The Arrangement actually came about, indirectly, through Crowley's campaign to tempt Aziraphale. It started with Crowley suggesting one day in the mid-700s, "I'm going over to Italy to tempt a priest – can I do anything for you while I'm there?"
Aziraphale started and blushed before mumuring, "No, nothing. But thank you for asking." He coughed slightly. "Actually I was thinking of heading over to Italy myself, there are some very nice manuscripts that I want to copy. Er, which monastery did you say you were going to be tempting at?" He looked away and pretended to study to his fingernails which were, as always, perfect.
Crowley did not crack a smile as the bait was taken, just started reeling in the line, "Oh, I think it's called St Nicholas's. It's just a tiny place up in the mountains. Not worth my time really, but there's a priest there who I think is going to fall – just needs a little tempting." Then he played his final card. "You could come along if you like, since you're going to be in Italy anyway. Keep an eye on me and be on hand in case he decides to call for angelic assistance at the last moment, you know how fickle humans are."
Aziraphale looked thoughtful. "Yes," he said slowly, "perhaps I'd better be on hand. Just in case."
"Yesssss," hissed Crowley, unable to keep his forked tongue from flickering over his lips.
# # # #
The trip to Italy was uneventful, but it allowed Crowley and Aziraphale to spend time together eating, talking and bemoaning the frightful conditions on board primitive ships. Inevitably the talk also turned to the people they had known in heaven and what Michael, Gabriel and the other boys were up to these days. Aziraphale had the most recent gossip, and Crowley was surprised at how much he liked just being together and talking. He even listened to a lot of it, as it was too early to be planning much along the seduction lines. He knew his eyes kept drifting to the angel's beautiful hands though, and he couldn't help wondering how those warm white hands would feel stroking over his black scales when he was in snake form. He wondered uneasily if Aziraphale would be put off by his snake form. They hadn't been on close enough terms back in the Eden days to ask what he really thought of it.
They arrived at the little town below the monastery in the middle of the afternoon, but since there was no inn there they decided to disguise themselves as travelling clerics and bespeak beds for themselves at the monastery itself. They were too late for the single daily meal which was part of the routine of the place, but as travellers they were allowed to go into the kitchen and get some bread and cheese.
After a mostly silent and awkward meal, they retired to the room they had been given to share. The atmosphere was increasingly heavy as the time for the confrontation approached. Normally they could put aside their differences, and as travelling companions they had more in common than at any other time. But soon they would be in direct conflict as Crowley tempted and Aziraphale thwarted. As each prepared in his own way, it was impossible to ignore the fact that they were on opposite sides – enemies, in point of fact.
"This is ridiculous," said Crowley, flinging himself down full length on the woven mat that served as his bed.
Aziraphale was sitting cross-legged on his own mat, trying to meditate. "What is?" he asked absently, without opening his eyes.
"Us," replied Crowley, succinctly.
Aziraphale's eyes popped open. "What do you mean?" he sounded somewhat offended. "We both take our duties seriously, what's ridiculous about that?"
"No, no, not that." Crowley tried to hide his frustration. "Of course we do our jobs to the best of our ability. That's not what I mean." He tried to hold his thoughts away from what his job would involve in just a few hours, and focus on reassuring Aziraphale. "We're acting like this is some kind of conflict between the two of us, when it isn't really."
Aziraphale looked confused. "It isn't?"
"No, not at all!" Crowley sat up and faced Aziraphale. "This is the temptation of a human. Whether he falls or not is his choice, and has nothing to do with either of us. The conflict is between Above and Below, and in the man's heart as he chooses between doing good and doing evil." Crowley could have bitten his tongue out for mentioning the "E" word at this delicate moment, but forged on regardless. "The orders come from above, the decisions are made by humans – we're just the soldiers on the front line and have more in common with each other than with anyone else."
