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Crowley frowned. “Run that by me again, angel?”
“It’s really very simple.” He tried propping himself up on an elbow, but didn’t get very far. The ludicrously expensive foam of Crowley’s mattress re-molded itself to the shape of his arm, and he found himself sinking in. Wonderful thing for a lie-in, which was of course why Crowley had it, but Aziraphale still found it a bit confounding. He sat up instead. “You and I swapped corporations without a hitch.”
“As was foretold, yes.”
“You didn’t suffer any harm from my vessel, nor I from yours.”
“No,” said Crowley slowly, “No, we didn’t. Bodies are basically the same whoever issues them, I suppose. My lot did steal the blueprints from yours in the first place, after all.”
“Quite. But we also, shall we say, crossed paths while we were switching. I know my essence brushed past yours. Surely you noticed?”
Crowley, reclining still, went a bit pink. “Might have done.”
“Right. And that didn’t hurt a bit. No burning, no lightning,” Aziraphale said insistently, “which is why I think I may have been a bit hasty in declaring that we would explode if we inhabited the same body.”
“Okay. Great. Something to keep in mind if one of us gets discorporated in some stupid way in the future.” Crowley smoothed down his shirt, which had gotten rather rumpled from having Aziraphale’s hands under it but a moment ago. “I don’t see why we had to interrupt a perfectly good snog to discuss that.”
“Well,” said Aziraphale. He went to fiddle with his bow tie, realized he had taken it off when he shed his coat ten minutes ago, and fiddled with his ring instead. “I mean, of course it could come in handy in an emergency, yes, but I brought it up because I thought it might be, well, fun. Recreationally.” He dared a glance at Crowley’s face. The demon’s eyebrows had shot up, and his eyes looked especially serpent-ish.
“Recreationally.”
“Yes.”
“For sex, you mean.”
“I’d rather hoped so, yes.”
Crowley licked his lips. Aziraphale tried not to stare too intently. “So you want to, what, possess my body and then rub one out? Have a bit of a wank?” He seemed to be thinking about it, which was promising.
“Essentially. Or, or you could inhabit mine, if you prefer. I’d be happy to share, my dear.”
“And then I’d jack it off. With you still in it.”
Aziraphale nodded. “Only it wouldn’t really be a solo activity. Not with us both in the same corporation. It would be more of a, a team effort.”
“‘Team effort,’ Satan’s sake, angel.” Crowley sat up. His color was high and the slits of his pupils were steadily widening. “Not exactly what I was envisioning when I said we were on our own side, but you’ve always been good at surprising me.” He laughed. “All right. You are a wicked tempter, Aziraphale. Must be all my bad influence. I want to try it.”
“Oh, really?” He couldn’t help the delighted wiggle. “Oh, that’s wonderful! I should very much like to try it right now. Is that all right? Yours or mine, dear?”
Crowley grinned. “Eager, are you? I should have known. Come to mine, Aziraphale, I want to have you.”
Aziraphale beamed.
“How do you want to do this?”
“I shouldn’t think you have to do anything. We’re already in bed. I’ll just move my essence over, and then we can finish undressing you. All you need is to be receptive.”
Crowley’s smile took on a gentler edge. “Denying you was always the hard part. Come in, angel, the water’s fine.”
They faced each other on the bed, kneeling. Gathering himself up, Aziraphale took Crowley’s face in his hands and kissed him. Not that he needed to, a touch of the hands would work just as well, but he did so like kissing Crowley. First he pushed his tongue into his mouth, which made the demon shiver all over, and then he pushed his self in. There was a little resistance, at first. The day after Armageddon, they’d flowed past each other, Crowley’s essence leaving empty space in his body as quickly as Aziraphale could fill it. Now, however, they were packing two of them into a vessel meant for one, and it took some maneuvering to find room. Aziraphale flowed into Crowley, just a trickle at first, then a stream, then a flood, as he found all the gaps and hollow places in the demon and filled them up. He could feel less and less of his own body, more and more of Crowley’s senses. Touch changed, smells changed.
Possessing Madam Tracey had been a bit awkward. Their spirits hadn’t meshed terribly well, slipping past each other like oil and water. Mortals and immortals were more unalike than he had supposed. Angels and demons, however, were all from the same stock, as Crowley liked to say. They twined together quite tightly. The last of Aziraphale bridged the gap and he took a moment to enjoy the sensation of Crowley all around him, really all around him. It was a tight fit, and anywhere he turned, there was Crowley. It felt even better than he had imagined.
