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"Thank you for coming so quickly," says Anathema, stepping back from the door. "I wasn't sure what to do."
"It's no trouble at all, dear," says Aziraphale, at the same time that Crowley offers, "We were in the neighborhood anyway. Sounded fun."
"In the neighborhood" meant they were in the bookshop, in London, when they received Anathema's call, and Crowley had pointed out they were but an hour's drive, forty-five if Aziraphale let him drive the Bentley as fast as he liked. They'd compromised, and made it in fifty-one minutes.
"This way." Anathema guides them through the cottage. They pass by Newt watching telly in the den. He waves with a beer in hand, but doesn't get up to follow their little troop. If the items are as dangerous as Anathema thinks, Aziraphale doesn't blame him for keeping his distance—Newt's seen enough strangeness to last a lifetime. Having an angel and a demon over at tea every now and again is strange enough.
They trail after Anathema down a rickety set of stairs into the cottage's basement, a small room rough-hewn out of the damp earth. A single forlorn lightbulb swings to illuminate the glorious dark mahogany trunk set on a stool in the center of the otherwise empty room.
Crowley whistles when he sees the trunk, and Aziraphale rather agrees. It's a magnificent specimen—he'd date it to the seventeenth century, or thereabouts—solidly built by hand, such as is rare these days. A master craftsman put their life's work into its sinuous wrought-iron decorations.
Anathema is eyeing the trunk warily. "It's like I told you on the phone," she says, extending one booted toe to tip back the lid. "This was delivered as a bequest to me from a relative I never knew and seemed lucky not to know." She crosses her arms with a frown. "Truth is, there are some less-than-savory branches of the tree that trace their descent to Agnes Nutter. My family was long sworn to try and stop the Apocalypse. But there were others that used the riches Agnes' prophecies predicted, and our magical gifts, and went in other directions."
She looks so miserable that Aziraphale reaches out to give her shoulder an encouraging pat. "We've all of us some less than savory relations," he tells her gently, thinking on the brethren he's left behind. "They need have no bearing upon you, my dear."
Crowley flashes him a sideways glance at that, but his attention is caught on the trunk—he looks as gleeful at the prospect of what's inside as a child on Christmas morning. He moves swiftly, leans over to peek inside.
Another whistle. "Angel, c'mere," says Crowley. "Haven't seen anything like this since—oh, Wessex, or thereabouts. They don't make black magic torture instruments like they used to."
Anathema makes a distressed sound. Aziraphale clucks, "Really, Crowley."
Crowley shrugs. "Well, they don't."
Aziraphale steps closer to examine Crowley's findings. He hardly need see the objects to feel the rank power that they radiate. As soon as Anathema lifted the lid, he was struck by the nefarious force of the trunk's contents. Nothing inside was made with goodwill, or if it was, it was long ago perverted by foul usage.
By the light of the burning bulb, Aziraphale can see a curved blade that appears to be slick with fresh blood even now; a fine-looking silver hand mirror he has no desire whatsoever to gaze into; a thin gold collar with a jeweled clasp, too small for a dog, too large for a cat; a pale book bound in what cannot be leather, and Aziraphale refuses to consider other options; a quill pen with a treacherously wicked-looking point, more made for slicing than writing. These are the more charming objects. The rest of the trunk is full of spiked traps and chains, sharpened stakes and gleaming thumb-screws.
"Awful," says Aziraphale with a shudder, stepping back. He turns to Anathema. "You did the right thing in calling us, my dear, and did well not to touch any of this. We'll get rid of it for—Crowley!"
Crowley, halfway to reaching into the trunk, retracts his hand. He refuses to look guilty, though he would if he could hear the thudding racket Aziraphale's heart just launched into. "What? It can't hurt me. You think I haven't tangled with the wrong end of a thumb-screw before?"
Aziraphale clears his throat, tugs primly at the edge of his waistcoat. "I'm sure I wouldn't want to know.”
"This is all so much witchy hocus pocus," says Crowley, disdainful, and he moves to snap the lid closed. "Nonsense, really. Child's play."
It happens so quickly that even when Aziraphale has recourse to replay the scene in his mind, he tells himself that there was nothing they could do to stop it. Well. Perhaps if Crowley hadn't issued such a challenge, hadn't mocked some fell magician's legacy quite so loudly. They'll never know, now, the other ways this could have ended. Because quick as a flash, something shoots out of the trunk, launched straight for Crowley's throat.
Crowley staggers backward. Aziraphale hears himself cry out at the sight of it, Crowley staggering, every awful possibility flooding through his body all at once. It's one of the spikes, Aziraphale guesses, gone clear through his throat, and Crowley will be discorporated, taken from Aziraphale forever—Hell will never let him return. Or it's the knife, with the same result. The quill pen looked evil enough for murder.
Then Crowley is clawing at his throat. He's still here, still whole, Aziraphale is stumbling towards him. Around Crowley's neck is wrapped the thin gold collar, its clasp snapped tight.
With more forethought than Aziraphale is evincing, Anathema darts forward and slams the lid of the trunk before they can suffer any further arcane attacks.
"I'm—I'm fine," Crowley says, rather to persuade himself as much as them, Aziraphale can hear.
"Take that off at once," says Aziraphale, angry in the wake of his abject terror. If this is some prank of Crowley's, it will be days before Aziraphale forgives him. The fright he felt!
"I'm—erm, I'm trying," says Crowley. As he turns towards Aziraphale, round-eyed, fingers tugging at the collar, he doesn't seem particularly mirthful, but Aziraphale has been fooled too many times before. "Won't come off."
Aziraphale stamps his foot. "Now, really. Banish it and have done."
"Can't." Crowley bites his lip, his forehead creased with effort, but the collar stays put. "You want to give it a go?"
"Oh, for Heaven's—" Aziraphale will not forgive him for an entire week for his. He gestures to remove the collar, only to be met with a blank wall against his power where there should be easily yielding gold. It's like nothing Aziraphale has encountered before; it isn't celestial in nature, but deeply, stubbornly human. Aziraphale blinks. Redoubles his approach. Nothing.
He fast forgives Crowley, ashamed now to have doubted him. He tries to swallow down the panic that wants to rise again.
"Maybe it needs witch’s magic," says Anathema softly. She goes to Crowley's side, and Aziraphale can tell she exerts considerable energies, but the collar stays put. At this point, Newt has descended to investigate the commotion. He offers to get out his toolbox, but Crowley waves him away. If the combined powers of an angel, a demon, and a witch can do nothing for it, a screwdriver is unlikely to help.
Then Anathema, bless her, asks what Aziraphale has been afraid to put into words. "How do you feel?"
Aziraphale looks up to find Crowley staring at him, the brightness of his yellow eyes stark in the basement's dim. Crowley transfers his gaze to Anathema.
"Just fine," Crowley says. "Peachy. I prefer to choose my own accessories, but you have to admit it rather suits me."
