Happiest of Holidays, muselolita!
Title: (Shut Up and) Drive
For: muselolita
From: maribella008
Rating: Hard R/NC17 for drugs, slash, light restraint, language (gosh, did I leave much out?)
Personae: Pollution/Aziraphale/Famine/Crowley (now as to who shows up where/when/why …)
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. For non-commercial use exclusively.
No attempt to infringe on any rights held.
Author's Thanks: Grand Mistress Beta of Canon, without whom this would have never. Mods for letting me play here.
A/N: Chosen one and I share affinity for kinky fluff, colorful language, fanmix, and belief there are lots of ways to pollute the mind. Hope this spices up her holiday. *crosses fingers*
Summary: Lots of Beings Hunger to Get Something - or SomeOne - Done.
"Something in me dark and sticky
All the time it's getting strong
Digging in the Dirt
Stay with me I need some more"
Peter Gabriel, Digging in the Dirt
© Real World Music, Ltd
(Shut Up and) Drive
The wind wailed and moaned.
It might've done that because it wanted to sweep away the miasma that suddenly grew and hung in the sky, menacing rooftops, shadowing streetlights. Instead, it could only drape and be still, melancholy, stretched against its will from a stingy half-before to something vague and spectral past midnight.
If anyone (or -thing) had looked closely, they might have seen - maybe - a roiling cloud of smoke wisps, going from grey to almost black, then grey to white again, billowing around the doors to Books R Us, camouflaging windows, melting their views; slithering and curling around and under and through the doorjambs and hinges with some furious purpose to be inside.
The person (or being) might've seen the coil of wisps swell, anthropomorphize, then flash around the room, directed, like it knew what to do, where to go, as if its mission had been meticulously planned and the only thing remaining, like the shimmering trick guillotine in a master illusionist's finale, was to execute.
The wraith wielded long fingers as he grew them.
Off counter edges and tops of bookshelves, they plucked incense sticks from heavy Regency silver holders that tarnished as the fingers touched them, dipping and swirling the sticks in what looked like seed-filled tar before dusting them with the original scents again.
The fingers snapped, unpacked and reassembled a greyish thing - it looked like a machine, might not have been - and stowed its various parts, some perforated, under countertops and in corners, its dingy controller camouflaged to the point where it might as well have been invisible. Trenchant words glowed from it before disappearing under the dust veil - Toxic, Pushing Forward Back, Poison, Outshined, Sandman.
The fingers crushed capsules quickly, mercilessly, into glittering microscopic dusts and flashed them across countertops, back tables, pitchers, all the edges of all the china. They mashed more of the pungent seeds between them, stirring and scattering them into tins of spiced powdered drinking chocolate and imported tea, where they'd hide well.
There was one sound. Might've been the ghost of a young man's laugh, or the creak of a rotting floorboard.
Then the cloud billowed forcefully back out under the door and vanished, fast as it had appeared, and only one preoccupied human would've had a clue to what it might've been, as she wrinkled her nose at dark grimy residue and wondered why the municipality permitted that ghastly petrochem plant to practically molest the town, with its pipes' exhaust maliciously spewing upwind over them all.
~~~~~
Aziraphale stopped by his shop to collect sustenance -- reference materials and cocoa -- prior to embarking on a brief but prospectively intense tour of yoga studios in the Americas.
He knew they were all doing some Mala 108 Sun Salutations thing, during Winter Solstice.
He wasn't precisely sure what that meant -- and he wasn't sure they knew either -- but he knew they thought all the Salutations had something to do with keeping the earth firmly in its regular rotation, like this newfangled MTV programming, past the Mayan calendar's last day in 2012, as opposed to the Human Series being Cancelled by the Network Executives in the Sky (and also Below, if one wanted to get picky about it) -- as theorized by that hack director with the long last name, as well as, hang him, Nostradamus.
And as his bosses had been suspiciously closed-mouthed about Plans and Objectives for that particular year, Aziraphale thought it a good idea to just keep an eye on the whole thing.
He also thought it worth keeping an eye on the Series as they had a tendency -- especially in places like Buenos Aires, New York, and, his bosses help him, Los Angeles -- to attract glamorous model types whose diet for the 108-Salutation duration (which could take days) tended to consist of a sprout, an umeboshi plum, and one amaranth biscuit.
(An extra raisin's ingestion could involve a fall from grace requiring numerous acts of penance, precipitating in turn a fall from the yoga mat requiring numerous trips to the hospital.)
Aziraphale suspected such environments to be disturbingly ripe for the sudden and mysterious proliferation of MEALS™ as the only 'nutritional' choice for post-Salutation restoration. He wanted to make sure there were actual calories on hand on both continents, to fuel all 108 Salutations, and if they were required by some Mayan calendar orthodoxy to be fat-free, gluten-free, and lactose-free, that they weren't also necessarily taste-free.
He had fixed his cocoa, lit a stick or two of incense and was leafing through the Bhagavad Gita, hoping he wouldn't have to pack all 20 volumes, when his phone rang.
"Yes?" Aziraphale tried to squelch any impatience in his voice, but he didn't see the point of identifying himself as proprietor when not critically necessary.
"Aziraphaaaalllllle." The voice hissed through the phone. "It'ssss … White."
"My dear." What a pleasure refused to come out. "Can't imagine what would inspire you to call."
At least he'd begun crisply, Aziraphale thought, head tingling slightly. He was used to a slight buzz from the incense - a drop of decadence here and there was necessary to good taste, really - but there was something darker, thicker about this evening's batch, making his focus less sharp than he preferred. Overall.
