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rainjoyswritingLove Seeketh Not Itself to Please, a Good Omens fic, Crowley/Aziraphale bless them <3
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters for which we should all be pleased because I never could be trusted with them, look how horrible I am to them =/
Rating: I'd say R just for some serious nastiness around the concept of consent.
Warnings and spoilers: Set post-series (apart from a jaunt to sixteenth-century England), watch that first. This fic contains some pretty gross shitfuckery around the notion of consent due to a fucking incubus. I ship those two asexual, which particularly in the smut-heavy medium of fanfic is a sometimes painful place to work from, given the expectations and judgements of the world we live in. Basically: If you want to have sex, great, lovely, more power to you, be kind and be safe and have fun. If you don't want to have sex, great, lovely, more power to you, be kind and be safe and have fun. Just never try to make someone else do the one you don't want to (that very much goes for emotional manipulation as well as physical force) and don't judge them for their choices because it is not okay or cool.
Summary: In which an incubus has an eye on promotion, Crowley does not know how to say no to a certain angel's lip-wobble, and Aziraphale doesn't know how to say no to a certain demon at all.
Note: I wanted to write something really short and fluffy after the last piece and my brain was like 'hey have this massively fucked-up thing about an incubus enjoy \o/' and this is why I can't have nice things.
You come through a wall with boredom, at some point. Boredom is an awareness of a lack of stimuli but a lack of stimuli for long enough makes even the concept of stimuli cease to make sense, and then you just float, in a drowsy, distant way; like sleeping with the eyes open. And Crowley feels like he's been in this place now for approximately five thousand years even though sunrises showing through the window tell him it's been just over three weeks and while this is hardly the worst thing that's ever happened to him, when he gets out of this circle and gets his hands on the human who stuck him in it he is turning the bastard inside out.
There's a moth in the room. It's the most interesting thing that's happened in the last few days, apart from the human's panic when it returns to refresh the candles holding Crowley in; now in the night Crowley sees the moth circle those candles marking out the circle that is the current edge of his world, its flight unpredictable and looping. So it's that he's watching, glazed beyond thought, when he hears the door click in the next room, the entering footsteps. Crowley blinks, sighs - so the idiot human found someone willing to sell him 'the bark of a black dog in a graveyard at midnight', then - and stands up, smoothes his clothes, shuffles his shoulders right, ready to face . . .
A clatter and stumble from the next room, a mutter of, "Oh for goodness' - let there be light."
The next room illuminates with the pure clear light of Heaven itself and that voice runs up Crowley's spine like a feather, his breath - stops in.
And in the next room, "Oh -"
Crowley snaps his heart shut like a clamshell, listens to the silence, the silence . . . footsteps pad closer, and then silhouetted in the doorway, blinking into this side room, is the guileless white-haired face of an angel Crowley has known on and off and consciously thought about for a lot less than he's wanted to for five thousand years and change, who blinks in and says, ". . . Crowley? Good Lord, is that you?"
"No, I'm a sea slug," Crowley snaps back, Heaven he's been in this stupid circle for three weeks, he does not have the softness of temper for this right now. "Yes it's me, angel, what the Heaven are you doing here?"
"Looking for a book, actually." Aziraphale blinks around the room, half-lit from the light beaming through the doorway around him, and the candles edging Crowley's freedom. "Did you feel . . . just felt this absolutely astonishing . . . love. How odd." He rubs the centre of his chest as if he has heartburn, but slower, as if it's really nice heartburn. "Maybe whoever lives here . . . never mind. It's gone now anyway. Crowley, what are you doing here?"
Crowley stabs his hands out in a gesture taking in the chalk circle he's stuck in, the half-melted candles he can't step over. "Some idiot human summoned me and I'm - stuck." This is so embarrassing. Jesus, this is so humiliating.
"Stuck?" Aziraphale says, blinking at the candles, then he says, "Oh, Crowley, the book - Mr Mainprize wrote that he would hold it for me but then he sold it on when someone offered more for it, the rotter, I came here for - Crowley, it's one of those alchemical texts on the summoning of demons."
"Is it," Crowley says, and fights every muscle's urge to scream and start punching the floor.
"I had heard it was actually accurate, that was why I wanted it, can't trust humans with things like that." Aziraphale looks over the circle, says, "How long have you been stuck here for?"
Crowley looks sourly across at the half-shuttered window and mutters it under his breath.
Aziraphale says, "I'm sorry?"
"I said three weeks! Three weeks, angel! Now do you mind - ?" He gestures at the circle, overeager now, he wants out -
"Three weeks? But - my dear fellow, that must have been dreadful."
"Must it have been," Crowley says flatly, and Aziraphale glances at him, then looks down and plays with the fur on the cuff of his over-robe which he's wearing long past the knee, Crowley wouldn't be seen dead with one that length in this day and age.
Aziraphale says to his cuff, voice small and chastened, "How do I let you out?"
The greed in Crowley to get out twists on the way his voice sounds, and he swallows hard, reaches inside himself, finds the softness; his own voice comes lower, still edged rough. "Just blow out the candles, angel. Please."
Aziraphale glances up at him, and smiles. He smiles, and Crowley's heart feels punched. Then he snaps his fingers and every candle is out, startled smoke rising in thin ribbons to the ceiling, and Crowley feels the walls edging his world disappear, his shoulders fall back, his whole body is a sigh. And he skips quickly over the chalked lines of that circle and gives it an evil look, as Aziraphale watches him giving a gentler smile, before he turns for the desk and begins searching amongst the papers, jars and bundles there, sliding out a thick, much-stained book.
"What on earth is all this stuff?" he says, eyeing the jars. "Alchemy?"
Crowley shrugs his black over-robe right over the doublet, says, "Oh, he wanted the secrets of ultimate power and all that rubbish, I was sending him out for 'ingredients'. The egg of a black cock and the light of a midsummer's dawn and all that."
"But neither of those things can be - collected."
"No, no they can't be. But there's always some human who sees a retail opportunity when faced with a complete moron." Crowley watches Aziraphale - there is no other word for this, hugging the book, running his thumb lovingly around its foxed edge with such a happy look in his eyes. Crowley says, "So I'm not going to say 'thank you' -"
"No, best not," Aziraphale says quickly, "doubt they'd be happy about me setting a demon free, you know, up there," with a discreet little point, nodding at and eyeing the ceiling. Crowley feels that helpless fondness overcome him, this ridiculous, perfect angel, he is utterly . . .
". . . but you didn't even hesitate when I asked you to let me out," Crowley says. "Which, given that you probably really shouldn't be letting demons free at every chance you get . . ."
"Oh," Aziraphale says, and it clicks behind his eyes like flint catching. "Oh. No. No, I probably shouldn't. Oh dear, yes. Could get in terrible trouble for that. But I don't suppose either of us will be telling anyone -"
"Definitely not," Crowley mutters, because he's not telling a soul about these last three humiliating weeks and he's killing any fucker who finds out. Apart from Aziraphale, of course.
"And it's not like I would go around setting any demon free, my dear fellow. Just you."
And he is so entirely ingenuous, so entirely trusting and smiling, Crowley looks at him and he does know, he does know, this angel, he would let Crowley close his hands around his neck only curious for what he intended to do next. He feels it on the inside of his spine, the way Aziraphale trusts him.
It does not feel entirely good.
"Come on," he says. "Let me buy you a drink, there's a decent place around the corner."
"Well, why not, as we're already here. Haven't seen you since - when was it, Hull? We were supposed to be blessing and cursing the exact same man."
"Perfect no score draw," Crowley says.
"Nice fish supper we had instead, anyway," Aziraphale says. "Do you think I should leave some money for the book?"
Crowley gives him a look over his tinted glasses, holding the front door open for Aziraphale to exit under his arm. "No, angel." he says. "No, I do not think that you should."
As the door closes behind them Crowley snaps his fingers, and Aziraphale glances at him sidelong, still hugging the book to himself.
"What did you just do?" the angel says, eyeing him suspiciously.
"Best you don't know," Crowley says. "Three weeks, angel."
Aziraphale takes a breath in, sighs it out. ". . . yes, it probably is best I don't know. Do you fancy a pie, after the drink? Might as well make an evening of it now."
And this, this is the best they have, until they have better.
*
Five hundred years later, give or take, they have quite a lot better.
Crowley's strolling back to the flat from a morning he'd chalk up as nigh perfect, all things considered. He woke before Aziraphale did is the really perfect part of it. The angel doesn't always sleep and can usually be trusted to wake before Crowley even if he does, Crowley viewing decades the way humans view a snooze alarm, but Crowley woke first, and shifted drowsily in the sheets, and turned blinking slow to the most familiar face in his universe, eyes closed and asleep on the pillow next to and above him. And Crowley lifted his head from Aziraphale's shoulder, awed, it was like watching the first ever sunrise again, that quiet perfect moment he could almost hold in his hands, like catching a star between the palms and feeling the glow all the way through the bones.
They are still, in the grand scheme of things, new to this. The apocalypse has still barely not happened by any stretch even of mortal time, let alone their lives, and they're getting used to the whole business of freedom from Heaven and Hell, no longer needing to hide and meet in secret and - well, pine, with varying degrees of dignity and severity depending on the day. They hardly knew what they wanted from each other, at first. They are mostly working that out by trial and error. Thus far it's been less of a trial, and there have been fewer errors, than might have been predicted.
The glory is they have so much time to work it out in. So the first time Aziraphale kissed him on the cheek Crowley could take his time not freaking out about it, could act like nothing had happened for a good week before he bottled playing it cool and doing nothing for longer out of terror that Aziraphale would think that the gesture hadn't been welcome and might not only never do it again but would definitely never do more than it. And given that Crowley really doesn't think he could pull off a kiss on the cheek himself, it's really not his image, he got himself drunk enough to feel brave in the bookshop one night and then said, it felt important to ask the question given that all the encouragement Aziraphale had given him was a 'thank you' peck on the cheek for passing him his coat and untold centuries' worth of gazes of helpless, rapt, abject adoration, "Is it alright if I kiss you?"
Aziraphale, refilling their glasses, looked up at him and poured wine all over the table and Crowley snapped his fingers to catch it in a bubble in the air before it poured all over the floor as well. Crowley manoeuvred the wine over his own glass to let it fall, and Aziraphale just kept staring at him, blinking now and then before he swallowed, visibly and very beautifully, and said with his eyes flitting down and back up at Crowley, a delicious mixture of both genuine and coy modesty, "On the cheek?"
"On the mouth." He hadn't been able to take his eyes off that point himself; moth-pale as Aziraphale mostly is, his mouth has always stood out as such a very pretty pink. "Chastely," he'd added, not wanting to panic the angel at this exact moment in time, now was exactly not the time to fright Aziraphale knowing full bloody well that refusal now would fright Crowley out of ever, ever asking the question again.
Aziraphale put the wine bottle down, carefully, and put his hands on his knees, and the mouth Crowley was watching very carefully pressed a smile that jumped delighted-nervous-needy in a single flex, and he said, "Oh, well, if that's the case," and when Crowley slid both hands around his face Aziraphale's eyes closed both joyously and shyly all at once and Crowley didn't breathe, took his time holding his breath, until after maybe the second kiss.
They take their time. They find their own ways together. Crowley thinks they're as at sea as each other in many respects, because Crowley might have seduced a few humans way back in the day (an extremely tedious enterprise, he found more amusing ways to besmirch a soul as quickly as he could) and Aziraphale might have explained to Crowley what a 'bear' is (after decades of working in Soho Aziraphale gets his own unique definition of innocence) but the truth of it is that when it came to kissing each other for the first time - Aziraphale's hand, when it caught in Crowley's jacket, may indeed have been trembling a little, but Crowley was squeezing his eyes closed to keep himself from crying. A perfect no-score draw. In so many ways they seem almost designed as if to complement each other, Crowley hasn't yet found a way they're incompatible, not beyond the point of merely irritating each other. Mostly the apparent incompatibilities turn out to be much greater complementaries than they might have anticipated. After all, Aziraphale might sleep less than Crowley but he reads, which means that for a good few hours a day when one or the other of them might have been bored stupefied they're actually both doing exactly, exactly what they want to do, which is to do both of those things together.
And of course, there are the perfect mornings, when Aziraphale does sleep, and then sleeps in past Crowley . . .
So he's strolling back to his flat in a very good mood, having sent the angel off for the bookshop before heading out for orchid food himself, now carrying it back to the flat in a brown paper bag (humans are getting a bit better about the environment, finally, now Crowley has very good reason to want them not to fuck this planet up beyond habitability for a good long while) and whistling Don't Stop Me Now as he lets himself back in. There's an underperforming string of pearls he's going to noisily murder while Aziraphale isn't present, there being certain forms of gardening Crowley doesn't think Aziraphale has the stomach for, and then there's the misting, and then he should be able to swing by the bookshop in time to tempt the angel out for an extended lunch. Except as he kicks the door closed behind himself he hears a little - well he can only in honesty call it a 'squeak', the noise an angel-sized mouse would make, from the living room. And Crowley sets his bag down on a sideboard, and walks suspiciously to the living room doorway.
"Oh," Aziraphale says, looking flustered, shaking a match out. "I wasn't expecting you back for -"
Crowley says, slowly, "What's - all this . . . ?"
The blinds are drawn; the scene is lit by the arc of candles the angel has set up around the blankets and pillows he's laid out on the floor, the coffee table pushed aside to give him room; quite a lot of room, two could fit in his circle of candles easily, even - Crowley's forehead begins to knit - even horizontally.
Because there are also rose petals. Because there is also a bottle of champagne and two flutes. Because when the angel does make a gesture, he really does it properly, and Crowley gives the candles and petals a look of - not exactly aversion, it's just that his what the fuck has an unsettled aspect to it of having a pretty good sense of what the fuck. Because Aziraphale stands there eyes low and squeezing the box of matches in both hands, breathing a little unsteady, and then his smile flutters on as he lifts his eyes to Crowley's, the smile softening in his cheeks and churning Crowley's guts all warm as he says, softly, "I'm sorry it's not so much of a surprise then, Crowley. Only - you've been so terribly patient with me. I really wanted to make it - make it special, now I'm -" His throat pulses and Crowley's eyes can't lift from it. "Now I'm ready for you."