Anathema is startled into a half-smile, and Newt grins. Aziraphale does neither. His mouth is a tight line. "Everything in that trunk is cursed," he says. "I refuse to wait around until this one works on you. We'll get it off. Anathema, dear—"
As though she's reading his mind—perhaps she is—Anathema says, "I'll comb through the family histories, and ring up anyone who might be able to tell us more."
"I'll look on the internet," volunteers Newt. "Bound to be something."
"Thank you." With a sweep of his hand and sudden burst of rage that surprises even him in its intensity, Aziraphale obliterates the trunk and the rest of its contents from existence. He feels angrier when it obliges him by vanishing, while the terrible collar won't budge at all. "Crowley. We're going home."
"Angel—"
They're all looking at Aziraphale now, pitying him for overreacting, Aziraphale thinks. But he should have overreacted before this happened, not after. He never should have let Crowley get so close to the trunk. Demonic energy calls to the dark things on Earth, and Crowley, being a somewhat lapsed demon, sometimes forgot that. Aziraphale shouldn't have.
"We're going home," Aziraphale repeats, resolute. Is he imagining it, or does Crowley look paler than usual?
This time no one argues. Everyone is subdued as they say their goodbyes, though Crowley tries for a sort of false cheer that falls flat and kicks up an ache in Aziraphale's chest. Anathema would apologize for the incident, but Aziraphale kisses both of her cheeks before the words can form and assures her that it's not by any means her fault.
"I'm driving," Aziraphale announces, as they wend down the front garden path back to the car.
Crowley, it must be said, looks strange with the collar so prominent around his neck, the red gems on its clasp flashing. It rests just above the soft dip of his throat, beneath his Adam's apple. Aziraphale tamps down on the absurd thought that it does, indeed, suit him. The thing is officious.
Crowley blinks, too taken aback to disagree. "You don't drive."
"I do today," says Aziraphale. "Until we know what's happened to you, there will be no operation of heavy machinery."
Before Crowley can protest any further, Aziraphale climbs into the driver's side. Crowley watches him do it, mouth ajar, then closes his mouth with a snap. For a moment Aziraphale thinks he'll refuse to get in, but at last Crowley swallows and slides into the passenger seat. He's white as a sheet, thinks Aziraphale.
"I am perfectly capable," says Aziraphale, "of telling this car where to take us." And he does, in no uncertain terms. The Bentley leaps to life and whisks them on their way. Aziraphale watches the road for a moment, then turns to Crowley. Crosses his arms. "All right. Out with it."
"With what?" queries Crowley, all innocence.
Aziraphale narrows his eyes. "You don't fool me for a moment, you old snake." He breathes in a calming breath, tries to check his own severity—it's fear that's making him sound sharp. But he's certain now that they're sat so close. "Crowley. I can feel that you're in pain."
Crowley is quiet a space. Seems to toy with the idea of denying it. At last he says, "It's nothing unmanageable, angel, and that's the truth. Some crummy low-grade human torture device is a walk in the park compared to the jaunts I've had in Hell. I really am fine."
Aziraphale quite prefers not to dwell too much upon the range of tortures that Crowley has been made to suffer, and the rest of the ride passes in fraught silence. They make it back to London in forty-two minutes, with even Crowley impressed by the Bentley's speed.
"Thought you said you were taking me back home," says Crowley, staring through glass at the front of the bookshop.
"No," says Aziraphale. "I didn't say that." He lets the car quiet down with a grateful stroke to her dashboard for a job well done. "We'll have that infernal collar off tonight. You'll stay with me until this is over, of course."
"No," says Crowley. "Absolutely not."
That Crowley is stubborn, and would resist Aziraphale's offer of aid and care, is hardly surprising. Aziraphale has known him for six thousand years, seen his willfulness play out in innumerable ways. But there's an odd set to Crowley's jaw when he says it, and he's not looking at Aziraphale. He's looking at everything but Aziraphale: the windshield, the rain fast collecting there, the front of the bookshop again, the street light overhead. This hardens Aziraphale's resolve all the more.
"I'm afraid it's not open to debate," says Aziraphale with frosty resolve. He gets out of the car, then tilts back in to address Crowley through the open door. "Come of your own accord, or I'll be carrying you."
Crowley bursts out laughing at that, color rising in his cheeks above the golden line of collar. It's good to hear him laugh; so much better than the tension strung between them the whole way back. Still, it sounds a touch unhinged in a way Aziraphale dislikes.
"By Someone," says Crowley. "I do believe you'd try it."
Aziraphale raises his eyebrows. Lets that answer for him. Leaves Crowley to consider that they've never tested their strength against each other, not really, preferring, by silent agreement, not to know if one might win out.
Aziraphale sees the way his friend is hunched, and knows tonight that he would prove the stronger. It will cause a spectacle should he need to bodily wrestle Crowley from the car, and take quite a lot of energy to both wrestle Crowley from the car and cover up the spectacle from watching eyes. He stands at the ready.
"You're mad," Crowley exhales, reading all of that in Aziraphale's lifted eyebrows, but he gets out and follows Aziraphale inside.
Inside, Aziraphale settles them both in the back room. He causes the sofa to reshape itself into a decidedly more comfortable bed-shape, complete with piled pillows and snowy linens. He installs Crowley there despite protests, dampens the protests with a bottle of Chateau Margaux 1787, then sets out to scour his shelves from top to bottom.
He didn't spend centuries collecting books of esoterica for there not to be something helpful contained within their trusty pages. He piles up a stack as tall as Crowley to scan through before morning, pulls the armchair close enough to the sofa to keep a watchful eye on the patient, adjusts his reading glasses just so, and goes to work.
At first, Crowley pages idly through a few of the books, but he's fast on his second bottle of wine, the reading material abandoned. He crosses his legs, with their feet pointedly still in boots despite the bedsheets (a token rebellion, thinks Aziraphale), crosses his arms, leans back into the pillows, and watches Aziraphale without blinking.
On any other occasion Aziraphale would let Crowley get a rise out of him, but he continues to read, refuses to be distracted. Crowley is soon on his third bottle of wine, and then he is saying into the silence: "This is absurd, you know."
"Yes, the situation rather is," Aziraphale agrees, not glancing up.
"No. You—nursemaiding me like this," says Crowley. "I'm perfectly fine."
"If that's the case, no one will be happier than I to be proven wrong," says Aziraphale pleasantly. He turns the page. "In the meantime, I don't see what harm it will do for you to humor me, and let me keep an eye on you."
"I don't suppose you would," mutters Crowley.
Now Aziraphale does glance up. He abhors the sight of the wicked collar, but more troubling are Crowley's flushed cheeks. He's gone from too pale to looking feverish, and wine alone has never had this effect.
"Crowley," he says, deciding not to respond to that. "Are you sure you're feeling quite well?"
"I'd feel better if I were in my own bed," says Crowley. Then he gives Aziraphale the slow, seductive smile that had won him patronage in royal courts across the ages, won him his freedom in too many chaotic situations to count. "Or in yours."
