Happy Holidays, bookshop!
Title: The Perils of Retirement
Recipient: Bookshop
Author: stalkerbunny
Pairing: Aziraphale/Crowley
Rating: PG-13 (there is sort of wing kink but it’s not graphic)
Summary: In which Crowley’s suspicions towards gavotte being a slippery slope to
foolish ideas (like having sex) are confirmed and also there are ducks. Though thankfully not at the
same time.
A/N: betaed by taiyou_to_tsuki, on very short notice. Remaining mistakes are all on me.
The bookshop was quiet, that afternoon, the sign at the door safely turned to CLOSED. The only sound was Aziraphale’s voice as he droned on.
Crowley wasn’t really listening, because Aziraphale was talking about that gavotte class he’d found out about on the internet and Crowley found it all a bit terrifying. The things people got up to now they could safely share their most shameful interests and find like-minded people… idly, he wondered which of them would get a recommendation for that, before he remembered. No meddling, not anymore, and no recommendations either. He sank deeper into the old sofa in Aziraphale’s backroom and fiddled gloomily with the cuffs of his sweater. It was second-
hand*1, with multi-coloured ducks on it.
It wasn’t that he missed making people more*2 inclined towards the path of frozen door-to-door salesmen, it was just… he’d been good at what he did, and what else was he going to do? Aziraphale had his shop and seemed to have moved on with little trouble, but one could only put so much time and effort into cultivating plants. The blog he wrote about said plants helped slightly, but he still found himself with too much spare time to… think. Remember things. Things that made sleeping another century or two seem like a good idea.
Whoever heard of demons retiring? They wouldn’t have, because it wasn’t supposed to happen. Fire and brimstone and sulphur ‘till the end of the world and beyond; that was the idea. Only the world had almost ended, and now…
“-and it was actually very pleasant, more so than I expected.” Aziraphale was saying ponderingly.
“Of course, humans claim that all the time, but then they also claim all kinds of other silliness. You might have mentioned they were actually on to something for once.”
“Eh?” Crowley asked, feeling he had missed something important, and took a drink from his
wineglass.
“You weren’t listening, were you?” Aziraphale said accusingly, but then smiled. “Why, I mean
sex!”
Choking on wine is not a particularly pleasant experience, even when you don’t technically need to breathe.
“But what about the whole… brouhaha, with the, what’s their face, Nephilim?” Crowley argued
weakly once he’d recovered somewhat, which prompted Aziraphale to give him a long look.
“Well, I’m hardly planning to have any offspring with Ms. Mckendrick,” he pointed out primly.
“They’ve long since come up with ways around that, you know.”
“Yes, I do,” Crowley said quickly, fearing Aziraphale would specify.
He blamed the gavotte. He’d just known it was a bad idea, just like last time. Dancing was really just a socially acceptable form of foreplay people could do in public, whether those involved realised it or not, Crowley thought darkly.
“I don’t suppose it’ll happen again though,” Aziraphale mused. “Might be just as well, wouldn’t want things to get awkward. Still…”
A silence descended between them.
“You wouldn’t happen to have any… tips,” Aziraphale said slowly, his head tilted in Crowley’s direction.
“Tips?” Crowley repeated in a bland tone, clutching at his (now tragically empty) wineglass like a drowning man clutches at a suitably buoyant piece of timber.
“Well, I’d have expected you’d be something of an expert on this…” he made a vague gesture. “Sex business.”
“I,” Crowley said, and found that was the extent of what he had to say. He tried to take a drink of non-existent wine and then hissed at the glass until it filled up obediently. “No.”
“No?” Aziraphale’s eyebrows, which had been raised hopefully, fell.
“No,” Crowley repeated.
“Hmm,” Aziraphale said.
Crowley couldn’t take it anymore.
“Look, where on earth do you get this idea I’d be some expert on… on that?” he asked, gesturing wildly with the other hand. “Have you thought all this time I go around… seducing humans or whatnot?”
“Well I-“
“I don’t, ok? Not in my job description!” he paused, and then muttered: “Previous job description…” he snorted and then took off his sunglasses to glare at Aziraphale more effectively.
“And it’s not my idea of a fun thing to do with my free time either, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
Aziraphale’s eyebrows had travelled up and down his forehead during Crowley’s rant, but now he was just looking at him with a sort of rueful expression.
“I’m sorry my dear, I shouldn’t have presumed,” he said conciliatorily.
“No, you shouldn’t have,” Crowley huffed, and another silence descended upon them.
“Perhaps we could go to the park?” Aziraphale suggested after a while.
Crowley almost wanted to refuse just on principle, but… he could really do with some boring
normality. Feeding the ducks, that would be just the thing.
*
Too bad he’d forgotten one thing in his strain for normality.
“Angel, it’s November,” Crowley complained and tried to stuff his hands deeper into his sleeves, shivering as another icy gust of wind blew in from the water spreading out not far away from them, the edges of it frozen over with a latticework of ice. A light coating of snow covered the ground and trees around them.
Aziraphale threw a last handful of seed mix to the small group of ducks that had stuck around on the ice waters of the pond, before fastidiously folding up the empty bag and putting it back into his pocket.
“I know, dear,” he replied somewhat exasperatedly, but didn’t move away when Crowley scooted
closer on the bench.
