To Ineffability and Beyond, Chapter 4
Chapter 1: http://go-exchange.livejournal.com/198741.html
Chapter 2: http://go-exchange.livejournal.com/199132.html
Chapter 3: http://go-exchange.livejournal.com/199301.html
Chapter 4
Aziraphale was awoken by something thin and whiskery rubbing his cheek. He brushed it away without opening his eyes. The sensation withdrew momentarily, then came back.
“Crowley, that tickles,” he said sleepily.
Another tickle. “Stop it.”
When it still did not stop, he mustered up the motivation to open his eyes. And all the electric disgust beings from Earth hold for creepy-crawlies surged through him as he saw something a few inches away, something with a maw lined with rows and rows of conical teeth, a leathery carapace, too many legs, and three pairs of antennae that were currently tapping him.
He would later be embarrassed about the volume and pitch of the scream that came out of his mouth. With one mighty heave, he flung the duvet off. Whatever it was that had been on the bed with him rolled to the floor as the blanket whipped out from underneath it, landing with a meaty thunk. The blanket sprawled to cover it, only to be thrown away amidst a tangle of legs struggling to right the creature, which had landed on its back.
Aziraphale sprung up and grabbed the broom. The thing had managed to flip itself over, and with some trepidation Aziraphale saw that it was nearly as long as the angel himself, with a wedge-shaped head and antennae almost the length of its body over again. It reared up, waving its antennae around, vibrating in a strange way.
Aziraphale beat its head with the broom, one decent smack.
“Ow,” said a familiar voice.
“C-Crowley!?” Aziraphale said, keeping the broom on the thing to prevent it from getting any closer to him.
“Oh thank somebody,” said Crowley’s voice from the general direction of the thing. “I thought I was going to be mute for the rest of my life.”
“Wh-what have you done to your corporation?” Aziraphale stuttered. “Crowley?!”
The antennae waved again. “I told you.”
“You told me what?”
“That there were aliens on 442b.”
“What?”
With one spindly leg, the creature pushed the broom out of its face-or lack thereof, since it didn’t seem to have any eyes. Its legs pulled at the sheets, crawling over with bed with a sinuous wave of its legs. “What happened to Nick Jr. Jr.?” it said, dismayed, the antennae wriggling all over the pot and the dirt on the floor.
“Forget about the plant!” Aziraphale said. “What happened to you?”
The creature’s head snaked back around to Aziraphale, the antennae battering his face. He waved the broom to paddle them away. Centipede-Crowley began to shake with vibration, and a sonorous laugh rang out.
“I can only imagine your face,” he said. “I can imagine. I don’t think you can tell right now, but I’m smug. I’m smug as hell. I’m laughing at you right now. Ow.”
This last part came as Aziraphale brought the broom down on his head again. “Knock it off, angel!”
“Crowley, you can’t just barge into our room looking like that and expect me to not have a reaction.”
The antennae wiggled on him again. He waved a hand as though he were shooing away a fly.
“I couldn’t get my voice to work,” said Crowley. “I don’t have vocal cords in this body.”
“What? Then how do you communicate?”
“Hell if I know! I was trying my damnedest to figure it out before you started smacking me around! I finally just cheated to make my voice out of thin air, because nothing in my anatomy can do it! Talking is a non-stop stream of miracles!”
“All right, just calm down,” said Aziraphale.
“You’re one to talk. Put that thing down.”
Aziraphale leaned the broom against the wall, then forced himself to sit on the bed next to Crowley. “All right. Why don’t you just tell me what happened?”
“Well, I took one of the atmosphere suits to go out of the dome. And I used my screen to-My screen! I left it out there! Oh no! What am I going to do without my screen?”
“Don’t worry about that. The aliens?”
“Oh, right. I used my screen to find the nearest…er…’volcano.’ And when I looked inside of it. Well.”
“Well?”
One of the broader antennae came around and smacked him in the face. “There wasn’t any lava! Didn’t I tell you? It’s a very narrow, very hot alien civilization!”
“You can’t be serious!”
“It was very hot. And something came out of the hole at me. And…well…We’re not supposed to interfere in human affairs in the sense of history, you know? With our powers, we have the responsibility to let them make their own history and not decide for them. How improper would it be if a demon made first contact? I couldn’t let that happen. And who knows how they’d react to seeing someone so different, you know? Might get violent. So I…”
“You jury-rigged your corporation to quickly make it like what they looked like. So they wouldn’t see a human, but one of their own.”
It looked like Crowley was trying to nod, but it didn’t quite work. So he gave up and said, “Yes.”
“Did it work?”
“I think so. I don’t think I got the placement of the antennae quite right. I did it really quickly. It’s hard to tell, but they seemed a little unsettled by me. Like I fell right into their uncanny valley.”
Aziraphale put his hands on his chin, curiosity beginning to burn as his revulsion faded. “And how did they react?”
“They tried to coax me inside. I think they were afraid I was going to freeze to death on the surface.”
“Well, they sound…nice.”
“It was really warm inside. Like, it would uncomfortably hot for a human. I don’t think they really go on the surface.”
“You went down?”
“Only for a few dozen meters. It was so claustrophobic that I turned around and bolted back out. I was afraid I’d get lost and be stuck down there.”
“And I assume you had to employ miracles to keep from freezing to death outside?”
“Mm-hmm. And now here I am.”
“Wow,” said Aziraphale. “Just. Wow. I-I don’t know what to say.”
The antennae came back down on him. “Crowley, please stop doing that.”
“Angel, I don’t have any eyes! This is how I form images of the world around me!”
“What, with your feelers?”
“Well, that and the sounds…”
“Sounds?”
“Echolocation. Vibration. Er.”
“Well, they live underground. I’d imagine that’s what they’d have to do. But you can change back now, you know.”
Crowley’s feet tapped uncomfortably on the bed. “Um…”
“Yes?”
“Well. Do you remember that time, ah…”
“When, dear?”
“2068. When I shapeshifted into a snake. And I’d always told you I was afraid to change my shape because I might forget how to change back? And I got stuck as a snake and couldn’t get unstuck until 2070?”
“You didn’t. Crowley, you didn’t.”
The antennae waved. Aziraphale wished to God that Crowley had a facial expression to read. “I, um…”
“You got stuck, didn’t you?”
“Maybe. A little. Yes.”
“Crowley! What are the humans going to do if they see you like this? And you left the atmosphere suit out there, didn’t you? They’re going to think you’re still missing.”
“Angel, you didn’t call to report me missing? Did you?”
“I just…I just called to ask if they had seen you, and I might have told them I wasn’t sure where you were.”
“Oh my god!” Crowley reared up again, his front legs waving. “Angel! Come on!”
“I’m sorry! I was worried about you! And then Lily showed up and…”
He trailed off. “Who’s Lily?” Crowley prompted.
“The other demon. I’m worried she might try to start something.”
“Great.” Crowley dropped down low and crept forwards, hiding what was presumably his head under the cover next to Aziraphale. “Gah, angel, it’s freezing in here. I can’t figure out if I’m still warm-blooded or not.”
