Chapter Text
“If you wanted to stop me from coming, that’d be fine with me,” Crowley said one evening, a propos of absolutely nothing, except that he’d been watching Aziraphale biting on his lower lip for a good half hour, and the flash of his white teeth bringing a red flush to his mouth had been Crowley’s sole focus that entire time.
“Coming – where?” Aziraphale said distractedly, turning a manuscript over in his hands. It was a beautiful work, embossed hardcover with peeling gold leaf that Aziraphale had been painstakingly restoring by hand, the tremulously-thin fibres too delicate for the heat of miracles.
“Anywhere, really.” Crowley uncrossed his legs as he slouched down in the armchair in their living room, shifting in his skin-tight trousers. They were the kind of trousers that were furnished with primarily decorative pockets with inflexible topstitching that Crowley could only just squeeze the tips of his forefingers into. The attempt tugged his jeans tight – tighter – across his crotch. “Anywhere, anytime. I’m not fussy about it.”
Aziraphale paused, bonefolder in hand, a dark green little paintbrush in the other that shone with gold residue. “Do you mean,” he asked carefully, “that is, am I making the assumption you mean this in a sexual context rather than – than you want me to stop you from coming to the tailor’s with me tomorrow?”
“Yes.” Crowley raised his eyebrows. “Obviously. This is – I’m talking about orgasms.”
“I see.” Aziraphale put the manuscript aside, instruments perched daintily on a little porcelain receptacle – a knock-off Charles and Diana commemorative dish by an artist who couldn’t seem to decide whether he was painting the Princess of Wales or a young Aled Jones. “May I ask why?”
Crowley shrugged. “Could be fun.”
Aziraphale turned fully in his desk chair to face him. “I believe the general consensus is that the fun of sexual activity is to enjoy climax, not to be deprived of it.”
“Well, you would think that, angel.” Crowley stood, unfolding himself in a sinewy deployment that Aziraphale followed with his eyes. “A right little hedonist you are, if ever I saw one.”
“Nothing wrong with the harmless appreciation of earthly pleasures between informed and consenting parties,” Aziraphale said, the mantra he repeated whenever Crowley teased him about his indulgences.
“’Course not.” Crowley stepped towards Aziraphale, who watched him, still. He stood over Aziraphale now, between his open thighs where he sat with his back to his desk, an impeccable crease in his well-pressed trousers, though he had undone the top button of his shirt, and it showed the soft dip at the base of his throat. Crowley wanted to put his tongue on it. “Anyway, it’s not you who won’t be coming. It’s me.”
“But why would you want that? Being denied?” Aziraphale asked, hands going up to Crowley’s sides, skimming his ribs, lacing warmly over the bare dip of his back where his shirt never tucked in properly, trousers always riding too low.
Crowley shrugged again. He didn’t know what it was, exactly; there was a place in his mind, where paradoxes and contradictory desires intersected and became indistinguishable one from the other; where a little sting of pain and a coil of pleasure sometimes felt like the same thing; where he wanted to give, to serve, but also very much to push, to take, and sometimes those impulses were identical too. “I don’t know. I just want to try it.”
“And what about me?” Aziraphale pushed Crowley’s shirt up, revealing bone-sharp hips, and put his face to Crowley’s abdomen, tender and inquiring. “What do I get out of this, out of refusing you?”
Crowley pushed forward into Aziraphale’s touch, and stuttered when he felt Aziraphale kiss his skin, wet and open-mouthed just above the button of his jeans, where the metal had bitten red marks into him. “You’re not refusing me.” His voice came out a little high, a little breathy. “You’re giving me exactly what I want.”
Aziraphale went still, and his fingers, which had found their way down to grip the skinny handful of Crowley’s denim-clad arse, froze in place. His face turned up to Crowley, a soft look of wonder and careful uncertainty there.
“Crowley,” Aziraphale said, and then all at once he was fumbling with buckles and buttons and the damned, inflexible material of Crowley’s drainpipe jeans, to peel it all down and away, letting Crowley’s cock spring, half-hard, to meet his open mouth.
He made short work of it, enveloping Crowley in lush heat, taking him in and sucking him with relentless, assiduous insistence, bobbing his head back and forth until Crowley was moaning in loud, scattered cries, thrusting forward and coming fast and shocked down Aziraphale’s throat.
“That was,” Crowley said, after a moment, shivering as Aziraphale pulled off but continued to press soft, nerve-teasing kisses up and down his spent cock. “That was the opposite of what we were discussing.”
“I couldn’t help it,” Aziraphale sniffed, and he moved away, finally, to sit back in his desk chair, trousers tenting significantly.
“You like it, though?” Crowley asked. He tucked himself away, but didn’t bother doing his belt buckle or zipper up. “The idea of – of deciding for me. When I get to, you know.”
Aziraphale closed his eyes briefly, pressing the heel of his hand between his legs. “Yes,” he murmured, finally, eyes open but not looking at Crowley. A soft, guilty admission. “I do.”