Aziraphale looked unpersuaded. "But we are soldiers on opposite sides. You will offer your… tempting wiles." His eyes slid away from Crowley's as he obviously got slightly sidetracked at contemplating what those wiles were likely to involve. But then he returned to his main point, "And I will try to thwart you. How does that make us similar?"
"Well," drawled Crowley resuming his lounging posture, "I won't take it personally if you won't. We can do our jobs, then go back to being travelling companions. There's a great bistro in France that I want to take you to on the way home, as soon as this little job is out of the way."
"Hmmm." Aziraphale resumed his meditative posture and closed his eyes. "We'll see."
# # # #
After Vespers the whole monastery retired for the night, and the two visiting monks were locked into their cell as was standard procedure. This didn't bother either Aziraphale or Crowley, as neither of them planned to leave the cell in corporate form anyway. Even if someone checked on them during the night, all they would see would be the two bodies of the visitors lying quietly on their mats, apparently asleep.
Crowley rose up in spirit form first, and drifted out of the cell in search of the novice he planned to use as his host for the Temptation. He wasn't sure yet what degree of possession he would need to use, if he would just give a nudge to the man's thoughts or manifest himself more completely. But he could tell from the way the novice looked at the novice master that the groundwork was well laid for the master to Fall.
He found the novice in his cell, counting his breaths. At first Crowley thought he might be praying or meditating but on invading his mind just a little, he found that he was counting. Timing the passing minutes until the whole monastery could be expected to be asleep and he could venture out of his cell undetected. If Crowley had been corporeal at that moment, he would have smiled and licked his lips. This was going to be easier than he had thought, and he could probably just watch if he wanted to. But he was a demon, so he invaded the novice's mind anyway and settled into his body to enjoy the ride.
The novice suddenly tired of counting and decided that whatever number he had already counted was enough. He wanted and now it was time to go and have. He pulled open his cell door, checking that the tree sap gum was in place to allow the door to remain closed but without locking behind him, and he drifted down the corridor without needing a light. He trailed his fingertips along the stone wall, but he had made this trip in his mind so many times that he didn't need to count the doorways to know when he had reached the correct one. He listened at the door, but heard nothing inside. He placed his palms flat against the door and pushed gently, then more firmly. He was just beginning to wonder if all the encouraging signs he had been seeing were in his own head, when the door suddenly gave way under his hand, spilling him abruptly into the novice master's completely dark cell. He stumbled to a halt and stood in the dark room wondering what to do next.
There was a whisper of cloth as someone brushed past, and the door closed silently behind him. Then he heard a soft scratch against the wall and the curtain was half opened allowing the bright moonlight to flood the room. He flinched in the unexpected light and would have thrown his arm across his eyes, but he was restrained by an embrace from behind. A voice whispered breathlessly in his ear, "You are so beautiful, don't be afraid to let me look at you."
The novice stood still, trembling slightly, and Crowley smirked to himself. He had guessed his men absolutely correctly. There was no chance of the master calling for angelic assistance to resist a seduction he had obviously expected, maybe even planned! The timing suited Crowley, and demons were nothing if not opportunistic. He used his supernatural sight for a moment to check if Aziraphale had made it into the room, and spotted the angel leaning against the wall in the darkest corner of the room, looking somewhat grim. Clearly he also realized that his man was about to Fall, and that calling for angelic rescue was the last thing on his mind.
Crowley realized that he was going to need to spin some urgent damage control, or the angel would just leave. He took over the novice's vocal cords for a moment. "Father?" he whispered, "Father, is this right? When we swear chastity, we give up the love of women and reserve all our love for God, do we not?"
The novice master chuckled huskily from behind him, making even Crowley's flesh crawl with the suggestive mockery in his voice. "Having second thoughts? It's a bit late for that, my boy." The novice master's hands were on his robe, lifting it up, tearing it off him and wrenching his neck in the process. The boy's skin shivered in the sudden cold, or was it more than the cold? The novice master was pressing a series of hot, feverish kisses down the boy's spine and Crowley could tell without looking that every kiss was going to leave a mark.
