Chapter Text
-.*.-
1
Spring had gifted the little treed circle in which two human-shaped beings were sitting with flowers and green buds. It was hardly a garden, little more than a patch of tended soil and paths around a stone monument. But it had been consecrated to Buddha by the Dalai Lama, so it was as neutral as anywhere. Being there lent both a sense of calm and vulnerability, and not only to supernatural creatures who temporarily ceded their power to cross its threshold.
For Crowley, there was also safety here. He was seated on a bench in the sunshine, with fresh green all around, the lawn beyond the circle twinkling with tiny white daisies. His hand slid to the side, fingers finding and interlacing with Aziraphale's, and the angel next to him smiled.
“It is lovely,” the blond mused, “Smaller than I expected.” Followed by a side-eye when Crowley made an amused little sound. “What?”
“No, nothing.” Crowley glanced around, it was right about the middle of a Tuesday, and they had the circle nearly to themselves. With a smidgin of will, he summoned a vague sense of unease in a wide ring around them to keep the humans away.
“We could have just had this conversation in your apartment.”
Crowley worried a long tooth over his lip and shrugged, “No, we couldn't. Maybe you could, but, I need, you know,” An even footing? An equal start? To be in this place where neither of them held territory. To feel like the world isn't in a tilt-a-whirl careening toward oblivion long enough to put the words together. “I needed to get out.”
“It's a nice spot.” Nice enough, the angel supposed, for being in the middle of the city, with the constant traffic and tight-packed loom of buildings all around it. It must be pleasant, comparatively speaking, for those people who stayed in London most of their lives. “We could go out of the city, have a picnic in a proper meditation garden, somewhere far away from all this.”
“Hm. Yeah, that sounds good.” A moment's pause, “But I want to talk here.”
“Of course.”
There was a longer lull, Crowley stared up at one of the obelisks around the circle, as if studying it while he collected his thoughts. When the demon was ready, he said, “Tell me what you want to do to me.”
“Oh,” Not that anyone was listening, but it still inspired a flush of warmth to the cheeks. Aziraphale squeezed the fingers twined with his, and leaned closer, “Are you asking me to talk naughty to you in a public park, darling?”
Crowley laughed, a short bark of amusement, “Not exactly.” He dipped his head so Aziraphale could see a sliver of his eye over the rim of his glasses, “I want to know what you were thinking of doing to me, I want to know why you want to do it. And I want to get whatever it is that makes it important to you.”
The angel looked down at his knees, at ants forging a trail in front of his oxfords. “I don't want you to think you need to do anything to make me happy, Crowley. I don't want you to let me do anything you don't want me to, either.” He lowered his tone, trying to sound both stern and gentle, “You've always put me first, and I've allowed it far too often. Please, don't let me hurt you. Don't say yes to me unless you mean it.”
“You underestimate my taste for pain, love.” The demon teased, chuckling, “I might want to, and I won't know until you tell me. Isn't that fair?”
Aziraphale nodded, “So I'm to take it that I'll be the guiding hand in this, er, adventure?”
“I'm hardly fit to take the wheel. B'sides, you've always been my guide in one way or another.”
The angel felt himself go giddy. “My goodness, that is a lot of responsibility. Thank you for trusting me, I will do my absolute best.”
Crowley turned and pressed his temple into the angel's padded shoulder, “I know you will. Go on, then.”
Despite having thought about all the many things he'd like to share with Crowley, a concrete plan failed to come to mind, and Aziraphale dithered, “Well, I, well... I suppose...”
The demon elevated an eyebrow expectantly, though still leaning into Aziraphale.
“Well I suppose we'd start with the easiest things. Touching, like we already do, but with the right um, physical features installed.” Oh, why is it difficult to talk about something that's so easy to imagine?
Crowley nodded, “Genitalia. Check.”
“No, well, yes, but not only that. Our bodies have erogenous spots all over, they just aren't connected properly when we get them. But one doesn't spend nearly all of history around humans without figuring things out.”
“You figured it out pretty quickly in Eden.” Crowley mused.
Aziraphale's already pink face tipped towards red. “Oh, yes, I suppose so. I had to learn it all over again.”
“I don't think I have. So step one, then. Finding my spots.” Crowley chuckled, “Yes, I'd like to do that. What's next?”
The angel shivered, not from cold, but from the eagerness of his mortal body as he thought about that question. “I'd want to use my mouth, on all the places my hands had been. On all the spots we find, and bring them to life. I want to lick and suck and bite,” The words made easier by the migration of blood away from the brain.
“Bite.” It came out lower than he expected. Crowley hadn't manifested anything to be aroused with, and yet – he must have overlooked something more basic than the contents of his pants.
“If you like. I'd be careful. A little nibble.” Was it getting warmer? He turned toward Crowley, leaning in close, nearly whispering, “And then we would get to the genitalia. I would go slow, let you savor it, and bring you to climax in my mouth.”
“Is it getting warmer?” Crowley smirked, “I thought you weren't going to talk dirty to me in public, angel.”
Aziraphale's breath ghosted over the side of Crowley's neck, riffling through fine red hair and earning a twitch, “Oh I'm not. I could. Do you like the itinerary so far?”