The ducks descended on the seeds, clucking at the two of them accusingly once they’d devoured it all. Then they spotted an elderly pair of men passing by and toddled after them.
Secret agents might not be as abundant a source of sustenance as they’d once been, but the ducks still had the instincts honed by several generations of park fowl. They saw the fur collar and the tartan scarf trailing in the wind and pounced.
The fur collared man shooed at them with his cane, while his companion raised his hat at
Aziraphale and Crowley in an absent manner, before adjusting his collar and hooking his arm with the other man again.
“Really bring you back, doesn’t it, Afanasenkov,” he remarked, chuckling as if at some private joke.
“Oh, do shut up, Smith,” the other could be heard to reply as they walked on with the retinue of ducks determinately trailing after them.
Aziraphale smiled benignly after the two men, and Crowley gave him a suspicious look.
“What?” he asked and Aziraphale shrugged innocently.
“It just transpires that you are paying for our next visit to the Ritz,” he replied smugly. When Crowley kept looking at him uncomprehendingly, Aziraphale made a gesture towards the departing pair.
“We made a bet about those two. I said they’d eventually sort things out between them and you supposed they’d be dead by thirty, remember.”
Crowley shifted closer still to elbow him, and Aziraphale wrapped an arm around his shoulder, alleviating the cold somewhat. It occurred to him that there was no reason to stay in the freezing park, but maybe it wasn’t that cold after all…
“Well, it did seem most likely, didn’t it,” he muttered.
Aziraphale made a non-committal hum.
“Do you ever wonder about it?”
“Eh?”
“I mean, the way things were, all those countries arming themselves, mutually reassured
destruction, all of that… was it just because they were nudged, or…”
Aziraphale was giving him a faintly worried look.
“I don’t know,” he said, in a tone that meant I don’t think we’re meant to know.
They could be very dangerous things, questions, Crowley thought and shivered. Aziraphale’s arm tightened around him, and for a long moment neither of them said anything.
Then Crowley brushed at his chin thoughtfully.
“No Crowley,” Aziraphale said strictly without even looking at him. “No beards. It wouldn’t suit you.”
“You can’t know that!”
“Yes I can.”
*
Aziraphale shook his head as he came out of the kitchen with his second cup of cocoa and found Crowley curled up on the sofa. He was snoring, a soft hissing sound, and Aziraphale took a drink to hide his smile on reflex, before stepping forwards on quiet feet to take the old blanket on the sofa and lay it over the sleeping demon.
In the past, he’d have woken him up and told him to go home, but lately…
He sat down in the space left, nudging Crowley’s feet slightly. He was at least a very compact sleeper, Aziraphale thought in passing, before returning to the previous thread of thought.
It was the not-end-of-the-world, he mused. It had changed things. He glanced at Crowley, who seemed to have curled up even more into the blanket over him, only half of his face visible over it.
He wasn’t even wearing his sunglasses, and his face looked naked without them, vulnerable.
Aziraphale sighed.
No immediate change, nothing dramatic. Well, apart from the sweaters, he supposed, those had
been a bit of a shock, but then fashion could be like that and Crowley had never failed to follow the latest trends. But there was something… lost, about the demon. Something that made it harder to send him away at the end of the night, to that impersonal apartment. He’d never been very good at settling, Crowley, always fluttering about with his projects.
“Crowley?”
Aziraphale nudged one foot that had peeked out from under the edge of the blanket to press into his thigh, and it immediately disappeared, accompanied by a displeased, sleepy hiss.
“Crowley, wake up,” he repeated, not unkindly, but determined.
Crowley pulled down the blanket and glowered at him.
“What?” he asked, sitting up and yawning, slightly too wide to be human. Then he blinked, his pupils shrinking at the light into narrow slits.
“I do have a bed as well, you know,” Aziraphale said, and Crowley frowned, before he yawned again and then shrugged.
“It’s not dusty, is it?” he asked suspiciously, as he followed Aziraphale up the stairs.
“Of course not,” he replied indignantly, and then sent a thought ahead to disappear any dust on said bed, since he couldn’t actually remember when he’d last used it.
When they stepped into the small bedroom upstairs, the bed and its tartan cover were pristine.
Crowley still stopped in the doorway and narrowed his eyes at it suspiciously.
“Wait, you didn’t do anything with that human here, did you?” he asked Aziraphale, who popped his head out of the wardrobe, already wearing his pyjama shirt.
“Oh no, that was at her house,” he assured the demon, who made a grudging sound and started to warily approach the bed while Aziraphale shook his head and continued changing.
When he got back, Crowley was already under the covers, only the top of his head visible.
Aziraphale joined him, lying on his back with his hands folded on his chest.
“Your bed’s cold,” Crowley muttered and shifted closer to him, until his back was pressed against Aziraphale’s side. He patted him on the side, over the covers.
“It’ll warm up soon,” Aziraphale assured him.
“They used to have things to warm beds with…” Crowley remarked idly.
“Oh?” said Aziraphale who had been even less in the habit of sleeping back in the day.
“Of course the rooms were colder too,” Crowley admitted.
Then, after another silence, he suddenly asked:
“Why did you do it, anyway?”
“Do what?” Aziraphale asked, though he had some idea.
