Chapter Text
It’s late before Gabriel reenters the room. Or early, depending on your view of the night. Crowley is sprawled on the lumpy motel bed, staring at the ceiling, sweating in the sweltering heat. The ancient AC unit in the window has been rattling nonstop, but Crowley is pretty sure it’s doing nothing except making noise. Has been since yesterday, when the three of them came here to plan what had been a brilliant—in Crowley’s personal opinion—attempt to stop Heaven from ending the universe.
He’s been thinking of what they do now. How they get out of this one. If they try again, or if they just give up. Or rather, if Crowley tries again, because there’s no way that Gabriel is going to want to help him now. No motivation anymore. He’ll probably just go back to sitting out there on the balcony and waiting for the inevitable end. Alone, in the crumbling plastic chair, facing the polluted monotony of the motorway.
Crowley really doesn’t blame him. It had been his first thought too, after Aziraphale was gone. To give up. But apparently something happened to him when they switched bodies after the failed Apocalypse, because holy water doesn’t work on him anymore. A little detail he’d omitted last night when he’d explained the mechanics of swapping to Gabriel and Beelzebub.
If Gabriel asks him for hellfire now, he’ll have to tell him.
Crowley gazes at the sliding balcony door. The glass is smudged. The lock is broken. It opens with a sticky click, and the ex-archangel’s enormous silhouette fills up the doorway. He shuts the door behind him and stands beyond the light from the cheap lamp on the other side of the room. Crowley can just make out the large stain of blood on his dove-grey suit. He can make out the shine of his eyes, the glint, like a wild dog in the night.
He can’t see the expression on his face at all.
“Why didn’t you just leave me there?” Gabriel asks.
Crowley sighs. So that’s how it’s going to be. The truth is, Crowley doesn’t have an answer. He’s actually been wondering that too. Why did he use every ounce of strength and power he possessed to pull Gabriel out of there after the plan went to shite? Gabriel is big. Tall, muscled, heavy. Ginormous head, big hands, a torso like a fucking Titan. Wings like a—a—what’s that giant bird again? Albatross. Wings like an albatross, compared to a… well, whatever bird you might associate with Crowley. And though Gabriel may not technically be Supreme Archangel anymore, he still has the power of one—which, in his rage and sorrow in the moment, manifested as uncontrolled lightning. And that, coupled with his brawn, had made extracting him from Heaven’s headquarters a lot more difficult than Crowley anticipated.
Why hadn’t Crowley just gone? Or stayed? Maybe he could have got away while the rest of them were distracted, while Aziraphale was grimly switching Beelzebub and Gabriel back into their own bodies with a snap of his Supremely-powered fingers. Got into Heaven’s mainframe, performed the reset himself. Sure, Gabriel would have probably been obliterated, but what does he care about Gabriel, anyway?
Gabriel takes a step closer into the light. Crowley still can’t make out his face.
“Why didn’t you just leave me?”
Crowley blinks, slow and unhurried. “Did you want me to leave you?”
He’s sneering a little at Gabriel’s ungrateful tone. Whatever unknown reason he’d had, he’d rescued him, godblessit. The angel should at least be thankful.
Gabriel takes three more steps. His strides are the length of yardsticks. He’s in the light now, and Crowley finally gets a good look at his face.
It’s livid.
Fear bolts through Crowley’s stomach. It's just self-preservation he supposes, because it’s not like he’s actually scared of what Gabriel will do. But Gabriel is tall, towering over Crowley on the bed, and it’s making Crowley feel defenseless, sprawled out as he is below him. He’s giant, a wild-eyed mammoth. From this perspective, it almost looks like his head is touching the ceiling.
“It should have worked,” Crowley finds himself saying. “It should have.”
Gabriel lurches forward and grabs the front of Crowley’s shirt.
Crowley feels the air whoosh by his head as he’s hauled up off the bed. Gabriel is lightning fast, pulling him with one hand. He brings him close enough so that their noses touch, so that Crowley has to go cross-eyed to see him. Close enough now for Crowley to read the expression behind the anger.
Pain.
Crowley tries to think of something to say. To dredge up some sympathy from somewhere, even though all his sympathies died the day that Aziraphale went back to Heaven. To say he’s been cold is an understatement; he’s been totally robotic. “Apathy” doesn’t even begin to describe his state of mind these past couple of months. Feelings have never served him well, so he’s apparently dispensed with them.
(In the back of his mind he thinks—no, he knows—that this is wrong. That the lack of emotion he’s experiencing is not really a lack at all. It’s more to do with not being able to handle the size of the emotion to begin with. It’s too big for his human body, too big for his demonic mind. Too big to feel in any part of him, because if he felt even an ounce of it, he’d surely not survive.