Aziraphale feels his own cheeks heat. He sits back, astonished, into the armchair's embrace. He would be robbed of speech entirely, were these words not a sign of something gone quite amiss. "What did you say?"
"Oh, nothing much," answers Crowley, his tone lilting and liquid. Then the smile vanishes, and he blinks hard, as though to clear his vision. Shivers. The expression that crosses his face is more shocked than the one on Aziraphale's. In his normal voice he says, "Nothing. I—Aziraphale—"
"I think you have a fever," diagnoses Aziraphale. He casts one book aside, reaches for another, directs his concern and his embarrassment down at the text, though it blurs briefly before his eyes. To hear Crowley finally say such a thing to him, and have it be false, forced, cursed—"Yes. A fever."
"I don't get sick," says Crowley.
"It's not every day you're bound in a hexed object that neither you nor I can banish," says Aziraphale. "I believe a fever may be the least of our troubles. Do you think you can rest?"
"I'll give it a shot," says Crowley. His lapse in speech seems to have shaken him, resistance to the idea of Aziraphale's nursemaiding at least temporarily abandoned. The wine and his glass fade from view, along with his boots, and he stretches out along the bed.
"I'll be here," says Aziraphale firmly.
"Aziraphale, I—"
"I'll be here," Aziraphale repeats. "Rest."
Rest Crowley does, fitful about it. At first he seems to sleep well enough, but within the second hour he is tossing and turning, sighing, even groaning. Sometimes he speaks words in unintelligible bursts. He is sweating as though with exertion, the fever, if indeed it is a fever, seeming to worsen.
Aziraphale reads faster. He burns through books as a temporary panacea against his worry, but the relief does not last. He tries a few incantations and tricks and even a poultice or three he uncovers in the course of research, but nothing undoes the collar, nor its awful grip on Crowley.
He exchanges a series of text messages with Anathema, glad that Crowley had succeeded in teaching him that method of communication against Aziraphale's long-standing refusal. She is hopeful about a few of her own lines of inquiry, but has nothing concrete yet. She sends a comforting string of tiny yellow faces and colorful heart iconography.
"Aziraphale.”
Aziraphale nearly startles out of his skin at the soft call. Crowley seems still to be asleep, yet speaks his own name in a low, desperate hum. Aziraphale gets up at once, limbs numb from so long sitting, and perches at Crowley's bedside. His heart does something complicated in his chest, for Crowley looks deathly pale, with two unnatural splotches of red high on his cheeks.
"My dear," Aziraphale says quietly. He's unsure if he should wake Crowley to greater awareness, or if sleep is more curative. He would not have Crowley caught up in terrible nightmares either.
Crowley's eyes flutter open. He stares unseeing, unfocused, then seems to realize that Aziraphale is so near. He smiles happily, a smile of such unexpected joy and staggering sweetness that Aziraphale is only just beginning to parse it when Crowley reaches for him.
"There you are," Crowley murmurs. "I thought that you had gone." Crowley's hands close on him, pull him down, and before Aziraphale understands what is happening he is upended, flat on his back, Crowley rolling over smoothly to settle atop him like it's the easiest thing in the world. "Give us another kiss, angel."
Aziraphale's flummoxed brain says: another? They've never had a first. He and Crowley have danced around physical intimacy since the Garden was reduced to memories of green in a gold field.
Aziraphale knows how much of their long and painful delay at arriving at even a kiss is due to him. He was afraid; he was so afraid for so many years. Not of Crowley, never Crowley, but of the differences that divided them. He had let those so-called differences justify the space he maintained, even when he came to realize he desired no space at all.
He was a coward in this respect—but, as of late, a coward bent on reformation. Crowley was kind at heart, and forgiving, and he forgave Aziraphale the trespass of refusing them. Azraphale knows that he has; otherwise Crowley could not have done all that he did for Aziraphale. Would not have stayed with him thereafter.
They are lucky: so few receive a second chance. They have time now to figure it out, and Aziraphale is no longer afraid.
Since they threw over Heaven and Hell and cast their lots with each other, he has hoped they would find their way here. They've drifted deliciously closer and closer, day in and day out, until Crowley was practically living in the bookshop.
One day, Aziraphale thought, he would simply ask him to stay. One day, it would be perfectly natural for them to kiss, and caress, and all that came after. It was where they were going, slowly and steadily, all that Aziraphale knew how to want. He has never been so happy as in these perfect days of late.
But his first kiss with Crowley should not be this. Not Aziraphale, toppled and mostly stunned, not Crowley kissing him, entirely delirious and definitely not of his own devices. Yet Crowley's mouth on his feels as marvellous as he's imagined since Aziraphale discovered imagining. Crowley's weight over him is achingly right, his hands hot on Aziraphale's skin, slipping under shirt and vest, so longed for and so loved. For half a breath Aziraphale sinks into it, ever the hedonist, unable to deny what he's wantonly craved to taste.
It's all wrong, though. It’s all wrong, and half a breath later, he regains his senses. As does Crowley.
Crowley’s eyes go wide. He flings himself sideways off of Aziraphale, as though burned—no, it is as though Aziraphale is comprised of holy water, toxic to the touch. “God,” Crowley exclaims, shocked into such abandon that he invokes Her name without question. “What have I done?”
Aziraphale sits back up, tries to reclaim some semblance of dignity. He smooths his vest back into place. His mind churns. While it is not as he pictured their first kiss should be, Crowley’s recoil upon realizing they were kissing—his blank-faced terror, even disgust—hurts badly. Could Aziraphale have been wrong, then, all these years, about Crowley’s intentions? Or is he simply too late?
He pushes his own wounded pride and crushing sense of loss aside—makes himself do it; there will be time enough to mourn later—and pulls what he hopes is a neutrally clinical expression.
“You are quite ill,” Aziraphale says, letting worry replace want, and giving Crowley a way out. “You were not in control of your actions.”
“I—" Crowley seems too mortified to speak. He works his jaw, works through it. Then speech comes in a frantic stream: “Aziraphale, listen. You’ve got to kick me out of here and bar the door. Or go—go somewhere else, anywhere else, and don’t tell me where. You have to get away from me.”
“I’ll do no such thing,” says Aziraphale. Crowley’s eyes are fever-bright, and even if there’s cogent urgency in his words, that awareness has been going in and out. He cannot know what he is demanding.
To leave Crowley now would be tantamount to condemning him to be consumed by whatever evils the collar is working. It hurts again, another piercing blow, that Crowley is trying to send him away, that the way his affliction is manifesting—unabashed lust for Aziraphale—could be so loathsome as to be unendurable.
“You don’t understand,” Crowley says, teeth clenched with frustration. For the first time since the cellar he tries to claw and pry at the gold band round his neck with his bare hands. “My control. Like you said. It’s slipping. Hard to know what’s real and what isn’t. What I’ve dreamed and what’s not a dream. I can’t—angel, please. You need to not be here.”