“The… the sex,” Crowley asked, his voice muffled slightly by the covers still over his face.
“Ah,” Aziraphale said. “Well. I suppose I was… curious.”
Crowley’s head appeared out of the covers, one eyebrow raised disbelievingly.
“For how long?”
Aziraphale didn’t entirely appreciate his tone.
“It hardly seemed worth the risk before, but I had occasionally wondered… and then there was an opportunity to see for myself, it seemed as if it’d be no harm,” he explained defensively.
“Huh,” Crowley said quietly, not meeting his eyes.
“You really never…?”
Crowley glanced at him, shaking his head. There was something shuttered about his face.
“Hardly,” he said.
Aziraphale turned to look at the roof, smiling ruefully.
“Fair enough,” he said softly, more to himself than Crowley.
He didn’t see the slight widening of Crowley’s eyes as he looked at him.
“You… you fancy me!” he accused.
“No!” Aziraphale lied, and felt his face reddening treacherously.
“Ha! Do too!” Crowley crowed victoriously, and then his mouth snapped shut and he just stared at Aziraphale with a strange, tense expression that he couldn’t really decipher.
“Well, maybe… maybe I did. Do. But that’s…” he shrugged. “Hardly very important, is it? Not if it’s not something you want.”
Crowley was looking at him from below his lashes, and then he licked his lips. Slowly, he brought an arm forward, laying it on Aziraphale’s chest, and then leaned up, hesitating for a moment before kissing him on the lips. His lips were dry and warm; his nose a cooler point of contact, and Aziraphale laid still, until Crowley leaned back, frowning. Aziraphale blinked at him.
“I think you’re supposed to do something,” he said, and Aziraphale couldn’t help it, the nervous energy he’d been holding back dissolved into helpless laughter.
“Stop that,” Crowley told him, and when he didn’t, he grabbed the angel and kissed him deeply instead, using his tongue to derail the laughter and turning it into a startled moan. He only stopped once they’d long run out of air and he’d almost forgotten why he’d started.
Aziraphale made a soft, lazy sound as Crowley pulled away. He felt that way, lazy and at the same time bright, tingling all over. He breathed, in and out, and smiled. It was a bit like being drunk, this feeling. Less of a surprise, this time, and also more comfortable, with someone he already knew.
Crowley laid a finger on his lips, as if to warn him not to start laughing again, which only made it worse. He laughed, but it was softer this time, darker. Crowley still frowned.
“I’m not mocking you,” Aziraphale told him, his voice gone husky; Crowley’s eyes widened and he shuddered, as if that voice was touching him.
“Right,” he said, and then tilted his head, almost birdlike. Waiting.
Aziraphale pulled him down again, into another kiss, their bodies tangling. Crowley made an
impatient sound, pushing his hands below his nightshirt to warm skin, before there was a faint pop and the shirt disappeared.
“Oy,” Aziraphale protested. He’d liked that shirt.
Crowley pulled away just far enough to grin.
He was wearing dark blue silk, himself, and it was soft and sleek where it brushed against
Aziraphale’s chest. Thoughtfully, he found the edge of it and the skin underneath. It had a curious, scaly texture, and as he made to stroke upwards, Crowley hissed.
Aziraphale frowned. Now, what was that move he’d used to use back in the day… Crowley’s
eyes widened slightly at whatever expression he saw, but before he had time to react otherwise Aziraphale had deftly flipped him onto his stomach and was perching comfortably on the demon’s thighs. Ha, so much for Crowley’s implications that he’d gone rusty.
“Aziraphale…” Crowley protested, and he recalled with a twinge of guilt he’d meant to be careful not to spook him.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Just wanted to see what I’m doing,” he explained, and Crowley twisted around to glare at him.
“Doing what exactly?” he asked.
“Call it a test? Do tell me if you don’t like it, though,” Aziraphale replied innocently.
Crowley gave him another narrow-eyed look before laying his head on folded arms.
“Fine, do your worst,” he challenged.
“Best, dear,” Aziraphale corrected him primly. He removed the shirt because it was in the way, and then the rest of their clothing as an afterthought. The contact of warm skin against his thighs was very gratifying, he decided in passing.
Crowley’s back, revealed from under the silk, was… intriguing. Smooth and brown over his
shoulder blades, with a smattering of scales at the small of his back, dark and iridescent. Aziraphale brushed his fingers over them carefully, down rather that upwards this time.
“This ok?” he asked.
“Yes, I suppose…” Crowley mumbled.
“Hmm.” careful of the scales this time, Aziraphale returned up, scooting up so he could sink his fingers into Crowley’s black hair and press them into his scalp. He noted with appreciation how that caused the demon to stifle a gasp into the pillow, and then melt against the bed. He really could do with some relaxation, poor dear, Aziraphale thought smugly.
He leaned down to press an affectionate kiss to Crowley’s neck, before stroking over the spot with his hands. Crowley sighed, seemingly without realizing it, and Aziraphale’s mouth curled into a smile. It was, though he’d have never admitted it, slightly devious.
His hand stroked downwards along the demon’s spine, and then pressed gently between his
shoulder blades, the fingers fanned out.
Crowley let out a sound that mostly resembled eep! and then shivered violently, his
breathing speeding up suddenly.
