"Yeee-ouch," said Crowley, squirming in his seat.
"Hold still, my dear," Aziraphale muttered patiently as his fingers traced the muscles. He grasped and gently pulled, making Crowley stretch out his wing with a scowl.
The angel pinched down on the more delicate part of the limb, stroking aside soft dark feathers, then looked to Crowley for confirmation. "And here?"
Crowley shifted and winced. "A little. Not as much as higher up."
"I see." The angel gave a soft sigh."On second thought, no, I don't believe I do. How do you say this happened?"
Crowley gritted his teeth. "Flying, how else d'you think?"
"I didn't think you were that out of practice, my dear, for it to sprain so easily..."
"Oh yeah, and when was the last time you spread 'em out for a quick toss'n tumble with gravity?"
"Even so..."
"It was a duck, okay?" Crowley snapped, his shoulders tensing instinctively against the eloquent silence that followed. He was still wearing the expensive shirt he'd been in when he found himself standing on the top of a skyscraper and struck with the sudden urge to do something spontaneous. The shirt was immaculate in front and split across the back. He was still torn over whether to miracle it fixed or take it to a tailor, proper-like.
He became aware that the eloquent silence persisted. "Well?" he challenged uncomfortably. "Aren't you going to say something?"
"Nonsense, my dear," the angel cooed, sitting down behind him on the edge of the bed, "I'm sure the duck had it coming."
Crowley hissed. "Hey, it's not like I make it a habit to get into fights with ducks or anything-"
"That is reassuring to hear, my dear..." Aziraphale muttered, absent-mindedly running a hand along the curve of the wing.
"That's not what happened, okay? It just... appeared out of nowhere. No bloody ressspect for aerial supremacy at all. I was just... caught by surprise and... y'know... flailed, or something."
"I see. And the duck?"
"Uh." Crowley floundered a bit, staring at the wall. "What about it?"
"Did the duck survive?"
Crowley glowered, though without much energy.
"...Yes," he admitted. He'd seen it just moments later, in fact, after his crash landing – cuddling with some obscenely fluffy yellow ducklings with whom it had at last been reunited. He was so not going to mention that.
It wasn't such a big deal, really. Ducks... well, ducks flew. Well-known fact. Even the ones in St. James's. Despite the bread. Note to self: Feed ducks more to discourage them from aerial competition. White grain equals higher calorie count. Useful.
Yes, he really didn't hold it against the duck. Even if there had been a conflict of interest. He was sure it was a nice duck, really. Dedicated mother, and all that.
The ducklings had been rather cute, though. Cute, and... and fluffy... tiny enough to... fit... into his... palm...
"Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa," Crowley exclaimed, and was alarmed when it came out as a drowsy mumble. It abruptly dawned on him that Aziraphale was...
"Yes, my dear?" the angel replied mildly, but didn't stop fondling his wings.
"What are you..." Crowley started, blinking against the wall. He tried to twist around but realised he'd more or less sagged into the kind of slouch not possible for people with normal spines.
Aziraphale rubbed a hand across the heavy muscled part and Crowley's eyes closed of their own volition.
"Don't be silly now," the angel said reasonably. "You were hardly going to bring this little injury to my attention if you weren't planning on manipulating me into kissing it all better."
Crowley laughed breathlessly, sagging even more, than shook himself and tried to straighten up.
"'Sss not little," he protested weakly. "I was... threat of death, I was... with the duck..."
"I am pleased to see you survived, then," the angel replied good-naturedly and grasped the wing with both hands, fingers kneading insistently into the muscles.
Things got very tingly, very quickly.
Crowley felt a brief burst of bewilderment. Angels weren't supposed to do things like that, really – you didn't associate them with the kind of fingers that could drive you wild and make you beg for mercy twice. And yes, truth be told, Aziraphale wasn't like that, either. But he was currently massaging the muscles and the sensitive roots of the feathers with the kind of loving diligence he normally reserved for turning the pages of old books, gentle and feather-light and yet perfectly, single-mindedly focused – and it might have been demeaning to be compared to the way a book was treated - unless you actually knew Aziraphale, which Crowley did.
"Gah," Crowley jumped a little, startled at the burst of sensation as some nerve centre or another was hit.
"Alright, my dear?"
"Yesssss," Crowley hissed, letting himself relax once more. It did feel nice.