Aziraphale graciously pulled the duvet over him and watched as his fat body curled up underneath of it, only antennae poking out. “Well…I suppose we’ll just have to keep you out of sight for a while, then. But you really should try and figure out how change back.”
“I dunno, I rather like it. You could give a new shape a try.”
“No.”
“Aw come on, where’s your sense of adventure?”
“I left it at home, unfortunately. Now, do please let me go back to sleep.”
Crowley’s head poked out as Aziraphale took some of the covers for himself. “You’re just going to sleep with these new developments?”
“Yes, I’m tired.”
“You sound like me.”
“You woke me up. I’m just still tired, all right? What are you going to do about it?”
The answer turned out to be nothing, because Crowley was also asleep a few minutes later. Kepler-442b was an exhausting planet.
***
It was difficult to tell when you were supposed to wake up if you did not set an alarm, which Aziraphale hadn’t. Fortunately nobody had to work very hard, so you could generally sleep as much as you wanted to.
Aziraphale let himself wake up naturally. His eyes opened sleepily, pupils dilating in the darkness of the room. Crowley was lying next to him, curled up in a way reminiscent of how he slept as a snake. Aziraphale had no idea how to tell if he was asleep or not. One of his antennae twitched.
“Crowley, are you awake?”
No response. He patted Crowley’s fat body gently. “Crowley?
A leg twitched. Must be asleep. Aziraphale drew the covers up to completely cover the demon, then tiptoed out of bed. Now that he had a clearer head, he knew that he should do something to prepare if Lily decided to start something.
The settlement had holy places scattered about. They were the kinds of sites that tried to be inter-faith to the extreme, spattering as many holy symbols as possible along the walls in the hopes of doing something and, as a consequence, not doing much of anything. It was a “jack-of-all-trades, master of none” scenario. But the holy water in them was as much holy water as any holy water. He grabbed an empty flask before exiting their apartment, padding down the unlit stairs.
It was quiet. The settlement seemed to go into torpor during the night cycle. He picked his way across the rocky ground to the nearest church/mosque/temple/synagogue/community room. One human was on their knees praying inside, and Aziraphale took the opportunity to impart a bit of divine comfort to them before scooping up some holy water in the flask. He screwed it tightly shut, wiped the excess off, and stored it in his jacket pocket.
He left the holy site, taking his time on the walk back to take in the sights, which in this case were mostly just the rocky horizon and the other buildings in the compound. Still, they were sights, and he took them in. He swiped his screen to be let into the building, took the stairs back up, and swiped again to be let into the room.
“Crowley, I know you’re probably not going to like this,” he said, taking his jacket off as he came in. “But I’ve-Crowley?”
He tiptoed over and threw the covers back. The bed was empty. He cursed aloud. “Crowley?” He looked wildly around the room, tossing things aside and digging around trying to find him. “Crowley? Crowley! Crowley, where are you? Stupid boy!”
The window was open. The window had been shut when he had left. He cursed again, throwing whatever was currently in his hands in anger.
He peered out the window, noting what building was across the way-it was a straight shot to the building that housed a cafeteria.
Aziraphale turned around, still releasing a string of curses, and went down the stairs, looped around, and marched straight for the building in question. He strained his senses to the max to feel any demonic presence around. He felt one faintly straight ahead.
“Crowley?” he whispered harshly into the door. “Crowley, come out here now.”
No response, so he shoved it open all the way and started in. The hallway was bare metal and his boots clanked loudly on the floor. Thankfully nobody seemed to be around. He made the turn to the corridor hallway that he knew led to the cafeteria, and which also happened to have the strongest feeling of demonic presence.
There was a great big something on the ceiling, picking its way over the wires and metal pipes that lined it. Aziraphale managed to overtake him just before he made the final turn into the cafeteria.
“Crowley!” Aziraphale hissed, grabbing one antenna and yanking hard on it. “What are you doing?”
“Ow,” said Crowley. “Don’t do that!”
“Crowley, I thought the first thing we agreed on was that we shouldn’t let the humans see you like this!”
“Oh, stop fussing, Aziraphale, nobody’s seen me. Besides, I’m on the ceiling! Nobody ever looks up anymore. Too busy looking at the ground.”
“There’s cameras!”
“Conveniently malfunctioning.”
“I was gone for half an hour at most! And I come back to find you missing!”
“I was getting hungry! And I didn’t have my screen to call you.”
“Crowley, you need to stay home. I’ll get you something to eat.”
“My taste buds are different now! I don’t know what’s going to look good anymore. I don’t trust you to pick something out for me.”
“For God’s sake, Crowley-” He stopped as he heard a small whirring sound approaching them. “Someone’s coming.”
Crowley scuttled unsurely on the ceiling, then pressed himself as flat as he would go.
The captain rounded the bend, wheeling herself leisurely. Aziraphale stood up ramrod straight, trying not to look nervously and failing miserably. “Ah! Captain! Hello!”
“Hey, there,” she said. “Aziraphale, right?”
“Yes, ma’am!” His eyes flicked from her up to Crowley on the ceiling, then back down.
“Relax, you’re not in trouble. I just thought it might be good to talk about your missing partner. Someone took one of our atmospheric suits yesterday without permission and went out of the bubble, and there’s been no return trip reported. Do you think it might have been him?”
Aziraphale rubbed his hands together nervously. “Ah, I don’t know. Maybe? Maybe it was him. I don’t know. I don’t think so. Oh! I just remembered. He wasn’t missing at all. He was just down at the laundromat and I didn’t know where he was. Nothing wrong at all. No need to look for him.”
Crowley’s longest pair of antennae were slowly unfolding and coming down. If the captain hadn’t been seated in a wheelchair, they would have run right into her face. Aziraphale’s eyes flicked up to him and down again, but he could not gesture or speak to him and risk losing her attention.
“Are you okay?” she said. “If something’s going on, you can tell me about it. Confidentially.”
The antennae brushed the back of her neck, then retreated back up to the ceiling a split second before she palmed her neck and twisted around to look behind her. Aziraphale took the opportunity to furiously make the “cut it out” gesture with his hand on his neck, which he suddenly remembered Crowley would not be able to see with no eyes.
“Drafty in here,” she said. “Anyway, I’m on schedule to go back up to the Aphelion at first light in a few days, so I thought it’d be best if that situation got resolved before I left. Good to hear he turned up. Let me know if you hear anything about who our wanderer might be, will you?”
“Yes, of course, captain. You’re going back up to the Aphelion?”
He watched in horror as the antennae came back down. “We have a skeleton crew onboard, and we alternate shifts. He’s got terraforming programs running to speed up the atmospheric conversion, and most of the electrical grids are still drawing from his systems. Best to have someone up there keep an eye on things in case something goes wrong, because if he stops spinning we’d probably be dead within a few hours. Not sure if we’re all set up yet to maintain the temperature and atmospheric filters without him.”
She stopped talking and cranked her neck back again, but the antennae had disappeared. “Anyway.” Aziraphale stood to the side and let her wheel herself past. “You can call me if there’s anything you wanted to talk about. Have a nice breakfast.”
