Blessed Wiles- Aziraphale/Crowley
When the Apocalypse has been averted, you are free to go back to your old habits. Wile, thwart. Wile, thwart. Bless, thwart, too, although you don’t remember Aziraphale ever being overtly proactive on the blessing front. It occurs to you that he might be stealthier that you are, which is a little unnerving. And after you’ve been through something like the Apocalypse- after you’ve gone hand-in-hand together to face down the Ineffable, when you’re both studiously avoiding thinking about what that means and whose side you’re on now- well, after you’ve been through something like that together, you don’t like the thought that he might be slipping under your radar.
And so if you two can be found in parks and cafes, in his bookshop or your apartment, leaning back in your respective chairs, saying little and watching each other carefully, well, it is only your respective duties to keep a closer eye on your respective opposite numbers.
If you can manage very little wiling under his steady eye, you are not so certain that he is not orchestrating blessings, somewhere, somehow. But you are nothing if not a patient being, and so you lean back in your chair and the two of you spend your time watching humanity. And each other, but mostly humanity. Practically self-wiling, humanity. Over the course of a decade or two, you put in a claim to Below for Reality Television, the Internet, and, subsequently, online piracy rings. Interestingly, Aziraphale also claimed the latter. Nose in the air, he declared that music ought to be free, even if it was be-bop. You both claimed End User License Agreements, too.
Sometimes you discuss the Good Old Days. Aziraphale, typically, liked the fourteenth century. While you had been sleeping somewhere, he’d been lurking around Avignon and drinking good French wine. If you don’t shut him up, he’ll go on for hours and hours about that horrible alliterative poem that went on forever. He needn’t keep harping on- you remember it well enough from the sixteenth century, and you haven’t the heart to tell him it was you who meddled and edited and passed it off as extreme radical Protestantism. The things you did for the sake of Wiles, before you realised any Wile you thought of could be outdone in a heartbeat by mere human ideas.
You think of something to distract him. You push the bottle of wine across the table.
‘Angel,’ you ask, sipping at your own glass. ‘Did you ever…’
Aziraphale pours himself another generous glass. ‘Did I ever what, my dear?’
‘You know. Make the Effort.’
Aziraphale regards you with mild surprise. ‘What kind of question is that to ask a gentleman?’
‘A thoroughly inappropriate one, I should think,’ you say, with just a hint of smugness. ‘Come on, Angel. Who was it? Michael? Gabriel?’
Aziraphale actually blushes. This, you think, is fun. It almost counts as a Wile.
‘Did you- I bet you were the girl,’ you say, and reach over the table to grab the bottle again. You don’t mean it metaphorically, either. If one is to Make the Effort, one can make any sort of Effort one wishes. You’ve tried female yourself, once or twice, and found it interesting. You think you’d have to keep the Effort up for a long stretch to really get the hang of all the anatomy, though.
Aziraphale’s ears are so red they might as well have been on fire. He takes a deeper draught- any other man, and it would have been a swig- of your best vintage. (Fifteenth century. Why you’re wasting it on him, neither Above nor Below knows).
‘Now, really, my dear,’ he says, ‘we do not indulge in the unsavoury habits that your side obviously enjoy.’
Not always enjoy, you think to yourself. To Aziraphale, you ask: ‘Well then, who? Not- a human.’
Aziraphale ignores this. ‘And what about you, then?’
‘Me?’
‘Yes, you. Why are you so interested in the Effort?’
‘Oh,’ you say. ‘I’m not interested in the Effort. Not at the moment, at least.’ You sigh. ‘There have been some good times…’
‘Virgins deflowered, wives lead astray?’ Aziraphale asks, with what you think might actually be a tolerant smile. Tolerant! You can’t have the enemy being tolerant. You smirk.
‘Remember the eleventh century?’ Aziraphale nods, a little surprised by this turn of conversation. ‘Why do you think King Edward was always Confessing?’ You push the wine back toward Aziraphale and rest your heels on the table, grinning at him over your wineglass.
This time Aziraphale’s whole face is flaming red. He splutters on the mouthful of wine he has just taken. ‘That was you?’
‘That was me, Angel.’
The notion keeps bothering you. Another night, another vintage, this time in the stuffy sitting room above Aziraphale’s shop.
‘Come on, Angel.’
‘Come on what, my dear?’
‘Don’t be crude.’
Aziraphale clucks disapprovingly, and ignores you again.