Perhaps Gabriel can do it. Perhaps Gabriel, big, powerful angelic being that he is, can weather the emotion he feels. Crowley hopes he can. Because Crowley’s clearly not fit to help him.)
Crowley opens his mouth. He has to say something, and now, because Gabriel is at some sort of breaking point. The emotion of it all has finally caught up with him, and it seems Crowley was right—he is certainly big enough to hold it.
He’s holding it behind his eyes and it’s about to snap him in two.
Say something. Say something. Anything—
Gabriel kisses him.
He's got one hand locked onto Crowley’s shirt, and the other comes up to grip the back of Crowley’s head. Crowley tries to flail away but only manages to flail around. He inhales, and Gabriel’s breath gets sucked into his mouth. It tastes like over-brewed espresso; like fermenting apple cider just beginning to turn hard. A sharp, dark edge on the periphery of something rich.
(Crowley briefly wonders if all angels taste that way. He doesn’t know. It’s not like he ever got to taste Aziraphale's breath. They’d only kissed the once, and Aziraphale had kept his mouth closed. And it’s not like he can ask any other demons about it. Beelzebub was the only other one he’d known who had kissed an angel. Maybe they’d known of someone else, but it’s too late to ask them anything.)
Crowley finally finds purchase on Gabriel’s thick shoulders and pushes him away with both hands. He suspects that Gabriel lets him. If Gabriel really wanted to keep him there, he would have.
“What,” Crowley gasps, his lips stinging from the bruising kiss, “the fuck?”
Gabriel’s eyes are still steeped in pain. His face is still twisted up. The only difference post-kiss is that he’s panting now, his blood-soaked shirt rumpled where Crowley had been crushed against it. That, and the long shadow that has appeared on the front of his trousers.
“What the fuck?” Crowley says again. It sounds like a shriek and he would hate himself for it if he wasn’t so unbelievably shocked.
(Come to think of it, shock is probably the first real feeling he’s felt in the last five months.)
Gabriel pushes him.
There’s not a lot of room between Crowley and the bed. Crowley’s knees hit the back of it and he falls down with a surprised grunt. His head hits one of the lumps in the mattress and it almost hurts. He’s disoriented, and by the time he refocuses, Gabriel is looming over him again.
There’s another slice of fear through Crowley’s stomach, and something else—shock again, maybe, as his mind races to figure out what’s happening and what Gabriel is going to do next. But the ex-archangel just hovers there, looking at him, panting so hard that his jaw is practically unhinged. There’s mania in his eyes now, mixed with the pain.
Crowley knows those eyes. He’d seen them on himself, in the mirror, the night after Aziraphale had left him for Heaven. The night he’d found out that the rest of the holy water he’d kept stowed away doesn’t work on him anymore.
“Gabriel—” Crowley tries, but then Gabriel gets on top of him.
He lies down, his weight depressing Crowley’s whole torso. It’s not his full weight, fortunately. If it was, Crowley would probably suffocate between him and the lumps. His elbows settle into the mattress on either side of Crowley's shoulders. He aligns his head with Crowley’s head, his face with Crowley’s face, and he captures Crowley’s mouth again.
This time, Crowley closes his eyes.
Gabriel’s mouth is hot. His tongue descends. Crowley feels it there, pushing inside, filling his own mouth with soft pink flesh. That taste, the same decadent flavor laced with the edge of ruin. Gabriel holds Crowley’s face as he licks inside, as he presses down, letting more of his weight collapse. It’s an infinitesimal amount compared to the force he can probably exert, but it’s still enough to push the rest of the air from Crowley’s lungs.
Crowley’s chest spasms, jarring him back to himself. He scrambles, trying to get one of his own bony elbows into Gabriel’s ribs. He kicks out his legs, feeling the hardness in Gabriel’s trousers roll across his hips as he does.
Gabriel detaches himself from Crowley’s mouth and sits up, pinning Crowley's legs to the bed.
“Get off me!” Crowley screeches. He clenches his abdomen and lurches upright, making a swipe at Gabriel’s face. His hand makes contact with Gabriel’s jaw, and it sounds like he’s slapping a stone slab. If Crowley was actually human, he might have broken his fingers.
Still, a red handprint blooms across Gabriel’s cheek.
Gabriel grabs both of Crowley's wrists. It takes him a few tries—at least Crowley can say that much for his own self-defense skills—before he forces them back onto the bed. He holds them on either side of Crowley’s head, breathing on Crowley’s face, his deep violet eyes raking over Crowley's own. He licks his lips, the upper, the lower.
And then suddenly, he lets go.
“That’s right,” Gabriel says, the words softly thunderous. “Hit me again.”
Crowley stares at him.
“Go on,” Gabriel says. It’s solid and sincere. “I know you want to.”
Crowley doesn't move. “What?” he manages, unable to think.