It felt more than nice – suspiciously more than nice, in fact – and as Aziraphale's fingers buried into a knot of muscles just so and then trailed lovingly along the bone to the very tip of the wing – yes, nice – and against all pride and dignity he was actually groaning.
"Does that make you feel better, then?"
Crowley shut his eyes against the rush of blood to his face and sagged forward, struggling to control his breathing. "Yesss," he ground out. "...Though probably not for the reason you intended."
There was a pause, and then Aziraphale said, "Now why would you assume that?"
His voice was soft and unassuming and just on the wrong side of innocent.
Crowley's eyes flew open.
"Y-you devious-" he sputtered, then twisted, finally wrenching his wing out of the angel's grasp, folding them both against this back. "Oh, sneaky, angel, very sneaky. You almosssst had me there."
"I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about," Aziraphale smiled up at him.
"I'm sure you don't," Crowley hissed, then grabbed Aziraphale by the shoulders and threw him face-down onto the bed. The angel yelped in protest but Crowley held him down, crawling forward to straddle his thighs, pinning him down with his weight. He leaned in to whisper into his ear, "I'm the demon, remember? I'm the one who's supposed to use people," he added with a grin.
Aziraphale huffed. "Crowley, dear, what are you doing?"
"Restoring balance to the universe," Crowley said solemnly, then grabbed a handful of the angel's shirt and tore a hefty chunk of it clean off.
Aziraphale sputtered.
"I'll buy you a new one," Crowley muttered, before he could say anything.
"With fake money?"
"Deal with it."
"But it was-"
"Tartan."
"Crowley-"
"Sssshhhhhhhhh." Crowley smiled and shifted to settle himself in more comfortably, then leaned down again, kissing the angel's back, just above his shoulder. "Now, where would they be? Here, maybe?" His lips migrated lower, trailing along the dip of the shoulder blade, across the ribs. "Or maybe here. Guess I'll just have to keep looking until I find them."
"...Crowley..." the angel mumbled somewhere into the pillow.
"Just tell me if we're getting warmer here, angel," Crowley murmured into the nape of his neck.
"Mmnnghh.."
"I'll take that as a yes. Let's see..." he sighed theatrically, slipping his hands past the tear in the shirt and down to caress Aziraphale's sensitive sides, even as he ran his tongue down the crest of his back. The angel shifted against him, bucking slightly in discomfort.
Crowley raised his head again. "Can't seem to find them," he said cheerfully. "Are we quite sure that's an angel we've got here? Could be just a duck. A wingless one."
"M'dear, you are making no sense at all," Aziraphale said breathlessly, then thwacked him across the face with newly-manifested wings.
Crowley recovered quickly, bursting forward to tackle the angel even as Aziraphale scrambled to his knees, feet caught in the twisting sheets.
"Not sssso fasssst," Crowley grinned, pushing the angel flat onto his back and stretching across him, which turned out to be quite the informative experience. His hands found Aziraphale's, fingers interlacing even as he shifted his weight, pinning them down against the bed. His own wings spread around him in a dark tent, pinions running over the angel's face.
"Crowley..."
"Yes, what?" Crowley asked impatiently. He dipped his head to kiss the angel's belly through the blasted tartan shirt, fully aware that the cloth was likely muffling most of the sensation. Aziraphale squirmed against him in annoyance.
"You are just full-set on being insufferable today, aren't you?" Aziraphale said primly, which was quite the accomplishment for someone in that particular horizontal position.
"Methinks the lady... doth... protest too much," Crowley said, in-between further kisses up the angel's shirt. The cloth deserved some attention too, after all. It was tartan. Pity for the less fortunate, and all that.
"That's... wrong," Aziraphale gasped, squirming against him with slightly more vigor. His wings flapped uselessly as he slapped them against Crowley's sides, without much effect - save that the brush of another's wings against his did sort of drive him wild.
"What's wrong, angel?" Crowley mumbled, nuzzling Aziraphale's neck just on the wrong side of his collar and grinning at his sound of indignation as bare skin was neglected once again.
