Crowley makes an acknowledging sound, pushing his face against Aziraphale's shoulder. He wants to luxuriate in this too, in the addictive warmth of Aziraphale's body and the scent of his skin, the love and contentment surrounding him in the aftermath of pleasure. How strange, how wonderful that a demon could give this to him. No other angel, not even a human has seen him so replete with love, relaxed and indulging in it, his kisses and caresses returning it to Crowley until he feels as though he's glutted for a long time and is finally sated, having enough to believe that this will not be taken from him or denied again. His hand toys gently at the unfastened collar of Aziraphale's shirt, slipping beneath it as his fingertips trace the line of his collarbone, more reverently than a demon has a right to be, and he shivers when Aziraphale tells him again that he loves him, as though he hears all those hidden meanings behind the words. Or maybe it's just the words themselves that have that effect on him. So sweet as to be nearly painful, giving him more joy than his heart seems capable of holding.
"Love you, angel." Crowley presses the words against his throat, in a ragged voice. Yes, he will, he'll accept as much as he can, hear it as often as he can bear without simply combusting on the spot from the sheer pleasure of it. Which he doesn't intend to do, so Aziraphale can just go on saying it as often as he likes.
He nods in understanding, turning his head to kiss the fingertip that teases along the edge of his jaw. "You make me ache," Crowley tells him, not as an accusation, more as a simple statement of fact that he's come to accept long ago. Need consumes him in Aziraphale's presence; that it was his lot to yearn for him for so long, perhaps to yearn for him until the end of time, was something he'd accepted as well. Being able to indulge it, to find relief in Aziraphale's arms is still so new and wonderful he doesn't know what to do with it.
Aziraphale doesn't think he's ever been quite so nosy with anyone's corporation as he is with Crowley's, especially if Crowley is to keep kissing him for his efforts, fondly rubbing the skin of his nape and tracing fingers down his arm. He really is a feast for the senses, doubly so that Aziraphale still feels the lingering sensation of Crowley over him and inside of him, subsided into a lightly pulsing glow but nonetheless a pleasant reminder.
His face fills with affection when Crowley tells him he aches, because it identifies whatever this feeling is, the one of sinking and drowning whenever Crowley is away from him; it's obsessive and unhealthy and Aziraphale has tried to push it away and sequester it somewhere it couldn't touch him. But they are tethered, bound to one another completely, and the harder he tries the stronger the feeling and the more he can sense something in him withering. So finally he rests his wandering hands to cradle Crowley and hold him steady and tight, as it was meant to be.
He wonders how long it will be before that menacing uncertainty goes away. Certainly they've kept it around too long, Aziraphale having used it as a shield for centuries, regretting the choice. But he also knows it's because this is so new that it's almost surreal, like it all might be a second dream he hasn't woken up from yet, layered so deeply under his first that he hopes to stay here awhile and make a home in this reality.
"I blessed it myself," he says, cutting through the moment with its suddenness. "It takes better if you really believe." That's really all it had taken, a true blessing, a little salt. Water could've come from the tap and salt could have come from the little blue canister that had the girl and her umbrella (it didn't; he'd imported both from where Eden had once stood.) "So don't you dare be careless." He doesn't know what he'll do if he's the ultimate reason for his end.
Aziraphale’s hands settle against him with, it seems to Crowley, an intent not to let go, never to let go again. That would suit him just fine. Held against him, Aziraphale’s hands feeling gentle and sure where they rest on his bare skin, he’s certain this is the most contentment he’ll ever know—to be here in the angel’s arms, with promises made to bind them to one another. He moves his hand in a drowsy gesture and in an instant Aziraphale’s shirt is once again clean and unstained, lying against his skin with the fabric smoothed and softened and holding barely a wrinkle, and all the rest of the signs of their lovemaking are gone too, aside from the way his heart still races and he breathes as unsteadily as any human plagued by love. Letting his eyes fall half-shut, coiling himself as much around Aziraphale as he can manage, Crowley listens to the silence between them as his pulse slows.
When Aziraphale breaks it he lifts up his head to look at him. He doesn’t need to say what he’s speaking of, Crowley knows at once. Quietly he answers, “You know I won’t be, angel.” Not before, not when he first asked for it and certainly not now. He’s got plenty to live for—more than he’d ever expected to have, in truth. And he intends to keep it, which means he’ll have to be prepared to use the holy water in the right moment, if it comes down to it—and do for the angels as well if necessary, Crowley thinks, watching Aziraphale with his eyes briefly narrowing. He ducks his head down to kiss him. “Stuck with me now, s’what you are,” he murmurs fondly after.
