Happy Holidays, Danny_Sama!
Title: Strange Meeting
Author: Secret!
Recipient: danny_sama
Rating: Adult. Very.
Characters/Pairings: Aziraphale/Crowley
Summary: Crowley slept through most of the nineteenth century. By 1916, he's beginning to regret his decision to wake up.
Warnings: War and sex. But not that War.
There was blood on his wings again, and it didn't belong to him.
One would think, after so long in the trenches, that he would cease to notice it--just a bit more grime, that's all. But the tacky feel of drying blood was unignorable, even for one long inured to the other muck of battle.
Crowley slipped away to a stream that he had found in a corner of no-man's land, half-hidden behind a stand of stripped and blackened trees. The water was filthy, of course, choked with soot and ash and Someone-only-knew what else, but it was his only option. He hadn't been up to muddling with the fabric of reality for months. He dipped a rag in the muddy water, took a deep breath, and let his wings manifest.
The soldier had been shot over Crowley's shoulder. He hadn't made a sound as he fell; only the warm splash of blood had marked his passing. And Death, of course, but he was everywhere these days, and far too busy for conversation. The dead soldier had been very young, Crowley remembered, and had always been reading during the calm between barrages.
Of course that reminded him of--well. It was no use thinking of him. Crowley hadn't seen him since... It had definitely been after the Protestant Revolution. Oh, he had enjoyed taunting the angel about that. And he'd slept through nearly everything last century, so it couldn't have been any later than the 1790s when they had last met.
There was no telling whether they ever would again.
Crowley dipped the rag in the water again and twisted around, remembering a time when this would have been easier, when his body had been sleek and supple and--
--well, he hadn't had wings, then, had he? So the point was rather moot.
The sound of the artillery faded away to the north as he scrubbed, but finally he had to give it up as a bad job. The blood was dried now, and he simply couldn't reach it all. There was nothing more he could do to clean his wings, short of jumping in the river itself, and that was not a prospect to which he was quite ready to commit himself.
There was a sound behind him, the crunch of a boot on a scorched twig.
"Oh," said a voice, very softly.
Crowley turned, and the first thing he saw was the uniform, mud-spattered khaki, and the rifle slung over his back. His own rifle was--where? Where had he put it? Why had he put it down, what could he have been thinking? He scrambled back along the bank, forgetting even to hide his wings as he ducked away from the shot that would surely discorporate him. But it never came.
"Crawl--er, Crowley, is that you?"
Speak of the Dev--angel. The fear and panic faded as abruptly as they had begun, and Crowley looked up to see the English soldier's face. Round, it was, and smooth--this body was still very young, then, and unfamiliar to Crowley. He must have been discorporated again since the last time they'd met; Crowley pretended that the thought of it didn't trouble him. "Aziraphale."
The angel's smile was gentle. "I might have known."
Might have known what? That Crowley would wear the grey uniform of a German soldier? That he would be sitting beside a muddy river, washing blood from his wings, too distracted to notice the enemy's approach?
"What happened?"
Crowley narrowed his eyes and said nothing. He missed the little round spectacles he'd worn at the start of the war, with blue lenses to hide the yellow of his eyes. They'd been broken in a skirmish months ago--but whenever anyone asked about the strange colour of his eyes, he simply blamed it on the chlorine gas. Nobody questioned that.
"Is that your blood?" Aziraphale asked, and there was a sharp note of worry in his voice.
"No," Crowley said, infinitely tired. "It never is." He dipped the rag in the river again and stretched out one wing to scrub at it.
Aziraphale moved forward, kneeling in the dirt behind him. "Let me?" he asked, and he plucked the rag from Crowley's unresisting hand.
Crowley gave him a withering glare. "You might have noticed that we are on different sides."
Aziraphale brushed his palm gently over the tip of Crowley's left wing, and began to dab, very gently, at the blood there. "Do you think that matters?" he asked. "And anyway, our sides aren't so different."
