Happy Holidays, thekeyholder!
Dec. 10th, 2017 05:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
goe_mod posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
go_exchangeThekeyholder, your secret author used your prompt to write this just for you!
Summary: Notable moments of hand kissing throughout history (or, five times Crowley resists admitting to something and one time he doesn’t.)
Rating: T
Paring: Aziraphale and Crowley
i used to build dreams about you
The first time, it’s the garden, and there is no time to speak of yet.
It’s just after: in the blurry dark trembling of the first rain, the angel is standing with his wings outstretched—sticky feathers blending into one another, lit up dimly with dawdling traces of ethereal glow permeating his skin. The snake studies him, half-surprised and half-fascinated: his own shape has been smooth and easy to assume, and before that—well, there’s hardly been any need for a corporation more solid than a fraction of intensely concentrated light.
But Aziraphale doesn’t seem concerned with his human form, or any curious deviation from it—he has vacant bright eyes and he looks ahead, into the gathering storm. Crawly draws himself up the tree, then down the branch, flexes closer and hovers in the damp air. He feels … curious. It’s a new feeling.
‘You don’t suppose,’ the angel is now saying, very quietly, and then breaks off—looking, all of the sudden, vaguely bashful. The snake watches the light fade into a glint of water sprinkled on flesh, eerie still, if in an entirely different way. ‘You don’t suppose that—if we made a mistake—there would be a way of doing it all over again, in the end?’
Crawly sways in the thickening drizzle, flicking out his tongue to taste the water—and ah, it’s cold and shocking. Something flares ahead of them, perhaps the first thunder, casting an equally shocking glare onto Aziraphale.
‘No,’ Crawly mutters, eyes stunned by the light and unblinking, ‘I think the point might be that there can’t be.’
Aziraphale looks at him then, almost curiously as well, and suddenly reaches over—uncertain fingers brush past the cold wet scales, and Crawly would have recoiled, was he not so entirely surprised.
There’s hardly anything to feel yet, not with the layers and layers of newness and unfamiliarity—except perhaps that the ethereal must have hidden itself snugly in the pretence of human shape by this point, because the veiny light under the angel’s skin has dissipated wholly.
If snakes can’t be tense, Crawly manages even so. And tense he remains, trying to dress his thoughts into words and allowing himself to exude a vague hiss as he fails.
‘Funny,’ Aziraphale then says, in a voice detached and vaguely thoughtful, sliding his hand further down the scales, ‘I figured it would burn.’
…
It is different later, in the particular afterwards that chooses to follow: sticky and hot and uncomfortable and he would writhe were he not constrained to limbs and bones now, and were the sand not this harsh against this newly thin skin.
He cowers under the sun and shudders; this is what falling should have been like, in order to truly feel damning.
There are the first ruins of the first city in front of him. Something heavy settles in his stomach.
‘I should have known,’ a stern, familiar voice comes drifting.
Crowley turns—and he’s almost as intrigued as that first day that by now feels like a hazy improbable memory, when there was still that light under Aziraphale’s skin. Now the surprise lies in the fabric that covers it: the angel is wearing human clothes, looking solid and exasperated, and his bright are eyes are fixed upon Crowley.
And if there’s anything at all, he thinks, that should feel more intolerable than the unrelenting sun, it would be these eyes. But they don’t—for the first time in a long time, he feels justified in his discordant form. Recognition rebuilds something inside him, even if Crowley isn’t quite sure what.
‘Angel,’ he says aloud, voice young and almost elated, ‘who’d have thought? What is it—damage control? Is it how it’s gonna be now, then, mutual check-ups? You must admit, all this was rather more than—’
And suddenly he’s being shoved into the warm stone, and Aziraphale’s hand is clutched around the cloth on his breast, eyes burning white. The angel is deceptively strong, unnervingly so, and Crowley’s untrained human breath hitches under the strain. He fumbles for air, but it suddenly smells human, and it’s suddenly a whole new shock of unprecedented sensation.
‘Don’t try me, snake,’ the angel says. ‘It wasn’t—’
Crowley remembers how to breathe, spits out, ‘Wasn’t what?’
‘Necessary.’ Aziraphale’s face is too close to his: Crowley wants to blink or recoil but finds himself unable to—it’s almost as if letting this entire wretched new world out of sight, even for a moment, would cost him whatever frail grip he has on it.
Gradually, Aziraphale’s clutch subsides and the angel leans away somewhat. His voice grows hesitant, ‘What’s wrong with your eyes? They’re not—’
Crowley forces himself to focus. He tries to assess this new-old face in front of him, grow accustomed to it, recognise The Adversary in its lines and hollows. The angel does look earthlier now, more palpable—the skin that’s supposed to be unearthly is swarthy from the sun, tangled unkempt hair blown forward—and Crowley doesn’t know if it’s better or worse, and he doesn’t know if his body seems as eerily inhuman as Aziraphale’s once had, in the garden.
Probably yes, probably more so, because he still feels like he’s burning out of his skin right now and he wants to protest something rather silly, maybe simply that this is not really what I had in mind when I said I want out. I never really wanted to—
Aziraphale withdraws abruptly, looking conflicted. Something of the ferocity evaporates from his eyes, melts into traces of familiar, vague bashfulness.
‘Er,’ he says, sounding sheepish. ‘I’m sorry, that was rather harsh, wasn’t it? I’m not entirely sure if I’m grasping the concept of smiting quite well.’ He releases Crowley’s tunic entirely.
Led by a frantic impulse to know, Crowley snatches the angel’s hand mid-air. He swiftly pulls it forward and brings up to his mouth, perhaps to taste it, perhaps to bite, because even that still feels more natural, easier to comprehend.
But his teeth barely graze the patch of smooth feverish skin on Aziraphale’s wrist before Crowley freezes, a new thought taking over him. He drops the angel’s hand.
There’s, suddenly, this odd and foreign sense of shame, in how none of this … none of this curiosity feels like evil intent. Crowley half-wants to blurt out, I’m still learning this human thing. And, is it supposed to be this nice? Are you?
‘Funny,’ he says instead, through pliant uncertain lips, ‘I figured it would burn.’
The angel looks down at his hand as though realising its existence for the first time. He looks surprised.
‘How did you—’ he begins, after a long moment, and there’s no heat in the word.
‘I didn’t, though,’ Crowley immediately counters, almost hissing. ‘If you’re talking about the city. Didn’t do it. It was already … uh, over by the time I showed up. Sorry to disappoint.’
He wants to think he’ll manage to remember the initial shove and vengeful bright eyes later, to help him thread the proper guidelines of his new existence here.
What he does remember will be this: warm skin against his clumsy lips, and how inconceivably strangled Aziraphale sounds when he says,
‘You mean—you—but they couldn’t have done it themselves?’
…
1327, and he’s standing in the snow, and Jorge’s library is burning.
Simply another farrago of conflicted sensations. Crowley feels a sting of cold on his ankles and the warm haze of the fire on his upturned face—and, bizarrely, he wants to laugh. There is no sense in it: the blind old man dying for the love of his God—stern and understandable as He ought to be—along with the heresy he found in a book.
Poetics: Comedy.
Fool, Crowley thinks dully, staring into the fire, if only you knew how it’s all nothing less than just that. A goddamned comedy of errors.
He could tell. He was there in the beginning, after all, and heard the ringing silence from above very clearly. He was the snake, in flesh, he nudged the apple forward. He was there: he remembers the embarrassed angel, and the startling rain. He remembers what has followed.
‘Fool,’ Crowley whispers, tenaciously, ‘if He didn’t let you laugh, you’d all go blasted insane.’
He doesn’t quite say, I would, anyway; his throat constricts. Perhaps it’s just the smoke.
He raises his perpetually cold hands to his eyes to rub at his eyes—skin dry, unnervingly rough, fingers bony. He tries to remember the dizzying comparison—how many years ago? why does it even matter?—but something in his memory refuses, as though still as acutely ashamed.
But when he opens his eyes once again, there’s a figure huddled at the shimmering periphery of vision, among the melting orange-blazed snow. A shabby woollen cloak and curly hair, and Crowley has never seen the angel look quite so lost.
He starts almost involuntarily, drawn forward like a stray cat recognising his chosen and unaware companion.
Aziraphale barely looks his way, his face—which Crowley has learned by this time, down to every angle, and still fails to see in it what he needs to—twitching in the ever-changing light and shadow. He looks familiar: somewhat scruffy, somewhat dishevelled.
‘This is sacrilegious,’ the angel says, very quietly, without turning. ‘I don’t understand.’
Crowley quirks an eyebrow. ‘You don’t understand fanaticism?’ he says wryly. ‘Well, angel, that’ll be the flimsy moment when you have don’t doubt turn into don’t think and—well. Man sees heresy, man burns down everything in reach. Man dies before he can muster up some regret. Man continues.’
Aziraphale murmurs something incoherent that still sounds profoundly unangelic and sniffs. Crowley shuffles his feet in the snow.
‘He was one of yours, mind you,’ he mutters, well aware that it makes the matters even worse. He cringes. ‘But, ah—so was the other one. William of … of something. Baskerville, was it? William of Baskerville, yeah. Brilliant chap, let me tell you, with the glasses and whatnot. Glasses have an enormous future.’