“Your concern for my person is appreciated,” says Aziraphale, with the coldness of distance he never thought to employ with Crowley again. “I assure you it is misplaced. I remind you that I am still a Principality, once Guardian of the Eastern Gate. If you believe that I need be afraid of a fevered demon twisted by some paltry human lust-spell—“ He swallows down a rising tide of outrage. Crowley cannot know how deep the insult cuts. Once, it’s true, there would have been an Aziraphale who faltered here, who would have been frightened, apprehensive, even an Aziraphale who fled. But he is no longer that Aziraphale, and he found this absolute strength of purpose, he thought, because of Crowley. “—if you believe that, then you do not know me after all, and perhaps when this is done you should not know me.”
Crowley buries his face in his hands. He seems to come undone all at once. The sound that escapes him is truly inhuman, pure agony and despair out of the depths of Hell. He curls in on himself, long body twisting, and now looks so near irretrievable collapse that Aziraphale’s anger falters and falls away.
For the first time he can see just how fully Crowley is racked by pain, how desperately he has been trying to hide its extent. A fresh surge of agony seizes Crowley in its teeth, and it’s such that Aziraphale feels it on the periphery of his senses and gasps. Even a hint of it is bone-crushing, breath-stealing. Tears fill Aziraphale’s eyes.
“Oh, my dear,” whispers Aziraphale. “You should have told me. I’m sorry for what I said, I didn’t—I didn’t see. You feel this pain when you fight it, don’t you? If you gave over instead—what does it want from us, Crowley?”
But Crowley will only shake his head.
“Since it seems to push you to—ah—what if we—"
“Don’t say another word. I’m begging you.”
“But—“
“Aziraphale.” His name is sobbed, a plea and a prayer. Crowley has never sounded like this before. Aziraphale shuts his mouth.
As Aziraphale sits, helpless and overwrought, he becomes aware that the phone is ringing. He leaps for it like a lifeline.
Anathema’s far-away voice is excited. “I’ve figured out what the collar is.”
“We already know,” says Aziraphale tightly, his scrap of hope going up in flames. “Some kind of frightful lust-curse.”
There’s a pause, and then Anathema says, “Well, yes, I suppose, in a manner of speaking.” She brightens. “The good news is that I spoke to my great-aunt, and she knew just how to break it. Turns out there’s a whole family history about great-great-great-great-grand uncle Martin, who was quite the—“
Aziraphale gropes for the chair to sit back down before his legs give out with relief. “You know how to break it?” he repeats.
“Give me the phone,” Crowley rasps.
Aziraphale ignores him, but he does put Anathema on speakerphone. Crowley deserves to hear the solution.
“The further good news is that it should be relatively easy to break. It feeds on provoking the wearer’s most shameful desire. Try to ignore it, and you get sickness, excruciating pain, even death. Uncle Martin was a bastard, and he was obsessed with the idea that everyone else was a secret bastard too. He’d put that on his enemies to expose their hypocrisy. Colonial New England sounds like it sure was a fun place. Anyway, if you don’t fight it, the collar should come off. After someone indulged their shame, they weren’t any fun anymore, apparently. Uncle Martin was into the holdouts. Sounds like he would have appreciated Crowley.”
Aziraphale’s throat is desert-dry, his pulse a dull thump in his ear. He makes himself say: “So to break it, you have to follow your most—your most shameful desire.”
“That’s the bad news, yeah. But as long as it’s not, like, mass murder that Crowley’s resisting, and you can tell him I don’t believe for one moment that’s what he’s into, hopefully you can just get it over with and he’ll be right as rain.”
“Get it over with,” repeats Aziraphale, hearing his voice echo from a distance. “Yes. Of course.”
“I really am sorry about all of this,” says Anathema. “When you get the collar off, I do hope you’ll both come back for tea.”
Aziraphale puts down the mobile. His fingers feel numb, his whole body does. Crowley lies curled up on the bed, faced away from Aziraphale, and Aziraphale knows that no force in the universe could make Crowley turn back.
“Shameful desire,” Aziraphale says. He’s afraid it may be all that he can say; it’s all that he can hear. “Is that how you think of me?”
For there is no doubt that from the moment the collar snapped into place, Crowley was looking at him with poorly veiled hunger. No doubt that Crowley fought it, tooth and claw, no doubt how, in fevered speech and action, it nevertheless slipped through. Aziraphale had figured the collar was creating Crowley’s overly amorous grasping out of whole cloth, but instead it was drawing from what was already there—a need that was despised.
The wrenching feeling of loss when Aziraphale thought he’d miscalculated Crowley’s intentions toward him is nothing compared to this. It is confirmation of all the worst doubts of his own self-worth, and his worth to Crowley.
What a horrific way to be wanted. Furtively, a buried secret, a distasteful burden. Aziraphale had felt cowardice and fear in coming to realize how much he loved Crowley—but he had not been ashamed. Crowley was a magnificent thing to love.
“I told you to go,” says Crowley.
His voice emerges like one from a grave, and that’s the only reason why Aziraphale turns back to him, why Aziraphale does not go.
“You desire me,” says Aziraphale. Just a few minutes ago, that confession, finally given proper voice, would have moved him to ecstatic joy. Now he feels carved-out, his bones hollow. “And it is your greatest shame.”
“What else could it be?” Crowley seems to choke on the question. He is silent so long after that Aziraphale wonders if those are the last words they will ever exchange. But then he says, “How else, Aziraphale?”
“I—I don’t understand,” says Aziraphale.
“I tried to tell you that, too,” says Crowley. “You still wouldn’t go.”
“Tell me again,” says Aziraphale.
Crowley says, “In six thousand years of loving you I’ve never so much as touched your hair. I think that it will be softer than anything—there are decades when I’ve thought of little else. Once, in Greece, your sandal came untied, and I dove down before you noticed. Your hands were full of parcels. You permitted me the honor, made a joke of it; my fingers brushed your ankle then. I’ve postured, I know, played as though I didn’t care about how far away you were, pushed you sometimes into walls to test the gap. Couldn’t help myself, sometimes, gave myself that. But it was your lapels in my grasp; I wouldn’t dare to feel your neck under my fingertips. I’ve thought, wildly, in these perfect days we’ve had since Adam—the second one, that is—I’ve thought, in another thousand years, or five, or ten, I’d wait—I might be so lucky as to kiss your hand. The inside of your wrist, maybe. That would have sustained me until the next end of the world.”
