Fic: Both Odd and Even (The f(x)=0 Remix) [Good Omens; Aziraphale/Crowley; R]
Title: Both Odd and Even (The f(x)=0 Remix)
Author: ineffabili_tea
Summary: Aziraphale wants to kiss Crowley. He does.
Rating: R
Fandom: Good Omens
Disclaimer: All hail Gaiman and Pratchett; pay no attention to little ol' me.
Title, Author and URL of original story: Both Odd and Even by apple_pi
Notes: Thanks to such_heights for the beta!
***
Both Odd and Even (The f(x)=0 Remix)
Aziraphale wanted to kiss Crowley.
The bare act of wanting did not shock him1; how he wanted to kiss Crowley did. Right on the lips, deep, devouring - this was no gentle Kiss of Peace.
Aziraphale couldn't imagine where this new preoccupation had come from. It had taken centuries for him to make the Arrangement; decades to grow comfortable in it and consider Crowley a colleague; an apocalypse to admit that the demon was a friend 2; only months to grow used to his more frequent presence, undisguised by plausibly deniable meetings in public locations; why shouldn’t it be mere weeks, days, minutes, seconds that it took for this strange new feeling to arise inside him?
Strange and new? Of course the sensation of love was not strange to Aziraphale, being the sort of, well, being, he was; it was just that he never dwelled on the physical in the way that his mind, lately, had been dwelling on Crowley's mouth, his lips, his tongue, teeth, spit - spit! Aziraphale had spent six millennia not thinking about saliva without difficulty, but now he could seemingly think of little else except how Crowley's would taste on his tongue.
But such an important step should hardly be undertaken without consulting Crowley, even if he suspected the demon would be difficult about it.
And so, one evening as they entered the bookshop after a pleasant dinner at the Ritz, Aziraphale took a deep breath to calm himself3 and attempted to broach the topic as casually as possible.
"Crowley, do you ever- That is, have you ever- I suppose you must've, sometime- There was that one century, when I was busy with scribal training, and I don't know where you were - I don't want to know where you were - but-"
"Spit it out, angel, I haven't got eternity."
Spit. There it was again. "As a matter of fact, you have got eternity, and what I was going to say is, I'd like to- If you've no objection, I'd-"
Crowley, as he was occasionally wont to do when feeling impatient, began to run his tongue along his eyeteeth, as if to test their sharpness. Aziraphale caught a tiny glimpse of tongue, flickering lazily between moist lips, and nearly whimpered.
"Bugger it," he muttered, and, giving discussion up for a lost cause, just leaned in and kissed the demon before he could think better of it yet again.
There was a fair amount of saliva involved, but it was overshadowed by the amount of nose-bumping before Aziraphale corrected his angle.
This is nice, he thought, and then Crowley opened his mouth a little more, so Aziraphale opened his mouth a little more, and the addition of tongue quite bumped everything up a grade from nice, and soon he was clutching the demon for support and probably, he realized, wrinkling his suit, which Crowley would hate.
Aziraphale stopped kissing Crowley.
He backed away slightly, rubbing ineffectually at the creases he had indeed caused before it occurred to him to miracle them away, tongue running now over his own lips for a residual taste of the demon, who didn't taste particularly of sin, as Aziraphale had imagined - but then what did sin taste like, after all? - but who did look rather fetching with his sunglasses askew; he remembered that he ought to have removed them first.
"You've never done that before," Crowley said, but without any real malice, and Aziraphale could tell he was feeling wrong-footed.
"Well, not as such," he replied, a bit off-kilter himself, "not with quite so much, er, enthusiasm."
"I meant to me."
"Oh."
"Why?" He pushed his sunglasses slightly down the bridge of his nose, fixing his eyes on the angel.
Aziraphale squirmed a bit under the gaze. Crowley did have a talent for asking uncomfortable questions. No wonder they'd thought he'd had something to do with the Inquisition.
"I don't suppose you'd believe me if I told you you'd finally succeeded in tempting me?" the angel offered.
"Not for a second," Crowley replied thoughtfully. "But I suppose pride would be satisfied all around."
"And you are, of course, all in favour of pride." Aziraphale smiled4.