“Good.” Crowley placed a warm palm on Aziraphale’s cheek. Then he smiled, sharp-toothed and bright. “Right, now, do you want to come in my arse or in my mouth?”
---
It had been a couple of months now, since Crowley and Aziraphale had decided to move to the coast together.
They had upped sticks from London and into a crumble-stoned little cottage in Upper Beeding, a modest affair on the banks of the Ardur which was quiet enough to bring them the peace they had started to long for, old souls that they were, but was also a very reasonable twenty-minute drive from the centre of Brighton.
In the aftermath of the averted apocalypse, Crowley had hoped that a change of pace and scenery might settle things down. Eternity stretched out tentatively once more before them, but they had come too close, too recently, to losing everything, and there was a new, quiet fear that what they had – time, love, each other – could be taken away at any moment.
It manifested in strange ways.
Aziraphale especially, worrier that he was already before the events at Tadfield, had become even more obsessed with a multitude of insignificant and imagined tasks, unable to stop fussing for a moment, as if everything might just spin out of control if he weren’t keeping busy.
For one thing, despite never showing a particular predilection for DIY previously, he had suddenly been taken by the notion that their new home absolutely needed renovating, and was spending his afternoons glued to loud, American home decorating show clips on Youtube, emerging, days later, with a vague insistence that they had to make sure the sofa “talked” to the chairs, and that they needed something called a feature wall.
(There had been a solid two weeks of vacillation and distress, découpaged magazine articles about colour psychology scattered all over the house, and swatches of embossed curlicue wallpaper samples pinned everywhere from the bay windows in the kitchen to the fireplace in the lounge, after which Aziraphale suggested that the best place for the new, decorative feature wall should, in fact, be their bedroom. Which was what he had said he’d wanted in the first place.
“That’s what you said you wanted in the first place,” Crowley had pointed out.
“Yes but—” Aziraphale’s face had fallen under that cloud of agonised doubt that was ever moments away from misting over his features whenever he was faced with a choice between two or more options. “There were a lot of things to consider. And is it what you want?”
“I don’t mind.”
“Well, neither do I!” Aziraphale had said, voice rising with an edge of panic that always meant he was working himself up over nothing at all. “But it’s our bedroom, Crowley, I don’t want to make the wrong decision.”
“It’s not – it can’t be the wrong decision,” Crowley had said, patiently. “There’s no patron saint of painters and decorators. There’s no – objective moral truth about whether green wallpaper is allowed in the bedroom or not.”
“Let me just check what the Google says again,” Aziraphale had insisted, voice already fading as he hurried from the room.)
Aziraphale had always been a ditherer. He was a fusser, a fretter, a great big nervous Nellie, hovering anxiously around Crowley like a flustered bird, shilly-shallying over every step forward, issuing agitated platitudes and apprehensive warnings about always being just a little more careful.
But Angels, at their core, also had the capacity to be ruthless. Crowley knew that very well. Angels were divinity manifest, agents of God’s judgement, descending onto the earthly planes in unbound, terrorising watchfulness, righteously imparting unto quivering mortals the command, THOU SHALT NOT. They had a tendency, in times of strife, towards a steely willingness to lay down the law, and a utilitarian practicality for enacting the greater good with very little interest in relativism.
Which were all different ways of saying that angels could be right stubborn bastards, when they wanted to be.
Crowley was not, historically, a big fan of absolutism. It showed a disappointing lack of imagination. And he liked how his angel had, over time, thrown out his smug protestations about bloody ineffability for an altogether more reasonable inclination for asking questions.
Still. After Aziraphale had changed his mind for the sixth time about the colour accents for their new throw pillows, thrown a fit about it, and then disappeared into Ikea for an actual, literal week, Crowley decided that a little reminder of the power of decisive action might be a good idea.
---
“It is a nice wall,” Crowley gasped, three days later, when they were in their bedroom and Aziraphale was fucking him beneath it. They’d gone, in the end, with a cottagey William Morris aesthetic that was all elaborate, curling vines, repeated patterns of pendulous fruits and small, hidden birds amongst the flowers. Crowley, despite his tastes running almost exclusively to chrome-finish minimalism, actually found it quite lovely, and somehow comforting to look at. “You made the – oh, oh fuck – the right ch-choice.”
Aziraphale smiled demurely. There was a faint sheen of sweat on his forehead. “Thank you, my dear, I’m glad you think so.” He rolled his hips, a long, deep stroke in, before pulling back shallowly, as Crowley let out a soft moan.
“Th-the pillows are nice too. Very – oh – very c-complementary.”
“The lady in the upholstery department recommended the autumn shades.”
“She has a g-good – a good eye.”
“Quite. And I am sorry it took so much dithering.” Aziraphale punctured the words with a hard snap of his hips, and Crowley arched and keened.
His fingernails were digging grooves into the soft flesh of Aziraphale’s arms, and he released them with some effort. “No need – nngh – to apologise, angel. I know you like t-to get th-things right. As long as you’re h-happy.”
