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“Why, my dear, you look quite miserable.”
Crowley turned to snap at whatever well-fed, well-to-do society matron had decided to visit that little pearl of wisdom on the head of a sodden Whitechapel tart, but then she realized that she actually knew this well-fed, well-to-do society matron.
“Aziraphale,” she said, her voice hoarse from the cold and the wet. “Thought you were still in the Americas.”
Aziraphale made a face, shaking her head. Under the edge of her dark umbrella, her pale curls, pinned up in a plain bun, almost seemed to glow. She was the brightest thing on the street, or so Crowley thought.
“Oh, that business. It was a wash for me, I'm afraid. They move fast in the west, too fast for my liking, maybe even too fast for yours, and I was eager to be home.”
Crowley grinned. It was easier to grin with the angel back in London where she belonged.
“What, missed all this?”
She spread her hand out to encompass the narrow street, from the broken cobbles to the pair of skinny children sharing a pigeon pie on the stoop to the old woman pushing a barrow of rags for cleaning and resale. The rain had flooded half the street, and a man stumbled out from the gambling crib down the lane straight into it, swearing as he sent the filthy water halfway up his knees.
“Oh yes,” Aziraphale said, not looking away from Crowley. “It may be wicked, but it is home.”
“Too wicked by far without you,” Crowley complained. “It was getting a mite too easy around here since you've been gone, angel. I'm practically sleepwalking through the job.”
Now Aziraphale did look around, taking in the doorway that Crowley stood in that barely sheltered her from the rain, Crowley's shivering form, her dark dress caked with mud at the hem.
“Is this what you call easy?” she asked.
“Well, no. I call this setting out some bait for a priest who was meant to be by ages ago.”
“I see. And is your priest proved unfortunately virtuous?”
Crowley scowled.
“No need to sound so very smug, angel. He probably got tempted by someone further down the street.”
“Ah, in which case, you're free.”
Free. That word didn't have much to do with Crowley, and it sounded frankly strange on Aziraphale's lips, but Crowley's heart beat a little faster all the same.
“I always am,” Crowley said, just to be contrary. “But if you're back, maybe I should stay a bit, see if I can catch some stray sin before I duck home for the night..”
She left the statement hanging, and she had the idea that Aziraphale was examining it curiously, like a bit of ribbon she thought might look nice woven through her soft hair.
“So you want to tempt some goodly and righteous soul to wickedness?”
“Yeah, just trying to do my job,” Crowley grumbled. Really. What had she been thinking?
“And you are very good at your job.”
“Of course I am,” Crowley snapped. “And I'm good at my job even if it's pissing down rain and I'm wet straight to my drawers. I am bloody fantastic at my job, angel, and you should know it.”
Azirpahale was as still as a marble statue, the rain running down in rivulets from the crown of her umbrella, her eyes too brilliant a blue. Crowley bared her teeth a little. If the angel wanted her to apologize for snapping, then maybe she should try standing in the blessed rain for hours, waiting for some poxy little priest to come by and give up his tattered dull soul...
“Of course you are.”
Crowley blinked.
“I... am.” she said, a little uncertainly.
“Well?”
“Well, what angel?”
Azirpahale smiled a little, twitching her cream skirts with her fingers as if to show them off.
“Aren't I goodly and righteous enough for you?”
Crowley's throat was suddenly very dry.
“Can't think of anyone better in Whitechapel...” she said, strained. “I mean, Mayfair, maybe, but Whitechapel... No, no one better.”
Azirpahale dimpled prettily, wrinkling her nose in a way that made Crowley want to nip at it just a little.
“How fortunate that we are not in Mayfair. So?”
Crowley was suddenly too aware of the world, too aware of the cobblestones under her thin cracked shoes, too aware of the weight of her sodden skirts and how the rain seemed beat down on her and tattooed cold straight into her skin. There was an alarm bell sounding in her head, and all of the scripts she had ever written for this moment (and there had been many, composed over Babylonian wine, Chinese baiju, priest's desks and brothel pillows), went up in smoke. Her heart was beating too hard, the place between her legs felt tight and odd, and she knew, she just knew that she was going to make an idiot of herself.
“Aren't you a pretty little thing?” Aziraphale said, apparently trying to help. She gave Crowley an encouraging smile.
“Take me home, miss,” Crowley managed. “Oh, please take me home.”
Oh, said the little voice in the back of Crowley's head. Oh good. My brain has turned to jelly, and not even the good sort. The stuff made with calves' feet. Studded with olives. That's me.