Then something warm and heavy fell on him. He blinked.
“Right,” said Crowley, “slight problem with this plan, here.”
Through Crowley’s eyes, Aziraphale looked at his own body, crumpled in a heap on the bed. It looked more than a bit corpse-like. “I suppose it does rather spoil the mood,” he conceded.
Crowley sputtered, and Aziraphale could actually feel the half-formed exclamations colliding at the back of his throat, the exasperation roiling in the back of his head. It had a warm note to it that he thought might be fondness. Crowley rolled the unoccupied corporation onto its back, laying it out in a more comfortable pose, and leaned in close. With Crowley’s ear pressed right against its chest, they both felt the slight rise and fall as the lungs worked, shallowly but breathing, and the heart beating at a rate significantly slower than a human would consider healthy. Of course Aziraphale hardly needed breath or pulse, but he supposed that his body was human-shaped enough it wasn’t so strange that it would default to human-like needs without his ethereal energies to sustain it. In any case, it remained warm and living, and that evidence of life definitely soothed something in Crowley. Aziraphale felt his shoulders drop a bit as tension bled from them.
“It’s all right, no harm done,” he said.
Crowley said nothing. He laid his hand on the corporation’s cheek a moment, then tucked it in, pulling the dark satin sheet up to its chin. Aziraphale felt his hands move almost as if they were his own, a strange sensation, both because he could tell that he was not, in fact, steering at the moment and because he had never treated his own corporation with such tenderness in six thousand years. Spoiled it, yes. Pampered it. Indulged it. But even when he fed it fine foods and fine wines he realized that he had been taking his body itself a bit for granted. In the end it was only a vessel.
Crowley took nothing for granted. He adjusted its head against the pillow, so it looked like Aziraphale’s body was merely sleeping peacefully, with a gentleness that struck him straight to the heart. Or perhaps that was Crowley’s heart.
“My dear love,” said Aziraphale. He couldn’t tell which of them blushed.
Crowley stood abruptly, turning away from the bed and the body resting mindlessly in it. “So,” he said, “the bed’s out of the question. What now?”
“Well, is there anywhere else you like to, erm, indulge in Onanism, as it were? Only please don’t say it’s that ridiculous chair you’ve got in your office.”
“What’s wrong with the chair?” asked Crowley. His tone was affronted, but even if Aziraphale did not have six thousand years’ experience to tell him so he would have known that he wasn’t serious by the tenor of his thoughts.
“It’s tacky. I have standards.”
Crowley laughed. Aziraphale felt it bubble up from his chest, a bright surge of delight that swept through both of them. “Isn’t that exactly what you said the time you nearly died for some crepes, angel? Never mind, the chair’s bloody uncomfortable anyway. What else? The couch?”
Crowley’s couch was rather uncomfortable itself, more style than function, and Aziraphale was fairly certain Crowley caught the thread of that thought without his saying anything. He scanned the room, turning Crowley’s head to do so. The demon let him, a faint shiver traveling up his spine. Aziraphale didn’t think it was unease. He caught sight of the closed door to the master bath, a room he’d never seen fit to enter before.
“Do you have a tub? I do enjoy a good soak, and sometimes I like to, well, you know. Bring myself off.”
“Ngk,” said Crowley.
Aziraphale watched the fantasy bloom in Crowley’s mind, brief but much too vivid to hide: Aziraphale reclining in steaming water up to his chest, his face and his lips flushed pink, his hands moving below the surface just enough to make the water lap gently against the rim. As an experiment, he tried thinking very hard about the last time he’d actually touched himself in the bath, the way he’d let both hands smooth over his belly and thighs under the cover of bubbles. He’d closed one hand over his shaft and slid two fingers of the other inside himself.
“Angel!” Crowley hissed, clearly caught off-guard. His body flashed hot all over, and Aziraphale noted that his trousers, which had been rather tight to begin with, were now so restrictive it bordered on painful. “All right, all right, bathroom it is. I think you’ll like the shower, I’ve wanked in there loads of times.”
Crowley started across the room in that loose, easy swagger he had, and Aziraphale, without really thinking about it, did the same. As they were both working with the same set of feet, this caused some difficulties, until Aziraphale yielded full control of the corporation to its proper owner. He thought he’d done a good job of imitating Crowley’s walk down in Hell—certainly he’d fooled the other demons—but it felt different, from the inside. They crossed the room together.
