leave

by lovinfries4

you

Preface

Leave of Absence
Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at /works/19265608.

Rating: Explicit Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply Category: M/M Fandom: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, Good Omens (TV) Relationship: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens) Character: Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley (Good Omens), Gabriel (Good Omens) Additional Tags: Explicit Sexual Content, Rimming, Anal Sex, First Time, Top Aziraphale (Good Omens), metaphysical elements, Fluff and Angst Language: English Stats: Published: 2019-06-18 Words: 9,299 Chapters: 1/1 Leave of Absence

by Eremji (handsfullofdust)

Summary

Crowley doesn't know what to do next, but he guesses he can be excused. Armageddon doesn't happen twice, after all. Maybe it's time for a real vacation – but first there are a couple things left unsaid.

Aziraphale is, perhaps for the first time in his long tenure on Earth, sleeping soundly, and he's doing it directly in the center of Crowley's bed. He's lying on his side, curled up on himself, fist tucked against his mouth. Intermittently, he murmurs in his sleep, little snatches of celestial language that make Crowley's skin prickle as if he's being watched from a great distance, but have little other effect.

Notes

Take Two: Electric Boogaloo. I love these two. Any excuse to write them. A short little fic about the moments between what was and what could be.

Another unbeta'd work; any mistakes are my own.

As always, I try to tag thoughtfully, but if there's something you come across you feel should be added, please let me know!

You can find me on Tumblr and on Twitter

Leave of Absence

'As to me, I know nothing but miracles'
- Walt Whitman 'Miracles'

*

Aziraphale is, perhaps for the first time in his long tenure on Earth, sleeping soundly, and he's doing it directly in the center of Crowley's bed. He's lying on his side, curled up on himself, fist tucked against his mouth. Intermittently, he murmurs in his sleep, little snatches of celestial language that make Crowley's skin prickle as if he's being watched from a great distance, but have little other effect.

Crowley, still in his shoes, head propped in one hand, has been watching the proceedings from a dressing chair with broody interest from the moment Aziraphale slipped off in the middle of some fusty hardback.

He's been nursing the same glass of wine and it's been holding steady at a third full, no matter how many sips he takes, for several hours.

He has no idea what to do next. Not with his Hellish vocation, not with his life, and certainly not with Aziraphale, who has managed to make a sense of peace and warmth settle over his flat like a rush hour smog. Crowley resents it a little, for how immediately it makes the cold stone feel like a home, but craves it in equal measure, deep down in that dark place that's always felt hollowed out since his Fall, where the connection to the Presence once filled him with divine ecstasy.

Aziraphale feels a lot like magnetic north, if magnetic north were a place that Crowley were exiled from and could never reach and never see and never know again.

The plants in his atrium, never before the flowering sort, have all begun to blossom.

*

The whole thing with Heaven and Hell goes down surprisingly well, and they find themselves spectacularly unattended.

They dine at the Ritz twice in three days and after the second lunch, Crowley sets out to determinedly bask in the little rooftop garden that's popped up directly over Aziraphale's bookshop. Secluded from prying eyes, he slithers out flat on a chaise, stretching bonelessly, and pretends to ignore Aziraphale doing sums in his ledger beneath a wide-brimmed hat.

Summer is in full force and fills Crowley's body — which, despite being exclusively human-shaped for centuries, sometimes forgets that and remembers quite well how to be a snake — with a fulgent pleasure.

He listens to Aziraphale's pen scratching on the paper and makes it all of twenty minutes — an itching restlessness building beneath his skin alongside the heat — before he asks, "Why do you keep up with doing that?"

"The sums? For the shop. You know that," Aziraphale answers without pause. He's tipped forward a little in his garden chair with an expression of concentration.

"But you have a computer and you'll just enter them there anyhow," Crowley points out, scratching at his stubble. He finds he's a bit scalier than before but doesn't do anything about it. It's just the two of them and Aziraphale's never minded that. "You never sell anything, besides."

Crowley's been around since it opened. He figures, aside from Aziraphale, he's the closest thing to an expert on this one particular book shop that the world's got.

Jabbing at Aziraphale's sales tactics usually earns him a look halfway between scandalized and guilty, but this time Aziraphale hums in agreement, an affable but cryptic sound, and goes right back to scratching out numbers. Crowley cracks one eye to find Aziraphale bent even further over, the back of his neck exposed to the sun.

Another ten minutes pass. Crowley shifts, coiling and uncoiling inside of his skin, trying to find a position where he can relax. He considers abandoning his current form and going full on snake, but he thinks loitering around as a serpent in the garden, even Aziraphale's miraculous new garden, might be a little too on the nose.

"My dear, what's on your mind?" Aziraphale says, finally setting his pen down. He gives Crowley a discerning look. "Do you need to nip out for a quick spot of temptation?"

Crowley quashes down the irritable feeling he gets when he senses he's too transparent under Aziraphale's scrutiny. It always makes him feel something adjacent to guilty to get into a snit over being called out on his little demonic compulsions, especially since Aziraphale's well of patience and understanding for his proclivities is seemingly infinite, despite all his fuss.

And that's not really it, not this time, even though he's certainly well overdue for sowing a few seeds of malcontent.

Mulling over his answer, Crowley tries not to sound paranoid when he asks, "Don't you think it was a little too easy? Aren't you worried they might come calling again?"

"Time, as far as we know it, is immeasurable and infinite. I consider it more a matter of when than if," Aziraphale says, which sounds a whole lot like he's about to start nattering on about ineffability again.

Or saying things like pip-pip or jolly good chap while not hearing half the words Crowley's speaking.

Crowley, for his part, isn't really saying exactly what he means, so it's not as if he can cast stones. Glass houses and all.

"Like, what? So the agents of Heaven and Hell are just going to be out there lurking, like sort of inevitable, ineffable boogeyman?" Crowley doesn't like the sound of that. He's already been weighed and found wanting; he was happy enough to keep his head down and let Hell think what they wanted about his behavior topside. "Seems a bit ridiculous to go through all of that for no good reason, doesn't it?"

