Chapter Text
Crowley allowed his grin to widen wickedly, his eyes pulling reluctantly from the Bentley's keys where they dangled from Aziraphale's finger to slowly drink in the sight of his new lover. He shivered almost imperceptibly at the thought- how he had dreamt of Aziraphale, for years. His flesh beneath his teeth. The taste of his tongue. The warmth of his breath against his neck. Were he not standing at the door of Crowley's flat, insistently arching an eyebrow, he wouldn’t even believe it had happened. But that lovely, insistent ache all over his body, where Aziraphale’s manicured fingernails had clawed at his arms, back and thighs… oh what a beautiful reassurance that it hadn’t been a dream at all.
Crowley slithered forward, into Aziraphale's personal space, until he had him backed against the wall. He pressed his lithe body against his lover's slightly more plump one, breathing in his scent as he eased his arms up, pinning his wrists to the wall as he gave his hips a shallow roll. Aziraphale sucked in a quick breath, whatever words he was about to utter gulped back down as Crowley’s tongue flicked gingerly beneath his ear. Crowley took the temporary moment of distraction to slide the Bentley’s keys away from him. I'll drive... he had said. Ha! He was starting to wonder if Aziraphale liked taunting him. He was starting to wonder if he liked being taunted.
“Not a chance in Hell, angel,” he whispered, backing quickly away and loving the little blush that his closeness had left on Aziraphale’s cheeks.
“Wicked little beast,” Aziraphale muttered with a grin, and Crowley felt a very strange heat in his own cheeks. Aziraphale smiled devilishly at the sight. He pushed away from the wall, grabbing fistfuls of Crowley’s jacket at his sides and hauling him into a needy kiss. Crowley whimpered against the suddenness of it, his knees all but melting at the raw, passionate energy that was radiating from Aziraphale. It was that same loving glow that had always emanated from him as an angel, but now, so intoxicatingly tinged with need…
Crowley had to pull back, and if he were human, he would have been panting from the crash of satisfaction that hit him like a tidal wave. He allowed his hands to rest comfortably on Aziraphale's waist, his forehead resting on his shoulder as he attempted to regain his composure. Even though he didn’t need to, he realized, he was indeed panting.
“Keep doing that, angel, and I'm gonna need to spend the next six thousand years showing you exactly what you do to me…” he whispered against Aziraphale's shoulder, a shudder coursing through him, to which he received a low chuckle.
“Oh my dear, I look forward to it,” Aziraphale cooed, his fingers lacing into the hair at the base of Crowley’s neck, sending another violent shudder down his spine.
“But for now… I think I’d very much like to go for a drive.”
Crowley let out a frustrated growl, unable to keep himself from biting Aziraphale's shoulder, over his coat.
Aziraphale could feel the effort it took for Crowley to pull himself away. “Yeah, alright angel. Whatever you want,” he grumbled, motioning for Aziraphale to go first.
They walked in silence to the Bentley, and Aziraphale felt, for the first time since the Arrangement had been made, an awkwardness between them. When Crowley opened the passenger side door for him, he felt heat rising in his cheeks, even though he had held his door a thousand times before. Now, it seemed, there was a suggestion in the gesture. A romance to it that made Aziraphale wonder if it had always been there. Had Crowley been silently courting him for centuries? And he had been so intentionally blind to it? How impossibly cruel he had been to the demon all these years.
“Crowley, my dear, I…” he stammered, watching Crowley in his peripheral vision, his shrouded eyes darting hopefully off the road and over at his counterpart.
“I do believe…” he turned slowly, placing a hand lovingly on Crowley’s thigh and feeling the demon's heart rate double. “I owe you an apology.”
Crowley scoffed, but he slid one hand down from the steering wheel and beneath Aziraphale’s hand to cradle it lightly. “Angel… I just fucked you straight out of Heaven… and you think you owe me an apology?”
Aziraphale fidgeted in his seat, his cheeks blushing once more. Oh how he wished his corporation's most annoying habit of blushing had gone away when he fell.
“Well I… what I mean to say is… I don’t feel any different…” he said, his voice cracking as centuries of memories came crashing down over him. “I always thought… I assumed that once one had fallen, they would feel some sort of… inclination towards evil, some… predilection to vice. But I… I still feel like… me.”