“I do,” Aziraphale agreed. “I am.” He leaned down and kissed Crowley, then, warm and tender, and Crowley wrapped his arms around the back of Aziraphale’s neck. “Still,” Aziraphale murmured against Crowley’s mouth, and then he was pulling up and away, sitting back on his knees, cock slipping out of Crowley’s arse, where Crowley had previously very much been appreciating its presence. “I ought to learn to be more decisive.”
“You ought to—” Crowley repeated, squirming, confused as to why Aziraphale wasn’t putting his very nice cock back inside Crowley immediately. And then, suddenly, he understood. “Oh, angel,” Crowley huffed out a laugh. “Oh, we’re doing this now?”
“I’m being decisive, Crowley,” Aziraphale said, primly. And then, voice a little lower, “I’ve decided you’ve had enough.”
Crowley stopped laughing abruptly. The atmosphere had changed. Aziraphale’s gaze on him was steady, not furrowed in worry and doubt for once, but heated and even. “If you say so,” Crowley said, a little breathless. He pushed his arousal to the back of his mind, and reached for Aziraphale’s cock instead, his sole focus now.
“Oh, no, dear,” Aziraphale said, incomprehensibly, and he started to roll away, off the bed, although his cock was still stiff, a flushed-dark curve against the soft white of his belly. “I’ve had enough, too.”
“Angel.” Crowley blinked. “You don’t have to – at least let me—”
“Not right now.” Aziraphale leaned over to give Crowley a kiss, a chaste peck on the lips before standing and gathering his clothes to him with a snap of his fingers. “I have some errands to run.”
“Errands,” Crowley repeated.
“Yes.” Aziraphale, now fully dressed, his cock still an obscene, swollen line in his trousers, placed a hand on Crowley’s cheek. “In the interest of full disclosure and absolute clarity,” he said, as Crowley swallowed past his dry throat, “you are not allowed to touch yourself without my permission, and I forbid you to come until I decide you’re allowed to. I also expect you to maintain an Effort at all times unless I tell you otherwise. If it becomes too much, I want you to clearly say the words Alpha Centauri to me, and we can stop. Understood?”
“Fuck,” Crowley said, feelingly.
“Understood?”
Crowley closed his eyes. His cock pulsed, a bead of fluid trickling down the length, and he shuddered. “Understood.”
“Good.” And then Aziraphale was gone.
Crowley let out a breath and flopped onto his back on the bed, one arm bent behind his head, the other across his hips. He laughed again, disbelieving. His palm was clammy with sweat, a hot-damp imprint on his thigh that suddenly felt like a direct trigger to his cock. It would be so easy to just wrap his hand around it. It wouldn’t take long. He was on the edge already.
He put his fingers in his mouth instead, and bit down hard on his knuckles until his teeth ached. It took him a full half hour to calm down.
---
Crowley was washing dishes in the sink.
They had polished off a tabbouleh at lunchtime, a generously fragrant serving with pomegranate seeds and parsley from their own garden, and there was a stack of plates and cutlery to attend to. It was an unnecessary activity, this tidying up, when messes could be vanished and dishes popped into hidden dimensions for the sake of storage space, but the repetitive, rote gestures were soothing to Crowley, meditative.
The kitchen was a sanctuary for Crowley.
As much as his and Aziraphale’s bedroom was a place of comfort and intimacy, the kitchen had a forgiving neutrality and a practicality to it that Crowley was drawn to. He had also, despite his six thousand-year lack of interest in food except for the way it disappeared into Aziraphale’s mouth, recently become quite adept and surprisingly enchanted by the notion of cooking, and the kitchen had become like his own personal workshop.
Their bodies required no feeding, so it was an entirely useless and indulgent pastime, but there was something in the creation of dishes, in the slow reduction of liquids to cream-thick sauces, in the flashy broil of stir-fried vegetables, in the precise goldening of an hachis parmentier, that satisfied Crowley deeply. Aziraphale’s enjoyment, his delighted expression, the way he both savoured careful bites and gorged himself entirely on his favourite meals, was equally rewarding.
Crowley paused, hands buried in soapsuds. Perhaps thinking about Aziraphale’s approach to food consumption wasn’t ideal right now.
He was feeling a little edgy. It had been a whole week since Aziraphale had committed them to this – this thing, this game they had decided to play, and they hadn’t done anything, or spoken of it since. Aziraphale hadn’t felt like sleeping during that time, less prone to the practice than Crowley anyway, so there had been no reason to go into their bedroom together, and they had instead spent their days in the living room and garden, reading, repotting plants, watching television and being frightfully domestic.
But there had been something in Aziraphale’s gaze this afternoon, in the way it lingered, heatedly, on the places where Crowley’s shirt was open, watching the dip of his throat and his olive oil-slick fingers as he dished out helpings of onion, tomatoes and bulgur. He also seemed, to Crowley, more pointed in his degustation, more deliberately provocative in the way his mouth lingered, pursed, around his fork, in the sounds he made when he swallowed and licked his lips.