He started and craned his neck to glare at Aziraphale. "Heaven and Hell, not so different?"
Aziraphale gave him a sheepish smile. "I had thought you meant Germany and England."
That would be just like Aziraphale, to forget the basic differences in their natures in favour of the trappings of human politics. Crowley wondered how an angel had got mixed up in the war at all; surely Aziraphale ought to be back in England, curled up within the stone walls of the Bodleian Library. Safe.
There was a sudden, sharp tug at one of his feathers. "Ouch," Crowley said, his wings jerking against Aziraphale's gentle grip. "That hurt."
"I'm sorry. Hold still, it's nearly done." There was one last tug, a sweep of cloth. "There," Aziraphale said. He set the rag aside.
Crowley stretched his wings, relishing the way the feathers no longer stuck to one another. He ought to hide them again, now, and go back to his company.
But he turned to Aziraphale, instead. "Have you seen Them?"
"All but Famine," Aziraphale said. "I know what you're thinking. But it isn't time, yet."
Yes, War, Pestilence, and Death--they had more than enough to keep them busy. "How can you be sure?" Crowley argued. "Isn't that the point, the not-knowing? The ineffability?" He let the word glide off his tongue, remembering how Aziraphale had stumbled over it, drunk on bad ale after the Globe had burned. (It had taken most of the evening and half a barrel of ale to convince Aziraphale of Crowley's innocence in the whole affair; Downstairs still thought he'd been responsible for it.)
"We would know if it were time. Your side as well as mine. And I should think," he added loftily, "that we would be told. If only to...prepare ourselves."
"Why should we have to be told?" Crowley argued. "Look around you, angel. Is this not apocalypse enough for you?"
Aziraphale was silent for a moment, and Crowley realized that he really was looking around him. The landscape was alien and unnatural, the ground churned to mud, the trees charred and stripped of leaves and branches. A coil of barbed wire had fetched up against the bank of the river, rusted and forgotten. The haze of smoke to the north suggested that the battle had moved on--but it had not ended. Perhaps it never would.
"Crowley..."
He turned away. He was not going to be pitied, least of all by some meddlesome angel who had spent the past nine centuries intent on somehow uncorrupting him.
"Crowley, please."
He gave in, as he always knew he would, and looked up. But it wasn't pity that he saw in Aziraphale's eyes. (They were blue. They were almost always blue; Crowley wondered if angels got to choose that sort of thing when they were recorporated.)
He saw the same weariness, the same shell-shocked fear that he knew he would see in his own eyes, if he had the luxury of a mirror. The recognition, the understanding went too deep for words, and so Crowley did the only thing left to him: He leaned forward, and he kissed Aziraphale.
The angel's response was perfectly in-character--a prim gasp, a stiffening spine. But then, against all expectation and the book of Leviticus, he parted his lips, one hand rising to rest against the back of Crowley's neck.
Aziraphale tasted of tea, though Crowley couldn't imagine such a civilised thing existing out here in the trenches. His lips were chapped but warm, and his fingers slid gently through the short dark hair at the nape of Crowley's neck.
Somehow the blanket in Crowley's pack had manoeuvred itself beneath them, so that when Aziraphale lay back, pulling Crowley with him, they were lying on clean, dry wool instead of cold mud.
He stripped Aziraphale of his uniform carefully, fumbling just a bit with the buckles and buttons in his haste. He faltered when he saw a bandage tied tight around Aziraphale's right arm.
"Bit of a near thing," Aziraphale said lightly. "Only a graze."
"You should take better care of yourself, angel," Crowley chided. "You know how much paperwork it takes to get a new body these days."
Aziraphale laughed, but the sound was faint and hollow. "If only the others had that luxury."
Crowley thought of the soldier whose blood had stained his wings, and he sighed. "If only."
But Aziraphale's hands drew him back to the moment, working deftly at the buttons of his uniform, pushing layers of wool and cotton aside to trace teasing patterns over Crowley's skin.