"No good reason?" Aziraphale sets his pen down with great care and closes his ledger. He seems to be considering his words carefully. "I believe we learned a very valuable material lesson."

"What did you learn from it, then? Out with it, I'd like to hear this," Crowley demands.

Aziraphale angles his gaze towards the sky for a brief moment, as if offering a quick prayer, then looks directly at Crowley. The ceiling of the world is a beautiful, cloudless blue and the birds are singing with the kind of perfect charm that only comes around once in a lifetime. Aziraphale's expression is unexpectedly tender. "I learned that some things just aren't worth living without."

Crowley's gut lurches with something adjacent to fear and with close family ties to excitement, because it's one thing to talk about his feelings when the end of the world is bearing down on you. It's quite another for Aziraphale to put it out in the air when they have the rest of forever to go about navigating them.

Leave it to Aziraphale to go from fretting and fussing about sides to jumping feet first into a topic Crowley's been avoiding since the very beginning. Talk about whiplash.

Crowley heaves himself up, reorganizing himself back into a more human shape with a rapid series of grinding snaps and metaphysical pops.

"I don't think the world needed to nearly end for all that," Crowley mutters, then, lying straight through his pointy little eye teeth, claims, "It's too hot out here. I'm going inside. There's a rather young Chablis chilling in the icebox."

"I don't think I have an icebox," Aziraphale says with a confused frown. He's mostly correct, but only by virtue of not knowing of its existence; he's always had one, but it was from the mid-1800s and hidden behind several tottering stacks of books. Now it's clean and functional and slightly more modern.

Crowley points out, "You didn't have a rooftop garden before today, either," and beats a retreat before Aziraphale can get back to the uncomfortable topic of emotions.

It isn't as if Crowley has had an entirely appropriate feeling since his Fall, anyhow. He's full of a yawning, hungry emptiness and the occasional sullen, petty compulsion to rifle through Aziraphale's shop till. He's also full of a sharp, needling desire to press Aziraphale into a broom closet and undress him with his teeth.

Crowley thinks that part's always been there, baked in from the start – for a long time, before he resigned himself to actually liking Aziraphale, he thought it was just about wanting what he couldn't have.

While he descends into the small flat attached to the upper level of the bookshop, he mulls over Aziraphale's sudden interest in discussing their little Arrangement. It started with Crowley blatantly lying about his desire to maintain professional boundaries, but eventually he'd dropped the pretense entirely.

He gets the Chablis out of the icebox and two glasses from a cupboard lined in floral paper from the 1930s. They're a bit dusty, so he rinses them in the sink, holding his hands under the cool water, then wills them dry, staring at the flowering cactus in the window with a pinched look of concern.

Aziraphale's footsteps are slow and familiar on the stairs. The floorboards creak as he pauses in the doorway behind Crowley. He puts his ledger down on the counter, checks the clock – barely going on half one – and asks, "Drinking this early in the day?"

"It's always five o'clock somewhere," Crowley says. He waits for Aziraphale to join him at the sink and eyes him disapprovingly. "You really should take better care of your corporeal body, angel. Wouldn't want to damage the new model so soon."

It comes out softer than he means it to. He halts Aziraphale's hand mid-reach and puts his own damp palm on the nape of Aziraphale's neck. The sun has scorched it a bright, angry red, but the burn vanishes with a soothing stroke of Crowley's fingers.

Aziraphale's cheeks go a marvelous shade of pink and looks up at Crowley from beneath his generous lashes. Something starving crawls its way up from some deep pit in Crowley's heart and begs to be acknowledged. Crowley shoves it away, lets his hand drop, and pours them two brimming glasses of Chablis.

"Are you really so concerned about what comes next?" Aziraphale asks. He takes the wine and settles down at the dining table that wasn't there a week prior.

At least, if it had been, it was covered in old books and not the beautiful floral tablecloth that's draped over it now. A small bin has place settings for two — cloth napkins all rolled up and secured with golden filigree rings, woven white placemats, and a brilliant black glass vase bursting with red roses.

The windows are open and a breeze stirs the sheer curtains. Crowley's only been upstairs a handful of times to the glorified storage room erroneously labeled as a flat that capped Aziraphale's books shops, but he very clearly remembers there were no curtains. Or neat little dishes drying on the rack, or an under-cabinet arrangement of wine glasses in all their favorite styles.

That's not Adam's doing. It can't be. They weren't there a few days prior and as far as Crowley knows the boy's all out of juice – or if he has any left, it's only enough for the ordinary, everyday magic that shows up in a regular person that's been touched by some preternatural force.

Crowley examines a wine glass more closely, then looks around in growing alarm. "Do you see what's happening here?"

"Yes, a little bit of spontaneous home decorating, it seems, so please sit down and join me. Since you're determined to entice me to drink well before dinner, I'm certainly not going to stand for you slithering out of it now you've succeeded," Aziraphale says.

Crowley thumps down into the seat opposite Aziraphale and goes for the timelessly effective tactic of draining his glass. He drinks it in one fell swoop and refills it without pouring from the bottle. Aziraphale's mouth works itself into a moue of disapproval at Crowley's frivolity for all of half a second before he follows suit and miracles his own glass full.

"You have serving platters now, angel. I can see them, because the glass on your cabinets has been cleaned," Crowley says pointedly. He's trying not to think about shoving the elegant little salt and pepper shakers onto the floor. They're unnecessarily fussy little things, with a ring of matching gold and onyx around the base, and he likes them viciously. "You've window treatments. You've never had so much as a sheet hung up over your windows."

Aziraphale sips his wine primly, eyebrows raised, radiating comforting calm. "That's what's got you worked up? A vigorous dusting and some new linens?"

"It is if it's not happening on purpose," Crowley says waspishly, completely and fully aware that it's not Adam that's manifesting garden lounges and all his favorite wines in Aziraphale's shop. "And it's not, thanks much. Makes me wonder what else is going on."

It's definitely Crowley's fault and he hasn't even thought to do it, which is a new one on him. Maybe it's some strange side-effect of whatever Adam actually did to avert Armageddon.

