The Sons, of God and Satan respectively, were finally gone, and Aziraphale and Crowley had retired to the bedroom. Now, Crowley had a lapful of sticky, whipped cream-covered, angel to enjoy, and he was working diligently to remove the stickiness, or add to it, depending on how you wanted to look at it. Aziraphale didn't seem to mind one way or the other, as he babbled between little moans and whimpers.
"I'm so sorry for my...ahhh… behavior lately. Mmmnh… I really don't know what's come, ungh… over me."
"I have a few ideas," Crowley said suggestively, and bent his head to give a good hard suck at Aziraphale's nipple. (They each only had two, whatever Shadwell might think.) He released it with a pop, and smirked up at Aziraphale.
Aziraphale gave him a blessed out smile and batted at him. "Oh, you."
"Exactly," Crowley agreed, and flipped his angel over onto his back on the mattress for better access, as he got back to his dessert.
"Really though, my dear. Ohhh… Huhng. I've been acting just, Gugh… reprehensibly. I've no cause to, ohhhhhh… be jealous. It's just…" Aziraphale fell silent.
Crowley detached his mouth from the inside of Aziraphale's thigh to ask, "Just what?"
"Hmmm?" Aziraphale asked.
"It's just what?"
"Oh," Aziraphale said. "I suppose it's like your Mr. Mercury says." He gave him a soft smile. "Crazy little thing called love."
Crowley let out a little huff- one that meant, how can you even be this soppy, and you're ridiculous, and how I love you. Then, he dipped his head lower, flicked out his forked tongue, and made his angel shake all over like a jellyfish.
oOoOoOo
Adam had a small flat in Oxford, where he lived alone, save for Dog.
He'd once had a serious girlfriend, but Susan had left him after half a year, because she wanted more excitement from life, and Adam was just too ordinary. He couldn't even be mad about it. It was just too ridiculous. Then, he'd tried a serious boyfriend for a while, but Jarrod hadn't been interested in being as serious as he'd led Adam to believe, so Adam had kicked him out after finding a condom wrapper on their bedroom floor that didn't belong to him.
There had been the odd fling here and there over the years, but it was hard to keep up the ruse of an honest relationship when you were secretly the Antichrist, and it wasn't as though anyone would've believed him if he had told them. He'd thought, when he was a kid, that maybe he'd end up with Pepper, or even Wensleydale, but the older they all got, the more laughable that idea seemed.
So, Adam was decidedly single at the moment.
Which was why he was surprised to come home to find someone else in his flat.
"I took Dog for a walk," Azazel said from his couch, where he had Adam's laptop open across his thighs.
"Dressed like that?" Adam asked, closing the door behind him. He eyed Azazel up and down, taking in the disco goat outfit he was wearing with less surprise than might be expected. "Why are you dressed like that?"
"I thought Jesus might be a furry," he said, still not looking up from the computer screen.
"You thought," Adam started, but he couldn't finish the sentence. The fact that he was feeling relief over the semantics of Azazel saying that he'd thought Yeshua might be a furry, rather than just, 'Jesus is a furry,' so completely summed up his life right now that it left him reeling. "Why did you.." he started, but "no. Nononono. I'm not getting dragged into this."
"I think I'm going to try BDSM next. Does this seem like too much?" Azazel turned the screen so that Adam could see the video playing: a man spread-eagled on a St. Andrew's cross while two other men, dressed head-to-toe in black leather, saw to him with a variety of implements.
"Given his history, I'd say so, yeah."
Azazel made a thoughtful noise and turned the laptop back to face him. "Well, maybe he'd like to get a bit of his own back. I could go on the cross, I suppose. It might be a nice change of pace. Lucifer's had me clocking a lot of hours in the Second Circle lately. And, it would fit with the rest."
Adam pinched the bridge of his nose. He shouldn't ask. He knew he shouldn't ask; he didn't want to know, but the words were leaving his mouth anyway. "Fit with the rest of what?"
"Oh," Azazel said. "I didn't tell you. I figured out why Jesus wants your urine. Have you heard of water sports?"
Well, that backfired spectacularly, Adam thought. He wasn't sure how an offhand idiom, misunderstood by a demon, some 2,500 years out of date in the area of slang, had spiraled down into the assumption that Jesus Christ wanted to be peed upon by a furry, anthropomorphic goat, with a leather daddy fetish, but Adam had a sinking suspicion that it was his fault.
"Am I to understand from all of this," Adam gestured at Azazel, the furry costume, the laptop, all of it. "That Lucifer has sent you here to seduce Yeshua."