“Wha-“ he asked, voice gone thick. Aziraphale made a circling motion with the hand, causing
Crowley to sink his head into the pillow.
“You see, I happened to notice I was particularly… sensitive in this spot, and was wondering if it was a shared feature,” he explained, into Crowley’s ear. “Seems so… or am I wrong?”
“Yes… I mean no,” Crowley mumbled into the pillow, trailing off into a moan as Aziraphale tried pressing two hands on the inner edge of his shoulder blades and massaging them.
“Very curious,” he commented, feeling almost giddy at the sounds Crowley was making. “I wonder if it’s transference of sorts, to the wings. If so, I wonder how it’d feel directly…”
Crowley went quiet, suddenly, and Aziraphale stopped.
“Want to try?” he asked, and Crowley shivered again, back arching under the angel’s still hands.
“I…” he trailed off, sounding conflicted.
“It’s fine, either way,” Aziraphale assured him.
Wings were sensitive, as one who had them would know. That meant any injury on them was extremely unpleasant, as well.
Crowley wriggled under him, and then got up on his elbows to give Aziraphale a supercilious look, as effective as was possible in the position he was in.
“Look here, angel, you’ve discorporated me in the past, so stop acting like I’m… one of your books or something,” he sniffed, and then there was the specific sound of a pair of large wings being where they were not the moment before. It was a… feathery sound.
Crowley settled down, sighing and folding up and stretching his wings a few times. The room was just large and uncluttered enough that they didn’t hit the wall or the bookshelf on the other side.
Crowley’s wings had a sharp, compact shape, each feather slick and well-ordered. They were also the colour of a sunset, shading from deep iridescent blue to bright magenta, with the outermost tips laced in soft cadmium yellow.
“You had better not mess up the feathers,” Crowley told him haughtily, his nervousness only visible in the way the wings moved, folding and unfolding minutely.
“Oh no… I’ll try to avoid that,” Aziraphale replied, mostly on automatic. The… trust Crowley
was showing was overwhelming him with a warm glowing feeling. In fact, he was literally glowing slightly, but Crowley wasn’t about to mention that.
Aziraphale brushed a reverent hand over the outer feathers, and then moved to the downy part in the middle. He was careful to keep the touch light, at first, and was glad of it when Crowley let out a choked moan at the touch, his wings flapping jerkily and then shuddering.
“Crowley?” Aziraphale asked after a moment, petting the soft feathers, and only received a muzzy hum as answer. “Crowley!?” he repeated, and this time the demon managed a:
“Fine. Very fine. Do it again.”
“How does it feel?” he asked as he slowly and carefully carded his fingers into the feathers, delighting in the full-body shiver it caused, how it made Crowley arch and claw at the pillow.
“Like, like… I don’t know.” Crowley replied dreamily. Then he bit at his lip to hold in a gasp at another stroke through the feathers. His mouth opened, his eyes fluttering shut, inky lashes repeating the movement of his wings, as Aziraphale observed it all raptly.
He was so beautiful, so obviously wrapped up in pleasure, and it made Aziraphale feel fiercely protective. Without the angel really noticing it, his own wings had come out, arching around them, a few stray feathers fluttering away unnoticed.
Crowley keened, low in his throat, and Aziraphale leaned over to kiss the side of his face gently, before Crowley turned towards him, inhumanly flexible, to catch his mouth, hiding whatever words he needed to silence in the kiss. Eventually, he simply wrenched himself up to clutch at Aziraphale, and seemingly almost inadvertedly got a hand in the angel’s feathers, in a hold that was just this side of pulling.
When the sparks faded somewhat, Aziraphale blinked up at Crowley who was giving a look somewhere between concerned and exasperated.
“Hello there,” he said drily, as Aziraphale blinked at him.
“Hello,” Aziraphale replied, and got up slowly. He felt… rejuvenated and relaxed at once.
Crowley was leaning back, his long, lean limbs just a bit too carelessly arranged.
“Well, that wasn’t too bad,” he remarked with studied nonchalance, which didn’t fool Aziraphale one bit.
“I suppose we can keep practicing… no?” he replied softly, studying Crowley from under his lashes, noting how the demon shifted in place and then studied his nails.
“I suppose so. Yes, why not,” he said, and then blinked as Aziraphale was suddenly much closer, hovering over him.
“For instance, there’s a more… human way,” he suggested in a low, throaty voice.
“O-oh?” Crowley stuttered, but managed to raise one eyebrow in an approximation of cool.
“Making an effort, you mean?” his eyes flicked to where Aziraphale was licking his lips. “And what would that be, do you think?” his voice had gone lower as well, almost purring.
“I’m sure we’ll figure something out…” Aziraphale murmured.
And then, perhaps, they might have a talk about certain things. Or not. Some things, perhaps, didn’t need saying.
THE END
*1 Not the sort you get off cheap from a place with a slightly suspicious smell, but rather the sort sold in small boutiques that call their wares “vintage” , play obscure indie music on their speakers and you have to be prepared to pay about double the amount you would at the aforementioned suspiciously-smelling shop. Crowley had managed to snatch that particular sweater right after the woman with blue hair put it on the rack, and right before a man with a carefully cultivated beard and tattoos on his neck managed to grab it. He’d gotten glared at and felt very accomplished.