Aziraphale still doesn’t deign him with any sort of verbal answer more articulate than a sniff.
‘What I’m trying to say is,’ Crowley offers uneasily, cracking another lopsided grin, ‘… you just let me pester the humans with doubt like I do, and maybe … maybe more of them will actually think before starting the holy fire or whatever, yeah?’
He can’t quite help it, this odd … this odd warmth welling up in him, and knows it well by this time—an unspeakable reaction, inevitable pull towards the other one. Crowley feels better already, steadier on his feet once again, and he wants to persevere.
‘C’mon, angel,’ he murmurs. ‘One book less in the world, it’s not quite its end.’
And there must be something in that, because Aziraphale tears his eyes away from the tower at last and turns them to Crowley—weary and sullen as they never are when dealing with any sort of blatant villainous intent. The spectacle of misconception before them apparently touches something deeper, and Crowley recognises the angel’s expression in a shuddering second.
‘Funny if we both got it wrong, eh?’ the angel mutters with a wan smile, and it sounds almost caustic.
Something inside Crowley coils painfully just then, because there are things in this world that he will allow, and some that just won’t do.
And alright, he may well agonise in his own homely doubt and yield into the fitful dithering from time to time, but he’d be damned—or more damned than he already is, at least—if he lets Aziraphale become anything like that. He needs the counterpart and he needs the steady light; what else could he look back to—the bloody rain?
So he reaches out, impulsively, to catch the angel’s hand—briefly shocked, as always, by its inconspicuous easy warmth; as though Aziraphale has truly managed to fit more comfortably into entertaining a living manifestation, while Crowley remained rigid and uneasy in both his life and long cold fingers—and tugs him away from the monastery. Away from the fire.
‘Not really,’ he says mildly.
At least, he thinks, we don’t blame each other anymore. Call it the Arrangement or sanity, at least it works.
‘Come on, angel, stop fussing,’ he adds, obnoxiously enough to hope for a decent exasperation in response this time, ‘there’s still a plague to try and herd. And some hot little papal debate. And consider the village; there might be proper wine—’
Aziraphale huffs, indignant, ‘Oh, you’re incorrigible. There’s truly no sanctity to you—’
‘Thank you,’ Crowley says haughtily, and he almost means it. ‘Glad you appreciate my work ethic.’
…
At times, the world grows too much with him. The angel has always been better at tolerating grandiosity; Crowley finds it all too easy to gawp and stumble.
(Perhaps it’s the legs; he’s always felt he’s been allocated a bit more than a fair share of them.)
July, 1789, and vive la France—the air is so thick with gunpowder that Crowley feels nauseated, ducking into an arch and cringing in the vibrations of a cannon firing. Somebody is screaming; a woman, but he can’t get a proper fix on her location.
And the worst thing is, like with that blessed Inquisition and with countless others, he hasn’t even known, he hasn’t even realised, not until he’s stumbled right into the middle of it: the prison, the guillotines, the blood—
Crowley can smell a commendation with it, coppery on his tongue, and it doesn’t help.
Then suddenly—obviously—there’s Aziraphale as well, shouting something in French, herding a flock of people out of a gate, in mismatched clothes, with askew glasses.
Crowley dashes forward to catch his arm before the angel has the chance to advance further into the farrago.
‘Angel!’ he croaks out, and Aziraphale turns to face him, startled at the familiar voice, yet looking thunderous still. ‘What are you doing?’
‘This was not the way it was supposed to go,’ Aziraphale replies, tersely. ‘Crowley, I did try to avoid meddling, but for the love of God, they’re simply imp—’
He looks startlingly different from when Crowley has last seen him—which is not quite surprising, given the difference between chuckling damply into a cup of sangria in Spain and this current place—stern and absent-minded. Something that Crowley has always lacked, conviction, at times makes Aziraphale almost a being of ruthlessness.
‘Now, if you don’t mind, Crowley, lovely to see you and all, dear boy, but I’d rather—’
Crowley doesn’t listen: his eyes catch up with the blood staining the angel’s ridiculous coat, and the sliced skin of his palm, pressed impatiently into the fabric as if to will away the bleeding. Crowley might not be entirely at home with his own corporation, but he knows the rules—and he knows that Aziraphale likes to pretend there still aren’t any, that the heavenly does extend into the physical and ethereal still means immortal.
Mindlessly, he reaches out and pulls Aziraphale’s injured hand to himself, ‘Oh, you bleeding idiot.’
There’s no need for that, he thinks at the same time, in self-directed frustration, no need for being this invested.
The angel winces. ‘Now really, Crowley—’
But he’s cut off, or maybe simply caught off guard, by Crowley biting at his own cuff and tearing away the white cloth—an action both disarmingly irrational and disarmingly easy—only to wrap it tightly over Aziraphale’s outstretched, pliant hand.
(No need, but since when does he do what he needs to?)
‘Don’t you have other things to do?’ the angel mutters peevishly, but it lacks conviction this time. ‘Revenge and revolts and suchlike, this must be like a field trip to you.’
Another vibration reverberates around them, sprinkling Crowley’s hair with dust and almost causing him to blink. He ties the makeshift bandage roughly—on his part, determined not to descend so low as to answer.
Somehow, inexplicably, he feels furious. He’s not sure if he has a right to be.
‘Oh, damn you,’ Aziraphale then says, voice oddly soft.
Crowley braces himself and looks up into the unnerving bright eyes. He snaps, ‘Well, pardon me, angel. Perhaps you’d rather I let you bleed to death? Nothing like a merry case of blood poisoning after all, I’ll be glad to—’
In lieu of an answer, Aziraphale pulls Crowley’s hand up and kisses it—a quick lethal touch, barely even there—before abruptly releasing it. For a moment, Crowley effectively forgets to breathe.
‘Thank you,’ Aziraphale says evenly. Crowley is not even sure what the angel is referring to: the bandage, which is unlikely, or the reminder of a broader perspective, which would be at least convenient. Or perhaps it’s something else entirely—but Crowley prefers not to think of it, lest he visibly shivers.
He waits for the angel to half-disappear among the rubble, stunned and ashamed again, even if it wasn’t him this time, even if it probably wasn’t quite a time at all—until something inside him breaks.
‘Wait!’ he calls out, hoarsely. ‘I do have other—what should I—whose side am I on? Azira—’
He doesn’t realise the hopelessness of the question until Aziraphale doesn’t hear him, and somebody else shoves him into a wall; the idiocy of asking at all if he’s not sure that he’s ever believed in sides. He collects himself with a wince, trying to ignore the tingling patch of skin on his right hand, and stalks towards the prison.
Away—as he tends to do.
…
Time trudges on, and it still doesn’t help. He sleeps through the nineteenth century: dreaming languid, lopsided dreams, and there are things in them that he doesn’t want to remember should he ever choose to wake up.
In 1832, he gets up with a hoarse blessing, staggers up to the window, hears shots and shouts, sees red.
Gabriel’s undercrackers, we’ve got to move out from Paris, Crowley thinks blearily, managing a full owlish blink. S’all getting ridiculous, I have to tell Azi—
He freezes.
The dream comes back. The dream, in which he wasn’t alone, and there was no shame in yearning—or rather, there was no yearning. No distance, no dissonance, no sides, no—
‘Damn you,’ Crowley mumbles, closing his eyes. ‘Damn you.’
He turns away from the window—half-hating himself for wanting to rush out and make sure there are no sliced palms or burnt books this time—and buries himself in the sheets of his stark lonely bed once again; sleeps on, remembering warm hands and bright eyes at quieter times.
It’s no longer a lie, and not even a half-truth: these days, he does miss the bloody rain.
…
1945, London, the Ritz. Apparently unable to hold back any more, Aziraphale bursts out laughing.
It’s a rare thing to see him discard the usual composure to such extent: crinkles around the eyes, grinning into his wine as though he can’t quite stop himself, one of his soft hands travelling up to brush away a stray wisp of hair.
‘You,’ the angel chokes out, finally, somewhere between another sip and an exasperated glance at Crowley, blurry and fond as it really ought not to be, ‘you snake. You shouldn’t say that. And for God’s sake, Crowley, I mean it. I don’t even know why I’m laughing. That’s—tha’s corrupting, that is. S’playing n’fair.’
The angel is beginning to slur, Crowley notes with delight, as it tends to go after his second bottle.
‘Oh, c’mon,’ he counters, grinning himself, and swaying in his chair. ‘Don’t tell me it’s undeserved. S’been a right mess. Free will, my ass. Talk about the word backfire.’
Aziraphale tsks fretfully, leaning away and drumming his fingers on the tablecloth; there are still remains of that smile lingering in his mouth’s corners. ‘Should I really stoop so low as to point fingers?’ he asks innocuously, ‘My dear, if I remember correctly, there was the matter of the apple.’
‘Oh, yeah? What of it?’ Sluggishly, Crowley attempts to pour the wine again and snickers as his hand draws an arch in the air. Aziraphale makes a movement as though he wants to steady the demon’s hand, but thinks against it at the last moment, merely patting the tablecloth awkwardly.
‘I meant—it didn’t hand itself to that poor woman, my boy’ he says, sniffing.