Aziraphale held his breath until he heard the external door shut, heralding her exit. Then he exploded, “Crowley, what was that all about? You couldn’t keep your appendages to yourself?”
“I can’t see her, angel, I needed to know where she was!”
“Bugger! What’s wrong with you?”
“You want an itemized list? That’ll take a while.” He snaked forwards, crawling over the ceiling towards the cafeteria. “And now I know what time of day it is: breakfast. Hopefully there’s no one around.”
It turned out that there was only person eating alone at a table at the far end. Aziraphale managed to convince them to finish up and leave a bit early, and then miracled the door locked behind them, leaving him and Crowley alone with the automated food service.
“But we have to hurry up,” he told Crowley. “Because they might call someone if they can’t get the doors open.”
Crowley took a tray clumsily with a foreleg not designed for such a task. Aziraphale sighed and took it off of him. “Here, let me help you.”
Operating the machines that produced the food went much the same way, with Crowley insisting he could do it and Aziraphale eventually pushing him aside and doing it for him or, occasionally, performing a small miracle to help him out.
Crowley immediately set about vacuuming the food up with his strange, downward-turned mouth. Aziraphale pulled fistfuls of napkins out of the dispenser and brought them over.
“This all tastes awful,” said Crowley gloomily. “What do they eat? I have no idea how to tell what smells good or not.”
A mélange of grease and ketchup and crumbs was dripping down from his mouth, which he did not seem to notice. “For goodness sake, Crowley,” said Aziraphale, wiping him. “You can still act civilized.”
He nearly let out a scream as the maw closed around the napkins, tearing them up and swallowing.
“Crowley, those are supposed to be recycled!”
“Hey, that’s not bad.”
“You can’t be serious.”
The antennae tickled Aziraphale all over until they found the wad of napkins in his other hand. He lifted his head, as though smelling the air.
“You can’t seriously mean to eat napkins.”
His insectoid body flopped off the bench onto Aziraphale, putting his head approximately near Aziraphale’s other hand. The angel let go of the napkins as they disappeared into Crowley’s mouth, which was moving in a circular motion to grind them up.
“Dear-”
Crowley’s body began to vibrate, and he threw himself down, tapping on the floor. “Where was the dispenser again?”
“It’s-blast, Crowley, you can’t just eat all the napkins!”
“Why not?”
A knock sounded on the door. “Hello? Is the cafeteria closed?” said a muffled voice.
Aziraphale cursed. Crowley had reached the dispenser was sucking the napkins down.
“Crowley, we have to go.” He came over and wrapped his arms around Crowley’s body, but the demon clung to the dispenser with all his legs and waved his antennae wildly, booming with angry vibrations.
“Get off me!”
“Crowley, someone’s coming!”
He finally managed to rip Crowley off, and a flood of napkins spilled out after him. Crowley strained against Aziraphale’s arms, scrabbling on the floor and balling up the spilled napkins in his forelegs.
Another knock sounded on the door. “I feel like it should still be open,” said a second voice.
Aziraphale dragged Crowley to the nearby window, slammed it open, and hurled him out. He then miracled the doors open, revealing a pair of confused-looking colonists. “Ah, there we go,” said one of them.
Aziraphale glanced back out the window, sweating, and was relieved to see Crowley scuttling off in the direction of the apartments, awkwardly clutching the ball of napkins with one pair of legs and using the others to propel himself forwards. It was only a matter of moments before he scrabbled up the wall of the building and whipped into the open window of their bedroom.
Aziraphale shuffled past the newcomers, muttering a vague apology about the door being stuck earlier, and joined up with the demon in their residence. The napkins were mysteriously gone by the time he got there.
***
Aziraphale managed to convince Crowley to stay indoors from then on with the promise that he would bring Crowley anything to try and eat he requested, no questions asked. It was a team effort to feed him; neither of them really had any idea of what Crowley could eat, and while he wouldn’t starve to death, he certainly would complain a lot.
Paper products seemed to be a favorite, which was unfortunate because of how sparse they were. Aziraphale was glad for once that his books were all safely converted to electronics. He’d never thought he’d have to worry about the demon eating them. Crowley managed to get his hands-pincers-on a roll of paper towels at one point, and he sat there on the bed rolling it out with his foremost pair of legs and slurping it up.
Bread was acceptable when fresh but a delicacy when moldy. Milk was disgusting but cheese was tolerable. Fruit turned out to be palatable, but only when it had started to rot, so Aziraphale ended up carting armfuls of fruit from the cafeteria back to the room to set on the windowsill. He made the rounds at all the different cafeterias, going so far as to go across the settlement to avoid the strange looks he’d get from taking a cumulative three pounds of apples from one single source. Crowley turned his nose up at meat, saying it smelled like it would make him ill, which was probably for the best since natural meat was very expensive and the artificial stuff was never very good anyway. Artificial seafood turned out to be poisonous altogether, which they learned after Aziraphale finally caught onto what anaphylactic shock would look like for that species and did a quick healing miracle. They were both very downcast to find that it was apparently impossible to get drunk with that particular anatomy, as well.
For the life of him, Aziraphale could not figure out what this species’ natural diet would be. What would they eat? Rocks? Dirt? Lava?
When Crowley insisted that Aziraphale go to the greenhouse and get him another potted plant, Aziraphale also brought back a handful of dirt. Crowley reported that it tasted good, but he could only eat a few mouthfuls because it had the same effect as, say, a very rich piece of chocolate cake. He stuck the remainder of it in the refrigerator, perhaps without realizing what he was doing.
He then set about setting up Nick Jr. Jr. Jr. in the sunniest corner of the room. This went about as well as one would expect from a creature with no eyes or thumbs.
There were other problems as well. He insisted on using Aziraphale’s screen since he had lost his own, but his pincers did not interact with the touch screen well. Aziraphale gave him a stylus, but it was very difficult to use without any fingers. And he hogged it all the time. Once when Aziraphale tried to take it back to do some accounting, Crowley complained loudly that he was missing something very important. Apparently, Sherlock series five was finally available, and he needed to finish up Supernatural season 1,097 before he could watch it because he couldn’t watch two TV shows at once.
Once someone from the greenhouse came by to ask Crowley about work. Aziraphale was surprised, because he hadn’t thought Crowley had actually been doing any work or even keeping up the appearance of doing work. He cobbled together a story about Crowley being sick, which Crowley embellished with a few overly dramatic coughs and moans from under the duvet.
There were also some less expected problems. They found that some type of purple moss kept growing on Crowley’s body unless it was scrubbed daily. He had a hard time scrubbing himself on his own, and while it was true that he could technically just use some miracles, that would mean he wouldn’t have an excuse to badger Aziraphale into washing him. As a consequence, they got into the routine of starting the day with a shower together. Aziraphale warmed up to it much faster than he thought he would.