The demon was standing so close to him now, their noses were nearly touching. Like Eskimos, Aziraphale thought vaguely. "Of course," Crowley whispered. "Pride's a sin, isn’t it? Just like this."
And this time it was Crowley kissing Aziraphale, but gently, almost hesitantly, lips barely parted and brushing softly against his own, again and again, only gradually growing more insistent, more forceful. When he broke the kiss, it seemed almost reluctant, and his face remained mere centimetres from Aziraphale's, expression serious.
"Funny, that didn't feel like sin to me," Aziraphale murmured when he trusted himself to speak again.
"No? What about this?"
The third kiss was like the first in its intensity, though with considerable refinements in technique. Aziraphale noted, not precisely unhappily, that he seemed to be losing control of his body: his knees felt in danger of collapse, his stomach was alive with a strangely pleasant squirming sensation, and he had started breathing - panting, almost, between kisses.
"Well?"
"Still no," Aziraphale said and then, seeing that Crowley remained so serious, earnest even as he almost never was, he ventured further. "In fact, if I had to give it a name, I'd call it-"
Crowley's mouth on his stopped him from finishing the sentence. "Shh," he said with just a tinge of chagrin. "Pride, remember?"
Well, not everything needed saying, did it? That was what ineffability was about. "Of course, my dear. Of course."
And not everything needed saying in words, either, which was perhaps more Crowley's point, so Aziraphale kissed him again, returning to this compelling new fascination with the body - Crowley's and his own.
His initial attraction to Crowley's mouth had not dampened, but he now found his interest broadening to embrace other parts; while he resisted the urge to run fingers through the demon's artfully tousled hair, how had he not remarked before on how perfect the line of his jaw and the curve of his neck were for kissing, nipping and sucking, how his earlobes dangled in a way that practically begged for nibbling?
But Crowley's earlobes were hardly the only part of him Aziraphale was now devoting far more thought and attention to than ever before, and that was an idea with a much more sobering effect than ear-nibbling, which was turning out to be rather more arousing than he would have thought.
Reluctantly he pulled slightly away from Crowley, wanting to look him in the eye, or at least in those blasted sunglasses, for this. "Er," he began, recalling all too clearly how well the 'I'd like to kiss you' conversation of a bit earlier had gone and at a loss as to where to start this one.
Luckily, two beings don’t know each other for six millennia without coming to understand each other awfully well. Crowley wouldn’t quite meet his eyes. "I've never," he said, chewing nervously on the inside of his cheek.
"I didn't think you had," Aziraphale answered calmly, and he didn't. He knew Crowley well enough to know he was secretly quite fond of people, but not that fond. "Perhaps we shouldn't."
"Perhaps," Crowley echoed. "But 'shouldn’t' isn’t 'won't'." He grinned wickedly, looking more his usual self5 than he had since this whole thing had begun.
"I want to," Aziraphale blurted.
"So I had gathered," Crowley replied dryly. He straightened his sunglasses and gestured towards the shop door. "Shall we?"
"Shall we what?"
"Shall we get into the Bentley?" Crowley asked, sounding like an impatient parent with a rather slow child.
"You want to … in the Bentley?" Aziraphale couldn't imagine that that would be very practical.
Now Crowley looked both impatient and horrified. "Not in the Bentley!" he hissed. "In my flat. Which we can get to by driving. In the Bentley."
"Oh. Oh, yes, yes, of course." Aziraphale flushed. How was he already making a muddle of this, when they hadn’t even got to the tricky bits?
Crowley placed a steadying hand on his shoulder. "Relax," he said. "We can't possibly do worse than Adam and Eve that first time, do you remember?"
He certainly had a point there. He supposed it hadn’t been very compassionate, but that had been the first time he'd really laughed, here on Earth.
Still, "I'll relax if you will," he answered.
"Me?" Crowley's voice cracked as he opened the passenger side door for Aziraphale6. "I am as cool as a cucumber."
"If a cucumber was an extremely nervous demon."
"Just for that I'll discorporate us both on the drive back," Crowley threatened as he started the car.
"Don't," Aziraphale said firmly. Never before had discorporation seemed so inconvenient.