It was abyssal, but Aziraphale apparently had no idea what a decent temptation looked like. Instead, her blue eyes seemed a shade darker, and there was a hunger to her smile that made it less pretty, more predatory.
“Oh what a tempting thing you are,” she said, almost kindly. “Come along, my dear.”
She held out her umbrella to keep Crowley, not dry, but at least no more wet. As Crowley slipped under its shelter, an echo of another time and another place rang a subtle bell in her heart, and she glanced at the serene angel, wondering if she could hear it too.
-
“So what are we doing, exactly?” asked Crowley when the hack dropped them off at Aziraphale's doorstep in Bethnal Green. It was a slightly slovenly abode with a doorstep that could use some leading and windows blocked up with books on the sill. It was, like Crowley's own rooms down in Seven Dials, bigger on the inside than it was on the outside, and as they stepped in, a soft and sourceless candlelight glow suffused the space.
“Well, we're getting out of the cold, my dear,” Aziraphale said, casually drying her own clothes with a snap of her fingers. “Terrible night, not fit for man or beast.”
“I was doing just fine,” Crowley said stubbornly.
“Doing quite well, as a matter of fact,” Aziraphale said with a smile. “After all, you're tempting a principality tonight.”
Well, just for the last six thousand years or so, angel, so nice of you to notice, Crowley thought, bemused, and then she frowned.
“You're plotting, miss,” she said. “Care to share with the class?”
“Oh, but I'm a socialist these days,” said Aziraphale sweetly.”I am always plotting”
“Angel...”
Aziraphale turned towards Crowley, hands on her plump hips, giving Crowley a critical glance up and down. Crowley, still sopping wet and powers effectively nullified in the angel's territory, hunched her shoulders up, glaring back rather balefully. Really, it was as easy to miracle for two as one...
“Oh, dear, this won't do it at all, will it?”
“What?”
Aziraphale flapped a hand up and down in Crowley's general direction.
“This,” she said. “I'm afraid that this will hardly hold my attention at all, poor bedraggled thing that you are.”
“Well, you could always take my poor bedraggled clothes off, couldn't you?” asked Crowley with a leer that was rather more form than anything else.
“Oh, what a good idea!” Aziraphale said clapping in delight, and Crowley was beginning to feel like she was being had.
“Er... it is?”
“Oh, I'm sure I will be ever so tempted by a demon who is clean, dry and warm. Come right this way.”
“Um.”
This was, Crowley was fairly certain, the last moment where she could dig in her heels, stop and make Aziraphale stop. She should. Something about this evening made her feel as if she were teetering on the edge of a precipice, and to go forward would change everything, and to go back would change it as well.
Crowley swallowed, scowled, and then without thinking about any of that, followed Aziraphale down the hallway to the small bathroom.
It was a lovely little place, really, all sleek green tile and sparkling clean copper tub. Trust the spoiled angel to have such luxury tucked away in her working class digs. There was a bronze-tinted mirror over the sink, and a single jar of pomade on the small shelf underneath it. While Aziraphale fussed with the faucet, Crowley opened the jar, taking in the brisk scent of rosemary and orris root. It was a curiously intimate article, with Aziraphale's fingermarks marring the smooth surface of the cream, and she lingered over it for a moment before setting it back on the shelf.
She always smells so good, Crowley thought idly.
The tub began to fill with a rush of hot water, and Aziraphale turned to Crowley, shaking her head sadly.
“My goodness, your poor clothes. I will tell you right now, my girl, if you wish to tempt me, those are going to have to go.”
Crowley swallowed.
“Go?” she asked, her voice higher than it was before.
“Oh my, yes. Don't worry, I'm sure that we can find you something more enticing. After your bath of course.”
“Of course,” she echoed, and then, a bit more defiantly, “Well, what happens now, angel? Since you obviously have so many ideas of how a good temptation should go.”
Aziraphale pouted to be even so lightly reprimanded.
“Well, I hardly think that is necessary, my dear. Just because I have a few suggestions doesn't mean that you're not the expert, after all. What do you recommend? Should I simply miracle your clothes away or remove them by hand?”
Butter wouldn't dare melt in the angel's pretty mouth.
“Hands,” Crowley whispered, and Aziraphale inclined her head.
Crowley's arms dangled uselessly by her sides as Aziraphale began undoing the long row of buttons down the front her jacket. The buttons were tiny and numerous, but Aziraphale seemed to have no trouble at all, flicking them open one by one until she could pull off the close-fitting garment and hang it up on the hook on the back of the door.
