Author's Note: This is by far the most explicit fic I have ever written, and so I beg for feedback.
Rated 'M' for sexual content, because I worry, and for a very extended simile.
Disclaimer: Very not mine.
Crowley looks like a painting.
While the demon had always been beautiful – and Aziraphale knows that is the word for him, beautiful, because handsome is too rough a word for golden eyes and inked-in hair, and words like pretty or appealing or lovely (what a loathsome word, lovely) were somehow too immediate, too impermanent for a being like Crowley – the angel has never seen him quite like this before.
But now, yes, now, the parallel is irrefutable.
The sheets are a dusky greyish-blue, and there is a gentle whisper of skin against silk as Crowley slides onto them, his eyes fire-bright and laughing. Aziraphale cannot help but imagine, even as he is drawn down by the demon's clever, restless fingers wrapping around his wrist, as to how an artist would attempt to capture Crowley within the limitations of a single page.
A rough sketch would do very well, he thinks, although it's already difficult to concentrate because Crowley's lips are so very soft, and the way Aziraphale's hands tangle in his hair is such a glorious study in contrasts that he finds his breath leaving him with a gentle whoosh. A very rough sketch, with the chaotic, messy strokes of a blunt pencil or the smudges of a charcoal stick would indeed do well, with his constant movement, and the disarray of his very character and beliefs.
Crowley's lips daub kisses down his jaw, just like acrylic or oil paint upon canvas, and eventually come to rest against Aziraphale's throat. The angel gasps, his skin quivering and becoming near-incendiary with the longing to stay like this, with this unbelievable picture of a being, for an eternity. As if sensing this, the demon smiles – he can feel it curl against his skin - and whispers something quite low in his ear. He feels a whimper gathering as Crowley turns beneath him, offering himself to be worshipped and adored.
He is thin – the angel counts the soft bumps of his spine with his tongue – and he is made up entirely of points and angles and an awkward type of splendour. Aziraphale twists the fingers of one hand into a complicated shape and summons all that he needs, while he rests the other upon Crowley's hip, stroking the delicate bones which lie beneath his cream-coloured skin.
Aziraphale wonders if the demon would allow him to trace the outlines of his veins, his muscles, and his bones themselves, and turn him, just for a little while, into a piece of living artwork. The angel would use a pen dipped in very black ink, he thinks, with perhaps a small dash of red or blue or a very soft green to break the shocking contrast. He doesn't know whether Crowley would indulge him, and let the colours sink into his skin, leaving an echo of the ink behind once they have been washed away, but it's a gorgeous contemplation, all the same.
The angel's fingers are slippery now, and Crowley is already beginning to whine with impatience, the sharp edge of his cheekbones dashed pink, but Aziraphale likes this part too much to bring it to an end this soon. It suspends them both, and time seems to slow and become, somehow, so much more. It is as if the world entire is held at a standstill, just for the two of them, and every beautiful thing in the universe catches its breath at the sight of a demon bathed in the moonlight.
Crowley's back is arching slowly, like a paintbrush spreading a dark and glistening line of colour up the entire length of a porcelain figurine, and he is gasping, a hint of his voice appearing with every quick exhale. His hands are crushing the silk sheets, and even that simple beauty – the white against the majestic blue – is enough for an entire collection of artwork.
His head turns, the tendons in his neck straining as he kisses Aziraphale, his lips slack and clumsy with a curious mixture of love, lust, and overwhelming need. Crowley is completely undone beneath him, the persona he has built for himself beginning to fray and unravel until he is laid bare. He has only his heart to offer, and so offer it he does, no matter how small or unworthy he thinks that it may be. Aziraphale cannot see anything but artistry within him, although the demon does not see it himself.
Crowley's thighs are trembling, and the angel catches sight of his eyes, which now look like they're made of pure gold leaf – the type which was lovingly smoothed across parchments in those glorious and candle-lit scriptoriums, waiting to be painted over with lapis lazuli blues and startling vermilions, and turned into the holy word.
He can see Crowley beginning to crack – like a piece of Grecian ceramic, painted with sharp, geometric shapes and lines – and he is making the soft, shattered sounds which never fail to break the angel's heart with their need. It would be cruel to them both to hold back any longer, and Aziraphale never had understood his people's obsession with martyrdom, and so he has no desire to prolong suffering anyway.
He gathers the demon in his arms, and as he presses a kiss to sweat-dampened skin, pushes in so, so slowly. For a long moment, Aziraphale loses himself, all thoughts spiralling away as they cry out in perfect tandem. His fingers are biting into Crowley's skin, and he knows, in a now unreachable part of his mind, that tomorrow the demon will have small bruises like dabs of finger-paint scattered across his body.
They won't last long. They never do, because Crowley is an impossibility – and tonight, especially so. He is a masterpiece, the kind which simply does not exist outside of the idealised, theoretical dreams of an artist; the kind which cannot help but be perfect in his imperfection; the kind which shudders and is completely silent as he comes apart, dragging Aziraphale down into the depths of bliss after him.
Crowley is very human, the angel thinks, in those seconds after he collapses onto the sheets. There is no way he could compare him to a fallen angel, because they do not immediately roll to wrap their entire bodies around angels who are still shaking with sensation. And he is not an angel, either, because they are not so unselfconsciously greedy when it comes to stealing warmth, or kisses, or space inside the bed itself.
As they simply lie there, limbs and hair and fingers entangled in the most glorious of ways, Aziraphale finds that he does not know what Crowley is, exactly. He is a masterwork, that was undeniable, but that implies that the demon is a figment of his imagination, and something which is not precisely real.
He feels a hand resting in his hair as the demon whispers, "What are you thinking?"
"Nothing, dear," he says, but as he does so, he knows. "Just – God's signature, that's all."
A line appears between Crowley's eyebrows, deepened by the shadows of the moon. "Emerson? I thought the line was about His handwriting."
"It was," Aziraphale agrees, but kisses him before he can ask.
If the world itself is a painting, then Crowley is not depicted alongside the humans, or other demons, or even Aziraphale himself. No, if the world is a painting – and with every passing moment, the angel is becoming convinced that it truly is – then Crowley is the signature.
He is not the artwork, but the artist. He has seen both sides, now – the pure and the corrupted, the saints and the sinners, the beauty and the ugliness of the world – and is unafraid to fight for both. He is not pursued by the need to un-see what he has seen, or to judge, or to turn his face away.
He is not a demon, who sees only the vices, nor an angel, with the virtues. He is not God, but of God, more than anyone but a human could be.
Crowley is the signature, and becomes all the more beautiful because of it.
Finis.
"Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God's handwriting." (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
Thank you for reading.
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