Everywhere he taught men the culture of the vine...
Number two of the fic request responses.
fickle_goddess said:
"He would not sleep with me, so I slept with him."
Summary/plotbunny: Angel feathers make a beautiful stuffing for a feather quilt, and angelic skin is softer than any silk bedspreads will ever be. Crowley's insane and love is a disease of the mind, not the heart. He's also redecorated his bedroom, and this time, the plants are the least of his worries.
I used this more as a launching-point than an outline, so it probably isn't exactly what you were thinking, but there are copious amounts of alcohol involved, which I think tends to perk up a fic.
stella_polaris said:
Anything with smut. Smut smut smut. There's too little smut in GO-fandom.
Let me know if this is close enough :)
Debauchery
Crowley/Aziraphale, R
Aziraphale never acquiesced to do much drinking at Crowley’s place. He was agonisingly scrupulous about being prepared for any unexpected difficulties in completely eradicating the alcohol from his susceptible corporeal metabolism before venturing forth into the night.
“These human bodies can be ever so tricky, especially when one begins to tamper with their delicate fluid balances, or so I’ve always found.”
Crowley had six thousand years’ experience interpreting the angel’s sciolistic jabber, and he understood this remark to mean that Aziraphale couldn’t hold drink well, but refused to acknowledge the fact. Then again, Crowley didn’t need to listen to him to figure that one out. He had seen the angel drink, after all.
And Aziraphale never really had got the hang of it, though he kept trying and trying, like The Little Drunk That Could, hurtling through the spangled depths of inebriation without ever finding the mythical floatation device of tolerance. That’s why Crowley always brought an extra bottle of wine or five when he visited Fell’s Rare and Antique Books and Manuscripts.
Crowley watched Aziraphale drink through slit eyes, lids pulled halfway down over the serpentine pupils, sunglasses hanging crazily on the end of his nose, like a schoolmarm’s spectacles. He grinned.
There was always a point when either one of them would become so drunk that he forgot to reverse the condition. Crowley grinned because he saw that moment motoring toward them at full speed.
“Y’know,” he said, “If we did thi’ a’ my place, y’could always crash on my, uh, my, y’know, my.”
“No need, m’dear.”
“My couch.”
“N’need. S’nice n’ warm here ‘nough.”
“Yesss.”
“No need to hiss, m’dear.”
They lapsed into silence. After the first few giddy days of The Rest of Their Earthly Existences (Somewhat Comparable To Lives), they had spoken less, especially when drinking together. Most of what they could share consisted of recollections of That Day, an event that still eclipsed any other menial news of what had happened afterward. Tacitly, they had managed to agree to avoid the subject of That Day in conversation, and thus found little else worth verbalising-after all, if you can’t talk about the apocalypse anymore, you really have run out of things to say.
The silence accented the strange and new discomfort that hung between them, an intimacy that neither had asked for. Crowley looked at the glazed blue eyes that swam above a trembling wineglass. There was something in the angel’s eyes that Crowley hadn’t seen before. A desperate sort of loneliness that would never be remedied by the sufferer. The Days After were stranding him from the world that should have belonged to him.
Aziraphale would never ask Crowley over, but he could refuse to go to Crowley and wait should the demon choose to come to him.
And, as it was painfully obvious in those old, old, innocent eyes, Aziraphale had never once expected Crowley to come when he did, though he may have hoped.
Crowley never expected it either.
Then again, being devious was part and parcel of being a demon. It made sense that he could trick himself, often as not. Trick himself into not noticing he was driving toward Soho. Trick himself into not noticing the aching need, pitted deep in his stomach, devouring him from the inside out. A need for company, and contact.
Crowley hadn’t blinked in about fifteen minutes. He had forgotten to.
He decided, fuzzily, that he would swim one day in Aziraphale’s blue eyes. Disgustingly pure, they were. He would tinge them darker.
That was when he came up with the plan.
There was always a point when either one of them would become so drunk that he forgot to reverse the condition. Crowley would make sure that, next time, Aziraphale reached that point first. It shouldn’t be too difficult. The idea threaded and wended and trickled through his brain until he was sure it would still be firmly lodged there when he was sober.
“’S a good idea. ‘S gonna be fine,” he muttered.
“Goo’ boy, tha’s the sp’rit,” slurred Aziraphale, encouragingly, completely oblivious.