Crowley drags his eyes up to Aziraphale's and he says, too numb for the suspicious tone he's aiming for, "Ready for what?"
"Oh Crowley," Aziraphale says, his smile turning so happy, as if everything has finally come perfect. "For making love."
Crowley probably does not control his immediate expression very well, and he is aware that the sunglasses have never really hidden much from Aziraphale who for thousands of years remained cheerful and friendly in his presence when Crowley didn't really mean his front of fuck off and who got cross and stormed off the first moment he really did. But he controls the aghast drop of his face as best he can and luckily Aziraphale's gaze has dropped again, such a happy, wanting shyness, as he squirms a little like it's a dance and says, "You've been so patient, and I know it's taken me ever so long, and I really wanted to make it - make it good for you, now I'm not being so silly anymore. And you have to forgive me if I - don't really know what to do, or - until I learn a bit, you know, you might just have to - just do whatever you want, to me, and I'll just have to pick it up as we go along."
That way he smiles has often unsettled Crowley's knees but it's never made him feel ill before. "You," he says, and doesn't know what the fuck else to say, clears his throat and says, "You don't have to do this if you just think it's something, you know, I want to do. I'm happy as we are, angel, you know I'm - I'm happy exactly as we are."
"But it's cruel of me, isn't it, leading you on and . . . Crowley, really, I do want this, I want to feel you, I want to make you feel-"
"Alright, yes, alright, only -" Only it took fucking months before we both spent the night here because I thought we were both nervous about putting out the wrong signals about what it meant, and it took fucking further months before we eased into both using the bed with explicit verbal assurances that it was only for sleeping and - and you don't even look at me like that when I'm undressing, and you - you - you -
Aziraphale's eyes bright and eager on his catch, stop, holding fast to some meaning they find in Crowley's gaze and he says, it falls out of him like a bowling ball hitting the floor, "You don't want to."
Crowley opens his mouth and makes a long noise that might eventually turn into 'I' but doesn't want to commit until he knows at least one word that should follow it and, fuck, he doesn't.
"Oh," Aziraphale says, turning a little away, hands pressing that box of matches closer, swallowing, eyes not knowing where to settle amongst the candles and roses and blankets. "Oh. Of course. No. How stupid of me. Of course."
". . . angel, it's . . ."
"No, it's fine, I understand completely, you don't -" Aziraphale's chin jumps, and he turns the other way, doesn't seem to know where to look except definitely not at Crowley. "You don't - like me. Like that. I understand - completely -"
"No, it, it's not like that -"
"I mean, I don't know what She was thinking myself if I'm honest, She made me - too old and too - fat -"
"No, no no no no -" Crowley strides into the arc of candles, catches Aziraphale's arms before he can squirm himself around in some other direction to avoid him. "No, angel, no, look at me, look at me, it's never been that, you know She made you perfect, you're - perfect, Aziraphale, you are, you're - perfect, to me." Aziraphale is blinking very hard with wet eyelashes, and still only meeting Crowley's eye for fragments of a second at a time. "It's not you, it's not like that, it's just . . . never been that - into it, really. It just always seemed like a waste of time. So you don't, you really don't have to do this if it's just something you think I want to do, because really I'm not bothered. Just a lot of faff. You really don't have to."
Aziraphale says, still very low and too flat to Crowley's shoes, "Oh."
Crowley holds him by the elbows and watches his face carefully, says and feels sick with it, "You really do want to."
All those years Aziraphale's lived in Soho, all those period-appropriately steamy novels he's read, all that talk about 'dear Oscar', Jesus, fuck, Aziraphale really was taking his time, it wasn't that he wasn't interested in sex, he's just a romantic idiot who was prepared to wait six thousand years not only for the right person but for the precisely right moment for the perfect romantic gesture and then Crowley put his foot through his perfect moment like a cowpat on a hot day by personally not really caring for sex. Aziraphale has wanted this for six thousand years and in less than a minute Crowley has ruined it, just as Crowley, and he really thinks he has definitive proof of this now, ruins everything.
"It doesn't matter," Aziraphale says to the blankets.
". . . of course it does. It's important to you." Crowley doesn't know what to say, until he does. It's not like he finds sex loathsome, he's just not very into it, really doesn't get the excitement humans seem to feel about it. So it's not like it's the end of the world (he knows what the end of the world looks like and it's much worse than this). Might even be nice, making Aziraphale happy. Maybe . . . "Look, maybe - maybe it'll be different if it's us. Maybe it'll be nice. Maybe we should give it a go." Aziraphale looks up at him with damp, wondering eyes, and in the candlelight, Heaven, Crowley approves of all of humanity's technological advances but electricity really has nothing on this for the way he so softly glows. He twitches his own smile, trying to make it feel genuine. "If you still want to."
Aziraphale raises a hand from the box of matches, touches his arm, watches his eyes. "Are you sure?"
Crowley brushes his fingers through the hair above Aziraphale's ear because he's allowed to do things like that now and wonders if maybe it'll just be like that; getting to touch Aziraphale, it's hardly a chore. "Yeah," he says. "Why not."
Aziraphale's eyes light, his smile presses eager, and he tucks Crowley in by the neck for a kiss - and there is a different quality to it, Crowley feels the thing that's changed, kissing for them has always previously been a matter of kissing, not a matter of prelude to something other than kissing and the knowingness of Aziraphale's mouth now, Crowley doesn't know how he feels about this new kiss - and breaks back, says, "Oh, I forgot - hold on for one second, I left something in the bedroom -"
"What?" Crowley says, thinking with a grim sort of horror of all those years Aziraphale has spent in Soho (lube, a how-to guide, a vibrator, who fucking knows -).
"Just one moment -" Aziraphale says, hurrying for the door and then pausing, saying, "See, you caught me too early," and pushing the last unlit candle into place, striking a match for it, and in the second that the wick is lit (his face leaned in is soft gold) and he's shaking the match out -
Crowley feels the walls of the world close in small around himself.
He stands stock still. He bristles his wings back - invisible on this plane, but very much here and very much feeling how hemmed in he is, he couldn't spread them to their full breadth - and he says, "What -?"
Aziraphale stands back, smiling at him. Aziraphale smiles a lot, but Crowley's never seen that smile on his face. He would never even have been able to imagine that smile on Aziraphale's face. Aziraphale might not be textbook angelic but maliciousness, cruelty, Crowley's never known what they would look like on him because in six thousand years he's never once seen them there.
Crowley takes the one step he can and lifts a hand, presses the invisible wall that is so utterly there in front of him and looks down at the blankets covering - he knows what they're covering, as his stomach drops the distance to the pavement far below and he looks up at Aziraphale, doesn't - "What - what are you -"
He understands then that the question he just asked is a complete question in itself, cold through every fine bone in his body as he says, lower, the hiss underneath comes out more in fear than in anger yet, "What are you?"
Aziraphale smirks, and changes. His body flexes, thins, grows; and 'Crowley' looks back at himself over his sunglasses, before he grins and tosses the box of matches aside. "That was easy, no idea why Hell's so afraid of someone who buckles like his knees are made of paper at the sight of one wet angel."
"What the fuck have you done -" Now the anger comes, hotter than the parts of Hell that incinerate beyond charcoal, not even vapour left; his wings sharpen at his back and his voice comes low, and it shakes; "What the fuck have you done to him?"
The demon wearing his shape runs a hand through his hair, shifts its shoulders back, as if getting used to the body. "Nothing yet, I wanted to make sure you weren't going to walk in halfway through. But you know exactly what I am going to do to him, if you've worked out what I am."
"Incubuss." Crowley says, flatly. "I'm going to fucking kill you."
The incubus shrugs with Crowley's shoulders. "Have to find me first, and I reckon I'm down for a nice cushty promotion in Hell once I corrupt the angel you walked out on us for, you won't see me doing legwork on Earth anymore. Not that I'm not going to enjoy my last job. You're really not into it, are you? I mean, that angel is - the humans would call it thicc. With like, three or four Cs in his case. But you -" Crowley's hands are tightening into fists as he watches his own face sneer its smile back at him. "You've never tupped him, have you? That angel's as untouched as the day She made him, for the next - oh I don't know, half hour or something. But you don't have to worry." The smile is sharp and horrible. "He will enjoy it, whether he wants to or not."
Crowley's fists are hurting him and he's leaning into the power he can feel holding him in, and it's not shifting, he knows it won't shift, he's been here before.
"You don't even need to touch him," he hisses out, the panic is beginning to raise, he doesn't know what to - "Just kill me, you know I'm sstuck here."
"I know some other demons who would take a lot more pleasure than me in killing you, once I tell them where you are." the incubus says, smoothing Crowley's jacket against himself, giving it a look of disdain. "You know how this works, it doesn't even matter if he did fail Heaven, he still counts as an angel and I still get points for fucking him. And let's face it, if you've got to corrupt an angel, this has got to be one of the more fun ways to do it." Putting on a crooked, nasty grin, "Not that you'll ever find that out for yourself now."
The panic has now filled the circle Crowley is trapped in and is getting bigger than the room, far bigger than the space Crowley has for it. Because if an incubus gets its hands on Aziraphale, looking like him - it's not just sex, incubi fuck people up with it, warp their minds, the incubus wasn't lying about Aziraphale 'enjoying' it, that's what they do, even if he hates it the reaction will be the same and its consequences are - disintegration. The collapse of psyche and soul. Or it is for humans, Crowley doesn't even know what they might do to an angel because he's not aware of any incubi ever getting their hands on an angel before, they've never had the proper bait, but Aziraphale -
His hands press, fingers like claws, at the invisible wall he can't break.
Over the years Crowley has done a lot of things for Aziraphale because he loves the idiot more than he knows how to deal with, but most of the things he's given to Aziraphale didn't really cost Crowley very much to give; a little miracle here, a rescue from discorporation there, the worst he's ever saved him from is paperwork. But Crowley knows - has never understood, but knows - that Aziraphale loves him more than his own soul because back to the wall Aziraphale will give to Crowley the things he doesn't want to give, the things that cost him personally and painfully. He gave Crowley holy water when he would rather have never seen Crowley again than hand it over, given how dangerous a gift it was, and he tried to shoot the Antichrist for him even though he desperately, desperately didn't want to. Crowley knows - it stops his throat because he has never felt worthy of it and look what it's going to do to Aziraphale now - Crowley knows that Aziraphale would do anything for him. Anything. It doesn't matter if he likes it or wants it. He will give him anything.
Aziraphale loves Crowley so utterly that Crowley's face is going to destroy him, and there's nothing he can do to stop it.
He watches the other him stroll long-legged for the door, throwing an arm up without looking around; "Ciao."
And there's nothing he can do. Nothing. He feels hollow; he feels like his legs can't hold him up, like the incubus is the solid one and he's been left empty. And he sucks his queasy breath in and lashes out rage, shrieks his fury at the walls as he slashes and frenzies and burns and when all that berserk energy is just the heave of his breath and the burn of his overburdened muscles - the blankets are scorched to reveal the untouched chalk circle underneath, the pillows are charred snowdrifts, the roses are mulch, the champagne is shatter, but the walls still stand and he can still hear the mocking laughter of his own voice, even though the incubus is gone . . .
*
Aziraphale is reading at his desk, spectacles on and keeping a suspicious eye on his customers, when Crowley strides in with a spring in his step and a bottle of champagne in one hand. Crowley snaps his fingers, points at the customers, jerks his thumb for the door. "You, out. Aziraphale, how's your morning been?"
"Until now, quiet." Aziraphale says, putting his book down and watching suspiciously as Crowley slams the door behind the last customer walking dreamily out, and switches the sign to 'closed'. Usually he rather likes how easy Crowley finds corralling the customers but usually Crowley doesn't just eject them en masse, and he doesn't know why he's done it now. "What are you planning?"
Crowley laughs, walking over to plunk the bottle on the desk in front of him. "You," he says, and Aziraphale frowns at him as Crowley leans over the desk, pulls Aziraphale forwards by the back of the head - there's really only the time to make the beginning of a surprised noise - and kisses him.
Sometimes, when they kiss, Crowley does things with his tongue. These are rare and subtle and startling things every time, clearly saved for special occasions and used with care, as they never fail to make Aziraphale's entire body start and then - relax, shivering loosely to his new centre of gravity somewhere inside Crowley's chest. Those kisses are rather lovely, intricate little excitements to share. This couldn't be called subtle even by the explicit standards of Soho and when hands don't seem to have any effect, Aziraphale utilises an elbow and his entire forearm to lever Crowley off himself, dropping back into his chair and staring at him, feeling - dumb. He doesn't know what the Hell else to feel. He doesn't know what on Earth is going on and doesn't understand that kiss in the slightest and says, he doesn't know what to say, "Crowley - what the Hell are you doing?"
Crowley laughs at the ceiling, hikes himself up to sit on the edge of the desk so Aziraphale is now folding his neck back to look him in the face, and grins at him. "I'm doing what comes naturally. You always knew I was a demon." His legs give a slow kick, stretching themselves long from the edge of the desk, and Aziraphale blinks from them back to Crowley's face, to his smile, he doesn't understand his smile. "You knew this was coming sooner or later. This is for celebrating, afterwards." He flicks the bottle with a fingernail, and Aziraphale's forehead feels furrowed, he feels like he's missed the first half of this conversation. Crowley is - looking at him, as he says, lower and - purred, somehow, "You'll enjoy it more than you think."
"Enjoy what? Did we have plans? I don't remember -"
Crowley laughs, low, and says, "We have plans. Come on angel, you know what this is about."
Beginning to get annoyed now, "I really don't, my dear."