Changed the underpinnings of something or the other. Fabric of reality, and all that. A little too much of Crowley's rampant imagination leaking through where the barrier between worlds was yanked aside and not quite healed over.

"I'm not about to root around in every flat in Soho and ask if they've got any new teacups they haven't seen before," Aziraphale says. "Anyhow, they're quite nice. I'm only surprised it's to my taste and not yours."

"How can you be so calm? I'm manifesting tea towels and we don't know whether or not we'll be ambushed again by operatives on either side," Crowley protests, but his unease is slowly running out of steam. As usual, his anxiety is browbeaten into submission by Aziraphale clinging tenaciously to his positive it'll-all-be-fine-I'm-certain attitude.

"You said it yourself, my dear," Aziraphale says. He reaches out and lays his hand over Crowley's wrist and leaves it there for a moment. "We stopped the end of the world. I think that's what winning against impossible odds always feels like – waiting for the other shoe to drop, so to speak. And I quite like the drapes."

He has a point. When Aziraphale withdraws his hand, there's a palpable physical absence. A little bit of Crowley's loneliness floods right back in and settles in his belly like a leaden weight, but it's not quite so heavy as before.

"It's just not how it used to be," Crowley says. He thought they'd go back to what it had been, but now he's put all his cards on the table and he can't pick them back up. It's terrifying to be so seen. "I thought it'd be easier to do what we were doing, just without any supervision."

"My dear," Aziraphale says, his entire demeanor softening into an expression of aching tenderness. "Nothing ever stays the same. And if it went back to exactly like it was before, we wouldn't be together in all these lovely little moments. Isn't this far better than skulking around, stealing one another's company?"

Crowley nurses his second glass a little more reasonably, staring at the little scraps of Soho that he can make out beyond Aziraphale's fluttering kitchen curtains. It's a beautiful day.

There have been at least four beautiful days since their brush with almost-Armageddon.

He settles back against his chair, attempting to convince the last of the tension coiled inside his chest to unravel. Their plan worked. They're free now — or as free as they can be, all things considered.

He suspects they've all been fairly free for quite some time.

"Since you've very generously provided me with a new duvet, will you avail yourself of my hospitality and stay here tonight?" Aziraphale asks, unexpectedly. "I can make you some hot cocoa, if you'd enjoy some rest. A good lie in might help clear your head."

He thinks too quickly of Aziraphale curled up in his bed and how frightening and thrilling he found it.

He says, "Yes, of course," and surprises even himself.

*

Crowley dreams of sun and grass and clouds chasing one another across the sky and then wakes up to the quiet rustle of Aziraphale reading directly beside him. He's still for a few minutes but gives up the game with a restless twitch that turns into a full body stretch. His limbs are a little rubbery and his spine makes a series of sounds more like a popcorn machine than vertebrae rearranging.

Strictly speaking, neither of them need to sleep, but it's a function that's baked in and accessed as easily as, say, eating or using the loo. Crowley has always enjoyed a little self-indulgent Sloth and it's profoundly nice to shut off all higher functions for a solid few hours and let everything rest.

It's put him in a considerably more optimistic mood, though he wouldn't admit that out loud on pain of discorporation.

"Good morning," Aziraphale says. He has on an absolutely ridiculous pair of reading glasses that must've gone out of style some time in the late 1700s, but Crowley lets a snide comment slide because his own sunglasses are pretty superfluous beyond making him look very cool.

Besides, upon consideration, they make look Aziraphale seem unexpectedly dashing, if looking like a Victorian courtier is what a chap is after. Crowley would also not admit that on pain of discorporation, even though Aziraphale has, for some reason, decided to join him in bed.

He contemplates his predicament for a moment and decides on taking a direct approach. "What's all this then?"

Aziraphale has a dressing gown on that looks like it might have been ordered out of the back of a catalog that serves up custom men's sleepwear for the discerning Regency aristocrat. Knowing Aziraphale, it's an original and he's sewn on the little mother-of-pearl buttons himself. It has a bit of fussy lace at the sleeves, but is remarkably less frou-frou than Crowley's seen him wear.

"Ah, well," Aziraphale begins, and then apparently finds he has no good excuse for being found in bed with Crowley and blushes. "I wanted to catch up on a bit of light reading, but it seemed strange that I not keep you company."

He decides then and there he'll take any amount of manifesting cornflower blue butter dishes to hold on to Aziraphale just like this. Aziraphale's right. This is far better than some stolen moment on a park bench, trying not to laugh too hard lest they be seen.

"You know," Crowley says, trying for very suggestive and landing somewhere between timid flirtation and a bad bar pick-up line. "A demon could get certain unsavory ideas."

Dryly, Aziraphale retorts, "As if me reading literature wouldn't be the more scandalous and shocking part of Heaven finding me abed with you. They already think I get up to all manner of consorting as it is. It's your lot that go around making people feel ashamed of sexual congress."

As soon as the words sexual congress are out of Aziraphale's mouth, Crowley realizes he's been outclassed, though he has no idea how he's let it happen. He goggles at Aziraphale and protests, "Hell, be prudish? But it's your people spreading the message of celibacy. Saving yourself for the institution of marriage, yadda yadda."

Aziraphale gives Crowley a disdainful look out of the side of his eye. "Your lot was the one that planted that seed, not ours. Somehow a message of personal cleanliness and safe intercourse was terribly misconstrued into never enjoying anything. Never could get in front of that little rumor, thanks so very much."

"Wasn't me," Crowley denies. Though he was well enough pleased when people had stopped having a sloppy go of it right out in the open and did it behind bushes like respectable — well, he can see Aziraphale's point. "Might have been Hastur. Or maybe Dagon. He did nip up in the early days for a quick spell of infernal heckling."

He becomes slowly aware that Aziraphale is looking at him. Not just at him while he talks, but at his body, with something akin to scientific interest. Bug under a microscope kind of stuff.

"Crowley," Aziraphale says very gently. He doesn't quite close his book, but he folds it over his hand as though he's thinking of doing so.