*2 Or less, if he’d been covering for Aziraphale at the time.
Recipient: Bookshop
Author: stalkerbunny
Pairing: Aziraphale/Crowley
Rating: PG-13 (there is sort of wing kink but it’s not graphic)
Summary: In which Crowley’s suspicions towards gavotte being a slippery slope to
foolish ideas (like having sex) are confirmed and also there are ducks. Though thankfully not at the
same time.
A/N: betaed by taiyou_to_tsuki, on very short notice. Remaining mistakes are all on me.
The bookshop was quiet, that afternoon, the sign at the door safely turned to CLOSED. The only sound was Aziraphale’s voice as he droned on.
Crowley wasn’t really listening, because Aziraphale was talking about that gavotte class he’d found out about on the internet and Crowley found it all a bit terrifying. The things people got up to now they could safely share their most shameful interests and find like-minded people… idly, he wondered which of them would get a recommendation for that, before he remembered. No meddling, not anymore, and no recommendations either. He sank deeper into the old sofa in Aziraphale’s backroom and fiddled gloomily with the cuffs of his sweater. It was second-
hand*1, with multi-coloured ducks on it.
It wasn’t that he missed making people more*2 inclined towards the path of frozen door-to-door salesmen, it was just… he’d been good at what he did, and what else was he going to do? Aziraphale had his shop and seemed to have moved on with little trouble, but one could only put so much time and effort into cultivating plants. The blog he wrote about said plants helped slightly, but he still found himself with too much spare time to… think. Remember things. Things that made sleeping another century or two seem like a good idea.
Whoever heard of demons retiring? They wouldn’t have, because it wasn’t supposed to happen. Fire and brimstone and sulphur ‘till the end of the world and beyond; that was the idea. Only the world had almost ended, and now…
“-and it was actually very pleasant, more so than I expected.” Aziraphale was saying ponderingly.
“Of course, humans claim that all the time, but then they also claim all kinds of other silliness. You might have mentioned they were actually on to something for once.”
“Eh?” Crowley asked, feeling he had missed something important, and took a drink from his
wineglass.
“You weren’t listening, were you?” Aziraphale said accusingly, but then smiled. “Why, I mean
sex!”
Choking on wine is not a particularly pleasant experience, even when you don’t technically need to breathe.
“But what about the whole… brouhaha, with the, what’s their face, Nephilim?” Crowley argued
weakly once he’d recovered somewhat, which prompted Aziraphale to give him a long look.
“Well, I’m hardly planning to have any offspring with Ms. Mckendrick,” he pointed out primly.
“They’ve long since come up with ways around that, you know.”
“Yes, I do,” Crowley said quickly, fearing Aziraphale would specify.
He blamed the gavotte. He’d just known it was a bad idea, just like last time. Dancing was really just a socially acceptable form of foreplay people could do in public, whether those involved realised it or not, Crowley thought darkly.
“I don’t suppose it’ll happen again though,” Aziraphale mused. “Might be just as well, wouldn’t want things to get awkward. Still…”
A silence descended between them.
“You wouldn’t happen to have any… tips,” Aziraphale said slowly, his head tilted in Crowley’s direction.
“Tips?” Crowley repeated in a bland tone, clutching at his (now tragically empty) wineglass like a drowning man clutches at a suitably buoyant piece of timber.
“Well, I’d have expected you’d be something of an expert on this…” he made a vague gesture. “Sex business.”
“I,” Crowley said, and found that was the extent of what he had to say. He tried to take a drink of non-existent wine and then hissed at the glass until it filled up obediently. “No.”
“No?” Aziraphale’s eyebrows, which had been raised hopefully, fell.
“No,” Crowley repeated.
“Hmm,” Aziraphale said.
Crowley couldn’t take it anymore.
“Look, where on earth do you get this idea I’d be some expert on… on that?” he asked, gesturing wildly with the other hand. “Have you thought all this time I go around… seducing humans or whatnot?”
“Well I-“
“I don’t, ok? Not in my job description!” he paused, and then muttered: “Previous job description…” he snorted and then took off his sunglasses to glare at Aziraphale more effectively.
“And it’s not my idea of a fun thing to do with my free time either, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
Aziraphale’s eyebrows had travelled up and down his forehead during Crowley’s rant, but now he was just looking at him with a sort of rueful expression.
“I’m sorry my dear, I shouldn’t have presumed,” he said conciliatorily.
“No, you shouldn’t have,” Crowley huffed, and another silence descended upon them.
“Perhaps we could go to the park?” Aziraphale suggested after a while.
Crowley almost wanted to refuse just on principle, but… he could really do with some boring
normality. Feeding the ducks, that would be just the thing.
*
Too bad he’d forgotten one thing in his strain for normality.
“Angel, it’s November,” Crowley complained and tried to stuff his hands deeper into his sleeves, shivering as another icy gust of wind blew in from the water spreading out not far away from them, the edges of it frozen over with a latticework of ice. A light coating of snow covered the ground and trees around them.
Aziraphale threw a last handful of seed mix to the small group of ducks that had stuck around on the ice waters of the pond, before fastidiously folding up the empty bag and putting it back into his pocket.
“I know, dear,” he replied somewhat exasperatedly, but didn’t move away when Crowley scooted
closer on the bench.