Stuck with him, as if that weren't the whole point. He'd already been resigned to this for the last four thousand of their six thousand years, and wishing he hadn't for the last... who even knows how long, pining, writing thousands upon thousands of lines of poetry and song and love letters all tucked neatly into his head where Heaven nor Hell nor, God forbid it, Crowley could ever find them.
He may have, in a particularly romanticized period of Crowley's absence in the nineteenth century, drunk and lonely despite finding himself in the company of some talented authors who only wrote of great loves, penned and published a very obscure and totally embarrassing novella. He is half sure that didn't actually happen, and he can't remember it very clearly, but sometimes he recalls snippets of a story he read once that he can't place, though he remembers that it featured a handsome and flame-haired demon who constantly shielded his eyes under the shade of a hat.
"Wouldn't want to be anywhere else," he replies, smiling into the kiss but eyebrows for a second knitted in recognition as he recalls the elusive story he hasn't thought of for a good sixty years.
Hm.
"This is the only place I truly belong," he whispers, confessing his truth into the crook of Crowley's jaw as he presses kisses into it. Too human to be an angel, too angelic to be a human; the only person who's ever really understood him, who's ever really accepted all he is, is right here in his arms promising himself to Aziraphale. This kind of gift he doesn't take lightly.
It's good of Aziraphale to keep reassuring him, so that any question or doubt that whispers itself into the back of Crowley's mind is chased away before it can really take hold. He can't help it: beneath the exterior he presents to the world is a foundation of unacknowledged anxieties and a great deal of nerve, which perhaps only Aziraphale is aware of--he's certainly the only being in all of Creation that has seen Crowley so raw and vulnerable as when they are intimately joined. It's enough that at the moment he knows hardly a care in the world, with Aziraphale smiling against his mouth and saying that there's nowhere else he'd rather be, his mouth moving on to kiss his jaw as his voice turns soft and confessional, and Crowley's eyes close, his fingers slip into Aziraphale's hair to hold him insistently. The words are like a gift offered to him, his entire being hungry for them.
"Yeah, it is," he agrees unsteadily, tipping his head to offer more of himself to Aziraphale's mouth. "Right here, angel." He'll always have a place with Crowley, whatever happens. Crowley would go with him anywhere, run away to the stars if need be or journey to the farthest corners of the earth: it wouldn't matter to him, anywhere they went would be good enough if they went together.
He knows nothing about Aziraphale's secret writing, though it would be a pure delight if he ever found out; and perhaps when they've gotten used to sharing their days and nights together Aziraphale will feel comfortable enough to tell him. Crowley looks at him with heavy-lidded eyes, letting himself dwell just a little on the thought of sharing a flat--perhaps there's room for his plants here somewhere amidst all the clutter. "D'you mind if I sleep?" he asks, bringing one of Aziraphale's hands to his lips to kiss, in his gaze the real meaning of his question: will you be with me when I wake?
The night has stilled all around them in the lateness of the hour, no one and nothing awake outside save for some bugs zipping around by a street light. It's like this that Aziraphale feels that they are truly alone and not under someone's watchful gaze that might be lurking about. No, there is a safety here, a calming sensation. And truthfully his body is too boneless and sated to do anything else at the moment but rest, even if what he really wants is to stay up and stretch this night out as long as possible by any means. Should they run out of conversation, Aziraphale would be more than happy to just lie there in silence listening to the rhythm of their breathing fall in and out of sync.
Sleep, however, sounds like both a reasonable and desirable suggestion, now that Aziraphale is warm and clean and smelling of fresh linens left out to dry in sunlight. He nods his assurance into Crowley's chest and crawls in close, nuzzling his neck and generally invading his space. It will be hard to be there in the morning when sense starts to return to him and the dread creeps in with the daylight, but it will get better the next morning. Oh, how he hopes that Crowley will be here the next morning and the one after that.
This is what he last thinks before he drifts off to sleep again, and this time his dreams, intangible and amorphous as they are, only leave him with positive half-memories upon waking.
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"Love you, angel." Crowley presses the words against his throat, in a ragged voice. Yes, he will, he'll accept as much as he can, hear it as often as he can bear without simply combusting on the spot from the sheer pleasure of it. Which he doesn't intend to do, so Aziraphale can just go on saying it as often as he likes.