Currently, they were together in the tub with the hot water streaming over them, steam making wet droplets on every surface in the room and fogging the mirror. Crowley was reared up, clinging to Aziraphale’s chest. His antennae drooped contentedly, and the vibrations coming from his throat sounded remarkably like a cat purring. He leaned into the scrub brush as Aziraphale began to rub it on him.
He started making those wheedling little sounds that Aziraphale liked so much. He perhaps liked it a little too much.
“Angel, are you… aroused right now?” said Crowley. If he had had a perceptible face, he would probably be smirking.
“No,” Aziraphale said, colouring furiously.
It was silent except for the water cascading over them.
“It’s okay,” said Crowley. “You don’t have to be embarrassed.” His body moved in a shimmying motion. “I know, I am pretty sexy.”
Aziraphale let out a snort of a laugh, then covered his mouth.
Crowley’s antennae tapped all over him. “I mean, it was over a week since we’d had sex before I showed up like this, wasn’t it? You must be getting blue balls by now.”
“That’s not how it-Well, I-I suppose maybe I might-Crowley, you can’t be seriously suggesting we-”
“Come on,” said Crowley, another vibration rumbling in his chest. “It’ll be fun.”
“Only if you change back first!”
“Aw, angel, it wouldn’t be that different from 2069. Remember that? When I was a snake and we-”
“Yes, I remember,” he cut in. “We said we wouldn’t bring that up again.”
“Nobody else is gonna know. You’d be the first one to find out what it feels like to have sex with an alien. Come on, Aziraphale! You’re missing a golden opportunity here. What if it’s really good, but you miss out on it because you thought it was too weird?”
Aziraphale lowered the scrub brush. “Well…”
A few minutes later, a freshly scrubbed Aziraphale was lying back on a mound of pillows on the bed, wondering how he had been talked into this.
“All right,” he said. “I’m ready.”
Crowley scaled over the headboard and descended upon him. His muscular body wrapped around him, his feelers tickling his chest and his legs tapping him rhythmically. His body vibrated with a steady hum, which Aziraphale could feel throbbing in the areas where that alien body was pressing against him. He did not want to admit how much he liked it. He could feel that subsonic booming syncing with his heartbeat, pulsing like an unheard song.
He leaned back, straight into the bulky body of Crowley’s chest, entrenched in those many pairs of legs. The feelers tickled him, and he twitched in response as they went lower and lower. He could feel something nibbling on his earlobe, then his neck, then his shoulder.
Aziraphale closed his eyes, drifting away with the sensation. He could feel legs tapping against his chest, stroking, the undulating body slithering down him, curling and grasping him, enveloping him with that rhythm.
He felt something tickling the head of his erection. He moaned, still twitching.
“Are you ready, angel?”
An image suddenly flashed into his mind: Crowley’s alien gullet, lined with rows of conical teeth, white and sharp as anything.
His eyes flew open. Crowley was hovering close to his crotch, that downward-turned mouth above his member.
“Crowley, wait!” he said, embarrassed to hear his voice squeak.
“What is it?”
“You, um…”
That muscular mouth flexed open and shut, the teeth rotating within it. “What?”
“Your mouth is quite a bit sharper than it was before!”
“Aw come on, you know I don’t use my teeth.”
“You’ve never had that many teeth before.”
“They’re retractable.”
“What?”
“My teeth. They’re retractable, you know. And I’ve discovered that I don’t have a gag reflex.”
Okay, that was a bit too much to refuse. Aziraphale closed his eyes again, moved his hands down the warm, leathery body on top of him, and gripped the base of his antennae.
“It’s not the same,” he said. “Normally I can stroke your hair.”
“We can be a bit rougher. Go ahead and yank me down.”
“Just like that? Down onto it?”
“Somebody, I don’t know how to tell if I’m aroused. I think I’m enjoying this. Just give me a good yank.”
Aziraphale squeezed his fists around Crowley’s antennae and shoved him down.
Oh lord, if anything Crowley’s body was even warmer than usual now. He had to stop himself from shouting out and coming immediately as his partner’s throat constricted and squeezed in new and interesting ways. He bucked and squirmed, all of Crowley’s legs moving rhythmically on him, that vibrating beat increasing in frequency and intensity.
He climaxed embarrassingly fast. His cock was further squeezed as Crowley swallowed. He let himself shout out, then sprawled on the bed.
“You like that?” Crowley purred.
“Oh…” he said, putting his hand to his forehead. “Wow.”
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
Crowley swiveled and lay his head down on Aziraphale’s chest, letting his feelers go limp. Aziraphale stroked his head. “How was that for you?”
“Didn’t do much.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. If you gave me an idea of what, I could, em…”
“I’m not sure if I’ve got genitals at all,” he said morosely.
“Oh, my dear boy-”
They were interrupted by a knock on the door. Crowley started and scuttled under the bed. Aziraphale hastily tried to find his pants and put them back on. He ended up answering the door without a shirt on.
It was Lily. He suddenly wished he had put a shirt on.
“Angel,” she said.
“I told you not to call me that.”
She had a crazed look in her eye. “Please. I’m begging you. They told me I’m not allowed to just flat-out destroy anything unless it was in a fight with you. I’m going mad on this rock with nothing going on. I’m a demon of chaos. I don’t know why they sent me here if they weren’t going to let me do anything violent. Please be merciful.”
“I’m not going to fight you!” he shouted. “You’ll just have to deal with it! Leave me alone!”
“You’ll be sorry!” she yelled back. “You’d do better to just get it over with now! Come, we can just raze one building! Hardly anybody will notice!”
“No,” he said. “Kindly do go away.”
He slammed the door in her face. That wouldn’t actually do anything, of course. But sliding the lock shut made him feel better.
He could hear her growling outside the door. He dived towards the dresser where he had stashed his thermos of holy water. He took it out and pointed it at the door.
There turned out to be no need to use it. The demonic presence outside faded after a few moments.
He sighed in relief and replaced the holy water in his sock drawer. He then knelt by the bed and grabbed Crowley, sliding him out by one front leg. “It’s all right, you can come out now.”
The demon scaled his leg and torso almost instantly, feelers whipping wildly as he maintained his precarious balance on Aziraphale’s shoulders. “Angel, I have an idea.”
“What’s that? About what to do about Lily?”
“No, about the aliens.”
“…I suppose technically we’d be the aliens, don’t you think?”
“Listen, you and I should go out and make first contact.”
“Crowley, you’re thinking about that now? Don’t you think we should try to get Lily out of our hair first?”
“Ah, demons are like that, Aziraphale. She’s not going anywhere. This is important. We should go out there and make contact.”
“Okay….dare I ask why?”
“Think about it, angel. They’re going to discover each other eventually. There’s no avoiding it.”
“But we should let them do it in their own time!”
“Listen, they’ve already seen me. If you and I go out together, if they see one of us and one of them together, it’ll smooth things out for when the real humans meet them. If this first meeting between species goes sour, it’s going to affect us as well. If they bomb each other into oblivion, we’ll be stuck on a lifeless rock with no way of getting back to Earth.”
“I think I see your point. And you’re sure you just don’t want to go out there for the sake of causing trouble, hm?”