Silently, Crowley turned so that Aziraphale could undo the fasteners at the back of her skirt, and with a pleased little sound, Aziraphale worked the skirt down so that she could step out of it. Her single petticoat received the same treatment, and both were hung up next to her jacket.
“That will need a good brushing once the mud is dry, and even then... Honestly, perhaps we should just pass them on to the parish poor. Still some use in that skirt yet, at least,” Aziraphale mused, and Crowley didn't know why she felt so simultaneously uneasy and fascinated by the removal and apparent disposal of her clothing.
“Well, I was looking to get some more use out of it, angel,” she said more for form's sake than anything else, and Aziraphale laughed.
“I'll get you better,” she said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
The corset cover was admittedly a bit of a rag. Crowley wouldn't miss it, but then Aziraphale had her turned around and facing the mirror, her hands braced on either side of it.
“You always lace your corset so tightly, my dear. I don't think it's very good for you.”
“Sexy, though,” Crowley protested, and then she grunted as Aziraphale worked her laces loose. They had been on the tight side, giving her a few more curves than she claimed, and she couldn't resist a soft sigh as the whalebone and canvas loosened around her. In the mirror, she could watch Aziraphale's face as she worked, and there was something about how intent the angel was that made her heart beat faster. Angels were famously single-minded, and in this moment, the only thing on Aziraphale's mind was Crowley.
“There we are,” Aziraphale said triumphantly, and then she turned Crowley around to undo the busk down her front. The corset came free, and suddenly Crowley felt far more bare than she had before, standing only in her chemise, her stockings and her broken shoes. Her arms came up to wrap around her body and Aziraphale tilted her head, Crowley's corset still in her hands.
“Are you all right, my dear?” she asked gently.
“Yeah,” Crowley said, her voice suddenly small. “Are you tempted, angel?”
A smile as warm as Eden had been.
“Let me take your shoes, dear.”
Crowley perched on the edge of the tub as Aziraphale knelt down to unfasten first one shoe and then the other. So strange to see the angel so humble. Crowley, more daring than she had thought she would ever be, reached for the angel's nape, grazing just a fingertip over the wisps of pale hair there. She jerked her hand away guiltily when Aziraphale unfastened her garters and tugged off her dark stockings, rising to put them with the rest of her clothes.
Now there was only the chemise, and unable to wait any longer, Crowley whipped it over her head, shoving it at Aziraphale as she turned.
“Here,” she said, almost snappish. “What do you think?”
Crowley actually didn't do much tempting with her actual body. Most of the time, it was enough to whisper poison in her marks' ears and then move on. She never stood so bare in front of them, revealing her long, gangling shape, the freckles, the scars, the sag of skin and the odd bumps and contusions.
Aziraphale clearly hadn't expected the sudden reveal. For a moment, she only stared, eyes wide and a gentle flush of color high on the apples of her cheeks. Then she recovered and gave Crowley a slight, sharp smile.
“I think you look cold,” Aziraphale said. “Let me give you a hand into the bath, my girl.”
Crowley wanted to shake her, wanted to demand what the heaven kind of game she was playing, but then the game might have ended, and she couldn't stand that. Instead she nodded jerkily and let Aziraphale hand her into the tub. She hissed a little at the perfect warmth of the water, and when she sat down in it, she discovered that the tub was perfectly sized for her, deep enough that she was covered up to her chin and long enough that she could stretch her legs out in front of her.
“Nice,” she said grudgingly, and Aziraphale preened.
“So glad you think so.”
As Crowley watched, Aziraphale drew up a tall stool to sit next to the tub, and then she had a soft cloth in her hand.
“Come here, let me have your arm. This will do you good.”
It was impossible to wander around London as she did without getting grubby, and Crowley watched in fascination as Aziraphale used the cloth to gently scrub her clean. The blush never left Aziraphale's cheeks, but she cleaned Crowley as diligently as any bath servant, scrubbing with firm motions that made her squirm.
“Are you going to tell me what your game is yet, angel?”
“Mm. Maybe in a little bit. You are coming along nicely, though, aren't you?”
Crowley felt something snap inside her, and she decided abruptly that it was time the angel remembered who she was dealing with. Overwhelmed or not, seduced or not, she was still Crowley, the Serpent of Eden. She was bloody good at her job, and it was time she proved it.
When Aziraphale reached for her leg, Crowley stopped her by taking her hand, twining her fingers through Aziraphale's.