Crowley was silent for a moment, before he squeezed Aziraphale's hand gently. “Funny, innit?” he said dryly. He clearly did not find it funny at all.
“Crowley, what I mean to say is… when I was operating under the assumption that you had no heart…” his voice was barely a whisper and his chin quivered. “It made it easier for me to keep breaking it.”
Crowley sucked in a breath, swallowing hard as he kept his eyes maddeningly focused on the road ahead of him. The streetlights danced across the dashboard and over his sunglasses for a long while. Aziraphale had hoped Crowley would argue, that he would reassure him that he had never truly hurt him. But he knew better. Crowley’s silence was telling.
“Honestly angel… there’s a lot of guilt and pain that goes into being a demon. Let’s not make each other a source of it, shall we?”
Aziraphale couldn’t help the warm tears that clung to his eyelashes. All those pithy little comments he had ever made- telling Crowley he couldn’t possibly understand things like love, compassion, or empathy. So many hurtful words, from someone who supposedly understood those concepts better than him. And yet Crowley was displaying the most angelic practice of all- forgiveness.
“Oh angel, don’t cry, please. I can’t stand… I don’t… really it’s alright. If you hadn’t been such an asshole all these years, I never would’ve been drawn to you in the first place, right?” Crowley smiled nervously, his thumb caressing Aziraphale's knuckles. Aziraphale forced out a laugh, before pulling Crowley’s hand up to his lips and kissing the back of it. “My dear, I simply cannot believe how daft I've been. You’ve been more of an angel than I have, apparently.”
“Don’t insult me.”
Aziraphale smiled genuinely, and relished the beautiful way Crowley’s lips framed his mildly serpentine fangs when he was happy.
“Where are we going anyway?”
“You asked me to show you how to make some trouble. That’s exactly what I’m doing.”
Aziraphale giggled, glancing down at Crowley’s hand still resting in his. His surprisingly innocent, lovely hands. “My dear I really had hoped you knew I was being facetious. We both know you haven’t started any real trouble since the dark ages.”
Crowley pouted, but didn’t argue. He leaned forward, switching on the radio and motioning to the glove box. “Why don't you find us some music? Think I’ve got Stravinsky in there somewhere.”
Aziraphale began digging around, entirely aware that whatever tape he found would decidedly not be Stravinsky, while the DJ on the radio chattered obnoxiously with his co-host. Aziraphale found the tape he was looking for, and inserted it into the deck as the DJ began laughing at a poorly delivered joke.
The voice continued to laugh, and laugh, and laugh. It grew deeper and more menacing, until it was very clear that the laughter was no longer human.
“CRAWLY!” the voice screeched, and Crowley jerked so hard that he yanked the steering wheel, narrowly avoiding a head-on collision before veering onto a sidewalk and slamming on the brakes. Aziraphale felt an involuntary bubble of panic at the voice, but nowhere near the evident horror that had Crowley's hand covering his mouth in what looked like an attempt to keep from vomiting.
“CRAWLY THIS IS SENSATIONAL, YOU VILE CREATURE!” the voice bellowed, and Crowley visibly sank back into his seat as he gulped back a whimper. Aziraphale tightened his grip on Crowley’s hand. He knew Below hadn’t made contact since the almost-apocalypse, and no matter the reason they had waited so long… it couldn’t be anything good. Crowley opened his mouth to respond, but his throat had apparently closed up.
“WE HAVE BEEN FORMULATING YOUR PUNISHMENT EVER SINCE YOU BETRAYED US. IT WAS GOING TO BE SO… DELIGHTFUL…”
Crowley chewed his lip as he clamped his eyes shut, tears forming in the corners.
“BUT THIS… YOU MAY HAVE JUST REDEEMED YOURSELF. THE ANGEL OF THE EASTERN GATE? YOUR ADVERSARY SINCE THE GARDEN OF EDEN… AND YOU HAVE TEMPTED HIM TO FALL…” the voice once again devolved into hysterical laughter, to which Aziraphale huffed an annoyed sigh. As one does when their technologically challenged uncle doesn’t understand how 'speaker phone’ works.
“You know I can hear you, right?” Aziraphale snapped, Crowley's eyes darting toward him in a panic.
“AZIRAPHALE… WELCOME TO OUR RANKS! WHO WOULD HAVE GUESSED YOUR DAMNING SIN WOULD HAVE BEEN LUST! AND WITH THAT TRAITOROUS SNAKE NO LESS!”