He wiggled his antennae. “Me? Trouble? Never!”
To Be Continued....
Chapter 2: http://go-exchange.livejournal.com/199132.html
Chapter 3: http://go-exchange.livejournal.com/199301.html
Chapter 4
Aziraphale was awoken by something thin and whiskery rubbing his cheek. He brushed it away without opening his eyes. The sensation withdrew momentarily, then came back.
“Crowley, that tickles,” he said sleepily.
Another tickle. “Stop it.”
When it still did not stop, he mustered up the motivation to open his eyes. And all the electric disgust beings from Earth hold for creepy-crawlies surged through him as he saw something a few inches away, something with a maw lined with rows and rows of conical teeth, a leathery carapace, too many legs, and three pairs of antennae that were currently tapping him.
He would later be embarrassed about the volume and pitch of the scream that came out of his mouth. With one mighty heave, he flung the duvet off. Whatever it was that had been on the bed with him rolled to the floor as the blanket whipped out from underneath it, landing with a meaty thunk. The blanket sprawled to cover it, only to be thrown away amidst a tangle of legs struggling to right the creature, which had landed on its back.
Aziraphale sprung up and grabbed the broom. The thing had managed to flip itself over, and with some trepidation Aziraphale saw that it was nearly as long as the angel himself, with a wedge-shaped head and antennae almost the length of its body over again. It reared up, waving its antennae around, vibrating in a strange way.
Aziraphale beat its head with the broom, one decent smack.
“Ow,” said a familiar voice.
“C-Crowley!?” Aziraphale said, keeping the broom on the thing to prevent it from getting any closer to him.
“Oh thank somebody,” said Crowley’s voice from the general direction of the thing. “I thought I was going to be mute for the rest of my life.”
“Wh-what have you done to your corporation?” Aziraphale stuttered. “Crowley?!”
The antennae waved again. “I told you.”
“You told me what?”
“That there were aliens on 442b.”
“What?”
With one spindly leg, the creature pushed the broom out of its face-or lack thereof, since it didn’t seem to have any eyes. Its legs pulled at the sheets, crawling over with bed with a sinuous wave of its legs. “What happened to Nick Jr. Jr.?” it said, dismayed, the antennae wriggling all over the pot and the dirt on the floor.
“Forget about the plant!” Aziraphale said. “What happened to you?”
The creature’s head snaked back around to Aziraphale, the antennae battering his face. He waved the broom to paddle them away. Centipede-Crowley began to shake with vibration, and a sonorous laugh rang out.
“I can only imagine your face,” he said. “I can imagine. I don’t think you can tell right now, but I’m smug. I’m smug as hell. I’m laughing at you right now. Ow.”
This last part came as Aziraphale brought the broom down on his head again. “Knock it off, angel!”
“Crowley, you can’t just barge into our room looking like that and expect me to not have a reaction.”
The antennae wiggled on him again. He waved a hand as though he were shooing away a fly.
“I couldn’t get my voice to work,” said Crowley. “I don’t have vocal cords in this body.”
“What? Then how do you communicate?”
“Hell if I know! I was trying my damnedest to figure it out before you started smacking me around! I finally just cheated to make my voice out of thin air, because nothing in my anatomy can do it! Talking is a non-stop stream of miracles!”
“All right, just calm down,” said Aziraphale.
“You’re one to talk. Put that thing down.”
Aziraphale leaned the broom against the wall, then forced himself to sit on the bed next to Crowley. “All right. Why don’t you just tell me what happened?”
“Well, I took one of the atmosphere suits to go out of the dome. And I used my screen to-My screen! I left it out there! Oh no! What am I going to do without my screen?”
“Don’t worry about that. The aliens?”
“Oh, right. I used my screen to find the nearest…er…’volcano.’ And when I looked inside of it. Well.”
“Well?”
One of the broader antennae came around and smacked him in the face. “There wasn’t any lava! Didn’t I tell you? It’s a very narrow, very hot alien civilization!”
“You can’t be serious!”
“It was very hot. And something came out of the hole at me. And…well…We’re not supposed to interfere in human affairs in the sense of history, you know? With our powers, we have the responsibility to let them make their own history and not decide for them. How improper would it be if a demon made first contact? I couldn’t let that happen. And who knows how they’d react to seeing someone so different, you know? Might get violent. So I…”
“You jury-rigged your corporation to quickly make it like what they looked like. So they wouldn’t see a human, but one of their own.”
It looked like Crowley was trying to nod, but it didn’t quite work. So he gave up and said, “Yes.”
“Did it work?”
“I think so. I don’t think I got the placement of the antennae quite right. I did it really quickly. It’s hard to tell, but they seemed a little unsettled by me. Like I fell right into their uncanny valley.”
Aziraphale put his hands on his chin, curiosity beginning to burn as his revulsion faded. “And how did they react?”
“They tried to coax me inside. I think they were afraid I was going to freeze to death on the surface.”
“Well, they sound…nice.”
“It was really warm inside. Like, it would uncomfortably hot for a human. I don’t think they really go on the surface.”
“You went down?”
“Only for a few dozen meters. It was so claustrophobic that I turned around and bolted back out. I was afraid I’d get lost and be stuck down there.”
“And I assume you had to employ miracles to keep from freezing to death outside?”
“Mm-hmm. And now here I am.”
“Wow,” said Aziraphale. “Just. Wow. I-I don’t know what to say.”
The antennae came back down on him. “Crowley, please stop doing that.”
“Angel, I don’t have any eyes! This is how I form images of the world around me!”
“What, with your feelers?”
“Well, that and the sounds…”
“Sounds?”
“Echolocation. Vibration. Er.”
“Well, they live underground. I’d imagine that’s what they’d have to do. But you can change back now, you know.”
Crowley’s feet tapped uncomfortably on the bed. “Um…”
“Yes?”
“Well. Do you remember that time, ah…”
“When, dear?”
“2068. When I shapeshifted into a snake. And I’d always told you I was afraid to change my shape because I might forget how to change back? And I got stuck as a snake and couldn’t get unstuck until 2070?”
“You didn’t. Crowley, you didn’t.”
The antennae waved. Aziraphale wished to God that Crowley had a facial expression to read. “I, um…”
“You got stuck, didn’t you?”
“Maybe. A little. Yes.”
“Crowley! What are the humans going to do if they see you like this? And you left the atmosphere suit out there, didn’t you? They’re going to think you’re still missing.”
“Angel, you didn’t call to report me missing? Did you?”
“I just…I just called to ask if they had seen you, and I might have told them I wasn’t sure where you were.”
“Oh my god!” Crowley reared up again, his front legs waving. “Angel! Come on!”
“I’m sorry! I was worried about you! And then Lily showed up and…”
He trailed off. “Who’s Lily?” Crowley prompted.
“The other demon. I’m worried she might try to start something.”
“Great.” Crowley dropped down low and crept forwards, hiding what was presumably his head under the cover next to Aziraphale. “Gah, angel, it’s freezing in here. I can’t figure out if I’m still warm-blooded or not.”