“You want to hit me. So do it.”
Crowley shakes his head. “I don’t.”
“You do,” Gabriel insists. “You told me. You as good as told me. You hate me.” His voice is even and low. It hums steady, like the broken air conditioner. “You told me to jump out of a window. You threatened to hurt me yourself. Remember?”
It had been Jim that he'd threatened, Crowley remembers.
Gabriel leans a little farther down. “Do it. I’m letting you. Come on.” A siren’s flare of urgency, tempered back to a drone. “I know you want to.”
“No, I fucking don’t,” Crowley growls.
Gabriel’s face is contorting again. Or contorting more. It’s been contorted this whole time. “Do it.”
“No,” Crowley repeats, defiant, and then Gabriel spits on him.
It catches Crowley off guard. Not that any of this has Crowley on anywhere close to resembling guard, but he’s entirely unprepared for this turn of events. It’s not very much spittle—it happened so fast, it’s not like Gabriel had time to work anything up—but it’s still enough to spray over Crowley’s nose and eyes.
It’s uncomfortable in his eyes. It stings.
Crowley hits him before he even realizes what he’s doing. One closed fist, flailed right at his face. It catches Gabriel on the chin and part of his mouth, and Gabriel’s head whips to the side. He closes his eyes as blood wells from the newly-formed cut on his bottom lip.
“You want punishment. Is that it?” Crowley’s voice is shaking. Now the words are coming, something’s coming, bubbling up from somewhere inside him. He thinks he might be shouting. Everything is muffled. “It’s your fault Beezlebub’s dead. And you want to be punished.”
Gabriel’s eyes open again. He’s still facing off to the side.
“Well count me out,” Crowley huffs through a peel of hysterical laughter. “I’m not getting involved in whatever self-loathing bollocks you’ve got going on in that fat fucking head of yours. Count me the fuck out.”
Gabriel makes a sound in his throat. A hacking, half-coughing sound, and Crowley only realizes what it is a second later when Gabriel spews a heftier glob of saliva across his face. This one drips down the side of Crowley’s cheek, the spray in his eyes tinged red with the blood from Gabriel’s lip.
“Fuck!” Crowley tries to scramble away, but Gabriel clenches his thighs—like fucking treetrunks, fucking old-growth forest felled logs —and he can’t get very far. He feels the hard length of Gabriel’s cock along his thigh, and his stomach twists. “What, is this turning you on?” He tries to sneer, but it comes out all wrong. “This the kind of thing you got up to with ol’ Beezy? Fucking sick fucking games you two played—”
“What about you?” Gabriel cuts back. His typically-gelled hair has been rustled out of its swoop. It’s been like that ever since the fiasco in Heaven. It bobs over the top of him as if moved by an invisible breeze. “You and Aziraphale play games while you fucked? Or did you just make love?”
That Gabriel even knows the distinction is telling. He’s come a long way. Idiot didn’t even know how babies were made back in the day, and now he knows the difference between fucking and making love?
“Shut up,” Crowley growls, wishing he and Aziraphale had done either. Both. Anything.
Gabriel clings to it. Crowley can see how he gloms on, digs in. “You did, didn’t you? So tenderly. Candles and wine and rose petals on the bed—”
Crowley bangs his other fist into the side of Gabriel’s head. This one hits Gabriel’s ear. Crowley can imagine it produces some strange noises, maybe even ringing. He doesn’t know. He’s never hit anyone hard enough to know.
“That’s it,” Gabriel encourages. The contortions on his face smooth away. “Do it again.”
Crowley grits his teeth and does. This one connects with Gabriel’s cheekbone.
Gabriel grunts. A bruise forms immediately under the red mark, and Crowley doesn’t know why, but he wants to reach out and touch it. Delicately, the tips of his fingers ghosting over the purple blood beneath Gabriel’s skin.
Gabriel’s eyes are screwed shut. He pushes down with his hips. Pushes forward, rolls them once, his cock along the indentation between Crowley’s thighs, and then Crowley—Crowley groans.
There’s a jolt of something through his body, but it’s not fear anymore, and it’s not shock. The shock is over. This is something else, something new. Something that isn’t the pallid, tepid monotony of the total dispassion that has plagued him for the last half a year.
(Plagued, what a word. Like Crowley hadn’t welcomed it. Like it wasn’t all his fault to begin with.)
It’s a relief to feel something now.
Gabriel opens his eyes. They look at each other. Crowley sees the pain again, and he can’t pretend Gabriel doesn’t see it back. Gabriel's eyes are round and violet, yet it’s like looking into a mirror. Like looking into the godblessed mirror that night, in his newly-reclaimed Mayfair flat, when he’d decided he didn’t want to live in a universe where he and Aziraphale couldn’t be together.