"Well, can't very well email you, can I?" Little snarkbadger - Aziraphale bristled at the smarm in his tone. "It's only a rumor you're still struggling with the internet thing, but …"
Rising above it is your literal job and you're better equipped to do it than most, Aziraphale reminded himself.
"To gettt tooo it, I'm -" it was somewhere between a wheeze and a whisper - "aaaaching. Need your help."
Aziraphale tried to at least stifle the audible sigh.
More and more often, the solace-to-suffering-beings sub-gig of the Good Influence Directive was so not what it was cracked up to be. He thought briefly about bringing it up at the next Celestial Agenda, but his thoughts seemed … fuzzy … at the moment. Overextension from multi-tasking, he sulked slightly to himself.
And even angels' minds worked better hydrated. Especially with chocolate, he thought, draining his cup. The aftertaste rang a little strangely.
"I have to confess to a terrrrrrible crush on you, angel," White purred then, in a tone so saccharine it hooked on the aftertaste at the back of Aziraphale's throat. "You know, opposites attracting, all that … plus you've always seemed so good at … compromise --"
"My dear, this is all - fascinating - and flattering - but I'm afraid I'm in a terrible rush --"
"Ohhhh, I think you want to hear about it now though."
Before Aziraphale could work his mouth to say "I beg your pardon" or some less (or more) vulgar variant, White went salaciously on. "See, I love to follow you. I love to watch you. And … vaporizing is my favorite way to eavesdrop."
Alarm bells rang in Aziraphale's head. (Or some other faint clanging. He wasn't quite sure.)
But he didn't say anything. Not yet. Caution, valour, blah blah.
"You're always so on about ... divine ecstasy … maybe there's more to it than just what's in the books in your headquarters. You know what I mean?"
The insinuations were like over-sweetened aldehydes.
"Even powerful beings have … weaknesses." Oily. Viscous, hypocritical, flattering, suave, slippery, greasy.
Aziraphale still didn't say anything.
He figured the little sleazeweasel was fishing. But Aziraphale didn't know what he knew. And he would not confirm anything White was hinting at but couldn't prove.
And …
He probably had to get to the bottom of it anyway.
(His teeth rattled on his chocolate cup; he hadn't realized he was gnawing on the china's edge. He let go his viselike grip on it and set it down.)
After all, in these relationship … variants the humans had (the mess they'd made of which had offered TPTB a fabulous excuse to plot this apoca … revela … thing in the first place) … sometimes the only way … out … was through.
Aziraphale began to perspire. Little drops stood out on his nose, rolled down his neck.
And poisons they used in other spaces in their lives, burning through to some arguable greater good … DDT, before they banned it. Tear gas, depending on who was using it. Radiation therapy. Tricholoracetic acid peels …?
He couldn't know where the lines were if he didn't always know … where the lines were.
He wanted - no, needed to know.
Especially since the lines seemed to keep shifting these days.
Definitely shifting right now. Aziraphale looked down. His counter looked more like one of those newfangled Dali paintings Crowley liked than usual, what with the corners melting and all.
Crowley.
Bent hell, his mind was wandering. Aziraphale set his teeth.
"Go on."
Plus, the part of his mind that dealt with time wasn't whispering quite as urgently as it had been.
White, on the other hand, was whispering urgently. Insistently, intrusively.
"Yes," he breathed. "You know … the first time can be … not comfortable" … he grunted like he was rubbing on something, or something was rubbing him ... "but you and I have known each other so long …"
He's not lying right now, thought Aziraphale, a little dizzily.
"You're so beautiful … I've always wanted … to spoil you." A viscous whisper underlain with malicious multiple meanings. "Blow in your hair … suck on your gorgeous hands … everything I want to do … with you … so many new ways to use a filthy mouth." White let go a stream of obscenities so blue there were words in there even Aziraphale wasn't sure he knew.
"I don't want you to think about me. I'm not even here," White crooned mockingly. "I'm just gonna lick your neck a little, and lay on your chest --" a shiver skimmed Aziraphale 's chest; the nipples puckered like they'd been plucked -- "and you think about the wrongest possible person you shouldn't be with … "
Oh, fine.
"… and I'm just going to … watch."
Aziraphale couldn't help it. Sharp lines of his jaw, dark hair, little hollows at his throat … Aziraphale mind's eye traveled slowly further down … firm thighs in all that … black the flash bastard affected sometimes, when wanting to be especially … Aziraphale sighed, and the black leather turned colors in his head.
"I'm so hard right now, angel. Do you know how hard that is, to make vapor hard?" Ghostly laughter, like they were sharing the joke. "My fingers … wet with how much I want you … have to touch myself. So good … so good …" Licking, sucking, who knew what else.
White groaned. "I stroke myself and think of you."
It wasn't that. It wasn't the thought of White doing that that made Aziraphale's mouth slacken slightly, and go dry. It was the sounds he was making, the soft sighs, the groans, that spun in Aziraphale's head as he thought of them coming from a different voice, a lower register … sounds Crowley might make as he fingered himself, coming toward Aziraphale and seeing how much Aziraphale wanted him, from the white auric heat emanating from his mouth and eddying around his thighs …
"Is he … getting swollen, just watching you move?" Aziraphale began to writhe, on the counter's edge and against his own edge.
"Did he tie your hands? Really well, so you could stop doing good for a while and let us … please you?"
Aziraphale saw it inside his mind, dark stretched straps standing out against the gleaming white of his hands, which trembled, like his lower belly, He was having trouble working his hands anyway. He couldn't feel them … or parts of his face. His coordination seemed to be … affected. Vapors licked his ears, tongued his throat, pressed firm, sour, heavy like bad atoms, on his chest.
"Do you feel me?" Aziraphale hallucinated the damp sticky invasion of his upper body, shivered. "And him, low on you?" Again, and bit back a groan.