The ducks descended on the seeds, clucking at the two of them accusingly once they’d devoured it all. Then they spotted an elderly pair of men passing by and toddled after them.
Secret agents might not be as abundant a source of sustenance as they’d once been, but the ducks still had the instincts honed by several generations of park fowl. They saw the fur collar and the tartan scarf trailing in the wind and pounced.
The fur collared man shooed at them with his cane, while his companion raised his hat at
Aziraphale and Crowley in an absent manner, before adjusting his collar and hooking his arm with the other man again.
“Really bring you back, doesn’t it, Afanasenkov,” he remarked, chuckling as if at some private joke.
“Oh, do shut up, Smith,” the other could be heard to reply as they walked on with the retinue of ducks determinately trailing after them.
Aziraphale smiled benignly after the two men, and Crowley gave him a suspicious look.
“What?” he asked and Aziraphale shrugged innocently.
“It just transpires that you are paying for our next visit to the Ritz,” he replied smugly. When Crowley kept looking at him uncomprehendingly, Aziraphale made a gesture towards the departing pair.
“We made a bet about those two. I said they’d eventually sort things out between them and you supposed they’d be dead by thirty, remember.”
Crowley shifted closer still to elbow him, and Aziraphale wrapped an arm around his shoulder, alleviating the cold somewhat. It occurred to him that there was no reason to stay in the freezing park, but maybe it wasn’t that cold after all…
“Well, it did seem most likely, didn’t it,” he muttered.
Aziraphale made a non-committal hum.
“Do you ever wonder about it?”
“Eh?”
“I mean, the way things were, all those countries arming themselves, mutually reassured
destruction, all of that… was it just because they were nudged, or…”
Aziraphale was giving him a faintly worried look.
“I don’t know,” he said, in a tone that meant I don’t think we’re meant to know.
They could be very dangerous things, questions, Crowley thought and shivered. Aziraphale’s arm tightened around him, and for a long moment neither of them said anything.
Then Crowley brushed at his chin thoughtfully.
“No Crowley,” Aziraphale said strictly without even looking at him. “No beards. It wouldn’t suit you.”
“You can’t know that!”
“Yes I can.”
*
Aziraphale shook his head as he came out of the kitchen with his second cup of cocoa and found Crowley curled up on the sofa. He was snoring, a soft hissing sound, and Aziraphale took a drink to hide his smile on reflex, before stepping forwards on quiet feet to take the old blanket on the sofa and lay it over the sleeping demon.
In the past, he’d have woken him up and told him to go home, but lately…
He sat down in the space left, nudging Crowley’s feet slightly. He was at least a very compact sleeper, Aziraphale thought in passing, before returning to the previous thread of thought.
It was the not-end-of-the-world, he mused. It had changed things. He glanced at Crowley, who seemed to have curled up even more into the blanket over him, only half of his face visible over it.
He wasn’t even wearing his sunglasses, and his face looked naked without them, vulnerable.
Aziraphale sighed.
No immediate change, nothing dramatic. Well, apart from the sweaters, he supposed, those had
been a bit of a shock, but then fashion could be like that and Crowley had never failed to follow the latest trends. But there was something… lost, about the demon. Something that made it harder to send him away at the end of the night, to that impersonal apartment. He’d never been very good at settling, Crowley, always fluttering about with his projects.
“Crowley?”
Aziraphale nudged one foot that had peeked out from under the edge of the blanket to press into his thigh, and it immediately disappeared, accompanied by a displeased, sleepy hiss.
“Crowley, wake up,” he repeated, not unkindly, but determined.
Crowley pulled down the blanket and glowered at him.
“What?” he asked, sitting up and yawning, slightly too wide to be human. Then he blinked, his pupils shrinking at the light into narrow slits.
“I do have a bed as well, you know,” Aziraphale said, and Crowley frowned, before he yawned again and then shrugged.
“It’s not dusty, is it?” he asked suspiciously, as he followed Aziraphale up the stairs.
“Of course not,” he replied indignantly, and then sent a thought ahead to disappear any dust on said bed, since he couldn’t actually remember when he’d last used it.
When they stepped into the small bedroom upstairs, the bed and its tartan cover were pristine.
Crowley still stopped in the doorway and narrowed his eyes at it suspiciously.
“Wait, you didn’t do anything with that human here, did you?” he asked Aziraphale, who popped his head out of the wardrobe, already wearing his pyjama shirt.
“Oh no, that was at her house,” he assured the demon, who made a grudging sound and started to warily approach the bed while Aziraphale shook his head and continued changing.
When he got back, Crowley was already under the covers, only the top of his head visible.
Aziraphale joined him, lying on his back with his hands folded on his chest.
“Your bed’s cold,” Crowley muttered and shifted closer to him, until his back was pressed against Aziraphale’s side. He patted him on the side, over the covers.
“It’ll warm up soon,” Aziraphale assured him.
“They used to have things to warm beds with…” Crowley remarked idly.
“Oh?” said Aziraphale who had been even less in the habit of sleeping back in the day.
“Of course the rooms were colder too,” Crowley admitted.
Then, after another silence, he suddenly asked:
“Why did you do it, anyway?”
“Do what?” Aziraphale asked, though he had some idea.
“The… the sex,” Crowley asked, his voice muffled slightly by the covers still over his face.
