Happy Holidays, Ineffablemercury!
Jan. 4th, 2020 07:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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go_exchangeTitle: The Year Without a Summer
Recipient: ineffablemercury
Pairing: Aziraphale/Crowley
Rating: Explicit
Word Count: ~4500
Content Notes/Warnings: Some extremely unconvincing dub-con roleplay.
Summary: When Crowley begins to suspect that Aziraphale is coming under too much of the wrong kind of scrutiny, he decides there’s nothing for it but to abduct him: to the tunnels of the old Hellfire Club.
Author’s Notes: I mashed up two of your prompts, ineffablemercury. This is a sort of Hades/Persephone AU set during the Regency period. There’s also a bit of service top Crowley, Aziraphale in lingerie, and aftercare. I hope you like it!
London, 1815
Everything changed when the demon Lord Crowley laid eyes for the first time in a decade upon the Principality Aziraphale, Earl of Eden. The angel had changed little to human eyes, and from his London bookshop he continued to spread such cheer and kindness as he could muster. He beguiled mortal eyes into seeing an unremarkable person, very little out of the ordinary, although he spread a thin veneer of light and warmth in his wake.
Lord Crowley could see a storm about to gather in the air about him, and the fine hairs on his neck did rise at a shimmering perception of displeased angelic aether. He perceived that Aziraphale might be in danger of some censure, and not from Crowley’s own side this time.
It was in the spring of 1815 that Heaven’s wrath was roused, and the toe of the Metatron was stubbed upon a mountain in the far Pacific Ocean.
And lo, fearing the gathering storm, Lord Crowley trailed his angel through the pleasure-gardens of London, jealous of every sun-bathed flower and relentlessly greedy duck. Above him, the air seemed to ripple with a misty sense of doom, and Crowley turned up his collar and pushed down his hat to hide himself in vain from the eyes of God.
Ladies flitted through the garden in their high-waisted gowns like legless birds. Tall hats of men pushed aggressively through the air in their wake. They shivered and fluttered around one another in the unseasonable chill.
Aziraphale stood in one corner by a decorative urn, and the wings he wasn’t showing rippled the air in his consternation. He seemed to flicker in and out, and there was a cold blue light shining on him in a way that spotlit every flaw and cast harsh shadows.
The air was suspiciously acrid even by London standards. Something was very very wrong, and it wasn’t just the general air of madness, tooth decay, and coverup that wafted from the palace out over the city to engulf the whole country in its uncertainty and denial.
This wouldn’t do.
The ozone stench of Heaven blotted out the struggling flowers.
Surrounded by dissolute and handsome young gamblers, watching centuries-old family fortunes fizzle into a sorry slurry of weak excuses, broken kneecaps, and worse, Lord Crowley couldn’t even bring himself to revel in any of it. Playing card tricks wasn’t any fun when there weren’t any stakes in it for him - and a quick flash of fangs enough to make sure any questions were deflected at other suckers at the table.
England was off her game. The king was more unfit than usual, which was saying something.
Something about the angel was off too. Aziraphale should have been in fine fettle in his fusty little shop - books flew off the presses and onto the shelves at a dizzying rate. Even Crowley’s attempts to make sure most of them were the most disreputable sort of novel, the rate of uplifting and improving literature was still an overwhelming tide and all Crowley’s work was like shoveling back sand dunes at high tide.
Yet there was something uncannily listless about him. The air of his shop was stifling, and the glances of the mortals about him unusually hostile. Crowley was simply not up for a repeat of their French meeting, despite the excellent wine they’d sampled from the cellars of recently decapitated nobility. So extremely dramatic, the French. England would presumably keep their collars buttoned and endure the loss of the occasional colony with passive-aggressive dignity.
One hoped. Crowley ignored the increasingly threatening messages from his home office with more than the usual resentment, even condescending to use them for kindling in his not-exactly-infernal home fire.
Restlessness festered in him.
There was nothing for it but this. He was going to have to do something drastic. Something mildly demonic for once - but, if he played his cards right (or at least played his metaphorical cards far better than his literal ones), there wouldn’t be any actual harm done, and possibly a great deal of pleasure to be had. Or at the very least, better company.
He began to plan. Well, perhaps planning is overstating it. Crowley had always been rather a seat-of-the-pants sort of demon, even well before pants were invented and even when he was in a shape incapable of wearing them. Crowley didn’t plan. He certainly didn’t conspire either. At his best, he could manage a sort of short-lived burst of scheming, which was hardly distinguishable from a daydream most of the time.
But the ideas swimming up from the not-particularly demonic primal swamp of Crowley’s mind were starting to grow sufficient lungs and legs to survive on land - as Darwin would later imagine in his works of ambitious fiction - and what they were shaping into wasn’t really device or design or strategy. It was more of an unusually complex instinct.
It was a heist, strictly speaking. An abduction. A ravishment of sorts, in the original sense (thoughts of it taking on other senses as well went firmly to the back of Crowley’s reptile brain - which in fact was pretty much all of his brain). If the Arrangement was getting out of hand and risking danger to Aziraphale - and if Aziraphale’s light was burning too brightly and drawing unwanted attention - then best to put a shade over it til the heat was off.
Aziraphale. In the bookshop in the winter, and in the pleasure-gardens when the sun grew warm. Aziraphale didn’t cause the warmth of summer, but the sun shone in his hair and made its light brighter. Aziraphale didn’t cause the ducks to lay eggs or the flowers to bloom or the spoiled children of the nouveau riche to shriek with liberated joy while they destroyed those things. But his effete disapproving clucks of his tongue and the exquisite subtlety of his delicate hand gestures that caused the little Bungley, fifth Lord of Prattling, to fall face down in the holding pond, caused shivers and ripples in the aetheric air that simply could not be tolerated.
The Arrangement, Crowley reminded himself. Well, they hadn’t actually put it down in writing per se, but as far as Crowley was concerned, one important component of the Arrangement was, from time to time, pulling each other’s feathers out of the fire - whether literal or metaphorical, and Crowley still felt a little bit singed on occasion after 1666.