The shower dominated the bathroom, an immense expanse of clear glass, bright chrome, and ostentatious black marble that filled the entire rear of the room. Or, at least, Aziraphale assumed it was the shower. Off to the side sat an abstract curl of white porcelain, and the near wall held a smaller curl that might, charitably, be called a sink. Small lights dappled the ceiling, reflecting rather a lot off of all the glass and metal, which only just managed to brighten up the striking black rock. A nervous potted ivy hung trembling in front of the frosted-glass window.
“Good lord,” said Aziraphale. He approached the big curl of porcelain warily. Up close he could see it was a rather deep hollow, with a drain fitted into the smooth curve of the bottom. “What is it?”
Crowley shifted his weight, and Aziraphale could feel the sway all up through his body. “S’ a bathtub, angel, you might have seen one before?”
“Not like this.” Aziraphale rested a hand on the lip of it. It made a very pretty curve, exactly like one of those crisp, ultra-modern sculptures, but, well. “How on earth do you get in without breaking your neck?”
“You don’t. Or, well, I don’t. I don’t use it, angel, come on. It’s just for show.”
“Show?” said Aziraphale, “It’s a bathtub.” But he let Crowley turn them away from the useless tub. He snaked across the room towards the clean lines of the shower.
Aziraphale caught a glimpse of himself—themselves—in the mirror, and started. Of course, he knew he was in Crowley’s body, but it still gave him a bit of a shock, to catch his reflection’s eye and find it yellow and reptilian. A pleasant one, of course. They sauntered closer, leaning over the sink to examine the reflection. There were the eyes he’d always found so beautiful, even on the day they met, when they should have been enemies, and the tattoo that had caused Crowley no end of trouble in certain times and places. There was the dear nose, the lovely sharp features of his adversary’s face, even the fine wrinkles that made the demon look middle-aged to human eyes, faithfully reproduced each time he was discorporated. Aziraphale could tell that Crowley was a bit embarrassed by his soppiness, he could feel the urge to squirm in his spine, but he couldn’t help it. He saw Crowley’s face and he smiled.
Oh, but that was interesting. That was his smile blooming on Crowley’s face. After six thousand years of catching his own reflection he knew it quite well, that particular softness that would have given him away ages ago, if anyone but Crowley had bothered to look. How strange to see it so clearly on another face.
Crowley leaned harder on the sink. “I can see you in me,” he said. Then his brain clearly caught up with his mouth, because he turned quite red. “Er. I mean.”
“Oh, I know what you meant, dearest,” said Aziraphale. “You know I love being inside you.”
“Fuck, angel.” He backed up a step. “All right, we can use this.” He drew off his shirt, exposing the pale skin of his narrow chest. He only got slightly exasperated when Aziraphale immediately folded it and set it neatly aside, as if it were one of his own elderly dress shirts and not something Crowley had simply conjured up from the ether that morning.
He ran a hand down, from the fine dusting of red hair on his chest, over his belly, to tease at the waistband of his jeans. Aziraphale got rather distracted. He did love to watch Crowley touch himself, and now he could also feel the warm glide of skin under his palm, the coarseness of body hair, the way his muscles jumped under his own hand, because he was touching himself for Aziraphale and Aziraphale was touching him. He could also feel how very hard he was, how much he ached. Crowley grinned at him in the mirror, his own sharp smile this time.
“How’s that, then, angel? I can feel how much you want me, you know.” He trailed his fingers over his belt. The texture was not unlike that of his actual scales. Very slowly, showily, he unhooked the fangs on the snake-head buckle and drew it out of the loops. “If you were in your own body I’m sure you would have pounced by now. Where’s your patience?”
“I have patience in plenty. I always want you like this, Crowley.” He rolled up the belt and set it on top of the folded shirt. That one was a clever bit of human artistry, and he knew Crowley was rather fond of it, even if he would never admit it. Then without ceremony he took one of Crowley’s hands and groped him through his jeans. “I just don’t see any reason to delay right now.”
Crowley moaned and his cock gamely tried to twitch against the too-tight denim. “Insatiable,” he said. “Right, well, no more clothes, I’m done with them.”
They struggled together to peel him out of his trousers until Crowley lost patience and miracled them off. He stood up—they stood up—and Aziraphale took a long look at Crowley’s body in the mirror, all his wiry limbs. He doubted he would ever tire of the sight of Crowley nude, now that he was free to look, his face flushed down to his chest, his cock red and rampant. Aziraphale gave it a long, slow stroke and watched Crowley’s mouth go slack, felt the pleasure roll through him.
“Lovely.”