“Ah,” Aziraphale said. “Well. I suppose I was… curious.”
Crowley’s head appeared out of the covers, one eyebrow raised disbelievingly.
“For how long?”
Aziraphale didn’t entirely appreciate his tone.
“It hardly seemed worth the risk before, but I had occasionally wondered… and then there was an opportunity to see for myself, it seemed as if it’d be no harm,” he explained defensively.
“Huh,” Crowley said quietly, not meeting his eyes.
“You really never…?”
Crowley glanced at him, shaking his head. There was something shuttered about his face.
“Hardly,” he said.
Aziraphale turned to look at the roof, smiling ruefully.
“Fair enough,” he said softly, more to himself than Crowley.
He didn’t see the slight widening of Crowley’s eyes as he looked at him.
“You… you fancy me!” he accused.
“No!” Aziraphale lied, and felt his face reddening treacherously.
“Ha! Do too!” Crowley crowed victoriously, and then his mouth snapped shut and he just stared at Aziraphale with a strange, tense expression that he couldn’t really decipher.
“Well, maybe… maybe I did. Do. But that’s…” he shrugged. “Hardly very important, is it? Not if it’s not something you want.”
Crowley was looking at him from below his lashes, and then he licked his lips. Slowly, he brought an arm forward, laying it on Aziraphale’s chest, and then leaned up, hesitating for a moment before kissing him on the lips. His lips were dry and warm; his nose a cooler point of contact, and Aziraphale laid still, until Crowley leaned back, frowning. Aziraphale blinked at him.
“I think you’re supposed to do something,” he said, and Aziraphale couldn’t help it, the nervous energy he’d been holding back dissolved into helpless laughter.
“Stop that,” Crowley told him, and when he didn’t, he grabbed the angel and kissed him deeply instead, using his tongue to derail the laughter and turning it into a startled moan. He only stopped once they’d long run out of air and he’d almost forgotten why he’d started.
Aziraphale made a soft, lazy sound as Crowley pulled away. He felt that way, lazy and at the same time bright, tingling all over. He breathed, in and out, and smiled. It was a bit like being drunk, this feeling. Less of a surprise, this time, and also more comfortable, with someone he already knew.
Crowley laid a finger on his lips, as if to warn him not to start laughing again, which only made it worse. He laughed, but it was softer this time, darker. Crowley still frowned.
“I’m not mocking you,” Aziraphale told him, his voice gone husky; Crowley’s eyes widened and he shuddered, as if that voice was touching him.
“Right,” he said, and then tilted his head, almost birdlike. Waiting.
Aziraphale pulled him down again, into another kiss, their bodies tangling. Crowley made an
impatient sound, pushing his hands below his nightshirt to warm skin, before there was a faint pop and the shirt disappeared.
“Oy,” Aziraphale protested. He’d liked that shirt.
Crowley pulled away just far enough to grin.
He was wearing dark blue silk, himself, and it was soft and sleek where it brushed against
Aziraphale’s chest. Thoughtfully, he found the edge of it and the skin underneath. It had a curious, scaly texture, and as he made to stroke upwards, Crowley hissed.
Aziraphale frowned. Now, what was that move he’d used to use back in the day… Crowley’s
eyes widened slightly at whatever expression he saw, but before he had time to react otherwise Aziraphale had deftly flipped him onto his stomach and was perching comfortably on the demon’s thighs. Ha, so much for Crowley’s implications that he’d gone rusty.
“Aziraphale…” Crowley protested, and he recalled with a twinge of guilt he’d meant to be careful not to spook him.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Just wanted to see what I’m doing,” he explained, and Crowley twisted around to glare at him.
“Doing what exactly?” he asked.
“Call it a test? Do tell me if you don’t like it, though,” Aziraphale replied innocently.
Crowley gave him another narrow-eyed look before laying his head on folded arms.
“Fine, do your worst,” he challenged.
“Best, dear,” Aziraphale corrected him primly. He removed the shirt because it was in the way, and then the rest of their clothing as an afterthought. The contact of warm skin against his thighs was very gratifying, he decided in passing.
Crowley’s back, revealed from under the silk, was… intriguing. Smooth and brown over his
shoulder blades, with a smattering of scales at the small of his back, dark and iridescent. Aziraphale brushed his fingers over them carefully, down rather that upwards this time.
“This ok?” he asked.
“Yes, I suppose…” Crowley mumbled.
“Hmm.” careful of the scales this time, Aziraphale returned up, scooting up so he could sink his fingers into Crowley’s black hair and press them into his scalp. He noted with appreciation how that caused the demon to stifle a gasp into the pillow, and then melt against the bed. He really could do with some relaxation, poor dear, Aziraphale thought smugly.
He leaned down to press an affectionate kiss to Crowley’s neck, before stroking over the spot with his hands. Crowley sighed, seemingly without realizing it, and Aziraphale’s mouth curled into a smile. It was, though he’d have never admitted it, slightly devious.
His hand stroked downwards along the demon’s spine, and then pressed gently between his
shoulder blades, the fingers fanned out.
Crowley let out a sound that mostly resembled eep! and then shivered violently, his
breathing speeding up suddenly.
“Wha-“ he asked, voice gone thick. Aziraphale made a circling motion with the hand, causing
Crowley to sink his head into the pillow.
