Chapter Text
It was just this once.
Just one little teensy time, and then Crowley would be done. He’d promised he wouldn’t, but just once. Once couldn’t hurt.
Asa and Anthony were fucking again. They had been doing that a lot lately. They were getting better at it, too, from what Crowley could tell. It had taken them forever to start, fumblings in the back room of the bookshop and among the shelves, giggling like teenagers. One heavy necking in the backseat of the car (a Prius, pshhh, not that Crowley was judging). And then finally, finally, Anthony had invited Asa up to his flat and they’d done it properly. On the sofa, in about six minutes, but still.
They’d figured some things out by now. Like how Asa preferred the bottom, for example. Crowley was fascinated by it. By preferences. By Asa’s preferences, to be more precise. From what he could tell, Anthony didn’t mind being the top. He didn’t mind it, but he was open to either, had said as much during their first time on the couch. And Crowley had an inkling that he would like the bottom just as much. Just an inkling, of course. Something probably to do with Asa being inside him, being inside and around him, all over him and through him, fusing into him, never letting him go. Something about Asa seeing him vulnerable, seeing him open, seeing all of him, and wanting him anyway.
Probably something like that.
Anyway. Asa was currently on the bottom—or, technically, he was bottoming but was on top, riding Anthony, who had his long-fingered hands locked around Asa’s plush waist, staring up at him with wide, brown eyes through his glasses. He couldn’t see without his glasses. He was nearly legally blind without them. He had to keep them on at all times. There was something ironic about being a famous astrophysicist who was blind, but Crowley didn’t go in for irony these days. It felt too much like divine providence, and he didn’t go in for that either. Anymore. Obviously.
Anthony’s mouth was hanging open, lips parted in awe. At least, Crowley thought it was awe. It was probably awe, because Asa was a sight. Hair mussed, hips rolling, his round, soft body undulating in the candlelight—Asa seemed to always insist on “setting the mood”—moaning wantonly in Anthony’s lap like some kind of pornographic film star. Except it wasn’t pornographic, it was agony.
It was agony for Crowley, because Asa looked like Aziraphale.
Just this once. He’d promised Aziraphale he wouldn’t, and how the angel—er, former angel—had known Crowley had been thinking about it, Crowley didn’t know, but he figured that after spending six thousand years and a few billion more with the same person, you might just know some things.
“Don’t try and possess him,” Aziraphale had said sternly, that look in his eye—the vague, half-transparent eye on the vague, half-transparent body that made up what passed for the image of their souls these days—before he’d fucked off to Guam or Beliz or wherever the fuck he'd gone to check on whatever the fuck he wanted to check on. “We promised, remember? We wouldn’t interfere.”
Yeah. Promised. The truth was, Crowley hadn’t exactly promised anything.
Truth was, he’d thought they’d be dead.
They weren’t dead. God had fucked off entirely—maybe She was dead, maybe not, it was hard to say—and someone had to keep the universe working. Apparently. There had evidently been some sort of miscommunication when they’d made their choice with Her ultimatum and now that responsibility, instead of going to God and Satan, had been entrusted to Aziraphale and Crowley. Crowley couldn’t say he was surprised by it. By God twisting his words and pulling one over on them yet again. One final one over on them, the mic drop to end all mic drops, but still. Kind of a bitch move, if you asked him.
So it was up to them to watch over it all. Guardians of the new universe, right from the new Beginning. Because even with complete free will, things got messy. In the last thirteen billion years they’d prevented sixty-three human-instigated apocalypses, not to mention about a hundred thousand natural ones. They couldn’t very well leave their only chance at a free-willed universe to the fate of an asteroid with murder in its eyes, now, could they?
Then there were the floods. And the pandemics. The famine. Things that had been the fault of the Horsemen before were just… natural disasters, now. No grand design, no meaning behind them but random chance. Which was its own sort of meaning, Crowley supposed. If he thought about it hard enough. Though these days, he wasn’t in the habit of thinking too hard at all.
He was desperately trying not to think too hard right now.
His mouth was dry. He didn’t have a mouth, not a tangible one, but it was dry nonetheless. Or perhaps it was just the memory of what it was like to be dry, that visceral memory of dark nights in his bed with his hand below the covers imagining something very like the scenario playing out in front of him right now. He swallowed. The motion was awkward, the memory of the feeling rough, his tongue like sandpaper against the back of his throat.
