Chapter Text
Beezlebub’s lurking outside A.Z. FELL AND Co. She’d cause quite the stir if there were anyone around, what with the dozens of flies crawling around her face, but the street’s empty. That in itself is a screaming red klaxon. This part of Soho is never empty, not even in the dead of night, and especially not during a mild summer afternoon.
“To what do I owe this pleasure?” says Aziraphale, keeping one hand on the doorknob. Dash it. It’s been nearly a year and a half since the failed Armageddon. Why now? He really should call Crowley, but doesn’t want to reach into his pocket for his mobile (the one Crowley insisted he get specifically for situations like this). Right now, she would likely take it as a threat and try her luck with Hellfire again, despite his reputation.
Beezlebub smiles a peculiar little smile. Then she lifts both her hands and blows into her palms. A cloud of brown dust swirls up to surround Aziraphale’s face. He staggers back into his thick oak doors, scrabbling for the doorknob again and coughing, then belatedly stops breathing, horrified. He doesn’t even need to breathe. Why in Heaven did he pick up the stupid habit? Oh no. Oh dear.
The dust vanishes. Beezlebub’s face splits into a grin. “You have two options, angel: fall, or die.” She holds out her hands and shrugs. “The choice is yours.”
Aziraphale’s hand finds the doorknob and he grabs onto it like a lifeline, shoving his door open. He falls back into the bookshop, wings sprouting from his back, abrupt and unbeckoned. The door swings shut on Beezlebub’s maniacal laughter.
Aziraphale staggers up the stairs that lead to his flat, one hand tugging at his bow tie, wings dragging behind him like the cape of a fallen king. He catches himself against the wall and has to stop. It’s too hot. It’s too—bloody—hot. He burns.
Pressing his forehead against the cool wall, he takes a moment to catch his breath, before stumbling into the room at the end of the hall.
Aziraphale lands hard on his knees in the middle of what should be a bedroom. It’s empty of all furniture, but still feels too small, like a prison cell. One that he will likely die in. He tips forward, catching himself on the hardwood floor with shaking hands.
“Oh, bugger,” he gasps.
“Angel,” Crowley singsongs, sauntering through A.Z. FELL AND Co., bag slung over one arm. A new crepe shop had opened up in France, and Crowley really is a sentimental dumbass sometimes.
There’s no response.
“Huh.” He was certain the angel would be home—they’d had plans for the evening, and it’s unlike Aziraphale to flake on him—especially not now, when they were both free from Divine and Occult responsibilities. He tries holding up the bag in invitation. “I’ve brought you something.”
Silence.
Crowley glances over his shoulder. The door to the bookshop had been unlocked; Aziraphale had to be somewhere. Mentally shrugging off his sudden unease, he rambles up the stairs, whistling Aziraphale’s favorite Chopin concerto, Under Pressure.
“You didn’t ditch me, did you, angel?” asks Crowley, cheerfully, peering around the corner and down a short hallway. It’s entirely possible that Aziraphale heard something about how one can acquire old books from eBay and tripped off to Egmont Bight.
Crowley’s never actually been up here before; for the most part, they spend their evenings in the furnished back rooms. As far as he knows, Aziraphale doesn’t even bother coming up here. Except for now, apparently.
The rich, gleaming red wood from downstairs is carried to the upper floor, along with the hideous red Persian rugs. Bit too mildewy, though, and there’s certainly not enough air circulating through the cramped hall. Stagnating. It’s got no life up here, not like the shop, which is full up with—well, with Aziraphale.
Crowley slides off his sunglasses, dropping them onto an inner pocket. There’s very little light; no window, and he can’t easily spot a light switch. No matter—he’s always had excellent night vision, and it’s not long before he spots the footprints in the dust leading up to a room at the end of the hall.
“Angel?” Crowley asks, pushing the door open. The bag drops out of suddenly nerveless fingers, landing with a quiet thump on the bare floor.
Aziraphale is kneeled in the middle of the empty room, head bowed, wings drooping limply behind him, sweat dripping from his forehead to the floor. He’s panting with his mouth open, hands curled into claws on his thighs, and his eyes are fixed blindly ahead of him.
“Aziraphale?” Crowley gasps, taking a step towards him. “What happened to y—”
“Stay back,” Aziraphale snarls. Crowley automatically falls back, lifting his hands in supplication.
“What happened to you?” Crowley repeats, chest tightening with panic.