Watching from a distance as Aziraphale made his rounds, Crowley mentally ticked out what he’d need to do a proper abduction. Unfortunately, probably a horse. One of those big black jobs with fiery eyes that he never managed to stay on properly. A cloak seemed important too. Perhaps a mask? Crowley found that a little embarrassing, but Aziraphale deserved a proper job and not half-arsing it.
***
Wasn’t going to work to keep him in Crowley’s lodgings, no. Despite the natural wards that tend to develop in a demon domicile, it was still too open. Unprotected. The angel might wander and Crowley alone wouldn’t have the power to stop him - it was rare to see Aziraphale in full angelic strop, but Crowley suspected they might not be as evenly matched as he might wish.
There was nothing for it - he’d have to use that social club that the humans whispered about in shocked titillated tones, and Crowley would have rolled his eyes at if he had irises that could move. Embarrassing, really. The costumes and the sigils and whatnot. None of that was really necessary if you really wanted to damn yourself for some reason. You just had to…talk yourself into a habit of treating people as things. That’s where real evil always started. Some people did it naturally, didn’t even need any persuading.
And sure, there were plenty of those to be found at the Hellfire Club. But Crowley remembered the court of Caligula and so he was difficult to impress as far as decadence was concerned.
Crowley was mostly interested in what lay underneath it.
A genuine portal to Hell. Not there by the efforts of any of the dissolute rakes and sporting wenches, of course.
***
“Oh, it has been a long time, hasn’t it - what on earth are you doing?”
“Ravishing you. Hold on.”
Aziraphale’s blush gave off so much heat it was palpable even in the picturesque mist. The flowers he’d been picking dropped from his soft, lace-wrapped hands. “R-ravishing? This is just...rather aggressive horseback riding.”
“Original meaning, angel.”
“Oh.”
The gathering gloom of twilight wrapped around them as the very dramatic horse galloped on and Crowley put all his infernal energy into not falling off, a project not at all helped by the rather lopsided way Aziraphale flopped around.
It look a long time before Aziraphale finally asked, “Why? I am aware that I still owe you dinner from 1793 but you could have just left your calling card like a civilized…”
“Because I have to!” Crowley snapped. “They’re onto you. They’re onto us. I’m saving our reputations!”
“I don’t see how this could possibly help!” Aziraphale said. “You, carrying me off like a common rogue.”
“I am a big bad rakish demon, powerful enough to kidnap an angel. You are an innocent victim - it would help if you swooned a little - NO, not like that, I almost dropped you! - and I’m going to keep you until Heaven realizes they need you. That way, you will get coddled after enduring an ordeal and I will get commendations for trying to keep you. And with any luck this will stop them thinking we’re friends. Friends don’t kidnap each other and hold each other prisoner, right?”
“Might do,” Aziraphale muttered. “If it was for a good reason.”
“Hush,” Crowley said. “I don’t do that.”
“Of course not,” Aziraphale said. “All right? I’ll be very frightened if you like. Where are you taking me, you foul fiend?”
“Hellfire Club,” Crowley said, only slightly mortified about it. Mortals making such a show of it were always an embarrassment. There’s only so much absinthe a privileged scion of the peerage can drink out of a crusty old human skull before an even worse ennui starts to set in, and half of them wind up settling down to be respectable or at least repenting on their death beds anyway. From Hell’s point of view it was all rather a wash. “Certainly the most exciting thing ever to hit West Wycombe.”
“Oh,” Aziraphale said. “Is that still…?”
“Oh no, they’re all dead, the original ones. Probably not having as much fun where they are now, I’d imagine. Today’s rakes of fashion don’t like to hide around in musty old tunnels where they can’t be looked at. Secrets are out, showing off is in. Just look at the trousers. I’ve got half a mind to bring the codpiece back.”
“You could do that?”
“I could try. Hush. We’re almost there.”
“Shouldn’t I be fighting you? Putting up a struggle or something?”
“I’m holding onto you, so if I fall off this horse, so will you.”
***
“Well, this certainly has…atmosphere,” Aziraphale said.
“Bit over the top if you ask me. But Dashwood was rich enough that he didn’t have to cut any corners with his…macabre bordello.”
Ahead of them, walls of a ruined abbey yawned open to the darkling sky, and at the base loomed a pitch-black door.
Aziraphale dismounted gracefully and Crowley landed in a heap of elbows and knees at his feet. The big black horse harrumphed and galloped off, striking sparks with its hooves. “Couldn’t we have just flown here?” Aziraphale asked as Crowley dusted himself off.
“There’s a protocol to ravishment, you know.”
“I wasn’t aware,” Aziraphale sniffed. “Hardly in my wheelhouse.” Then he kept sniffing. And sneezed. Again and again. “Dear me,” he said, recovering himself. “I do think there is a little bit of genuine demonic residue here.”
“Yeah, and it’s gonna get worse. Do you have a handkerchief?”
“I’d never allow myself to be ravished without one.”
Crowley choked a little bit on his own tongue but managed to turn it into a hissing snarl that he hoped was sinister and masterful as he grabbed Aziraphale’s elbow. “I’m taking you down to the Underworld and you’re going to like it.”
Aziraphale allowed himself to be marched into the cave beyond the Gothic arches. Amazed, he looked around him in awe at the network of tunnels carved out of the chalk hillside. Down and down it went, and as they walked Crowley snapped his fingers to light torches in the darkness.
Long-abandoned, still some traces of the debauchery remained. Broken lamps and bottles littered the floors, and rotting chaise lounges covered in unclassifiable stains were everywhere. Statues of satyrs pointing erections at the stalactites. Water-damaged paintings of orgy scenes. Upside-down crosses and trampled Host. Bats burst out of hidey holes in the pockmarked walls. Aziraphale fancied he could hear cries of tortured pleasure echoing out of the past. He started to say something to Crowley, and Crowley’s head cocked as if he were listening. “You can actually get to Hell from here, you know.”
“Well, you can get to hell from anywhere, really, “Aziraphale said primly, trying not to study too closely the stains on a dismembered Bible. Thankfully it was not a rare edition.