“I've always liked your hands,” she commented. “You keep them so soft...”
“I go and see a smart lad on Pepper Street,” Aziraphale said. “He keeps them ever so nice for me.”
“Does he?” asked Crowley indifferently, tracing the creases of Aziraphale's palm, not missing the way Aziraphale quivered just a little. “You should tip him, he does a good job.”
“Oh, I always do...”
“Mm. Generous angel.”
Crowley brought Aziraphale's hand to her lips, kissing the cup of her hand and then lapping at it with her tongue.
“Crowley...”
Crowley ignored her, nibbling her way to Aziraphale's thick fingers, paying especial attention to the space between them. The angel tasted delicious- she had always suspectesd and now she knew. There was something dangerous about all of this, as if they were dancing on an edge that they had stayed well clear of before. It didn't matter. She was on the job, and if Aziraphale had a plan, she could look to it.
Aziraphale sat unmoving, unbreathing, until Crowley popped the tip of her forefinger into her mouth, suckling gently and moving to take more until Aziraphale pulled her hand away.
“Well, angel?” asked Crowley lazily. “Tempted yet?”
“No,” Aziraphale murmured, and Crowley laughed.
“Tough customer. What would it take, then? What would draw you to the very edge and push you over? What would make you-”
Fall.
The word shocked her, made her sit up in alarm.
No.
No, no, no. She couldn't have that on what was left of her conscience, couldn't bear it. What in the name of Hell was she thinking, why would she-? How could Aziraphale-?
She flailed in the water, struggling to sit up, but then she found herself pressed back down, Aziraphale as calm as stone, and as implacable.
“Angel,” she said her voice high and panicked. “We can't, I won't let you...”
“My girl,” she said. “I won't.”
“How do you know?” Crowley demanded. “What the fuck are we doing here?”
“Well, darling, you are trying to tempt me.”
“So you keep saying. What does that mean?”
“Well...”
For the first time, Aziraphale hesitated, and she took up Crowley's hand again, squeezing it between both of hers.
“Angel?”
“You come live with me. You stay. You tempt me into... well, whatever you like. At least, I am sure that is how you will tell it to your superiors.”
Crowley couldn't quite get her breath. She was sure it had been too long since she blinked.
“And you...”
“And I let you think you are tempting me. I keep you bound up, too busy trying your wiles on me to work them on innocent humans. And that is what I will tell my superiors.”
Crowley stared.
“That is one hell of a double bluff,” she said finally, and Aziraphale smiled.
“Not at all. It is only what we have been doing for almost six thousand years. Only now, you stay.”
Crowley prodded at the logic of that, at the wall of words that Aziraphale had built. The angel liked words, liked their solidity and their respectable boundaries; she had ever since they came about. Crowley dealt with slipperier things, blood and mud, wine and tears, places where words stopped mattering, and falling was just a long despairing howl, no words necessary.
“Say no to me, angel,” she said at last, freeing her hand and gliding her sharp fingertips down Aziraphale's face.
“No,” Aziraphale said with a slight smile.
“I'm serious,” Crowley hissed. “I need to know you can, or I can't. Say no to me.”
Aziraphale opened her mouth to comply, and Crowley leaned out of the tub, dripping water everywhere to set her hands on Aziraphale's broad shoulders as she pressed her mouth to hers. She should have made it a technical wonder- she had once kissed a king and brought down a country- but she didn't have the head for it, not when it was the angel. Instead she kissed her with teeth and tongue and wild abandon, showing her what it might be to have her, have this, have more.
Crowley kissed Aziraphale until she was short of breath and a little light-headed. When she pulled back, Aziraphale's eyes were dilated to inky black, and her mouth was red, but there was a hint of cold to her smile.
“No,” she said sweetly, and Crowley bared her teeth.
This time she leaned further out of the tub, one hand fisted in Aziraphale's jabot to pull her close, and the other tugging up the angel's skirts. She ground her mouth against Aziraphale's, putting just a touch of tantalizing hellfire to her lips even as she found the angel's strong thighs under what must have been miles of sturdy linen. She scratched at the creamy flesh with her nails, knowing she was leaving long red scrapes. She knew old soldiers, or at least she knew this old soldier,and a bit of pain, a bit of a challenge-
She gasped out loud as a strong hand pressed against her sternum, pushing her back into the water with a splash. Suddenly she was pinned to the slanted back of the tub, looking up at Aziraphale who rose over her with a slight unearthly gleam in her eyes.