"Are you really that dense?" Crowley says, watching his face as if genuinely curious on the point while Aziraphale has gone still, couldn't have been more shocked if Crowley had struck him, the cruelty of it feels the same. But staring into Crowley's eyes what rises isn't indignation or self-defence but - shame, the glutting of his throat with the thought - how stupid he must be acting to make Crowley say it like that -
Crowley has called him stupid before. It's just that he's never before thought that Crowley intended unkindness from it and he definitely, definitely does now. Which means that he must be being really particularly stupid right now to bring this out of Crowley, he just doesn't in this moment know in which exact way he is being stupid -
He takes his glasses off to give his hands something to play with, and clears his throat a little. His voice does come mostly steady. "Forgive me, Crowley, but I really don't know what we're talking about. If we were supposed to be doing something today and I forgot I'm really terribly sorry -"
"We've been supposed to be doing something since the beginning of Creation." Aziraphale watches his eyes, and doesn't know how he ought to be breathing, he doesn't understand what's happening. "How much longer were you planning on making me wait?"
That -
- like a physical steel pin through the heart -
That strikes the skin like ice, then immediately like fire as the shock gives way to the dumb heat of the blush, and he looks down at the glasses in his suddenly nerveless fingers and it's - true. He's always needed Crowley's patience and Crowley has always given it, Crowley likes speed but Aziraphale panics when things move too fast and Crowley has always been patient for him. He's always needed Crowley's patience, he gets scared, he just never thought - he just never thought it would be used against him and -
No, that's not fair, he mustn't blame Crowley, he has made Crowley wait an awfully long time out of his own stupid fear, it's his own stupid fear making this conversation so difficult now, it's always his own stupid fear. He wets his lips, and puts the glasses on the desk, and presses his hands together in his lap, says quietly, "I'm sorry. I am sorry, Crowley, dear. I'm sorry I don't understand." He looks up at him and doesn't understand the way the fear reacts to Crowley's hungry stare, in that moment. He still says, "What is it I'm supposed to be doing?"
Crowley watches his face as if there's something a bit magical about how confused Aziraphale is - it gives him a strange, unpleasantly twisted memory of Eden - and he says, "If you really need it naming, angel, I think it's well past time you let me fuck you, isn't it?"
Aziraphale stares at him. His lips part; he doesn't say anything. He doesn't know what to say.
Crowley stretches his arms up, slides from the desk and turns to lean over it, hands on the wood, watching Aziraphale's blank expression. "You'll enjoy it," he says. "Trust me. And you really have made me wait long enough for it."
Finally he blinks, breaks the stare, and looks down at his hands in his lap feeling only numb. "Oh," he says, quietly. ". . . I . . . didn't know you . . . wanted to."
Said as if he's still being very slow, "I'm a demon, Aziraphale."
"Oh," he says again to his hands, he doesn't know what else to say. "I didn't know it meant that."
Crowley has never really been whatever a demon ought to be, Aziraphale isn't sure he would like him were that not true; the individuality of Crowley, his specialness, comes from his being so very much Crowley and so very much more than just generic demonness. But there are still demonic things about Crowley, just as there are angelic things about Aziraphale, he just didn't know that this was one of them, what it meant. But Crowley must know - if the desire for it is a demonic thing, he must know, Aziraphale's still an angel, he doesn't feel . . .
He says, risking a glance to him, he needs reassurance, "You know I . . . I don't know that I'll, ah, be very - good at it, dear."
"First time?" Crowley says, and it sounds sympathetic but something about it, Aziraphale just feels so flustered, it just feels off. He looks him in the eye, he feels very lost right now and his heart is beating so fast he's feeling light-headed but he reaches for that strong sure rope that has never faltered, the only anchor he has, he's not going to let go, he's sure they're going to be alright, even through this.
"You know it is," he says, and his breath shivers a little. "I've never loved anyone but you."
Crowley shrugs. "You can leave making it good up to me. Shall I let you choose, if it's your first time?" He slaps the desk under his hand, says, "Am I having you bent over here or would you rather -" His smile curls up, all teeth. "- on the sofa on your back thinking of England, as it were?"
"- here?" He's on his feet in sheer - he looks at the windows, dusty but still windows, and - "Here? Now?"
"We've had plenty of potential locations over the centuries but you preferred to tease."
"Crowley I - wasn't, you know I wasn't, I just - didn't know this - I didn't know you wanted this, I -"
Aziraphale, while reading and a little carried away with a love story, has sometimes wondered about whether sex might be nice. Any sense of its reality quickly makes him wrinkle his nose away from it; he likes cuddling, and kissing now and then, and holding Crowley's arm, and he loves it when Crowley casually throws an arm behind his shoulders along the back of a bench, he loves being with him, in all the ways they are together. He just doesn't think that he would like that. And he feels now - he swallows, and feels it trying to set his spine steadier - Crowley is being unfair. Since they came together Crowley has been so careful to make sure that his gestures were understood for what they are, not for what they might be taken to be, that a kiss is a kiss to be enjoyed as a kiss and not as a mere signpost to something else, that he intends to be an absolute gentleman when they share the bed, it's not fair to suddenly blame Aziraphale for taking him at his word. And Aziraphale has been so tentative because he doesn't want to tease, doesn't want to give the wrong impression, but he doesn't want Crowley for one second to think that he doesn't love him and want him, he has just always wanted - wanted -
"Not here," he says, and he means it urgently, if he's doing this - is he doing this? Good Lord - it can't be here. "Crowley, half of Soho is walking past and you have a flat that you've been very strangely averse to putting very many windows in, we could -" His throat is clogging, he doesn't want to be saying this, it's only now he's saying it that he knows how he doesn't want to. "- we could go to your bedroom, we could make it - nice -"
It comes out like despair, nothing about this is nice. Crowley pushes himself up from the desk and Aziraphale who has never flinched from Crowley in six thousand years feels his body's automatic urge to back away, to get some space before Crowley can get to him as if - as if he would hurt him? It's Crowley, he's never going to -
"It will be nice," Crowley says soothingly. "Let me make it nice for you."
Crowley doesn't move towards him, seems finally to understand how very spooked Aziraphale is feeling, just stands there, watching him, waiting. And it hurts so much when Aziraphale swallows that that may be why his eyes sting, looking at him, because - is he really going to do this? He doesn't see how he could - not. How can he refuse him? If Crowley has honestly always thought that this was going to happen and Aziraphale was just putting him off and putting him off until his patience snapped - but not here, not like this, can't he wait until they're somewhere - somewhere - anywhere else - ?
Aziraphale knows why he really doesn't want this to happen here, in his bookshop, in the safest place the two of them had for decades, the safest place he has ever had. He knows he's going to hate this. He does not want to do it. And the fear - the fear, the fear says -
What if, if I say no, he leaves?
Aziraphale stares at him and his breath is not steady and it took him six thousand years to be brave enough for Crowley and if he's actually brave enough to refuse him this, he might lose him for eternity. And if it happens here, here, for that reason, if he lets Crowley do this to him out of sheer terror that if he doesn't then Crowley will leave - how is he ever afterwards going to look at Crowley, to be affectionate with Crowley, to love him in any natural way again, especially here?
He breathes, shakily, and his fists squeeze anxious at his sides, and Crowley is watching him through his sunglasses with a little tilt to the corner of his mouth that could be called a smile but a smile is a pleasant thing. And Aziraphale could choke on it all of a sudden, hot in his throat, he wants to snap back why are you doing this to me, there are a thousand ways Crowley could have approached this, he could have been nice, Aziraphale can imagine a thousand scenarios in which he could honestly have been happy only to make Crowley happy, a thousand scenarios that don't involve him being near-tears in his bookshop because Crowley is being so - is being so - cruel he doesn't - he never thought Crowley could -
His breath stills.
He never thought Crowley could ever be so cruel to him as this.
He snaps his fingers before he can think and hesitate and before the demon in front of him can realise and react. He just feels it so suddenly and he snaps his fingers and the ceiling breaks, and the noise it makes when it hits, his body reacts as if to an electric shock.
And then there's the pouring dust and broken wood, the creaking as the heavy wooden body of it settles, still the discordant plinking of snapped keys and broken wires, and, somewhere underneath the great smashed grand piano Aziraphale just miracled through the ceiling, the demon moans.
Aziraphale stands there with his eyes closed, breathing in awful shuddery gulps, making very, very sure that he's not going to cry. When he has some semblance of control over himself he smoothes his waistcoat and neatens his bowtie and picks his way across the debris, stepping carefully over a broken piano leg, avoiding looking at the choking demon underneath the wreckage of the piano as he examines its snapped-back lid, its mangled wiring.
"I'm very kind," he says, his voice coming softer now, surer, he doesn't feel so threatened and flustered and frightened anymore, he knows exactly what he's doing now, his sense of priority is as bright as the edge of a blade. "I think it's an important thing to be, there's quite enough dreadfulness in the world, one might as well be nice. And it is something that people do try to take advantage of now and then, thinking that kindness is the same as naïveté, which it is not. I happen to be both of those things so I'm quite aware of the difference between them."
He's picked out a wire now with one trailing end, which means he only needs a foot on the piano for purchase - the demon shrieks but it breaks into wet coughing at the pressure, before the wire snaps free and Aziraphale staggers back with it, righting himself again against the desk. "Because kindness is about seeing the truth of someone's soul and wishing to protect it, there is a courage in kindness, in understanding how truly precious something so worthy of protection is, understanding the things you would sacrifice in the name of that protection."
He winds the wire around both fists, and finally looks down at the bloody head and one free arm hanging from underneath the shattered piano of the thing that looks so utterly like Crowley and is not him, is never him, even if it looks just like the death of him at Aziraphale's feet. Aziraphale's breath is shaky and low and his heart feels like a snapped piano wire, all his strength is being spent in steadying his voice and his hands. "So please believe me when I say that I am going to take all the kindness in my heart and I am going to use it to garrotte you by millimetres until you tell me what you've done with Crowley because so help me God -" His throat grinds closed, his voice hurts, "I don't care how I have to kill you to save him. So I advise you -" He pulls the piano wire taut, and the demon looks up at him with mute yellow eyes and blood in its mouth. "Start talking."
*
Slumped on the floor, wrists propped off his knees and whole body heaving with his breath after the latest attempt to force himself free, Crowley is blinking more than he has in at least the last six months with trying not to let himself cry.
He can't get out. These things are designed so he can't get out, that's the point of them, it doesn't matter what energy he puts into it and how much strength he spends, the problem is ontological, demons cannot break free of this circle and Crowley is a demon. The only way to get free is to stop being a demon and he did for about five breathless weepy minutes hunch face-down on his knees begging Her for forgiveness if it would just make him something, anything other than a demon just so he could get free because if that thing gets Aziraphale, breaks Aziraphale - but She isn't fucking listening or doesn't fucking care and if She doesn't care what that thing is going to do to Aziraphale, it's the last proof Crowley could possibly need of it, She's evil. The Heaven and Hell thing was an elaborate, nasty joke from the beginning. She's been on the side of bad since the start.
But he can't get out, he can't get out, and he thinks of Aziraphale trusting him and not knowing why Crowley is doing this to him and wanting through all of it to make him happy, he wants to throw up. He knows that he probably won't know a thing about what's happened until that incubus tells someone like Hastur that Crowley's stuck up here and Hastur comes to kill him some tedious drawn-out way but Hastur will definitely be telling him what that thing did to Aziraphale and it comes out as a soft shaky moan, to know second-hand from a demon who if he had a sense of humour would only think it funny -
Isn't it better if it turns Aziraphale into some twisted shell of himself? Because if he stays himself and he realises that it wasn't Crowley, that he meekly submitted to something he desperately didn't want for Crowley's sake and the demon that did that to him wasn't even Crowley and Crowley's probably already dead and now he's alone, forever - fuck, fuck, he really wants to throw up -
The front door of the flat bangs open. It's the first noise he's heard from outside this circle since the incubus walked away and Crowley jerks his head up, wipes both eyes on the back of a wrist, stands as panicked footsteps hurry down the long corridor outside -
Aziraphale bolts past the doorway, spotting him and skidding his sprint, scrabbling towards him, Crowley sees him taking in the circle and snapping his fingers and the candle flames turn to strings of smoke, Crowley feels the walls around him vanish. He leaps out of that circle, Aziraphale is clearly running too fast and off-balance to stop himself, they both halt their own forward momentum by throwing their arms around each other and staggering in a clumsy circle, Aziraphale stuffing his face into the side of Crowley's neck and whimpering there, "Oh God - oh thank God -" and Crowley has a hand in the back of his hair and an arm around his side and is hissing, "Angel angel angel -"
It's a few shaky seconds of clasping and saying nothing but nonsense before any practical thought can occur to either of them, and Crowley's first thought is - is he certain this isn't the incubus? But the angel's shoulders have started to jog and he's clutching Crowley's jacket tight, Crowley feels the hot line of a tear run down the side of his throat and Aziraphale croaks, "Sorry - I'm sorry - it was just so horrible -"
"Oh, no, oh no, no, angel . . . Aziraphale it didn't - what did it do to you? Angel - angel -" He has to catch his wet cheeks up in both hands to make Aziraphale lift his head to meet his eye; his own throat is closing, the pain of it is incredible and his voice comes scoured and shaking. "What did it do to you?"
Aziraphale blinks at him, baffled brown eyes, and he says, "Oh - Crowley, darling, nothing, it didn't, it - oh, he kissed me. Oh. That was vile, actually, but it was only that, only -"
He stops, face stock still and turning a mottled red, embarrassment and something worse in his eyes. It takes a moment for it to click with Crowley and he says, lip curling his own disgust, "Yeah, it kissed me too. Nothing worse? Angel, it didn't do anything worse to you?"
"No." Aziraphale sniffs, pats his pockets as if it's not always in exactly the same place and retrieves his handkerchief. "No, it didn't. I - stopped it. And it - does it - if it counts as unfaithfulness, is it alright if we both did it?"
Crowley brushes back his perfect fluffy hair and kisses his perfect furrowed forehead. "It doesn't count when it's some lying bastard incubus anyway."
"Oh. Good." Aziraphale blows his nose and tucks the handkerchief away. "Sorry," he says. "I'm being dreadfully silly. It was just all rather horrible."