“Mmn.” Replied Crowley, “I don't know. Everything up to that last bit sounds fine. Could we just do the other things and worry about that last part after?”
“Oh, yes. That would be lovely. Do you want to stop talking about it?”
Crowley nodded. He was curious, certainly, but knew well that reading too far ahead would make it harder to move forward.
“Do you want to go somewhere else or just sit here?”
Nuzzling into the collar of Aziraphale's jacket, Crowley mumbled against the fabric, “Just stay here a lil', n' then we can go to yours, okay?” He was warm and content, the little urban garden smelled pleasant, and if he concentrated the sounds of the city went away and he could imagine they were somewhere else. As much as he loved London – the cars. the smog, the centuries of grime and perseverance leached into the brickwork – he also often yearned for solitude and quiet, for sun-dappled green spaces far from human touch, known only to the two of them.
Aziraphale watched people outside their little bubble of 'go away', how they'd subconsciously redirect themselves elsewhere if they wandered into it. Young women with strollers, elderly folk walking their tiny dogs. Cars going by on the other side of the wrought iron gate, their glossy carapaces winking sunshine as they passed. It was a small garden, yes, but he could see why Crowley liked it, it felt like a place between worlds.
They rested in easy silence for a while, until the children began to invade. Freshly released from the captivity of their schools, they descended on the park like uniformed locusts. Their screams and laughter, endearing when it was only a few kids in the distance and not several hundred and everywhere, finally prompted Crowley to tug at the other's hand and urge them to go.
It took an hour to walk back to Soho, in part because Aziraphale liked to take his time along flower-lined back roads instead of the noisy streets that would get them there faster. And there were also shops to be peeked into, and birds to be fed, but there was no rush, they would arrive when they arrived, at the bookshop and all things after.
-.*.-
“A glass of wine?”
Crowley took his glasses off and tucked them in his jacket pocket, before tossing the garment over the back of the settee, “Absolutely. And then the rest of the bottle.”
“You aren't nervous, are you?” Placing two glasses on the small table between them, Aziraphale opened a Chilean Carménère and poured both.
Crowley made a dismissive noise and gesture, but then said, “I suppose. Shouldn't I be?”
Lifting a glass and sipping from it, the blond hummed briefly. “This needs to air.” And then, after putting his drink back down, “So am I.”
“Fair.” But just thinking about wine had a calming effect – purely psychosomatic, but enough to ease Crowley toward speaking freely. “I never thought we'd get this far, you know. I told myself I'd be happy just being able to keep you around at all. Watch over you, know you were happy somewhere. Tried to make it dry and practical.”
Aziraphale relaxed into his chair, one knee over the other. “I appreciated it.” They'd already been through whose fault this or that was, and who should apologize and who should forgive. Arguing that there was nothing to be forgiven for, and then conceding that there was, and granting it. Over and over, they'd been through that. Now what was left to achieve was acceptance. “I had hoped we'd get here before the world ended. You could say we made it on a technicality.”
Crowley laughed, “Well-l, we couldn't let it end while we had unfinished business. That's on us.”
The wine oxidized into fall fruits and caramel, and the bottle emptied. Savoring the last sips, the topic had wandered to sunnier climes, “And honestly, sometimes there's just nothing you can do for them. This poor fellow was so committed to his own humility that every time I tried to reward him, it just wound up bouncing right off him and into the hands of someone else.” Aziraphale laughed, “Which made him even more deserving, and therefore we were told to reward him more! It was going to become utterly ridiculous if he hadn't suddenly died.”
“That's the problem with ascetics. They always think virtue is as good as a wool coat until there's an actual cold snap.”
“People need things, Crowley. Comfort, pleasure, to share it with someone.”
Lines crinkled at the corners of the demon's eyes as he smirked, Aziraphale was not as subtle as he liked to imagine, “Even you and I. I know, love.”
He'd been thinking around the question of whether he was willing to do this because it would make his angel happy, or because he actually wanted to. Complicated greatly by how much Crowley wanted to make his angel happy. What really put the pin in it was the concession that what he wanted was to know. He was, and always had been, uncontrollably curious; The kind of curiosity that angels were strongly discouraged from after the Fall, but about which he had never learned his lesson. “Take me upstairs.”
Crowley's bed was bigger – so was his flat, for that matter, but this was where he felt safest. The plushness of the furniture, the cluttered, dusty shelves and aging wooden baseboards, the smell and warmth, all of which his own apartment lacked. The shop and its upstairs rooms felt like an extension of Aziraphale himself, one in which Crowley could curl up as if its timbers were a ribcage, to hide tucked behind the angel's heart.
This had not been lost on Aziraphale, who had willed his modest home to be warm and welcoming, to feel like a safe embrace around his beloved. (Recently this thought had been overshadowing the discouraging pall he'd put over the shop itself to keep customers at bay, and the result had been an influx of people with no interest in old books wandering in just because they liked the place.) He had put some work into the bedroom, dusting and moving some of the books out so they could have more space. He pushed aside the heavy drapes and opened the window, inhaling fresh air scented with crab-apple blossoms, cut grass, and a hint of petrol.