Crowley fell out of his chair. Perhaps it was a bit late to implement the plan tonight.
Crowley’s heart would have been hammering if he had remembered to start it beating in the first place.
Normally, an act of deviation and deceit shouldn’t thrill him like this. That angel must have been a good influence on him. Crowley should have resented this. Instead, he unconsciously avoided that unpleasant concept, and chalked up his jangling nerves to the violation of what was, at its core, a somewhat devious treaty, namely, The Arrangement. No tempting or salvation on the part of either individual when directly concerning the opposite individual had been an unspoken but fairly consistently upheld term of their agreement. Then again, did offering a friendly drink constitute temptation, really? Plus, violating a devious agreement could amount to good, and doing good was a fairly devious thing for a demon who was expected to do evil, so Crowley wasn’t really doing anything too unusual, was he?
These circular arguments left Crowley dizzy by the time he stumbled into Fell’s Rare and Antique Books and Manuscripts. The demon made a mental note to take it even easier with the drink tonight. The door to the backroom was open, the sign facing outward in the front door read CLOSED, and Aziraphale was absorbed in a large, musty volume in the kitchenette when Crowley breezed in.
Aziraphale looked up with a surprised expression and raised his eyebrows when he saw the brown bag containing three bottles of wine that Crowley set down on the table. Crowley simply shrugged his shoulders and began uncorking the first bottle with slightly shaking hands.
Aziraphale put away his book silently, and neither spoke all night. Not when the third bottle Crowley had brought was finished off, and Aziraphale stumbled toward the cabinet for more. Not when the room seemed to tilt sideways, and focus was out of the question. Not when hours passed, and night settled, and the single ceiling fixture in the kitchenette struggled to beat off the encroaching darkness from the high, small windows.
Crowley observed Aziraphale’s body slump through his own haze of drunkenness. Now.
Crowley staggered uncertainly around the table, or perhaps he crawled beneath it, he wasn’t sure. Either way, he ended up with his hands on Aziraphale’s, and then with his arms around the angel’s shoulders, dragging them both to the floor, pushing feebly across the floor until they were propped up against the wall.
Aziraphale looked up at him with his foggy blue eyes and said nothing, but Crowley found a small crack in the hardened surface of distracted loneliness that had been there before.
Crowley doubted Aziraphale would remember anything, but he moved slowly, cautiously, nonetheless. Crowley would not kiss him upon the lips. Instead, Crowley dragged his lips across Aziraphale’s jaw and his neck, softly, dryly. Tiny goosebumps prickled where Crowley touched the angel’s skin.
Crowley nestled Aziraphale’s unresisting body close up beside his own. Crowley was surprised when Aziraphale raised one hand in response to the gesture and fumblingly stroked the demon’s chest. Aziraphale tilted his head back and looked blearily at Crowley. Crowley stroked the backs of his knuckles softly across the angel’s cheek.
He found his heart was beating again.
Aziraphale closed his eyes upon the further skin-to-skin contact, but opened them once more when it stopped. A terrible need was naked there.
Crowley ducked his head and nuzzled Aziraphale’s neck, breathing hotly on the tender skin under his ear, tracing the line of Aziraphale’s jaw from underneath with one hand. He could smell the angel’s smell, and before he could stop it, it filled his nostrils and his mind completely, and he felt as though he would never smell anything else ever again.
Aziraphale slid a hand over Crowley’s back, tracing lazy circles with his fingertips. His other hand hung limply, then stirred just enough to rest warmly on Crowley’s thigh. When Crowley withdrew, shaking, the cold air rushed back between them.
Crowley hauled Aziraphale’s body back onto a chair. The angel made no protest, but sighed. As Aziraphale slumped over the table, watching his companion through half-lidded eyes, Crowley thought of how easily that body was manipulated in his arms, like a doll. He ran his fingertips down the angel’s spine. This elicited a half-stifled squeak. Then Aziraphale sat up, and there was a rending noise as his shirt ripped and his wings unfolded as much as they could in the cramped space of the backroom.
Crowley had no idea why the angel would do a thing like that, even under the influence of copious amounts of alcohol, except perhaps to remind them both that the wings were there. They were a wall between them, but Aziraphale would not furl them. A single white feather drifted languidly to the floor. Crowley caught it and stuffed it in his pocket, then turned, and left the shop.