Aziraphale—no, no, Asa, Asa was saying something, but Crowley couldn’t hear exactly because it was soft. The way they listened here, from the outside, it was like listening through a wall. A transparent wall, like a wall of water. Murmurs were muffled. Whispers inaudible. Asa said something, and Anthony groaned, a groan that Crowley felt down his dry non-throat and all the way to the core of him. Asa put his fingers against Crowley’s—no, no, Anthony’s mouth, and Crowley’s core twisted, something ugly and mean and hot and wanting squeezing within him.
And then Crowley went.
Just this once, he promised himself, reaching out with one hand and pushing it through the cool, thin film of reality. It was so cold it felt wet, but it didn’t leave him wet as he pushed through, his hand directly in front of Anthony’s face, pushing into his open mouth, all of Crowley lurching forward at the first contact. His vision swirled. He blinked, and then he was staring up at Asa on top of him.
And oh, he felt everything.
His cock and balls. His back, his middle-aged back, pounded sore into the mattress. The bit of spit caught in his throat. The dryness, the real dryness of his mouth. The attraction. The adoration. Six months of courtship, six thousand years of pining, of wanting. Thirteen billion years of never getting. They didn’t know how Asa and Anthony had been created, or why, or why now. Supposedly there was no reason at all, but Crowley couldn’t imagine how there couldn’t be a reason that two people who looked like Aziraphale and Crowley had been born in the New Universe on the same date that the First Universe had ended. And that, without any interference at all, they had met and fallen in love.
(Okay, not without any interference.)
(Perhaps there was some precedent for Aziraphale’s suspicions.)
There was something wet at the corners of Crowley’s eyes. Anthony’s eyes. Crowley's eyes. It was tears.
“Oh, my dear,” Asa murmured, softly, seeing him cry. He smiled, his round cheeks appearing flushed even in the candlelight. He traced a delicate thumb through the tears, wiping them away. Which was useless, Crowley thought, because there would only be more. “You’re so good. You make me feel so good.”
Crowley whined. It was inhuman. Surely Asa would know, surely he would figure it out. Instead, Asa’s eyes darkened, and his own mouth hung open, panting, and he increased the speed of his hips.
Crowley didn’t blink. He didn’t dare blink. He wanted to take off the glasses. The damned glasses were fogging up, and he couldn’t see. He ripped them off Anthony’s face and tossed them across the room. His hand, which had apparently been afflicted by carpel tunnel syndrome from fifty years of handwriting all his notes—even in this day and age with computers, fucking hell, Anthony—was sore from holding onto Asa’s hip so tightly. But Crowley didn’t care, he didn’t care because sore meant real it meant corporeal it meant finally.
Finally.
Finally.
His hand flew back to Aziraphale's waist. It made a slapping sound on his flesh. Aziraphale laughed.
Asa. Asa laughed.
“Say my name,” Crowley begged, his voice rough from disuse, thirteen-billion years of disuse and fourteen minutes, which was what Asa and Anthony had worked up to so far. “Please.”
He would beg. He would do anything. It was just this once.
Aziraphale smiled. “Anthony.”
Asa.
Crowley shook his head. He swallowed. His throat was so dry. “No. No, Crowley.”
Fuck. Fuck. Asa looked at him strangely, quirking an eyebrow, a little smile on his lips, but he was pretty far gone, he was far gone enough to acquiesce. “Crowley,” he tried, and it wasn’t quite right, not yet, but it was more affecting than Crowley had ever dreamed it would be and he twisted, actually writhed, underneath Asa’s body, his whole corporation lit up by some unspeakable thrum of lust.
Asa’s eyes widened. He began to pant again. He slowed his hips, but moved them harder, with more purpose now, really fucking himself. Crowley’s cock—Anthony’s cock—somebody’s cock—bottomed out inside him with an obscene smack of skin on skin. It was slippery, hot and hard and soft and slippery and tight, god, god (with a lowercase “g” now, and mainly because Crowley could never shake the habit, not when he was this far gone), it was tight. It was everything.
“Crowley.” Asa’s voice rumbled. His hips moved, and Crowley keened.
“Hnghnh,” Crowley replied like he’d been stabbed. A wounded animal, pierced by an arrow. He still wasn’t blinking. His eyes were crying. His hips lifted off the bed out of rhythm, just to be closer. Something in his back popped ungracefully.