... and the Crowley in his head knelt down between Aziraphale's legs. With a hand on himself where Aziraphale could see.
"You're turgid. Bulging. Like a building on fire from the inside, on the edge of about to burst and shatter."
He was. A sharp, near-rank smell of sex rose in the room.
"Is he palming your thighs? Squeezing you? Licking … oh my … what is he doing with that … that tongue?" A strangled moan on one end. A hiss on the other. "I want to watch. I want to ssseee."
The volume of music - if one could call it that - had crept up gradually, sneaking up and around into Aziraphale's consciousness, infecting it from below with thumping bass, piercing it from above with shrieks about love's agony and sin's rhythms in the now, this moment. Aziraphale wanted to twist and pound and grind himself into things, beings, orifices, in the slick of those grooves.
And under the thrum, bang, bash, scream, he tried to keep silent. His skin turned chalky, drying and thinning till it felt papery. Rainbow colors on puddles went in and out. His mind was here. No, here …
Aziraphale clenched his teeth harder. Bit his tongue. One blood drop splashed on the counter. Tried to control his breathing. Tried …
"Is he sucking you yet?"
Was he? He was. Was he? Sweet righteous flaming swords. He was. He was. He was. The room was melting. Aziraphale thought he might evaporate. Slow, and then quicker licks of crystalline fluid seeped through his trousers. He pushed once, and felt the wet velvet of the back of Crowley's throat.
Softly. "You should come in his mouth."
Aziraphale pushed again, and felt it again. Again. Again. Again.
Again.
"Dirty … beautiful …" Pollution breathed harder … "we can make it, all of us making you, beautiful … making you … come …
All of us? How many were in the room? The music roared, mindpictures liquefied, A's muddied bloodstream vibrated. He had trouble noticing he was having trouble breathing, since he didn't do it regularly enough to know how irregular it was now.
He vibrated and thrust, tried not to grunt, tried not to buck.
"… aagh … guhh … ugh, uhg, ugh …" Pollution's pitch rose steadily, parallel to Aziraphale's hips. "-- yes, yes, yesss --"
Aziraphale wasn't sure if he was about to ruin his trousers, and he wasn't sure if the floor was about to rush up to meet him, when a ripping explosion of static shocked the phone from his hand.
The real Crowley blazed out through the phone, grabbed Aziraphale by the wrist so hard his talons dug in, and nearly dislocated his arm as he dragged him bodily out the door.
~~~~~
White bucked and twisted into the air, teetering on the brink of spurting over the sheets. "Aghh, yes, yes, yeh - he - hello? Hello??"
"Hello."
Fly loose, shirt trailing over bare chest flushed faint pink, hips still piked in the air, White torqued his neck sharply toward the long narrow shadow in the doorway.
"Ho - how - long have you been standing there?"
"Long enough to catch you in prurient, sordid flagrante delicto, as I'm sure was your plan. Good thing I finished early," Sable said a trifle coolly.
(He neglected to mention the possibility that a cornucopic delivery to every 108-Salutation location of obscene numbers of holiday delicacies prepared by Prud'homme, Ripert, and that arrogant multi-plater from French Laundry, tumbling with supernatural haste from the overfilled backseat of a top-down Bentley which then roared off like it was laughing, might have had something to do with his missions' abrupt denouements.
Likely the vegans wouldn't touch any of it. Call it a wash.)
He withdrew his hooded attention from White, who cramped a little at the deprivation, and refocused it on the still-smoking, bluish-puce remains of the formerly black RAZR that lay on the sheets at his side. "Interesting," Sable managed.
His usually elegant stride seemed a bit hitched and awkward, and his Hedi Slimane trousers strained in front at the zip.
"Your line is ruined." White scrambled to sound casual, shift the focus away from his nerves to someone else's.
"You ruined it." Sable's breath came faster.
"Doing my job, then, I think." The light grinding whine of White's voice mirrored the movement as he levered his hips slowly downward, stroking a long thin hand between his legs, mimicking what appeared to be a semi-conscious motion of Sable's. "I know what you were trying to get done … I really only wanted to help."
Could not have been pouted more prettily petulantly.
"You were driven to it." White could see a spot of liquid gleaming at the edge of Sable's immaculately razored VanDyke. Was he salivating? "Such a … warping of drive … such a sin and shame it can't be -- roped, corralled, chained … driven toward a … slightly less depraved manifestation of purpose."
"Drive. Driven. Drove," White said softly. His voice curled around the syllables like bad hexane on a doomed river's waves. He rolled from his lolling, prone position to his side, arching his back so the crack of his ass was visible, then rose, vulpine, to his hands and knees.
"You know I'd rather paint than verbalize --" as he undid his fly, unbelievably, further -- "but there must be a reason you keep … using that word." He then dropped his pants completely, exposing the entire smooth flash-white expanse of his ass, and bent forward, spreading the cheeks, so Sable could see the rosy hole between them in the depths.
And waited.
~~~~~
Crowley threw Aziraphale into the Bentley's front passenger seat as gently as he could.
He looked back over his shoulder for a minute and flicked his fingers at the door of Books R Us, sealing it and the windows, all the while muttering at a rat-tat-tat pace under his breath about finally seeing about a decent, evil, modern, updated, mothproof, bulletproof, paintbulletproof, flameproof, wraithproof security system dammit and never mind all the fine old historic landmark building crap BS.
Not even going to talk about it being the second time after the stupid fire.
He turned his full attention back to Aziraphale, peering in his eyes, laying hands on his pulse points. "This is going to sound ridiculous," he said briskly. "I'm going to ask you questions about what you're feeling, and you tell me, as best you can." He touched Aziraphale's jaw. "Stop grinding your teeth."