“Come on, I’m supposed to be showing you the shower.”
“Show me, then.”
Crowley turned, giving Aziraphale the briefest glimpse of his arse in the mirror, and stalked towards the shower. Showers, now. Aziraphale had never seen the need to give up the pleasures of a good long soak, but he understood how they worked. Crowley’s, however, sported rather more shower heads and nozzles and other unidentifiable chrome fittings than any being could possibly need, with a truly bewildering array of knobs and dials and things to match. Aziraphale fiddled about, earning himself a face full of cold water as a result, until Crowley took pity and took over.
He turned a knob and a large, flat rectangle overhead, which Aziraphale had not even realized was one of the shower heads, emitted a thin, gentle drizzle. He held out a hand, and, finding the water to be warm, stepped under it. Water pattered lightly all around him, rather like a light spring rain, if rain were hot. It didn’t take long for the room to begin to steam, but the drizzle was slow to soak into Crowley’s hair.
“Well,” said Aziraphale, “this seems rather pleasant. Although I must confess, it doesn’t seem terribly practical, if you’ll pardon my saying so.”
“Oh, it’s not. It’s brilliant. Water bill through the roof, but the pressure’s so weak it will leave you with an all-over soap film. Totally useless except for showing off how rich you are and inspiring envy in other humans.”
“Ah. One of yours, then.”
“Nah, this is pure human ingenuity. S’ nice on the wings, though.”
It was also, Aziraphale had to admit, very nice for warming them all through. Crowley wasn’t cold-blooded, exactly, at least not when his corporation was human-shaped, but he did respond wonderfully to the heat. He could feel his body going languid under the water, and he took his hands and smoothed them down his body just to feel it. He paused to tease over his nipples—Crowley’s weren’t half so sensitive as his own, but aroused as he was the touch felt pleasant—then down further, once again smoothing over his chest and belly, down his thighs. Aziraphale sighed and gave a bit of a wriggle, and the movement went absolutely liquid. There was something about Crowley’s spine that defied understanding, he had no idea how he ever managed to imitate him well enough to fool Hell.
“Thought you were in a hurry,” said Crowley, “Don’t turn tease on me now, angel.”
Aziraphale laughed. “Who’s teasing?” he asked, teasing Crowley’s fingers lightly over his shaft. “I just like touching you, my dear.”
He circled the head, admiring the way it glistened under the water. If he were in his own body he would want to put his mouth on it. He pressed just under the head, where he liked to press his tongue, and Crowley moaned, whether from what he was doing or what he was thinking he could not say. Then Aziraphale relented and did what they both wanted, stroking Crowley in long, firm pulls, from root to tip.
“What do you think about? You said you’ve done it in here before. Loads of times, you said. What do you think about when you touch yourself?”
Crowley made a small, desperate sound and leaned them back against the marble wall, widening his stance a bit. He let Aziraphale keep his hand moving in steady rhythm. “You,” he said at length. His voice was rough. “I think about you a lot, angel.”
“Doing what?”
“Sucking my cock,” he said breathlessly, “or even just—just eating. The way you put food in your mouth is absolutely pornographic, I hope you realize. Do you have any idea what sounds you make, how you sigh? Those oysters in Rome, its been two thousand years and I still remember it like it was yesterday. I thought I was going to go mad. Your bloody mouth, angel,” he groaned, “I could get off just thinking about kissing you.”
Aziraphale collided full-force with a memory of them kissing as Crowley turned his own trick back on him, thinking hard about what they had been doing right before Aziraphale proposed this little venture. He had never had cause to wonder what it was like to kiss his own lips, but now he knew, oh, he knew every intimate detail Crowley had committed to memory, which seemed to be all of them. His lips were soft and plush, apparently, and his mouth warm. His tongue made Crowley dizzy when it slid into his mouth, and knowing that made Aziraphale dizzy, too. One of them began stroking faster.
“And then there’s the rest of you, you know. It’s like you were made to enjoy things, angel. I’ve never known anyone to give themselves up to pleasure the way you do, you absolute hedonist.” He sighed. “Fuck, but it’s hot. I want to sink into you, Aziraphale.”
Aziraphale had always delighted in having a body, of course, ever since the Beginning, and he did indeed enjoy anything that pleased it. Comfortable, he’d thought that, not erotic. Seen through Crowley’s eyes that very comfort looked intensely erotic, unbearably sensual. Was it vanity, to let himself get swept up in it? Of course Crowley looked at him through a lens of love, hardly unbiased, but still.