Aziraphale’s feather was never discarded; it remained in a brushed steel tube originally meant to contain pencils. The pencil holder was a part of a small stationary set kept on a table in Crowley’s bedroom, under the window, conveniently waiting should communicative inspiration strike in the middle of the night, which it never did for Crowley.
Two weeks passed before he approached Aziraphale’s shop again. If the angel remembered anything of their last encounter beyond its first two hours, he made no sign of it.
This time, it wasn’t long before the drink seized them both with its dizzying effects, and Crowley doubted that even sanity could survive much more of this dreadful anticipation. Aziraphale didn’t blink when Crowley’s chair thudded backward and the demon strode purposefully (if a bit unsteadily) toward him.
Aziraphale’s hands drifted to Crowley’s hips when Crowley straddled him. Crowley braced his hands against the wall on either side of Aziraphale’s head, shifting his weight so as not to crush the angel. Then, he kissed him.
He tasted the angel’s lips slowly before sliding his tongue between them and exploring his mouth with snakelike darts. Aziraphale tightened his arms around Crowley’s waist and leaned into the kiss. One of Crowley’s hands tangled itself in Aziraphale’s soft golden hair.
Crowley’s other hand drifted down to Aziraphale’s torso, and his fingers undid the buttons of the angel’s shirt almost without Crowley’s volition. Crowley kissed Aziraphale again as his hand slipped inside the shirt, teasing up goosebumps again. He leaned back only to disentangle Aziraphale’s arms from about himself and slide the shirt down off the angel’s shoulders, and free his wrists so that the garment hung from where it was tucked into Aziraphale’s trousers.
Crowley lurched forward again and kissed Aziraphale’s neck, nibbling a little. Aziraphale made a small indistinct noise. Crowley licked the bell-shaped depression at the base of his throat, and the noise repeated itself. Crowley’s hands explored Aziraphale’s chest, ghosting over silky skin and teasing the sensitive parts that made Aziraphale gasp incoherently. When Crowley’s own breathing was on the brink of uncontrollable, he stood up, shaking, and staggered backward.
Unexpectedly, Aziraphale rose as well, and lurched forward, catching himself on the table, his wings spreading once again, as if to aid his balance. He winced and a small strangled sound escaped him as his wings collided with the furniture in the room. Crowley wished himself sober (Aziraphale was beyond that, in accordance to the plan) and helped the angel settle his wings back in. He patted the angel’s back as he sat down, trembling with the unexpected pain. Aziraphale’s eyes were wide and confused. Their porcelain façade of smooth, undisturbed loneliness was crumbling, and it was almost painful to desert that gaze.
Crowley found a feather had been torn out, wedged in a cabinet door, and he took it down, and pocketed it, and later it joined its twin in his pencil case.
Aziraphale never mentioned remembering (or forgetting) the outcome either of their drinking bouts. He made no protest when Crowley appeared at his shop for a third time, half a week later. The demon made a beeline for the cabinet and examined the bottles there.
“No good, angel. I’m disappointed. We’ll have to pick up something a bit better.”
“Excuse me, my boy, but I wasn’t expecting company.”
“Doesn’t matter. Get your coat. I know where to find a good vintage.”
They trooped out to the Bentley without any further conversation, and the next words were spoken fifteen minutes later by Aziraphale as they finally pulled up along a kerb and parked.
“My dear, you could have told me we were going to your flat.”
“No. I couldn’t’ve. Get out, angel. We’re drinking at my place today.”
“As you wish.”
They took the lift up, and Crowley opened the door and entered the flat without waiting for Aziraphale. Aziraphale wandered into the living room, and eventually seated himself on the large leather sofa and entertained himself by examining Crowley’s houseplants from a distance while Crowley banged about in the kitchen, collecting glasses and bottles and a corkscrew.
Crowley sauntered silently into the living room, his shoes having mysteriously disappeared. He sat on the couch at a discrete distance from Aziraphale and set down his plunder. He opened the first bottle, sniffed it appreciatively, poured two glasses, and offered one to Aziraphale. Aziraphale took it, set it on the coffee table, took Crowley’s glass out of his hand and set it down as well, and kissed Crowley soundly.