"Don' wanna," Aziraphale slurred, but he didn't yet seem to have the wherewithal to argue further.
"Are you sleepy?"
"Mmmm."
"Do you feel out of your body?"
"Not yet."
"Does your skin feel dry, papery - like parchment?"
"Mmmm."
Crowley shook his head, and laid more purging hands on.
Aziraphale's breathing rate slowly returned to normal.
So did Crowley's.
Aziraphale looked out from half-lidded eyes. "What …"
"Opium and hash, overlaid with ketamine, X and PCP. Angel dust." Crowley smiled grimly at the irony. "Depending on how you'd had it organized, your Blood Circulation Network could've quietly imploded at orgasm." He paused a minute, like the impact of his own words hadn't really hit him till they were out of his mouth.
Then he collected himself - almost all the way - and went on. "You had enough in you to take down several fields of chargers, of course, and the overlay caused different cross-reactions as those latter three chemical play-toys are pretty … new." His eyes widened and nearly turned colors behind his shades, as it dawned on him.
"Which is why you did it."
Aziraphale sighed deeply.
"Once I knew who it was, I figured organic shenanigans might be involved somehow. I just didn't … anticipate the multiplicity of permutations." He stopped to catch his breath again. "How do you think he knew …?"
"He could smell the determination on you, I'm sure," said Crowley. "Quite the nose for potentially flammable conflagration, that one." He was quiet for another minute. "They still want to win, you know."
Aziraphale, too, was quiet. Logistics, he thought, might be a slightly less incendiary subject. "How did you know where I was?"
"I … went where I thought you'd be, after … hearing about the events." Crowley glided hurriedly over that part. "You were late. You're never late."
Something else dawned on Aziraphale. "How did you know what to do?"
"I …" Given that they were snuffing out the specific personality's handiwork involved, Crowley really didn't want to get into it. "Never mind."
Aziraphale let it go.
He sighed again then, this one seeming to come from the bottom of his soul (which, for an ethereal, of course, tends to be a bit further down than most folks').
"My initial impulse, at least, was that for the sake of the humans, it was --"
"The Right Thing to Do," Crowley singsonged acidly in unison. "You time-warped, bookwormy, badass bastard."
Aziraphale let his head loll on the deep leather rest. "Call it … Continuing Education."
"May I recommend you not do it again, without, um, supervision? Or, at the very least - non-vaporous company?"
Aziraphale managed - finally - the gentle ghost of a smile. "That would beat the hell out of discorporation, I believe."
Crowley bit his lips sharply down and looked away like he didn't quite feel like giving up his 'peeved' face just yet.
Still a bit faintly. "You … didn't start out on either end of that phone."
"No." Crowley busied himself doing more loosening and smoothing.
"I don't remember you being quite that handy with the digital and electrical," Aziraphale commented.
A beat. "Call it Continuing Education," Crowley murmured.
Aziraphale huffed again - the sound slightly more robust this time.
"But you never studied."
Crowley cocked an eyebrow. "Feeling a bit better, are we?"
"Crowley --" By now, Aziraphale had recovered just enough to be able to lift his head and glance into the Bentley's backseat, wherein lay some suspiciously orphaned torte boxes, and a huge transparent-domed turducken from which it appeared some being had taken a single large bite.
"You weren't … thwarting?" Aziraphale angled half an eyebrow.
"I think the idea is, as long as someone's day is well and thoroughly ruined, the hash mark goes in the 'Agent Effective' column," Crowley said. "Plus, some of those pâtés …" he shook his head. "No one should eat that. Especially to excess. Which is why I took them all some extra ones."
He glanced again over into the passenger seat. "Also, that way, no … ah … other agent … has anything particularly pressing to do. 'Efficient', then, as well as 'Effective'."
Aziraphale bit down a very small smirk, then shifted in the passenger seat to face more toward the driver's side, tucking a hand under his head, which now felt smoothly whirly instead of like it might spin off his shoulders. "I notice you've let some of the more … pleasantly stimulating residual effects slide, dear," he commented even more casually.
Still flushed, head lolling, jacket loose, shirt loose, trousers still unabatedly snug -- he figured he knew how he must look.
Crowley struggled not to look, failing progressively steadily. "Perhaps today's menu-planning tip is, there's fair room to maneuver between cotton-candy-not-a-meal and battery-acid-good-for-what-ails-you," he mused at last.
"So to speak."
"So to speak."
"Perhaps." Aziraphale closed his eyes briefly, and the grey components that had screamed the head-rattling noises from his bookshelves and under his counter came wafting through the north wall of Books R Us and reassembled themselves just above Crowley's tape deck.
The components did not play F. Mercury.
♪♫ I got class like a '57 Cadillac
All the drive and a whole lot of boom in the back
Get you where you wanna go if you know what I mean
With a ride that's smoother than a limousine
I'm 0 to 60 in three point five
Honey you got the keys
Now Shut Up and Drive ♪♫
Crowley opened his mouth, but nothing came out except a small squeak.
"I hardly think it strategic to wait two weeks for Freddie to properly set the mood," said Aziraphale mildly.
Crowley tried again. This time he gurgled.
Aziraphale nodded delicately at the ignition. "I believe you heard the lady."
There were no other night sounds. Only his voice's overtones. And undertones.
Crowley floored it.
~ fin ~
*Aziraphale believed the particular choice of work to underscore his point more appropriate than others with a similar message might've been, as the artist hailed originally from Barbados, a civilized island still with ties to the Kingdom, even if her producers did happen to be rambunctious Americans.