"Aziraphale - don't take this the wrong way or anything, but -" Crowley watches his eyes, and Aziraphale just looks back, all trust and confusion. "What did you call yourself last night that had me laughing for five minutes straight?"
Aziraphale stares at him, then says, ". . . oh," because he understands, of course he understands. "I was being silly and I called myself a booby. And you were very ungentlemanly about it."
Crowley's mouth and forehead crease with not laughing because it's still funny even after all this. "And you don't want to check?" he says. "That I'm really me?"
"I don't need to check," the angel says, relaxed against him. "Of course you're you."
"You should check. Always check."
"Oh Crowley," said with a tut, and Aziraphale finally unpeels himself from Crowley's chest and holds a 'hold it right there' finger up, takes a breath - and a step back, and a step back, and with a little calculating frown, another step back; then he says, "There." and edges a half-step back, drawing a line on the floor with the tip of his shoe. "That's the edge of it."
Crowley gives him a weird look because he has justification, Aziraphale is being weird. "What?"
"Love," Aziraphale says. "I do feel it, Crowley, there's a radius of it all around you, it gets bigger and smaller but this is the usual breadth, I thought - whenever I did feel it before I thought that was just how you felt, it was only . . . it's only recently I, um, understood that's how you feel around me. That was how I knew he wasn't you, in the end. He was right at the other side of my desk and I couldn't feel a thing."
Crowley stares at him and keeps his face blank. Yes, he knows that Aziraphale is sensitive to pockets of love, gets a cheerful little bounce in his step when their walks in the park take them past what he would refer to as 'courting couples'. Yes, he has always known of the possibility of Aziraphale feeling it coming off him in waves; he spent a very long time contracting any feeling he had inwards to keep it away from him before he gave up on hiding it, it was so obviously there for any blessed fool to see. No, he was not aware that Aziraphale is casually aware of it on a day to day basis, that Aziraphale can mark the apparent five-foot radius where the feeling fades, that Aziraphale could actually use it to locate Crowley in a line up of demons all wearing his literal face. And that incubus -
"What did it do to you?" he says, it comes too quiet, horror won't let it be more than a whisper. "What did it say?"
Aziraphale looks at him and his gaze still isn't . . . there's still too much fear and horror there, and his mouth and jaw aren't steady, Crowley feels sick. "It was trying to seduce me," the angel says, a little primly. "It didn't get very far."
Crowley takes a step forwards, stops, helpless. "Whatever it said - it wasn't me."
"Oh darling, I know that."
"No, I mean - nothing it said - I don't even like sex." Crowley has never verbalised that before, and it feels like coming unbalanced on the edge of a precipice - and landing back on his feet, the lightness of having said it, it's a big admission for a demon to make but he knows it's safe to say to him. "It's not about us, or you, or anything like that, I'm just not into it and none of that - matters because I would never -"
He stops. He finds, sick, that he can't say 'I would never try to pressure you into doing something you don't want to do'. He's already done that.
"I know, Crowley," Aziraphale says, and smiles at him like there's never been anything, anything between them but love. "I'm sorry it took me so long to realise it wasn't you, you would never . . . you would never have said anything to me like . . ."
He wants, and urgently doesn't want, to know. "What did it . . ."
Aziraphale shakes himself out. "It doesn't even matter."
"It does. What did it say?"
Aziraphale stares at him, and his eyes fall slowly down. ". . . I know it took me a long time," he says, quietly. "I wasn't - trying to tease, and it wasn't that I didn't want you. I just . . . it was hard. I was afraid of Heaven, and of Hell."
He wants so fiercely to touch him. "So was I. Afraid. Always." He feels sick remembering those days. "Always."
(What if Aziraphale never meant it like that, what if Aziraphale would have been just as friendly to anyone and he didn't matter, what if Aziraphale couldn't love something like him, what if Heaven found out and hurt him, what if he Fell -)
"I don't - want to -" Aziraphale makes an uneasy gesture with his hands. "Be physical like that either. I really don't. I don't think I realised how much until - I don't."
"No, no, that's fine, that's good -"
"I like the cuddling, I really do, and it's nice when we kiss, it's not like I don't like -"
"Yes, yes, me too -"
"Oh, good."
"Yes. Good."
"Excellent. Good."
"Yes."
Hands twisting, "Can we maybe hug again now?"
Crowley walks over and nearly lifts the angel off his feet wrapping him up so close to his chest, burying his face in his hair, inhaling long; thank - well, not Her. Someone. Maybe Her. They're both still alive and largely unharmed after all. Thank someone. He still has his angel; thank someone.
There are decisions you make. Whatever he might have done in the past, the memory of that thing wearing his face will keep him from it now; if Aziraphale doesn't want to do it, Crowley will never, never again be the person that demands it. Apart from things like turning the volume on opera down and not acting like Crowley is driving unreasonably whatever speed he's at, because those things don't count. But the big things, he'll never push again. He'll remember the boundary Aziraphale needs for his 'no' to have space to breathe. He's not forgetting this.
Aziraphale gives a low sigh almost like a moan, closing his arms tight around Crowley's waist. "How did he get you in that circle? He didn't - hurt you, Crowley -"
"- no." Sourly, because it's an embarrassing thing to admit, "It looked like you."
"It - oh." Aziraphale lifts his head back to blink at him. "You said he kissed you."
Crowley shrugs. Aziraphale looks over his shoulder at the circle, the contents of which are so scorched and shattered you'd never guess what they once were. "'I' . . . trapped you in there. How?"
"It, that's not important."
Aziraphale looks nervously at his eyes. "I think it is."
Crowley rolls his eyes away from his gaze, mumbles it at the wall.
"Excuse me?"
"I said it tried to seduce me too, alright? It - was standing in all those candles getting all - tearful and I - was stupid. Alright? Alright. That's all. It's nothing."
". . . 'I' . . . was trying to seduce you." Aziraphale stares up at him. "But Crowley, you don't like sex."
Crowley shrugs jaggedly and Aziraphale squeezes at his elbows.
"Tell me you said no, Crowley, please tell me -"
Crowley glares at the ceiling. "You were all upset, I was mostly just trying to stop you crying."
"- please never do that again. Crowley, please." Crowley looks down, at the weird frantic light in Aziraphale's eyes. "If I ask you for something you don't want, say no, God if not for your own sake then for mine, my love, because I wouldn't want to - live knowing I could have done something so selfish to you. Please, Crowley."
"Alright, don't get upset, alright," He catches Aziraphale's jaw light in one hand, gaze softening on his eyes, he feels - honestly, a little tremulously happy, that Aziraphale is so certain on this point when he hadn't really thought about it himself. No-one's ever really cared about Crowley and what Crowley wants, before Aziraphale. It's nice - it's the first time he's really had it, the first time he's been able to appreciate it; it's nice to know that his refusal deserves its space to breathe too. "But before you worked out it wasn't me, did you say yes?"
Aziraphale stares at him for a moment with his mouth open, then blinks and his smile flexes nervous. "I suppose I did," he admits. "Sort of. I was . . ." He looks away. "I thought if I said no then you would leave."
Still holding his jaw stroking his cheek with his thumb to coax his gaze back, "Always say no. Always say no if you don't want something. Promise me. Because I'm never, angel, I am never going to leave you."
Aziraphale looks at him, and lays both arms over his shoulders, and says, "I promise, Crowley."
They kiss so gentle and meant, how the fuck did Crowley not realise that thing wasn't him, all the sweetness and joy in it every time . . .
Aziraphale comes back a little on his heels and the relief, Crowley hadn't really known how mangled his guts felt until they sigh themselves loose again with that kiss to promise that they're still okay, that even after all that they can kiss like there's nothing but care. But there is one last thing that itches at his mind, the nervousness, and he says, "How did you get away from it? Where is it?"
"- ah. It - it's gone. I discorporated it, it'll be back in Hell I suppose."
"You -" Oh he has such a special angel, such a clever angel, he knew he loved him for a reason. "You discorporated it. How?"
Aziraphale's face is taut. "I dropped a piano on it."
- after the shock the delight reaches a whole new peak, glee like Christmas, he couldn't make himself stop laughing. "- you dropped a piano on it -"
"I couldn't think what to do, there was some silly cartoon on after that film we watched the other day, it must have -"
Crowley squeezes him in with giddy joy. "Always drop a piano on me," he says. "If I'm being so much of a dick it can't be me, always drop a piano on me, any demon, always drop pianos on -" Aziraphale's hands, sliding down his chest so he can grip them tight together, are shaking. "- angel?"
"I know it wasn't you," Aziraphale says, blinking fast, swallowing hard. "Only it looked - Crowley, I dropped a piano on you -"
"It was the right thing, you did the right thing -"
"There was blood coming out of your mouth," Aziraphale says, and then presses his face into Crowley's shoulder and holds him tight around the waist and breathes that tight, shivery way he does when he's trying not to cry. "It was horrible. It was absolutely horrible -"
Now Crowley understands why he ran in here and hugged him hard and wept for how horrible it had been. Not because some demon wearing Crowley's face tried to manipulate him into sex he didn't want to have, but because he just walked away from Crowley's broken corpse and he was the one who did that to it. Oh, fuck. Crowley holds his arms around him, slides his fingers into his hair, hushes him, gently. "I'm alright. I'm right here. It's alright, angel, it's all alright. You did the right thing. You did the right thing."
"I threatened him with a piece of piano wire," Aziraphale grinds out against his shoulder. "I thought he might have hurt you, trapped you somewhere, I needed to find you. But he looked like you, I'm sorry, I know I'm being stupid, and it's just -"
"You're not being stupid."
"- the worst part is I was bluffing, I knew I might have to save your life and I was lying because I couldn't - I'd already dropped a piano on you, how the Hell could I hurt you - ? I know it wasn't you, Crowley, darling, I know it wasn't, but he looked like you and I needed him to believe that I could - oh, God, torture him if I had to and I wanted to cry because you looked so hurt and I needed him to believe me, I thought I was going to be sick and then he just started talking anyway and then he just died -"
He's never actually killed anyone, Crowley remembers, and the first person he ever did looks just like him. Crowley folds him in close, presses Aziraphale's head to his neck with his own cheek, flicks out and closes around them his own invisible wings. And for a time, because Aziraphale is too panicked with feeling for words to make a difference, he hums, and rubs his back, and he understands. Of course he understands. Because if he had broken free of that circle, if he had launched himself after that thing wearing his own face, if he'd lunged forward hands full of fire and it had turned around and it had suddenly looked like Aziraphale, scared -
He knows he would have faltered. And he knows he would have wound up dead for it. And it made Aziraphale do that, it made Aziraphale physically defend himself from him to the point of killing him -
He lifts his head, kisses him through his hair, strokes the back of his neck. His own voice is steadier now, and more certain. "You did the right thing. I'm sorry it was so horrible. You did the right thing, you were perfect. You were perfect, Aziraphale."
The angel draws a long shaky breath in and lifts his head, looks at Crowley and looks tired. Crowley holds his face in both hands and looks at him and he never understands, thousands of years he's known Aziraphale, it's still like he's new every day. Crowley's shaking his head very gently as he says, it comes low with how much he means it, "You are so, so much stronger than you think."
Aziraphale blinks at him, drained now, exhausted. Crowley allows his fingers to thread back through his hair, cocks his own head, his own smile. "Bed?"
He always likes to sleep, and for once the angel looks like he could use it too. And Aziraphale blinks at him and then smiles, slowly and truly, and he says, gentle and glad, "Bed."
Crowley puts an arm around his shoulders and turns him for the doorway, and Aziraphale sighs from some deep place inside. And Crowley is so grateful for every little touch, for every moment of honest eye contact and unafraid presence, after what that thing did to Aziraphale he might have been too afraid of Crowley's face to ever want him near him again except - maybe he's stronger than Crowley thinks, as well.
He rubs his arm as he walks him for the bedroom. "Whatever it said to you was bullshit," he says. "You do know that, right? It was spouting crap to manipulate you, nothing it said was real."
"I know that now," Aziraphale says easily. "Honestly, my dear, I do know what men are like."
Crowley cocks an eyebrow at the angel and says, "Oh really."
"I've been on Earth for six thousand years," Aziraphale points out. "He's hardly the first ungentlemanly gentleman I've had to manage."
That - Crowley says, "What - who? Who have you 'managed'?"
"Well, Defoe could get surprisingly handsy after a drink or two, and some of those Bloomsbury writers seemed to have no understanding that persistence is not necessarily a virtue. And some of Oscar's parties got completely out of hand, Douglas was absolutely beastly - Crowley?"
Because Crowley has stopped walking, and is standing staring at Aziraphale now a couple of paces ahead of him in the bedroom doorway, turning and looking back at him. The angel says, "Are you alright?"
Crowley, who whenever he was away liked to picture Aziraphale meek in his dusty bookshop having early nights in with cups of cocoa and not getting into trouble, pulls a face. "I'm . . . fine."
In his head he's trying to redefine innocence. The only thing he really understands about it, he realises, is that it's not a binary, and that after Eden they all make the best of it that they can.
Aziraphale says, a little tentatively, the angel's had a stressful day, "Are you coming to bed?"
". . . yes. Yes I am."
Aziraphale smiles a little more confidently then, and offers a hand. Crowley takes it and finds that the smile has captured the corner of his own mouth, softened his eyes, as Aziraphale draws him inside.
They let the bedroom door close behind themselves.
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters for which we should all be pleased because I never could be trusted with them, look how horrible I am to them =/
Rating: I'd say R just for some serious nastiness around the concept of consent.
Warnings and spoilers: Set post-series (apart from a jaunt to sixteenth-century England), watch that first. This fic contains some pretty gross shitfuckery around the notion of consent due to a fucking incubus. I ship those two asexual, which particularly in the smut-heavy medium of fanfic is a sometimes painful place to work from, given the expectations and judgements of the world we live in. Basically: If you want to have sex, great, lovely, more power to you, be kind and be safe and have fun. If you don't want to have sex, great, lovely, more power to you, be kind and be safe and have fun. Just never try to make someone else do the one you don't want to (that very much goes for emotional manipulation as well as physical force) and don't judge them for their choices because it is not okay or cool.
