Little Words
Title: Little Words
Author: ameonna1
Rating: NC-17
Characters/Pairings: Anna/Crowley
Betas: kijikun and person34
Word Count: 1,761
Warnings: Sex, ahoy
A/N: Especially for kijikun
Summary: Angels and demons fall for all sorts of reasons.
She’s sitting out on the patio of a cookie cutter coffee house in a city whose name she can’t remember. The sky is gray, threatening to spill over into a storm, but she’s under a wide red umbrella so she isn’t worried.
She’s still Anna, but it’s just Anna now. No surname, no family, no past. At least that’s what she tells herself. Because if she’s Anael she’s going to have to care that the sky isn’t the only thing that’s about to storm, and if she’s Anna Milton then she’ll have to come to terms with the fact that she’s far, far away from where she’d like to be.
Zachariah had her trapped and “educated” but she knows how to not listen to lies and how to read the signs that say her captor is becoming bored with her. She knows how to smile and nod. She knows what sigils to carve onto herself to disappear forever.
But now she’s at a bit of a loose end.
So, she sits in a café with some sort of coffee in front of her and an apple tart on a red plate; because it would have looked strange to be sitting there with nothing at all. Most angels don’t remember this and the fact that she does makes her endlessly smug. She’s toying with the coffee, running her fingertips along the rim of the cup and licking cocoa powder and whipped cream off her fingers. She does the same to the tart, tasting the edges of things when she feels something akin to a hum in the air.
A demon is close.
He walks by the café, in a smart suit and coat, talking on a cell phone and as he passes; Anna very suddenly remembers what it’s like to feel.
He probably doesn’t remember. Not his human name, or the loft in Paris, or the bargain he made to keep her safe.
She stands too fast, the plate goes spinning off the table and crashes to the ground in a spray of red ceramic and crumbled pastry as the sky opens and starts pouring rain. He stops and turns; slowly. He doesn’t recognize her. She can see that in his eyes, but he recognizes what she is and hurries away.
She forgets to keep the rain off her as she rushes for the gate to let her out of the café patio; running, completely forgetting what she is.
He knows she’s behind him, weaving through the crowd but he doesn’t run or teleport. He doesn’t even get into a taxi. Part of her knows that it might be a trap. He might imprison her somewhere forever, or lead her to other demons. She’s fine with that as long as she gets him in the end and she can be very patient.
Only when he’s close enough to touch does he turn, quick, quicker than any human and snatches her wrists before her fingers brush across the back of his coat. They collide and he holds her like a fly trapped in amber, immovable. He isn’t wet but she’s soaked through and through, the pea green of her wool coat darkening and dripping. There are humans walking past them, ignoring them as if they aren’t there, the only two creatures in the world.
They don’t say anything for a long time; he simply searches her face trying to find the trick or the trap or the danger. But she stares at him as if he’s the only thing she’s been trying to find for decades and it’s true. She remembers his human name, his human fingers, the music he would play for her, and she remembers that the words on her lips as she fell were only for him.
“Well, angel? Can I help you with something?”
His voice is warm and sharp and cold and when she shivers against him; his grip does not ease.
“Tell me your name,” she breathes. She has to know what kind of creature he’s become. She needs to know how far to bend to meet him in the middle.
“Crowley,” he whispers with a small smile now, like he thinks he’s figuring out the game.
He isn’t, he isn’t at all.
“Kiss me, Crowley.”
His eyes widen and he’s looking at her like she’s the craziest thing he’s ever seen in his life which she knows couldn’t be true. He’s been a demon for far too long a time to have an angel asking for a kiss really be all that strange.
For a moment he’s going to refuse her, he’s going to demand to know what she wants, when she intends to stab him in the back. But there’s something else, behind his dark eyes. A hum in the air.
He kisses her.
It's chaste at first, testing the waters. When she deepens it, when she presses her tongue to his lips and turns it into something messy, something blurring the lines; he lets go of her wrists and buries his hands in her hair. He's soaking wet when they finally break, mouths pink and ruined in the middle of the street.