‘Neither did the sssword,’ Crowley drawls, and just as Aziraphale’s drawing breath for a haughty response, he smugly throws in, ‘which all just leads us to your precious word ineffable.’
Aziraphale groans. ‘Oh, you are not playing fair.’
Crowley snickers once again. ‘Anytime, angel.’
(And maybe he isn’t playing fair, maybe he’s once again pushing it too far. Maybe it’s a tricky game to play to win a moment as sparse as this while risking spilling something more than wine. Maybe it’s all a little bit pitiful how he fishes for these points of interception.)
‘But alright,’ Aziraphale mutters, shaking his head in defeat. ‘I’ll give you that. Free will can be a right bugger at times.’
Crowley makes a low sound of approval at that, feeling warm and somewhat hazy, and allows his eyes to zoom in passively on the table. His glass, half-filled with Pinot Noir, stands inches from Aziraphale’s unguarded hand.
An audacious, tingling—and not at all coherent—thought develops somewhere in the peripheries of his mind, pressing and pressing until it takes over Crowley’s attention span entirely. The sentiment is familiar, embarrassingly so, but the intensity of it always has him dizzied.
If he reached over and swayed, just slightly, knocked the glass just a notch aside, he would be able to touch—
‘Nevertheless, truly—oh, you can’t imagine,’ Aziraphale says suddenly, in an entirely grave voice. ‘How grateful I am that dreadful … thing is over by now.’
In an instant, the thought is strangled, accompanying the rest of Crowley in cautious tensing. His hazy eyes snap up—shielded by the new dark glasses now—to focus on the angel, who looks pensive and detached.
Crowley’s thoughts flutter back to the sight of him, wings out, standing among the new ruins of another city, an improbable, humbling time later. There’s an—ironically preserved—figure of a human preacher behind him, stone sprinkled with dust, and Aziraphale looks surreal among the decaying remains of Dresden, with his tweed coat and clean hands. Crowley approaches slowly, stinking of blood and witnessed death, feeling closer to Hell than he remembers being in millennia.
He has thought, what is the etiquette here? Are they completing a circle, are they beginning another loop? If he tried to do a human thing, if he tried to hug the angel and ask for a break, how fast would he get pushed away?
He’s thought, we’ve never been to that damned opera, and instantly felt sick.
Back in the restaurant, even the vaguely jazz music seems to falter, the Moment—projected by Crowley’s tipsy delusion or not—gone and irretrievable as it ever was.
He catches his glass deliberately with tips of cold fingers and pulls it sharply away from where it’s tempting. He tries not to think about how Aziraphale may or may not look somewhat disappointed.
He wants to say, me too, but he’s not sure if he could still stomach the disbelief.
…
He tries to open the door three times and drops the keys repeatedly from his clumsy stiff hands, mumbling something that he’s not quite sure is a curse or blessing, before Aziraphale beats him to picking them up.
‘There you are,’ the angel says briskly, pushing the door open and guiding Crowley into his own flat. Crowley, who’s now trying not to stumble with a steady hand pushing at the small of his back, and trying not to think of the many ways in which this is not a good idea.
(‘Or we could go to my place,’ he’s said, mindlessly as he always bloody is.
‘Yes,’ Aziraphale has replied, as he hasn’t been supposed to, brightening unbearably. ‘I suppose we could.’)
‘Well, isn’t this nice,’ the angel now says, in a voice that can only be described as doubtful, standing cautiously among the white fluffy carpet. ‘So … er, consequent.’
Crowley can’t help the fleeting burning thought that it should be impossible for Aziraphale to clash so entirely with absolutely every-goddamned-thing the flat’s interior comprises of; and yet still somehow manage to look like he fits anyway, making this blasted cold place just a little more homelike than it has a right to be.
‘Lying’s a terrible habit, you know,’ Crowley croaks out, staggering towards the kitchen, led by the desperate and anchoring memory of having a couple of wine bottles stashed somewhere in there. He tugs at his own tie and loosens it, then yanks his collar open.
Aziraphale shoots him a mostly pretended annoyed glance that Crowley projects rather than actually sees, what with facing so determinedly away.
‘Sarcasm isn’t a particularly flattering feature, either,’ the angel responds brightly and Crowley swallows.
The wine is there alright—it should make this easier, in theory, smoother and devoid of all the unnecessary thinking. Turn it into something inconsequential; nothing easier to dismiss than a drunken scuffle, after all, in a life's worth of them.
Or it could make it infinitely worse, especially that there’s no table by the white leather sofa and no border physical enough to serve as a shield from the proximity, but Crowley doesn’t want to think of that. No—no thinking. Thinking’s where all trouble starts.
He still doesn’t as much as glance across his shoulder, instead listening to the angel’s—no longer cautious, the damned bloody bastard has always been better at adapting, hasn’t he—footsteps measuring the room among an incessant buzz of his ethereal babble.
‘Why don’t you,’ Crowley whispers, sarcastically, to his shaky traitorous hands fumbling with the corkscrew, ‘make yourself at home.’
‘… which is why I always maintain the engraving should go on the—sorry, did you say something, dear boy?’
Crowley sucks the wine and blood from the place where he’s cut himself and straightens up. One hand pressed to his mouth, the other cradling the bottle and the glasses haphazardly, he saunters into the living room. ‘Nah. Wine okay with you?’
Aziraphale turns to face him, looking as though he’s about to pick up on the abandoned thread of anecdote, and falters. For a brief improbable moment, he seems thrown off balance: his eyes settle on Crowley and linger there as he blinks, an expression on his face toeing the line with flustered.
Crowley looks away.
Oh, he must look a fright, for sure, dishevelled and unhinged as he is, and so blatantly uncovered in all the ways that matter except for the most literal—but it would still sting less it if Aziraphale had the decency not to look this … this startled.
‘I’m fine with whatever you have in mind for today, dear,’ Aziraphale meanwhile says, sounding oddly strangled.
A burning thought, I doubt that, flashes through Crowley’s mind before he could have it properly banished.
He strides decisively past the angel, feeling unnervingly warm, and drops onto the carpet. Leaning slack against the sofa, he fixes his eyes on the bottle as he exhales with a hiss and pours the wine—and not a drop dares touch the carpet, at least.
After a moment of hesitance, Aziraphale follows suit and perches himself down close by, with caution of someone stepping on thin ice.
To Crowley’s horror, he then proceeds to take off his tweed jacket and deftly dislodges the tartan-patterned bow-tie before miracling it away. With a slight stirring of the air, Crowley catches a waft of cinnamon soap and skin. The warm feeling flares into a burning feeling. He sinks a little lower on the carpet.
Well, so much for being able to look Aziraphale in the eyes.
More proximity has in no way been what Crowley has had had in mind, having meant none of this sleaze as an invitation, but rather the opposite. But he has to play along now, unless he much fancies explaining: pretend that he just tends to lounge about on his carpet, as Aziraphale has probably assumed is how it goes, in his supposed decadence of a demonic house life. He cringes at the very thought.
So he resolves to continue avoiding any direct contact, drains the glass in one burning go, and stares blearily ahead at the spotless television set.
Oblivious to Crowley’s suffering, Aziraphale makes a small indignant sound at the back of his throat. ‘Crowley, that’s not how you—my dear, you of all people should know that Riesling—’
‘Yeah, don’t care,’ Crowley counters vaguely, aiming for something in the way of wretched, and slumping even more against the couch. ‘Not today.’
It’s almost like you’re doing this on purpose, he thinks desperately. Like you know I—
He can’t decide whether Aziraphale’s voice is more biting or amused when the angel speaks up again, ‘Connoisseur on weekdays, humble consumer at holiday, a cheatsheet patented by Hell itself. And to think, Crowley, that I’ve always thought you to be the snob.’
‘Ha,’ Crowley says before his lips connect with the brain and he can quite stop himself, words childishly accusing and somehow hazy in his throat—the wine is getting to him already, and isn’t it just like him, doesn’t he just love a tumble into something irreversible without second damned thought, ’but that’s nothing new now, is it? You’ve always had that bright head of yours full of ideas about me, Aziraphale. Each one better than the bloody other.’
(‘Especially not to you.’)
A pause. He feels Aziraphale’s eyes on his skin, and this time, this time it does bloody burn. But he’s too far gone to retreat. ‘And somehow, Himself only knows bloody how, it’s always more than there’s actually to talk about. Funny, eh?’
‘Crowley,’ Aziraphale begins, guardedly once again, and Crowley has no stomach for it. He swallows down another shaky glass, and mumbles,
‘Should listen to something, s’getting dreadful quiet.’
He half-reaches, half-crawls up to the shiny black stereo, leaning on his elbow and picking out a cassette at random—it’s proper Tchaikovsky for once, but it doesn’t matter, it could well be blasted Mercury and he wouldn’t care. Anything to drown out this damned voice in his head, sounding ironically like his own, saying, you fool.
It’s 1990, right after the Almost Apocalypse, or at least Crowley thinks so—he might be losing grip on it all, because time’s become a little lazy and imprecise after it’s almost ended—and he’s sprawled upon the pristine carpet of his London flat, alive and breathing, trying fervently not to say something important.