“Crowley. Oh, Crowley.” Asa’s eyelids were going leaden, turned on as he was, no doubt, by the effect it was having on Anthony. “Oh, dearest. I love you so.”
“Angel,” Crowley choked out. The word gurgled unfamiliarly over Anthony’s tongue. Crowley said it again, to loosen it. “Angel, please.”
If Asa thought this new nickname was strange, he didn’t show it. He was about to come. Something had happened to him, a switch had flipped, perhaps from seeing Crowley’s reaction, from seeing his partner swoon. He was giving over to the instinct, to the animalistic need to rut. Belatedly, Crowley realized there was nothing for him to rut into except the humid bedroom air.
Crowley obligingly produced a fist from his non-carpel-tunneled hand.
Touching Aziraphale was like everything he’d imagined, and at the same time, like something entirely new. Aziraphale’s—Asa's—fuck it, Aziraphale’s cock was so hard, and ruddy, and smooth. It was hot, like the rest of him right now, giving off so much heat that he was sweating, glistening, the work he was doing up there was enough to make any man sweat and Aziraphale was doing it even harder now that Crowley had his hand around his cock.
Aziraphale’s thighs tightened next to Crowley's sides. He thrust into Crowley’s hand. He slammed back down onto Crowley’s cock, and Crowley saw stars. He saw stars like he’d never seen before, and they were beautiful.
They were gorgeous.
“Crowley, oh, oh, yes, that’s it, just like that, right there, oh my God—” Aziraphale blasphemed and Crowley’s middle-aged sciatica screamed as his back arched, driving himself up just the same time as Aziraphale drove himself down. He could tell it was good, he could tell it was good for Aziraphale because of the way he shouted, the way he closed his eyes and threw his head back and then Crowley’s other hand was touching him, touching him all over, running his palm over the sweaty, perfect rolls of Aziraphale’s body, through the hair on his chest, over his belly, his side.
Crowley still wasn’t blinking. Everything was blurry. He opened his eyes wider. He was breathing like he’d been running a marathon. No, not a marathon. Like he’d been running from something, running away from—no, not from something.
To.
He groaned in agony. Something was ripping inside him. It was ripping in a good way, he knew it was good, but it was so good it was painful, and it had never been like that before. It had never been like that when he’d been by himself in his bed all those nights. A hundred thousand fantasies played a hundred thousand times and it was worth it. Right now. Just for this.
Everything, everything, everything was worth it.
When he came it was electric. If he’d been a demon, he would have brought down the power grid for the entire street. His body went rigid, from his toes to his fingers to the ends of his hair. Aziraphale’s did too at the same time. He was still bouncing, slamming down again, and again, slow slams with every pulse of his cock, with every spurt of his spend over Crowley’s fist and chest and abdomen. Meanwhile, Crowley emptied himself, pumping Aziraphale full of himself, and maybe now it would mean something. The two of them. Together like this. Finally.
Just this once.
Somewhere in the post-coital haze of it all, Crowley opened his eyes and saw Asa above him, still coming down from his high, and did his own version of fucking right off—straight out of Anthony’s body and back through the wall of cold.
Crowley sat on the other side, panting. He blinked a lot. He realized he didn’t need to do either of those things anymore.
“Wow,” said Asa, after a beat. He was looking down at Anthony with mild surprise and immense wonder. “That was…”
“Really fucking good,” finished Anthony. “Holy shit.” He chuckled, and it came out rather breathlessly. He wiped at his eyes.
“Why did you…” Asa laughed too. “Why did you want me to call you ‘Crowley?’”
“I don’t know!” Anthony shook his head. “Honestly. I dunno what happened I just… I just thought of it all of a sudden. Or… well, it wasn’t even like I thought of it, really. I just said it. It just came out!” He laughed again.
“Perhaps it’s a professor thing,” Asa said thoughtfully. “They do call you ‘Professor Crowley,’ do they not?”
Anthony laughed like a barking dog. He flung an arm over his face. “Oh God, don’t tell me I have a ‘professor thing.’”
“Don’t all professors have a professor thing?” Now Asa was teasing.
Anthony looked out from under his arm. “Shut up.”
They finished their conversation and went to sleep. No one said anything about the “angel.”
Crowley relaxed.
It was okay. It was okay. It was just this once, and no one had noticed anything. Not anything important. Not anything worrying. And Aziraphale wasn't back yet, he didn't know. It was okay.
It wouldn’t happen again.