Rihanna, Shut Up and Drive
© Sturken & Rogers
For: muselolita
From: maribella008
Rating: Hard R/NC17 for drugs, slash, light restraint, language (gosh, did I leave much out?)
Personae: Pollution/Aziraphale/Famine/Crowley (now as to who shows up where/when/why …)
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. For non-commercial use exclusively.
No attempt to infringe on any rights held.
Author's Thanks: Grand Mistress Beta of Canon, without whom this would have never. Mods for letting me play here.
A/N: Chosen one and I share affinity for kinky fluff, colorful language, fanmix, and belief there are lots of ways to pollute the mind. Hope this spices up her holiday. *crosses fingers*
Summary: Lots of Beings Hunger to Get Something - or SomeOne - Done.
"Something in me dark and sticky
All the time it's getting strong
Digging in the Dirt
Stay with me I need some more"
Peter Gabriel, Digging in the Dirt
© Real World Music, Ltd
(Shut Up and) Drive
The wind wailed and moaned.
It might've done that because it wanted to sweep away the miasma that suddenly grew and hung in the sky, menacing rooftops, shadowing streetlights. Instead, it could only drape and be still, melancholy, stretched against its will from a stingy half-before to something vague and spectral past midnight.
If anyone (or -thing) had looked closely, they might have seen - maybe - a roiling cloud of smoke wisps, going from grey to almost black, then grey to white again, billowing around the doors to Books R Us, camouflaging windows, melting their views; slithering and curling around and under and through the doorjambs and hinges with some furious purpose to be inside.
The person (or being) might've seen the coil of wisps swell, anthropomorphize, then flash around the room, directed, like it knew what to do, where to go, as if its mission had been meticulously planned and the only thing remaining, like the shimmering trick guillotine in a master illusionist's finale, was to execute.
The wraith wielded long fingers as he grew them.
Off counter edges and tops of bookshelves, they plucked incense sticks from heavy Regency silver holders that tarnished as the fingers touched them, dipping and swirling the sticks in what looked like seed-filled tar before dusting them with the original scents again.
The fingers snapped, unpacked and reassembled a greyish thing - it looked like a machine, might not have been - and stowed its various parts, some perforated, under countertops and in corners, its dingy controller camouflaged to the point where it might as well have been invisible. Trenchant words glowed from it before disappearing under the dust veil - Toxic, Pushing Forward Back, Poison, Outshined, Sandman.
The fingers crushed capsules quickly, mercilessly, into glittering microscopic dusts and flashed them across countertops, back tables, pitchers, all the edges of all the china. They mashed more of the pungent seeds between them, stirring and scattering them into tins of spiced powdered drinking chocolate and imported tea, where they'd hide well.
There was one sound. Might've been the ghost of a young man's laugh, or the creak of a rotting floorboard.
Then the cloud billowed forcefully back out under the door and vanished, fast as it had appeared, and only one preoccupied human would've had a clue to what it might've been, as she wrinkled her nose at dark grimy residue and wondered why the municipality permitted that ghastly petrochem plant to practically molest the town, with its pipes' exhaust maliciously spewing upwind over them all.
~~~~~
Aziraphale stopped by his shop to collect sustenance -- reference materials and cocoa -- prior to embarking on a brief but prospectively intense tour of yoga studios in the Americas.
He knew they were all doing some Mala 108 Sun Salutations thing, during Winter Solstice.
He wasn't precisely sure what that meant -- and he wasn't sure they knew either -- but he knew they thought all the Salutations had something to do with keeping the earth firmly in its regular rotation, like this newfangled MTV programming, past the Mayan calendar's last day in 2012, as opposed to the Human Series being Cancelled by the Network Executives in the Sky (and also Below, if one wanted to get picky about it) -- as theorized by that hack director with the long last name, as well as, hang him, Nostradamus.
And as his bosses had been suspiciously closed-mouthed about Plans and Objectives for that particular year, Aziraphale thought it a good idea to just keep an eye on the whole thing.
He also thought it worth keeping an eye on the Series as they had a tendency -- especially in places like Buenos Aires, New York, and, his bosses help him, Los Angeles -- to attract glamorous model types whose diet for the 108-Salutation duration (which could take days) tended to consist of a sprout, an umeboshi plum, and one amaranth biscuit.
(An extra raisin's ingestion could involve a fall from grace requiring numerous acts of penance, precipitating in turn a fall from the yoga mat requiring numerous trips to the hospital.)
Aziraphale suspected such environments to be disturbingly ripe for the sudden and mysterious proliferation of MEALS™ as the only 'nutritional' choice for post-Salutation restoration. He wanted to make sure there were actual calories on hand on both continents, to fuel all 108 Salutations, and if they were required by some Mayan calendar orthodoxy to be fat-free, gluten-free, and lactose-free, that they weren't also necessarily taste-free.
He had fixed his cocoa, lit a stick or two of incense and was leafing through the Bhagavad Gita, hoping he wouldn't have to pack all 20 volumes, when his phone rang.
"Yes?" Aziraphale tried to squelch any impatience in his voice, but he didn't see the point of identifying himself as proprietor when not critically necessary.
"Aziraphaaaalllllle." The voice hissed through the phone. "It'ssss … White."
"My dear." What a pleasure refused to come out. "Can't imagine what would inspire you to call."
At least he'd begun crisply, Aziraphale thought, head tingling slightly. He was used to a slight buzz from the incense - a drop of decadence here and there was necessary to good taste, really - but there was something darker, thicker about this evening's batch, making his focus less sharp than he preferred. Overall.
"Well, can't very well email you, can I?" Little snarkbadger - Aziraphale bristled at the smarm in his tone. "It's only a rumor you're still struggling with the internet thing, but …"
Rising above it is your literal job and you're better equipped to do it than most, Aziraphale reminded himself.