He made Crowley want. Even more so with the way he was making Crowley wait.
Crowley rinsed out the serving bowl and put it upside-down in the drying rack. The sun outside was high and bright, an unrelenting source of light and heat that fell in gridded interruptions through the blinds across Crowley’s arms as he worked. And then, softly, another pair of arms were joining his.
“Crowley,” Aziraphale murmured, hugging around Crowley’s waist, bringing their bodies gently together, a slightly sticky warmth behind him in the thick, summer afternoon. “What are you doing, love?”
Crowley lifted his hands, soapsuds dripping down to the elbows. “Crocheting a nightgown, angel, what do you bloody think?”
“Very nice,” Aziraphale said, not listening in the slightest. He was pressed along Crowley’s back, and had started discreetly rubbing the hardening line of his cock against Crowley’s arse.
“Angel,” Crowley said, swallowing, and then Aziraphale was reaching around to find Crowley’s belt buckle, the heavy metal clink of it loud in the countryside quiet of the cottage. He pulled the belt off, allowing access to Crowley’s buttons and zipper, which he also undid, peeling Crowley’s jeans back slowly, opening them to pull out his cock. Crowley’s soapy hands slipped against the slick, chrome sink surface. “What’s – what’s brought this on?” he asked.
“Oh, nothing much. Only that I find it rather difficult to resist you like this.”
“Elbow-deep in fairy liquid?”
Aziraphale chuckled into the line of Crowley’s hair, sensitive against his neck. “Cooking,” he said, with a kiss against Crowley’s skin. “Cleaning.” Another kiss. “Feeding me.”
Crowley let out a moan, Aziraphale’s words going straight to his cock, thickening in the bite of his zipper where Aziraphale had exposed him.
“You’re so good to me,” Aziraphale murmured, moving in a slow grind against him. “Providing for me, wanting to please me like you do.”
“Fuck,” Crowley whispered.
“And you do like to please me, don’t you?” Aziraphale’s hands went gently to Crowley’s hips, fingers pushing between clammy-hot skin and tight, black denim, easing the jeans down.
“I do,” Crowley said, and his voice was thin, almost a whine, as he felt Aziraphale push his own light, linen trousers down to crumple around his thighs, his cock, hot and hard, nudging at the cleft of Crowley’s bare arse.
“F-fuck.” Crowley stuttered forward, trapped by the living heat of Aziraphale’s flesh behind him, and by the chilly, ungiving edge of the sink in front of him. His prick, all the way hard now, skidded against the spillage of soapsuds on the countertop.
Aziraphale smiled. Crowley could feel the press of the angel’s lips against the back of his own neck. His hand reached around to dip into the soapy foam – a sharp, bright, apple-scented froth – and then slipped down, wet and slick, to touch Crowley’s cock.
“Oh, oh, fuck.” Crowley bucked forward into Aziraphale’s hot, slippery grip. Goosebumps prickled over his skin, perspiration gathering in the crook of his limbs, under his arms and behind his knees, as Aziraphale jerked him off, tight and slow. “Oh, y-yes, angel, keep – k-keep going.”
The damp, sweat-gathered heat between their bodies eased the slide of Aziraphale’s cock against him, a sweet, insistent grind against the swell of Crowley’s arse, slipping between his cheeks, rubbing thickly in the split of him. It felt – it felt so good, and Crowley pushed back, pushed forward, whining in anticipation, wanting more.
“Oh, please, ffffuck, just there, j-just there—”
And then Aziraphale was kissing him sweetly on the neck, just below his ear, and pulling away.
“Wonderful,” he said, not without a little smugness.
“No – I – what? Angel,” Crowley whined, trying to push back, trying to turn around and reach for Aziraphale’s cock, but he was out of reach, and Crowley had fairy liquid dripping down his arms.
“I’m going to get some air. Try not to spill everywhere, darling,” Aziraphale added, as water sloshed down the anthracite cabinet doors under the sink, and he nipped forward to give Crowley’s cock one last squeeze for good measure before retreating, humming, from the room.
“Well, fuck,” Crowley said, to no one. His fingertips were pruney from the dishwater, and he was stood alone, bare-arsed in the middle of the kitchen, sporting an erection he could do nothing about, achingly hard and unsatisfied.
Swallowing, Crowley reached with shaky hands for a dishtowel, dried them, then slowly pulled his trousers back up.
---
On Monday, Aziraphale surprised Crowley in the bathroom, while he was arranging his hair just so with some indecently expensive styling pomade, by stepping up behind him and placing his hands on Crowley’s hips. Crowley’s stomach flipped as he met Aziraphale’s eyes, dark and heated, in the mirror. Then Aziraphale dropped to his knees behind Crowley, dragging Crowley’s trousers down as he went, spreading Crowley’s cheeks wide and licking and sucking wetly at his hole without so much as a by-your leave. Crowley was a shaking, shuddering mess within minutes, leaning over the sink, pressed into the mirror, fogging up the glass and crying out with every thrust and drag of the angel’s tongue inside him, cock hard and leaking, eyes rolling back, right on the edge of orgasm – when Aziraphale stood up, licked his lips, and walked out with a smile.