The bedsprings squeaked behind him, and Aziraphale turned back to see Crowley sitting there, watching him, uncertain and eager both.
“So, how do we start?”
“Clothes, I think, yes, let's take your clothes off, I'd like t- Crowley!”
“What?!” He was already naked with a thought before Aziraphale had even finished the suggestion.
The angel pouted, “I had wanted to undress you myself.”
“Oh, fine,” Crowley clicked his fingers to un-undress himself. “Go ahead.”
Shaking his head, Aziraphale laughed and sat down next to the flustered demon, “It's part of it, this slow uncovering. It's like opening a gift.” He began unbuttoning the charcoal silk waistcoat that wasn't there a moment ago.
Angling his arms back to let the garment be pushed from his shoulders, “But you've already seen me naked, lots of times.” Crowley wondered, had it always been titillating for Aziraphale to see him nude? The angel had never hinted at it, in any of the many times they'd been unclothed together; in baths and saunas, wading at the edges of rivers, sunbathing on beaches... clothing had often been optional before humans had gotten all weird about their bodies.
“Not the point, dear.” Aziraphale peeled up the supple. clinging shirt that remained the only layer between his hands and Crowley's pale, freckled skin. Here's the point, said his celestial fingertips, grazing over fine hairs and nerve endings: it's not seeing the body bared, it's being the one to bear it. It's not the result but the process. Aziraphale leaned in to kiss a constellation of tiny flecks at the arc of a clavicle, and the shiver his lips ignited told him that yes, that's the idea, he's starting to get it.
“Dearest, may I access your nervous system?”
Crowley nodded, and then clarified verbally, ”Yes.” Trust was implicit, but the asking and granting of consent had its own rewards. The demon could feel the warm suffusion of Aziraphale flowing from silky fingertips and into him, the electricity of his lover pinging its way through his synapses and axons, and then settling comfortably into him, present but not intrusive. Crowley opened his eyes again and gave his angel a hapless grin.
Aziraphale could now sense the effect he was having on his partner, each spark of sensory input and how it was being received. He stroked down the slim redhead's sides and arms, sending cascades of sizzling feedback through both of them. Sensation echoed through the angel's body and reverberated back into Crowley, giving his neurons ideas that they eagerly began work on.
Reptilian pupils dilated, Crowley's lips parted, the thinnest gap, and his skin began to ripple – first in gooseflesh, and then with a flowing, shadowy suggestion of diamond-shaped scales along his limbs. Aziraphale's sensuality was intense, the easy arousal of flesh that had been practiced in epicurean pleasure for thousands of years, a body which knew itself and withheld nothing. “Oh, fuck.”
“Go slow,” The angel's words brushed across Crowley's jaw, where it felt as if that warm breath could make the tiny snake at his ear squirm. “There's no rush, no hurry. Take what you want.” His strong arms wound about his demon's waist to hold him secure, and Crowley leant into him.
“Bless me, that's amazing – D'you feel that all the time?”
“No.” Aziraphale chuckled, “But often when I'm with you.”
Usually, when the angel said something sappy, it would melt into Crowley's chest, just above the diaphragm, and spread up into his throat and cheeks, a glow of fondness and love. He was used to that, it was a familiar burn, old and steady. But Aziraphale had taught him something new, and he felt that heat turn and sink into the space between his loose-jointed hips.
'Lust' it whimpered, wanting and writhing, something heavy and alien and frightening – surely not meant to be part of him – and he instinctively fought it, his stomach muscles coiling in protest as another ripple of scales passed just under the surface. The angel held him tightly, soothing him with sweet words.
“I can stop it, just tell me.” Aziraphale's voice had gone low and rich, like a distant rumbling under the Earth, and Crowley could feel it vibrate through his chest as he lay against the angel. His partner was fully aware of both his struggle and his awe, in trying to reconcile himself with this new piece that Crowley desired desperately to fit into the whole of him.
“No, no, I want it.” Scarcely more than a breath, he was drawn taut by the winding of it, the rising electric crackle literally charging the air around him. The heavy, hot thing of it was pulsing with potential between his thighs, aching to manifest itself into tissue and skin that could be made rigid and wet and stroked to completion.
Crowley could smell it, now. The circuit of arousal between himself and Aziraphale, who was broadcasting pheromones as well as that incorporeal signal. He's sure he's noticed this scent before, sweet and musky under the cedar and spice of his angel's favorite cologne. But it had never been heady like this, never jolted through to the core of him, making him ache and plead, “Aziraphale,”
“What do you need, darling?” Blunt, deft fingertips still drawing trails of sparks over Crowley's skin.
The demon murmured, exhausted, “Rest.” And Aziraphale withdrew from him, gently easing off that overwhelming sensory feedback, until Crowley was again alone in his body.
The blond angel kissed him lightly, before swinging his legs over the side of the bed, “Would you like some tea?”
A nod, and then a tired shake, “Nap, first.”
“Nap.” Aziraphale agreed, and rolled back into the middle of the bed, letting his arm fall open so Crowley could nestle in.