All of the air has gone out of the room, and Aziraphale cannot breathe. He forgets that he does not need to. He’s dizzy. All of the air is gone. He tries to say: “Crowley—"
"So it’s shameful that I should want for anything more, that I’ve let myself think on you like that. You’re an angel, the only one of the lot that matters, the only thing that matters at all, don’t you see—at all—and I’d debase you. Think common human thoughts. Couldn’t even be a proper demon about it. Wanted—I wanted you in all of the human ways. Desired you. Yes, shamefully. Yes, I’d think of you in bed. Call it ours. Dream whenever I could that you were next to me. Sometimes I imagined that we had a house, that it was quiet there and only us. I don’t have any excuses. The humans, they say—‘I’m only human, we’re only human,’ when they know they’ve done something wrong. But I’m not human. I didn’t have the right. I know exactly what you are, and I know what I am, and how off it was for me to even presume to want you. But I couldn’t stop, and I couldn’t stop, I couldn’t, no matter what, but I’d never—never—and then tonight, this fucking thing takes away my self-control, all my stopgaps—I kissed you, because I thought it was a dream. In dreams I kiss you, you see. But it wasn’t a dream, and you still wouldn’t go. You put yourself at risk of this—this shame I have, wanting you. I’d rather let it torture and discoportate me than have it make me touch you again against your will. If I’m being honest, though, and I think I’m being rather honest, let’s admit that to the record—since I’m on my way out anyway—I do wish that I had touched your hair when I had the chance. Just the once. I think it must be soft as—“
“Crowley.” Aziraphale’s face is wet with tears, his voice tight with them. “My darling, that’s quite enough.”
“Sorry. Seem to have lost the filter, too. Can’t be helped. Fucking thing sucks. Anathema wasn’t kidding. Uncle Martin’s a right bastard.”
Aziraphale, breathing again, alive again, more alive than he’s ever been—Aziraphale crosses the distance from the armchair to the sofa. It takes two seconds; it has taken him six thousand years.
He sits down on the snowy linens, then reaches to turn Crowley back over. There are tears streamed down Crowley’s cheeks also. Aziraphale takes his hand. He draws it to his lips, kisses each precious knuckle. The inside of Crowley’s wrist. Then he cradles Crowley’s hand against his cheek. At last he slips Crowley’s fingers into his hair.
“I hope it meets with your approval, after all this time,” says Aziraphale. “Because that feels quite wonderful. I’ll expect to have your hands in my hair often.”
It’s like watching the spring sun come out on fallow ground. That’s what Crowley’s expression is like. But he shakes his head, and the sun goes out. “What are you doing?”
“I love you,” says Aziraphale, who has always found the truth extraordinary to speak. No words have tasted sweeter than these three on his tongue. “And you’re not going to discorporate today, or any day, if I can help it.”
Crowley sets his jaw. He eases his hand free from Aziraphale’s hold. “Won’t. I won’t let you try and convince me of this just to keep me from discorporating.”
Aziraphale stares at him, a smile twitching on his lips. That’s not what Crowley expects—Crowley expects a long, drawn-out, bitter battle about it until the end.
“You know how I do enjoy a good debate with you,” says Aziraphale, and he lays his right hand on Crowley’s chest. Crowley double-blinks. “But I’m afraid circumstances warrant a bit more expediency.”
Aziraphale can make others feel. It’s an angelic gift—a demonic one, too. He’s used it to make people feel better; he’s used it to change dead-set minds; he’s made the culpable stew in their guilt, and blessed the good with a warmth that sustained them. Usually he need only think of the intended emotion to impress upon the other, and speak it into being. But he’s never tried it quite like this before. He expects it will be a smidge more complicated.
“You will feel, now, what I feel for you,” commands Aziraphale. “It is the oldest truth I have.” Before Crowley can react or try to deflect him, Aziraphale pours not one emotion, but many, oh, so many—all that concern Crowley—pours them straight into Crowley. It’s a waterfall; it fast becomes a flood.
It’s only for a moment. Six thousand years of love, much of it fraught, much of it painful, takes up a great deal of space in Aziraphale, and for Crowley to hold it unawares, for Crowley to try to bear it, would be flattening.
But Aziraphale lets it linger for the space of a few heartbeats. For alongside his cowardice and his longing is his profound appreciation for Crowley, his limitless admiration, his infinite affection. His deep and abiding trust. His faith. And, yes, a boundless passion, all-consuming, vital, still burning as brightly as when it was birthed on the wall in the Garden—no, it is so much brighter now, Aziraphale can see, as he shares it between them.
It is a passion more formless than Crowley’s, less grounded in the reality of their earthly bodies and more the wordless, perfect desire, simply a feeling, a certainty, that what he wants most is to have all of Crowley, and to give Crowley all that he is. There is nothing that he would not do for Crowley; there is nothing that he would like more than to do everything with Crowley. He loves Crowley beyond measure, beyond reckoning, irretrievably, ceaselessly, with the surety of one who knows that time and space need never end.
Aziraphale takes his hand away. “I do hope that was convincing enough,” he says. “There is little more that I can say in regard to the subject.”
Crowley looks as though a house has landed on top of him. Given the weight of Aziraphale’s feelings, it is probably more akin to a castle, or perhaps a pyramid. He opens his mouth, but nothing comes out.
Aziraphale soldiers on. “These—desires you feel, that you say you want from me. The human ones. What the collar is trying to push you to.” He tugs the edge of his vest down self-consciously, but not primly. “I—I want them also. I do not know the name and shape of it so well as you do, I think, but oh, Crowley, how long I have hoped that in time we would uncover this together.”
“Angel,” Crowley just about manages.
“I know some of this must come as a bit of a shock, and I’m terribly sorry to rush the process so,” says Aziraphale. He reclaims Crowley’s hand, threads up their fingers. “But we must proceed without further delay. We must. I told you that collar would come off tonight. It will.”
Waiting for Crowley to gather his thoughts and make a coherent speech of them could prove an indefinite wait. So Aziraphale further expedites the solution.
Strange, that for so much time, for so many centuries, he counted on Crowley to be the one who kissed him first. It was a natural assumption. It was always Crowley who blazed trails, who sped forward, Crowley who without restraint might one day take Aziraphale into his arms and that would be that. And in a way, he supposes this did come to pass—it was Crowley, unknowing, unrestrained, who pulled Aziraphale into their first kiss. But it hadn’t been right. It hadn’t been them, not really. This is them, with no distance left to cross save this one: Aziraphale leans down and kisses Crowley, making sure that it is their second kiss that really counts.
It starts slow and melting, soft and seeking, just as Aziraphale has imagined since he learned how to imagine. Crowley’s eyes are on him, and now there is such yearning—such hope—revealed there, finally ready to be read. Aziraphale opens his mouth, and Crowley’s tongue slips in to meet him, dart-quick, away, then back, and it is suddenly incomprehensible to Aziraphale that he has lived and breathed without this.
They must be quick about it now. Crowley is being tortured by that noxious winking ring of gold around his throat. Crowley could discorporate if he does not give in. Aziraphale deepens the kiss, this wondrous event, before he parts their lips with every regret. In a burst of boldness, but assured now, knowing just how much he has been longed for, treasured, worshipped, and loved, always loved, he asks, “May I join you?”