The day after that, while Crowley was doing some well-needed re-alphabetising of his jazz records, both because they had come out of order when they’d moved to the cottage, but also because he was keenly aware of the way Aziraphale, sitting in his armchair, was watching him from the corner of his eye, and he was jittery and needed something to do with his hands. He’d made it all the way to Louis Prima before Aziraphale had snapped the book he was reading shut, and walked over to where Crowley was sitting on the floor. He reached out to hold Crowley’s chin in a gentle but unyielding grip, to tilt Crowley’s head up and smile indulgently at him, and Crowley felt such a vivid rush of heat straight to his cock that he had to close his eyes. The record clattered to the ground.
Aziraphale had bent him face-down over the heavy oak writing desk under the window and fingered Crowley until he wailed, clenching and pushing back against the not-quite-satisfying thickness of Aziraphale’s fingers inside him, gently circling his prostate. That had ended with Crowley’s hands spread damply on the inlaid rosewood, breathing shakily as Aziraphale pulled out, and kissed him tenderly at the bottom of his spine before walking away.
Wednesday and Thursday involved, respectively, a frustratingly aborted blowjob behind the garden shed interrupted by the phone ringing indoors even though the phone never rang, and a tight-fisted handjob on the sofa that was just getting really interesting when Aziraphale pulled his hand out of Crowley’s trousers to go switch the radio on because it was seven o’clock and he wanted to listen to The Archers.
By Friday night, Crowley felt about ready to vibrate right out of his skin.
They tucked themselves into bed that evening, for the sake of routine more than anything else, and Crowley was about to switch the lights off when Aziraphale dived down under the covers and proceeded to suck the hell out of Crowley’s cock. Crowley hissed and thrashed and keened, trying to fuck deeper into wet heat, trying to chase the bright edge of the orgasm Aziraphale had kept from him all week.
Just as he felt himself teetering on the brink, Aziraphale pulled off with a loud, slick, sucking noise, and Crowley sank his head back into the pillow with a sob of frustration. Aziraphale emerged from under the duvet, dandelion-hair mussed in every direction, mouth red-flushed and swollen, looking extremely pleased with himself.
“Angel,” Crowley breathed, panting, feeling dizzy and crazy and desperate. “Now – you – can I please—?”
But Aziraphale said, “That’s enough for now,” in his prim, polite little voice that didn’t disguise the edge of severity there, pushing Crowley away.
Crowley dragged his hands back to himself, crossing them over his chest to tuck under his armpits, shuddering.
It was – infuriating, the way he couldn’t touch. Aziraphale, purveyor of every harmless human indulgence, who delighted in excesses, with his proclivity for fine things, for things that felt good, was not only denying Crowley any satisfaction, but had inexplicably come over all Catholic by depriving them both.
It certainly didn’t feel as good as Crowley had thought it would, but he supposed it was what he’d asked for, so he said nothing.
---
The garden at the back of the cottage was wide and sprawling, larger in square footage by far than the house itself, stretching back into hidden nooks and shaded corners, so that it was impossible to view the entirety from one angle. The sloping gravel pathway and fetchingly outmoded ha-ha wall gave the garden a charming, crooked feel and behind every draping trellis and unfurled rosebush were more places to discover.
The aesthetic, like their house itself, was strongly Aziraphale’s, an expansion of his predilection for fussiness and clutter. Crowley had always favoured space, minimal and clean, and yet he couldn’t bring himself to mind, as Aziraphale put up new bookshelves that overflowed with paperbacks and hardbacks and manuscripts, trails of trinkets and tchotchkes on the windowsill from his trips to every village carboot sale, coming home beaming with armfuls of potted plants that he handed off delightedly into Crowley’s care.
Their place was messy, crammed with joyful bits of purposelessness and self-indulgent knickknacks. It was full, but there was nothing of Hell’s stifling closeness there, no sharp-edged protractions to prod and scrape and keep you eternally restless. There was no smothering darkness, here, in their house filled with love, in their own garden, under a wide-open sky.
That afternoon, Crowley was tending to the south end of the garden, where a magnificent spillage of hydrangeas bloomed lustily in a half-shaded area near the fence.
“My, aren’t they doing well.”
Crowley turned to give a crooked smile over his shoulder. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to, angel.”
Aziraphale gave him a perfectly innocent look, arms behind his back. He was wearing – and looking rather pleased with himself about it – a wide-brimmed straw hat, complete with a ruffle-edged sleek black feather stuck in the band. Sun exposure didn’t affect their skin the same way it did humans, which meant he was wearing the hat for entirely aesthetic purposes. He probably thought it made him look jaunty and debonair. “I’m not up to anything,” Aziraphale said, coming closer to peer at where Crowley was trimming back the overgrowth.