Crowley kissed Aziraphale again. "Let me see them," he said, the words too soft to be a demand. "Please."
Aziraphale nodded and closed his eyes, and his wings spread wide and white behind him.
"Beautiful," Crowley murmured, just to see the flush on Aziraphale's cheeks. He stroked his hands along the pure white curve of the wings, smoothing feathers ruffled by too long in concealment. The wings fluttered gently, and Aziraphale arched up against him. Crowley grinned and repeated the motion, watching Aziraphale shiver beneath him.
Neither carried anything that might be used to ease their way, but there were yet other things that might be done. Crowley pressed his lips once more to Aziraphale's cheek, then slipped downwards, his spine curving gracefully as he settled himself.
Crowley was aware that he was rather skilled with his tongue--indeed, he had been told so by a great many breathless, sated humans over the centuries. But he had never been grateful for the talent until now. He wetted his lips and took the head of Aziraphale's prick into his mouth. The angel moaned something almost profane, and his hips rose, seeking more contact.
Vaguely, Crowley acknowledged to himself that Aziraphale had been endowed with a pleasantly sized manhood--angelhood? The very idea of the word made Crowley chuckle and nearly choke, but Aziraphale gasped at the vibrations. "Oh, do that again--"
Crowley complied, humming softly and without tune, as Aziraphale's breathing grew quick and rough. "Oh. Oh, please, Crowley--"
He felt the flutter of wings against his skin, and Aziraphale's prick pulsed heavily against his tongue, filling his mouth with a bitter-salt taste. Crowley's thumb stroked the smooth skin of Aziraphale's hip, and he swallowed, slowly and evenly, until he had taken it all.
He crawled back up to lie beside Aziraphale, ignoring his own body's desperate state in favour of taking in the sight that lay before him. Mussed, flushed, and entirely nude, Aziraphale looked like temptation itself, and Crowley wanted to remember the sight for a long, long time.
Eventually, Aziraphale blinked and focused again. He rolled onto his side to look at Crowley--to look at all of him, his eyes travelling down Crowley's body without shame or hesitation. He traced the tip of Crowley's prick with one gentle finger.
"Crowley--my dear, let me?"
He nodded, and Aziraphale pressed a swift kiss to his lips before bending down.
However angelic a being Aziraphale might have been, Crowley could now attest that his mouth was downright wicked. He licked and sucked at the head of Crowley's prick, one hand stroking gently along the base of the shaft. Crowley had been close enough to begin with, and the flickering of Aziraphale's tongue against the tender spot beneath the head drove him over the edge, gasping.
"Yesss..."
When he opened his eyes again, Aziraphale was leaning up on one elbow, watching him with a ridiculously sentimental expression on his face. Crowley rolled his eyes and tried to conjure up the proper disdain for such affection. He failed completely, and he turned away to gather up his clothes and dress again.
He concealed his wings with an effort of will. He turned around, now every inch the proper German soldier, and found that Aziraphale had dressed as well, in the khaki that marked him out as an enemy. But after what they had done--could they truly be enemies any longer? Were they, as Aziraphale had said before, not so different after all?
Aziraphale smiled and leaned in to kiss him, one last time. "Do take care of yourself," he said. "I shall be cross if you get yourself discorporated before the war is over."
"And you," Crowley replied, no longer surprised to find that he meant it. "Be careful, angel."
Aziraphale let his fingers trail along Crowley's cheek one last time, then rested his palm lightly over Crowley's heart. Then he turned away, his wings hidden once more, and disappeared over the ridge to the west.
Crowley sighed and picked up his pack, ready to return to his own side. As he shifted, something poked awkwardly at his chest. He reached up to unbutton the pocket of his coat, and withdrew the offending object.
Lying in his hand was a pair of round silver-rimmed spectacles, the lenses tinted a pale, perfect blue. He looked up in the direction that Aziraphale had vanished, but there was nothing to be seen on the horizon.
Crowley put the glasses on, and--in spite of everything--he smiled.