More insistent laughter.
Aziraphale and Crowley shared a glance, and even through Crowley’s dark lenses, their unspoken words were clear.
They don't know I was already falling when I came to you.
I won’t tell if you don’t.
By all means, my dear, the spoils are yours. I’ll even tell them you were a great shag.
Would you be so kind?
Of course, my dear.
Crowley finally found his voice, though it still quaked a bit. “Well you know… I had to do something to prove… I’m still yours…”
The chuckle he received was more threatening than it was amused.
“OF COURSE YOU ARE, CRAWLY. AND NOW, SO IS AZIRAPHALE. WE COULD RECALL HIM BELOW ANY TIME WE SO CHOOSE, NOW, COULDN'T WE? NO USE FOR TWO DEMONS ON EARTH IS THERE?!”
If two hearts could simultaneously stop at once, the Bentley would have suddenly become a Hearse.
“Okay, that’s all well and good, but trust me on this… Aziraphale would probably be as much use to you in Hell as a jar of piss at a house fire. No offense, angel.”
“None taken.”
“Just hear me out. Heaven has struggled for six thousand years to keep me, your most loyal servant…”
*Wink*
“...In check. This particular fallen angel knows exactly what to do to be of the utmost nuisance. Because I used to be that nuisance to him. Now imagine… how overwhelmed Heaven would be… if there were two of us?”
Silence.
“I imagine the scales might tip in your favor as the turnstiles to Hell started spinning from the multitude of souls we send your way?” Aziraphale suggested, and Crowley mouthed oh that’s good accompanied by a thumbs-up.
“I should think they might even send an Archangel to deal with us. And who says we can’t tempt another angel into a Fall?”
Okay, that’s a bit much, dial it back, angel. Crowley mouthed.
Sorry.
“THE TWO OF YOU… WORK AS A TEAM?” the voice sounded less sure, though its doubt was promising in itself.
“YOU MEAN… LIKE YOU DID WHEN YOU FOILED OUR GREATEST PLAN?!”
Crowley and Aziraphale stared wide-eyed at each other for painstaking moments. Aziraphale was the one to finally break the tension.
“Well… it worked, didn’t it?”
Crowley looked absolutely mortified.
The voice was quiet for a long time, before it began laughing once more. Neither demon knew whether to take that as a good sign or a very, very bad one.
“VERY WELL, FALLEN ANGEL. CONSIDER THIS YOUR TRIAL PERIOD. YOU MAY WORK ALONGSIDE THE DEMON CRAWLY, BUT MARK MY WORDS… WE EXPECT AN EXPONENTIAL INCREASE IN YOUR OUTPUT, CRAWLY, NOW THAT YOU HAVE A PARTNER. OTHERWISE ALL THOSE PLANS FOR YOUR PUNISHMENT… WE SHOULD LOVE TO ENACT THEM. AND WE'LL MAKE AZIRAPHALE WATCH.”
The radio clicked in a rather banal manner, the tape deck finally catching the tape and beginning to play Stravinsky's masterpiece, Another One Bites The Dust.
Crowley was silent for a long time, before he smiled to himself and steered the Bentley back onto the road, inciting a loud honk from a cabbie. “Well that went down like a lead balloon.”
Aziraphale laughed, finally releasing Crowley’s hand and instead resting it on the back of his neck, his thumb absently caressing the skin he found there. “I swear, Crowley, that forked tongue of yours can get you out of any situation.”
Crowley grinned, pulling Aziraphale's hand from his neck and putting that tongue to use around a few fingertips. “Hoping it gets me into more trouble than out.”
“Might do,” Aziraphale said, enraptured by Crowley’s dexterous use of his mouth. The serpent's yellow eyes peered out over his sunglasses, meeting Aziraphale's newly indigo gaze, and the desire in the exchange made Aziraphale shiver. Somehow the Bentley stayed in its lane, even with its driver so intensely preoccupied.
Crowley finally pulled the Bentley to a halt at their destination- an otherwise ordinary looking brick building.
“Where have you brought me, you fiend?” Aziraphale asked as Crowley offered a hand to help him out of the car. Their destination appeared to be just a seedy looking bar- not the usual fare of the Flash BastardTM.
“I thought you were going to show me how to start trouble?”
“Angel, I am trouble. And I'm only getting started.”