And at the same time it’s something else entirely; the Babylon all over again, and the snow and the revolution, and even the precious first garden, and—
(‘You don’t suppose that—if we made a mistake—there would be a way of doing it all over again, in the end?’)
The real question is, Crowley thinks, not if you can, but if you want to.
His hands are shaking when he pushes the cassette into the stereo; so much that it’s visible, and the clatter of plastic and metal audible in the air. He inhales with a hiss, blesses, tries again.
And again, and again, and again, they will go, teasing one another like two circling creatures of prey, or like astral bodies pulled by unrelenting gravity—and there’s nothing occult or ethereal in that, it’s just blasted physics, and Crowley has always hated laws, always hated patterns.
Aziraphale is still looking at him, intently, but he can’t afford to raise his eyes and fall even further down—even if it’s just lying to himself, because he’s been down there for whole millennia now. He basically invented down there.
Softly, Aziraphale says, ‘My dear, are you alright?’
And that blasted my dear again, as though anyone spoke like that, except with … with an intention. Of course, this would be what they’ll have preserved in the world, this cosy little almost of theirs, precious and insufferable at the same time, but tilting more and more towards the latter.
All of the sudden, Crowley desperately wants to punch something—which, coincidentally, doesn’t quite exclude Aziraphale.
‘Am I—’ something inside him is coiled tight and rigid, almost restricting the breath. ‘Am I alright?’ he repeats, listlessly. ‘Am I—for fuck’s sake, Aziraphale. No, I’m not alright, I’m not even sure if I’m going to make it through the—’
He’s cut off, rather majestically, by Aziraphale’s hand coming to rest on top of his own on the stereo: and as always, the warmth alone catches him unaware.
‘Stop it,’ Crowley instantly whispers, suddenly frightened. ‘I don’t need your—’
‘Crowley,’ Aziraphale says, voice much steadier than his, and the most bizarre thing is that he doesn’t listen, having his hand firmly wrapped around Crowley’s.
‘You need to stop. You are going to live through the night, we’ve been through this already. Ineffability, and—’ he winces. ‘And good grief, Crowley, we’ve agreed to move on, haven’t we? And I gladly would, but something’s clearly still bothering you. And I refuse to believe it’s the same thing, because you never cling to anything so—’
Crowley lets out a hiss, exhaling. His head is spinning, ‘Oh, I don’t?’
Then Aziraphale asks, insistently, ‘What’s wrong?’ without releasing Crowley’s hand.
And something gives way.
‘What’s wrong? What’s—ha. Wrong, that’s the thing.’ He’s nearly choked up, sounding not so much bitter as simply panicked.
‘What is wrong with me? You tell me, angel. After all these years, you must have a hunch. Come on, I’m not that difficult to see through. And yesterday—yesterday’s been a pretty damn big hint, I’d sssay.’
‘I don’t—’ Aziraphale begins worriedly, but Crowley doesn’t let him finish, audaciously determined to follow through.
‘I ran into a bloody burning building, Aziraphale,’ he snaps, and in a dizzying second, looks the angel straight in the eyes. ‘Because you—’
Bright eyes. He loses his nerve.
‘Something’s wrong with me, yeah,’ Crowley manages, after a moment. ‘Been for a while. Care to tell me what?’
Aziraphale’s thumb brushes past Crowley’s still cold, still trembling hand. And then—slowly, almost ceremoniously—he brings it to his lips and kisses.
Once again in however many years, the relived longing and shame and confusion come full force, but something goes wonderfully wrong this time. Perhaps there’s simply too much intention to write off as anything mistaken.
For once, it’s neither brief nor careless, lasting long enough for Crowley to realise he’s quite forgotten to breathe. There’s a new rush of warmth in his veins: Aziraphale doesn’t let go. He doesn’t lower his eyes.
‘From my perspective,’ the angel says, quietly, ‘not a thing.’
It feels like a punch in the gut, but different. It almost feels like a revelation. But different: warmer, scarier. Infinitely more confusing. Crowley swallows, and shakes his head, very lightly. He can hear his own blood.
Then, after a long, long moment, Aziraphale adds, in the impossible sort of soft, amused voice, ‘But surely you must realise,’ he pauses. ‘You must know, that in this matter, I’ll always be rather inevitably biased.’
And there’s something terrifying happening inside Crowley’s chest at these words, a stuttering rhythm of a heart that has for once remembered how to work the human way—and now, of all times, when he has to speak and explain, that he just simply didn’t know if—
‘Aziraphale,’ he blurts out instead, hoarsely, ‘d’you think we can—’
‘I think, dear,’ Aziraphale says, flatly, ‘that I don’t give much of a damn.’
He smiles. Quite overwhelmed, Crowley nods, feeling the dizzying warmth overcome his entire body, tingling.
He lets go of the cassette and lets himself be tugged up into the embrace—awkward angle, numb elbows and all, and it’s still more than anything—nuzzling the angel’s neck and clutching at his shirt, shivering for a good reason for once.
What a curious thing, to think: oh, so I wasn’t alone.
‘Well, s’high bloody time, angel’ he mutters into Aziraphale’s hair, vaguely. ‘Any more of that and I’d honestly have to—mhh.’
He’s being kissed. Properly. By Aziraphale. And even if he still wants to say something more, he doesn’t.
But that’s alright, thinks Crowley brightly, who cares about theorising anyway.
Summary: Notable moments of hand kissing throughout history (or, five times Crowley resists admitting to something and one time he doesn’t.)
Rating: T
Paring: Aziraphale and Crowley
i used to build dreams about you
I sleep. I dream. I make up things
that I would never say. I say them very quietly.
— Richard Siken, Meanwhile
The first time, it’s the garden, and there is no time to speak of yet.
It’s just after: in the blurry dark trembling of the first rain, the angel is standing with his wings outstretched—sticky feathers blending into one another, lit up dimly with dawdling traces of ethereal glow permeating his skin. The snake studies him, half-surprised and half-fascinated: his own shape has been smooth and easy to assume, and before that—well, there’s hardly been any need for a corporation more solid than a fraction of intensely concentrated light.
But Aziraphale doesn’t seem concerned with his human form, or any curious deviation from it—he has vacant bright eyes and he looks ahead, into the gathering storm. Crawly draws himself up the tree, then down the branch, flexes closer and hovers in the damp air. He feels … curious. It’s a new feeling.
‘You don’t suppose,’ the angel is now saying, very quietly, and then breaks off—looking, all of the sudden, vaguely bashful. The snake watches the light fade into a glint of water sprinkled on flesh, eerie still, if in an entirely different way. ‘You don’t suppose that—if we made a mistake—there would be a way of doing it all over again, in the end?’
Crawly sways in the thickening drizzle, flicking out his tongue to taste the water—and ah, it’s cold and shocking. Something flares ahead of them, perhaps the first thunder, casting an equally shocking glare onto Aziraphale.
‘No,’ Crawly mutters, eyes stunned by the light and unblinking, ‘I think the point might be that there can’t be.’
Aziraphale looks at him then, almost curiously as well, and suddenly reaches over—uncertain fingers brush past the cold wet scales, and Crawly would have recoiled, was he not so entirely surprised.
There’s hardly anything to feel yet, not with the layers and layers of newness and unfamiliarity—except perhaps that the ethereal must have hidden itself snugly in the pretence of human shape by this point, because the veiny light under the angel’s skin has dissipated wholly.
If snakes can’t be tense, Crawly manages even so. And tense he remains, trying to dress his thoughts into words and allowing himself to exude a vague hiss as he fails.
‘Funny,’ Aziraphale then says, in a voice detached and vaguely thoughtful, sliding his hand further down the scales, ‘I figured it would burn.’
It is different later, in the particular afterwards that chooses to follow: sticky and hot and uncomfortable and he would writhe were he not constrained to limbs and bones now, and were the sand not this harsh against this newly thin skin.
He cowers under the sun and shudders; this is what falling should have been like, in order to truly feel damning.
There are the first ruins of the first city in front of him. Something heavy settles in his stomach.
‘I should have known,’ a stern, familiar voice comes drifting.
Crowley turns—and he’s almost as intrigued as that first day that by now feels like a hazy improbable memory, when there was still that light under Aziraphale’s skin. Now the surprise lies in the fabric that covers it: the angel is wearing human clothes, looking solid and exasperated, and his bright are eyes are fixed upon Crowley.
And if there’s anything at all, he thinks, that should feel more intolerable than the unrelenting sun, it would be these eyes. But they don’t—for the first time in a long time, he feels justified in his discordant form. Recognition rebuilds something inside him, even if Crowley isn’t quite sure what.
‘Angel,’ he says aloud, voice young and almost elated, ‘who’d have thought? What is it—damage control? Is it how it’s gonna be now, then, mutual check-ups? You must admit, all this was rather more than—’
And suddenly he’s being shoved into the warm stone, and Aziraphale’s hand is clutched around the cloth on his breast, eyes burning white. The angel is deceptively strong, unnervingly so, and Crowley’s untrained human breath hitches under the strain. He fumbles for air, but it suddenly smells human, and it’s suddenly a whole new shock of unprecedented sensation.
‘Don’t try me, snake,’ the angel says. ‘It wasn’t—’
Crowley remembers how to breathe, spits out, ‘Wasn’t what?’