"The... the quote," Aziraphale said seriously, even as he shivered in impatience. "It is quite commonly misquoted and misinterpreted nowadays. The correct phrasing is 'the lady doth protest too much, methinks' and expresses a much greater breadth of meaning than the misquoted version, conveying the dryness and irony of Queen Gertrude's tone as she comments upon her in-story counterpart's emphatic proclamation that she would never remarry, made doubly meaningful, despite Hamlet's intent, by the reality that Gertrude herself has, in fact, remarried. The word 'protest', too, is misapplied now, seeing as its current meaning of 'denial' or 'objection' only came to pass after William's time - although it is still somewhat reserved in our use of the word 'protestation' - and the contemporary meaning of it was in fact closer to 'vow' or 'declare'. Whereas now one assumes that the 'lady' in question loses credibility because she denies too much, the correct interpretation is that she loses credibility due to affirming too much, in a too artful, elaborate, overwrought fashion. You were there at the time, my dear, the least you could do is get it right."
Crowley stared at him for a while.
"D'you want me to pop down to the book store and ask the first editions if any of them feel like joining in, then?" he said finally, and the angel frowned and writhed against him, with more force than before. Crowley writhed back, fighting to keep his own trembling limbs under control.
"Oh, just shut up and get on with it, dear boy," Aziraphale gasped.
"Whatever rocks your boat, angel," Crowley grinned and dipped his head again. He let his breath ghost over the sensitive, impatient skin of Aziraphale's throat... then passed over it completely, slithering forward and stretching past the angel's shoulder to bite sharply into his wing.
Aziraphale gasped harshly.
"My... my dear.." he stammered, then cut himself off with another keening gasp as Crowley dragged his teeth through the feathers, his hair tickling the angel's ear.
"We really should do the wing thing more often," Crowley mused, as he surfaced for a moment to spit out the down in his mouth.
"Mmm-ghhhhh..." said Aziraphale, blinking furiously.
"Yeah, I thought so. That'll take your mind off books for a while," Crowley smiled. He turned his attention to the other trembling wing, exploring the curves and dips of the thick, muscled part of the wing close to the base, so powerful and yet so sensitive and so very, very underappreciated over the course of the millennia. The occasional feather sticking to the roof of his mouth was worth it to feel Aziraphale's body turning to jelly beneath him – well, except for the parts of him that weren't.
Finally he turned his lips to the long-suffering, touch-deprived skin of Aziraphale's throat, nuzzling along his softly-defined collarbones and up the jugular and into that sensitive little dip at the base of his jaw. Aziraphale stopped breathing and shuddered against him.
He released the angel's hands, then, to thoroughly burrow his own fingers into the angel's wings.
This, as it turned out, had been the strategically unwise thing to do.
Aziraphale grabbed onto his shoulders and pushed, easily rolling them around and straddling Crowley in a startling turning of tables. The golden-white feathers fanned out triumphantly.
Crowley stared, momentarily taken aback. Aziraphale was wearing the closest he'd seen in a while to what he considered the smitey expression. It was not, at the moment, particularly wrathful or otherwise reminiscent of an avenging angel of Heaven, but it was utterly focused, determined even, in a way that was most unnerving – or currently, thrilling – for the otherwise scatterbrained angel.
"Oh, snap, now I'm really in for it," Crowley managed to gasp, before Aziraphale kissed him. It was sudden and intense and insistent, almost forceful, and he found himself hungrily kissing back, even as his own hands raked over the angel's back and his ruffled feathers.
Aziraphale made a sharp noise into his mouth, then pulled away. He gathered the rumpled shirt over Crowley's chest in his hand, tightening his fist. He looked Crowley in the eye.
"Oh no you don't," Crowley hissed. "That's ssssilk, that is-"
Aziraphale pulled sharply, tearing it clean off the demon's body with a decidedly far too much vindictive glee. Buttons went flying. The angel spitefully balled the shredded, unsalvageable mess in one fist, then tossed it forcefully away.
Crowley twisted his head sideways to watch mournfully as it hit the floor.
"You will be avenged," he said solemnly to the shirt.
Then there were hands cradling his face and Aziraphale's mouth reclaimed his, making further protestations – in either century's meaning of it – somewhat more difficult.
"We should feed the ducks," Crowley gasped, struggling to kick off his trousers before the angel could savage those, as well. "As... gratitude, and stuff. For... argh... indirectly... causing..." he trailed off, rendered quite helpless by what the angel's hand was doing further south.
Aziraphale smiled into his lips.
"As you say, my dear... whatever rocks your boat."
Things got rather hazy after that.
The ducks feasted for days.