The first thing Crowley said, when he had command of his mouth and senses once again, was:
“What do think you’re doing?!”
Aziraphale leaned back.
“Well, I thought we could skip all this,” he gestured at the array of bottles, “and the headaches that come after, and pick up where we had left off last week.”
“You remember that?”
“How could anyone forget it? You have quite the clever tongue, dear boy. And a disconcerting skill at disrobing unwitting individuals.”
“You remember and you didn’t tell me?”
“What could I have said?”
“You-you were taking advantage of me! You never said anything, I thought you were blind drunk!”
Crowley felt a cold, exposed sensation creeping up his spine. It was three parts wild humiliation and one part the guilt that only comes once you’re caught.
The sensation fled soon enough, however, when Aziraphale put a finger under Crowley’s chin and tilted the demon’s face toward his own.
“How could I make amends for this breach of trust, o serpent?”
Crowley was speechless. In a sense, they both were, as Crowley’s clever tongue was once again occupying Aziraphale’s mouth in a very distracting way. Somehow they slithered off the couch and stumbled into Crowley’s bedroom. Once there, Aziraphale broke the kiss, but before Crowley could protest, the angel said:
“Are those my feathers in the pencil case?”
Crowley followed his eyes to the window and the desk under it.
“They fell out,” he said, a touch guiltily. “I didn’t pull them out.”
“Why did you keep them?”
“Maybe I could have enough one day to stuff a quilt.”
Aziraphale smiled and Crowley saw laughter in his eyes, and desire staining them a deeper blue. The need was still in them, but the helplessness was not.
The rest was a whirl of confusion as clothes were shed and they tumbled onto Crowley’s wide, fresh bed. Crowley hovered above the supine Aziraphale, kneeling with a knee on either side of Aziraphale’s hips, and mostly undressed.
“What’s a few feathers, anyway? After all, the world belongs to us,” he said, trailing his hand down Aziraphale’s torso in a way that produced a shiver and a hitch in the angel’s breath, “And you belong to me.”
Which was true, in a sense, but either way, Aziraphale continued to produce all the noises Crowley wanted him to, and they both knew they’d have a lot more to talk about in the future. Not that the silence was ever that bad, anyway.
fickle_goddess said:
"He would not sleep with me, so I slept with him."
Summary/plotbunny: Angel feathers make a beautiful stuffing for a feather quilt, and angelic skin is softer than any silk bedspreads will ever be. Crowley's insane and love is a disease of the mind, not the heart. He's also redecorated his bedroom, and this time, the plants are the least of his worries.
I used this more as a launching-point than an outline, so it probably isn't exactly what you were thinking, but there are copious amounts of alcohol involved, which I think tends to perk up a fic.
stella_polaris said:
Anything with smut. Smut smut smut. There's too little smut in GO-fandom.
Let me know if this is close enough :)
Debauchery
Crowley/Aziraphale, R
Aziraphale never acquiesced to do much drinking at Crowley’s place. He was agonisingly scrupulous about being prepared for any unexpected difficulties in completely eradicating the alcohol from his susceptible corporeal metabolism before venturing forth into the night.
“These human bodies can be ever so tricky, especially when one begins to tamper with their delicate fluid balances, or so I’ve always found.”
Crowley had six thousand years’ experience interpreting the angel’s sciolistic jabber, and he understood this remark to mean that Aziraphale couldn’t hold drink well, but refused to acknowledge the fact. Then again, Crowley didn’t need to listen to him to figure that one out. He had seen the angel drink, after all.
And Aziraphale never really had got the hang of it, though he kept trying and trying, like The Little Drunk That Could, hurtling through the spangled depths of inebriation without ever finding the mythical floatation device of tolerance. That’s why Crowley always brought an extra bottle of wine or five when he visited Fell’s Rare and Antique Books and Manuscripts.
Crowley watched Aziraphale drink through slit eyes, lids pulled halfway down over the serpentine pupils, sunglasses hanging crazily on the end of his nose, like a schoolmarm’s spectacles. He grinned.
There was always a point when either one of them would become so drunk that he forgot to reverse the condition. Crowley grinned because he saw that moment motoring toward them at full speed.
“Y’know,” he said, “If we did thi’ a’ my place, y’could always crash on my, uh, my, y’know, my.”
“No need, m’dear.”