He nods in understanding, turning his head to kiss the fingertip that teases along the edge of his jaw. "You make me ache," Crowley tells him, not as an accusation, more as a simple statement of fact that he's come to accept long ago. Need consumes him in Aziraphale's presence; that it was his lot to yearn for him for so long, perhaps to yearn for him until the end of time, was something he'd accepted as well. Being able to indulge it, to find relief in Aziraphale's arms is still so new and wonderful he doesn't know what to do with it.
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His face fills with affection when Crowley tells him he aches, because it identifies whatever this feeling is, the one of sinking and drowning whenever Crowley is away from him; it's obsessive and unhealthy and Aziraphale has tried to push it away and sequester it somewhere it couldn't touch him. But they are tethered, bound to one another completely, and the harder he tries the stronger the feeling and the more he can sense something in him withering. So finally he rests his wandering hands to cradle Crowley and hold him steady and tight, as it was meant to be.
He wonders how long it will be before that menacing uncertainty goes away. Certainly they've kept it around too long, Aziraphale having used it as a shield for centuries, regretting the choice. But he also knows it's because this is so new that it's almost surreal, like it all might be a second dream he hasn't woken up from yet, layered so deeply under his first that he hopes to stay here awhile and make a home in this reality.
"I blessed it myself," he says, cutting through the moment with its suddenness. "It takes better if you really believe." That's really all it had taken, a true blessing, a little salt. Water could've come from the tap and salt could have come from the little blue canister that had the girl and her umbrella (it didn't; he'd imported both from where Eden had once stood.) "So don't you dare be careless." He doesn't know what he'll do if he's the ultimate reason for his end.
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When Aziraphale breaks it he lifts up his head to look at him. He doesn’t need to say what he’s speaking of, Crowley knows at once. Quietly he answers, “You know I won’t be, angel.” Not before, not when he first asked for it and certainly not now. He’s got plenty to live for—more than he’d ever expected to have, in truth. And he intends to keep it, which means he’ll have to be prepared to use the holy water in the right moment, if it comes down to it—and do for the angels as well if necessary, Crowley thinks, watching Aziraphale with his eyes briefly narrowing. He ducks his head down to kiss him. “Stuck with me now, s’what you are,” he murmurs fondly after.
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He may have, in a particularly romanticized period of Crowley's absence in the nineteenth century, drunk and lonely despite finding himself in the company of some talented authors who only wrote of great loves, penned and published a very obscure and totally embarrassing novella. He is half sure that didn't actually happen, and he can't remember it very clearly, but sometimes he recalls snippets of a story he read once that he can't place, though he remembers that it featured a handsome and flame-haired demon who constantly shielded his eyes under the shade of a hat.
"Wouldn't want to be anywhere else," he replies, smiling into the kiss but eyebrows for a second knitted in recognition as he recalls the elusive story he hasn't thought of for a good sixty years.
Hm.
"This is the only place I truly belong," he whispers, confessing his truth into the crook of Crowley's jaw as he presses kisses into it. Too human to be an angel, too angelic to be a human; the only person who's ever really understood him, who's ever really accepted all he is, is right here in his arms promising himself to Aziraphale. This kind of gift he doesn't take lightly.
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"Yeah, it is," he agrees unsteadily, tipping his head to offer more of himself to Aziraphale's mouth. "Right here, angel." He'll always have a place with Crowley, whatever happens. Crowley would go with him anywhere, run away to the stars if need be or journey to the farthest corners of the earth: it wouldn't matter to him, anywhere they went would be good enough if they went together.
He knows nothing about Aziraphale's secret writing, though it would be a pure delight if he ever found out; and perhaps when they've gotten used to sharing their days and nights together Aziraphale will feel comfortable enough to tell him. Crowley looks at him with heavy-lidded eyes, letting himself dwell just a little on the thought of sharing a flat--perhaps there's room for his plants here somewhere amidst all the clutter. "D'you mind if I sleep?" he asks, bringing one of Aziraphale's hands to his lips to kiss, in his gaze the real meaning of his question: will you be with me when I wake?
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Sleep, however, sounds like both a reasonable and desirable suggestion, now that Aziraphale is warm and clean and smelling of fresh linens left out to dry in sunlight. He nods his assurance into Crowley's chest and crawls in close, nuzzling his neck and generally invading his space. It will be hard to be there in the morning when sense starts to return to him and the dread creeps in with the daylight, but it will get better the next morning. Oh, how he hopes that Crowley will be here the next morning and the one after that.
This is what he last thinks before he drifts off to sleep again, and this time his dreams, intangible and amorphous as they are, only leave him with positive half-memories upon waking.