Down and down they went. Crowley’s conjured torchlight produced shivering, darting shadows in the stark arched doorways. “It was a chalk quarry nearby,” Crowley said. “Dashwood took advantage. Probably made a good profit off the chalk dug out of here too.”
“Did you ever come here when it was...active?” Aziraphale asked.
Crowley let his fangs show in the flickering fire. “Once or twice,” he said. “Not much of a challenge. Felt like my work was already done here. I might have been a factor in some duels over lovers and card cheats, that’s all. We try not to give Satanists too much direct encouragement. The harder they have to work for it, the better.”
***
The massive eruption of Mount Tambora in what is now Indonesia was a completely logical and natural explanation for the chilly shadow that fell over western Europe in the year to come.
Perhaps, however, sometimes, nature echoes supernature.
***
“Ta-daaaa!” Crowley cried, “Here we are!”
The subterranean room, while massive, did not quite justify a ta-da with even one a, let alone many. Not yet, anyhow.
“Is this Hell? Really?” Aziraphale asked. He’d expected it to be warm at least.
“No!” Crowley said impatiently. “No. This is a foyer to Hell. If you really want to go there, we can.” He held up a corner of mold-ridden rug on the floor to reveal an almost-perfectly-accurate portal circle on the floor. “HowEVer….” he flashed a snakey smile and traced a pattern with his finger on the stone wall - and it parted.
The room that opened up was a wine cellar, and its rows of racks stretched as far as the eye could see in the flickering torchlight.
Aziraphale’s eyes went wide with delight.
“Oh, but I’m not done yet,” said Crowley, quite pleased with himself. “Hush and I’ll be back!”
Before Aziraphale could stop him, he executed a complicated series of hand gestures and stepped into the portal circle, and vanished in a spear of acrid flame.
Aziraphale was barely done with his worried squeak when Crowley appeared, carrying a huge sack of items that might be said to be food by someone who wasn’t much for critical thinking. “I know it looks bad,” Crowley said. “Office party leftovers. But we can turn bad wine into better wine, remember? Let’s cook!”
***
“I must say, my dear,” Aziraphale said as he reached to catch a pomegranate bent on rolling away.
“I didn’t conjure up that pomegranate, did you?”
“Real, I imagine,” Aziraphale said with a glint in his eye, tearing it open and picking out seeds one by one, delicately, one by one. “They look a little gruesome don’t they? Bit of gore? Like a heart torn open or something like that?”
“You should have warned me,” Crowley said sulkily. “You might not ought to have eaten that.”
“It’s just fruit, Crowley. Now, as I was going to say-” His mouth looked unnervingly red. "It seems we’ve been here a good while now, at least a few hours-” (it had been four months, give or take)
“And?” asked Crowley, fidgeting slightly with an old scolds-bridle, not with any sort of intent of course.
“And - well, I don’t mean to cast aspersions on your hospitality, but-”
“But WHAT?”
“I was . . . I suppose I had expected a little more in the way of . . . ravishment.”
Crowley blinked for the first time in five years.
“Oh,” Aziraphale said quickly, laying his hand over Crowley’s. “I really don’t mean to put pressure on, I just, well, that word got me to thinking. Am I wrong that you were thinking too?”
“No, no,” Crowley said quickly while his hand silently shivered in a minor erotic frenzy and no small amount of panic. “Always thinking, that’s me. Never stop. Mind’s a machine, clever automated dev...thing. Lots of thoughts all the time! Ravishment, yes, a favorite...kind of thought. For sure!”
“So you DO think about ravishing me then!” Aziraphale said happily. “Well, let’s get to it then. There doesn’t seem to be much else to do down here, and I’m eager to try it!”
“Oh,” Crowley stammered. “All right. Bit sudden that’s all. You’re really serious. Oh my badness. Give me a moment. I’ll have to work up to it.”
As if sensing that Crowley might need a little inspiration, Aziraphale made a strange little wiggle that was akin to a shiver, and snapped his fingers at the same time, and Crowley could not help but notice that something had changed about the line of his body beneath his outdated but temptingly snug lace-and-breeches ensemble.
“What...did you…?” Crowley said, rather wetly because he was salivating, and something was occurring in his tight riding trousers that made them rather tighter still, and Aziraphale’s eyes kept dropping flickering back and forth between his boots and his bulge, and…
“Against the wall at first,” Aziraphale said. “I’d so love a proper pounce. Go on then. I know you’ve got it in you.”
Crowley growled, closed his eyes, and lunged. Before he knew it, Aziraphale was in his grasp, squirming, pressed between Crowley and the wall, and Aziraphale had a plump thigh in between Crowley’s lean ones, and the friction of fabric was maddening them both. For the first time, Crowley leaned in and pressed his lips against Aziraphale’s. It was open, and sloppy, and desperate.
At last, Crowley was inspired.
Instincts boiled in him - less demonic than simply human-vessel built-in features, rushing blood and nerves going haywire. He started to move his hips in a rolling motion, trapping the bulge in Aziraphale’s breeches against his own, and heard rewarding little cries and gasping sounds. “Oh Crowley - yes, that’s-”
“You like that? Angel? You like this?” He snaked his hand in between them and coiled it around something hot and stiff in silk.
“It’s everything I want, love,” he panted.
Oh. That was going to have to be filed away for later.
“I got more,” Crowley whispered, dragging his teeth down the side of Aziraphale’s neck and plucking off his lace collar, digging deep with his tongue, into little nooks and crevices at Aziraphale’s throat.
Aziraphale hitched up both his legs to wrap them around Crowley’s waist, and the demon made a shocked hissing sound as his heated cock rubbed against something soft and cleft and plush and waiting. “Oh...Someone...how are you staying up?” Aziraphale’s nails digging into this back through his coat weren’t quite enough to explain it.
One of Aziraphale’s buckled shoes fell to the floor with a clunk. He slid his stockinged foot up and down the back of Crowley’s calf and thigh. “You’re doing this aren’t you?”
“We’re doing it Crowley. We really are,” Aziraphale sounded incredulous.