“My couch.”
“N’need. S’nice n’ warm here ‘nough.”
“Yesss.”
“No need to hiss, m’dear.”
They lapsed into silence. After the first few giddy days of The Rest of Their Earthly Existences (Somewhat Comparable To Lives), they had spoken less, especially when drinking together. Most of what they could share consisted of recollections of That Day, an event that still eclipsed any other menial news of what had happened afterward. Tacitly, they had managed to agree to avoid the subject of That Day in conversation, and thus found little else worth verbalising-after all, if you can’t talk about the apocalypse anymore, you really have run out of things to say.
The silence accented the strange and new discomfort that hung between them, an intimacy that neither had asked for. Crowley looked at the glazed blue eyes that swam above a trembling wineglass. There was something in the angel’s eyes that Crowley hadn’t seen before. A desperate sort of loneliness that would never be remedied by the sufferer. The Days After were stranding him from the world that should have belonged to him.
Aziraphale would never ask Crowley over, but he could refuse to go to Crowley and wait should the demon choose to come to him.
And, as it was painfully obvious in those old, old, innocent eyes, Aziraphale had never once expected Crowley to come when he did, though he may have hoped.
Crowley never expected it either.
Then again, being devious was part and parcel of being a demon. It made sense that he could trick himself, often as not. Trick himself into not noticing he was driving toward Soho. Trick himself into not noticing the aching need, pitted deep in his stomach, devouring him from the inside out. A need for company, and contact.
Crowley hadn’t blinked in about fifteen minutes. He had forgotten to.
He decided, fuzzily, that he would swim one day in Aziraphale’s blue eyes. Disgustingly pure, they were. He would tinge them darker.
That was when he came up with the plan.
There was always a point when either one of them would become so drunk that he forgot to reverse the condition. Crowley would make sure that, next time, Aziraphale reached that point first. It shouldn’t be too difficult. The idea threaded and wended and trickled through his brain until he was sure it would still be firmly lodged there when he was sober.
“’S a good idea. ‘S gonna be fine,” he muttered.
“Goo’ boy, tha’s the sp’rit,” slurred Aziraphale, encouragingly, completely oblivious.
Crowley fell out of his chair. Perhaps it was a bit late to implement the plan tonight.
Crowley’s heart would have been hammering if he had remembered to start it beating in the first place.
Normally, an act of deviation and deceit shouldn’t thrill him like this. That angel must have been a good influence on him. Crowley should have resented this. Instead, he unconsciously avoided that unpleasant concept, and chalked up his jangling nerves to the violation of what was, at its core, a somewhat devious treaty, namely, The Arrangement. No tempting or salvation on the part of either individual when directly concerning the opposite individual had been an unspoken but fairly consistently upheld term of their agreement. Then again, did offering a friendly drink constitute temptation, really? Plus, violating a devious agreement could amount to good, and doing good was a fairly devious thing for a demon who was expected to do evil, so Crowley wasn’t really doing anything too unusual, was he?
These circular arguments left Crowley dizzy by the time he stumbled into Fell’s Rare and Antique Books and Manuscripts. The demon made a mental note to take it even easier with the drink tonight. The door to the backroom was open, the sign facing outward in the front door read CLOSED, and Aziraphale was absorbed in a large, musty volume in the kitchenette when Crowley breezed in.
Aziraphale looked up with a surprised expression and raised his eyebrows when he saw the brown bag containing three bottles of wine that Crowley set down on the table. Crowley simply shrugged his shoulders and began uncorking the first bottle with slightly shaking hands.
Aziraphale put away his book silently, and neither spoke all night. Not when the third bottle Crowley had brought was finished off, and Aziraphale stumbled toward the cabinet for more. Not when the room seemed to tilt sideways, and focus was out of the question. Not when hours passed, and night settled, and the single ceiling fixture in the kitchenette struggled to beat off the encroaching darkness from the high, small windows.
Crowley observed Aziraphale’s body slump through his own haze of drunkenness. Now.
Crowley staggered uncertainly around the table, or perhaps he crawled beneath it, he wasn’t sure. Either way, he ended up with his hands on Aziraphale’s, and then with his arms around the angel’s shoulders, dragging them both to the floor, pushing feebly across the floor until they were propped up against the wall.