"To gettt tooo it, I'm -" it was somewhere between a wheeze and a whisper - "aaaaching. Need your help."
Aziraphale tried to at least stifle the audible sigh.
More and more often, the solace-to-suffering-beings sub-gig of the Good Influence Directive was so not what it was cracked up to be. He thought briefly about bringing it up at the next Celestial Agenda, but his thoughts seemed … fuzzy … at the moment. Overextension from multi-tasking, he sulked slightly to himself.
And even angels' minds worked better hydrated. Especially with chocolate, he thought, draining his cup. The aftertaste rang a little strangely.
"I have to confess to a terrrrrrible crush on you, angel," White purred then, in a tone so saccharine it hooked on the aftertaste at the back of Aziraphale's throat. "You know, opposites attracting, all that … plus you've always seemed so good at … compromise --"
"My dear, this is all - fascinating - and flattering - but I'm afraid I'm in a terrible rush --"
"Ohhhh, I think you want to hear about it now though."
Before Aziraphale could work his mouth to say "I beg your pardon" or some less (or more) vulgar variant, White went salaciously on. "See, I love to follow you. I love to watch you. And … vaporizing is my favorite way to eavesdrop."
Alarm bells rang in Aziraphale's head. (Or some other faint clanging. He wasn't quite sure.)
But he didn't say anything. Not yet. Caution, valour, blah blah.
"You're always so on about ... divine ecstasy … maybe there's more to it than just what's in the books in your headquarters. You know what I mean?"
The insinuations were like over-sweetened aldehydes.
"Even powerful beings have … weaknesses." Oily. Viscous, hypocritical, flattering, suave, slippery, greasy.
Aziraphale still didn't say anything.
He figured the little sleazeweasel was fishing. But Aziraphale didn't know what he knew. And he would not confirm anything White was hinting at but couldn't prove.
And …
He probably had to get to the bottom of it anyway.
(His teeth rattled on his chocolate cup; he hadn't realized he was gnawing on the china's edge. He let go his viselike grip on it and set it down.)
After all, in these relationship … variants the humans had (the mess they'd made of which had offered TPTB a fabulous excuse to plot this apoca … revela … thing in the first place) … sometimes the only way … out … was through.
Aziraphale began to perspire. Little drops stood out on his nose, rolled down his neck.
And poisons they used in other spaces in their lives, burning through to some arguable greater good … DDT, before they banned it. Tear gas, depending on who was using it. Radiation therapy. Tricholoracetic acid peels …?
He couldn't know where the lines were if he didn't always know … where the lines were.
He wanted - no, needed to know.
Especially since the lines seemed to keep shifting these days.
Definitely shifting right now. Aziraphale looked down. His counter looked more like one of those newfangled Dali paintings Crowley liked than usual, what with the corners melting and all.
Crowley.
Bent hell, his mind was wandering. Aziraphale set his teeth.
"Go on."
Plus, the part of his mind that dealt with time wasn't whispering quite as urgently as it had been.
White, on the other hand, was whispering urgently. Insistently, intrusively.
"Yes," he breathed. "You know … the first time can be … not comfortable" … he grunted like he was rubbing on something, or something was rubbing him ... "but you and I have known each other so long …"
He's not lying right now, thought Aziraphale, a little dizzily.
"You're so beautiful … I've always wanted … to spoil you." A viscous whisper underlain with malicious multiple meanings. "Blow in your hair … suck on your gorgeous hands … everything I want to do … with you … so many new ways to use a filthy mouth." White let go a stream of obscenities so blue there were words in there even Aziraphale wasn't sure he knew.
"I don't want you to think about me. I'm not even here," White crooned mockingly. "I'm just gonna lick your neck a little, and lay on your chest --" a shiver skimmed Aziraphale 's chest; the nipples puckered like they'd been plucked -- "and you think about the wrongest possible person you shouldn't be with … "
Oh, fine.
"… and I'm just going to … watch."
Aziraphale couldn't help it. Sharp lines of his jaw, dark hair, little hollows at his throat … Aziraphale mind's eye traveled slowly further down … firm thighs in all that … black the flash bastard affected sometimes, when wanting to be especially … Aziraphale sighed, and the black leather turned colors in his head.
"I'm so hard right now, angel. Do you know how hard that is, to make vapor hard?" Ghostly laughter, like they were sharing the joke. "My fingers … wet with how much I want you … have to touch myself. So good … so good …" Licking, sucking, who knew what else.
White groaned. "I stroke myself and think of you."
It wasn't that. It wasn't the thought of White doing that that made Aziraphale's mouth slacken slightly, and go dry. It was the sounds he was making, the soft sighs, the groans, that spun in Aziraphale's head as he thought of them coming from a different voice, a lower register … sounds Crowley might make as he fingered himself, coming toward Aziraphale and seeing how much Aziraphale wanted him, from the white auric heat emanating from his mouth and eddying around his thighs …
"Is he … getting swollen, just watching you move?" Aziraphale began to writhe, on the counter's edge and against his own edge.
"Did he tie your hands? Really well, so you could stop doing good for a while and let us … please you?"
Aziraphale saw it inside his mind, dark stretched straps standing out against the gleaming white of his hands, which trembled, like his lower belly, He was having trouble working his hands anyway. He couldn't feel them … or parts of his face. His coordination seemed to be … affected. Vapors licked his ears, tongued his throat, pressed firm, sour, heavy like bad atoms, on his chest.
"Do you feel me?" Aziraphale hallucinated the damp sticky invasion of his upper body, shivered. "And him, low on you?" Again, and bit back a groan.