Aziraphale graciously pulled the duvet over him and watched as his fat body curled up underneath of it, only antennae poking out. “Well…I suppose we’ll just have to keep you out of sight for a while, then. But you really should try and figure out how change back.”
“I dunno, I rather like it. You could give a new shape a try.”
“No.”
“Aw come on, where’s your sense of adventure?”
“I left it at home, unfortunately. Now, do please let me go back to sleep.”
Crowley’s head poked out as Aziraphale took some of the covers for himself. “You’re just going to sleep with these new developments?”
“Yes, I’m tired.”
“You sound like me.”
“You woke me up. I’m just still tired, all right? What are you going to do about it?”
The answer turned out to be nothing, because Crowley was also asleep a few minutes later. Kepler-442b was an exhausting planet.
***
It was difficult to tell when you were supposed to wake up if you did not set an alarm, which Aziraphale hadn’t. Fortunately nobody had to work very hard, so you could generally sleep as much as you wanted to.
Aziraphale let himself wake up naturally. His eyes opened sleepily, pupils dilating in the darkness of the room. Crowley was lying next to him, curled up in a way reminiscent of how he slept as a snake. Aziraphale had no idea how to tell if he was asleep or not. One of his antennae twitched.
“Crowley, are you awake?”
No response. He patted Crowley’s fat body gently. “Crowley?
A leg twitched. Must be asleep. Aziraphale drew the covers up to completely cover the demon, then tiptoed out of bed. Now that he had a clearer head, he knew that he should do something to prepare if Lily decided to start something.
The settlement had holy places scattered about. They were the kinds of sites that tried to be inter-faith to the extreme, spattering as many holy symbols as possible along the walls in the hopes of doing something and, as a consequence, not doing much of anything. It was a “jack-of-all-trades, master of none” scenario. But the holy water in them was as much holy water as any holy water. He grabbed an empty flask before exiting their apartment, padding down the unlit stairs.
It was quiet. The settlement seemed to go into torpor during the night cycle. He picked his way across the rocky ground to the nearest church/mosque/temple/synagogue/community room. One human was on their knees praying inside, and Aziraphale took the opportunity to impart a bit of divine comfort to them before scooping up some holy water in the flask. He screwed it tightly shut, wiped the excess off, and stored it in his jacket pocket.
He left the holy site, taking his time on the walk back to take in the sights, which in this case were mostly just the rocky horizon and the other buildings in the compound. Still, they were sights, and he took them in. He swiped his screen to be let into the building, took the stairs back up, and swiped again to be let into the room.
“Crowley, I know you’re probably not going to like this,” he said, taking his jacket off as he came in. “But I’ve-Crowley?”
He tiptoed over and threw the covers back. The bed was empty. He cursed aloud. “Crowley?” He looked wildly around the room, tossing things aside and digging around trying to find him. “Crowley? Crowley! Crowley, where are you? Stupid boy!”
The window was open. The window had been shut when he had left. He cursed again, throwing whatever was currently in his hands in anger.
He peered out the window, noting what building was across the way-it was a straight shot to the building that housed a cafeteria.
Aziraphale turned around, still releasing a string of curses, and went down the stairs, looped around, and marched straight for the building in question. He strained his senses to the max to feel any demonic presence around. He felt one faintly straight ahead.
“Crowley?” he whispered harshly into the door. “Crowley, come out here now.”
No response, so he shoved it open all the way and started in. The hallway was bare metal and his boots clanked loudly on the floor. Thankfully nobody seemed to be around. He made the turn to the corridor hallway that he knew led to the cafeteria, and which also happened to have the strongest feeling of demonic presence.
There was a great big something on the ceiling, picking its way over the wires and metal pipes that lined it. Aziraphale managed to overtake him just before he made the final turn into the cafeteria.
“Crowley!” Aziraphale hissed, grabbing one antenna and yanking hard on it. “What are you doing?”
“Ow,” said Crowley. “Don’t do that!”
“Crowley, I thought the first thing we agreed on was that we shouldn’t let the humans see you like this!”
“Oh, stop fussing, Aziraphale, nobody’s seen me. Besides, I’m on the ceiling! Nobody ever looks up anymore. Too busy looking at the ground.”
“There’s cameras!”
“Conveniently malfunctioning.”
“I was gone for half an hour at most! And I come back to find you missing!”
“I was getting hungry! And I didn’t have my screen to call you.”
“Crowley, you need to stay home. I’ll get you something to eat.”
“My taste buds are different now! I don’t know what’s going to look good anymore. I don’t trust you to pick something out for me.”
“For God’s sake, Crowley-” He stopped as he heard a small whirring sound approaching them. “Someone’s coming.”
Crowley scuttled unsurely on the ceiling, then pressed himself as flat as he would go.
The captain rounded the bend, wheeling herself leisurely. Aziraphale stood up ramrod straight, trying not to look nervously and failing miserably. “Ah! Captain! Hello!”
“Hey, there,” she said. “Aziraphale, right?”
“Yes, ma’am!” His eyes flicked from her up to Crowley on the ceiling, then back down.
“Relax, you’re not in trouble. I just thought it might be good to talk about your missing partner. Someone took one of our atmospheric suits yesterday without permission and went out of the bubble, and there’s been no return trip reported. Do you think it might have been him?”
Aziraphale rubbed his hands together nervously. “Ah, I don’t know. Maybe? Maybe it was him. I don’t know. I don’t think so. Oh! I just remembered. He wasn’t missing at all. He was just down at the laundromat and I didn’t know where he was. Nothing wrong at all. No need to look for him.”
Crowley’s longest pair of antennae were slowly unfolding and coming down. If the captain hadn’t been seated in a wheelchair, they would have run right into her face. Aziraphale’s eyes flicked up to him and down again, but he could not gesture or speak to him and risk losing her attention.
“Are you okay?” she said. “If something’s going on, you can tell me about it. Confidentially.”
The antennae brushed the back of her neck, then retreated back up to the ceiling a split second before she palmed her neck and twisted around to look behind her. Aziraphale took the opportunity to furiously make the “cut it out” gesture with his hand on his neck, which he suddenly remembered Crowley would not be able to see with no eyes.
“Drafty in here,” she said. “Anyway, I’m on schedule to go back up to the Aphelion at first light in a few days, so I thought it’d be best if that situation got resolved before I left. Good to hear he turned up. Let me know if you hear anything about who our wanderer might be, will you?”
“Yes, of course, captain. You’re going back up to the Aphelion?”
He watched in horror as the antennae came back down. “We have a skeleton crew onboard, and we alternate shifts. He’s got terraforming programs running to speed up the atmospheric conversion, and most of the electrical grids are still drawing from his systems. Best to have someone up there keep an eye on things in case something goes wrong, because if he stops spinning we’d probably be dead within a few hours. Not sure if we’re all set up yet to maintain the temperature and atmospheric filters without him.”
She stopped talking and cranked her neck back again, but the antennae had disappeared. “Anyway.” Aziraphale stood to the side and let her wheel herself past. “You can call me if there’s anything you wanted to talk about. Have a nice breakfast.”