"Yes?" Crowley asks with an air of defeat. He hadn't expected his attempt at teasing to go south quite so quickly, so to speak.

"You've gone a bit scaly." He takes off his reading glasses and gestures at Crowley's torso with them.

So he has. Sometimes that happens, when he's especially comfortable or distracted, and the veil slips aside a little too much. He scratches at the big black scales and they vanish, leaving his narrow chest bare and a little itchy. "I was dreaming about a sunny picnic in Chiswick."

"Lovely little park there, depending on which century you're in. Not as good as St. James's." A pause and Aziraphale reopens his book, then closes it again. "That's odd."

It is a little odd to dream of Chiswick, but it's not that far off and it's got a park so it's right up their general alley. "Yeah, pretty weird. The last time I was in Chiswick on business it wasn't called Chiswick. I passed through recently — "

"No, not your thing – though that is unusual. The plot of this book is mixed up with another," Aziraphale says, his frown deepening. "I think it segues into Frankenstein about halfway through."

He flips over the hardcover and Crowley can read Lord of the Flies in ominous gold script. Crowley doesn't think that one must have a very happy ending.

Now that he thinks about it, Frankenstein doesn't have a happy ending, either, if the cinema can be believed.

"You think? You haven't read that one to know? Everyone has," Crowley cajoles. He pushes himself up and leans against the headboard, which is dark oak and quite nice in a very classical sort of way.

At least the bed doesn't have a canopy over it. Crowley doesn't know if he could take that kind of indignity being thrust upon Aziraphale. Or himself. It's bad enough he keeps dreaming up fanciful little scraps of domesticity.

He's nesting. With Aziraphale. He'll never survive the shame of it.

"You haven't read that one either, my dear," Aziraphale points out.

That's besides the point and he knows that Aziraphale knows it. "I don't read books at all."

Aziraphale puts a bookmark in the novel and sets it aside. Evidently one book becoming another is enough to deter him from continuing.

"You managed to read Atlas Shrugged," Aziraphale says with all the deep disapproval of someone who's been holding on to a piece of his mind for quite some time.

That was a joke, but he admits that prank took a little too much effort. He had to be certain that it really was tripe, not some secretly redeemable novel that was critically panned because it had a message of truth and love and peace, or something.

Humans are always doing that, always working against their own happiness somehow. Crowley finds that relatable.

Turns out, it was just an absolute shit book, which was to needle Aziraphale into explaining, at enormous length and completely pickled on fancy champagne, all the ways it wasn't very good at all.

Perfect for his purposes. He'd gifted it to Aziraphale the year it came out, thinking it a great joke. Aziraphale still keeps it locked carefully away in a display case, tucked out of direct sight beneath a buffer copy of Paracelsus: Essential Readings – which Crowley also gifted Aziraphale, though he didn't read that one first.

"Are you not going to finish that one?" He isn't strictly against lazing about in bed all day. He'll happily do it if given the chance. But it is getting a bit surreal to be lounging around in his pants with Aziraphale sitting next to him and the two of them bickering casually.

"I was just thinking that it's quite a lovely day for a picnic," Aziraphale says. Something soft beats around inside Crowley's chest, like someone's let loose a whole flock of lovebirds.

Crowley looks at him sideways, mouth stretching into a pleased, serpentine smile. "You weren't thinking of going to Chiswick, were you?"

*

They bring a blanket to sit on. It's tartan, but Crowley can almost forgive it for that because it's so soft that when he sprawls out in the sun, he doesn't want to get back up. There aren't as many ducks in Chiswick, but there are quite a few pigeons. They're mostly kept from being a nuisance by being just intelligent enough to understand what it means when Crowley hisses at them behind Aziraphale's back.

"Have you ever thought of taking a beach holiday?" Aziraphale asks, sedately spreading some sort of cheese on top of some fancy little handmade cracker. Crowley thinks the cracker might have already come with cheese baked in, or is made from cheese, or maybe from rutabaga, but it's not Crowley's job to sit in judgment.

There are beautiful green and purple grapes spilling from a wicker basket near Crowley's head and he reaches for them. Each one tastes exactly like spring, decadently fruity.

Around one particularly vivid morsel, he says, "I suppose I've never really given thought to taking any kind of holiday at all."

"Neither have I," Aziraphale says and Crowley thinks he catches ever-vigilant and righteousness mumbled around a smear of chèvre. "I think we should. Now that the powers Above and Below have been put off our scent, as it were. Before they decide to uniformly forget this whole business and drag us back into their employ."

"You were just going on about how we don't have anything to worry about," Crowley says. He levers himself onto his elbow and squints up at Aziraphale.

"I don't think we have a cause for concern outside of being annoyed to death," Aziraphale says. There's a moment of contended almost-silence while he chews. "But you do, and I thought that might be good motivation."

Crowley lies back in the grass and is surprised when Aziraphale sets aside his little knife, rearranges a few things on the blanket, and settles down right next to Crowley. And not just close, right up against him, pressed comfortably from shoulder to hip.

"What are you doing?" Crowley asks, after reminding himself that outright ignoring Aziraphale is almost always worse than meeting whatever awkwardness he feels head on.

"Whatever I like," Aziraphale says matter-of-factly. Then a second later, hurriedly and as if it's only just occurred to him that Crowley might decline his rebellious little impulse to cuddle in full view of all of the Heavenly Host, "That is – if you don't mind, my dear."

Crowley jostles him. There's no way to hide his blush so he does the next best thing and pretends he's not embarrassed at all. Aziraphale shifts and doesn't hesitate when Crowley lifts his arm, blazing past every line they've never crossed with each other in all the centuries they've been together, like this is how it should have been the whole time.

He tucks himself against Crowley's side like he was built to fit just exactly there — and isn't that a wild thought, given their ineffable Creator's mysterious plans — and Crowley's heart chooses exactly that moment to try to hammer its way right out of his chest.

Aziraphale is warm and soft and breathing slowly. He relaxes into Crowley with a sigh so pleased that Crowley doesn't have the heart to put on a show about pretending not to enjoy the immense affection radiating off the angel.