"I don't suppose you have any suggestions?"
Adam pretended that he hadn't heard that. "I need my laptop," he said instead. "I have a paper due tomorrow."
"I need it," Azazel said. "The library people are getting crafty. They've disconnected the internet."
"So, reconnect it."
"I tried that. It won't work."
Adam snorted. "Well, that's what you get for crossing the librarians. You don't mess with librarians. I still need my laptop back, though. Go buy a mobile and watch your pornography on there like everyone else."
Azazel reluctantly handed it over. Adam quickly closed the fifteen or so tabs worth of pornography, and half a dozen videos of goats in pajamas, which he resolutely refused to ask about, and closed the laptop. "I don't really appreciate you just breaking into my flat and messing with my things like this, either."
"I don't really know anyone else," Azazel said. "I'm supposed to be concentrating on Jesus; I can't just go spending my efforts on seducing random strangers into bed, so that I have somewhere to stay."
A week ago, this statement wouldn't have caused him to cringe the way it did now, but thanks to Crowley's completely unnecessary explanation over the special angelic and demonic meaning behind the phrase, 'making an effort,' Adam understood only all too well exactly what Azazel meant, and he didn't make any conscious decision to say it, but the words were leaving his mouth anyway. "If you're worried about wasted efforts, maybe you should lay off the pornography."
"That's research," Azazel said, but his eyes shifted away, leaving no doubt in Adam's mind that his interest hadn't been purely academic.
"Fine," Adam said. "You can stay here, if you must, but don't touch my stuff, and clean up after yourself, and go and buy a mobile,… and don't wank on my couch."
"Done," Azazel agreed readily, getting unsteadily to his feet and heading for the door. Adam gazed at the hooves half hidden beneath the fuzzy trousers, and he wasn't entirely sure if they were the true manifestation of Azazel's feet, or clever shoes made to look like hooves.
"You might want to change before you go out in public again," Adam suggested.
"Hmm?" Azazel turned to look at him.
Adam gestured up and down to indicate all of the… everything. "That isn't really something that people wear out in public. I don't even want to think about what my neighbors are going to say if they saw you out walking Dog like that."
"They might get the impression that you're more adventurous than you let on," Azazel said, with a wink, and he didn't change a single thing as he went out the door.
Adam groaned. Why did he let himself get dragged into these situations? He was the Antichrist for all the good it did him. Surely that ought to at least come with the ability to control his own life. From now on, he was going to use whatever power he had to generate a field of impotence in a hundred metre radius around himself. Though, that wasn't likely to improve his dating problems any.
oOoOoOo
"You're very demanding, aren't you," Crowley taunted.
"For fuck's sake, Crowley. Get on with it."
"And such language." Crowley smirked as he ran a hand down the length of Aziraphale's back to cup one cream-colored buttock of angelic arse.
"Fuck. Fuck. Sodding. Arse. Cunt. Shite…. Damn," Aziraphale said. "There, are you happy now? I can curse if I want to. I just choose not to. It isn't polite. Now, get on with it."
"I don't know if I should, if you're going to talk to me like that. Rude, angel."
"If you don't stop teasing, I'm going to flip you over and bugger you instead," Aziraphale threatened in a low growl.
"Hmmm," Crowley hummed as he kneaded idly at his angel's cheeks. "Naked wrestling, and here I thought that you didn't like my taste in statuary."
"I just don't think it should be displayed in your front hall, you wretched tease."
"And is that what you want? My submission?"
"Noooo," Aziraphale moaned. "I want you to bloody well get on with it already, before I discorporate and have to explain to God why I need a new body."
"Mmmm, yes, that would be an interesting discussion. I can just imagine you- all shame-faced and stammering."
"Damn you, Crowley."
"Been there, done that," Crowley muttered, dipping his head low to flick out his forked tongue. Aziraphale groaned. "Are you ready to admit that I was right about Wilde?"
"What? No. Ahhhhhh. Hnnnn. Why on Earth would you bring that up now?"
"Because, I don't like you getting all high and mighty with me over errant desires that I may or may not have entertained, momentarily, two thousand years ago. You've never been as innocent as you like to pretend. So, just admit it. You wanted Wilde to shag you. It's fine. I don't mind really."
"But I didn't," Aziraphale protested. "The thought never crossed my mind."
"Don't lie to me, angel. I can do this all night," Crowley threatened, teasing at him some more.