“You are. You’re deliberately trying to undo my work here with your loathsome compliments. All my efforts, gone to waste.”
“I’m doing no such thing. I simply said—”
Crowley prodded a finger at Aziraphale, the tip of it green and earthy. “No. Stop it. The plants are doing perfectly fine on a strict diet of glauconite, frequent watering—”
“—and creative death threats—”
“—and creative death threats which visibly yield results—”
“Balance and moderation in all things, my dear. I don’t see why they oughtn’t get a little encouragement, also.”
“Well, do forgive me for not taking gardening advice from someone who believes all pests are equal and should be allowed to live freely and gorge themselves on my geraniums.”
Aziraphale tilted his head in acknowledgement, smiling slightly. He didn’t say what he might have said, once – that all of them were God’s creatures, and deserving of love.
Crowley let them lapse into silence as he turned back to the plants. His secateurs clacked against the thick, verdant foliage amongst which candyfloss-coloured blooms were nestled. The flowers barely trembled at the sight of the blades, arching instead joyfully towards him, towards the sun. It was appalling, really.
“Come here.” Aziraphale’s voice came to him, soft.
Crowley turned. Aziraphale’s arms were open, waiting, and his face was – as it ever was. Kind, and knowing. Crowley might have said, once, that that was appalling too. Now, it felt like the only thing worth having.
He put his tools down, wiped his sap-sticky hands on his thighs – he had a rough and threadbare pair of jeans purposefully for gardening – and stepped into the loose circle of Aziraphale’s arms, hands slipping inside Aziraphale’s linen jacket to settle on the swell of his hips.
Crowley had found Aziraphale different, these last few weeks. He seemed surer, more in control. He was less prone to agonising for a half hour every time he had to make a decision and was being positively spontaneous in this choices. He’d been indulgently leaving projects he’d started unfinished, saying they would get round to them when the time was right. There wasn’t as much of a fearful desperation to do everything, and to do it perfectly. Aziraphale seemed to have settled into the idea that they had time, now – time to make mistakes, time to savour each other. Crowley glowed with the knowledge that he had, perhaps, helped.
On the other hand, it had left Crowley wound tight as a clock. Now, there was a constant, desperate thrumming under his skin, a relentless, magnetised pull, drawing every nerve up sharp like iron filings, every time Aziraphale so much as turned his gaze on him, reduced to a wanting, needful thing.
“Kiss me,” Aziraphale murmured.
Crowley launched forward and did as he was asked, knocking off Aziraphale’s ridiculous hat as he went. He kissed hungrily, licking into Aziraphale’s mouth, as far as he could go, tongue sloppy, sliding over the back of Aziraphale’s teeth, pushing hard into the fleshy wetness of his cheeks, against the sensitive topside of his palate. He growled and hissed as he did so, half choking on his own breaths as he made his assault on the angel’s mouth, sucking on his lips in a messy, wet smear, animalistic in his desperation.
“Crowley.” Aziraphale gasped as he pulled back, his hair a scarecrow mess from where Crowley had, unconsciously, threaded his fingers tightly into it, his lips swelled red, his eyes wide and wanting.
Crowley watched him, panting. He felt raw, unpeeled, and all that just from a kiss.
Aziraphale dragged them back together, the line of their bodies twining, limbs curled around each other like strands of DNA trying to reconfigure, and they kissed and kissed with heavy moans and sporadic breaths, until Aziraphale broke off long enough to say, “Down, get – down,” and then pushed his tongue back into Crowley’s mouth, where it belonged, and kissed him some more as he eased them both to lie on the grass right next to the hydrangeas.
Hot and distracted, Crowley ended up on his back, knees bound by the tangled restriction of his jeans as Aziraphale wrenched them down, t-shirt rucked up to his armpits, exposing him from chest to thigh, his cock already stiff and curved towards his belly, freshly-mown lawn prickling his back and arse. He was almost certainly flattening an unsuspecting bug or two with his thrashing, but Aziraphale didn’t seem particularly bothered about All Creatures Great and Small at that moment, and was instead focusing on sucking and biting at Crowley’s nipples with shocking voracity.
“Oh f-fuck, fucking h-Hell, fuck me, oh,” Crowley babbled, fingers digging into the ground either side of him, feeling the hard earth pile under his nails, desperate for a handhold. Aziraphale was being sloppy, leaving spit-slick trails over Crowley’s chest, using the wetness to ease the slide of his fingers as he sucked one nipple and rolled and pinched the other, every pain-edged squeeze sending shocks through Crowley that tangled into an electric highway of arousal that sang all across his skin. “Angel, angel, angel.”
Aziraphale pulled off with a wet smack of his lips. “Is there something you want, love?” he asked, voice low.
Crowley pressed a shaky hand over his eyes. “A-anything, oh fuck, please.”