“Oh, we’re just getting started.” With a little bit of demonic miracle to put some strength into his normally rather noodly arms, Crowley hoisted Aziraphale up against him and pivoted away from the wall, landing in a tangled heap on the distressed velvet chaise lounge, which increased the poor thing’s distress a great deal.
Leaning up on his arms, Crowley fumbled with Aziraphale’s buttons for so long he just vanished the angel’s outerwear entirely, and got a further surprise. That was what the kinky angel had done with his Will: a saucy French confection of a negligee, sheer and short, with beribboned stockings, and nothing in between. The dark pink curve of his hard cock in its golden curled nest was all the more obscene for being briefly veiled in gauze.
Aziraphale started to reach for Crowley’s clothes - and found his hands pinned. “Oh no. No you don’t. I’m opening my present first.” Crowley kept holding him down, and that made Aziraphale moan and wriggle in the most delicious ways. His prick jumped at Crowley’s mouth licking and biting at his nipples through the ethereal fabric, and it dripped clear nectar when Crowley got close to it with hot panting breaths. “Let me,” Crowley said, and his voice emerged husky and raw.
“Oh but of course!”
“I’m going to take what I want, and it’s going to feel really really good,” Crowley said, with more hope than conviction, but Aziraphale responded just the way he’d hoped, with a pitiful little whimper.
And Crowley said no more for a while as he took the angel’s cock in his mouth. Instinct took over, and his naturally flexible jaw and naturally unnatural tongue did the rest. Aziraphale gasped and bucked, and Crowley held down his legs and his hands with all of his limbs at once. The strain of struggle arched Aziraphale’s plump body like a bow, and as Crowley nodded his head and gulped and licked, he rather hoped he wasn’t doing too well.
“Dear boy...please...I think I’m going to...please let up a little so I don’t finish too soon….”
“You’re an angel,” Crowley said with a snakish grin, wiping his chin. “Who’s to say you can only go once?”
“But there’s so much more,” Aziraphale said. “I’d rather like to….” he wiggled again and spread his legs wide.
Crowley took a deep breath and slithered back over him, kissing his mouth again and again, and then pushing on Aziraphale’s shoulder. “Roll over then. I want to see your luscious arse in this nightgown thing.”
“I want to see you in my luscious arse,” Aziraphale said.
“For a kidnapped virgin being ravished, you are filthy,” Crowley exclaimed.
“Is that a complaint?”
“Bloody well not,” Crowley said, exclaiming inarticulately at the glory of Aziraphale’s back and rump draped in such translucent fabric. Aziraphale was curvy and strong, and that that glorious arse just begged for a gentle slap, which Crowley gave and only made Aziraphale giggle.
“More?”
“Just a bit - it tickles!”
“Not sure it’s supposed to, but all right,” Crowley gave him another slap to see the satisfying jiggle and watch Aziraphale attempt to be discreet in humping the cushions and failing so beautifully. “Gotta get some of that,” he said. He let Aziraphale watch over his shoulder as he shrugged off his jacket, and unbuttoned his trousers, slowly showing off a cock that was alert and wet and ready.
“Oh take me, you fiend!” Aziraphale said.
Crowley reached for the olive oil from the savaged sideboard and started to get himself ready to violate, since he’d been asked so nicely. “Gonna make this good for you.” Sliding into position, he reached around with his slick hand to take Aziraphale in a pulsing, slippery grasp as he slid his own aching prick slowly but firmly into tight gripping heat. The sound Aziraphale made was downright animal, and he arched his arse up obscenely, pulling Crowley in further.
They rocked together - linked, slick, pulsing. Aziraphale’s chemise rucked up and the sounds of skin-on-skin slapping, the scent of sweat, the tickle of Aziraphale’s hair against Crowley’s nose as he kissed and bit the nape of his neck - Crowley had to count slowly to keep himself from going off too soon. For a long time he managed to keep up the pace, determined he wouldn’t break until Aziraphale did.
The angel’s shocked cry, almost anguished, the spurts of wet heat in Crowley’s hand, the tightening of the body that gripped him - that did it, as Crowley closed his eyes and let crisis take him, burying himself deep and letting loose.
He didn’t swoon exactly. Demons don’t swoon. He gathered himself together very very slowly, murmuring in Aziraphale’s ear in a language that no humans spoke anymore, kissing a little here and there, separating slowly with a sweet squelch of sweat.
“Shhh, there, let me clean you up,” he said softly. Aziraphale had his face pillowed on his arms, and the look of bliss on his face made the word divine completely inadequate. Crowley took Aziraphale’s handkerchief from the outdated frilly coat, and dipped it in cool water, wiping the angel’s face gently.
Aziraphale pulled him down for a kiss. “I’m ravished.”
“Yes, you certainly are.”
“Did I say ravished? I meant famished. Is there any more of that pomegranate?”
“You really shouldn’t. Goblin fruits.”
“You telling me I shouldn’t probably means that I should. You old serpent.”
He had bursting juicy seeds in his mouth when he pulled Crowley in and down on top of him for a deep lingering kiss. Crowley made sure to refill the wine bottle with a gesture before surrendering to the passionate warmth.
***
Above them, the winds roared, the sun and moon hid away, and the sky darkened. The wrath of the mountain spread and spread, and the dreadful wind and rain covered the world.
Crowley kept Aziraphale at his mercy, very happily, in the tunnels of the Hellfire Club for more than a year, and the time passed for them so quickly they would have thought it a week’s decadent holiday at most. There was no summer that year. Crops failed and rivers froze and people starved. Lord Byron wrote:
Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light, and Polidori wrote that Lord Byron was a bit of a pretentious vampire.
The earth missed its ruling Principality’s gentle hand - and it was duty that bade him return, with Crowley by his side this time, and the sun emerged again with them. The world would not end in ice. For Aziraphale and Crowley, it was as though it had been made anew.
~end
Author’s Note: The old Hellfire Club and its tunnels beneath, built in the 18th century by Francis Dashwood, are a real thing, and you can visit them to this day.