And angel and a demon, curled up together like lions and lambs on a nice sunny day. If he didn't just help avert Armageddon, he might think it was happening now.

"It's a really beautiful day," he says, instead of all the other desperate, fearfully emotional things he really means, the truth all tangled up in his throat. His hand creeps up and lands on Aziraphale's hip.

Aziraphale makes a soft noise of encouragement that skids across Crowley's skin like a touch and Crowley retaliates by sliding his thumb up under the hem of Aziraphale's jumper. A thrill runs through Crowley. He knows no one is looking at them, but someone could at any moment.

"My dear," Aziraphale murmurs sweetly, breath humid against the bare skin at Crowley's throat. Even that, just that much, makes him shudder, makes him half-hard in his trousers. He knows Aziraphale must be able to see it, smell it, feel it, but Aziraphale stays right where he is, radiating a gently blinding joy that feels like standing in front of a floodlight.

They don't do anything beyond just that, Crowley's thumb caressing a strip of soft skin, Aziraphale's fingers balled in the front of Crowley's shirt. It feels too intimate by far and Crowley, greedy creature he is, basks in the too muchness of it like a thirsty plant drinking up water after a long drought.

That hunger has been there since the beginning. Perhaps he's been crafted to starve for more affection than he feels he deserves far before he ever Fell, some critical flaw in the casting of his form. Far as Crowley can tell, there was no real mold; they're each as different as humans are, dim and bright in turn, kind or capriciously cruel.

It's all infuriatingly unknowable. Humans have been running themselves in circles for centuries trying to figure it out. He wonders what they'd do if they knew Heaven and Hell were real, and that neither the divine nor the infernal have figured it out yet.

So he slips his hand further up Aziraphale's side and notes with deep relish that Aziraphale's breathing hitches, unsteady. Aziraphale lays a hand on Crowley's thigh, the touch intimate, the implications of it dizzying.

It's not as though he isn't aware of Aziraphale's gentler proclivities. He's fairly certain that Aziraphale hasn't ever actually consorted with a human, but Crowley knows he's played at a bit of above-the-waist romantic mooning a handful of times. Usually over some wild-eyed, brilliant writer or polymath covered in charcoal and full of dreams of revolution.

Crowley's had his own share of intimate encounters — a handful of old fashioned temptations and a spot of lust here and there. A little actual boot knocking, just for the fun of it and then away in the morning, all parties pleased.

Aziraphale, he suspects, is the kind of gentleman caller who knew all the hopes and aspirations of his partners, and then never availed himself of the coarser intimacies of the physical form. And he never called on one person for long; Crowley is the only acquaintance — best friend — Aziraphale has ever spent any significant amount of time with.

That means something. They mean something. They must.

Crowley clenches his jaw around the words. He's waited this long, and he can wait until whatever Aziraphale is doing plays itself out.

Aziraphale is right about one thing: With Heaven and Hell out of the way, a whole world of possibilities is spread out before them, eternity stretched out before them. At least, for now.

"My dear," Aziraphale murmurs and presses his face against Crowley's sternum, burrowing closer. "I'm sorry I couldn't come away with you when you asked. Would you like to go now? Anywhere your heart desires."

That's what he's always liked about Aziraphale. That steel-spined will to do the right thing instead of the obedient one, even if a measure of hand-wringing and a flurry of oh my, oh dear, I do hope I've done the right thing inevitably follows.

"Don't," Crowley says, chasing down that little spark of the impossible suddenly made possible. A real miracle, the two of them. "You wouldn't have ever come with me if you thought there was still even the faintest glimmer of hope."

"It isn't a sin to love," Aziraphale says. He rises to his elbow, looking down at Crowley as if he can see right into his heart. Maybe he can. "It isn't wrong to want to protect what you love. There's nothing you need to feel guilty for, my dear."

Crowley reaches up and tugs affectionately at a stray curl. Aziraphale smiles down at him and he can't help but smile back.

A little bit of his uncontrolled joy slips through his foggy blanket of infernal skepticism. All around their picnic blanket, wildflowers burst up from beneath the grass, petals unfurling under the cloudless sky.

"Oh!" Aziraphale exclaims, as if Crowley's done it on purpose, like each blossom is just for him — and maybe they are. Just like the wine glasses and the curtains and the soft heat that blooms in Crowley's chest and spreads outwards when Aziraphale looks at him and says, "How absolutely lovely."

*

They have business to attend to; six thousand years on Earth means that there are connections to maintain and personal projects to check in on. Things that have nothing to do with Heaven, nor Hell, nor each other. So Crowley spends a few days collecting himself and brooding over his next move while Aziraphale makes phone calls and answers client emails and fusses genially over the state of his bookshop.

On the eighth day, the good weather breaks and all of the rain that's been drifting broodily around London hits. Crowley comes in out of it with steam pouring off of him and stands irritably in Aziraphale's entryway trying not to drip on anything.

"Oh," Aziraphale says when he emerges from behind a stack of books as big as he is, "bugger this bad weather."

And Crowley's dry again and being fussed over for a cup of tea, ushered into Aziraphale's kitchen before he can protest that he's quite fine.

"I came to ask if you'd gotten a note from your colleagues yet," Crowley says, unfolding a rather tasteful — for Hell — letter from his pocket.

They've gone mad. According to the letter, he's earned a commendation for foiling Armageddon, and, by proxy, Heaven's attempts to start a war that would have collapsed Hell's free market economy if allowed to happen.

News to him that Hell even had a proper capitalist structure. They always did try to glom on to the latest evil human creation and take credit for it several decades later.

"They do realize they started this whole thing, correct?" Aziraphale asks as soon as he gets to that part. He looks vaguely disgusted. "Insofar as anyone can start Armageddon, anyhow."

"I'd say they have no problem bending the truth, but this is outright fabrication." Crowley isn't all that shocked, but he is fairly outraged.

Aziraphale hums in agreement and continues to read. When he finishes, he sets it at Crowley's elbow and produces a note on card stock. It's written in actual gold, the script a vaguely threatening sort of celestial cursive.