... and the Crowley in his head knelt down between Aziraphale's legs. With a hand on himself where Aziraphale could see.
"You're turgid. Bulging. Like a building on fire from the inside, on the edge of about to burst and shatter."
He was. A sharp, near-rank smell of sex rose in the room.
"Is he palming your thighs? Squeezing you? Licking … oh my … what is he doing with that … that tongue?" A strangled moan on one end. A hiss on the other. "I want to watch. I want to ssseee."
The volume of music - if one could call it that - had crept up gradually, sneaking up and around into Aziraphale's consciousness, infecting it from below with thumping bass, piercing it from above with shrieks about love's agony and sin's rhythms in the now, this moment. Aziraphale wanted to twist and pound and grind himself into things, beings, orifices, in the slick of those grooves.
And under the thrum, bang, bash, scream, he tried to keep silent. His skin turned chalky, drying and thinning till it felt papery. Rainbow colors on puddles went in and out. His mind was here. No, here …
Aziraphale clenched his teeth harder. Bit his tongue. One blood drop splashed on the counter. Tried to control his breathing. Tried …
"Is he sucking you yet?"
Was he? He was. Was he? Sweet righteous flaming swords. He was. He was. He was. The room was melting. Aziraphale thought he might evaporate. Slow, and then quicker licks of crystalline fluid seeped through his trousers. He pushed once, and felt the wet velvet of the back of Crowley's throat.
Softly. "You should come in his mouth."
Aziraphale pushed again, and felt it again. Again. Again. Again.
Again.
"Dirty … beautiful …" Pollution breathed harder … "we can make it, all of us making you, beautiful … making you … come …
All of us? How many were in the room? The music roared, mindpictures liquefied, A's muddied bloodstream vibrated. He had trouble noticing he was having trouble breathing, since he didn't do it regularly enough to know how irregular it was now.
He vibrated and thrust, tried not to grunt, tried not to buck.
"… aagh … guhh … ugh, uhg, ugh …" Pollution's pitch rose steadily, parallel to Aziraphale's hips. "-- yes, yes, yesss --"
Aziraphale wasn't sure if he was about to ruin his trousers, and he wasn't sure if the floor was about to rush up to meet him, when a ripping explosion of static shocked the phone from his hand.
The real Crowley blazed out through the phone, grabbed Aziraphale by the wrist so hard his talons dug in, and nearly dislocated his arm as he dragged him bodily out the door.
~~~~~
White bucked and twisted into the air, teetering on the brink of spurting over the sheets. "Aghh, yes, yes, yeh - he - hello? Hello??"
"Hello."
Fly loose, shirt trailing over bare chest flushed faint pink, hips still piked in the air, White torqued his neck sharply toward the long narrow shadow in the doorway.
"Ho - how - long have you been standing there?"
"Long enough to catch you in prurient, sordid flagrante delicto, as I'm sure was your plan. Good thing I finished early," Sable said a trifle coolly.
(He neglected to mention the possibility that a cornucopic delivery to every 108-Salutation location of obscene numbers of holiday delicacies prepared by Prud'homme, Ripert, and that arrogant multi-plater from French Laundry, tumbling with supernatural haste from the overfilled backseat of a top-down Bentley which then roared off like it was laughing, might have had something to do with his missions' abrupt denouements.
Likely the vegans wouldn't touch any of it. Call it a wash.)
He withdrew his hooded attention from White, who cramped a little at the deprivation, and refocused it on the still-smoking, bluish-puce remains of the formerly black RAZR that lay on the sheets at his side. "Interesting," Sable managed.
His usually elegant stride seemed a bit hitched and awkward, and his Hedi Slimane trousers strained in front at the zip.
"Your line is ruined." White scrambled to sound casual, shift the focus away from his nerves to someone else's.
"You ruined it." Sable's breath came faster.
"Doing my job, then, I think." The light grinding whine of White's voice mirrored the movement as he levered his hips slowly downward, stroking a long thin hand between his legs, mimicking what appeared to be a semi-conscious motion of Sable's. "I know what you were trying to get done … I really only wanted to help."
Could not have been pouted more prettily petulantly.
"You were driven to it." White could see a spot of liquid gleaming at the edge of Sable's immaculately razored VanDyke. Was he salivating? "Such a … warping of drive … such a sin and shame it can't be -- roped, corralled, chained … driven toward a … slightly less depraved manifestation of purpose."
"Drive. Driven. Drove," White said softly. His voice curled around the syllables like bad hexane on a doomed river's waves. He rolled from his lolling, prone position to his side, arching his back so the crack of his ass was visible, then rose, vulpine, to his hands and knees.
"You know I'd rather paint than verbalize --" as he undid his fly, unbelievably, further -- "but there must be a reason you keep … using that word." He then dropped his pants completely, exposing the entire smooth flash-white expanse of his ass, and bent forward, spreading the cheeks, so Sable could see the rosy hole between them in the depths.
And waited.
~~~~~
Crowley threw Aziraphale into the Bentley's front passenger seat as gently as he could.
He looked back over his shoulder for a minute and flicked his fingers at the door of Books R Us, sealing it and the windows, all the while muttering at a rat-tat-tat pace under his breath about finally seeing about a decent, evil, modern, updated, mothproof, bulletproof, paintbulletproof, flameproof, wraithproof security system dammit and never mind all the fine old historic landmark building crap BS.
Not even going to talk about it being the second time after the stupid fire.
He turned his full attention back to Aziraphale, peering in his eyes, laying hands on his pulse points. "This is going to sound ridiculous," he said briskly. "I'm going to ask you questions about what you're feeling, and you tell me, as best you can." He touched Aziraphale's jaw. "Stop grinding your teeth."