The rest of the ride back to Crowley's flat passed in a blur, both in his mind and in actuality. Similarly fuzzy was his recollection of climbing the stairs, entering the flat, and finding their way to the bedroom, though once he found himself there and the world, or at least he and Crowley, came into sharp focus once more, they were both certainly wearing much less clothing, so he could only assume it had been discarded along the way, by whatever means.
Crowley's sunglasses, however, hadn’t. Aziraphale reached his hand towards them, and Crowley grasped it at the wrist, stopping him.
"I want to see you," Aziraphale insisted.
"You already see me."
"Humour me, Crowley. Please?" True, Aziraphale could always see Crowley, see through Crowley (I know you, you old serpent), but at this moment he needed this, needed the demon to concede this small bit of vulnerability.
Crowley dropped his wrist, and Aziraphale carefully removed the glasses, folding them and setting them neatly on the table by the bed.
"Well then," he said. "Where were we? Ah yes." And then, it would be fair to say, Aziraphale pounced. As he pinned the surprised demon to the bed, he was aware only that he needed Crowley, needed not to possess him but to meld with him.
He couldn’t do that, but he could do all the things a human body could do to try and achieve that impossible goal: he could kiss, he could touch, could run his hands and fingertips over every inch of Crowley, tangle their limbs and tangle his fingers in his hair.
So he did.
And then - oh! - he could also press, and rub, and even grind himself against Crowley, and Crowley would press, rub, and grind back, would slither against him as they both made a series of disconnected and wordless noises, groans of joy when they moved together, just so, and sighs of despair when their bodies lost that guttural rhythm, only to renew it once more.
But all too soon it was over, as Aziraphale felt the tension which had built in him spill over into an ecstasy all the more intense for its earthly transience.
The moment of release ebbed and left Aziraphale feeling oddly empty, strangely alone, and he opened his eyes to reassure himself of Crowley's continued presence - just in time to see Crowley, too, lose control.
In that moment, Aziraphale had never seen anyone look so diabolic, so divine - so human.
In the aftermath there were quieter pleasures - listening to Crowley's breathing slow in time with his own, watching his eyes recover their focus in the here and now, gently pressing foreheads and then lips together in a languorous kiss.
"Shower?" Crowley suggested after a time.
"Nuh," Aziraphale murmured into his shoulder. "Sleepy."
"Suit yourself, angel, but you'll be sorry you didn't clean up come morning."
Aziraphale waved his hand vaguely. "Just miracle it away," he said, fitting action to the words.
"The Miracle of the Sweat and Semen," Crowley intoned.
Aziraphale snorted. "Must you always be so blasphem- nevermind. Aren’t you sleepy?" he asked plaintively.
"'Course I'm sleepy. But shouldn’t we- d'you want to talk about it?"
"No. I want to sleep now, Crowley," Aziraphale said, shifting so that he was curled on his side against the demon. "You'll still be here in the morning to talk, right? Perhaps over a nice breakfast at that charming little place by the bookshop?"
"Rounding out the lust with some gluttony, angel?"
"Crowley." Aziraphale's hand found his, squeezed it tightly. "The morning?" He yawned, mostly for effect, knowing it was infectious.
Sure enough, the demon yawned too, turning over so that Aziraphale was now snug against his back. "See you in the morning, angel."
1. It wasn't as though he'd never kissed anyone before, though he was surprised to find he had lost the distaste for it which the Judas incident had instilled in him.
2. Aziraphale may have been an angel, and thus incapable of lying to himself, but what with all the exposure to humans over the years he was certainly not above ignoring certain facts about himself; for example, the fact that he and Crowley had actually been friends for several centuries prior to any attempts to avert Armageddon.
3. He then sternly reminded himself that was not strictly necessary and huffed the superfluous air out of his lungs in annoyance mixed with (just a tinge of) nerves.
4. It was actually rather a sly smile, though Crowley often insisted that Aziraphale was completely incapable of slyness, deviousness, craftiness, underhandness and cunning. "Not that you can help it," he'd say. "It's down to your, you know, basic nature."
5. And really, had Aziraphale expected Crowley of all beings to resist temptation?
6. Not by hand, of course. Mr. Young was hardly the first human to assume Crowley had had his car fitted with some sort of automated, wireless system.