The Year Without a Summer was also a real thing. Here is a song about it by Rasputina.
Recipient: ineffablemercury
Pairing: Aziraphale/Crowley
Rating: Explicit
Word Count: ~4500
Content Notes/Warnings: Some extremely unconvincing dub-con roleplay.
Summary: When Crowley begins to suspect that Aziraphale is coming under too much of the wrong kind of scrutiny, he decides there’s nothing for it but to abduct him: to the tunnels of the old Hellfire Club.
Author’s Notes: I mashed up two of your prompts, ineffablemercury. This is a sort of Hades/Persephone AU set during the Regency period. There’s also a bit of service top Crowley, Aziraphale in lingerie, and aftercare. I hope you like it!
London, 1815
Everything changed when the demon Lord Crowley laid eyes for the first time in a decade upon the Principality Aziraphale, Earl of Eden. The angel had changed little to human eyes, and from his London bookshop he continued to spread such cheer and kindness as he could muster. He beguiled mortal eyes into seeing an unremarkable person, very little out of the ordinary, although he spread a thin veneer of light and warmth in his wake.
Lord Crowley could see a storm about to gather in the air about him, and the fine hairs on his neck did rise at a shimmering perception of displeased angelic aether. He perceived that Aziraphale might be in danger of some censure, and not from Crowley’s own side this time.
It was in the spring of 1815 that Heaven’s wrath was roused, and the toe of the Metatron was stubbed upon a mountain in the far Pacific Ocean.
And lo, fearing the gathering storm, Lord Crowley trailed his angel through the pleasure-gardens of London, jealous of every sun-bathed flower and relentlessly greedy duck. Above him, the air seemed to ripple with a misty sense of doom, and Crowley turned up his collar and pushed down his hat to hide himself in vain from the eyes of God.
Ladies flitted through the garden in their high-waisted gowns like legless birds. Tall hats of men pushed aggressively through the air in their wake. They shivered and fluttered around one another in the unseasonable chill.
Aziraphale stood in one corner by a decorative urn, and the wings he wasn’t showing rippled the air in his consternation. He seemed to flicker in and out, and there was a cold blue light shining on him in a way that spotlit every flaw and cast harsh shadows.
The air was suspiciously acrid even by London standards. Something was very very wrong, and it wasn’t just the general air of madness, tooth decay, and coverup that wafted from the palace out over the city to engulf the whole country in its uncertainty and denial.
This wouldn’t do.
The ozone stench of Heaven blotted out the struggling flowers.
Surrounded by dissolute and handsome young gamblers, watching centuries-old family fortunes fizzle into a sorry slurry of weak excuses, broken kneecaps, and worse, Lord Crowley couldn’t even bring himself to revel in any of it. Playing card tricks wasn’t any fun when there weren’t any stakes in it for him - and a quick flash of fangs enough to make sure any questions were deflected at other suckers at the table.
England was off her game. The king was more unfit than usual, which was saying something.
Something about the angel was off too. Aziraphale should have been in fine fettle in his fusty little shop - books flew off the presses and onto the shelves at a dizzying rate. Even Crowley’s attempts to make sure most of them were the most disreputable sort of novel, the rate of uplifting and improving literature was still an overwhelming tide and all Crowley’s work was like shoveling back sand dunes at high tide.
Yet there was something uncannily listless about him. The air of his shop was stifling, and the glances of the mortals about him unusually hostile. Crowley was simply not up for a repeat of their French meeting, despite the excellent wine they’d sampled from the cellars of recently decapitated nobility. So extremely dramatic, the French. England would presumably keep their collars buttoned and endure the loss of the occasional colony with passive-aggressive dignity.
One hoped. Crowley ignored the increasingly threatening messages from his home office with more than the usual resentment, even condescending to use them for kindling in his not-exactly-infernal home fire.
Restlessness festered in him.
There was nothing for it but this. He was going to have to do something drastic. Something mildly demonic for once - but, if he played his cards right (or at least played his metaphorical cards far better than his literal ones), there wouldn’t be any actual harm done, and possibly a great deal of pleasure to be had. Or at the very least, better company.
He began to plan. Well, perhaps planning is overstating it. Crowley had always been rather a seat-of-the-pants sort of demon, even well before pants were invented and even when he was in a shape incapable of wearing them. Crowley didn’t plan. He certainly didn’t conspire either. At his best, he could manage a sort of short-lived burst of scheming, which was hardly distinguishable from a daydream most of the time.
But the ideas swimming up from the not-particularly demonic primal swamp of Crowley’s mind were starting to grow sufficient lungs and legs to survive on land - as Darwin would later imagine in his works of ambitious fiction - and what they were shaping into wasn’t really device or design or strategy. It was more of an unusually complex instinct.
It was a heist, strictly speaking. An abduction. A ravishment of sorts, in the original sense (thoughts of it taking on other senses as well went firmly to the back of Crowley’s reptile brain - which in fact was pretty much all of his brain). If the Arrangement was getting out of hand and risking danger to Aziraphale - and if Aziraphale’s light was burning too brightly and drawing unwanted attention - then best to put a shade over it til the heat was off.
Aziraphale. In the bookshop in the winter, and in the pleasure-gardens when the sun grew warm. Aziraphale didn’t cause the warmth of summer, but the sun shone in his hair and made its light brighter. Aziraphale didn’t cause the ducks to lay eggs or the flowers to bloom or the spoiled children of the nouveau riche to shriek with liberated joy while they destroyed those things. But his effete disapproving clucks of his tongue and the exquisite subtlety of his delicate hand gestures that caused the little Bungley, fifth Lord of Prattling, to fall face down in the holding pond, caused shivers and ripples in the aetheric air that simply could not be tolerated.
The Arrangement, Crowley reminded himself. Well, they hadn’t actually put it down in writing per se, but as far as Crowley was concerned, one important component of the Arrangement was, from time to time, pulling each other’s feathers out of the fire - whether literal or metaphorical, and Crowley still felt a little bit singed on occasion after 1666.