Crowley’s shirt is unbuttoned to his navel. Blood drips from Gabriel’s lip onto Crowley’s chest, landing between the edges of the fabric, soaking into wiry hair. Gabriel leans over and licks it off, and whatever breath has been stuttering in and out of Crowley’s lungs disappears. He feels a wave of arousal so strong it gives him vertigo. He has to close his eyes for a moment, which doesn’t help, because that eliminates one of his senses and therefore sharpens the others: like the feeling of Gabriel’s wet tongue sliding on his chest and the cool trail in its wake as it makes its way to Crowley's nipple.
Gabriel nudges at Crowley’s shirt with his nose to get it out of the way. His tongue doesn’t leave Crowley’s skin. Crowley’s hands go immediately to Gabriel’s hair, threading through it, holding his head in place as the archangel laves him. Unholy fuck, Crowley thinks, throwing his head back on the bed, how does this feel so fucking—
Suddenly, Gabriel stops. He pulls back just a few inches, breathing onto Crowley’s chest.
Crowley looks down to see what the problem is. “Keep going,” he grunts, in case he needs to make it explicit. As if the sounds he’s been making haven’t been encouragement enough.
Gabriel looks up at him from under his heavy brows. “Make me.”
Crowley almost wants to laugh. As if he could make Gabriel do anything. Gabriel, who is big as a—a fucking whatsit, what’s that fucking huge horse, a Shire— hung like one too, from what’s still grinding into Crowley's thigh—who is still twice as powerful as Crowley ever was. As if he could make Gabriel lick and suck his nipples until Crowley came from that alone, make him do it against his will, like he didn’t want to, like he hadn’t fucking suggested it in the first place.
Crowley pulls on Gabriel’s hair so hard that he’d have pulled out a few tufts had Gabriel been a regular human. He yanks with both hands, pulling Gabriel’s head back down onto his chest, and then Gabriel—Gabriel bites him.
“Ow!” Crowley yelps, ripping Gabriel’s head up the opposite way. But his grip is no match for the angel’s strength. Gabriel leans forward again easily, barely straining against Crowley’s hands, and he bites the other nipple. Hard.
Crowley swears from between his teeth. He tries to pull Gabriel up by the back of the head again, and this time Gabriel lets him. The blood from Gabriel’s cut lip smears all down his chin. Crowley’s so hard in his trousers that it hurts.
“Don’t fucking bite me,” Crowley growls.
Gabriel’s bloody lips curl into a smirk. “Then give me something else to do with my mouth.”
God. God. “Satan,” Crowley hisses, sending one hand to his belt, his flies, the other still clutching Gabriel’s hair, pushing his head down to where Crowley's cock is nearly freed from his trousers. “Satan’s pit. Fuck. Suck me.”
Gabriel puts a hand on each side of Crowley’s zip. He rips the trousers wide open, splitting the seam all the way down the crotch like he’s opening a fucking bag of crisps. He curls his thick fingers into either side of the mangled fabric and pulls it off Crowley's legs in one smooth, strong jerk. Crowley’s cock is freed with an obscene slap as it’s dragged down and then swings back up onto his own stomach like it’s the arm of a fucking trebuchet.
“Fuck,” Crowley says again, weakly this time, as Gabriel takes him in his mouth all the way down to the root.
Crowley’s hips come off the mattress. His eyes roll back in his head. Cursed fuck it feels good, it feels so good —fuck, Crowley never—he never thought he’d feel anything this good, ever again—
Gabriel bobs his head, uses his tongue. He hollows his cheeks, descends again. Crowley feels his cock hit the back of Gabriel’s throat, again and again, as Gabriel works him toward what’s shaping up to be the quickest orgasm of his life.
He comes like someone’s punched him in the stomach. So hard that he can’t breathe, his mouth open in a shout that never manifests. His thighs go numb, his hips pumping and pumping into Gabriel’s throat like his life depends on it. Like it’s all he’s living for. And when he finally starts to calm down he barely has time to rattle in an aborted breath before Gabriel is picking him up, his arms beneath Crowley arse and all along his spine, and flipping them over so that Gabriel is the one laying on his back and Crowley is sitting on top of him with Crowley’s cock still buried down his gullet.
Crowley nearly falls face-first into the headboard with how dizzy he is. His brain is still offline, gone kaput with the force of his orgasm. He blinks down to where Gabriel is now underneath him, his enormous hands wrapped around Crowley's hips and his red lips still wrapped around Crowley’s softening cock.
And then Gabriel hollows his cheeks, and it’s too much.
“ Stop.” Crowley squirms, trying to sit up and pull himself from Gabriel’s mouth. Gabriel holds him in place, those dinner-plate hands doing their job. He sucks him again, using his tongue to massage the head of Crowley’s cock against his palate.