"Don' wanna," Aziraphale slurred, but he didn't yet seem to have the wherewithal to argue further.
"Are you sleepy?"
"Mmmm."
"Do you feel out of your body?"
"Not yet."
"Does your skin feel dry, papery - like parchment?"
"Mmmm."
Crowley shook his head, and laid more purging hands on.
Aziraphale's breathing rate slowly returned to normal.
So did Crowley's.
Aziraphale looked out from half-lidded eyes. "What …"
"Opium and hash, overlaid with ketamine, X and PCP. Angel dust." Crowley smiled grimly at the irony. "Depending on how you'd had it organized, your Blood Circulation Network could've quietly imploded at orgasm." He paused a minute, like the impact of his own words hadn't really hit him till they were out of his mouth.
Then he collected himself - almost all the way - and went on. "You had enough in you to take down several fields of chargers, of course, and the overlay caused different cross-reactions as those latter three chemical play-toys are pretty … new." His eyes widened and nearly turned colors behind his shades, as it dawned on him.
"Which is why you did it."
Aziraphale sighed deeply.
"Once I knew who it was, I figured organic shenanigans might be involved somehow. I just didn't … anticipate the multiplicity of permutations." He stopped to catch his breath again. "How do you think he knew …?"
"He could smell the determination on you, I'm sure," said Crowley. "Quite the nose for potentially flammable conflagration, that one." He was quiet for another minute. "They still want to win, you know."
Aziraphale, too, was quiet. Logistics, he thought, might be a slightly less incendiary subject. "How did you know where I was?"
"I … went where I thought you'd be, after … hearing about the events." Crowley glided hurriedly over that part. "You were late. You're never late."
Something else dawned on Aziraphale. "How did you know what to do?"
"I …" Given that they were snuffing out the specific personality's handiwork involved, Crowley really didn't want to get into it. "Never mind."
Aziraphale let it go.
He sighed again then, this one seeming to come from the bottom of his soul (which, for an ethereal, of course, tends to be a bit further down than most folks').
"My initial impulse, at least, was that for the sake of the humans, it was --"
"The Right Thing to Do," Crowley singsonged acidly in unison. "You time-warped, bookwormy, badass bastard."
Aziraphale let his head loll on the deep leather rest. "Call it … Continuing Education."
"May I recommend you not do it again, without, um, supervision? Or, at the very least - non-vaporous company?"
Aziraphale managed - finally - the gentle ghost of a smile. "That would beat the hell out of discorporation, I believe."
Crowley bit his lips sharply down and looked away like he didn't quite feel like giving up his 'peeved' face just yet.
Still a bit faintly. "You … didn't start out on either end of that phone."
"No." Crowley busied himself doing more loosening and smoothing.
"I don't remember you being quite that handy with the digital and electrical," Aziraphale commented.
A beat. "Call it Continuing Education," Crowley murmured.
Aziraphale huffed again - the sound slightly more robust this time.
"But you never studied."
Crowley cocked an eyebrow. "Feeling a bit better, are we?"
"Crowley --" By now, Aziraphale had recovered just enough to be able to lift his head and glance into the Bentley's backseat, wherein lay some suspiciously orphaned torte boxes, and a huge transparent-domed turducken from which it appeared some being had taken a single large bite.
"You weren't … thwarting?" Aziraphale angled half an eyebrow.
"I think the idea is, as long as someone's day is well and thoroughly ruined, the hash mark goes in the 'Agent Effective' column," Crowley said. "Plus, some of those pâtés …" he shook his head. "No one should eat that. Especially to excess. Which is why I took them all some extra ones."
He glanced again over into the passenger seat. "Also, that way, no … ah … other agent … has anything particularly pressing to do. 'Efficient', then, as well as 'Effective'."
Aziraphale bit down a very small smirk, then shifted in the passenger seat to face more toward the driver's side, tucking a hand under his head, which now felt smoothly whirly instead of like it might spin off his shoulders. "I notice you've let some of the more … pleasantly stimulating residual effects slide, dear," he commented even more casually.
Still flushed, head lolling, jacket loose, shirt loose, trousers still unabatedly snug -- he figured he knew how he must look.
Crowley struggled not to look, failing progressively steadily. "Perhaps today's menu-planning tip is, there's fair room to maneuver between cotton-candy-not-a-meal and battery-acid-good-for-what-ails-you," he mused at last.
"So to speak."
"So to speak."
"Perhaps." Aziraphale closed his eyes briefly, and the grey components that had screamed the head-rattling noises from his bookshelves and under his counter came wafting through the north wall of Books R Us and reassembled themselves just above Crowley's tape deck.
The components did not play F. Mercury.
♪♫ I got class like a '57 Cadillac
All the drive and a whole lot of boom in the back
Get you where you wanna go if you know what I mean
With a ride that's smoother than a limousine
I'm 0 to 60 in three point five
Honey you got the keys
Now Shut Up and Drive ♪♫
Crowley opened his mouth, but nothing came out except a small squeak.
"I hardly think it strategic to wait two weeks for Freddie to properly set the mood," said Aziraphale mildly.
Crowley tried again. This time he gurgled.
Aziraphale nodded delicately at the ignition. "I believe you heard the lady."
There were no other night sounds. Only his voice's overtones. And undertones.
Crowley floored it.
~ fin ~
*Aziraphale believed the particular choice of work to underscore his point more appropriate than others with a similar message might've been, as the artist hailed originally from Barbados, a civilized island still with ties to the Kingdom, even if her producers did happen to be rambunctious Americans.
Rihanna, Shut Up and Drive
© Sturken & Rogers