Watching from a distance as Aziraphale made his rounds, Crowley mentally ticked out what he’d need to do a proper abduction. Unfortunately, probably a horse. One of those big black jobs with fiery eyes that he never managed to stay on properly. A cloak seemed important too. Perhaps a mask? Crowley found that a little embarrassing, but Aziraphale deserved a proper job and not half-arsing it.
***
Wasn’t going to work to keep him in Crowley’s lodgings, no. Despite the natural wards that tend to develop in a demon domicile, it was still too open. Unprotected. The angel might wander and Crowley alone wouldn’t have the power to stop him - it was rare to see Aziraphale in full angelic strop, but Crowley suspected they might not be as evenly matched as he might wish.
There was nothing for it - he’d have to use that social club that the humans whispered about in shocked titillated tones, and Crowley would have rolled his eyes at if he had irises that could move. Embarrassing, really. The costumes and the sigils and whatnot. None of that was really necessary if you really wanted to damn yourself for some reason. You just had to…talk yourself into a habit of treating people as things. That’s where real evil always started. Some people did it naturally, didn’t even need any persuading.
And sure, there were plenty of those to be found at the Hellfire Club. But Crowley remembered the court of Caligula and so he was difficult to impress as far as decadence was concerned.
Crowley was mostly interested in what lay underneath it.
A genuine portal to Hell. Not there by the efforts of any of the dissolute rakes and sporting wenches, of course.
***
“Oh, it has been a long time, hasn’t it - what on earth are you doing?”
“Ravishing you. Hold on.”
Aziraphale’s blush gave off so much heat it was palpable even in the picturesque mist. The flowers he’d been picking dropped from his soft, lace-wrapped hands. “R-ravishing? This is just...rather aggressive horseback riding.”
“Original meaning, angel.”
“Oh.”
The gathering gloom of twilight wrapped around them as the very dramatic horse galloped on and Crowley put all his infernal energy into not falling off, a project not at all helped by the rather lopsided way Aziraphale flopped around.
It look a long time before Aziraphale finally asked, “Why? I am aware that I still owe you dinner from 1793 but you could have just left your calling card like a civilized…”
“Because I have to!” Crowley snapped. “They’re onto you. They’re onto us. I’m saving our reputations!”
“I don’t see how this could possibly help!” Aziraphale said. “You, carrying me off like a common rogue.”
“I am a big bad rakish demon, powerful enough to kidnap an angel. You are an innocent victim - it would help if you swooned a little - NO, not like that, I almost dropped you! - and I’m going to keep you until Heaven realizes they need you. That way, you will get coddled after enduring an ordeal and I will get commendations for trying to keep you. And with any luck this will stop them thinking we’re friends. Friends don’t kidnap each other and hold each other prisoner, right?”
“Might do,” Aziraphale muttered. “If it was for a good reason.”
“Hush,” Crowley said. “I don’t do that.”
“Of course not,” Aziraphale said. “All right? I’ll be very frightened if you like. Where are you taking me, you foul fiend?”
“Hellfire Club,” Crowley said, only slightly mortified about it. Mortals making such a show of it were always an embarrassment. There’s only so much absinthe a privileged scion of the peerage can drink out of a crusty old human skull before an even worse ennui starts to set in, and half of them wind up settling down to be respectable or at least repenting on their death beds anyway. From Hell’s point of view it was all rather a wash. “Certainly the most exciting thing ever to hit West Wycombe.”
“Oh,” Aziraphale said. “Is that still…?”
“Oh no, they’re all dead, the original ones. Probably not having as much fun where they are now, I’d imagine. Today’s rakes of fashion don’t like to hide around in musty old tunnels where they can’t be looked at. Secrets are out, showing off is in. Just look at the trousers. I’ve got half a mind to bring the codpiece back.”
“You could do that?”
“I could try. Hush. We’re almost there.”
“Shouldn’t I be fighting you? Putting up a struggle or something?”
“I’m holding onto you, so if I fall off this horse, so will you.”
***
“Well, this certainly has…atmosphere,” Aziraphale said.
“Bit over the top if you ask me. But Dashwood was rich enough that he didn’t have to cut any corners with his…macabre bordello.”
Ahead of them, walls of a ruined abbey yawned open to the darkling sky, and at the base loomed a pitch-black door.
Aziraphale dismounted gracefully and Crowley landed in a heap of elbows and knees at his feet. The big black horse harrumphed and galloped off, striking sparks with its hooves. “Couldn’t we have just flown here?” Aziraphale asked as Crowley dusted himself off.
“There’s a protocol to ravishment, you know.”
“I wasn’t aware,” Aziraphale sniffed. “Hardly in my wheelhouse.” Then he kept sniffing. And sneezed. Again and again. “Dear me,” he said, recovering himself. “I do think there is a little bit of genuine demonic residue here.”
“Yeah, and it’s gonna get worse. Do you have a handkerchief?”
“I’d never allow myself to be ravished without one.”
Crowley choked a little bit on his own tongue but managed to turn it into a hissing snarl that he hoped was sinister and masterful as he grabbed Aziraphale’s elbow. “I’m taking you down to the Underworld and you’re going to like it.”
Aziraphale allowed himself to be marched into the cave beyond the Gothic arches. Amazed, he looked around him in awe at the network of tunnels carved out of the chalk hillside. Down and down it went, and as they walked Crowley snapped his fingers to light torches in the darkness.
Long-abandoned, still some traces of the debauchery remained. Broken lamps and bottles littered the floors, and rotting chaise lounges covered in unclassifiable stains were everywhere. Statues of satyrs pointing erections at the stalactites. Water-damaged paintings of orgy scenes. Upside-down crosses and trampled Host. Bats burst out of hidey holes in the pockmarked walls. Aziraphale fancied he could hear cries of tortured pleasure echoing out of the past. He started to say something to Crowley, and Crowley’s head cocked as if he were listening. “You can actually get to Hell from here, you know.”
“Well, you can get to hell from anywhere, really, “Aziraphale said primly, trying not to study too closely the stains on a dismembered Bible. Thankfully it was not a rare edition.