Crowley is overly sensitive. He feels drained, his balls feel like they’ve been sucked dry—this is painful, shit, it’s painful—
“Again,” Gabriel says. He's lifted Crowley out of his mouth just enough so he can speak. The soft tip of Crowley's cock bumps over his lips, smearing them with blood from the cut. “I want you to come again.”
“I can’t.” Crowley’s got both hands on the headboard to steady himself. He’s still dizzy, still coming down from his orgasm.
“You can. Come on.” Gabriel tongues the slit of Crowley’s limp cock, chasing it, then pulls his lips over his teeth. He opens his mouth and Crowley’s cock dips easily into the dark, wet hole it makes. “Use me,” he says around the cock, closing his eyes like it tastes good, like he’s eating a fucking ice cream or something—
(—Crowley has seen Aziraphale eat an ice cream like that before—)
“Come on.” Gabriel claws his fingers into Crowley’s hips. They’re going to leave bruises. “Fucking use me.”
Crowley puts a hand on Gabriel’s face. One hand is still on the headboard, the other on Gabriel's jaw. Gabriel squirms beneath him, and his hips hump off the bed into the muggy air. Crowley lurches forward like he’s riding a bucking bronco.
“Don’t fucking move.” Crowley can feel sweat dripping down the sides of his face, down his temples, by the edges of his eyes. He holds Gabriel’s jaw and concentrates, gripping the headboard with pale knuckles, his thighs prickling with pins and needles as they finally start to get some feeling back into them. His cock prickles too as it hardens again, and he lowers himself back down. Back between Gabriel’s lips, over Gabriel’s tongue, all the way back down into Gabriel’s puffy, swollen throat.
Gabriel groans.
“You like that,” Crowley breathes. His voice is leaden with arousal. His lips are pulled back from his teeth, and his inhalations whistle between them. “Yeah. Fuck. You like my cock in your throat.” Crowley moves, thrusting now, pressing down far enough that he can hear the gurgle of Gabriel's breath trapped below. He’s fully hard again—inhumanly hard, really—and he’s only done this a few times, got hard again this fast, because it’s not easy, you’re fighting against physiology, and it’s only been—it’s only been when Crowley’s been by himself that he’s done this, come this fast again, when he’s just—when he’s thought that maybe if he just wanks enough times in a row he’ll get over it, he’ll be desensitized, he won’t want it so badly anymore, won’t want Aziraphale so badly anymore if he just wanks himself until it hurts, and keeps going and going until he doesn’t like it anymore, and then he can stop all the wanting, all the godblessed wanting that has been driving him fucking insane for centuries, for millennia—
Crowley pulls out halfway, and then he thrusts back in.
Gabriel whimpers. That colossal archangel who takes up half the bed, his barrel chest heaving, whimpers like he’s a helpless stray puppy.
“This what you wanted?” Another thrust. “My fat prick in your throat?” Another. Harder. Gabriel’s neck bends back and forth like he’s getting whiplash. “You want me to ruin you? You want me to break you? Come on. Come on. That’s right. Fucking take it.” Crowley’s voice is shaking. “I’m gonna break you. I’m gonna fucking break you.” He scrambles to find a better position. He needs more leverage. His hand moves from Gabriel’s jaw and holds him by the hair again, his arm locked out straight at the elbow, holding Gabriel firmly on the bed so that he doesn’t move at all. The sweat is dripping from Crowley’s hair, his forehead, his temples, even his eyes somehow. “How’s this for punishment?” he growls, thrusting harder, putting his whole weight into it—and there isn’t even a flicker of pain on Gabriel’s forehead, he looks fucking serene, his eyes closed like he’s fucking sleeping or something. Crowley pulls his hair, thrusts hard again. “This what you wanted? You’ve been bad, bad—” Gabriel whimpers, “You’ve been a bad angel, a bad lover, a bad friend—” Crowley thrusts and thrusts, “You’re bad at it, you’re horrible, you don’t deserve it, you don’t deserve anyone, you didn’t deserve them, they’re better off dead, they’re better off dead than with you—”
Gabriel makes a choking noise, and Crowley comes again. This one wrings him out. It’s powerful too, but the kind of power that breaks you, that spends you to the last penny. He shivers through it like he’s cold, like he’s going hypothermia. His teeth chatter with it.
When it’s done, Gabriel slides out from underneath him. He sits up and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, blood and spit and come smearing across his cheek.
When he turns and looks at Crowley again, his eyes are dark.
Crowley, despite feeling completely fucking exhausted, feels that jolt again in his core. Not shock or fear. Anxiousness maybe. Anticipation. Trepidation. Because Gabriel’s looking at him with a degree of lust that Crowley’s only seen in his own fantasies—fantasies of someone else, of someone else’s eyes, the pale blue eyes of someone so turned on that they can’t help themselves from doing what they’re about to do next.