‘Necessary.’ Aziraphale’s face is too close to his: Crowley wants to blink or recoil but finds himself unable to—it’s almost as if letting this entire wretched new world out of sight, even for a moment, would cost him whatever frail grip he has on it.
Gradually, Aziraphale’s clutch subsides and the angel leans away somewhat. His voice grows hesitant, ‘What’s wrong with your eyes? They’re not—’
Crowley forces himself to focus. He tries to assess this new-old face in front of him, grow accustomed to it, recognise The Adversary in its lines and hollows. The angel does look earthlier now, more palpable—the skin that’s supposed to be unearthly is swarthy from the sun, tangled unkempt hair blown forward—and Crowley doesn’t know if it’s better or worse, and he doesn’t know if his body seems as eerily inhuman as Aziraphale’s once had, in the garden.
Probably yes, probably more so, because he still feels like he’s burning out of his skin right now and he wants to protest something rather silly, maybe simply that this is not really what I had in mind when I said I want out. I never really wanted to—
Aziraphale withdraws abruptly, looking conflicted. Something of the ferocity evaporates from his eyes, melts into traces of familiar, vague bashfulness.
‘Er,’ he says, sounding sheepish. ‘I’m sorry, that was rather harsh, wasn’t it? I’m not entirely sure if I’m grasping the concept of smiting quite well.’ He releases Crowley’s tunic entirely.
Led by a frantic impulse to know, Crowley snatches the angel’s hand mid-air. He swiftly pulls it forward and brings up to his mouth, perhaps to taste it, perhaps to bite, because even that still feels more natural, easier to comprehend.
But his teeth barely graze the patch of smooth feverish skin on Aziraphale’s wrist before Crowley freezes, a new thought taking over him. He drops the angel’s hand.
There’s, suddenly, this odd and foreign sense of shame, in how none of this … none of this curiosity feels like evil intent. Crowley half-wants to blurt out, I’m still learning this human thing. And, is it supposed to be this nice? Are you?
‘Funny,’ he says instead, through pliant uncertain lips, ‘I figured it would burn.’
The angel looks down at his hand as though realising its existence for the first time. He looks surprised.
‘How did you—’ he begins, after a long moment, and there’s no heat in the word.
‘I didn’t, though,’ Crowley immediately counters, almost hissing. ‘If you’re talking about the city. Didn’t do it. It was already … uh, over by the time I showed up. Sorry to disappoint.’
He wants to think he’ll manage to remember the initial shove and vengeful bright eyes later, to help him thread the proper guidelines of his new existence here.
What he does remember will be this: warm skin against his clumsy lips, and how inconceivably strangled Aziraphale sounds when he says,
‘You mean—you—but they couldn’t have done it themselves?’
1327, and he’s standing in the snow, and Jorge’s library is burning.
Simply another farrago of conflicted sensations. Crowley feels a sting of cold on his ankles and the warm haze of the fire on his upturned face—and, bizarrely, he wants to laugh. There is no sense in it: the blind old man dying for the love of his God—stern and understandable as He ought to be—along with the heresy he found in a book.
Poetics: Comedy.
Fool, Crowley thinks dully, staring into the fire, if only you knew how it’s all nothing less than just that. A goddamned comedy of errors.
He could tell. He was there in the beginning, after all, and heard the ringing silence from above very clearly. He was the snake, in flesh, he nudged the apple forward. He was there: he remembers the embarrassed angel, and the startling rain. He remembers what has followed.
‘Fool,’ Crowley whispers, tenaciously, ‘if He didn’t let you laugh, you’d all go blasted insane.’
He doesn’t quite say, I would, anyway; his throat constricts. Perhaps it’s just the smoke.
He raises his perpetually cold hands to his eyes to rub at his eyes—skin dry, unnervingly rough, fingers bony. He tries to remember the dizzying comparison—how many years ago? why does it even matter?—but something in his memory refuses, as though still as acutely ashamed.
But when he opens his eyes once again, there’s a figure huddled at the shimmering periphery of vision, among the melting orange-blazed snow. A shabby woollen cloak and curly hair, and Crowley has never seen the angel look quite so lost.
He starts almost involuntarily, drawn forward like a stray cat recognising his chosen and unaware companion.
Aziraphale barely looks his way, his face—which Crowley has learned by this time, down to every angle, and still fails to see in it what he needs to—twitching in the ever-changing light and shadow. He looks familiar: somewhat scruffy, somewhat dishevelled.
‘This is sacrilegious,’ the angel says, very quietly, without turning. ‘I don’t understand.’
Crowley quirks an eyebrow. ‘You don’t understand fanaticism?’ he says wryly. ‘Well, angel, that’ll be the flimsy moment when you have don’t doubt turn into don’t think and—well. Man sees heresy, man burns down everything in reach. Man dies before he can muster up some regret. Man continues.’
Aziraphale murmurs something incoherent that still sounds profoundly unangelic and sniffs. Crowley shuffles his feet in the snow.
‘He was one of yours, mind you,’ he mutters, well aware that it makes the matters even worse. He cringes. ‘But, ah—so was the other one. William of … of something. Baskerville, was it? William of Baskerville, yeah. Brilliant chap, let me tell you, with the glasses and whatnot. Glasses have an enormous future.’
Aziraphale still doesn’t deign him with any sort of verbal answer more articulate than a sniff.
‘What I’m trying to say is,’ Crowley offers uneasily, cracking another lopsided grin, ‘… you just let me pester the humans with doubt like I do, and maybe … maybe more of them will actually think before starting the holy fire or whatever, yeah?’
He can’t quite help it, this odd … this odd warmth welling up in him, and knows it well by this time—an unspeakable reaction, inevitable pull towards the other one. Crowley feels better already, steadier on his feet once again, and he wants to persevere.
‘C’mon, angel,’ he murmurs. ‘One book less in the world, it’s not quite its end.’
And there must be something in that, because Aziraphale tears his eyes away from the tower at last and turns them to Crowley—weary and sullen as they never are when dealing with any sort of blatant villainous intent. The spectacle of misconception before them apparently touches something deeper, and Crowley recognises the angel’s expression in a shuddering second.
‘Funny if we both got it wrong, eh?’ the angel mutters with a wan smile, and it sounds almost caustic.
Something inside Crowley coils painfully just then, because there are things in this world that he will allow, and some that just won’t do.
And alright, he may well agonise in his own homely doubt and yield into the fitful dithering from time to time, but he’d be damned—or more damned than he already is, at least—if he lets Aziraphale become anything like that. He needs the counterpart and he needs the steady light; what else could he look back to—the bloody rain?
So he reaches out, impulsively, to catch the angel’s hand—briefly shocked, as always, by its inconspicuous easy warmth; as though Aziraphale has truly managed to fit more comfortably into entertaining a living manifestation, while Crowley remained rigid and uneasy in both his life and long cold fingers—and tugs him away from the monastery. Away from the fire.
‘Not really,’ he says mildly.
At least, he thinks, we don’t blame each other anymore. Call it the Arrangement or sanity, at least it works.
‘Come on, angel, stop fussing,’ he adds, obnoxiously enough to hope for a decent exasperation in response this time, ‘there’s still a plague to try and herd. And some hot little papal debate. And consider the village; there might be proper wine—’
Aziraphale huffs, indignant, ‘Oh, you’re incorrigible. There’s truly no sanctity to you—’
‘Thank you,’ Crowley says haughtily, and he almost means it. ‘Glad you appreciate my work ethic.’
At times, the world grows too much with him. The angel has always been better at tolerating grandiosity; Crowley finds it all too easy to gawp and stumble.
(Perhaps it’s the legs; he’s always felt he’s been allocated a bit more than a fair share of them.)
July, 1789, and vive la France—the air is so thick with gunpowder that Crowley feels nauseated, ducking into an arch and cringing in the vibrations of a cannon firing. Somebody is screaming; a woman, but he can’t get a proper fix on her location.
And the worst thing is, like with that blessed Inquisition and with countless others, he hasn’t even known, he hasn’t even realised, not until he’s stumbled right into the middle of it: the prison, the guillotines, the blood—
Crowley can smell a commendation with it, coppery on his tongue, and it doesn’t help.
Then suddenly—obviously—there’s Aziraphale as well, shouting something in French, herding a flock of people out of a gate, in mismatched clothes, with askew glasses.
Crowley dashes forward to catch his arm before the angel has the chance to advance further into the farrago.
‘Angel!’ he croaks out, and Aziraphale turns to face him, startled at the familiar voice, yet looking thunderous still. ‘What are you doing?’
‘This was not the way it was supposed to go,’ Aziraphale replies, tersely. ‘Crowley, I did try to avoid meddling, but for the love of God, they’re simply imp—’
He looks startlingly different from when Crowley has last seen him—which is not quite surprising, given the difference between chuckling damply into a cup of sangria in Spain and this current place—stern and absent-minded. Something that Crowley has always lacked, conviction, at times makes Aziraphale almost a being of ruthlessness.