Crowley has never moved faster, not even when he was made of scales. He slithers sideways, makes room for Aziraphale on the sofabed. Aziraphale lies down beside him, and they turn in face-to-face.
They smile at each other at the exact same moment, in the same way—can you believe it, here we are—and then both of them are laughing together. It feels so good to laugh. Aziraphale puts a hand to Crowley’s neck, studiously avoiding the collar, and sifts fingers through the silky hair at Crowley’s nape.
The kiss has done wonders for Crowley. Already the fever seems broken, and his pallor is receding. But Aziraphale knows that the collar will not be mollified by a few kisses.
Nor, he finds, will he.
“You must tell me,” he says to Crowley, very seriously, for this is serious business, “how it is you dreamed that we might be together. What it is you wanted.”
“There’s nothing of you that I don’t want,” says Crowley. His voice is still rough with affliction, but it is pitched low at a tone that runs like fingers down Aziraphale’s spine. Then Crowley’s fingers are actually reaching out to him of their own accord. He traces Aziraphale’s jaw in a trembling line, his yellow eyes snapped wide that such touches are not only permitted, but encouraged. “I want you every way there is.”
“Then it is well,” says Aziraphale, trembling himself, but only because he is full of so much light—“it is well that you and I will have the time to do precisely that, and learn which ways we like best.” He takes in an emboldening breath. “But tonight, Crowley. To be rid of this—thing. What is it you think on most? Which desire do you return to, and dwell upon, though you thought you should not?”
A demon blushing is a miraculous sight indeed. But Crowley knows how dire the situation is, and now, thinks Aziraphale, he knows the full extent of Aziraphale’s devotion. His eyes are lidded, goldenrods down-tilted toward the soil. Aziraphale can see him choosing words with painstaking care. At last he says, “To—to be allowed to pleasure you. To bring you pleasure. To be permitted to serve you.”
Aziraphale bites his lip to keep himself from smiling. The words are positively wrenched out of Crowley; they are lodged deep. “Dearest, I fail to see why that, of all things, would be the root of your shame.”
Crowley shakes his head. “You—you have to think on how I was looking at it. You could, should you have but lifted a finger to indicate it, have used me as you liked. That would have been the proper thing, if anything about it could be proper. Me, on my knees for you. Me, bent over for you. Taking whatever you would give me. Don’t get me wrong—I want those things, I want those things like the tide wants to come in—but—to—for you to let me—for me to be the one above you—it was unfathomable.”
“Oh,” says Aziraphale. “Well, do fathom it now. I’m quite keen on the idea. That sounds lovely.”
“Lovely,” Crowley repeats. He looks stunned.
“Really, Crowley, the way you’ve twisted yourself into knots over this,” tsks Aziraphale. “Have I given you reason to believe that I shouldn’t relish the idea of being seen to? That I would scoff at being offered pleasure? That it would be a burden for me to be indulged?” Aziraphale, feeling brave now, staving off another grin, tries not to let his expression seem mocking. The amusement he hopes is gleaming in his eyes is directed at himself, not Crowley. “You have met me, haven’t you?”
“Well,” says Crowley. He’s looking more robust by the moment, the collar well-fed by the growing potential it will get what it calls out for. His eyes are fever-bright without the fever. “When you put it like that.”
“I do,” says Aziraphale. The only hurdle left to climb: “You should know, however, before we begin, that while I am exceedingly well-read on these subjects, I—I have not put theory to practice, as it were.”
There’s a flash, a flare of emotions across Crowley’s face, indescribable tenderness, surprise, a lightning-strike of something more primitive that might have been jealousy, banished by relief—all of it there only for an instant, soon smoothed away by what Aziraphale must call abject adoration. There are no other words for it. “Never, angel?”
“Not with anyone else on hand,” says Aziraphale, succinct.
“Six thousand years is a long time,” says Crowley.
“Yes,” Aziraphale agrees. “It is.”
“I haven’t either,” says Crowley.
Aziraphale blinks, knocked off-guard and off-track. “Pardon?”
This earns him the slow, seductive smile Crowley used before, used so many times before, the one used to charm paint off walls. “Why, Aziraphale,” he drawls, and there he is, finally restored at last, the teasing, sharp-edged, sharp-toothed, brilliant counterpart that Aziraphale went to Hell for without a backward glance. “Are you saying you’ve considered my earthly prowess?”
“I—" What’s the use of denying it now? “—may have thought about it, and wondered what you’d gotten up to, a time or two.” Or eighty thousand. At least Crowley can’t see him mentally spluttering. “But you’re a demon!”
“Guilty of that,” says Crowley. “And I didn’t say I wasn’t—as you put it, extremely well-read. I suspect I may be a good deal more well-watched also. I’ve seen it all, of course, and tempted others to the deed, millions of ‘em, that’s the job. But tried it myself?” He wrinkles his nose. “With who possibly?”
“Ah,” says Aziraphale, more of an expelled noise than a cogent sound. For once in his storied existence he’s completely speechless.
“Surely this night’s adventures have made it obvious,” says Crowley. “There’s never been anyone but you since the world began.”
Aziraphale clears his throat above the exuberant thrum of his heart. “Yes. Quite. I—I’m going to kiss you now, if that’s all right.”
“If you ever ask that in the form of a question again, I’ll disown you,” says Crowley. The giddy admonishment is fast swallowed up by Aziraphale’s mouth, then quickly soothed by Crowley’s tongue.
They kiss and kiss, trading air, making it their own. Crowley’s hands are tangled up in Aziraphale’s hair, and Aziraphale’s hand has found and settled on the slant of Crowley’s hip he’s contemplated holding onto since they gazed across the Garden. It’s slow and considerate and simply exquisite, and any other night—or day, or afternoon, really—Aziraphale would be content to do nothing but this for hours. It is not another night, however. When Aziraphale does draw back, he drags his teeth across Crowley’s lip to communicate his reluctance in doing so.
“Well, now,” Aziraphale breathes. He suppresses a shiver, makes himself tap the dread collar with a chiding fingertip. It is bitterly cold to the touch despite Crowley’s overheated skin beneath. “This comes off.”
Still there’s a war in Crowley’s expression. “Angel, if I give over to it, I won’t be able to stop myself. I’ve wanted you in every way, true, but never to—never to hurt you."
"You couldn't," says Aziraphale, and then, with even greater confidence, "you wouldn't. Crowley, love. Please." And to drive the point home, Aziraphale vanishes their clothes from one blink to the next.
The conflict is pushed from Crowley's face under a fearsome weight of hunger and magic—and then, once more, Aziraphale knows what it is to have the weight of Crowley atop him. It's something else entirely to have chosen it—it's something else entirely to have their bodies flush, with no barriers left to bar them.