The look Crowley gives it is nonplussed. He reads out loud, "'Thank you for your service in furthering Heaven-Hell relations.'" It's Gabriel's handwriting, but he hasn't bothered to sign it. "Bunch of tosspots."

"I suppose this means we're not forgotten," Aziraphale says with an air of disappointment, then brightens. "Maybe they'll just bother one another instead of trying to go through us."

"Might want to lie low for a while," Crowley suggests, because he's done nothing but think about Aziraphale's hand on his leg. "No more saucy picnics in the park."

Aziraphale freezes, going an alarming shade of red. "I didn't know if you'd want to talk about that."

"I don't," Crowley says. He stands and moves into Aziraphale's space. He doesn't know how to be tender, except by imitation, so he tucks a stray lock of hair behind Aziraphale's ear and lets his hand drop. "But I don't have any objections to continuing somewhere more private."

He doesn't know what he expects, but for Aziraphale to lean in and press a trembling, careful kiss to the corner of his mouth isn't quite it. A rush of gnawing hunger surges through him — up becomes down and left becomes right for one dizzying instant. And then the world rights itself and Aziraphale is standing there, open and honest as he always is, looking at Crowley with an adoring expression.

"I've loved you for such a very long time," Aziraphale says. It's an open secret at best — Aziraphale, for all his shy, blushing bluster and goings on and get-thee-behind-mes, has loved Crowley since ten minutes, eight seconds after nine o'clock in the evening of July 18th, 1891.

Crowley remembers the exact moment, because the love that washed over him rocked him from head to toe, and Aziraphale, shocked and wide-eyed, excused himself abruptly and didn't speak to him for nearly a year.

And even after that, Aziraphale wouldn't even realize it until nearly fifty years later, standing in the husk of a bombed-out church clutching his precious collection of occult books.

Crowley has loved Aziraphale from the very second he gave that bloody flaming sword away to Eve and refused to be ashamed of doing the right thing instead of the obedient thing.

Outside, the birds are wittering on with a steadfast obliviousness. Crowley takes in the ridiculous curtains and the plates and the plant growing in the long line of sunshine and at Aziraphale and —

— then he has Aziraphale up on the counter, scattering tea towels and spoons and an unfortunate whisk that gets caught in the crossfire, his lips sealed over Aziraphale's like he's trying to breathe life back into him. Aziraphale moans against Crowley's mouth, the sound a hundred times more delicious because it's coming from an angel, from Aziraphale, who never does anything halfway.

There's a sharp tug at his hair and Crowley's knees go weak when he realizes Aziraphale has both hands fisted at his head, gripping him hard enough that he couldn't retreat even if he wanted to.

Aziraphale leans into the kiss, mouth wet, lips soft, tongue teasing, and it's Crowley's turn to make a distinctly inhuman noise. The sound feels like it rattles up from the very bottom of himself, a swell of heat and terrible, desperate need following it. He's empty, and he wants Aziraphale to pour all of his light and love and divinity right into Crowley, burn him up from the inside, like a match dropped directly into an oil well.

His hands pull at Aziraphale's clothes and they help one another undress with the unsurprising coordination of two entities that have known one another for more than six thousand years. Off goes Crowley's belt, followed by a slithering sound as his trousers drop. He kicks them off and grapples with Aziraphale's buttons.

Helpfully, Aziraphale kicks off his shoes and plants himself steadily — and he's always steady, isn't he? Crowley marvels with a steadily growing desire — on the floor, divesting himself of everything except his ridiculous jumper. And that's only because Crowley's fisted his hands in it.

Crowley slows, staggered, the feverish heat banked to a momentary smolder by how utterly lovely Aziraphale looks haloed from behind by the sunlight. His bare toes are curled on the floor, but he holds himself unselfconsciously as Crowley teases the last bit of fabric up and over his head.

Naked as their naming day, Crowley admires Aziraphale.

He's very plainly-adorned for an angel, in a sweet and lovely kind of way, a perfect daisy in a gallery of tiger lilies and the kind of orchids that are for looking but not for touching. His skin is incredibly soft, a little lined with the usual adornments of age, and there are even a few scars and freckles. He's not limned in gold or dusted in platinum or bejeweled in any sort of wild arrangements of crystalline formations. He's just Aziraphale, plain and soft and uncomplicatedly welcoming.

The look he's giving Crowley is searing, an up-and-down assessment that drives this thing between them forward with unrelenting momentum. Crowley can feel the need growing, not just his own any more, a palpable, physical sensation, almost as intense as a touch.

"Crowley," Aziraphale says, low, beseeching. It's all the invitation Crowley needs to plaster himself up against Aziraphale's front. He's biting Aziraphale's shoulder when Aziraphale asks, "Come to bed with me, Crowley."

They stumble towards the bedroom and reality moves out of the way for them. Crowley ends up flat on his back with Aziraphale bearing down on him, between his legs and bending him in ways that Crowley was meant to bend but would be distinctly challenging for a human man. He's covered with Aziraphale's body, with hungry kisses and sharp, surprising little nips.

The blunt, neat half moons of Aziraphale's fingers rake down Crowley's sides. It's clumsy and wonderful and Crowley might not have any instinctual urge to reproduce, but form aids function and it's easy enough to figure out what feels good — and then what feels amazing —and then repeat that until Aziraphale is straining against him.

Aziraphale, who appears to have a wonderfully girthy, lovely cock. Crowley puts a hand on Aziraphale's chest to stall the next surging kiss, going up on his elbow so he can get a good look at what's happening down there.

Demons aren't terribly constrained by reality, and neither are angels, but the hellish offshoot lends to more earthly forms. Crowley will always be a touch serpentine, no matter how hard he tries. Aziraphale, still hooked directly into the forces of creation, has a bit more leeway in shaping his corporeal form and he's put it to grand use.

Crowley looks at him and feels his jaw flex and work. Aziraphale has evidently been clued in, at some point in their lengthy liaison, that Crowley fancies is a good, hard buggering. He's utterly breathless when he asks, "Is that for me?"

Aziraphale ducks down and kisses him on the temple, murmuring, "My apologies if I'm being presumptuous."