Summary: In which an incubus has an eye on promotion, Crowley does not know how to say no to a certain angel's lip-wobble, and Aziraphale doesn't know how to say no to a certain demon at all.
Note: I wanted to write something really short and fluffy after the last piece and my brain was like 'hey have this massively fucked-up thing about an incubus enjoy \o/' and this is why I can't have nice things.
You come through a wall with boredom, at some point. Boredom is an awareness of a lack of stimuli but a lack of stimuli for long enough makes even the concept of stimuli cease to make sense, and then you just float, in a drowsy, distant way; like sleeping with the eyes open. And Crowley feels like he's been in this place now for approximately five thousand years even though sunrises showing through the window tell him it's been just over three weeks and while this is hardly the worst thing that's ever happened to him, when he gets out of this circle and gets his hands on the human who stuck him in it he is turning the bastard inside out.
There's a moth in the room. It's the most interesting thing that's happened in the last few days, apart from the human's panic when it returns to refresh the candles holding Crowley in; now in the night Crowley sees the moth circle those candles marking out the circle that is the current edge of his world, its flight unpredictable and looping. So it's that he's watching, glazed beyond thought, when he hears the door click in the next room, the entering footsteps. Crowley blinks, sighs - so the idiot human found someone willing to sell him 'the bark of a black dog in a graveyard at midnight', then - and stands up, smoothes his clothes, shuffles his shoulders right, ready to face . . .
A clatter and stumble from the next room, a mutter of, "Oh for goodness' - let there be light."
The next room illuminates with the pure clear light of Heaven itself and that voice runs up Crowley's spine like a feather, his breath - stops in.
And in the next room, "Oh -"
Crowley snaps his heart shut like a clamshell, listens to the silence, the silence . . . footsteps pad closer, and then silhouetted in the doorway, blinking into this side room, is the guileless white-haired face of an angel Crowley has known on and off and consciously thought about for a lot less than he's wanted to for five thousand years and change, who blinks in and says, ". . . Crowley? Good Lord, is that you?"
"No, I'm a sea slug," Crowley snaps back, Heaven he's been in this stupid circle for three weeks, he does not have the softness of temper for this right now. "Yes it's me, angel, what the Heaven are you doing here?"
"Looking for a book, actually." Aziraphale blinks around the room, half-lit from the light beaming through the doorway around him, and the candles edging Crowley's freedom. "Did you feel . . . just felt this absolutely astonishing . . . love. How odd." He rubs the centre of his chest as if he has heartburn, but slower, as if it's really nice heartburn. "Maybe whoever lives here . . . never mind. It's gone now anyway. Crowley, what are you doing here?"
Crowley stabs his hands out in a gesture taking in the chalk circle he's stuck in, the half-melted candles he can't step over. "Some idiot human summoned me and I'm - stuck." This is so embarrassing. Jesus, this is so humiliating.
"Stuck?" Aziraphale says, blinking at the candles, then he says, "Oh, Crowley, the book - Mr Mainprize wrote that he would hold it for me but then he sold it on when someone offered more for it, the rotter, I came here for - Crowley, it's one of those alchemical texts on the summoning of demons."
"Is it," Crowley says, and fights every muscle's urge to scream and start punching the floor.
"I had heard it was actually accurate, that was why I wanted it, can't trust humans with things like that." Aziraphale looks over the circle, says, "How long have you been stuck here for?"
Crowley looks sourly across at the half-shuttered window and mutters it under his breath.
Aziraphale says, "I'm sorry?"
"I said three weeks! Three weeks, angel! Now do you mind - ?" He gestures at the circle, overeager now, he wants out -
"Three weeks? But - my dear fellow, that must have been dreadful."
"Must it have been," Crowley says flatly, and Aziraphale glances at him, then looks down and plays with the fur on the cuff of his over-robe which he's wearing long past the knee, Crowley wouldn't be seen dead with one that length in this day and age.
Aziraphale says to his cuff, voice small and chastened, "How do I let you out?"
The greed in Crowley to get out twists on the way his voice sounds, and he swallows hard, reaches inside himself, finds the softness; his own voice comes lower, still edged rough. "Just blow out the candles, angel. Please."
Aziraphale glances up at him, and smiles. He smiles, and Crowley's heart feels punched. Then he snaps his fingers and every candle is out, startled smoke rising in thin ribbons to the ceiling, and Crowley feels the walls edging his world disappear, his shoulders fall back, his whole body is a sigh. And he skips quickly over the chalked lines of that circle and gives it an evil look, as Aziraphale watches him giving a gentler smile, before he turns for the desk and begins searching amongst the papers, jars and bundles there, sliding out a thick, much-stained book.
"What on earth is all this stuff?" he says, eyeing the jars. "Alchemy?"
Crowley shrugs his black over-robe right over the doublet, says, "Oh, he wanted the secrets of ultimate power and all that rubbish, I was sending him out for 'ingredients'. The egg of a black cock and the light of a midsummer's dawn and all that."
"But neither of those things can be - collected."
"No, no they can't be. But there's always some human who sees a retail opportunity when faced with a complete moron." Crowley watches Aziraphale - there is no other word for this, hugging the book, running his thumb lovingly around its foxed edge with such a happy look in his eyes. Crowley says, "So I'm not going to say 'thank you' -"
"No, best not," Aziraphale says quickly, "doubt they'd be happy about me setting a demon free, you know, up there," with a discreet little point, nodding at and eyeing the ceiling. Crowley feels that helpless fondness overcome him, this ridiculous, perfect angel, he is utterly . . .
". . . but you didn't even hesitate when I asked you to let me out," Crowley says. "Which, given that you probably really shouldn't be letting demons free at every chance you get . . ."
"Oh," Aziraphale says, and it clicks behind his eyes like flint catching. "Oh. No. No, I probably shouldn't. Oh dear, yes. Could get in terrible trouble for that. But I don't suppose either of us will be telling anyone -"
"Definitely not," Crowley mutters, because he's not telling a soul about these last three humiliating weeks and he's killing any fucker who finds out. Apart from Aziraphale, of course.
"And it's not like I would go around setting any demon free, my dear fellow. Just you."
And he is so entirely ingenuous, so entirely trusting and smiling, Crowley looks at him and he does know, he does know, this angel, he would let Crowley close his hands around his neck only curious for what he intended to do next. He feels it on the inside of his spine, the way Aziraphale trusts him.
It does not feel entirely good.
"Come on," he says. "Let me buy you a drink, there's a decent place around the corner."
"Well, why not, as we're already here. Haven't seen you since - when was it, Hull? We were supposed to be blessing and cursing the exact same man."
"Perfect no score draw," Crowley says.
"Nice fish supper we had instead, anyway," Aziraphale says. "Do you think I should leave some money for the book?"
Crowley gives him a look over his tinted glasses, holding the front door open for Aziraphale to exit under his arm. "No, angel." he says. "No, I do not think that you should."
As the door closes behind them Crowley snaps his fingers, and Aziraphale glances at him sidelong, still hugging the book to himself.
"What did you just do?" the angel says, eyeing him suspiciously.
"Best you don't know," Crowley says. "Three weeks, angel."
Aziraphale takes a breath in, sighs it out. ". . . yes, it probably is best I don't know. Do you fancy a pie, after the drink? Might as well make an evening of it now."
And this, this is the best they have, until they have better.
*
Five hundred years later, give or take, they have quite a lot better.
Crowley's strolling back to the flat from a morning he'd chalk up as nigh perfect, all things considered. He woke before Aziraphale did is the really perfect part of it. The angel doesn't always sleep and can usually be trusted to wake before Crowley even if he does, Crowley viewing decades the way humans view a snooze alarm, but Crowley woke first, and shifted drowsily in the sheets, and turned blinking slow to the most familiar face in his universe, eyes closed and asleep on the pillow next to and above him. And Crowley lifted his head from Aziraphale's shoulder, awed, it was like watching the first ever sunrise again, that quiet perfect moment he could almost hold in his hands, like catching a star between the palms and feeling the glow all the way through the bones.
They are still, in the grand scheme of things, new to this. The apocalypse has still barely not happened by any stretch even of mortal time, let alone their lives, and they're getting used to the whole business of freedom from Heaven and Hell, no longer needing to hide and meet in secret and - well, pine, with varying degrees of dignity and severity depending on the day. They hardly knew what they wanted from each other, at first. They are mostly working that out by trial and error. Thus far it's been less of a trial, and there have been fewer errors, than might have been predicted.
The glory is they have so much time to work it out in. So the first time Aziraphale kissed him on the cheek Crowley could take his time not freaking out about it, could act like nothing had happened for a good week before he bottled playing it cool and doing nothing for longer out of terror that Aziraphale would think that the gesture hadn't been welcome and might not only never do it again but would definitely never do more than it. And given that Crowley really doesn't think he could pull off a kiss on the cheek himself, it's really not his image, he got himself drunk enough to feel brave in the bookshop one night and then said, it felt important to ask the question given that all the encouragement Aziraphale had given him was a 'thank you' peck on the cheek for passing him his coat and untold centuries' worth of gazes of helpless, rapt, abject adoration, "Is it alright if I kiss you?"
Aziraphale, refilling their glasses, looked up at him and poured wine all over the table and Crowley snapped his fingers to catch it in a bubble in the air before it poured all over the floor as well. Crowley manoeuvred the wine over his own glass to let it fall, and Aziraphale just kept staring at him, blinking now and then before he swallowed, visibly and very beautifully, and said with his eyes flitting down and back up at Crowley, a delicious mixture of both genuine and coy modesty, "On the cheek?"
"On the mouth." He hadn't been able to take his eyes off that point himself; moth-pale as Aziraphale mostly is, his mouth has always stood out as such a very pretty pink. "Chastely," he'd added, not wanting to panic the angel at this exact moment in time, now was exactly not the time to fright Aziraphale knowing full bloody well that refusal now would fright Crowley out of ever, ever asking the question again.
Aziraphale put the wine bottle down, carefully, and put his hands on his knees, and the mouth Crowley was watching very carefully pressed a smile that jumped delighted-nervous-needy in a single flex, and he said, "Oh, well, if that's the case," and when Crowley slid both hands around his face Aziraphale's eyes closed both joyously and shyly all at once and Crowley didn't breathe, took his time holding his breath, until after maybe the second kiss.
They take their time. They find their own ways together. Crowley thinks they're as at sea as each other in many respects, because Crowley might have seduced a few humans way back in the day (an extremely tedious enterprise, he found more amusing ways to besmirch a soul as quickly as he could) and Aziraphale might have explained to Crowley what a 'bear' is (after decades of working in Soho Aziraphale gets his own unique definition of innocence) but the truth of it is that when it came to kissing each other for the first time - Aziraphale's hand, when it caught in Crowley's jacket, may indeed have been trembling a little, but Crowley was squeezing his eyes closed to keep himself from crying. A perfect no-score draw. In so many ways they seem almost designed as if to complement each other, Crowley hasn't yet found a way they're incompatible, not beyond the point of merely irritating each other. Mostly the apparent incompatibilities turn out to be much greater complementaries than they might have anticipated. After all, Aziraphale might sleep less than Crowley but he reads, which means that for a good few hours a day when one or the other of them might have been bored stupefied they're actually both doing exactly, exactly what they want to do, which is to do both of those things together.
And of course, there are the perfect mornings, when Aziraphale does sleep, and then sleeps in past Crowley . . .
So he's strolling back to his flat in a very good mood, having sent the angel off for the bookshop before heading out for orchid food himself, now carrying it back to the flat in a brown paper bag (humans are getting a bit better about the environment, finally, now Crowley has very good reason to want them not to fuck this planet up beyond habitability for a good long while) and whistling Don't Stop Me Now as he lets himself back in. There's an underperforming string of pearls he's going to noisily murder while Aziraphale isn't present, there being certain forms of gardening Crowley doesn't think Aziraphale has the stomach for, and then there's the misting, and then he should be able to swing by the bookshop in time to tempt the angel out for an extended lunch. Except as he kicks the door closed behind himself he hears a little - well he can only in honesty call it a 'squeak', the noise an angel-sized mouse would make, from the living room. And Crowley sets his bag down on a sideboard, and walks suspiciously to the living room doorway.
"Oh," Aziraphale says, looking flustered, shaking a match out. "I wasn't expecting you back for -"
Crowley says, slowly, "What's - all this . . . ?"
The blinds are drawn; the scene is lit by the arc of candles the angel has set up around the blankets and pillows he's laid out on the floor, the coffee table pushed aside to give him room; quite a lot of room, two could fit in his circle of candles easily, even - Crowley's forehead begins to knit - even horizontally.
Because there are also rose petals. Because there is also a bottle of champagne and two flutes. Because when the angel does make a gesture, he really does it properly, and Crowley gives the candles and petals a look of - not exactly aversion, it's just that his what the fuck has an unsettled aspect to it of having a pretty good sense of what the fuck. Because Aziraphale stands there eyes low and squeezing the box of matches in both hands, breathing a little unsteady, and then his smile flutters on as he lifts his eyes to Crowley's, the smile softening in his cheeks and churning Crowley's guts all warm as he says, softly, "I'm sorry it's not so much of a surprise then, Crowley. Only - you've been so terribly patient with me. I really wanted to make it - make it special, now I'm -" His throat pulses and Crowley's eyes can't lift from it. "Now I'm ready for you."
Crowley drags his eyes up to Aziraphale's and he says, too numb for the suspicious tone he's aiming for, "Ready for what?"
"Oh Crowley," Aziraphale says, his smile turning so happy, as if everything has finally come perfect. "For making love."
Crowley probably does not control his immediate expression very well, and he is aware that the sunglasses have never really hidden much from Aziraphale who for thousands of years remained cheerful and friendly in his presence when Crowley didn't really mean his front of fuck off and who got cross and stormed off the first moment he really did. But he controls the aghast drop of his face as best he can and luckily Aziraphale's gaze has dropped again, such a happy, wanting shyness, as he squirms a little like it's a dance and says, "You've been so patient, and I know it's taken me ever so long, and I really wanted to make it - make it good for you, now I'm not being so silly anymore. And you have to forgive me if I - don't really know what to do, or - until I learn a bit, you know, you might just have to - just do whatever you want, to me, and I'll just have to pick it up as we go along."