Crowley's cock is long and glorious, and it is very hard against the crook of Aziraphale's thigh. Aziraphale looks his fill, for there is so much of Crowley to look at—Crowley is a visual feast. His pale creamy skin, tinged pink by the collar's grip, smooth and also lined with secrets Aziraphale longs to learn; his strong arms and endless legs with their shapely calves; his flat belly and flat dusky nipples that Aziraphale aches to touch; the round globes of his ass that Aziraphale does touch, for his own edification and for encouragement. The sight of Crowley's cut hipbones is likely illegal in several countries, and the faint trail of fiery hair that leads from navel to outstanding cock was made, thinks Aziraphale, to be licked.
Aziraphale tells him as much, and imparts the flattering observations that bubble quickly to mind, as he seeks to let Crowley know that there is no time for Crowley's attempts at restraint. If the collar would have him have Aziraphale, then Aziraphale must be had. Aziraphale is really rather insistent on the point.
"You'll drive me mad," Crowley says, as he licks and bites his way down Aziraphale's throat. "You and this collar both. If you knew what you looked like—if you knew. Damn you." Crowley reaches one of Aziraphale's nipples, which he takes into his mouth, and Aziraphale gasps. Crowley, shaking, tries to make himself pull back, but doesn't seem able to.
Aziraphale narrows his eyes. "Don't you dare stop," he admonishes. "That feels divine. Now the other, if you'd be so kind."
So this is why the humans have been on about this without fail. Like war and taxes, they got up to sex in every century, and they made art and songs about it, and sometimes tried to ban parts of it, which never took. They had obsessed about this one subject in every civilization that was, just as they will obsess about it in every civilization that will be.
Aziraphale is a curious sort, and a scholarly one, and he's read near all there is to read on the subject, but he's never had a wet mouth and an ardent tongue on his nipple before, and now that he has it he understands why nation-states have risen and fallen for less. He starts with surprise at the sharp, rich pleasure of it, and then his body arches up in reaction, seeking ever more contact with the source.
This seems to do well to propel Crowley on, for his questing mouth seeks lower, his kissing mouth is everywhere. He only pauses, panting, when his breath is hot against Aziraphale's cock. Aziraphale realizes that he's squeezed his eyes shut to better track the pleasure as it washes over him, and he snaps them open at once. He meets Crowley's gaze without shame—for there is nothing shameful here. It's just the two of them. Their affection expressed with bodies instead of words. Aziraphale is so very far from afraid—he feels bold, brave as he's ever been. Brazen.
"Do you want—?" Aziraphale guesses, since Crowley is still trying to hold on to some manner of self-control with teeth and toenails. He gestures, an open invitation to himself—yes, brazen; with anyone else, he thinks, he would be shy and hesitant, but Crowley looks at him as though he's pulled down the moon and made of it a necklace. He looks at Aziraphale as though he's beautiful, as though beautiful is not a word that could encompass what Aziraphale is. So Aziraphale gestures, and Crowley drops his head, and he kisses a line across the hardening length of Azraphale's cock.
"Like you wouldn't believe," Crowley murmurs, his tongue flickering out to taste. Aziraphale sees a burst of light in his field of vision, the sensation grips him so; yet Crowley's mouth doesn't linger. "But what I need, angel—"
Crowley moves yet lower, his hands parting Aziraphale's thighs, then tilting them up, and then—then Crowley's mouth—his tongue—Crowley is—
"Oh, my," Aziraphale tells the bookshop ceiling. "Oh, my Lord." If She is listening—well, She'll certainly get an earful, because Aziraphale can't stop talking as it happens, such is his shock and toe-curling delight. "Crowley, oh—are you sure—ah, ah, that's good, that's so good, that feels—that feels—yes, go deeper, darling, that's—that's—oh, your dear wicked tongue, please, I—oh!"
In all likelihood Crowley's dedicated licking and tonguing at Aziraphale's entrance is inexpert; he is, by his own confession, untried; but Aziraphale has no basis for comparison, and all he knows is that it's possible this is the best thing that's ever happened to him.
Crowley is tireless at the task, working like a man who's been told his salvation lies in getting his tongue as far into Aziraphale is it can go, and then, as no man would be capable of, letting that tongue lengthen, snakelike, to work it in yet further. Aziraphale is halfway to incoherence by the time Crowley figures out how to multitask, and Crowley's hand wraps around Aziraphale's cock and strokes insistently as he works.
Aziraphale feels as though the match lit in his belly is fed on petrol, and heat and light course through him; pleasure crests as a spectacular release, so acute that he cries out Crowley's name, half in joy, half in desperation. He spills slick and wet all across his stomach and Crowley's helping hand, and through it all Crowley's mouth keeps him open and alight and doesn't let the flame go out for a moment.
Blissful, boneless, Aziraphale lies slack across the bed. He's fuzzily aware when Crowley draws away at last, but only because Crowley has moved to lick clean the seed from Aziraphale's skin with an enthusiasm that suggests a fervent gourmand. It's a new look on Crowley, such appetite and satiation both—but everything is new tonight, and Aziraphale far prefers him ravenous and consuming to the horrid hours they've come through.
Crowley is kissing the tender skin of Aziraphale's inner thigh when Aziraphale knits up enough pieces of his brain to form sentences again. Crowley's hand, with its long able fingers, is on the opposite thigh, edging ever higher. Aziraphale keeps his voice steady as he says, "Tell me what else you need, my dear. Tell me exactly. What you once thought shameful. Tell me, because we're going to do that, and then I'm going to rip that collar off with my own two hands."
Crowley lifts his head. His pupils are enormous, his eyes nearly all black, limned with gold. There's no filter brokering what to say, whether by dint of the collar's influence or Aziraphale's insistence. "To fuck you," he says. "God, Satan, Anyone, to fuck you, Aziraphale. I've wanted to fuck you since—always. Since always. I can't remember not wanting to fuck you. Would've said 'Hullo, I'm Crawly, nice weather we're having in the Garden, isn't it, I'd like to fuck you' when we first met, but I didn't have the vocabulary then." Only then does he look away. "Learned to be ashamed about it later, once we were friends, and I knew how good you were. That you were a real sort of angel, not like those wankers I used to know, and also a right bastard. Still wanted to fuck you, though."
Aziraphale smiles at this recitation. There's a faint flutter of nerves, an uptick in his pulse, as he suspects any and every number of humans have felt at just such a juncture. He revels in it. Crowley hasn't ceased to touch him as he talks, his hands restless, roaming, electrifying Aziraphale but only just stopping short of where clearly want to go. So Aziraphale takes hold of Crowley's hand at the end of his speech, and guides it without hesitation. "Then fuck me."
Even after the stretch of Crowley's tongue, Aziraphale isn't quite prepared for how full-up Crowley's fingers make him feel as they press inside. He bites his tongue, and then his lip, and then he says, breathless, "I'll just—" and he miracles up an oil. Crowley's concentration is focused entirely on trying to hold back the collar's coercion to climb over Aziraphale and part his legs and fuck him without any further adieu; Crowley tells him as much, since all their barriers and filters are gone.