‘Now, if you don’t mind, Crowley, lovely to see you and all, dear boy, but I’d rather—’
Crowley doesn’t listen: his eyes catch up with the blood staining the angel’s ridiculous coat, and the sliced skin of his palm, pressed impatiently into the fabric as if to will away the bleeding. Crowley might not be entirely at home with his own corporation, but he knows the rules—and he knows that Aziraphale likes to pretend there still aren’t any, that the heavenly does extend into the physical and ethereal still means immortal.
Mindlessly, he reaches out and pulls Aziraphale’s injured hand to himself, ‘Oh, you bleeding idiot.’
There’s no need for that, he thinks at the same time, in self-directed frustration, no need for being this invested.
The angel winces. ‘Now really, Crowley—’
But he’s cut off, or maybe simply caught off guard, by Crowley biting at his own cuff and tearing away the white cloth—an action both disarmingly irrational and disarmingly easy—only to wrap it tightly over Aziraphale’s outstretched, pliant hand.
(No need, but since when does he do what he needs to?)
‘Don’t you have other things to do?’ the angel mutters peevishly, but it lacks conviction this time. ‘Revenge and revolts and suchlike, this must be like a field trip to you.’
Another vibration reverberates around them, sprinkling Crowley’s hair with dust and almost causing him to blink. He ties the makeshift bandage roughly—on his part, determined not to descend so low as to answer.
Somehow, inexplicably, he feels furious. He’s not sure if he has a right to be.
‘Oh, damn you,’ Aziraphale then says, voice oddly soft.
Crowley braces himself and looks up into the unnerving bright eyes. He snaps, ‘Well, pardon me, angel. Perhaps you’d rather I let you bleed to death? Nothing like a merry case of blood poisoning after all, I’ll be glad to—’
In lieu of an answer, Aziraphale pulls Crowley’s hand up and kisses it—a quick lethal touch, barely even there—before abruptly releasing it. For a moment, Crowley effectively forgets to breathe.
‘Thank you,’ Aziraphale says evenly. Crowley is not even sure what the angel is referring to: the bandage, which is unlikely, or the reminder of a broader perspective, which would be at least convenient. Or perhaps it’s something else entirely—but Crowley prefers not to think of it, lest he visibly shivers.
He waits for the angel to half-disappear among the rubble, stunned and ashamed again, even if it wasn’t him this time, even if it probably wasn’t quite a time at all—until something inside him breaks.
‘Wait!’ he calls out, hoarsely. ‘I do have other—what should I—whose side am I on? Azira—’
He doesn’t realise the hopelessness of the question until Aziraphale doesn’t hear him, and somebody else shoves him into a wall; the idiocy of asking at all if he’s not sure that he’s ever believed in sides. He collects himself with a wince, trying to ignore the tingling patch of skin on his right hand, and stalks towards the prison.
Away—as he tends to do.
Time trudges on, and it still doesn’t help. He sleeps through the nineteenth century: dreaming languid, lopsided dreams, and there are things in them that he doesn’t want to remember should he ever choose to wake up.
In 1832, he gets up with a hoarse blessing, staggers up to the window, hears shots and shouts, sees red.
Gabriel’s undercrackers, we’ve got to move out from Paris, Crowley thinks blearily, managing a full owlish blink. S’all getting ridiculous, I have to tell Azi—
He freezes.
The dream comes back. The dream, in which he wasn’t alone, and there was no shame in yearning—or rather, there was no yearning. No distance, no dissonance, no sides, no—
‘Damn you,’ Crowley mumbles, closing his eyes. ‘Damn you.’
He turns away from the window—half-hating himself for wanting to rush out and make sure there are no sliced palms or burnt books this time—and buries himself in the sheets of his stark lonely bed once again; sleeps on, remembering warm hands and bright eyes at quieter times.
It’s no longer a lie, and not even a half-truth: these days, he does miss the bloody rain.
1945, London, the Ritz. Apparently unable to hold back any more, Aziraphale bursts out laughing.
It’s a rare thing to see him discard the usual composure to such extent: crinkles around the eyes, grinning into his wine as though he can’t quite stop himself, one of his soft hands travelling up to brush away a stray wisp of hair.
‘You,’ the angel chokes out, finally, somewhere between another sip and an exasperated glance at Crowley, blurry and fond as it really ought not to be, ‘you snake. You shouldn’t say that. And for God’s sake, Crowley, I mean it. I don’t even know why I’m laughing. That’s—tha’s corrupting, that is. S’playing n’fair.’
The angel is beginning to slur, Crowley notes with delight, as it tends to go after his second bottle.
‘Oh, c’mon,’ he counters, grinning himself, and swaying in his chair. ‘Don’t tell me it’s undeserved. S’been a right mess. Free will, my ass. Talk about the word backfire.’
Aziraphale tsks fretfully, leaning away and drumming his fingers on the tablecloth; there are still remains of that smile lingering in his mouth’s corners. ‘Should I really stoop so low as to point fingers?’ he asks innocuously, ‘My dear, if I remember correctly, there was the matter of the apple.’
‘Oh, yeah? What of it?’ Sluggishly, Crowley attempts to pour the wine again and snickers as his hand draws an arch in the air. Aziraphale makes a movement as though he wants to steady the demon’s hand, but thinks against it at the last moment, merely patting the tablecloth awkwardly.
‘I meant—it didn’t hand itself to that poor woman, my boy’ he says, sniffing.
‘Neither did the sssword,’ Crowley drawls, and just as Aziraphale’s drawing breath for a haughty response, he smugly throws in, ‘which all just leads us to your precious word ineffable.’
Aziraphale groans. ‘Oh, you are not playing fair.’
Crowley snickers once again. ‘Anytime, angel.’
(And maybe he isn’t playing fair, maybe he’s once again pushing it too far. Maybe it’s a tricky game to play to win a moment as sparse as this while risking spilling something more than wine. Maybe it’s all a little bit pitiful how he fishes for these points of interception.)
‘But alright,’ Aziraphale mutters, shaking his head in defeat. ‘I’ll give you that. Free will can be a right bugger at times.’
Crowley makes a low sound of approval at that, feeling warm and somewhat hazy, and allows his eyes to zoom in passively on the table. His glass, half-filled with Pinot Noir, stands inches from Aziraphale’s unguarded hand.
An audacious, tingling—and not at all coherent—thought develops somewhere in the peripheries of his mind, pressing and pressing until it takes over Crowley’s attention span entirely. The sentiment is familiar, embarrassingly so, but the intensity of it always has him dizzied.
If he reached over and swayed, just slightly, knocked the glass just a notch aside, he would be able to touch—
‘Nevertheless, truly—oh, you can’t imagine,’ Aziraphale says suddenly, in an entirely grave voice. ‘How grateful I am that dreadful … thing is over by now.’
In an instant, the thought is strangled, accompanying the rest of Crowley in cautious tensing. His hazy eyes snap up—shielded by the new dark glasses now—to focus on the angel, who looks pensive and detached.
Crowley’s thoughts flutter back to the sight of him, wings out, standing among the new ruins of another city, an improbable, humbling time later. There’s an—ironically preserved—figure of a human preacher behind him, stone sprinkled with dust, and Aziraphale looks surreal among the decaying remains of Dresden, with his tweed coat and clean hands. Crowley approaches slowly, stinking of blood and witnessed death, feeling closer to Hell than he remembers being in millennia.
He has thought, what is the etiquette here? Are they completing a circle, are they beginning another loop? If he tried to do a human thing, if he tried to hug the angel and ask for a break, how fast would he get pushed away?
He’s thought, we’ve never been to that damned opera, and instantly felt sick.
Back in the restaurant, even the vaguely jazz music seems to falter, the Moment—projected by Crowley’s tipsy delusion or not—gone and irretrievable as it ever was.
He catches his glass deliberately with tips of cold fingers and pulls it sharply away from where it’s tempting. He tries not to think about how Aziraphale may or may not look somewhat disappointed.
He wants to say, me too, but he’s not sure if he could still stomach the disbelief.
He tries to open the door three times and drops the keys repeatedly from his clumsy stiff hands, mumbling something that he’s not quite sure is a curse or blessing, before Aziraphale beats him to picking them up.
‘There you are,’ the angel says briskly, pushing the door open and guiding Crowley into his own flat. Crowley, who’s now trying not to stumble with a steady hand pushing at the small of his back, and trying not to think of the many ways in which this is not a good idea.
(‘Or we could go to my place,’ he’s said, mindlessly as he always bloody is.
‘Yes,’ Aziraphale has replied, as he hasn’t been supposed to, brightening unbearably. ‘I suppose we could.’)
‘Well, isn’t this nice,’ the angel now says, in a voice that can only be described as doubtful, standing cautiously among the white fluffy carpet. ‘So … er, consequent.’
Crowley can’t help the fleeting burning thought that it should be impossible for Aziraphale to clash so entirely with absolutely every-goddamned-thing the flat’s interior comprises of; and yet still somehow manage to look like he fits anyway, making this blasted cold place just a little more homelike than it has a right to be.
‘Lying’s a terrible habit, you know,’ Crowley croaks out, staggering towards the kitchen, led by the desperate and anchoring memory of having a couple of wine bottles stashed somewhere in there. He tugs at his own tie and loosens it, then yanks his collar open.
Aziraphale shoots him a mostly pretended annoyed glance that Crowley projects rather than actually sees, what with facing so determinedly away.