What Gabriel's about to do next, probably, is fuck him.
Because there’s an implied reciprocity here, right? With sex? And maybe this was it all along. Maybe Gabriel only went first as a favor, as the quid before the quo . Maybe Gabriel really just wants to use Crowley, maybe that’s been the endgame this whole time. There’s something there for sure, something about an angel punishing a demon, using him like he’s not a person, like he’s not worthy of being treated nice—the candles and rose petals and silken sheets, the sweet nothings and tender caresses, those aren’t for him— this is for him, a dilapidated motel room next to a traffic-jammed motorway and a broken air conditioner banging on in the window. An ex-Supreme Archangel with a sadistic look in his eye and a monster cock that’s going to feel like being split in half the way of Crowley’s trousers when it gets up inside him.
Crowley imagines it. Gabriel lurching forward, flipping him over, pinning him down. Holding his hips down with one hand, just one, because that’s all he needs to keep down Crowley’s scrawny-nothing human body. The jangle of his belt, the sound of his zip as he gets his cock out, as he spits a third time—this time onto his own hand—as he gives himself a few strokes, like racking the slide of a shotgun, before shoving it up inside Crowley’s tight furled little hole. God, Satan, the pain. Crowley can’t even begin to imagine the pain. How it will feel being skewered like that.
How he will deserve it.
Because this was his idea, wasn’t it? The whole thing. The whole plan was his idea, his alone, he’s the one who trekked all the way to Alpha Centauri and found them when they were just trying to live out their days in peace with each other. He’s the one who recruited them to come help him save the world, to save the universe when they could have just stayed there and had another month or two of bliss before it all came crashing down. Instead they have nothing, because Beelzebub is gone, and Gabriel is here alone by himself with nothing, nothing, no one and nothing—
Gabriel moves. Crowley’s heart stutters. He whines at the sensation. He rolls on his back like a trained fucking dog. He closes his eyes, then opens them again. He doesn’t want to watch, but he does. The complicated look in Gabriel’s eyes, the darkness compressed with the pain and anger there. He puts up his knees. He holds his ankles. He wants to watch. “Here,” he rasps, his own voice high and strange, sounding nothing like he remembers it, “here, like this, do it like this—”
“Get up,” says Gabriel.
Crowley blinks. Gabriel is still moving, grabbing Crowley’s shirt again, hauling the bewildered demon upright with one hand and grasping Crowley’s cock with the other. Crowley’s cock, at this point, is about as useful as a wet paper straw. It’s mush in Gabriel’s hand, but Gabriel is still touching it, tugging on it, stroking it like—like he thinks Crowley is going to use it. Again.
“Gabriel,” Crowley breathes, bewildered and gasping. “I don’t—”
“Shut up.” Gabriel releases Crowley’s cock. He licks his own hand, and God, even his tongue is fucking gargantuan. He puts his wet hand back between Crowley’s legs and strokes him again.
“Hngh.” Crowley collapses under Gabriel’s grip, leaning forward onto Gabriel’s chest. He can’t anymore, he can’t.
“You can,” Gabriel says, as if he can hear Crowley’s thoughts. “Come on. Do it.”
“I can’t.” Crowley speaks into Gabriel’s shirt. It smells faintly metallic, like human blood. You wouldn’t think a demon’s blood would smell that way, but it does.
“Come on.” Gabriel shakes him with the hand that’s holding his shirt, like Crowley is a rag doll. Just a quick one-two shiver to detach Crowley from his chest.
Crowley twists his hips away, but Gabriel’s hand follows him. He puts both hands around Gabriel’s forearm and pushes it back, then to the side, trying to wrench his shirt from Gabriel’s grasp. Gabriel lets go of Crowley’s cock and slaps him on the side of the head.
Crowley’s brain rattles in his skull. There is a clanging in his ears. He understands what it means now to get your bell rung. The bell of Crowley’s head is banging on like high noon.
Gabriel licks his hand again and goes back in for Crowley’s cock. Crowley, still kneeling on the bed, tries to scoot backward, at the same time feebly pushing away from Gabriel’s arm. He wishes he were standing. Or that his legs were free somehow. Then he could kick at him until he got away.
“I told you I can’t,” he snarls.
There’s a tussle. Gabriel lets go of Crowley’s shirt and his cock to restrain his hands. Crowley maneuvers them out of the way—he’s always been a slippery thing—and tries to scramble off the edge of the bed. He manages to get halfway there before Gabriel grabs both of his legs and drags him back. Crowley brings fistfuls of the blankets with him, snarling again, this time a sound of frustration more than rage. Gabriel flips him over and Crowley tries to kick out with his legs, but Gabriel’s still got hold of them. The force of it sends Crowley up on his shoulders, his hips in the air, and he thinks he hears his spine crack.