Aziraphale looked up at him with his foggy blue eyes and said nothing, but Crowley found a small crack in the hardened surface of distracted loneliness that had been there before.
Crowley doubted Aziraphale would remember anything, but he moved slowly, cautiously, nonetheless. Crowley would not kiss him upon the lips. Instead, Crowley dragged his lips across Aziraphale’s jaw and his neck, softly, dryly. Tiny goosebumps prickled where Crowley touched the angel’s skin.
Crowley nestled Aziraphale’s unresisting body close up beside his own. Crowley was surprised when Aziraphale raised one hand in response to the gesture and fumblingly stroked the demon’s chest. Aziraphale tilted his head back and looked blearily at Crowley. Crowley stroked the backs of his knuckles softly across the angel’s cheek.
He found his heart was beating again.
Aziraphale closed his eyes upon the further skin-to-skin contact, but opened them once more when it stopped. A terrible need was naked there.
Crowley ducked his head and nuzzled Aziraphale’s neck, breathing hotly on the tender skin under his ear, tracing the line of Aziraphale’s jaw from underneath with one hand. He could smell the angel’s smell, and before he could stop it, it filled his nostrils and his mind completely, and he felt as though he would never smell anything else ever again.
Aziraphale slid a hand over Crowley’s back, tracing lazy circles with his fingertips. His other hand hung limply, then stirred just enough to rest warmly on Crowley’s thigh. When Crowley withdrew, shaking, the cold air rushed back between them.
Crowley hauled Aziraphale’s body back onto a chair. The angel made no protest, but sighed. As Aziraphale slumped over the table, watching his companion through half-lidded eyes, Crowley thought of how easily that body was manipulated in his arms, like a doll. He ran his fingertips down the angel’s spine. This elicited a half-stifled squeak. Then Aziraphale sat up, and there was a rending noise as his shirt ripped and his wings unfolded as much as they could in the cramped space of the backroom.
Crowley had no idea why the angel would do a thing like that, even under the influence of copious amounts of alcohol, except perhaps to remind them both that the wings were there. They were a wall between them, but Aziraphale would not furl them. A single white feather drifted languidly to the floor. Crowley caught it and stuffed it in his pocket, then turned, and left the shop.
Aziraphale’s feather was never discarded; it remained in a brushed steel tube originally meant to contain pencils. The pencil holder was a part of a small stationary set kept on a table in Crowley’s bedroom, under the window, conveniently waiting should communicative inspiration strike in the middle of the night, which it never did for Crowley.
Two weeks passed before he approached Aziraphale’s shop again. If the angel remembered anything of their last encounter beyond its first two hours, he made no sign of it.
This time, it wasn’t long before the drink seized them both with its dizzying effects, and Crowley doubted that even sanity could survive much more of this dreadful anticipation. Aziraphale didn’t blink when Crowley’s chair thudded backward and the demon strode purposefully (if a bit unsteadily) toward him.
Aziraphale’s hands drifted to Crowley’s hips when Crowley straddled him. Crowley braced his hands against the wall on either side of Aziraphale’s head, shifting his weight so as not to crush the angel. Then, he kissed him.
He tasted the angel’s lips slowly before sliding his tongue between them and exploring his mouth with snakelike darts. Aziraphale tightened his arms around Crowley’s waist and leaned into the kiss. One of Crowley’s hands tangled itself in Aziraphale’s soft golden hair.
Crowley’s other hand drifted down to Aziraphale’s torso, and his fingers undid the buttons of the angel’s shirt almost without Crowley’s volition. Crowley kissed Aziraphale again as his hand slipped inside the shirt, teasing up goosebumps again. He leaned back only to disentangle Aziraphale’s arms from about himself and slide the shirt down off the angel’s shoulders, and free his wrists so that the garment hung from where it was tucked into Aziraphale’s trousers.
Crowley lurched forward again and kissed Aziraphale’s neck, nibbling a little. Aziraphale made a small indistinct noise. Crowley licked the bell-shaped depression at the base of his throat, and the noise repeated itself. Crowley’s hands explored Aziraphale’s chest, ghosting over silky skin and teasing the sensitive parts that made Aziraphale gasp incoherently. When Crowley’s own breathing was on the brink of uncontrollable, he stood up, shaking, and staggered backward.