“You see, I happened to notice I was particularly… sensitive in this spot, and was wondering if it was a shared feature,” he explained, into Crowley’s ear. “Seems so… or am I wrong?”
“Yes… I mean no,” Crowley mumbled into the pillow, trailing off into a moan as Aziraphale tried pressing two hands on the inner edge of his shoulder blades and massaging them.
“Very curious,” he commented, feeling almost giddy at the sounds Crowley was making. “I wonder if it’s transference of sorts, to the wings. If so, I wonder how it’d feel directly…”
Crowley went quiet, suddenly, and Aziraphale stopped.
“Want to try?” he asked, and Crowley shivered again, back arching under the angel’s still hands.
“I…” he trailed off, sounding conflicted.
“It’s fine, either way,” Aziraphale assured him.
Wings were sensitive, as one who had them would know. That meant any injury on them was extremely unpleasant, as well.
Crowley wriggled under him, and then got up on his elbows to give Aziraphale a supercilious look, as effective as was possible in the position he was in.
“Look here, angel, you’ve discorporated me in the past, so stop acting like I’m… one of your books or something,” he sniffed, and then there was the specific sound of a pair of large wings being where they were not the moment before. It was a… feathery sound.
Crowley settled down, sighing and folding up and stretching his wings a few times. The room was just large and uncluttered enough that they didn’t hit the wall or the bookshelf on the other side.
Crowley’s wings had a sharp, compact shape, each feather slick and well-ordered. They were also the colour of a sunset, shading from deep iridescent blue to bright magenta, with the outermost tips laced in soft cadmium yellow.
“You had better not mess up the feathers,” Crowley told him haughtily, his nervousness only visible in the way the wings moved, folding and unfolding minutely.
“Oh no… I’ll try to avoid that,” Aziraphale replied, mostly on automatic. The… trust Crowley
was showing was overwhelming him with a warm glowing feeling. In fact, he was literally glowing slightly, but Crowley wasn’t about to mention that.
Aziraphale brushed a reverent hand over the outer feathers, and then moved to the downy part in the middle. He was careful to keep the touch light, at first, and was glad of it when Crowley let out a choked moan at the touch, his wings flapping jerkily and then shuddering.
“Crowley?” Aziraphale asked after a moment, petting the soft feathers, and only received a muzzy hum as answer. “Crowley!?” he repeated, and this time the demon managed a:
“Fine. Very fine. Do it again.”
“How does it feel?” he asked as he slowly and carefully carded his fingers into the feathers, delighting in the full-body shiver it caused, how it made Crowley arch and claw at the pillow.
“Like, like… I don’t know.” Crowley replied dreamily. Then he bit at his lip to hold in a gasp at another stroke through the feathers. His mouth opened, his eyes fluttering shut, inky lashes repeating the movement of his wings, as Aziraphale observed it all raptly.
He was so beautiful, so obviously wrapped up in pleasure, and it made Aziraphale feel fiercely protective. Without the angel really noticing it, his own wings had come out, arching around them, a few stray feathers fluttering away unnoticed.
Crowley keened, low in his throat, and Aziraphale leaned over to kiss the side of his face gently, before Crowley turned towards him, inhumanly flexible, to catch his mouth, hiding whatever words he needed to silence in the kiss. Eventually, he simply wrenched himself up to clutch at Aziraphale, and seemingly almost inadvertedly got a hand in the angel’s feathers, in a hold that was just this side of pulling.
When the sparks faded somewhat, Aziraphale blinked up at Crowley who was giving a look somewhere between concerned and exasperated.
“Hello there,” he said drily, as Aziraphale blinked at him.
“Hello,” Aziraphale replied, and got up slowly. He felt… rejuvenated and relaxed at once.
Crowley was leaning back, his long, lean limbs just a bit too carelessly arranged.
“Well, that wasn’t too bad,” he remarked with studied nonchalance, which didn’t fool Aziraphale one bit.
“I suppose we can keep practicing… no?” he replied softly, studying Crowley from under his lashes, noting how the demon shifted in place and then studied his nails.
“I suppose so. Yes, why not,” he said, and then blinked as Aziraphale was suddenly much closer, hovering over him.
“For instance, there’s a more… human way,” he suggested in a low, throaty voice.
“O-oh?” Crowley stuttered, but managed to raise one eyebrow in an approximation of cool.
“Making an effort, you mean?” his eyes flicked to where Aziraphale was licking his lips. “And what would that be, do you think?” his voice had gone lower as well, almost purring.
“I’m sure we’ll figure something out…” Aziraphale murmured.
And then, perhaps, they might have a talk about certain things. Or not. Some things, perhaps, didn’t need saying.
THE END
*1 Not the sort you get off cheap from a place with a slightly suspicious smell, but rather the sort sold in small boutiques that call their wares “vintage” , play obscure indie music on their speakers and you have to be prepared to pay about double the amount you would at the aforementioned suspiciously-smelling shop. Crowley had managed to snatch that particular sweater right after the woman with blue hair put it on the rack, and right before a man with a carefully cultivated beard and tattoos on his neck managed to grab it. He’d gotten glared at and felt very accomplished.
*2 Or less, if he’d been covering for Aziraphale at the time.