The boy's initial feigned hesitation, more part of the game than serious resistance, was now rapidly crystallizing in the forefront of his mind. "Father? Father, I… thought…" he faltered.
"Now, now, my young novice," the priest soothed, "I'm not a woman or a purveyor of original sin, am I? We're just two priests together celebrating the wonderful work that God has made in the magnificent body of man." As he spoke his hands were efficiently stripping both the novice and himself, and he started to guide the almost mesmerized youth towards the bed. The younger man balked when he realized where they were going, and the novice master smoothly converted their destination to a small prie-dieu in the corner of the room.
Crowley winced in anticipation, knowing what was probably about to happen. Sure enough, as the boy knelt on what looked like a kneeling cushion, it turned out to be nothing of the kind but instead a wooden block with crosses engraved in high relief all over it. If he knelt there for more than five minutes he was going to have crosses imprinted on his knees for at least a day afterwards.
The novice master stood in front of the boy, which relative position brought his erection into convenient and prominent view. "Are we men not fearfully and wonderfully made?" he whispered. Crowley felt rising anticipation from the boy, and the quotation from the Psalms seemed to have quieted his conscience. He leaned forward and took the master's hard, jutting flesh into his mouth and the older man groaned in long-denied ecstasy. The boy's hesitant tongue rasped up and down the length of the shaft and Crowley gave the boy's hand an impatient shove. Obedient to the hint, the boy reached up and started massaging the heavy balls with one hand, while mimicking the movement of his mouth on the priest's nipple with the other.
The priest groaned again, and the sound was oddly doubled in Crowley's ears. He couldn't place what was different about this groan, apart from the obvious increase in passionate sexual tension. His expert gaze gave the whole scene about another three minutes, less if the priest reached down and fondled the novice's own straining erection.
Then he had it – the groan had been heard twice, once by his host's human ears and once by Crowley's own supernatural ears. Aziraphale must be connected to the priest and experiencing his pleasure! Crowley glanced around the room and saw that Aziraphale was still leaning against the wall, so he wasn't fully inside the mind of the novice master, but his eyes were closed and there was a silver cord connecting his outstretched hand to the back of the older priest's neck.
Well, well! An interesting development indeed – Crowley had thought it would take at least two or three scenes such as this to induce the angel to "partake" but obviously angels were more curious than he had realized. Perhaps he shouldn't have been surprised being an angel himself, albeit a fallen one. Crowley decided to stop analyzing the situation and encourage his host to give the master (and indirectly Aziraphale) the best time of his life.
After the boy had used all the variations he could think of on licking, sucking and fondling, he urged the boy to stand up slowly. He tongued his way up the other man's body from a last kiss on the head of the engorged cock, to a slow tongue-tickle of his navel and then up to bite lightly at each erect nipple. Crowley hoped that last move wouldn't give him away, as many boys had no idea that nipples were fantastically sensitive in aroused men, but the novice master just seemed to be completely given over to sensation and not thinking about anything and Aziraphale was obviously too inexperienced to wonder about it. After all, they both had been there when the human body was designed and they knew exactly how it worked. What Aziraphale had lacked was first-hand experience, and now he was saturated in the touch of his first hand, and apparently enjoying the experience too much to question any of it.
The older priest clasped the novice to his chest and murmured appreciatively into his ear, kissing him deeply. He slid his hands up and down the younger man's back, squeezing the rounded globes of his ass and grinding their erections together between their bodies. The host and Crowley groaned together this time, and Crowley could feel a rising urgency in the body he was currently possessing that made him push the two men's sweating bodies apart for a moment. Both were panting, eyes closed, but the older priest was in his own room and apparently did not need his sight in order to draw the younger man towards his bed.