"Who are you?" His voice is full of fear and hope and the shaky shuddering noise of destiny colliding with fate, tumbling end over end into nothing.
"Yours," she says, fingers coming up to trace the lines of his face.
It's sudden, frantic, and she's not even sure where he's taken her. Only that in the space of a breath they're indoors, somewhere that smells like new paint and stale air. His fingers are shaking on the buttons of her coat but between them the soaked wool slaps to the ground, his coat follows, and in an instant he has her up against a wall or a door, her skirt pulled up as she fumbles with his pants. She's pretty sure she broke the zipper but that's the last thought she has as he sinks into the warm wetness of her, the barest amount of clothing pushed aside to make way for burning need and immediacy. He ruts into her, gasping as she digs nails into his shoulders and sobs in relief against his mouth. It's been too long. It's been forever. Neither of them last very long, she screams when she comes, the windows shuddering until they crack; fine spider webs branching out across the misted glass. He roars when he follows her over the edge and his eyes turn black, glittering gems in the half light as they cling to each other, panting, lost and confused.
Gently, he lets her down and they stumble, weave to the dusty bed in the corner. It's slower now, movements fluid and lazy as they undress each other properly. Hands sliding over flesh as cotton and silk flutter to the floor, forgotten. His eyes remain the solid black of an animal, and they make her shudder with something she cannot name when he looks at her, worshipful, adoringly. She folds herself into his lap and he licks his way into her mouth until she moans something keening, her hips bucking against him.
He smiles against her mouth, one arm sliding around her, pinning her in place. "Patience, woman."
She growls but patience gets her kisses and sweet fingers sliding down her belly and then slipping between the folds of her, crooking and twisting until she's writhing against him. The only words she can remember now are "more" and "please". He keeps her there on the hazy edges until she can't take anymore and bites him, hard on the juncture of neck and shoulder. He stiffens underneath her and finally lets her go, settling his hands on her hips and pressing, letting her mount him until she slides down his length with a gratified sigh. He lets her take control, riding him while the room spins beautifully around her and she hears him gasp. She isn't containing herself enough, ribbons of her grace spill out around the edges of herself. Black fades from his eyes until he's staring up at her in awe, she can see the shadows of her wings filling the space above them, rippling through the air and her hand, where she has it splayed across his collar bone burns and hisses against his skin. In the second that she means to move it, to stop hurting him, his hand comes up, clamping around her wrist and he pushes, thrusting up into her as he keeps her hand pressed tight to his flesh. She breaks then, screaming a human name that hasn't been his for years, her wings snapping out, shattering the spider web glass around them and feels him flip her, dizzyingly, onto her back as the world whites out.
It takes awhile for her to come back to herself, to be aware of the feeling of skin pressed to skin, holding tight to each other in the dark, the down comforter thrown over them both to keep creation out. His fingers are sliding through her hair, carefully working out tangles as his other arm loops around her waist. Her face is pressed to the crook of his neck and she can feel the hand print that she left behind warm and throbbing beneath her cheek. He hadn't healed it, he might never heal it.
"Who are you?" he breathes into her hair. "How do I know you?"
It's dark and the room is cool though they're snug under the blankets. It's peaceful and she has no reason to lie so she tells him, she tells him about Paris and about a human running into an angel on the street. How he laughed at her when she told him what she was. How he didn't believe her for the longest time until he saw her wings stretched out behind her on the street. She told him how she was blond then and how he wrote music on the piano just for her. She tells him how she fell and how he cried when he'd found her curled up next to what was their bed. She told him how angels came and how demons came and she told him about the last sacrifice he made so that they wouldn't destroy her completely.
It's almost dawn by the time her voice fades and she hears him sigh, thinking, until after awhile he says; "I had imagined it was something foolishly romantic. I seemed the type."
She laughs and he grins, pulling her chin up so he can kiss her and he tastes like he always has.