‘What does it take for an Angel to Make the Effort?’ you persist. Aziraphale shrugs.
‘Divine mandate? You’d better ask Gabriel about that sort of thing, he’s the one who gets those missions.’
You poke his chest with your finger. ‘I mean, what does it take for this Angel to Make the Effort?’
Aziraphale stares pointedly down at your finger. You remove it.
‘What makes you think I hadn’t Divine Mandate,’ he asks mildly. You snort into your wine.
‘Angel, even I have a higher opinion of the Powers Above than that. You lack all the virility necessary for angelic seduction.’ You eye him for a moment. ‘You could have been a woman, I suppose, but quite frankly I doubt you could figure the anatomy out.’
This time Aziraphale expels you from his premises, and forces you to promise on all that is Unholy that you will leave the topic alone.
You still suspect him of covert blessings. You can never catch him at it, though, and blessings are awfully hard to trace in hindsight. Difficult to separate from random good fortune.
And then it occurs to you that this would be an awfully good Wile. You haven’t really Wiled for centuries. Who needs to, when humanity Wile themselves with just the smallest nudges on your part? You certainly haven’t Wiled since the Apocalypse failed to happen. But to Wile your opposite number, now, no one could accuse that of being a half-hearted Wile.
And that is why you find yourself back in Aziraphale’s bookshop, and you find yourself coming up behind him as he sorts papers, and dragging a fingernail down the back of his neck. He shivers, and when he turns around and opens his mouth to chastise you, you kiss him. He tastes of Camembert cheese, and smells of book dust, and senses (one has never needed a word for ‘to perceive by supernatural means’) very faintly of blessings. You wonder if that will cause you problems, but it is very faint, and feels like someone running a feather over ticklish spots you can’t quite reach. A bad feeling. Oh, yes, definitely a bad feeling. And combined with the books-and-wine smell of Aziraphale, and the soft feeling of his hair on your hands, it is most aggravating. You are the one Wiling, here, and you can’t afford to be distracted by that faint, ticklish touch of blessings, running up and down your spine and spreading out over the wings you don’t have.
You tighten your hand in Aziraphale’s hair- he certainly isn’t resisting, you note- and with your other hand you curse his shirt away. That certainly has interesting results: a compulsive shudder runs through him, and you find yourself holding him upright for a moment. His skin heats under your hand, and you ought to snatch it away, because that’s approaching too much blessing, but instead you pull him into you and kiss him roughly, biting at his lips with your teeth. He has his hand in your hair now, and his other under your shirt, and there’s that crawling sensation of blessing, driving you mad. You think, rather hazily, that you must be leaking low-level curses, because Aziraphale is moaning low in his throat and dragging his fingernails helplessly against your scalp and back.
Aziraphale drags his head back, away from your mouth. You try to follow, but he has you by the hair and is holding you off.
‘I thought,’ and you are gratified to find that his breathing is more ragged than yours. ‘I thought you said you weren’t interested in the Effort.’
You smirk, and lean forward to run your tongue (forked. Bless it all, you shouldn’t be losing it like this) up the outer edge of one ear, one of Aziraphale’s flaming red ears. ‘I’m not,’ you purr into it. Aziraphale surprises you by bringing one knee up, rather forcefully, between your legs, and you’re very glad you haven’t Made the Effort, because that would mean you were in considerable pain right now. Unless you had gone for female, you suppose, but even that would’ve been painful. Hell, even your pristine pelvic bone is susceptible to bruising. You pull his head back and begin nipping at his collarbone, as punishment.
Punishment by a demon, however gentle, is a form of curse. Aziraphale fairly writhes under your ministrations. Somewhere in there, his pile of carefully sorted manuscript catalogues goes flying.
You have your arms around him, your hand in his hair, your legs between his and your mouth over his, when he decides to Miracle. You’ve been around when he Miracled before. A crinkly feeling in your spine, that’s all it does. Unless, apparently, your spine is already crawling with blessings, and you have Aziraphale’s breath on your tongue. The Miracle flashes white across your vision, roars across all of your senses, digs its teeth into your aura, runs its fingers through the wings you aren’t wearing. You gasp, feel your knees give way, and your eyes force themselves shut.
When you open them again, you are lying limply on Aziraphale’s bed. He is kneeling over you, the look on his face wavering between concern and victory. You reach out to drag him down, but he bats your hands away.
‘I see what this is about,’ he says, and smirks. ‘This is supposed to be some sort of Wile, isn’t it?’