“Anything?” Aziraphale sat up consideringly, looking down at Crowley lain next to him, a debauched mess already, nipples thick and puffy, chest straining, sweat gathering on the insides of his thighs, cock leaking slow pulses of fluid onto his belly, and Aziraphale hadn’t even been near it yet. “Do you want my fingers?” Aziraphale asked, trailing them across Crowley’s exposed knee, over the dry skin at the front, and then dipping lightly underneath to the hidden crook at the back of it, and Jesus Christ and Satan himself when had that place become so painfully erotic?
“Y-yes, God, Hell, fuckinggg – please, oh please.”
Humming, Aziraphale dragged the pads of his fingers up Crowley’s left thigh, higher and higher to the crease of his pelvis, tantalisingly close, then dipped down in between where Crowley’s legs were clenched tightly together. “Spread,” Aziraphale said, clicking his tongue when Crowley didn’t do as asked immediately, prodding a little harder to part them.
With a whine, Crowley let his thighs open, as far as he could still constricted by the jeans that had slipped to a tangle around his shins, tilting his pelvis up, practically begging.
“Oh, lovely,” Aziraphale breathed, and he reached down to cup Crowley’s sac, lifting his balls gently up, feeling the heft of them, rolling them in his palm, as Crowley squirmed and panted and tried not to flail. As Aziraphale’s hand crept further, thumb pressing up against the velvet hot skin just behind his balls, following the crease of him to push in and up between his cheeks, Crowley flinched like he’d been shocked, and let out a high moan.
“Oh, th-there, right there.”
“Here?” Aziraphale asked, all innocence though his voice was warm with fondness and a light, teasing joy. He crooked two fingers and stroked against Crowley’s hole, dry and a little rough, pressing slightly in to catch on the rim.
“Y-yes,” Crowley managed to stutter out. He wanted desperately to just roll over, stick his arse in the air, to let Aziraphale push in and fuck him with those thick, blunt fingers, shove them deep as they could go. But Aziraphale had placed a hand on his abdomen, keeping him in place, and he felt pinned by that as much as Aziraphale’s gaze on him, watching him, taking in his display.
And then Aziraphale pulled his hand away.
“Shitting Christ,” Crowley swore.
“Now, none of that,” Aziraphale admonished, swatting Crowley on the thigh. “Can’t you contain yourself a little better?”
Crowley leaned up onto his elbows and gave Aziraphale a look. He was covered in sweat, and he thought he could feel a couple of ants crawling unpleasantly over his clammy skin. Either that or it was the pins-and-needles prickle of trapped bloodflow, directed away from his limbs and focused entirely on his cock, flushed purple and rock-hard against his belly. “Angel.”
“Yes?”
“Touch me.”
“Like this?” Aziraphale put two fingers, just under the head of Crowley’s cock, and rubbed, light as anything, as if he were softly scritching a fucking bunny rabbit under its chin. Crowley let out a frustrated groan, almost a sob, and thrust his hips forward, trying to get more. “No?” Aziraphale said, all cloying innocence as he took his hand away. “Then how about like this?” And then he put out one finger to touch the very tip of Crowley’s cock.
“Ohgod,” Crowley whispered, trembling. “Ohgod, ohgod, ohgod.”
Aziraphale was making tiny, teasing circles over the slit with one single finger, rubbing slowly, no real pressure or rhythm, just an excruciating touch that had Crowley panting and hissing and rocking his body from side to side trying to get away and come closer at the same time. His cock throbbed steadily with the pulse of his heartbeat, leaking a pearl-sticky stream.
“Lovely,” Aziraphale said, softly. He pulled his finger away, and a spider-silk thread of precome followed, sagging wetly from the tip of Crowley’s cock. Crowley watched hazily as Aziraphale put his finger between his lips and sucked, smearing the taste over his tongue.
Crowley let his head drop back into the grass with a thud. He couldn’t take it anymore. He was going to discorporate.
And then the infuriating touches ceased, and Aziraphale lay his chin instead on Crowley’s thigh. Crowley lifted his head weakly to see the angel peering up at him through blonde eyelashes. “Do you want to come yet?” Aziraphale asked.
“I—” Crowley froze. His cock was aching, his balls heavy and tight, even his skin was shuddering with currents of white-sharp arousal. Every part of his body was yearning for release. “I want—”
“Yes?”
Crowley felt the sweat on his forehead plastering tendrils of red hair there, how it gathered behind his neck and at the backs of his knees, at the rucked-up tangle of his jeans where they’d been pushed down and forgotten. Drips of it ran from under his arms, on his upper ribs, at the small of his back and in the crack of his arse. He was reduced to the sensations Aziraphale was pulling out of him, and he didn’t know what he wanted. He opened his mouth, and all he could do was whine.
“I’ll tell you what I think,” Aziraphale said, kindly, when it became clear Crowley couldn’t. “I think you want to show me how good you can be. I think you want to show me how much you can take. And I think that you want me to reward you for how well you’ve done, later.”
Crowley let out a long, low moan, feeling the caress of Aziraphale’s words, his cock pulsing with an arousal so sharp he could barely focus on anything else. “Y-yes,” he managed to stutter out.