That way he smiles has often unsettled Crowley's knees but it's never made him feel ill before. "You," he says, and doesn't know what the fuck else to say, clears his throat and says, "You don't have to do this if you just think it's something, you know, I want to do. I'm happy as we are, angel, you know I'm - I'm happy exactly as we are."
"But it's cruel of me, isn't it, leading you on and . . . Crowley, really, I do want this, I want to feel you, I want to make you feel-"
"Alright, yes, alright, only -" Only it took fucking months before we both spent the night here because I thought we were both nervous about putting out the wrong signals about what it meant, and it took fucking further months before we eased into both using the bed with explicit verbal assurances that it was only for sleeping and - and you don't even look at me like that when I'm undressing, and you - you - you -
Aziraphale's eyes bright and eager on his catch, stop, holding fast to some meaning they find in Crowley's gaze and he says, it falls out of him like a bowling ball hitting the floor, "You don't want to."
Crowley opens his mouth and makes a long noise that might eventually turn into 'I' but doesn't want to commit until he knows at least one word that should follow it and, fuck, he doesn't.
"Oh," Aziraphale says, turning a little away, hands pressing that box of matches closer, swallowing, eyes not knowing where to settle amongst the candles and roses and blankets. "Oh. Of course. No. How stupid of me. Of course."
". . . angel, it's . . ."
"No, it's fine, I understand completely, you don't -" Aziraphale's chin jumps, and he turns the other way, doesn't seem to know where to look except definitely not at Crowley. "You don't - like me. Like that. I understand - completely -"
"No, it, it's not like that -"
"I mean, I don't know what She was thinking myself if I'm honest, She made me - too old and too - fat -"
"No, no no no no -" Crowley strides into the arc of candles, catches Aziraphale's arms before he can squirm himself around in some other direction to avoid him. "No, angel, no, look at me, look at me, it's never been that, you know She made you perfect, you're - perfect, Aziraphale, you are, you're - perfect, to me." Aziraphale is blinking very hard with wet eyelashes, and still only meeting Crowley's eye for fragments of a second at a time. "It's not you, it's not like that, it's just . . . never been that - into it, really. It just always seemed like a waste of time. So you don't, you really don't have to do this if it's just something you think I want to do, because really I'm not bothered. Just a lot of faff. You really don't have to."
Aziraphale says, still very low and too flat to Crowley's shoes, "Oh."
Crowley holds him by the elbows and watches his face carefully, says and feels sick with it, "You really do want to."
All those years Aziraphale's lived in Soho, all those period-appropriately steamy novels he's read, all that talk about 'dear Oscar', Jesus, fuck, Aziraphale really was taking his time, it wasn't that he wasn't interested in sex, he's just a romantic idiot who was prepared to wait six thousand years not only for the right person but for the precisely right moment for the perfect romantic gesture and then Crowley put his foot through his perfect moment like a cowpat on a hot day by personally not really caring for sex. Aziraphale has wanted this for six thousand years and in less than a minute Crowley has ruined it, just as Crowley, and he really thinks he has definitive proof of this now, ruins everything.
"It doesn't matter," Aziraphale says to the blankets.
". . . of course it does. It's important to you." Crowley doesn't know what to say, until he does. It's not like he finds sex loathsome, he's just not very into it, really doesn't get the excitement humans seem to feel about it. So it's not like it's the end of the world (he knows what the end of the world looks like and it's much worse than this). Might even be nice, making Aziraphale happy. Maybe . . . "Look, maybe - maybe it'll be different if it's us. Maybe it'll be nice. Maybe we should give it a go." Aziraphale looks up at him with damp, wondering eyes, and in the candlelight, Heaven, Crowley approves of all of humanity's technological advances but electricity really has nothing on this for the way he so softly glows. He twitches his own smile, trying to make it feel genuine. "If you still want to."
Aziraphale raises a hand from the box of matches, touches his arm, watches his eyes. "Are you sure?"
Crowley brushes his fingers through the hair above Aziraphale's ear because he's allowed to do things like that now and wonders if maybe it'll just be like that; getting to touch Aziraphale, it's hardly a chore. "Yeah," he says. "Why not."
Aziraphale's eyes light, his smile presses eager, and he tucks Crowley in by the neck for a kiss - and there is a different quality to it, Crowley feels the thing that's changed, kissing for them has always previously been a matter of kissing, not a matter of prelude to something other than kissing and the knowingness of Aziraphale's mouth now, Crowley doesn't know how he feels about this new kiss - and breaks back, says, "Oh, I forgot - hold on for one second, I left something in the bedroom -"
"What?" Crowley says, thinking with a grim sort of horror of all those years Aziraphale has spent in Soho (lube, a how-to guide, a vibrator, who fucking knows -).
"Just one moment -" Aziraphale says, hurrying for the door and then pausing, saying, "See, you caught me too early," and pushing the last unlit candle into place, striking a match for it, and in the second that the wick is lit (his face leaned in is soft gold) and he's shaking the match out -
Crowley feels the walls of the world close in small around himself.
He stands stock still. He bristles his wings back - invisible on this plane, but very much here and very much feeling how hemmed in he is, he couldn't spread them to their full breadth - and he says, "What -?"
Aziraphale stands back, smiling at him. Aziraphale smiles a lot, but Crowley's never seen that smile on his face. He would never even have been able to imagine that smile on Aziraphale's face. Aziraphale might not be textbook angelic but maliciousness, cruelty, Crowley's never known what they would look like on him because in six thousand years he's never once seen them there.
Crowley takes the one step he can and lifts a hand, presses the invisible wall that is so utterly there in front of him and looks down at the blankets covering - he knows what they're covering, as his stomach drops the distance to the pavement far below and he looks up at Aziraphale, doesn't - "What - what are you -"
He understands then that the question he just asked is a complete question in itself, cold through every fine bone in his body as he says, lower, the hiss underneath comes out more in fear than in anger yet, "What are you?"
Aziraphale smirks, and changes. His body flexes, thins, grows; and 'Crowley' looks back at himself over his sunglasses, before he grins and tosses the box of matches aside. "That was easy, no idea why Hell's so afraid of someone who buckles like his knees are made of paper at the sight of one wet angel."
"What the fuck have you done -" Now the anger comes, hotter than the parts of Hell that incinerate beyond charcoal, not even vapour left; his wings sharpen at his back and his voice comes low, and it shakes; "What the fuck have you done to him?"
The demon wearing his shape runs a hand through his hair, shifts its shoulders back, as if getting used to the body. "Nothing yet, I wanted to make sure you weren't going to walk in halfway through. But you know exactly what I am going to do to him, if you've worked out what I am."
"Incubuss." Crowley says, flatly. "I'm going to fucking kill you."
The incubus shrugs with Crowley's shoulders. "Have to find me first, and I reckon I'm down for a nice cushty promotion in Hell once I corrupt the angel you walked out on us for, you won't see me doing legwork on Earth anymore. Not that I'm not going to enjoy my last job. You're really not into it, are you? I mean, that angel is - the humans would call it thicc. With like, three or four Cs in his case. But you -" Crowley's hands are tightening into fists as he watches his own face sneer its smile back at him. "You've never tupped him, have you? That angel's as untouched as the day She made him, for the next - oh I don't know, half hour or something. But you don't have to worry." The smile is sharp and horrible. "He will enjoy it, whether he wants to or not."
Crowley's fists are hurting him and he's leaning into the power he can feel holding him in, and it's not shifting, he knows it won't shift, he's been here before.
"You don't even need to touch him," he hisses out, the panic is beginning to raise, he doesn't know what to - "Just kill me, you know I'm sstuck here."
"I know some other demons who would take a lot more pleasure than me in killing you, once I tell them where you are." the incubus says, smoothing Crowley's jacket against himself, giving it a look of disdain. "You know how this works, it doesn't even matter if he did fail Heaven, he still counts as an angel and I still get points for fucking him. And let's face it, if you've got to corrupt an angel, this has got to be one of the more fun ways to do it." Putting on a crooked, nasty grin, "Not that you'll ever find that out for yourself now."
The panic has now filled the circle Crowley is trapped in and is getting bigger than the room, far bigger than the space Crowley has for it. Because if an incubus gets its hands on Aziraphale, looking like him - it's not just sex, incubi fuck people up with it, warp their minds, the incubus wasn't lying about Aziraphale 'enjoying' it, that's what they do, even if he hates it the reaction will be the same and its consequences are - disintegration. The collapse of psyche and soul. Or it is for humans, Crowley doesn't even know what they might do to an angel because he's not aware of any incubi ever getting their hands on an angel before, they've never had the proper bait, but Aziraphale -
His hands press, fingers like claws, at the invisible wall he can't break.
Over the years Crowley has done a lot of things for Aziraphale because he loves the idiot more than he knows how to deal with, but most of the things he's given to Aziraphale didn't really cost Crowley very much to give; a little miracle here, a rescue from discorporation there, the worst he's ever saved him from is paperwork. But Crowley knows - has never understood, but knows - that Aziraphale loves him more than his own soul because back to the wall Aziraphale will give to Crowley the things he doesn't want to give, the things that cost him personally and painfully. He gave Crowley holy water when he would rather have never seen Crowley again than hand it over, given how dangerous a gift it was, and he tried to shoot the Antichrist for him even though he desperately, desperately didn't want to. Crowley knows - it stops his throat because he has never felt worthy of it and look what it's going to do to Aziraphale now - Crowley knows that Aziraphale would do anything for him. Anything. It doesn't matter if he likes it or wants it. He will give him anything.
Aziraphale loves Crowley so utterly that Crowley's face is going to destroy him, and there's nothing he can do to stop it.
He watches the other him stroll long-legged for the door, throwing an arm up without looking around; "Ciao."
And there's nothing he can do. Nothing. He feels hollow; he feels like his legs can't hold him up, like the incubus is the solid one and he's been left empty. And he sucks his queasy breath in and lashes out rage, shrieks his fury at the walls as he slashes and frenzies and burns and when all that berserk energy is just the heave of his breath and the burn of his overburdened muscles - the blankets are scorched to reveal the untouched chalk circle underneath, the pillows are charred snowdrifts, the roses are mulch, the champagne is shatter, but the walls still stand and he can still hear the mocking laughter of his own voice, even though the incubus is gone . . .
*
Aziraphale is reading at his desk, spectacles on and keeping a suspicious eye on his customers, when Crowley strides in with a spring in his step and a bottle of champagne in one hand. Crowley snaps his fingers, points at the customers, jerks his thumb for the door. "You, out. Aziraphale, how's your morning been?"
"Until now, quiet." Aziraphale says, putting his book down and watching suspiciously as Crowley slams the door behind the last customer walking dreamily out, and switches the sign to 'closed'. Usually he rather likes how easy Crowley finds corralling the customers but usually Crowley doesn't just eject them en masse, and he doesn't know why he's done it now. "What are you planning?"
Crowley laughs, walking over to plunk the bottle on the desk in front of him. "You," he says, and Aziraphale frowns at him as Crowley leans over the desk, pulls Aziraphale forwards by the back of the head - there's really only the time to make the beginning of a surprised noise - and kisses him.
Sometimes, when they kiss, Crowley does things with his tongue. These are rare and subtle and startling things every time, clearly saved for special occasions and used with care, as they never fail to make Aziraphale's entire body start and then - relax, shivering loosely to his new centre of gravity somewhere inside Crowley's chest. Those kisses are rather lovely, intricate little excitements to share. This couldn't be called subtle even by the explicit standards of Soho and when hands don't seem to have any effect, Aziraphale utilises an elbow and his entire forearm to lever Crowley off himself, dropping back into his chair and staring at him, feeling - dumb. He doesn't know what the Hell else to feel. He doesn't know what on Earth is going on and doesn't understand that kiss in the slightest and says, he doesn't know what to say, "Crowley - what the Hell are you doing?"
Crowley laughs at the ceiling, hikes himself up to sit on the edge of the desk so Aziraphale is now folding his neck back to look him in the face, and grins at him. "I'm doing what comes naturally. You always knew I was a demon." His legs give a slow kick, stretching themselves long from the edge of the desk, and Aziraphale blinks from them back to Crowley's face, to his smile, he doesn't understand his smile. "You knew this was coming sooner or later. This is for celebrating, afterwards." He flicks the bottle with a fingernail, and Aziraphale's forehead feels furrowed, he feels like he's missed the first half of this conversation. Crowley is - looking at him, as he says, lower and - purred, somehow, "You'll enjoy it more than you think."
"Enjoy what? Did we have plans? I don't remember -"
Crowley laughs, low, and says, "We have plans. Come on angel, you know what this is about."
Beginning to get annoyed now, "I really don't, my dear."
"Are you really that dense?" Crowley says, watching his face as if genuinely curious on the point while Aziraphale has gone still, couldn't have been more shocked if Crowley had struck him, the cruelty of it feels the same. But staring into Crowley's eyes what rises isn't indignation or self-defence but - shame, the glutting of his throat with the thought - how stupid he must be acting to make Crowley say it like that -
Crowley has called him stupid before. It's just that he's never before thought that Crowley intended unkindness from it and he definitely, definitely does now. Which means that he must be being really particularly stupid right now to bring this out of Crowley, he just doesn't in this moment know in which exact way he is being stupid -
He takes his glasses off to give his hands something to play with, and clears his throat a little. His voice does come mostly steady. "Forgive me, Crowley, but I really don't know what we're talking about. If we were supposed to be doing something today and I forgot I'm really terribly sorry -"
"We've been supposed to be doing something since the beginning of Creation." Aziraphale watches his eyes, and doesn't know how he ought to be breathing, he doesn't understand what's happening. "How much longer were you planning on making me wait?"