Aziraphale whimpered. "Fine! I thought about it," he admitted. "Is that what you want to hear?"
He turned onto his side and rose up onto one elbow, so that he could look at Crowley, before he continued. "It would be hard not to. That's all his circle ever talked about- who was buggering whom on that particular week. That doesn't mean that I was secretly lusting after Oscar bloody Wilde."
Crowley raised an eyebrow.
Aziraphale huffed in frustration. "I told you. It wasn't like that. I just liked the attention. I fit in there. You've always been fashionable, no matter which century we were in; whatever country, you always found your niche. Well, that was mine: 1880 until about 1900. That was my era of fashionability, okay? That was when I got invited to all the best parties with all the brightest people. And you missed it, because you were too busy sulking over the fact that I wouldn't give you holy water to kill yourself. I didn't want Wilde, you idiot, I wanted you, but you weren't there. So, yes, I passed the time with some enjoyable company. But that was it. He liked me, and I liked him. We were friends. I needed that, because my best friend had been asleep for a quarter of a century, and didn't look to be dragging himself out of bed anytime soon. And, Oscar was hopelessly in love with Lord Alfred Douglas, who was a huge wanker, but that was enough to get him two years of hard labour in Newgate anyway, and it may as well have been a death sentence. And, since you weren't there for any of that either, you can just shut up about it, all right?"
"Yeah, all right. I'm sorry, angel. I didn't realize."
"Well you should have. Oscar was a lovely person, and I miss him dearly. He didn't deserve what they did to him, and he certainly doesn't deserve your scorn." Aziraphale paused for a moment as his own words sunk in. "I suppose that I should have understood about Yeshua as well. He really is a nice young man. I shouldn't wonder that you're so happy to see him after everything. I expect that I would feel the same way, if I suddenly had Oscar back. That's the problem with befriending mortals; their lives are over so quickly." Aziraphale sighed. "Oh, I really have been behaving abominably. And now I've gone and ruined the mood."
"Oh, just shut up, and give me a few minutes. I'll have you back to cursing at me in no time."
Aziraphale let out a huff, but he turned back over onto belly, and pillowed his head in his arms. "I still don't want him in our bed again."
"I said, shut up," Crowley said. "Anyway, I'm not sure you have to worry about that after your display at dinner. Yeshua is starting to look at us the way that Adam does when we take the innuendo a step too far."
"When you take it a step too far, you mean," Aziraphale said. "You're the one with the pornographic taste in hall decoration."
"Back to the naked wresting, are we? If it's really that important to you, I'm happy to throw out my wings, and let you try to pin me down."
"How about, you shut up, and put that tongue of yours to use for something that it's actually good at?"
"And we're back to the demands," Crowley observed. "That didn't take long." But, he was happy to comply, and within moments all transgressions and maudlin talk of old friends was forgotten, and Aziraphale was back to begging for it.
Crowley's restraint was just about spent, and he was about to give in, when a noise from downstairs brought them both up short.
"What was that?" Aziraphale asked.
"Don't care," Crowley said.
The noise came again then—a high pitched buzz that rose to a near screeching whine and then tapered away again.
"It's coming from the shop," Aziraphale said.
"I really, really, don't care," Crowley repeated, with a whimper.
"It could be vandals," Aziraphale protested.
"How much damage could they possibly do in the next ten minutes?"
"The books, Crowley."
Crowley threw his head back and groaned.
oOoOoOo
"IF I HAD A HAMMER," Yeshua sang out over the buzz of his new circular saw. "I'D HAMMER IN THE MORNING. I'D HAMMER IN THE EVENING. ALL OVER THIS LAND."
Between the saw, the singing, and his new earmuffs, he couldn't have possibly heard Aziraphale and Crowley creeping down the stairs, and he stood with his back to them now, in the center of a circle of chaos. Books had been removed from shelves and stacked haphazardly in piles on the floor, where they gathered a coating of sawdust, while Yeshua cut their shelves into pieces.
"IF I HAD A HAMMER, I'D HAMMER YOU BACK UP ONTO THAT FUCKING CRUCIFIX, YOU CRETIN!" Aziraphale shouted, as soon as the shock of the scene before them had worn off enough for him to form words.
The sound of that at least, if not the meaning of it, seemed to register over the din, because Yeshua turned the saw off and pulled the earmuffs down to rest around his neck like a torque, as he turned to them. The corners of his eyes crinkled behind the safety glasses that he wore, and he flashed them a broad smile.
"Oh, hey guys. Are you finished already? You might want to put some clothes on."