Author: ineffabili_tea
Summary: Aziraphale wants to kiss Crowley. He does.
Rating: R
Fandom: Good Omens
Disclaimer: All hail Gaiman and Pratchett; pay no attention to little ol' me.
Title, Author and URL of original story: Both Odd and Even by apple_pi
Notes: Thanks to such_heights for the beta!
***
Both Odd and Even (The f(x)=0 Remix)
Aziraphale wanted to kiss Crowley.
The bare act of wanting did not shock him1; how he wanted to kiss Crowley did. Right on the lips, deep, devouring - this was no gentle Kiss of Peace.
Aziraphale couldn't imagine where this new preoccupation had come from. It had taken centuries for him to make the Arrangement; decades to grow comfortable in it and consider Crowley a colleague; an apocalypse to admit that the demon was a friend 2; only months to grow used to his more frequent presence, undisguised by plausibly deniable meetings in public locations; why shouldn’t it be mere weeks, days, minutes, seconds that it took for this strange new feeling to arise inside him?
Strange and new? Of course the sensation of love was not strange to Aziraphale, being the sort of, well, being, he was; it was just that he never dwelled on the physical in the way that his mind, lately, had been dwelling on Crowley's mouth, his lips, his tongue, teeth, spit - spit! Aziraphale had spent six millennia not thinking about saliva without difficulty, but now he could seemingly think of little else except how Crowley's would taste on his tongue.
But such an important step should hardly be undertaken without consulting Crowley, even if he suspected the demon would be difficult about it.
And so, one evening as they entered the bookshop after a pleasant dinner at the Ritz, Aziraphale took a deep breath to calm himself3 and attempted to broach the topic as casually as possible.
"Crowley, do you ever- That is, have you ever- I suppose you must've, sometime- There was that one century, when I was busy with scribal training, and I don't know where you were - I don't want to know where you were - but-"
"Spit it out, angel, I haven't got eternity."
Spit. There it was again. "As a matter of fact, you have got eternity, and what I was going to say is, I'd like to- If you've no objection, I'd-"
Crowley, as he was occasionally wont to do when feeling impatient, began to run his tongue along his eyeteeth, as if to test their sharpness. Aziraphale caught a tiny glimpse of tongue, flickering lazily between moist lips, and nearly whimpered.
"Bugger it," he muttered, and, giving discussion up for a lost cause, just leaned in and kissed the demon before he could think better of it yet again.
There was a fair amount of saliva involved, but it was overshadowed by the amount of nose-bumping before Aziraphale corrected his angle.
This is nice, he thought, and then Crowley opened his mouth a little more, so Aziraphale opened his mouth a little more, and the addition of tongue quite bumped everything up a grade from nice, and soon he was clutching the demon for support and probably, he realized, wrinkling his suit, which Crowley would hate.
Aziraphale stopped kissing Crowley.
He backed away slightly, rubbing ineffectually at the creases he had indeed caused before it occurred to him to miracle them away, tongue running now over his own lips for a residual taste of the demon, who didn't taste particularly of sin, as Aziraphale had imagined - but then what did sin taste like, after all? - but who did look rather fetching with his sunglasses askew; he remembered that he ought to have removed them first.
"You've never done that before," Crowley said, but without any real malice, and Aziraphale could tell he was feeling wrong-footed.
"Well, not as such," he replied, a bit off-kilter himself, "not with quite so much, er, enthusiasm."
"I meant to me."
"Oh."
"Why?" He pushed his sunglasses slightly down the bridge of his nose, fixing his eyes on the angel.
Aziraphale squirmed a bit under the gaze. Crowley did have a talent for asking uncomfortable questions. No wonder they'd thought he'd had something to do with the Inquisition.
"I don't suppose you'd believe me if I told you you'd finally succeeded in tempting me?" the angel offered.
"Not for a second," Crowley replied thoughtfully. "But I suppose pride would be satisfied all around."
"And you are, of course, all in favour of pride." Aziraphale smiled4.