"That's not—that's not what I ever wanted, not really," Crowley is telling him, watching with amazement the slide of his fingers into Aziraphale, and watching keenly Aziraphale's reaction to them. "When I let myself think of this, actually imagine that it was you, and not some abstract idea of you, I always thought about how slow I'd be. How careful." He swallows, the collar bobbing on his throat in the dim half-light from the lamp. "I'm sorry, angel. I am."
"Don't be," Aziraphale says. Crowley's fingers twist, and he sees sparks; anticipation is a heady build that began in his belly and races through his blood. "I want you just like this."
The last of Crowley's clung-to restraint seems to disappear entirely at that, as though Aziraphale has spoken the words of a spell. Aziraphale is only concerned with one kind of magic at the moment—if what they do now doesn't undo the cursed collar, nothing will, he's dreadfully certain of it, and that outcome is unacceptable. Crowley must give over and have done. Aziraphale takes him into his arms.
There are centuries of longing behind Crowley's eyes as thrusts in. The same sight can be seen on Aziraphale's face, and he rises to meet Crowley halfway. What they do is unlikely to hurt a being such as Aziraphale, and it does not. Still, it's strange, at first, the taking in of another, telling his body to make space for someone else. Then it clicks that it is Crowley, at last. Crowley's long proud cock slid deep inside him, Crowley's adoring kisses on his neck. Crowley, who he has never been able to be close enough to, now close as two can be. Crowley, with Aziraphale's name in his teeth as he rocks them together.
By degrees, then measures, Aziraphale unbends to it. He's always been slow to the task but a quick study, and his greatest weakness is indulgence. Some might say that his weakness was falling in love where he should not have, but love is the fiercest force there is—there is nothing weak about it. No, if Aziraphale has an Achilles' heel it is that he would be indulged, and when Crowley pulls back and thrusts just right and Aziraphale's body sings in response this, this is why we were made to breathe—he thinks: oh dear, Uncle Martin has created a monster after all, because I'll never have enough of this.
"Again, just like that," Aziraphale whispers, then louder, pointed, when Crowley complies, "oh, yes, more, yes. Oh, Crowley."
It's then that Aziraphale knows that what they're doing is working—for Crowley's mouth cracks from its too-serious grimace into a grin, and he says, "All right, then, angel?"
"Harder, if you please," says Aziraphale around a brilliant thrust, "I'm certain you can go a good deal harder. You'd do that for me, wouldn't you."
That's how they break the sofabed. A hasty miracle works for a repair, but by then they're both laughing, and Aziraphale has come again, and Crowley looks not only healthy, but happier than Aziraphale can remember.
"If I might—" Aziraphale indicates with his hand, and Crowley is all too quick to comply, rolling them over so that Aziraphale is astride him. Aziraphale settles back, shifts experimentally, and Crowley looks as though he will bite through his own tongue to keep from coming right then and denying Aziraphale the new angle.
Aziraphale rises up, then down, then up, discovering a rhythm that is better than triple chocolate mousse cake and classical music, and listening to classical music while eating triple chocolate mousse cake, though he won't tell Crowley just yet. Crowley must still suffer a little for taunting a box full of black magic, even if it did get them here. What he tells Crowley is, "That's good. Yes, that's very good," and he turns his attention to the black magic in question. He narrows his eyes at the collar. Then he slides one finger underneath it and pulls.
Crowley is only strangled a little when it doesn't give, and his cock gets even harder when that happens, isn't that interesting, so Aziraphale rides him faster, and pulls again.
"He's done as you asked," Aziraphale scolds the wretched golden thing, "you will desist this very moment."
Crowley throws back his head and cries out, and he spills deep inside Aziraphale, his hands locked onto Aziraphale's thighs, his eyes round and his face red from Aziraphale's relentless tug upon the collar. It snaps all at once, coming free from around Crowley's neck, and Aziraphale crushes it in his hand. Then he crushes it some more.
"Let me, please," says Crowley. Aziraphale nods, and with a furious burst of energy it goes up in flames, fast reduced to ash and then to nothing. Aziraphale glares at the merest particles of it on his palm until they go away.
He and Crowley are both breathing hard, shivering in the aftermath of orgasm and adrenaline. Crowley is still inside him, and though Aziraphale is loath to move—Aziraphale intends to do little moving from anywhere but the bed for some time—at length he must carefully disengage. Crowley watches with pleasure-glazed eyes as Aziraphale all but collapses back down beside him.
In the wake of their triumph Aziraphale might feel almost shy—the old Aziraphale certainly would have, would have pulled up a blanket for security or hurried away with the excuse of making tea. But this Aziraphale reaches out a hand. Crowley takes it at once, slots their fingers together. They hold on, lying quietly without a need for words, and it feels as intimate as anything else they've shared.
A good while later, Crowley says, softly, "All right, then, angel?"
Aziraphale smiles with his eyes closed. "Mmm. Quite well, thank you, dear."
"It's me who should be thanking you," says Crowley.
"Thank me by promising you'll never do anything that imprudent again."
"Now you know I can't do that," says Crowley.
Aziraphale sighs, much put-upon. "No, I suppose that's asking a bit much."
"I haven't said it proper," says Crowley. "I do love you, Aziraphale. A bit too much, while we're on it."
Aziraphale opens his eyes. Tries to keep his smile flat. Fails. "Oh? How's that?"
"How's what?"
"How much you love me."
Crowley thinks about it. "I'd turn my back on Hell and thumb my nose at Heaven if you asked me to."
"Now that does seem imprudent," says Aziraphale.
"It was," Crowley agrees. "It's also the best thing I ever did, until roughly ten minutes ago."
"Hmm," hums Aziraphale. "How else?"
"How else what?"
"How else do you love me."
"I'd burn the whole world down," says Crowley, "before I let anything happen to you, or if either of us decides it's a good idea to investigate anything else that has to do with Anathema's extended family."
"Is that so," says Aziraphale.
"Bit much?"
"Bit much," says Aziraphale. He studies Crowley beside him, and sees that there's still an angry red line that rings his neck where the collar bit. He runs a finger across it, feather-light, and watches the line fade away under his touch. "It's a shame, really."
Crowley is too tense beside him, and he tenses yet further at Aziraphale's words. He seems to be waiting for the other shoe to drop. "What is?"
"That blasted thing being so awful. It did suit you."
"It—I'm sorry, what?"
"Suited you," Aziraphale repeats. He moves closer. Kisses Crowley's throat. The hinge of his jaw. The startled bow of his lips. His lips, for a long time. "Maybe I'll get you another one. Much better. No magic."
Crowley looks happily dazed as Aziraphale curls into his arms. "You do whatever you like, angel. I'll wear it."
Aziraphale makes a contented sound. "I'm glad to hear it. I'm thinking tartan."
Crowley's spluttered indignation doesn't last, because Aziraphale has other, better ideas.
That is how they break the sofabed three times in one day—a record—though this, too, will be broken soon enough.