Aziraphale’s head snaps up, gray eyes zeroing in on Crowley. For a moment, he looks exactly like an apex predator, eyes flat and fixed and—and hungry. But then his face crumbles, like the slow collapse of a building during an earthquake. He tries to stand, but overbalances and falls back, and then scrambles on all fours to the other side of the room. “Oh no, not you, my dear. Please, not you. You must go.”
“Excuse me, but there is no way in Heaven or Hell I’d leave you like this.”
“You must. Oh, you must,” Aziraphale begs, true terror gleaming in his eyes. “Crowley, please. I beg of you. I can’t—”
“Tell me what happened, angel,” Crowley says, keeping his voice calm even as panic wants to claw its way up his throat. He crouches down to one knee, trying to make himself as least threatening as possible. “I can help. Just tell me.”
“I—I—” Aziraphale stutters. He seems to have trouble focusing on one thing, eyes flying around the room, occasionally landing on Crowley before darting away again. All the color has left his face, save for two red splotches high on his cheeks. “I don’t know.”
“Don’t lie to me, Aziraphale!”
Aziraphale’s eyes crack back to him, like a pistol whip. The fixed look enters his gaze again. Crowley stares flatly back. He’s been an apex predator for far longer than Aziraphale ever has. But then Aziraphale wrenches his eyes away and roughly shakes his head. “I really don’t. I—that is to say—she—”
“Who?” Crowley demands furiously. “Michael? Beezlebub?”
“Second.”
Anger bubbles up in Crowley’s chest, but he tamps it down. It can wait. “What did she do?”
“I don’t know, Crowley!” It’s almost like their normal bickering, except Aziraphale is shaking so hard that Crowley can hear his wings rustle. “She said—she—” He squeezes his eyes shut. “‘Fall, or die. The choice is yours’.”
Crowley goes down on both knees. He wants to crawl across the floor, gather the angel up in both his arms, but Aziraphale has erected an impenetrable barrier between the two of them.
“Crowley.” A tear slips out of the corner of his eye. “I can’t—”
“Tell me what you need, angel. Let me help you.”
Aziraphale shakes his head. “You need to go. While I’m still in—in my right mind.”
“If you think I’m just going to leave you here to die, then you’re already out of your fucking mind!” Crowley shouts.
Silence settles over the room in a suffocating blanket. Aziraphale blinks rapidly, then folds his knees under him. They kneel across from each other in the empty room, the light from the setting sun bathing the room a tarnished gold.
“Tell me what you need,” says Crowley, quietly.
“You,” says Aziraphale, nearly whispering.
Crowley climbs to his feet. Unknots the thin scarf around his neck and lets it drop to the floor. Aziraphale stares up at him, his expression slipping into something inhuman again. His stubborn, brave angel.
Crowley steps forward. Meets some resistance from the barrier. He shrugs off his suit jacket and takes another step forward, and the barrier gives way, before snapping up again, holding him in place.
“I won’t,” Aziraphale snarls, wild eyed. “I won’t. I’d rather be discorporated—I’d rather burn in Hellfire for eternity than force you.”
“Shhh, sweetheart,” Crowley soothes. He’s within touching distance, but Aziraphale has his arms pinned to his sides. “You’re not forcing me. Take whatever you need—I give it to you willingly.”
Aziraphale’s expression cracks down the middle, and the barrier drops. “Crowley.”
“I know, darling,” Crowley says, and reaches for him.
Crowley is the worst.
He drops his head. A bead of sweat trickles down his forehead and around one eyebrow, into his eyelashes. He blinks; it falls. His knees grate against the wood floors, but he barely notices it, panting open-mouthed.
He’d prepared himself to be thoroughly fucked with zero prep, but Aziraphale, the contradictory asshole, still hasn’t even stuck his dick into him despite Crowley already coming twice. He hasn’t even taken off his goddamned coat.
“Az—Aziraph—ah!” His nails dig grooves into the floor as Aziraphale drags the flat of his tongue into Crowley’s ass. Aziraphale’s fingers press bruises into Crowley’s waist, but at his name, he slides his hands down to grab Crowley’s ass, spreading him open to lick deeper. Crowley lets out a choked sob, scrabbling at the floor. “Fuck!”
Crowley is the worst.