Happy Holidays, danny_sama, from your Secret Author!
Author: Secret!
Recipient: danny_sama
Rating: Adult. Very.
Characters/Pairings: Aziraphale/Crowley
Summary: Crowley slept through most of the nineteenth century. By 1916, he's beginning to regret his decision to wake up.
Warnings: War and sex. But not that War.
There was blood on his wings again, and it didn't belong to him.
One would think, after so long in the trenches, that he would cease to notice it--just a bit more grime, that's all. But the tacky feel of drying blood was unignorable, even for one long inured to the other muck of battle.
Crowley slipped away to a stream that he had found in a corner of no-man's land, half-hidden behind a stand of stripped and blackened trees. The water was filthy, of course, choked with soot and ash and Someone-only-knew what else, but it was his only option. He hadn't been up to muddling with the fabric of reality for months. He dipped a rag in the muddy water, took a deep breath, and let his wings manifest.
The soldier had been shot over Crowley's shoulder. He hadn't made a sound as he fell; only the warm splash of blood had marked his passing. And Death, of course, but he was everywhere these days, and far too busy for conversation. The dead soldier had been very young, Crowley remembered, and had always been reading during the calm between barrages.
Of course that reminded him of--well. It was no use thinking of him. Crowley hadn't seen him since... It had definitely been after the Protestant Revolution. Oh, he had enjoyed taunting the angel about that. And he'd slept through nearly everything last century, so it couldn't have been any later than the 1790s when they had last met.
There was no telling whether they ever would again.
Crowley dipped the rag in the water again and twisted around, remembering a time when this would have been easier, when his body had been sleek and supple and--
--well, he hadn't had wings, then, had he? So the point was rather moot.
The sound of the artillery faded away to the north as he scrubbed, but finally he had to give it up as a bad job. The blood was dried now, and he simply couldn't reach it all. There was nothing more he could do to clean his wings, short of jumping in the river itself, and that was not a prospect to which he was quite ready to commit himself.
There was a sound behind him, the crunch of a boot on a scorched twig.
"Oh," said a voice, very softly.
Crowley turned, and the first thing he saw was the uniform, mud-spattered khaki, and the rifle slung over his back. His own rifle was--where? Where had he put it? Why had he put it down, what could he have been thinking? He scrambled back along the bank, forgetting even to hide his wings as he ducked away from the shot that would surely discorporate him. But it never came.
"Crawl--er, Crowley, is that you?"
Speak of the Dev--angel. The fear and panic faded as abruptly as they had begun, and Crowley looked up to see the English soldier's face. Round, it was, and smooth--this body was still very young, then, and unfamiliar to Crowley. He must have been discorporated again since the last time they'd met; Crowley pretended that the thought of it didn't trouble him. "Aziraphale."
The angel's smile was gentle. "I might have known."
Might have known what? That Crowley would wear the grey uniform of a German soldier? That he would be sitting beside a muddy river, washing blood from his wings, too distracted to notice the enemy's approach?
"What happened?"
Crowley narrowed his eyes and said nothing. He missed the little round spectacles he'd worn at the start of the war, with blue lenses to hide the yellow of his eyes. They'd been broken in a skirmish months ago--but whenever anyone asked about the strange colour of his eyes, he simply blamed it on the chlorine gas. Nobody questioned that.
"Is that your blood?" Aziraphale asked, and there was a sharp note of worry in his voice.
"No," Crowley said, infinitely tired. "It never is." He dipped the rag in the river again and stretched out one wing to scrub at it.
Aziraphale moved forward, kneeling in the dirt behind him. "Let me?" he asked, and he plucked the rag from Crowley's unresisting hand.
Crowley gave him a withering glare. "You might have noticed that we are on different sides."
Aziraphale brushed his palm gently over the tip of Crowley's left wing, and began to dab, very gently, at the blood there. "Do you think that matters?" he asked. "And anyway, our sides aren't so different."
He started and craned his neck to glare at Aziraphale. "Heaven and Hell, not so different?"