“Oh, dearest.”
They were both quite lost at that point, both thinking of each other as they liked best: Crowley with his shirt unbuttoned far too low, or turning an elegant leg in stockings, or naked and languid in his bed; Aziraphale in his shirtsleeves and waistcoat, or spread out on his own well-worn couch in the back room, or moaning over a particularly exquisite bite of sushi. Aziraphale was quite loosing track of the division between them, his essence fuzzing into Crowley’s, one bleeding into the next. He touched Crowley, and Crowley touched himself, and the water rained down, warm and gentle. One of them or the other or both of them slid a miraculously slick hand down over Crowley’s arse and made the same move Aziraphale had shown him in his fantasy, pushing two fingers inside while the other hand kept pumping frantically over his cock.
That was enough. Crowley’s body went tight, his spine arched magnificently and they cried out, two voices in one throat as they found completion together. They shot several times, and then they slumped against the wall, spent and shaking.
“Bless,” said Crowley after a long moment. He turned his face up into the spray.
“Yes, quite.”
When Crowley’s legs seemed like they would bear weight again, they pushed off the wall and turned on one of the other shower heads, a much more practical movable unit, for a proper wash. That was a different sort of intimacy, as Crowley showed him exactly how he went about bathing, the simple little domesticities he’d picked up from the humans over the centuries. Aziraphale felt strangely touched by the trust in it, wrapped up in Crowley as he was. He only teased him a little bit for the profusion of little bottles that went into his hair care routine.
They finished and stepped out of the shower. The steam billowed around them in thick clouds, fogging up the mirror and the glass door. Crowley dismissed it with a snap and wrapped up in a towel. Aziraphale quite liked the way Crowley went loose and pliable after finding satisfaction, and found that it felt even better from the inside. They sauntered back into the bedroom, where the cooler air prickled delightfully over Crowley’s damp skin, and Aziraphale had no trouble at all matching his easy, swaying stride. It felt quite natural.
Aziraphale’s body was just where they’d left it, still and peaceful in Crowley’s bed. They looked down on it, and Crowley reached out and touched its face, let his thumb brush its lower lip.
“Time to go back, I think, angel.”
“I suppose it is.”
Crowley bent and kissed him, like the prince waking Sleeping Beauty, and Aziraphale began reluctantly uprooting himself. It was harder to untangle himself from Crowley than he might have expected, but he let his essence flow back into its proper vessel. Suddenly he was not bending over to kiss a still body but lying on his back being kissed, and he blinked open his own eyes and kissed back. Crowley sighed and broke the kiss to look at him.
Aziraphale wriggled until he had settled back into his bones. Everything seemed to be in order, all the little scraps of himself back in their proper places, all his flesh gathered around him in its familiar weight again. He was missing the rush of endorphins from the orgasm in Crowley’s body, which was a shame. Something to remember for next time. There would absolutely be a next time if he had anything to say about it. Crowley was peering down at him a little anxiously, so Aziraphale smiled up at him. “Hello, my dear.”
“Hi.”
“I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did.”
Aziraphale lifted the covers invitingly, and Crowley tossed aside the towel to slither under them. He cuddled up to Aziraphale’s side. “You know I did. You were right, it was fun. Going to stay, angel? I think I might have a nap.”
“Hmm. I might read a bit. Will the light bother you?”
Crowley rolled his eyes. “No, come on, angel, you know I can sleep through anything. I’m going to tempt you into trying it one of these days.”
Aziraphale smiled. “I look forward to it, foul fiend.”
“You might at least finish undressing, though,” said Crowley. He prodded at Aziraphale’s hip. “You’ve still got your bloody waistcoat on.”
“You like my waistcoats,” said Aziraphale, ignoring the demon’s glower, “but you’re quite right, I’ll be much more comfortable without it.” A quick miracle had him trading his day-clothes for some cozy flannel.
“Ugh, more tartan.” Crowley sounded disgusted, but he nuzzled against the soft cotton with every appearance of contentment, and soon enough looked to be falling asleep in earnest.
Aziraphale pet his hair a bit, damp and clean-smelling still, and then he turned and picked up his book from the nightstand. It gave him a thrill of a different sort, that he could leave something so distinctly his just sitting out in the open in Crowley’s flat. He settled back against the pillows, the mattress obligingly molding itself to his body, and opened the book just where he had left off. Crowley looked peaceful next to him, his breath coming in steady, warm puffs at his side. Was there a single angel in Heaven as content as he? He rather doubted it.