That -
- like a physical steel pin through the heart -
That strikes the skin like ice, then immediately like fire as the shock gives way to the dumb heat of the blush, and he looks down at the glasses in his suddenly nerveless fingers and it's - true. He's always needed Crowley's patience and Crowley has always given it, Crowley likes speed but Aziraphale panics when things move too fast and Crowley has always been patient for him. He's always needed Crowley's patience, he gets scared, he just never thought - he just never thought it would be used against him and -
No, that's not fair, he mustn't blame Crowley, he has made Crowley wait an awfully long time out of his own stupid fear, it's his own stupid fear making this conversation so difficult now, it's always his own stupid fear. He wets his lips, and puts the glasses on the desk, and presses his hands together in his lap, says quietly, "I'm sorry. I am sorry, Crowley, dear. I'm sorry I don't understand." He looks up at him and doesn't understand the way the fear reacts to Crowley's hungry stare, in that moment. He still says, "What is it I'm supposed to be doing?"
Crowley watches his face as if there's something a bit magical about how confused Aziraphale is - it gives him a strange, unpleasantly twisted memory of Eden - and he says, "If you really need it naming, angel, I think it's well past time you let me fuck you, isn't it?"
Aziraphale stares at him. His lips part; he doesn't say anything. He doesn't know what to say.
Crowley stretches his arms up, slides from the desk and turns to lean over it, hands on the wood, watching Aziraphale's blank expression. "You'll enjoy it," he says. "Trust me. And you really have made me wait long enough for it."
Finally he blinks, breaks the stare, and looks down at his hands in his lap feeling only numb. "Oh," he says, quietly. ". . . I . . . didn't know you . . . wanted to."
Said as if he's still being very slow, "I'm a demon, Aziraphale."
"Oh," he says again to his hands, he doesn't know what else to say. "I didn't know it meant that."
Crowley has never really been whatever a demon ought to be, Aziraphale isn't sure he would like him were that not true; the individuality of Crowley, his specialness, comes from his being so very much Crowley and so very much more than just generic demonness. But there are still demonic things about Crowley, just as there are angelic things about Aziraphale, he just didn't know that this was one of them, what it meant. But Crowley must know - if the desire for it is a demonic thing, he must know, Aziraphale's still an angel, he doesn't feel . . .
He says, risking a glance to him, he needs reassurance, "You know I . . . I don't know that I'll, ah, be very - good at it, dear."
"First time?" Crowley says, and it sounds sympathetic but something about it, Aziraphale just feels so flustered, it just feels off. He looks him in the eye, he feels very lost right now and his heart is beating so fast he's feeling light-headed but he reaches for that strong sure rope that has never faltered, the only anchor he has, he's not going to let go, he's sure they're going to be alright, even through this.
"You know it is," he says, and his breath shivers a little. "I've never loved anyone but you."
Crowley shrugs. "You can leave making it good up to me. Shall I let you choose, if it's your first time?" He slaps the desk under his hand, says, "Am I having you bent over here or would you rather -" His smile curls up, all teeth. "- on the sofa on your back thinking of England, as it were?"
"- here?" He's on his feet in sheer - he looks at the windows, dusty but still windows, and - "Here? Now?"
"We've had plenty of potential locations over the centuries but you preferred to tease."
"Crowley I - wasn't, you know I wasn't, I just - didn't know this - I didn't know you wanted this, I -"
Aziraphale, while reading and a little carried away with a love story, has sometimes wondered about whether sex might be nice. Any sense of its reality quickly makes him wrinkle his nose away from it; he likes cuddling, and kissing now and then, and holding Crowley's arm, and he loves it when Crowley casually throws an arm behind his shoulders along the back of a bench, he loves being with him, in all the ways they are together. He just doesn't think that he would like that. And he feels now - he swallows, and feels it trying to set his spine steadier - Crowley is being unfair. Since they came together Crowley has been so careful to make sure that his gestures were understood for what they are, not for what they might be taken to be, that a kiss is a kiss to be enjoyed as a kiss and not as a mere signpost to something else, that he intends to be an absolute gentleman when they share the bed, it's not fair to suddenly blame Aziraphale for taking him at his word. And Aziraphale has been so tentative because he doesn't want to tease, doesn't want to give the wrong impression, but he doesn't want Crowley for one second to think that he doesn't love him and want him, he has just always wanted - wanted -
"Not here," he says, and he means it urgently, if he's doing this - is he doing this? Good Lord - it can't be here. "Crowley, half of Soho is walking past and you have a flat that you've been very strangely averse to putting very many windows in, we could -" His throat is clogging, he doesn't want to be saying this, it's only now he's saying it that he knows how he doesn't want to. "- we could go to your bedroom, we could make it - nice -"
It comes out like despair, nothing about this is nice. Crowley pushes himself up from the desk and Aziraphale who has never flinched from Crowley in six thousand years feels his body's automatic urge to back away, to get some space before Crowley can get to him as if - as if he would hurt him? It's Crowley, he's never going to -
"It will be nice," Crowley says soothingly. "Let me make it nice for you."
Crowley doesn't move towards him, seems finally to understand how very spooked Aziraphale is feeling, just stands there, watching him, waiting. And it hurts so much when Aziraphale swallows that that may be why his eyes sting, looking at him, because - is he really going to do this? He doesn't see how he could - not. How can he refuse him? If Crowley has honestly always thought that this was going to happen and Aziraphale was just putting him off and putting him off until his patience snapped - but not here, not like this, can't he wait until they're somewhere - somewhere - anywhere else - ?
Aziraphale knows why he really doesn't want this to happen here, in his bookshop, in the safest place the two of them had for decades, the safest place he has ever had. He knows he's going to hate this. He does not want to do it. And the fear - the fear, the fear says -
What if, if I say no, he leaves?
Aziraphale stares at him and his breath is not steady and it took him six thousand years to be brave enough for Crowley and if he's actually brave enough to refuse him this, he might lose him for eternity. And if it happens here, here, for that reason, if he lets Crowley do this to him out of sheer terror that if he doesn't then Crowley will leave - how is he ever afterwards going to look at Crowley, to be affectionate with Crowley, to love him in any natural way again, especially here?
He breathes, shakily, and his fists squeeze anxious at his sides, and Crowley is watching him through his sunglasses with a little tilt to the corner of his mouth that could be called a smile but a smile is a pleasant thing. And Aziraphale could choke on it all of a sudden, hot in his throat, he wants to snap back why are you doing this to me, there are a thousand ways Crowley could have approached this, he could have been nice, Aziraphale can imagine a thousand scenarios in which he could honestly have been happy only to make Crowley happy, a thousand scenarios that don't involve him being near-tears in his bookshop because Crowley is being so - is being so - cruel he doesn't - he never thought Crowley could -
His breath stills.
He never thought Crowley could ever be so cruel to him as this.
He snaps his fingers before he can think and hesitate and before the demon in front of him can realise and react. He just feels it so suddenly and he snaps his fingers and the ceiling breaks, and the noise it makes when it hits, his body reacts as if to an electric shock.
And then there's the pouring dust and broken wood, the creaking as the heavy wooden body of it settles, still the discordant plinking of snapped keys and broken wires, and, somewhere underneath the great smashed grand piano Aziraphale just miracled through the ceiling, the demon moans.
Aziraphale stands there with his eyes closed, breathing in awful shuddery gulps, making very, very sure that he's not going to cry. When he has some semblance of control over himself he smoothes his waistcoat and neatens his bowtie and picks his way across the debris, stepping carefully over a broken piano leg, avoiding looking at the choking demon underneath the wreckage of the piano as he examines its snapped-back lid, its mangled wiring.
"I'm very kind," he says, his voice coming softer now, surer, he doesn't feel so threatened and flustered and frightened anymore, he knows exactly what he's doing now, his sense of priority is as bright as the edge of a blade. "I think it's an important thing to be, there's quite enough dreadfulness in the world, one might as well be nice. And it is something that people do try to take advantage of now and then, thinking that kindness is the same as naïveté, which it is not. I happen to be both of those things so I'm quite aware of the difference between them."
He's picked out a wire now with one trailing end, which means he only needs a foot on the piano for purchase - the demon shrieks but it breaks into wet coughing at the pressure, before the wire snaps free and Aziraphale staggers back with it, righting himself again against the desk. "Because kindness is about seeing the truth of someone's soul and wishing to protect it, there is a courage in kindness, in understanding how truly precious something so worthy of protection is, understanding the things you would sacrifice in the name of that protection."
He winds the wire around both fists, and finally looks down at the bloody head and one free arm hanging from underneath the shattered piano of the thing that looks so utterly like Crowley and is not him, is never him, even if it looks just like the death of him at Aziraphale's feet. Aziraphale's breath is shaky and low and his heart feels like a snapped piano wire, all his strength is being spent in steadying his voice and his hands. "So please believe me when I say that I am going to take all the kindness in my heart and I am going to use it to garrotte you by millimetres until you tell me what you've done with Crowley because so help me God -" His throat grinds closed, his voice hurts, "I don't care how I have to kill you to save him. So I advise you -" He pulls the piano wire taut, and the demon looks up at him with mute yellow eyes and blood in its mouth. "Start talking."
*
Slumped on the floor, wrists propped off his knees and whole body heaving with his breath after the latest attempt to force himself free, Crowley is blinking more than he has in at least the last six months with trying not to let himself cry.
He can't get out. These things are designed so he can't get out, that's the point of them, it doesn't matter what energy he puts into it and how much strength he spends, the problem is ontological, demons cannot break free of this circle and Crowley is a demon. The only way to get free is to stop being a demon and he did for about five breathless weepy minutes hunch face-down on his knees begging Her for forgiveness if it would just make him something, anything other than a demon just so he could get free because if that thing gets Aziraphale, breaks Aziraphale - but She isn't fucking listening or doesn't fucking care and if She doesn't care what that thing is going to do to Aziraphale, it's the last proof Crowley could possibly need of it, She's evil. The Heaven and Hell thing was an elaborate, nasty joke from the beginning. She's been on the side of bad since the start.
But he can't get out, he can't get out, and he thinks of Aziraphale trusting him and not knowing why Crowley is doing this to him and wanting through all of it to make him happy, he wants to throw up. He knows that he probably won't know a thing about what's happened until that incubus tells someone like Hastur that Crowley's stuck up here and Hastur comes to kill him some tedious drawn-out way but Hastur will definitely be telling him what that thing did to Aziraphale and it comes out as a soft shaky moan, to know second-hand from a demon who if he had a sense of humour would only think it funny -
Isn't it better if it turns Aziraphale into some twisted shell of himself? Because if he stays himself and he realises that it wasn't Crowley, that he meekly submitted to something he desperately didn't want for Crowley's sake and the demon that did that to him wasn't even Crowley and Crowley's probably already dead and now he's alone, forever - fuck, fuck, he really wants to throw up -
The front door of the flat bangs open. It's the first noise he's heard from outside this circle since the incubus walked away and Crowley jerks his head up, wipes both eyes on the back of a wrist, stands as panicked footsteps hurry down the long corridor outside -
Aziraphale bolts past the doorway, spotting him and skidding his sprint, scrabbling towards him, Crowley sees him taking in the circle and snapping his fingers and the candle flames turn to strings of smoke, Crowley feels the walls around him vanish. He leaps out of that circle, Aziraphale is clearly running too fast and off-balance to stop himself, they both halt their own forward momentum by throwing their arms around each other and staggering in a clumsy circle, Aziraphale stuffing his face into the side of Crowley's neck and whimpering there, "Oh God - oh thank God -" and Crowley has a hand in the back of his hair and an arm around his side and is hissing, "Angel angel angel -"
It's a few shaky seconds of clasping and saying nothing but nonsense before any practical thought can occur to either of them, and Crowley's first thought is - is he certain this isn't the incubus? But the angel's shoulders have started to jog and he's clutching Crowley's jacket tight, Crowley feels the hot line of a tear run down the side of his throat and Aziraphale croaks, "Sorry - I'm sorry - it was just so horrible -"
"Oh, no, oh no, no, angel . . . Aziraphale it didn't - what did it do to you? Angel - angel -" He has to catch his wet cheeks up in both hands to make Aziraphale lift his head to meet his eye; his own throat is closing, the pain of it is incredible and his voice comes scoured and shaking. "What did it do to you?"
Aziraphale blinks at him, baffled brown eyes, and he says, "Oh - Crowley, darling, nothing, it didn't, it - oh, he kissed me. Oh. That was vile, actually, but it was only that, only -"
He stops, face stock still and turning a mottled red, embarrassment and something worse in his eyes. It takes a moment for it to click with Crowley and he says, lip curling his own disgust, "Yeah, it kissed me too. Nothing worse? Angel, it didn't do anything worse to you?"
"No." Aziraphale sniffs, pats his pockets as if it's not always in exactly the same place and retrieves his handkerchief. "No, it didn't. I - stopped it. And it - does it - if it counts as unfaithfulness, is it alright if we both did it?"
Crowley brushes back his perfect fluffy hair and kisses his perfect furrowed forehead. "It doesn't count when it's some lying bastard incubus anyway."
"Oh. Good." Aziraphale blows his nose and tucks the handkerchief away. "Sorry," he says. "I'm being dreadfully silly. It was just all rather horrible."
"Aziraphale - don't take this the wrong way or anything, but -" Crowley watches his eyes, and Aziraphale just looks back, all trust and confusion. "What did you call yourself last night that had me laughing for five minutes straight?"
Aziraphale stares at him, then says, ". . . oh," because he understands, of course he understands. "I was being silly and I called myself a booby. And you were very ungentlemanly about it."
Crowley's mouth and forehead crease with not laughing because it's still funny even after all this. "And you don't want to check?" he says. "That I'm really me?"
"I don't need to check," the angel says, relaxed against him. "Of course you're you."
"You should check. Always check."
"Oh Crowley," said with a tut, and Aziraphale finally unpeels himself from Crowley's chest and holds a 'hold it right there' finger up, takes a breath - and a step back, and a step back, and with a little calculating frown, another step back; then he says, "There." and edges a half-step back, drawing a line on the floor with the tip of his shoe. "That's the edge of it."