Aziraphale gave him a sheepish smile. "I had thought you meant Germany and England."
That would be just like Aziraphale, to forget the basic differences in their natures in favour of the trappings of human politics. Crowley wondered how an angel had got mixed up in the war at all; surely Aziraphale ought to be back in England, curled up within the stone walls of the Bodleian Library. Safe.
There was a sudden, sharp tug at one of his feathers. "Ouch," Crowley said, his wings jerking against Aziraphale's gentle grip. "That hurt."
"I'm sorry. Hold still, it's nearly done." There was one last tug, a sweep of cloth. "There," Aziraphale said. He set the rag aside.
Crowley stretched his wings, relishing the way the feathers no longer stuck to one another. He ought to hide them again, now, and go back to his company.
But he turned to Aziraphale, instead. "Have you seen Them?"
"All but Famine," Aziraphale said. "I know what you're thinking. But it isn't time, yet."
Yes, War, Pestilence, and Death--they had more than enough to keep them busy. "How can you be sure?" Crowley argued. "Isn't that the point, the not-knowing? The ineffability?" He let the word glide off his tongue, remembering how Aziraphale had stumbled over it, drunk on bad ale after the Globe had burned. (It had taken most of the evening and half a barrel of ale to convince Aziraphale of Crowley's innocence in the whole affair; Downstairs still thought he'd been responsible for it.)
"We would know if it were time. Your side as well as mine. And I should think," he added loftily, "that we would be told. If only to...prepare ourselves."
"Why should we have to be told?" Crowley argued. "Look around you, angel. Is this not apocalypse enough for you?"
Aziraphale was silent for a moment, and Crowley realized that he really was looking around him. The landscape was alien and unnatural, the ground churned to mud, the trees charred and stripped of leaves and branches. A coil of barbed wire had fetched up against the bank of the river, rusted and forgotten. The haze of smoke to the north suggested that the battle had moved on--but it had not ended. Perhaps it never would.
"Crowley..."
He turned away. He was not going to be pitied, least of all by some meddlesome angel who had spent the past nine centuries intent on somehow uncorrupting him.
"Crowley, please."
He gave in, as he always knew he would, and looked up. But it wasn't pity that he saw in Aziraphale's eyes. (They were blue. They were almost always blue; Crowley wondered if angels got to choose that sort of thing when they were recorporated.)
He saw the same weariness, the same shell-shocked fear that he knew he would see in his own eyes, if he had the luxury of a mirror. The recognition, the understanding went too deep for words, and so Crowley did the only thing left to him: He leaned forward, and he kissed Aziraphale.
The angel's response was perfectly in-character--a prim gasp, a stiffening spine. But then, against all expectation and the book of Leviticus, he parted his lips, one hand rising to rest against the back of Crowley's neck.
Aziraphale tasted of tea, though Crowley couldn't imagine such a civilised thing existing out here in the trenches. His lips were chapped but warm, and his fingers slid gently through the short dark hair at the nape of Crowley's neck.
Somehow the blanket in Crowley's pack had manoeuvred itself beneath them, so that when Aziraphale lay back, pulling Crowley with him, they were lying on clean, dry wool instead of cold mud.
He stripped Aziraphale of his uniform carefully, fumbling just a bit with the buckles and buttons in his haste. He faltered when he saw a bandage tied tight around Aziraphale's right arm.
"Bit of a near thing," Aziraphale said lightly. "Only a graze."
"You should take better care of yourself, angel," Crowley chided. "You know how much paperwork it takes to get a new body these days."
Aziraphale laughed, but the sound was faint and hollow. "If only the others had that luxury."
Crowley thought of the soldier whose blood had stained his wings, and he sighed. "If only."
But Aziraphale's hands drew him back to the moment, working deftly at the buttons of his uniform, pushing layers of wool and cotton aside to trace teasing patterns over Crowley's skin.
Crowley kissed Aziraphale again. "Let me see them," he said, the words too soft to be a demand. "Please."