“Good,” Aziraphale said. He lifted his chin away from where it had been digging into the lean meat of Crowley’s thigh. Nothing touched him now but the earth at his back. “You’ve done exceptionally well so far, my dear. Just a little longer, now. Tomorrow night, perhaps. You can hold out, can’t you?”
Crowley said nothing, just squeezed his eyes shut, panting.
Aziraphale stood up, shadow cast over Crowley, the dipping sun just behind his head, and when Crowley opened his eyes Aziraphale was entirely haloed in gold.
Dazed, Crowley lifted a hand, and let Aziraphale hoist him to his feet.
“That’s it, that’s good, come on now, darling,” Aziraphale murmured as he tugged Crowley’s jeans back up, letting Crowley lean weakly against him. Crowley let out small, pitiful moans, breath hitching wetly with unshed sobs as Aziraphale carefully buttoned his jeans back up, leaving Crowley’s cock trapped in the waistband so the head peeked out above the zipper, held tight against his belly by the belt that Aziraphale buckled for him. He tugged Crowley’s t-shirt down to cover him. “You’re doing so well, love.”
Crowley groped for Aziraphale desperately, still shaking. His mind was a-whirr, he felt untethered, like he was floating. He wanted – he still wanted. Without thinking, his hands pawed at Aziraphale’s clothes, seeking something, skin, or some living hot part of him, that he could touch, that could ground him somehow. Fingers scrabbled ineffectually at shirt buttons, and skidded down over sandy-coloured slacks.
When his hands made contact with the cloth-covered heat of Aziraphale’s cock he almost cried out in relief. Aziraphale hadn’t let Crowley touch him in weeks, and it was deeply, soulfully, axis-rightingly good to feel the evidence of his pleasure there, hard between his legs, to hear Aziraphale’s soft, oh, exhaled into his ear.
Crowley trembled. He wanted to drop to his knees there and then, to push his face against the angel’s cock and let it rub against his cheek, press into his mouth, breathe hot and wet all over it and suck messily through Aziraphale’s trousers, soaking the cloth with his spit until Aziraphale was beside himself and would wrench the fastenings open to shove hot and unencumbered between Crowley’s swollen, parted lips, to fuck his mouth and come down throat.
“Ah, ah,” Aziraphale admonished softly, and he pulled Crowley’s hand away. “Not right now.” He kissed Crowley on his damp, furrowed brow, tender as anything, but Crowley felt the rejection like a rift of longing rending the surface of his skin. “Later, love.”
As Aziraphale walked away, Crowley sank to the ground. It was hard under his knees, and the feeling of loneliness was shocking.
---
Much later, when the sun had come down and the long August shadows had decayed into evening twilight, Crowley came indoors. Lamplight spilled from the library into the corridor, soft-edged and inviting, and yet Crowley hesitated. He couldn’t have said why.
Without really meaning to – or, at least without consciously acknowledging any thought process that led him there – Crowley’s body began to smooth out, limbs repatriated to his serpent form, mind simplifying to a more focused train of thought, a blissful unburdening of all the humanlike niggles that prodded and plagued his brain.
If it weren’t for the wonder that was being able to hold hands, interlocked fingers and palms pressed like a supplication together, Crowley sometimes thought he would prefer to stay a snake. Certain things were simpler.
Aziraphale went still as Crowley came slithering into the room, belly frisking softly across the hardwood floor, cool on his scaleless underside.
“Crowley,” he said, his mouth holding an O shape of surprise, light consternation on his brow. “Everything alright?”
Crowley raised up, swaying slightly, a soft hiss on his tongue but no words. His head cocked as he watched Aziraphale watch him, and then he nodded slowly.
Aziraphale pursed his lips, and then put the book he was holding down on the rosewood desk. He turned in his chair, spread his thighs slightly and opened his arms.
Grateful, Crowley slithered over and twined with perhaps more force than he ought up Aziraphale’s leg, squeezing hard around each warm thigh as he looped his coils into Aziraphale’s lap. His upper body nosed headfirst at the sides of Aziraphale’s jacket, pushing them aside and burying his beady face into Aziraphale’s chest, the angel’s body heat soaking with ethereal conduction into Crowley’s.
Crowley flickered out a tongue to taste the air. Aziraphale’s scent, old books and wood polish, under the slightly stale tang of summer sweat, was strongest here, where he buried his reptilian snout into Aziraphale’s soft neck. There was something sweet and heavy hanging over him too, and Crowley scented it greedily, basking in the heightened sense of it, close as he could get to it.
Aziraphale stroked the hard-edged crown of Crowley’s head, then kissed it with dry lips, and Crowley sighed, a wordless, sibilant hiss.
“Are you going to bed tonight, love?” Aziraphale murmured after a moment.
“I will if you carry me.”
Aziraphale chuckled, and Crowley felt it vibrate through his skin. He tightened his coils compulsively, as if he could trap the sound, the sensation of Aziraphale’s happiness, inside his own body.