‘Sarcasm isn’t a particularly flattering feature, either,’ the angel responds brightly and Crowley swallows.
The wine is there alright—it should make this easier, in theory, smoother and devoid of all the unnecessary thinking. Turn it into something inconsequential; nothing easier to dismiss than a drunken scuffle, after all, in a life's worth of them.
Or it could make it infinitely worse, especially that there’s no table by the white leather sofa and no border physical enough to serve as a shield from the proximity, but Crowley doesn’t want to think of that. No—no thinking. Thinking’s where all trouble starts.
He still doesn’t as much as glance across his shoulder, instead listening to the angel’s—no longer cautious, the damned bloody bastard has always been better at adapting, hasn’t he—footsteps measuring the room among an incessant buzz of his ethereal babble.
‘Why don’t you,’ Crowley whispers, sarcastically, to his shaky traitorous hands fumbling with the corkscrew, ‘make yourself at home.’
‘… which is why I always maintain the engraving should go on the—sorry, did you say something, dear boy?’
Crowley sucks the wine and blood from the place where he’s cut himself and straightens up. One hand pressed to his mouth, the other cradling the bottle and the glasses haphazardly, he saunters into the living room. ‘Nah. Wine okay with you?’
Aziraphale turns to face him, looking as though he’s about to pick up on the abandoned thread of anecdote, and falters. For a brief improbable moment, he seems thrown off balance: his eyes settle on Crowley and linger there as he blinks, an expression on his face toeing the line with flustered.
Crowley looks away.
Oh, he must look a fright, for sure, dishevelled and unhinged as he is, and so blatantly uncovered in all the ways that matter except for the most literal—but it would still sting less it if Aziraphale had the decency not to look this … this startled.
‘I’m fine with whatever you have in mind for today, dear,’ Aziraphale meanwhile says, sounding oddly strangled.
A burning thought, I doubt that, flashes through Crowley’s mind before he could have it properly banished.
He strides decisively past the angel, feeling unnervingly warm, and drops onto the carpet. Leaning slack against the sofa, he fixes his eyes on the bottle as he exhales with a hiss and pours the wine—and not a drop dares touch the carpet, at least.
After a moment of hesitance, Aziraphale follows suit and perches himself down close by, with caution of someone stepping on thin ice.
To Crowley’s horror, he then proceeds to take off his tweed jacket and deftly dislodges the tartan-patterned bow-tie before miracling it away. With a slight stirring of the air, Crowley catches a waft of cinnamon soap and skin. The warm feeling flares into a burning feeling. He sinks a little lower on the carpet.
Well, so much for being able to look Aziraphale in the eyes.
More proximity has in no way been what Crowley has had had in mind, having meant none of this sleaze as an invitation, but rather the opposite. But he has to play along now, unless he much fancies explaining: pretend that he just tends to lounge about on his carpet, as Aziraphale has probably assumed is how it goes, in his supposed decadence of a demonic house life. He cringes at the very thought.
So he resolves to continue avoiding any direct contact, drains the glass in one burning go, and stares blearily ahead at the spotless television set.
Oblivious to Crowley’s suffering, Aziraphale makes a small indignant sound at the back of his throat. ‘Crowley, that’s not how you—my dear, you of all people should know that Riesling—’
‘Yeah, don’t care,’ Crowley counters vaguely, aiming for something in the way of wretched, and slumping even more against the couch. ‘Not today.’
It’s almost like you’re doing this on purpose, he thinks desperately. Like you know I—
He can’t decide whether Aziraphale’s voice is more biting or amused when the angel speaks up again, ‘Connoisseur on weekdays, humble consumer at holiday, a cheatsheet patented by Hell itself. And to think, Crowley, that I’ve always thought you to be the snob.’
‘Ha,’ Crowley says before his lips connect with the brain and he can quite stop himself, words childishly accusing and somehow hazy in his throat—the wine is getting to him already, and isn’t it just like him, doesn’t he just love a tumble into something irreversible without second damned thought, ’but that’s nothing new now, is it? You’ve always had that bright head of yours full of ideas about me, Aziraphale. Each one better than the bloody other.’
(‘Especially not to you.’)
A pause. He feels Aziraphale’s eyes on his skin, and this time, this time it does bloody burn. But he’s too far gone to retreat. ‘And somehow, Himself only knows bloody how, it’s always more than there’s actually to talk about. Funny, eh?’
‘Crowley,’ Aziraphale begins, guardedly once again, and Crowley has no stomach for it. He swallows down another shaky glass, and mumbles,
‘Should listen to something, s’getting dreadful quiet.’
He half-reaches, half-crawls up to the shiny black stereo, leaning on his elbow and picking out a cassette at random—it’s proper Tchaikovsky for once, but it doesn’t matter, it could well be blasted Mercury and he wouldn’t care. Anything to drown out this damned voice in his head, sounding ironically like his own, saying, you fool.
It’s 1990, right after the Almost Apocalypse, or at least Crowley thinks so—he might be losing grip on it all, because time’s become a little lazy and imprecise after it’s almost ended—and he’s sprawled upon the pristine carpet of his London flat, alive and breathing, trying fervently not to say something important.
And at the same time it’s something else entirely; the Babylon all over again, and the snow and the revolution, and even the precious first garden, and—
(‘You don’t suppose that—if we made a mistake—there would be a way of doing it all over again, in the end?’)
The real question is, Crowley thinks, not if you can, but if you want to.
His hands are shaking when he pushes the cassette into the stereo; so much that it’s visible, and the clatter of plastic and metal audible in the air. He inhales with a hiss, blesses, tries again.
And again, and again, and again, they will go, teasing one another like two circling creatures of prey, or like astral bodies pulled by unrelenting gravity—and there’s nothing occult or ethereal in that, it’s just blasted physics, and Crowley has always hated laws, always hated patterns.
Aziraphale is still looking at him, intently, but he can’t afford to raise his eyes and fall even further down—even if it’s just lying to himself, because he’s been down there for whole millennia now. He basically invented down there.
Softly, Aziraphale says, ‘My dear, are you alright?’
And that blasted my dear again, as though anyone spoke like that, except with … with an intention. Of course, this would be what they’ll have preserved in the world, this cosy little almost of theirs, precious and insufferable at the same time, but tilting more and more towards the latter.
All of the sudden, Crowley desperately wants to punch something—which, coincidentally, doesn’t quite exclude Aziraphale.
‘Am I—’ something inside him is coiled tight and rigid, almost restricting the breath. ‘Am I alright?’ he repeats, listlessly. ‘Am I—for fuck’s sake, Aziraphale. No, I’m not alright, I’m not even sure if I’m going to make it through the—’
He’s cut off, rather majestically, by Aziraphale’s hand coming to rest on top of his own on the stereo: and as always, the warmth alone catches him unaware.
‘Stop it,’ Crowley instantly whispers, suddenly frightened. ‘I don’t need your—’
‘Crowley,’ Aziraphale says, voice much steadier than his, and the most bizarre thing is that he doesn’t listen, having his hand firmly wrapped around Crowley’s.
‘You need to stop. You are going to live through the night, we’ve been through this already. Ineffability, and—’ he winces. ‘And good grief, Crowley, we’ve agreed to move on, haven’t we? And I gladly would, but something’s clearly still bothering you. And I refuse to believe it’s the same thing, because you never cling to anything so—’
Crowley lets out a hiss, exhaling. His head is spinning, ‘Oh, I don’t?’
Then Aziraphale asks, insistently, ‘What’s wrong?’ without releasing Crowley’s hand.
And something gives way.
‘What’s wrong? What’s—ha. Wrong, that’s the thing.’ He’s nearly choked up, sounding not so much bitter as simply panicked.
‘What is wrong with me? You tell me, angel. After all these years, you must have a hunch. Come on, I’m not that difficult to see through. And yesterday—yesterday’s been a pretty damn big hint, I’d sssay.’
‘I don’t—’ Aziraphale begins worriedly, but Crowley doesn’t let him finish, audaciously determined to follow through.
‘I ran into a bloody burning building, Aziraphale,’ he snaps, and in a dizzying second, looks the angel straight in the eyes. ‘Because you—’
Bright eyes. He loses his nerve.
‘Something’s wrong with me, yeah,’ Crowley manages, after a moment. ‘Been for a while. Care to tell me what?’
Aziraphale’s thumb brushes past Crowley’s still cold, still trembling hand. And then—slowly, almost ceremoniously—he brings it to his lips and kisses.
Once again in however many years, the relived longing and shame and confusion come full force, but something goes wonderfully wrong this time. Perhaps there’s simply too much intention to write off as anything mistaken.
For once, it’s neither brief nor careless, lasting long enough for Crowley to realise he’s quite forgotten to breathe. There’s a new rush of warmth in his veins: Aziraphale doesn’t let go. He doesn’t lower his eyes.
‘From my perspective,’ the angel says, quietly, ‘not a thing.’
It feels like a punch in the gut, but different. It almost feels like a revelation. But different: warmer, scarier. Infinitely more confusing. Crowley swallows, and shakes his head, very lightly. He can hear his own blood.
Then, after a long, long moment, Aziraphale adds, in the impossible sort of soft, amused voice, ‘But surely you must realise,’ he pauses. ‘You must know, that in this matter, I’ll always be rather inevitably biased.’