Aziraphale didn’t want this. He’d begged Crowley to leave, had told him to his face he’d rather die, and yet here Crowley is, overcome by the sins of his weak, pathetic body, writhing in Heavenly ecstasy as Aziraphale’s tongue plunders into him, sloppy, eager, desperate, like he can’t get enough of how Crowley tastes. Spit leaks from his ass to drip down his tight balls and bobbing cock. Crowley tries to thrust back, wild for more, but Aziraphale holds him in place, inexorable.
Aziraphale didn’t want this, and Crowley is the worst because he did—he does, and has done, wants everything, with every fiber of his being, for all the years he’s walked this forsaken planet. He’s the worst because even though Aziraphale hadn’t wanted to do this with him, Crowley would greedily take whatever scraps he could get from the angel, freely given or not.
Crowley is the worst, because this Aziraphale, the one only just clinging to the threads of control, vibrating with barely banked passion, is furiously hot. If Crowley wasn’t already damned for eternity, he’d probably have another couple of centuries tacked onto his sentence for that thought alone.
And then Aziraphale curls his tongue, experimental, humming with pleasure at the taste of him, and Crowley comes with a shocked groan, cock untouched.
Crowley thumps down on his back with a gasp, and Aziraphale’s hands wrap around his hips, dragging him close. Dusk has slipped into night. The only light is from the dim streetlights and the occasional headlight of a turning car angled perfectly to flood the room. Crowley’s back arches off the floor when Aziraphale drives back into him with one torturously slow thrust, wings stretching out behind him.
Still white.
Aziraphale pulls back out so that the tip of his cock brushes his entrance, watching Crowley with flat eyes. He’s still in there, but just barely—Crowley catches glimpses of him when he reaches down to caress the side of Crowley’s face with one shaky hand, or cup the back of his head when he shoves him to the floor, so sweet even when he’s out of his mind with desire. And then he thrusts back into Crowley, bottoming out in one quick snap of his hips.
“Oh, fuck,” Crowley cries, pressing the heels of his hands into his closed eyes so hard that red spots dance behind his eyelids.
“Look at me,” Aziraphale orders, catching both of Crowley’s wrists with one hand and pinning them over his head.
Crowley’s sight blurs. He blinks several times. The tears fall, his vision clears, and Aziraphale looms over him, his face twisted in horrified agony. He looks completely fucking heartbroken, which is just—no. Aziraphale snatches his hand away from Crowley’s wrists as if Crowley’s burned him with Hellfire.
“Oh, my dear. I’m so very sorry—”
“No!” Crowley shouts, flailing until he catches one of Aziraphale’s wrists in both his hands. He draws it down to his face, then leans his cheek against his palm. “No. It’s good, Aziraphale. It’s too good. I’m just—overwhelmed.”
“You don’t deserve to be used like this—”
“Yes, but I want it.” It’s the truest thing he’s ever said, even though Aziraphale is looking like him like he doesn’t believe a word he’s saying. So he rolls his hips again, demanding, and the horror slips back into rhapsody. Aziraphale matches Crowley’s thrusts, but soon loses control of the rhythm, fucking into Crowley brutally hard.
It’s fine. It’s what Crowley wants.
Insatiable.
The hazy twilight is slipping into a red dawn. They’re kneeling, Aziraphale’s knees bracketing Crowley’s legs. This position doesn’t offer much room for deep thrusts, but Aziraphale is slowly rolling his hips, face buried in Crowley’s neck, one hand gripping his hip, the other arm wrapped around his chest, hand flat over his heart. Crowley reaches over his head to sink his hand into Aziraphale’s sweat-damp curls. He’s been slowing down for the past half hour, no longer fucking into Crowley as if he’ll fly apart at the atoms if he doesn’t.
“Alright, angel?” Crowley murmurs.
In response, Aziraphale draws back far enough to press his hand between Crowley’s shoulder blades, urging him to bend down. Crowley goes willingly, bracing himself on bruised elbows. He’s expecting Aziraphale to start ruthlessly fucking him again, but instead he leans down to snake an arm around his sweat-slick stomach and wraps a hand around his dick.
Crowley forces his wobbly arms to support him. Now. Now Aziraphale will fuck him.
But then Aziraphale leans down at bites his shoulder blade, latching on possessively, right where his wing would start if he had them out. Crowley shouts in surprise, his spent dick spilling out a small pearl of come. It’s too fucking much, even for an occult being, and Crowley’s vision whites out.