Down and down they went. Crowley’s conjured torchlight produced shivering, darting shadows in the stark arched doorways. “It was a chalk quarry nearby,” Crowley said. “Dashwood took advantage. Probably made a good profit off the chalk dug out of here too.”
“Did you ever come here when it was...active?” Aziraphale asked.
Crowley let his fangs show in the flickering fire. “Once or twice,” he said. “Not much of a challenge. Felt like my work was already done here. I might have been a factor in some duels over lovers and card cheats, that’s all. We try not to give Satanists too much direct encouragement. The harder they have to work for it, the better.”
***
The massive eruption of Mount Tambora in what is now Indonesia was a completely logical and natural explanation for the chilly shadow that fell over western Europe in the year to come.
Perhaps, however, sometimes, nature echoes supernature.
***
“Ta-daaaa!” Crowley cried, “Here we are!”
The subterranean room, while massive, did not quite justify a ta-da with even one a, let alone many. Not yet, anyhow.
“Is this Hell? Really?” Aziraphale asked. He’d expected it to be warm at least.
“No!” Crowley said impatiently. “No. This is a foyer to Hell. If you really want to go there, we can.” He held up a corner of mold-ridden rug on the floor to reveal an almost-perfectly-accurate portal circle on the floor. “HowEVer….” he flashed a snakey smile and traced a pattern with his finger on the stone wall - and it parted.
The room that opened up was a wine cellar, and its rows of racks stretched as far as the eye could see in the flickering torchlight.
Aziraphale’s eyes went wide with delight.
“Oh, but I’m not done yet,” said Crowley, quite pleased with himself. “Hush and I’ll be back!”
Before Aziraphale could stop him, he executed a complicated series of hand gestures and stepped into the portal circle, and vanished in a spear of acrid flame.
Aziraphale was barely done with his worried squeak when Crowley appeared, carrying a huge sack of items that might be said to be food by someone who wasn’t much for critical thinking. “I know it looks bad,” Crowley said. “Office party leftovers. But we can turn bad wine into better wine, remember? Let’s cook!”
***
“I must say, my dear,” Aziraphale said as he reached to catch a pomegranate bent on rolling away.
“I didn’t conjure up that pomegranate, did you?”
“Real, I imagine,” Aziraphale said with a glint in his eye, tearing it open and picking out seeds one by one, delicately, one by one. “They look a little gruesome don’t they? Bit of gore? Like a heart torn open or something like that?”
“You should have warned me,” Crowley said sulkily. “You might not ought to have eaten that.”
“It’s just fruit, Crowley. Now, as I was going to say-” His mouth looked unnervingly red. "It seems we’ve been here a good while now, at least a few hours-” (it had been four months, give or take)
“And?” asked Crowley, fidgeting slightly with an old scolds-bridle, not with any sort of intent of course.
“And - well, I don’t mean to cast aspersions on your hospitality, but-”
“But WHAT?”
“I was . . . I suppose I had expected a little more in the way of . . . ravishment.”
Crowley blinked for the first time in five years.
“Oh,” Aziraphale said quickly, laying his hand over Crowley’s. “I really don’t mean to put pressure on, I just, well, that word got me to thinking. Am I wrong that you were thinking too?”
“No, no,” Crowley said quickly while his hand silently shivered in a minor erotic frenzy and no small amount of panic. “Always thinking, that’s me. Never stop. Mind’s a machine, clever automated dev...thing. Lots of thoughts all the time! Ravishment, yes, a favorite...kind of thought. For sure!”
“So you DO think about ravishing me then!” Aziraphale said happily. “Well, let’s get to it then. There doesn’t seem to be much else to do down here, and I’m eager to try it!”
“Oh,” Crowley stammered. “All right. Bit sudden that’s all. You’re really serious. Oh my badness. Give me a moment. I’ll have to work up to it.”
As if sensing that Crowley might need a little inspiration, Aziraphale made a strange little wiggle that was akin to a shiver, and snapped his fingers at the same time, and Crowley could not help but notice that something had changed about the line of his body beneath his outdated but temptingly snug lace-and-breeches ensemble.
“What...did you…?” Crowley said, rather wetly because he was salivating, and something was occurring in his tight riding trousers that made them rather tighter still, and Aziraphale’s eyes kept dropping flickering back and forth between his boots and his bulge, and…
“Against the wall at first,” Aziraphale said. “I’d so love a proper pounce. Go on then. I know you’ve got it in you.”
Crowley growled, closed his eyes, and lunged. Before he knew it, Aziraphale was in his grasp, squirming, pressed between Crowley and the wall, and Aziraphale had a plump thigh in between Crowley’s lean ones, and the friction of fabric was maddening them both. For the first time, Crowley leaned in and pressed his lips against Aziraphale’s. It was open, and sloppy, and desperate.
At last, Crowley was inspired.
Instincts boiled in him - less demonic than simply human-vessel built-in features, rushing blood and nerves going haywire. He started to move his hips in a rolling motion, trapping the bulge in Aziraphale’s breeches against his own, and heard rewarding little cries and gasping sounds. “Oh Crowley - yes, that’s-”
“You like that? Angel? You like this?” He snaked his hand in between them and coiled it around something hot and stiff in silk.
“It’s everything I want, love,” he panted.
Oh. That was going to have to be filed away for later.
“I got more,” Crowley whispered, dragging his teeth down the side of Aziraphale’s neck and plucking off his lace collar, digging deep with his tongue, into little nooks and crevices at Aziraphale’s throat.
Aziraphale hitched up both his legs to wrap them around Crowley’s waist, and the demon made a shocked hissing sound as his heated cock rubbed against something soft and cleft and plush and waiting. “Oh...Someone...how are you staying up?” Aziraphale’s nails digging into this back through his coat weren’t quite enough to explain it.
One of Aziraphale’s buckled shoes fell to the floor with a clunk. He slid his stockinged foot up and down the back of Crowley’s calf and thigh. “You’re doing this aren’t you?”
“We’re doing it Crowley. We really are,” Aziraphale sounded incredulous.