And there’s something terrifying happening inside Crowley’s chest at these words, a stuttering rhythm of a heart that has for once remembered how to work the human way—and now, of all times, when he has to speak and explain, that he just simply didn’t know if—
‘Aziraphale,’ he blurts out instead, hoarsely, ‘d’you think we can—’
‘I think, dear,’ Aziraphale says, flatly, ‘that I don’t give much of a damn.’
He smiles. Quite overwhelmed, Crowley nods, feeling the dizzying warmth overcome his entire body, tingling.
He lets go of the cassette and lets himself be tugged up into the embrace—awkward angle, numb elbows and all, and it’s still more than anything—nuzzling the angel’s neck and clutching at his shirt, shivering for a good reason for once.
What a curious thing, to think: oh, so I wasn’t alone.
‘Well, s’high bloody time, angel’ he mutters into Aziraphale’s hair, vaguely. ‘Any more of that and I’d honestly have to—mhh.’
He’s being kissed. Properly. By Aziraphale. And even if he still wants to say something more, he doesn’t.
But that’s alright, thinks Crowley brightly, who cares about theorising anyway.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2017-12-10 02:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2017-12-12 02:15 pm (UTC)- the Secret Author
(no subject)
Date: 2017-12-10 03:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2017-12-12 02:15 pm (UTC)- the Secret Author
(no subject)
Date: 2017-12-10 07:36 pm (UTC)The language is so amazing, it took my breath away from the first paragraph already:
It’s just after: in the blurry dark trembling of the first rain, the angel is standing with his wings outstretched—sticky feathers blending into one another, lit up dimly with dawdling traces of ethereal glow permeating his skin.
You know, I really enjoyed it that hand kissing wasn't taken literally and that it wasn't just one of them doing it, but it was reciprocated!!!
This might have been my favourite hand "kissing" (or well, second fave after the last one)Led by a frantic impulse to know, Crowley snatches the angel’s hand mid-air. He swiftly pulls it forward and brings up to his mouth, perhaps to taste it, perhaps to bite, because even that still feels more natural, easier to comprehend.
But his teeth barely graze the patch of smooth feverish skin on Aziraphale’s wrist before Crowley freezes, a new thought taking over him. He drops the angel’s hand.
CROWLEY PATCHING UP AZIRAPHALE DURING THE FRENCH REVOLUTION? KILL ME
The latter part of the fic is so brilliant, I don't even have the proper words to express my feelings. Ugh that angst! God, Crowley is good at it, isn't he? But then this:
‘Something’s wrong with me, yeah,’ Crowley manages, after a moment. ‘Been for a while. Care to tell me what?’
Aziraphale’s thumb brushes past Crowley’s still cold, still trembling hand. And then—slowly, almost ceremoniously—he brings it to his lips and kisses.
Once again in however many years, the relived longing and shame and confusion come full force, but something goes wonderfully wrong this time. Perhaps there’s simply too much intention to write off as anything mistaken.
For once, it’s neither brief nor careless, lasting long enough for Crowley to realise he’s quite forgotten to breathe. There’s a new rush of warmth in his veins: Aziraphale doesn’t let go. He doesn’t lower his eyes.
‘From my perspective,’ the angel says, quietly, ‘not a thing.’
brought me back to life, it was just so intense and beautiful!
Thank you SOOO much for this!!! I love it!!! <333
(no subject)
Date: 2017-12-12 02:18 pm (UTC)And it's amazing that it was the prompt you were hoping for, because it was the prompt I was hoping to get! I remember seeing a post along the lines of "hand-kissing is high sacred romance and i think we need to revive it" somewhere even before participating and when I saw your prompt I just went... Heck YES.
Anyway - Merry Christmas once again! <3
- Your Secret Author xx
(no subject)
Date: 2017-12-12 07:23 pm (UTC)Merry Christmas to you as well, thanks so much for this awesome gift! <3
(no subject)
Date: 2017-12-10 09:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2017-12-12 02:19 pm (UTC)- the Secret Author
(no subject)
Date: 2017-12-11 03:59 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2017-12-12 02:19 pm (UTC)- the Secret Author
(no subject)
Date: 2017-12-11 11:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2017-12-12 02:20 pm (UTC)too <3
- the Secret Author
(no subject)
Date: 2017-12-14 04:57 am (UTC)I LOVE how Crowley the optimist kept help but try, even from so long ago, to push things as far as they can go. He's so scared, but he just can't help but try <3
Some favorite lines:
-"it’s almost as if letting this entire wretched new world out of sight, even for a moment, would cost him whatever frail grip he has on it."
-"is it supposed to be this nice? Are you?"
-"The angel looks down at his hand as though realising its existence for the first time. He looks surprised."
-the entire part after the library burns when Crowley is thinking about how he needs his counterpart, including the ending line "glad you appreciate my work ethic"
-your description of Aziraphale laughing is wonderful
-"Crowley can’t help the fleeting burning thought that it should be impossible for Aziraphale to clash so entirely with absolutely every-goddamned-thing the flat’s interior comprises of; and yet still somehow manage to look like he fits anyway, making this blasted cold place just a little more homelike than it has a right to be."
-Crowley pretending that he just sits on the floor all the time really does seem like something he'd do XD
-‘From my perspective,’ the angel says, quietly, ‘not a thing.’ PSFALDSIFDSHA
:O It doesn't burn when what they're least expecting is to be comfortable around each other, and then when burning would take on an entirely different meaning, it does.
Btw, I just realized that you write in present tense, which I normally can't stand, but it works SO WELL with your writing.
This was all so lovely. It was perfect :)
And the last line. Crowley so different from all the times he was suffering. I'm so happy :')
(no subject)
Date: 2017-12-16 11:50 pm (UTC)I'm really, really glad that you enjoyed how the touching/burning paradox thingy worked out, as well as my depressively-optimistic Crowley and ... and generally that you have enjoyed it!
(And I'm very glad that the present tense worked out because it's my typical way of writing but I did debate switching into past tense...but if it reads well, then all's good!)
Love, the Secret Author xx
(no subject)
Date: 2017-12-19 06:44 pm (UTC)Then Aziraphale asks, insistently, ‘What’s wrong?’ without releasing Crowley’s hand.
And something gives way.
‘What’s wrong? What’s—ha. Wrong, that’s the thing.’ He’s nearly choked up, sounding not so much bitter as simply panicked.
‘What is wrong with me? You tell me, angel. After all these years, you must have a hunch. Come on, I’m not that difficult to see through. And yesterday—yesterday’s been a pretty damn big hint, I’d sssay.’
‘I don’t—’ Aziraphale begins worriedly, but Crowley doesn’t let him finish, audaciously determined to follow through.
‘I ran into a bloody burning building, Aziraphale,’ he snaps, and in a dizzying second, looks the angel straight in the eyes. ‘Because you—’
Bright eyes. He loses his nerve.
‘Something’s wrong with me, yeah,’ Crowley manages, after a moment. ‘Been for a while. Care to tell me what?’
Aziraphale’s thumb brushes past Crowley’s still cold, still trembling hand. And then—slowly, almost ceremoniously—he brings it to his lips and kisses.
Kisses on the hand, God. I'm a sucker for them.
(no subject)
Date: 2017-12-20 08:01 pm (UTC)(And I'm very happy to hear you enjoyed this bit in particular, because it's exactly what I loved writing the most!)
Again, thank you for the lovely comment!
- the Secret Author
(no subject)
Date: 2017-12-19 08:04 pm (UTC)(Perhaps it’s the legs; he’s always felt he’s been allocated a bit more than a fair share of them.) heheheh AW yisssssss.
And this whole passage: ‘I’m fine with whatever you have in mind for today, dear,’ Aziraphale meanwhile says, sounding oddly strangled.
A burning thought, I doubt that, flashes through Crowley’s mind before he could have it properly banished.
He strides decisively past the angel, feeling unnervingly warm, and drops onto the carpet. Leaning slack against the sofa, he fixes his eyes on the bottle as he exhales with a hiss and pours the wine—and not a drop dares touch the carpet, at least.
Nearly six thousand years and they're still struggling to get past nearly existence-threatening awkwardness. I'm grateful Crowley managed to control the wine, at least.
Love the theme of hand-kisses, especially when they are disguised as something else. Gorgeous story, musical style, vivid images.
(no subject)
Date: 2017-12-20 08:04 pm (UTC)And yes, definitely, the straightforward and not-so-straightforward hand kissing was definitely an exquisite theme to try and work through.
I'm delighted to hear you enjoyed this take!
Love, the Secret Author xx
(no subject)
Date: 2017-12-25 12:16 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2017-12-26 11:29 pm (UTC)- the Secret Author
(no subject)
Date: 2018-01-01 08:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2018-01-06 01:19 pm (UTC)- the Secret Author
(no subject)
Date: 2018-01-04 10:31 am (UTC)And your style is so subtle and breathtaking!
The prompt was fabulous already (I'm so fond of hand-kissing) and you wrote a real masterpiece from it.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-01-06 01:24 pm (UTC)(And gee, I'm wondering if you're right, that would be so exciting)
- the Secret Author