Aziraphale held his breath until he heard the external door shut, heralding her exit. Then he exploded, “Crowley, what was that all about? You couldn’t keep your appendages to yourself?”
“I can’t see her, angel, I needed to know where she was!”
“Bugger! What’s wrong with you?”
“You want an itemized list? That’ll take a while.” He snaked forwards, crawling over the ceiling towards the cafeteria. “And now I know what time of day it is: breakfast. Hopefully there’s no one around.”
It turned out that there was only person eating alone at a table at the far end. Aziraphale managed to convince them to finish up and leave a bit early, and then miracled the door locked behind them, leaving him and Crowley alone with the automated food service.
“But we have to hurry up,” he told Crowley. “Because they might call someone if they can’t get the doors open.”
Crowley took a tray clumsily with a foreleg not designed for such a task. Aziraphale sighed and took it off of him. “Here, let me help you.”
Operating the machines that produced the food went much the same way, with Crowley insisting he could do it and Aziraphale eventually pushing him aside and doing it for him or, occasionally, performing a small miracle to help him out.
Crowley immediately set about vacuuming the food up with his strange, downward-turned mouth. Aziraphale pulled fistfuls of napkins out of the dispenser and brought them over.
“This all tastes awful,” said Crowley gloomily. “What do they eat? I have no idea how to tell what smells good or not.”
A mélange of grease and ketchup and crumbs was dripping down from his mouth, which he did not seem to notice. “For goodness sake, Crowley,” said Aziraphale, wiping him. “You can still act civilized.”
He nearly let out a scream as the maw closed around the napkins, tearing them up and swallowing.
“Crowley, those are supposed to be recycled!”
“Hey, that’s not bad.”
“You can’t be serious.”
The antennae tickled Aziraphale all over until they found the wad of napkins in his other hand. He lifted his head, as though smelling the air.
“You can’t seriously mean to eat napkins.”
His insectoid body flopped off the bench onto Aziraphale, putting his head approximately near Aziraphale’s other hand. The angel let go of the napkins as they disappeared into Crowley’s mouth, which was moving in a circular motion to grind them up.
“Dear-”
Crowley’s body began to vibrate, and he threw himself down, tapping on the floor. “Where was the dispenser again?”
“It’s-blast, Crowley, you can’t just eat all the napkins!”
“Why not?”
A knock sounded on the door. “Hello? Is the cafeteria closed?” said a muffled voice.
Aziraphale cursed. Crowley had reached the dispenser was sucking the napkins down.
“Crowley, we have to go.” He came over and wrapped his arms around Crowley’s body, but the demon clung to the dispenser with all his legs and waved his antennae wildly, booming with angry vibrations.
“Get off me!”
“Crowley, someone’s coming!”
He finally managed to rip Crowley off, and a flood of napkins spilled out after him. Crowley strained against Aziraphale’s arms, scrabbling on the floor and balling up the spilled napkins in his forelegs.
Another knock sounded on the door. “I feel like it should still be open,” said a second voice.
Aziraphale dragged Crowley to the nearby window, slammed it open, and hurled him out. He then miracled the doors open, revealing a pair of confused-looking colonists. “Ah, there we go,” said one of them.
Aziraphale glanced back out the window, sweating, and was relieved to see Crowley scuttling off in the direction of the apartments, awkwardly clutching the ball of napkins with one pair of legs and using the others to propel himself forwards. It was only a matter of moments before he scrabbled up the wall of the building and whipped into the open window of their bedroom.
Aziraphale shuffled past the newcomers, muttering a vague apology about the door being stuck earlier, and joined up with the demon in their residence. The napkins were mysteriously gone by the time he got there.
***
Aziraphale managed to convince Crowley to stay indoors from then on with the promise that he would bring Crowley anything to try and eat he requested, no questions asked. It was a team effort to feed him; neither of them really had any idea of what Crowley could eat, and while he wouldn’t starve to death, he certainly would complain a lot.
Paper products seemed to be a favorite, which was unfortunate because of how sparse they were. Aziraphale was glad for once that his books were all safely converted to electronics. He’d never thought he’d have to worry about the demon eating them. Crowley managed to get his hands-pincers-on a roll of paper towels at one point, and he sat there on the bed rolling it out with his foremost pair of legs and slurping it up.
Bread was acceptable when fresh but a delicacy when moldy. Milk was disgusting but cheese was tolerable. Fruit turned out to be palatable, but only when it had started to rot, so Aziraphale ended up carting armfuls of fruit from the cafeteria back to the room to set on the windowsill. He made the rounds at all the different cafeterias, going so far as to go across the settlement to avoid the strange looks he’d get from taking a cumulative three pounds of apples from one single source. Crowley turned his nose up at meat, saying it smelled like it would make him ill, which was probably for the best since natural meat was very expensive and the artificial stuff was never very good anyway. Artificial seafood turned out to be poisonous altogether, which they learned after Aziraphale finally caught onto what anaphylactic shock would look like for that species and did a quick healing miracle. They were both very downcast to find that it was apparently impossible to get drunk with that particular anatomy, as well.
For the life of him, Aziraphale could not figure out what this species’ natural diet would be. What would they eat? Rocks? Dirt? Lava?
When Crowley insisted that Aziraphale go to the greenhouse and get him another potted plant, Aziraphale also brought back a handful of dirt. Crowley reported that it tasted good, but he could only eat a few mouthfuls because it had the same effect as, say, a very rich piece of chocolate cake. He stuck the remainder of it in the refrigerator, perhaps without realizing what he was doing.
He then set about setting up Nick Jr. Jr. Jr. in the sunniest corner of the room. This went about as well as one would expect from a creature with no eyes or thumbs.
There were other problems as well. He insisted on using Aziraphale’s screen since he had lost his own, but his pincers did not interact with the touch screen well. Aziraphale gave him a stylus, but it was very difficult to use without any fingers. And he hogged it all the time. Once when Aziraphale tried to take it back to do some accounting, Crowley complained loudly that he was missing something very important. Apparently, Sherlock series five was finally available, and he needed to finish up Supernatural season 1,097 before he could watch it because he couldn’t watch two TV shows at once.
Once someone from the greenhouse came by to ask Crowley about work. Aziraphale was surprised, because he hadn’t thought Crowley had actually been doing any work or even keeping up the appearance of doing work. He cobbled together a story about Crowley being sick, which Crowley embellished with a few overly dramatic coughs and moans from under the duvet.
There were also some less expected problems. They found that some type of purple moss kept growing on Crowley’s body unless it was scrubbed daily. He had a hard time scrubbing himself on his own, and while it was true that he could technically just use some miracles, that would mean he wouldn’t have an excuse to badger Aziraphale into washing him. As a consequence, they got into the routine of starting the day with a shower together. Aziraphale warmed up to it much faster than he thought he would.
Currently, they were together in the tub with the hot water streaming over them, steam making wet droplets on every surface in the room and fogging the mirror. Crowley was reared up, clinging to Aziraphale’s chest. His antennae drooped contentedly, and the vibrations coming from his throat sounded remarkably like a cat purring. He leaned into the scrub brush as Aziraphale began to rub it on him.