He collapses backwards and arches his hips up, spine bowing, all invitation. Aziraphale, who's always seemed unphased by so many outrageously titillating things, so prim, lets Crowley see his mouth hang open, his eyes dilate.

It seems to be answer enough for Aziraphale, who reaches for him, this time lower. His mouth travels down from Crowley's throat to one hard nipple, then to the other. Crowley is spared conversation by being abruptly incapable of articulating a single coherent thought other than yes, please, or more.

Aziraphale gets his mouth on the narrow plane of Crowley's belly and seems absolutely intent on delving lower. He pauses, looking up at Crowley from beneath his lashes, eyes hooded with desire, and murmurs, "Roll over, my dear."

Crowley is pressed face-first into the sheets and hisses when Aziraphale presses a damp kiss to the base of his spine.

The whole spectrum of human sexuality is something that Crowley is well-versed in. He hasn't gotten to where he is now without having a peek in on what's considered standard fare, even beyond his personal dalliances. Most of their proclivities range from moderately pleasing to bizarrely dull, unless you're the right sort to enjoy that kind of play. Some things make Crowley's skin crawl.

And some, like what Aziraphale does with his tongue, sound a little strange, but apparently shoot fireworks straight up Crowley's spine and switch on lights in his brain he never knew were there. His nerve endings burn with stunned pleasure and he sucks in a breath that he doesn't need, only to hiss it back out again in a long, sibilant rush when Aziraphale's tongue probes into his body.

He struggles not to come right then and there because once focused, Aziraphale is relentless, single-mindedly circling his tongue around the ring of muscle that Crowley's previously never given much thought to, teasing it open. Even just the knowledge of Aziraphale's mouth there — doing such wonderfully profane things, worshipping Crowley's body — is going fuel Crowley's darkest fantasies for centuries.

Once Crowley is a shivering, helpless mess, head filled with nothing but the struggling rasp of his own uneven breathing, Aziraphale presses one finger into the slick opening of Crowley's body. Crowley cries out, a sobbing, wracked noise, at Aziraphale's tender mercy.

His forearms give out and he lets them, unable to be concerned about the indignity of having his arse waggling in the air. Aziraphale pushes a second finger in alongside the first, gentle as he can be, but there's still a wonderful biting stretch to the intrusion, prelude to what's to come.

Aziraphale sounds so sweet, so tremulously adoring, when he asks, "Is this too much?" that it feels like a fist closes around Crowley's heart and begins to squeeze.

"Don't go eassssy on me," Crowley hisses through his teeth, which are maybe a touch sharper than usual, what with his self-control eroding. "Feelssss good, angel."

He gets a third finger for the effort, instead of Aziraphale's cock, but he doesn't have to wait long for the main event. A few cursory thrusts later, Aziraphale's smooth fingers are replaced by something larger, the blunt head pushing at his body, stretching. It seems for a moment like Aziraphale won't fit without a little extracurricular assistance — but then he slides home with the startling, slick pop of something large making room for itself in an extremely tight space.

A groan resonates all the way down Aziraphale's body, a bit of divine ecstasy that washes over Crowley in an intense wave of pleasure-pain that makes him clench his teeth so hard his bones creak with the effort of it. Aziraphale's presence settles over them like a mantle, a sunburst-hot blanket of slick velvet ecstasy that lays atop Crowley's own adulation like light moving over dark waters.

Crowley can sometimes still feel the phantom agony of the Presence being burnt away from him as he hurtled downwards to Hell. This is the opposite of that in every way, the marrow of him on fire with glory and love. He feels like a cup filled past the brim, spilling over with Aziraphale's light.

Fingers twine with his and Aziraphale thrusts into him hard, just like Crowley wants, like he needs, stretching him out. And Aziraphale does it again and again and again — back until the head of his cock is the only thing stretching Crowley up, and then relentlessly forward until Crowley feels like he's about to burst, so full of love he isn't certain he won't burst into flames then and there.

He wants it, so desperately, for the growing heat inside of him to purge out everything awful left in the darkness after his Fall, to be cleansed and forgiven. Crowley pushes back and back and back, clutching at the duvet, mouth open, begging wordlessly for more, more, more.

Aziraphale murmurs his name, invocation and praise in one, and Crowley's orgasm takes him so hard that it's all he can make sense of for an interminable amount of time. Nothing feels real except Aziraphale, who digs his fingers into Crowley's hips, bent almost entirely over him, and rocks into Crowley's body a handful more times before he follows suit with shuddering, sharp jerks of his hips.

Crowley reaches back for Aziraphale, who bears them both all the way down into the blankets, still tangled together, body in body. Aziraphale coils around him, presses kisses into the damp skin at the nape of Crowley's neck, cards his fingers through Crowley's hair until the shivering, shuddering rawness begins to subside into something more bearably pleasant.

He wants to say something, but he isn't sure what it's going to be. He doesn't have the words to express this rich, honeyed contentment that settles over him, or his gratitude for Aziraphale's part in it. "Aziraphale — "

"Shh, there's time enough for talking," Aziraphale cajoles, caressing his side, sweet and effusive. "There's a love. Come now, let me clean you up. I've made such a mess."

*

He ends up back in bed with Aziraphale for the rest of the day, the rain drumming on the window and the heat of Aziraphale's bare skin lulling him into a sleepy, serpentine doze. Aziraphale is wrapped up in a tangle of Crowley's long limbs, glowing with affection. Crowley's heart feels so full he could burst.

Half-awake, he's not quite in and not quite outside of himself. Time stretches thinly over their cozy little square of the universe. Wrapped together, reality is mostly a suggestion. Crowley's both himself as he likes to look and himself as he really looks, slithering seamlessly from one form to another while Aziraphale's skin is beaded with a thousand brilliant stars that glow with faint, ethereal holiness, divine lightning sparking between them like a storm in the eastern sky.

Aziraphale rouses Crowley from a light doze by dragging his fingers through Crowley's hair. He shakes his head and they're just them as they've always been on Earth, lounging in rumpled bed in Soho safe and warm away from the storm.