The demon was standing so close to him now, their noses were nearly touching. Like Eskimos, Aziraphale thought vaguely. "Of course," Crowley whispered. "Pride's a sin, isn’t it? Just like this."
And this time it was Crowley kissing Aziraphale, but gently, almost hesitantly, lips barely parted and brushing softly against his own, again and again, only gradually growing more insistent, more forceful. When he broke the kiss, it seemed almost reluctant, and his face remained mere centimetres from Aziraphale's, expression serious.
"Funny, that didn't feel like sin to me," Aziraphale murmured when he trusted himself to speak again.
"No? What about this?"
The third kiss was like the first in its intensity, though with considerable refinements in technique. Aziraphale noted, not precisely unhappily, that he seemed to be losing control of his body: his knees felt in danger of collapse, his stomach was alive with a strangely pleasant squirming sensation, and he had started breathing - panting, almost, between kisses.
"Well?"
"Still no," Aziraphale said and then, seeing that Crowley remained so serious, earnest even as he almost never was, he ventured further. "In fact, if I had to give it a name, I'd call it-"
Crowley's mouth on his stopped him from finishing the sentence. "Shh," he said with just a tinge of chagrin. "Pride, remember?"
Well, not everything needed saying, did it? That was what ineffability was about. "Of course, my dear. Of course."
And not everything needed saying in words, either, which was perhaps more Crowley's point, so Aziraphale kissed him again, returning to this compelling new fascination with the body - Crowley's and his own.
His initial attraction to Crowley's mouth had not dampened, but he now found his interest broadening to embrace other parts; while he resisted the urge to run fingers through the demon's artfully tousled hair, how had he not remarked before on how perfect the line of his jaw and the curve of his neck were for kissing, nipping and sucking, how his earlobes dangled in a way that practically begged for nibbling?
But Crowley's earlobes were hardly the only part of him Aziraphale was now devoting far more thought and attention to than ever before, and that was an idea with a much more sobering effect than ear-nibbling, which was turning out to be rather more arousing than he would have thought.
Reluctantly he pulled slightly away from Crowley, wanting to look him in the eye, or at least in those blasted sunglasses, for this. "Er," he began, recalling all too clearly how well the 'I'd like to kiss you' conversation of a bit earlier had gone and at a loss as to where to start this one.
Luckily, two beings don’t know each other for six millennia without coming to understand each other awfully well. Crowley wouldn’t quite meet his eyes. "I've never," he said, chewing nervously on the inside of his cheek.
"I didn't think you had," Aziraphale answered calmly, and he didn't. He knew Crowley well enough to know he was secretly quite fond of people, but not that fond. "Perhaps we shouldn't."
"Perhaps," Crowley echoed. "But 'shouldn’t' isn’t 'won't'." He grinned wickedly, looking more his usual self5 than he had since this whole thing had begun.
"I want to," Aziraphale blurted.
"So I had gathered," Crowley replied dryly. He straightened his sunglasses and gestured towards the shop door. "Shall we?"
"Shall we what?"
"Shall we get into the Bentley?" Crowley asked, sounding like an impatient parent with a rather slow child.
"You want to … in the Bentley?" Aziraphale couldn't imagine that that would be very practical.
Now Crowley looked both impatient and horrified. "Not in the Bentley!" he hissed. "In my flat. Which we can get to by driving. In the Bentley."
"Oh. Oh, yes, yes, of course." Aziraphale flushed. How was he already making a muddle of this, when they hadn’t even got to the tricky bits?
Crowley placed a steadying hand on his shoulder. "Relax," he said. "We can't possibly do worse than Adam and Eve that first time, do you remember?"
He certainly had a point there. He supposed it hadn’t been very compassionate, but that had been the first time he'd really laughed, here on Earth.
Still, "I'll relax if you will," he answered.
"Me?" Crowley's voice cracked as he opened the passenger side door for Aziraphale6. "I am as cool as a cucumber."
"If a cucumber was an extremely nervous demon."
"Just for that I'll discorporate us both on the drive back," Crowley threatened as he started the car.
"Don't," Aziraphale said firmly. Never before had discorporation seemed so inconvenient.