He started making those wheedling little sounds that Aziraphale liked so much. He perhaps liked it a little too much.
“Angel, are you… aroused right now?” said Crowley. If he had had a perceptible face, he would probably be smirking.
“No,” Aziraphale said, colouring furiously.
It was silent except for the water cascading over them.
“It’s okay,” said Crowley. “You don’t have to be embarrassed.” His body moved in a shimmying motion. “I know, I am pretty sexy.”
Aziraphale let out a snort of a laugh, then covered his mouth.
Crowley’s antennae tapped all over him. “I mean, it was over a week since we’d had sex before I showed up like this, wasn’t it? You must be getting blue balls by now.”
“That’s not how it-Well, I-I suppose maybe I might-Crowley, you can’t be seriously suggesting we-”
“Come on,” said Crowley, another vibration rumbling in his chest. “It’ll be fun.”
“Only if you change back first!”
“Aw, angel, it wouldn’t be that different from 2069. Remember that? When I was a snake and we-”
“Yes, I remember,” he cut in. “We said we wouldn’t bring that up again.”
“Nobody else is gonna know. You’d be the first one to find out what it feels like to have sex with an alien. Come on, Aziraphale! You’re missing a golden opportunity here. What if it’s really good, but you miss out on it because you thought it was too weird?”
Aziraphale lowered the scrub brush. “Well…”
A few minutes later, a freshly scrubbed Aziraphale was lying back on a mound of pillows on the bed, wondering how he had been talked into this.
“All right,” he said. “I’m ready.”
Crowley scaled over the headboard and descended upon him. His muscular body wrapped around him, his feelers tickling his chest and his legs tapping him rhythmically. His body vibrated with a steady hum, which Aziraphale could feel throbbing in the areas where that alien body was pressing against him. He did not want to admit how much he liked it. He could feel that subsonic booming syncing with his heartbeat, pulsing like an unheard song.
He leaned back, straight into the bulky body of Crowley’s chest, entrenched in those many pairs of legs. The feelers tickled him, and he twitched in response as they went lower and lower. He could feel something nibbling on his earlobe, then his neck, then his shoulder.
Aziraphale closed his eyes, drifting away with the sensation. He could feel legs tapping against his chest, stroking, the undulating body slithering down him, curling and grasping him, enveloping him with that rhythm.
He felt something tickling the head of his erection. He moaned, still twitching.
“Are you ready, angel?”
An image suddenly flashed into his mind: Crowley’s alien gullet, lined with rows of conical teeth, white and sharp as anything.
His eyes flew open. Crowley was hovering close to his crotch, that downward-turned mouth above his member.
“Crowley, wait!” he said, embarrassed to hear his voice squeak.
“What is it?”
“You, um…”
That muscular mouth flexed open and shut, the teeth rotating within it. “What?”
“Your mouth is quite a bit sharper than it was before!”
“Aw come on, you know I don’t use my teeth.”
“You’ve never had that many teeth before.”
“They’re retractable.”
“What?”
“My teeth. They’re retractable, you know. And I’ve discovered that I don’t have a gag reflex.”
Okay, that was a bit too much to refuse. Aziraphale closed his eyes again, moved his hands down the warm, leathery body on top of him, and gripped the base of his antennae.
“It’s not the same,” he said. “Normally I can stroke your hair.”
“We can be a bit rougher. Go ahead and yank me down.”
“Just like that? Down onto it?”
“Somebody, I don’t know how to tell if I’m aroused. I think I’m enjoying this. Just give me a good yank.”
Aziraphale squeezed his fists around Crowley’s antennae and shoved him down.
Oh lord, if anything Crowley’s body was even warmer than usual now. He had to stop himself from shouting out and coming immediately as his partner’s throat constricted and squeezed in new and interesting ways. He bucked and squirmed, all of Crowley’s legs moving rhythmically on him, that vibrating beat increasing in frequency and intensity.
He climaxed embarrassingly fast. His cock was further squeezed as Crowley swallowed. He let himself shout out, then sprawled on the bed.
“You like that?” Crowley purred.
“Oh…” he said, putting his hand to his forehead. “Wow.”
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
Crowley swiveled and lay his head down on Aziraphale’s chest, letting his feelers go limp. Aziraphale stroked his head. “How was that for you?”
“Didn’t do much.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. If you gave me an idea of what, I could, em…”
“I’m not sure if I’ve got genitals at all,” he said morosely.
“Oh, my dear boy-”
They were interrupted by a knock on the door. Crowley started and scuttled under the bed. Aziraphale hastily tried to find his pants and put them back on. He ended up answering the door without a shirt on.
It was Lily. He suddenly wished he had put a shirt on.
“Angel,” she said.
“I told you not to call me that.”
She had a crazed look in her eye. “Please. I’m begging you. They told me I’m not allowed to just flat-out destroy anything unless it was in a fight with you. I’m going mad on this rock with nothing going on. I’m a demon of chaos. I don’t know why they sent me here if they weren’t going to let me do anything violent. Please be merciful.”
“I’m not going to fight you!” he shouted. “You’ll just have to deal with it! Leave me alone!”
“You’ll be sorry!” she yelled back. “You’d do better to just get it over with now! Come, we can just raze one building! Hardly anybody will notice!”
“No,” he said. “Kindly do go away.”
He slammed the door in her face. That wouldn’t actually do anything, of course. But sliding the lock shut made him feel better.
He could hear her growling outside the door. He dived towards the dresser where he had stashed his thermos of holy water. He took it out and pointed it at the door.
There turned out to be no need to use it. The demonic presence outside faded after a few moments.
He sighed in relief and replaced the holy water in his sock drawer. He then knelt by the bed and grabbed Crowley, sliding him out by one front leg. “It’s all right, you can come out now.”
The demon scaled his leg and torso almost instantly, feelers whipping wildly as he maintained his precarious balance on Aziraphale’s shoulders. “Angel, I have an idea.”
“What’s that? About what to do about Lily?”
“No, about the aliens.”
“…I suppose technically we’d be the aliens, don’t you think?”
“Listen, you and I should go out and make first contact.”
“Crowley, you’re thinking about that now? Don’t you think we should try to get Lily out of our hair first?”
“Ah, demons are like that, Aziraphale. She’s not going anywhere. This is important. We should go out there and make contact.”
“Okay….dare I ask why?”
“Think about it, angel. They’re going to discover each other eventually. There’s no avoiding it.”
“But we should let them do it in their own time!”
“Listen, they’ve already seen me. If you and I go out together, if they see one of us and one of them together, it’ll smooth things out for when the real humans meet them. If this first meeting between species goes sour, it’s going to affect us as well. If they bomb each other into oblivion, we’ll be stuck on a lifeless rock with no way of getting back to Earth.”
“I think I see your point. And you’re sure you just don’t want to go out there for the sake of causing trouble, hm?”
He wiggled his antennae. “Me? Trouble? Never!”
To Be Continued....