This time the novice made no resistance, and soon they were entangled together on the bed, kissing and stroking feverishly, hands and mouths all over each other's hot skin, hips pumping in an irresistably biological rhythm that stroked their penises together as the sexual tension spiralled higher and higher, subtly reinforced by the presence of the two supernatural beings who were both participants and audience in this spectacular show.
Just when he thought it was all about to be over, when the screaming tension in his host's body was about to find relief – the master pulled away leaving the novice panting and whimpering for completion. "Just a moment, my dear, this will make it even better," he said, reaching up to the head of the mat and groping around under it. He found what he was looking for, and triumphantly displayed a small pot of something that looked semi-liquid as it glistened in the moonlight. Crowley thought it must be some kind of lubricant, or at least it was about to serve as one, whatever its original purpose had been.
The priest urged the novice to his hands and knees, ignoring the boy's sudden gasp of pain as his bruised knees took most of the weight of his body. He knelt behind him, quickly and expertly lubricating and preparing the boy to be mounted. He thrust into the warm, eager body below him, and the boy cried out as the extra weight put pressure on his tortured knees.
The pain in his host's knees was not the uppermost problem in Crowley's mind at that moment however. Something was wrong here, deeply wrong. The novice master was clearly far gone in corruption, that he could have orchestrated this scene and had all the accoutrements already to hand. Clearly, this was not the first novice he had seduced in exactly this way. Having the Scripture quotation ready to hand was a nice touch but it spoke of forethought, not the inspiration of the moment. So if the novice master was not the one to be tempted, then who…
Even as he felt the thrusting of the priest increase in tempo and the boy's cries spiralling up to meet his rising passion, even as he felt the climax gathering in the pit of the boy's body, it all clicked into place for Crowley. He was in the wrong body! The tempter was supposed to be the novice master and the boy was the one who was supposed to either resist temptation or fall into it!
The shock of Crowley's realization reverberated through his host's body, and joined as they were, Aziraphale felt it too, and realized what it meant. His eyes snapped open from his position on the wall, and the silver cord jumped from the neck of the priest, to the neck of the boy. It was an instantaneous and smooth transition from one host to another, and Crowley noticed with some admiration the speed and efficiency with which Aziraphale was completely master of the situation from the boy's point of view.
But even as Crowley fought to disengage his entangled consciousness from the boy and shift to the master, he felt fingers tightening on his hips and the gush of warmth inside him that usually signalled the successful consummation of a temptation. Even as he came, the master reached around and tugged at the novice's erect and weeping penis, and with two firm strokes the boy was screaming and climaxing. And Crowley was swept along also crying out as he came, and somehow Aziraphale was there too, gasping out his pleasure. Crowley was the first demon to hear an angel scream with orgasm but since they were sharing the same body when they did it, no-one else heard. Good thing too, Crowley reflected. He wasn't sure he wanted the story of this rather incestuous orgy to get about. Tempting an angel into a sexual encounter was one thing – but simultaneous orgasms from the same body was a bit strange, even to his admittedly broad mind.
After it was all over, and the two celestial beings were back in their own bodies, Aziraphale seemed oddly inclined to chat. "You were right Crowley, it wasn't personal at all. Your side won tonight, but no hard feelings, eh? So, what about that bistro in France? On the way I've a mind to show you a simply gorgeous little village in Switzerland where they make the most amazing cheese. Something about the wet climate and what they feed the cows there, I've never tasted anything like it…"
Aziraphale chattered on about travel plans and eventually fell asleep mumbling about climate effects on bovine digestion and milk production. Crowley took considerably longer to fall asleep, despite having more practice than the angel. Demons were never bothered by twinges of conscience, and their eavesdropping on the sexual encounter of the novice and master didn't rate a second thought. He wondered a little about who had "won" tonight and whether he had liked it. But the comment that he kept turning over in his mind for most of the night, was what had Aziraphale meant by his cheerfully ambiguous use of the expression "No hard feelings?"