Unexpectedly, Aziraphale rose as well, and lurched forward, catching himself on the table, his wings spreading once again, as if to aid his balance. He winced and a small strangled sound escaped him as his wings collided with the furniture in the room. Crowley wished himself sober (Aziraphale was beyond that, in accordance to the plan) and helped the angel settle his wings back in. He patted the angel’s back as he sat down, trembling with the unexpected pain. Aziraphale’s eyes were wide and confused. Their porcelain façade of smooth, undisturbed loneliness was crumbling, and it was almost painful to desert that gaze.
Crowley found a feather had been torn out, wedged in a cabinet door, and he took it down, and pocketed it, and later it joined its twin in his pencil case.
Aziraphale never mentioned remembering (or forgetting) the outcome either of their drinking bouts. He made no protest when Crowley appeared at his shop for a third time, half a week later. The demon made a beeline for the cabinet and examined the bottles there.
“No good, angel. I’m disappointed. We’ll have to pick up something a bit better.”
“Excuse me, my boy, but I wasn’t expecting company.”
“Doesn’t matter. Get your coat. I know where to find a good vintage.”
They trooped out to the Bentley without any further conversation, and the next words were spoken fifteen minutes later by Aziraphale as they finally pulled up along a kerb and parked.
“My dear, you could have told me we were going to your flat.”
“No. I couldn’t’ve. Get out, angel. We’re drinking at my place today.”
“As you wish.”
They took the lift up, and Crowley opened the door and entered the flat without waiting for Aziraphale. Aziraphale wandered into the living room, and eventually seated himself on the large leather sofa and entertained himself by examining Crowley’s houseplants from a distance while Crowley banged about in the kitchen, collecting glasses and bottles and a corkscrew.
Crowley sauntered silently into the living room, his shoes having mysteriously disappeared. He sat on the couch at a discrete distance from Aziraphale and set down his plunder. He opened the first bottle, sniffed it appreciatively, poured two glasses, and offered one to Aziraphale. Aziraphale took it, set it on the coffee table, took Crowley’s glass out of his hand and set it down as well, and kissed Crowley soundly.
The first thing Crowley said, when he had command of his mouth and senses once again, was:
“What do think you’re doing?!”
Aziraphale leaned back.
“Well, I thought we could skip all this,” he gestured at the array of bottles, “and the headaches that come after, and pick up where we had left off last week.”
“You remember that?”
“How could anyone forget it? You have quite the clever tongue, dear boy. And a disconcerting skill at disrobing unwitting individuals.”
“You remember and you didn’t tell me?”
“What could I have said?”
“You-you were taking advantage of me! You never said anything, I thought you were blind drunk!”
Crowley felt a cold, exposed sensation creeping up his spine. It was three parts wild humiliation and one part the guilt that only comes once you’re caught.
The sensation fled soon enough, however, when Aziraphale put a finger under Crowley’s chin and tilted the demon’s face toward his own.
“How could I make amends for this breach of trust, o serpent?”
Crowley was speechless. In a sense, they both were, as Crowley’s clever tongue was once again occupying Aziraphale’s mouth in a very distracting way. Somehow they slithered off the couch and stumbled into Crowley’s bedroom. Once there, Aziraphale broke the kiss, but before Crowley could protest, the angel said:
“Are those my feathers in the pencil case?”
Crowley followed his eyes to the window and the desk under it.
“They fell out,” he said, a touch guiltily. “I didn’t pull them out.”
“Why did you keep them?”
“Maybe I could have enough one day to stuff a quilt.”
Aziraphale smiled and Crowley saw laughter in his eyes, and desire staining them a deeper blue. The need was still in them, but the helplessness was not.
The rest was a whirl of confusion as clothes were shed and they tumbled onto Crowley’s wide, fresh bed. Crowley hovered above the supine Aziraphale, kneeling with a knee on either side of Aziraphale’s hips, and mostly undressed.
“What’s a few feathers, anyway? After all, the world belongs to us,” he said, trailing his hand down Aziraphale’s torso in a way that produced a shiver and a hitch in the angel’s breath, “And you belong to me.”
Which was true, in a sense, but either way, Aziraphale continued to produce all the noises Crowley wanted him to, and they both knew they’d have a lot more to talk about in the future. Not that the silence was ever that bad, anyway.