“Come on, you bastard,” Gabriel growls. He kneels with one knee on the bed over top of Crowley’s thighs, holding them down with his shin as he unzips his own trousers.
Now it’s going to happen. Now he’s going to do it. Now he’s going to take out his massive dick and fuck it into Crowley like he deserves. Crowley immediately relaxes at the thought. Unbelievably, and unexpectedly, his cock begins to refill.
When Gabriel sees it his expression goes gaunt. “There you go,” he says, cooing almost, and pulls off his own trousers one-handed without even getting off the bed—must have used a miracle to do it. He climbs up beside Crowley, lays down and flips over on his side. Facing away.
Crowley blinks at the back of Gabriel’s head.
“Come here,” says Gabriel. He reaches around with one long, powerful arm and wraps his hand around Crowley’s hip behind him.
“You,” Crowley tries. His tongue is thick. His mouth has gone dry, he can’t wet it anymore. “You want me to fuck you.”
“Yeah,” Gabriel says to the headboard against the wall. “Problem?”
Crowley breathes. His stomach swirls. He’s not sure if it’s with disappointment or renewed desire. Probably it’s both. “You want me to—to be inside you. Stretch you open. Satan, I bet you’re tight. I bet your arse is so fucking tight.” Crowley’s fingers skitter over the swell of Gabriel’s arse, reach underneath and find the hot, puckered skin of his hole. His fingers are dry, drier than Crowley's mouth, the only two Satanforsaken dry things in this entire swamp of a room.
Gabriel rolls onto his stomach. Crowley rolls with him, on top, like he’s humping a fucking boulder. Gabriel tucks his knees underneath him, presenting his arse in the air, and Crowley can see his cock hanging purple and swollen between his legs leaking precome in a sticky thread onto the sheets.
Crowley places a hand on Gabriel's lower back, palm flat to his sweaty skin. He slides it down, fingertips parting his arse-cheeks, and Gabriel pushes back into his hand, his powerful hips nearly bumping Crowley off the bed.
“Be still,” Crowley commands. Gabriel freezes, his head turning to the side, panting out into the mattress. Crowley presses a finger against Gabriel’s hole, just one finger against the dusky pink flesh. The only part of him that Crowley would ever describe as small.
“What are you waiting for?” Gabriel grumbles, impatient. “Just do it.”
Crowley licks his lips. He rubs circles around Gabriel’s hole with his fingertip. Tiny circles, like he’s coaxing it to open. He licks his finger. He puts it back.
“Stop petting it. It’s not a fucking bunny rabbit.” Gabriel reaches back with one hand, his spine curving as he goes for Crowley’s cock. Crowley slaps it away. Gabriel tries again, and then Crowley, in a sudden fit of inspiration, grabs Gabriel’s wrist and pins it behind his back.
Gabriel groans. He leans sideways into the mattress, his spine off-kilter with only one elbow to support him. Satisfied, Crowley wets two fingers in his mouth this time.
“Just do it,” Gabriel repeats, sounding strained. His face is flushed red against the bleached white sheets. “I don’t need preparation.”
“Shut up,” Crowley says. “This isn’t for you.” He pushes in with both fingers. Just a little, just enough to wet the edge of the ring of muscle there. If every other bit of Gabriel is as powerful as an ox, his hole is probably like a fucking vice. Crowley’s not sticking his cock in there, not until it’s loosened up. Would snap it right off if he did it now, and he’s rather attached to his cock, thank you very much.
Crowley finally works up some real spit, and he smears that down there too. He gets one finger up all the way, turns his hand and crooks it.
Gabriel collapses beneath him. “Yeah,” he breathes, eyes closed, lips loose and open and drool leaking out into a slick spot on the sheets. “More.”
Crowley lets go of Gabriel’s wrist and holds his hip instead. He pushes the second finger in. It goes in easily. Gabriel’s finally relaxed.
“More,” Gabriel begs.
Crowley’s cock throbs. He removes his fingers and grasps the base of it, lining himself up. He pushes inside with one thrust, all the way.
He gasps. Gabriel gasps. Gabriel writhes under him, which clenches the muscles in his arse. It squeezes Crowley's cock, and it doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t hurt at all. It feels fucking fantastic, and Crowley moans.
“Harder,” Gabriel huffs. “Come on, do it hard.”
Crowley pulls out as far as he can without slipping out completely. He pushes back in.
“That’s it?” Gabriel’s eye is open now, just the one, looking back from where his head is lying on the bed. “That’s all you can do?”
Crowley pulls out and pushes in harder.
Gabriel makes a garbled noise. It sounds like a laugh. “You call that fucking? No wonder Aziraphale left.”