Crowley gives him a weird look because he has justification, Aziraphale is being weird. "What?"
"Love," Aziraphale says. "I do feel it, Crowley, there's a radius of it all around you, it gets bigger and smaller but this is the usual breadth, I thought - whenever I did feel it before I thought that was just how you felt, it was only . . . it's only recently I, um, understood that's how you feel around me. That was how I knew he wasn't you, in the end. He was right at the other side of my desk and I couldn't feel a thing."
Crowley stares at him and keeps his face blank. Yes, he knows that Aziraphale is sensitive to pockets of love, gets a cheerful little bounce in his step when their walks in the park take them past what he would refer to as 'courting couples'. Yes, he has always known of the possibility of Aziraphale feeling it coming off him in waves; he spent a very long time contracting any feeling he had inwards to keep it away from him before he gave up on hiding it, it was so obviously there for any blessed fool to see. No, he was not aware that Aziraphale is casually aware of it on a day to day basis, that Aziraphale can mark the apparent five-foot radius where the feeling fades, that Aziraphale could actually use it to locate Crowley in a line up of demons all wearing his literal face. And that incubus -
"What did it do to you?" he says, it comes too quiet, horror won't let it be more than a whisper. "What did it say?"
Aziraphale looks at him and his gaze still isn't . . . there's still too much fear and horror there, and his mouth and jaw aren't steady, Crowley feels sick. "It was trying to seduce me," the angel says, a little primly. "It didn't get very far."
Crowley takes a step forwards, stops, helpless. "Whatever it said - it wasn't me."
"Oh darling, I know that."
"No, I mean - nothing it said - I don't even like sex." Crowley has never verbalised that before, and it feels like coming unbalanced on the edge of a precipice - and landing back on his feet, the lightness of having said it, it's a big admission for a demon to make but he knows it's safe to say to him. "It's not about us, or you, or anything like that, I'm just not into it and none of that - matters because I would never -"
He stops. He finds, sick, that he can't say 'I would never try to pressure you into doing something you don't want to do'. He's already done that.
"I know, Crowley," Aziraphale says, and smiles at him like there's never been anything, anything between them but love. "I'm sorry it took me so long to realise it wasn't you, you would never . . . you would never have said anything to me like . . ."
He wants, and urgently doesn't want, to know. "What did it . . ."
Aziraphale shakes himself out. "It doesn't even matter."
"It does. What did it say?"
Aziraphale stares at him, and his eyes fall slowly down. ". . . I know it took me a long time," he says, quietly. "I wasn't - trying to tease, and it wasn't that I didn't want you. I just . . . it was hard. I was afraid of Heaven, and of Hell."
He wants so fiercely to touch him. "So was I. Afraid. Always." He feels sick remembering those days. "Always."
(What if Aziraphale never meant it like that, what if Aziraphale would have been just as friendly to anyone and he didn't matter, what if Aziraphale couldn't love something like him, what if Heaven found out and hurt him, what if he Fell -)
"I don't - want to -" Aziraphale makes an uneasy gesture with his hands. "Be physical like that either. I really don't. I don't think I realised how much until - I don't."
"No, no, that's fine, that's good -"
"I like the cuddling, I really do, and it's nice when we kiss, it's not like I don't like -"
"Yes, yes, me too -"
"Oh, good."
"Yes. Good."
"Excellent. Good."
"Yes."
Hands twisting, "Can we maybe hug again now?"
Crowley walks over and nearly lifts the angel off his feet wrapping him up so close to his chest, burying his face in his hair, inhaling long; thank - well, not Her. Someone. Maybe Her. They're both still alive and largely unharmed after all. Thank someone. He still has his angel; thank someone.
There are decisions you make. Whatever he might have done in the past, the memory of that thing wearing his face will keep him from it now; if Aziraphale doesn't want to do it, Crowley will never, never again be the person that demands it. Apart from things like turning the volume on opera down and not acting like Crowley is driving unreasonably whatever speed he's at, because those things don't count. But the big things, he'll never push again. He'll remember the boundary Aziraphale needs for his 'no' to have space to breathe. He's not forgetting this.
Aziraphale gives a low sigh almost like a moan, closing his arms tight around Crowley's waist. "How did he get you in that circle? He didn't - hurt you, Crowley -"
"- no." Sourly, because it's an embarrassing thing to admit, "It looked like you."
"It - oh." Aziraphale lifts his head back to blink at him. "You said he kissed you."
Crowley shrugs. Aziraphale looks over his shoulder at the circle, the contents of which are so scorched and shattered you'd never guess what they once were. "'I' . . . trapped you in there. How?"
"It, that's not important."
Aziraphale looks nervously at his eyes. "I think it is."
Crowley rolls his eyes away from his gaze, mumbles it at the wall.
"Excuse me?"
"I said it tried to seduce me too, alright? It - was standing in all those candles getting all - tearful and I - was stupid. Alright? Alright. That's all. It's nothing."
". . . 'I' . . . was trying to seduce you." Aziraphale stares up at him. "But Crowley, you don't like sex."
Crowley shrugs jaggedly and Aziraphale squeezes at his elbows.
"Tell me you said no, Crowley, please tell me -"
Crowley glares at the ceiling. "You were all upset, I was mostly just trying to stop you crying."
"- please never do that again. Crowley, please." Crowley looks down, at the weird frantic light in Aziraphale's eyes. "If I ask you for something you don't want, say no, God if not for your own sake then for mine, my love, because I wouldn't want to - live knowing I could have done something so selfish to you. Please, Crowley."
"Alright, don't get upset, alright," He catches Aziraphale's jaw light in one hand, gaze softening on his eyes, he feels - honestly, a little tremulously happy, that Aziraphale is so certain on this point when he hadn't really thought about it himself. No-one's ever really cared about Crowley and what Crowley wants, before Aziraphale. It's nice - it's the first time he's really had it, the first time he's been able to appreciate it; it's nice to know that his refusal deserves its space to breathe too. "But before you worked out it wasn't me, did you say yes?"
Aziraphale stares at him for a moment with his mouth open, then blinks and his smile flexes nervous. "I suppose I did," he admits. "Sort of. I was . . ." He looks away. "I thought if I said no then you would leave."
Still holding his jaw stroking his cheek with his thumb to coax his gaze back, "Always say no. Always say no if you don't want something. Promise me. Because I'm never, angel, I am never going to leave you."
Aziraphale looks at him, and lays both arms over his shoulders, and says, "I promise, Crowley."
They kiss so gentle and meant, how the fuck did Crowley not realise that thing wasn't him, all the sweetness and joy in it every time . . .
Aziraphale comes back a little on his heels and the relief, Crowley hadn't really known how mangled his guts felt until they sigh themselves loose again with that kiss to promise that they're still okay, that even after all that they can kiss like there's nothing but care. But there is one last thing that itches at his mind, the nervousness, and he says, "How did you get away from it? Where is it?"
"- ah. It - it's gone. I discorporated it, it'll be back in Hell I suppose."
"You -" Oh he has such a special angel, such a clever angel, he knew he loved him for a reason. "You discorporated it. How?"
Aziraphale's face is taut. "I dropped a piano on it."
- after the shock the delight reaches a whole new peak, glee like Christmas, he couldn't make himself stop laughing. "- you dropped a piano on it -"
"I couldn't think what to do, there was some silly cartoon on after that film we watched the other day, it must have -"
Crowley squeezes him in with giddy joy. "Always drop a piano on me," he says. "If I'm being so much of a dick it can't be me, always drop a piano on me, any demon, always drop pianos on -" Aziraphale's hands, sliding down his chest so he can grip them tight together, are shaking. "- angel?"
"I know it wasn't you," Aziraphale says, blinking fast, swallowing hard. "Only it looked - Crowley, I dropped a piano on you -"
"It was the right thing, you did the right thing -"
"There was blood coming out of your mouth," Aziraphale says, and then presses his face into Crowley's shoulder and holds him tight around the waist and breathes that tight, shivery way he does when he's trying not to cry. "It was horrible. It was absolutely horrible -"
Now Crowley understands why he ran in here and hugged him hard and wept for how horrible it had been. Not because some demon wearing Crowley's face tried to manipulate him into sex he didn't want to have, but because he just walked away from Crowley's broken corpse and he was the one who did that to it. Oh, fuck. Crowley holds his arms around him, slides his fingers into his hair, hushes him, gently. "I'm alright. I'm right here. It's alright, angel, it's all alright. You did the right thing. You did the right thing."
"I threatened him with a piece of piano wire," Aziraphale grinds out against his shoulder. "I thought he might have hurt you, trapped you somewhere, I needed to find you. But he looked like you, I'm sorry, I know I'm being stupid, and it's just -"
"You're not being stupid."
"- the worst part is I was bluffing, I knew I might have to save your life and I was lying because I couldn't - I'd already dropped a piano on you, how the Hell could I hurt you - ? I know it wasn't you, Crowley, darling, I know it wasn't, but he looked like you and I needed him to believe that I could - oh, God, torture him if I had to and I wanted to cry because you looked so hurt and I needed him to believe me, I thought I was going to be sick and then he just started talking anyway and then he just died -"
He's never actually killed anyone, Crowley remembers, and the first person he ever did looks just like him. Crowley folds him in close, presses Aziraphale's head to his neck with his own cheek, flicks out and closes around them his own invisible wings. And for a time, because Aziraphale is too panicked with feeling for words to make a difference, he hums, and rubs his back, and he understands. Of course he understands. Because if he had broken free of that circle, if he had launched himself after that thing wearing his own face, if he'd lunged forward hands full of fire and it had turned around and it had suddenly looked like Aziraphale, scared -
He knows he would have faltered. And he knows he would have wound up dead for it. And it made Aziraphale do that, it made Aziraphale physically defend himself from him to the point of killing him -
He lifts his head, kisses him through his hair, strokes the back of his neck. His own voice is steadier now, and more certain. "You did the right thing. I'm sorry it was so horrible. You did the right thing, you were perfect. You were perfect, Aziraphale."
The angel draws a long shaky breath in and lifts his head, looks at Crowley and looks tired. Crowley holds his face in both hands and looks at him and he never understands, thousands of years he's known Aziraphale, it's still like he's new every day. Crowley's shaking his head very gently as he says, it comes low with how much he means it, "You are so, so much stronger than you think."
Aziraphale blinks at him, drained now, exhausted. Crowley allows his fingers to thread back through his hair, cocks his own head, his own smile. "Bed?"
He always likes to sleep, and for once the angel looks like he could use it too. And Aziraphale blinks at him and then smiles, slowly and truly, and he says, gentle and glad, "Bed."
Crowley puts an arm around his shoulders and turns him for the doorway, and Aziraphale sighs from some deep place inside. And Crowley is so grateful for every little touch, for every moment of honest eye contact and unafraid presence, after what that thing did to Aziraphale he might have been too afraid of Crowley's face to ever want him near him again except - maybe he's stronger than Crowley thinks, as well.
He rubs his arm as he walks him for the bedroom. "Whatever it said to you was bullshit," he says. "You do know that, right? It was spouting crap to manipulate you, nothing it said was real."
"I know that now," Aziraphale says easily. "Honestly, my dear, I do know what men are like."
Crowley cocks an eyebrow at the angel and says, "Oh really."
"I've been on Earth for six thousand years," Aziraphale points out. "He's hardly the first ungentlemanly gentleman I've had to manage."
That - Crowley says, "What - who? Who have you 'managed'?"
"Well, Defoe could get surprisingly handsy after a drink or two, and some of those Bloomsbury writers seemed to have no understanding that persistence is not necessarily a virtue. And some of Oscar's parties got completely out of hand, Douglas was absolutely beastly - Crowley?"
Because Crowley has stopped walking, and is standing staring at Aziraphale now a couple of paces ahead of him in the bedroom doorway, turning and looking back at him. The angel says, "Are you alright?"
Crowley, who whenever he was away liked to picture Aziraphale meek in his dusty bookshop having early nights in with cups of cocoa and not getting into trouble, pulls a face. "I'm . . . fine."
In his head he's trying to redefine innocence. The only thing he really understands about it, he realises, is that it's not a binary, and that after Eden they all make the best of it that they can.
Aziraphale says, a little tentatively, the angel's had a stressful day, "Are you coming to bed?"
". . . yes. Yes I am."
Aziraphale smiles a little more confidently then, and offers a hand. Crowley takes it and finds that the smile has captured the corner of his own mouth, softened his eyes, as Aziraphale draws him inside.
They let the bedroom door close behind themselves.
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Date: 2019-08-16 07:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-08-17 12:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-08-17 09:29 am (UTC)Beautiful, painful exploration of the both of them dealing with no.
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Date: 2019-08-17 12:40 pm (UTC)Aziraphale's ethics I find *such* an odd thing, I've been trying to work them out but they're a very moment-to-moment whatever-works affair, which is a very human way to approach it, really. I don't think he really *does* understand what he's capable of, I don't get the impression that he has any clear sense of his own mind at all, he's got his head so warped around trying to manage life in both Heaven and Earth and how different morality looks in those realms. He won't raise a hand against threatening, violent angels but if it's the end of the world then to hell with *everything*; which, again, it's such a human way of reacting, not really knowing what you can do until you actually do it, he really has been down here too long ^^:
'No' is one of the most important words we have, the most important words we have for measuring ourselves and others (the other most important one is 'yes'). I'm glad you enjoyed it, honey - thank you for reading it <3
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Date: 2019-08-21 07:53 am (UTC)Made me think of this shiny meta: https://findingfeather.tumblr.com/post/185718661677/the-new-tv-goodomens-fanon-tendency-to-take
And how nicely you've subverted it. A* as always
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Date: 2019-08-23 12:28 pm (UTC)I'm glad you enjoyed it honey <3 Thank you for reading it! =)
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Date: 2019-11-01 08:02 pm (UTC)Fucking fuck. I do not want anything bad to ever happen to these dear dear darlings ever again. I almost cried again, jeeesus.
And fuck yeah for them being so ace. I loved how they experience it so very differently, to be honest.