"Are you well-pleased?" Aziraphale asks softly. Out of the heat of the moment he's gone a little shy and soft again, but Crowley finds that just as irresistible.

"That you could even ask that," Crowley mutters back, pushing his face into the curve of Aziraphale's shoulder where it meets his neck. It feels good to be fussed over but he's hardly going to admit that, not just yet. "I'm certain I saw my entire life flash before my eyes."

Aziraphale's blunt nails rake across Crowley's scalp, once, twice, thrice, and he can't suppress his shiver of pleasure. Aziraphale does it again. "I must admit, I was concerned for a moment."

"Oh come off it, you enjoyed yourself quite well, lording over me like that and all," Crowley says slyly, nudging Aziraphale with his elbow. "Don't think I don't know, your holiness."

Aziraphale, flustered but unwilling to be beaten at his own game, reaches for Crowley's naked hip. "I do recall a rather enticing passage in Revelations about binding a serpent in chains."

"Gross mistranslation. I can slip right out of chains. You'll have to get me one of those proper collars for slinky creatures," Crowley says. He gives a hiss and a serpentine flicker of his tongue for emphasis. Aziraphale smells heady, like sweet sex and divinity with an undertone of his own rich, reptilian odor mixed in.

Acting scandalized in a way that's mostly about putting on a show to please Crowley — and they both know it — Aziraphale laughs, pulling Crowley closer, "Perhaps a little bell, as well?"

Crowley shoves Aziraphale flat on his back and climbs on top of him. "Is that the best you can think — "

He doesn't have the opportunity to finish his thought, much less his sentence. A chime sounds and burning, unpleasant light washes over Crowley's back. He slithers headfirst into the covers and scrambles for something to cover himself, fairly certain it's futile to hide his arse and the red bite marks Aziraphale evidently left all down his belly.

"Aziraphale," Gabriel says stiffly, standing at the foot of the bed and eyeing Crowley with vague disdain. He looks like he's got just as much of a stick up his rear as the last time Crowley saw him. "I have a message for you."

Aziraphale's face rumples, but he makes no move to cover himself or hide Crowley's presence, which only gives Crowley the courage to hiss at Gabriel from beneath his poorly-constructed defense of a floral sheet.

The curl of Gabriel's lip is entirely worth it. "I suppose Michael will want to collect on that bet."

"What bet?" Crowley asks, coming up at once. Aziraphale does shush him then, but sweetly, with a hand on his leg. It makes Gabriel cringe, so Crowley can't be too bothered by being told in the politest fashion to shut his trap.

"I already got your note, so thank you – but no, thank you," Aziraphale says frostily. He's naked and sticky and he still manages to look far more dignified than Gabriel in his stupid blue suit with his stupid blue scarf. "I'm doing very well for friends, as you can see."

"This isn't a social call," Gabriel pushes on, practically radiating horror. Crowley snakes his arm around Aziraphale's waist and thinks unpleasant things. He normally wouldn't go in for that sort of routine, traumatizing others outright, but Gabriel would probably still pitch Aziraphale straight into a flaming inferno if given half the chance.

"Then state your business and be off," Aziraphale says. "I have a prior engagement." The way he says prior engagement is the same way that people say hot date, but with twice as much vigor and a not-so-subtle glance sideways at Crowley.

Gabriel rolls his eyes and puffs out his cheeks like he's just caught a whiff of something extremely unpleasant. Crowley's heart swells with vicious glee. This is perhaps the best day of his extraordinarily long life.

"I'm here to congratulate you. You've earned –" he pauses to consult a note stuffed into his stupid blue pocket "– ten years of leave from Heavenly duties, based on your previously exemplary service record."

"Ten years, for six bloody thousand years of service?" Crowley squawks. "What kind of racket are you lot running?"

Gabriel appears to be trying to glower at Crowley and ignore him at the same time. "Your record, unfortunately, is nearly impeccable. Barring your execution, many of us felt that unpaid administrative leave would be more appropriate, at a minimum. However, unbeknownst to us, your case was escalated and the official verdict is mandatory vacation with a reevaluation pending."

"I suppose, if I must." Aziraphale pats Crowley's knee comfortingly as if to say I told you so. "I did lose the flaming sword, my dear. They're not very easy to come by these days."

Gabriel sticks his hand out with the little card, stretching awkwardly so he keeps as much of his body away from both of them as angelically possible. Aziraphale snatches it and Gabriel vanishes with a rushing pop and another flash of blinding light. Heaven doesn't need to be so ostentatious, but it's ever so telling when they are.

"What an absolute dunce," Crowley mutters while craning his neck to see what's written on Aziraphale's little card.

It's a tiny timer, also in gold script, counting down from ten years. It's already gone on eight days, which Crowley feels is an unfair thing to pull on someone, but can't help but secretly admire how devious it is. That's almost as good as credit card terms and conditions.

"Well, I suppose now we know what Heaven's game is," Aziraphale says. He seems agreeable about the whole ordeal. "Do you suspect your lot gave you the same deal?"

"Nah," Crowley says. He's not really too worried, if Aziraphale's being granted a holiday. He's been a pain in the arse of every ladder-climbing demon from the bottom of Hell all the way up to the Head Office. Preventing Armageddon gets you a commemorative plaque and a good riddance. "They went in for retail business practices decades ago. If they want to get rid of you, they'll just stop putting your name on the schedule."

"We've got some time, at any rate," Aziraphale says. He makes himself comfortable and muses quietly over the little timer for moment. It bursts into flame a second later and Aziraphale blows the ash off his fingers. "I've no intention of cooperating with their mediocre little institution. There's a bigger game afoot, so to speak."

Crowley shifts restlessly, draping himself over Aziraphale and vaguely considering trying to get handsy again even though Gabriel put a damper on the mood. "Ten years isn't very much time at all."

Aziraphale smiles and plants a disgustingly saccharine kiss right on Crowley's cheek. Crowley is not-so-secretly pleased.

"And anyways," Aziraphale says, "a lot can change, even in seven days, so ten years is quite a coup."

Afterword

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