“Oh, we’re just getting started.” With a little bit of demonic miracle to put some strength into his normally rather noodly arms, Crowley hoisted Aziraphale up against him and pivoted away from the wall, landing in a tangled heap on the distressed velvet chaise lounge, which increased the poor thing’s distress a great deal.
Leaning up on his arms, Crowley fumbled with Aziraphale’s buttons for so long he just vanished the angel’s outerwear entirely, and got a further surprise. That was what the kinky angel had done with his Will: a saucy French confection of a negligee, sheer and short, with beribboned stockings, and nothing in between. The dark pink curve of his hard cock in its golden curled nest was all the more obscene for being briefly veiled in gauze.
Aziraphale started to reach for Crowley’s clothes - and found his hands pinned. “Oh no. No you don’t. I’m opening my present first.” Crowley kept holding him down, and that made Aziraphale moan and wriggle in the most delicious ways. His prick jumped at Crowley’s mouth licking and biting at his nipples through the ethereal fabric, and it dripped clear nectar when Crowley got close to it with hot panting breaths. “Let me,” Crowley said, and his voice emerged husky and raw.
“Oh but of course!”
“I’m going to take what I want, and it’s going to feel really really good,” Crowley said, with more hope than conviction, but Aziraphale responded just the way he’d hoped, with a pitiful little whimper.
And Crowley said no more for a while as he took the angel’s cock in his mouth. Instinct took over, and his naturally flexible jaw and naturally unnatural tongue did the rest. Aziraphale gasped and bucked, and Crowley held down his legs and his hands with all of his limbs at once. The strain of struggle arched Aziraphale’s plump body like a bow, and as Crowley nodded his head and gulped and licked, he rather hoped he wasn’t doing too well.
“Dear boy...please...I think I’m going to...please let up a little so I don’t finish too soon….”
“You’re an angel,” Crowley said with a snakish grin, wiping his chin. “Who’s to say you can only go once?”
“But there’s so much more,” Aziraphale said. “I’d rather like to….” he wiggled again and spread his legs wide.
Crowley took a deep breath and slithered back over him, kissing his mouth again and again, and then pushing on Aziraphale’s shoulder. “Roll over then. I want to see your luscious arse in this nightgown thing.”
“I want to see you in my luscious arse,” Aziraphale said.
“For a kidnapped virgin being ravished, you are filthy,” Crowley exclaimed.
“Is that a complaint?”
“Bloody well not,” Crowley said, exclaiming inarticulately at the glory of Aziraphale’s back and rump draped in such translucent fabric. Aziraphale was curvy and strong, and that that glorious arse just begged for a gentle slap, which Crowley gave and only made Aziraphale giggle.
“More?”
“Just a bit - it tickles!”
“Not sure it’s supposed to, but all right,” Crowley gave him another slap to see the satisfying jiggle and watch Aziraphale attempt to be discreet in humping the cushions and failing so beautifully. “Gotta get some of that,” he said. He let Aziraphale watch over his shoulder as he shrugged off his jacket, and unbuttoned his trousers, slowly showing off a cock that was alert and wet and ready.
“Oh take me, you fiend!” Aziraphale said.
Crowley reached for the olive oil from the savaged sideboard and started to get himself ready to violate, since he’d been asked so nicely. “Gonna make this good for you.” Sliding into position, he reached around with his slick hand to take Aziraphale in a pulsing, slippery grasp as he slid his own aching prick slowly but firmly into tight gripping heat. The sound Aziraphale made was downright animal, and he arched his arse up obscenely, pulling Crowley in further.
They rocked together - linked, slick, pulsing. Aziraphale’s chemise rucked up and the sounds of skin-on-skin slapping, the scent of sweat, the tickle of Aziraphale’s hair against Crowley’s nose as he kissed and bit the nape of his neck - Crowley had to count slowly to keep himself from going off too soon. For a long time he managed to keep up the pace, determined he wouldn’t break until Aziraphale did.
The angel’s shocked cry, almost anguished, the spurts of wet heat in Crowley’s hand, the tightening of the body that gripped him - that did it, as Crowley closed his eyes and let crisis take him, burying himself deep and letting loose.
He didn’t swoon exactly. Demons don’t swoon. He gathered himself together very very slowly, murmuring in Aziraphale’s ear in a language that no humans spoke anymore, kissing a little here and there, separating slowly with a sweet squelch of sweat.
“Shhh, there, let me clean you up,” he said softly. Aziraphale had his face pillowed on his arms, and the look of bliss on his face made the word divine completely inadequate. Crowley took Aziraphale’s handkerchief from the outdated frilly coat, and dipped it in cool water, wiping the angel’s face gently.
Aziraphale pulled him down for a kiss. “I’m ravished.”
“Yes, you certainly are.”
“Did I say ravished? I meant famished. Is there any more of that pomegranate?”
“You really shouldn’t. Goblin fruits.”
“You telling me I shouldn’t probably means that I should. You old serpent.”
He had bursting juicy seeds in his mouth when he pulled Crowley in and down on top of him for a deep lingering kiss. Crowley made sure to refill the wine bottle with a gesture before surrendering to the passionate warmth.
***
Above them, the winds roared, the sun and moon hid away, and the sky darkened. The wrath of the mountain spread and spread, and the dreadful wind and rain covered the world.
Crowley kept Aziraphale at his mercy, very happily, in the tunnels of the Hellfire Club for more than a year, and the time passed for them so quickly they would have thought it a week’s decadent holiday at most. There was no summer that year. Crops failed and rivers froze and people starved. Lord Byron wrote:
Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light, and Polidori wrote that Lord Byron was a bit of a pretentious vampire.
The earth missed its ruling Principality’s gentle hand - and it was duty that bade him return, with Crowley by his side this time, and the sun emerged again with them. The world would not end in ice. For Aziraphale and Crowley, it was as though it had been made anew.
~end
Author’s Note: The old Hellfire Club and its tunnels beneath, built in the 18th century by Francis Dashwood, are a real thing, and you can visit them to this day.
The Year Without a Summer was also a real thing. Here is a song about it by Rasputina.
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Date: 2020-01-05 09:30 pm (UTC)