The rest of the ride back to Crowley's flat passed in a blur, both in his mind and in actuality. Similarly fuzzy was his recollection of climbing the stairs, entering the flat, and finding their way to the bedroom, though once he found himself there and the world, or at least he and Crowley, came into sharp focus once more, they were both certainly wearing much less clothing, so he could only assume it had been discarded along the way, by whatever means.
Crowley's sunglasses, however, hadn’t. Aziraphale reached his hand towards them, and Crowley grasped it at the wrist, stopping him.
"I want to see you," Aziraphale insisted.
"You already see me."
"Humour me, Crowley. Please?" True, Aziraphale could always see Crowley, see through Crowley (I know you, you old serpent), but at this moment he needed this, needed the demon to concede this small bit of vulnerability.
Crowley dropped his wrist, and Aziraphale carefully removed the glasses, folding them and setting them neatly on the table by the bed.
"Well then," he said. "Where were we? Ah yes." And then, it would be fair to say, Aziraphale pounced. As he pinned the surprised demon to the bed, he was aware only that he needed Crowley, needed not to possess him but to meld with him.
He couldn’t do that, but he could do all the things a human body could do to try and achieve that impossible goal: he could kiss, he could touch, could run his hands and fingertips over every inch of Crowley, tangle their limbs and tangle his fingers in his hair.
So he did.
And then - oh! - he could also press, and rub, and even grind himself against Crowley, and Crowley would press, rub, and grind back, would slither against him as they both made a series of disconnected and wordless noises, groans of joy when they moved together, just so, and sighs of despair when their bodies lost that guttural rhythm, only to renew it once more.
But all too soon it was over, as Aziraphale felt the tension which had built in him spill over into an ecstasy all the more intense for its earthly transience.
The moment of release ebbed and left Aziraphale feeling oddly empty, strangely alone, and he opened his eyes to reassure himself of Crowley's continued presence - just in time to see Crowley, too, lose control.
In that moment, Aziraphale had never seen anyone look so diabolic, so divine - so human.
In the aftermath there were quieter pleasures - listening to Crowley's breathing slow in time with his own, watching his eyes recover their focus in the here and now, gently pressing foreheads and then lips together in a languorous kiss.
"Shower?" Crowley suggested after a time.
"Nuh," Aziraphale murmured into his shoulder. "Sleepy."
"Suit yourself, angel, but you'll be sorry you didn't clean up come morning."
Aziraphale waved his hand vaguely. "Just miracle it away," he said, fitting action to the words.
"The Miracle of the Sweat and Semen," Crowley intoned.
Aziraphale snorted. "Must you always be so blasphem- nevermind. Aren’t you sleepy?" he asked plaintively.
"'Course I'm sleepy. But shouldn’t we- d'you want to talk about it?"
"No. I want to sleep now, Crowley," Aziraphale said, shifting so that he was curled on his side against the demon. "You'll still be here in the morning to talk, right? Perhaps over a nice breakfast at that charming little place by the bookshop?"
"Rounding out the lust with some gluttony, angel?"
"Crowley." Aziraphale's hand found his, squeezed it tightly. "The morning?" He yawned, mostly for effect, knowing it was infectious.
Sure enough, the demon yawned too, turning over so that Aziraphale was now snug against his back. "See you in the morning, angel."
1. It wasn't as though he'd never kissed anyone before, though he was surprised to find he had lost the distaste for it which the Judas incident had instilled in him.
2. Aziraphale may have been an angel, and thus incapable of lying to himself, but what with all the exposure to humans over the years he was certainly not above ignoring certain facts about himself; for example, the fact that he and Crowley had actually been friends for several centuries prior to any attempts to avert Armageddon.
3. He then sternly reminded himself that was not strictly necessary and huffed the superfluous air out of his lungs in annoyance mixed with (just a tinge of) nerves.
4. It was actually rather a sly smile, though Crowley often insisted that Aziraphale was completely incapable of slyness, deviousness, craftiness, underhandness and cunning. "Not that you can help it," he'd say. "It's down to your, you know, basic nature."
5. And really, had Aziraphale expected Crowley of all beings to resist temptation?
6. Not by hand, of course. Mr. Young was hardly the first human to assume Crowley had had his car fitted with some sort of automated, wireless system.