Crowley sees red. He grips both of Gabriel's hips, digging his fingernails into the skin hard enough to draw blood. He pulls out and shoves back into him so hard that Gabriel’s body—his entire beefcake human body—slides forward until his head cracks against the wooden headboard.
Crowley does it again. Again and again, pistoning his hips. Gabriel moans. Crowley grits his teeth, snarling like a wild animal as he does it again, and again, and again— crack, crack, crack goes Gabriel's head until the headboard has had enough and splits down the center.
The walls shudder. The lamp rattles on the side table, its light throwing shivering shadows across the hideously striped wallpaper.
“That’s right,” Gabriel croons, “use me, come on, use me, ruin me, use me hard, punish me, fucking do it, you know how—” he breaks off in a groan when Crowley changes the angle slightly, driving up slightly more—“yeah, you know how don’t you, you know about punishment, you know what it’s like, you know how to do it, you know how it should feel—”
Crowley’s muscles are shaking. He’s gone, he’s gone, he’s still thrusting. Any energy he has left is only there for the thrust. Everything else is gone, his mind wiped blissfully blank, and it feels—it feels—he doesn’t know how it feels. He’s not sure if it’s good, or cathartic, or bad, or destructive. It just feels. It feels like something, which is better, so much fucking better, than nothing.
“It’s my fault,” Gabriel is saying, his voice suddenly high and strange. “It’s all my fault.”
No, wait. That’s not Gabriel’s voice.
Crowley chokes on a sob. He slaps the side of Gabriel’s arse like he’s smacking a horse on the rump. He slaps it again with a closed fist this time, and again, and fucks him. The room is blurry. He punches with both fists, both of Gabriel’s hips at once, and he shoves up into him one last time and buries himself there as he comes.
He shouts. He doesn’t move. His cock empties itself, he can feel it, his balls drawn up tight as he pulses inside Gabriel’s arse. Filling him up, God, filling him up so much, Crowley can feel how full he is, the slick of it inside. He opens his mouth to inhale—he needs to breathe—but all he manages is a useless stuttered retch.
Eventually he pulls out. There’s a suctioning sound as he does. Come dribbles out of Gabriel’s loose, red, used hole, down the inside of his thigh and onto the bed between his knees. There’s a lot. There’s a lot of come. Crowley doesn’t know how he could have possibly had that much come still inside him.
Three orgasms. Infernal fucking shit, three.
Crowley slumps on the bed. He’s finally breathing again. Gabriel rolls over to his side, facing him, and they look at each other. Gabriel’s gaze is hazy with lust, clouding the rage and pain into near-obscurity. His cock is still unbelievably hard, resting sideways across the mattress.
He reaches down and begins to stroke himself.
Crowley just watches. He can’t move. He’s so exhausted that he can’t do anything else. It doesn’t take long. Gabriel pants and strokes, his eyes rimmed red, half-lidded and bloodshot, and when he comes he doesn’t even make a noise. He just gasps in these little puffs that feather across Crowley’s face, the only cool sensation he’s felt in the last eight hours.
Gabriel’s abdominal muscles clench under his sweaty shirt as his spend stripes the space between them. Some gets on Crowley's arm and Crowley doesn’t even have the energy to wipe it away.
Afterward, Gabriel lets go of his cock. He wipes his hand on the bed, then rests his palm over Crowley’s hand where it’s been laying next to his face.
“It’s not your fault,” Gabriel says. His voice is soft. Nice. It’s a voice Crowley hasn’t heard him use in a while. Not since he was Jim, all those months ago.
“It is,” Crowley whispers, feeling the sweat dripping from his eyes.
Gabriel shakes his head. “No,” he insists, with a sharp sliver of conviction. “It’s Hers.”
***
The morning is still hot and gray. Thick clouds cloak the sky and the exhaust from the cars on the motorway has gone stagnant in the air. Everything smells like baked asphalt and burnt rubber. Crowley stands out on the balcony with a bedsheet draped around himself and a styrofoam cup of motel coffee in his hand. The coffee tastes just about the same as the air smells.
He hears the sliding door open and a crunch of flaking paint under bare feet. And then there’s a shadow in his periphery, as if from a mountain.
The mountain takes a sip from his own cup.
Crowley wishes Gabriel wouldn’t stand next to him. He wishes he would stay behind him instead—maybe wrap one of his large arms around him, pull him back into what would feel like a solid brick wall if it weren’t for the body heat and beating thump of a human heart. Bend his head over Crowley’s shoulder, nuzzle underneath the edge of the sheet. Put his lips to Crowley’s bare skin once, twice, kissing him there before resting his chin in the crook of Crowley’s neck.
Crowley would let him.
“So,” Gabriel says eventually. “What’s Plan B?”