Aziraphale nodded and closed his eyes, and his wings spread wide and white behind him.
"Beautiful," Crowley murmured, just to see the flush on Aziraphale's cheeks. He stroked his hands along the pure white curve of the wings, smoothing feathers ruffled by too long in concealment. The wings fluttered gently, and Aziraphale arched up against him. Crowley grinned and repeated the motion, watching Aziraphale shiver beneath him.
Neither carried anything that might be used to ease their way, but there were yet other things that might be done. Crowley pressed his lips once more to Aziraphale's cheek, then slipped downwards, his spine curving gracefully as he settled himself.
Crowley was aware that he was rather skilled with his tongue--indeed, he had been told so by a great many breathless, sated humans over the centuries. But he had never been grateful for the talent until now. He wetted his lips and took the head of Aziraphale's prick into his mouth. The angel moaned something almost profane, and his hips rose, seeking more contact.
Vaguely, Crowley acknowledged to himself that Aziraphale had been endowed with a pleasantly sized manhood--angelhood? The very idea of the word made Crowley chuckle and nearly choke, but Aziraphale gasped at the vibrations. "Oh, do that again--"
Crowley complied, humming softly and without tune, as Aziraphale's breathing grew quick and rough. "Oh. Oh, please, Crowley--"
He felt the flutter of wings against his skin, and Aziraphale's prick pulsed heavily against his tongue, filling his mouth with a bitter-salt taste. Crowley's thumb stroked the smooth skin of Aziraphale's hip, and he swallowed, slowly and evenly, until he had taken it all.
He crawled back up to lie beside Aziraphale, ignoring his own body's desperate state in favour of taking in the sight that lay before him. Mussed, flushed, and entirely nude, Aziraphale looked like temptation itself, and Crowley wanted to remember the sight for a long, long time.
Eventually, Aziraphale blinked and focused again. He rolled onto his side to look at Crowley--to look at all of him, his eyes travelling down Crowley's body without shame or hesitation. He traced the tip of Crowley's prick with one gentle finger.
"Crowley--my dear, let me?"
He nodded, and Aziraphale pressed a swift kiss to his lips before bending down.
However angelic a being Aziraphale might have been, Crowley could now attest that his mouth was downright wicked. He licked and sucked at the head of Crowley's prick, one hand stroking gently along the base of the shaft. Crowley had been close enough to begin with, and the flickering of Aziraphale's tongue against the tender spot beneath the head drove him over the edge, gasping.
"Yesss..."
When he opened his eyes again, Aziraphale was leaning up on one elbow, watching him with a ridiculously sentimental expression on his face. Crowley rolled his eyes and tried to conjure up the proper disdain for such affection. He failed completely, and he turned away to gather up his clothes and dress again.
He concealed his wings with an effort of will. He turned around, now every inch the proper German soldier, and found that Aziraphale had dressed as well, in the khaki that marked him out as an enemy. But after what they had done--could they truly be enemies any longer? Were they, as Aziraphale had said before, not so different after all?
Aziraphale smiled and leaned in to kiss him, one last time. "Do take care of yourself," he said. "I shall be cross if you get yourself discorporated before the war is over."
"And you," Crowley replied, no longer surprised to find that he meant it. "Be careful, angel."
Aziraphale let his fingers trail along Crowley's cheek one last time, then rested his palm lightly over Crowley's heart. Then he turned away, his wings hidden once more, and disappeared over the ridge to the west.
Crowley sighed and picked up his pack, ready to return to his own side. As he shifted, something poked awkwardly at his chest. He reached up to unbutton the pocket of his coat, and withdrew the offending object.
Lying in his hand was a pair of round silver-rimmed spectacles, the lenses tinted a pale, perfect blue. He looked up in the direction that Aziraphale had vanished, but there was nothing to be seen on the horizon.
Crowley put the glasses on, and--in spite of everything--he smiled.
Happy Holidays, danny_sama, from your Secret Author!