“Crowley, no,” she said, caressing the word in a way that made Crowley whimper.
This is how kinks develop, she thought. This is how people end up too fascinated with saddles or feather dusters or-
“I think you are getting rather too fractious, my dear,” said Aziraphale. “I think you may need to be set down.”
Well, at least it isn't a feather duster, Crowley thought helplessly, and then she gave herself up to wherever this madness was going to take them.
“Oooh, prissy little suffragette thinks she's going to set me down,” she said. “Has so many ideas above her station, like women should have the vote and manage their own lives and decide when to stop having kids. Do your worst, Miss Priss, not like I'm afraid of you.”
This was temptation too, an invitation to a smack or a scolding, or oh, perhaps if she was lucky, a bit of time with a switch...
Instead, Aziraphale looked at her with a gaze that was rather too sincere to be be believed, especially combined with the fact that she was beginning to trace her fingers down between Crowley's breasts.
“Oh, but shouldn't I be doing my best, instead?” she asked earnestly, her hand dipping down below the water. “Don't you think that women, as the very backbone of this nation, deserve to be offered the same dignity, the same leisure, the same fulfillment as their male counterparts?”
“I know all about fulfillment, miss, and you won't find it in any of your old pamphlets...”
Crowley's voice was getting unsteadier as Aziraphale's hand slid down her belly, drawing figures underwater over her thighs. The angel's light touch was maddening and Crowley spread her legs to either side of the tub, wiggling a little to see if she could move her hand a little closer to center.
“Oh, well that's only because you've not been reading the right ones,” Aziraphale said. “I have some rather well-thumbed volumes that might excite you regarding our cause, which is after all, only your cause as well.”
Aziraphale's own thumb traced along the crease of Crowley's thigh with just a little scrape of her nail at the end to make Crowley gasp.
“Ah! And... and what cause do we share?”
“Only that of safety for those of our kind, of shelter. Of possibility and of faith, if not in our world, then in each other...”
Aziraphale's words had gone soft and almost breathy. Crowley couldn't stop from gazing into her eyes, drowning in them. Aziraphale's hand paused, cupped over Crowley's sex, and with her silence, she asked a question that made Crowley ache.
Should I? Will you? Trust me? Stay?
“Well,” Crowley managed. “I... I don't want to read any boring old pamphlets, but perhaps... perhaps if you are willing to take me in hand and give me the instruction you so clearly think I lack, perhaps I might come 'round...”
“And over and over again, hopefully,” said Aziraphale with a pleased smile, and then...
Oh what had the angel been learning at those bluestocking salons?
She worked at Crowley with a single-minded intent that would have taken Crowley's breath away if she hadn't been writhing in the tub, bracing herself against the copper sides so she wouldn't simply shudder to bits over what Aziraphale was doing to her. The angel was relentless, fingers dexterous and strong as she stroked over Crowley's sensitive flesh. There was something almost brisk, almost medicinal about the way she touched her, more as if she really were just calming her down than making love to her, taking that fractious edge off.
Oh, that's hot, and she's not going to stop until I'm calm and placid and willing...
“Fuck, fuck, fuck, angel...!”
“Such language,” Aziraphale tutted, not even out of breath. “If you are staying, we shall certainly be speaking about that...”
With lectures? With a cane and some corner time? With little kisses until Crowley promised to behave? Her head spun, and Aziraphale pressed harder, her fingers curving just so. Crowley's thighs closed tight around her hand, riding it with a vicious strength that must have hurt.
Crowley's own hands clawed at the edges of the tub, her entire body went stiff, and she closed her eyes as that sweet pop of pleasure went off, hot like fireworks, brutally fast. She banged her head against the wall behind her, sliding down in the water. When Aziraphale started to pull her hand away, Crowley shook her head, grasping the angel's wrist, thighs still tight.
“No... just a little more,” she muttered, flexing her thighs a few more times to milk out the very last of the pleasure. “Just...”
Finally she hit the threshold where even a little more would be too much, and she let go, slumping down in the tub with a deep sigh. Aziraphale laughed softly, shaking out her hand. Her hair was falling slowly out of her bun, the front of her blouse was soaked, and her jabot would likely never be the same. Crowley thought she had never looked more beautiful.
“Well, angel?” she asked, her voice roughened with pleasure. “Tempted yet?”
Aziraphale's smile was slow, brilliant and so warm Crowley knew she would never be cold again.
“No,” she said.