Chapter Text
Sexual dalliances came up in conversation. It was a fact of life on Earth, especially in Crowley’s circles. It surprised him, how often they came up. It was also surprising how often the act itself occurred, given the intricacies involved and the trust required. He was a physically invulnerable demon and even he wouldn’t trust a human, and here were humans constantly letting strangers into their houses, into their bodies, all casual.
It surprised him, given how common it was, and given how long he’d been inhabiting a human body, that it never happened to him.
It was not--and Crowley could not emphasize this enough--it was not lack of opportunity. It was not disinterest from people. His flesh vessel was well-maintained, he kept up with the latest fashions, even his gait attracted attention from certain circles.
It just never seemed right.
And it never seemed interesting, not interesting enough to live up to the hype. Just repetitive gyrating movements, occasionally with props.
But he also knew that, at whatever age humans thought he was, it was unusual that he’d never had the experience--and even more unusual that he wasn’t actually the age he seemed. He was over six thousand years old and still a virgin. He hated that word. It conjured images of white linen dresses and blonde waifs. Virgin. He heard the word in the voice of judgmental clergymen. Why should anyone care?
Still, he needed to blend in, so he learned the art of implication through inflection. A little bit of a growl, or a half-octave shift down, a lingering emphasis on a word. He had a good voice for making things sound sexual even when they weren’t. Half the time, he didn’t know what he meant, but he was met with raucous back slaps and appreciative laughter.
Overseas, the accent helped.
Human innovation was a wondrous thing. In Crowley’s opinion, nothing demonstrated that more than cassette tapes. One thin little plastic rectangle stored a good two hours of audio, one for each side, and you could slip it into a machine in your car and get any song you wanted, provided you scanned the track listing and clicked the button to the right number, or fast-forwarded to the right spot, or listened through the ones you didn’t want so much. And then, if you wanted to listen to a song from a different artist, you just had to eject the one plastic rectangle, rifle through your collection, and push the other one in.
It was wonderfully convenient.
Aziraphale did not kiss and tell, but he kissed and implied, kissed and alluded, kissed and let slip and blushed and changed the subject. Whenever he spoke to Crowley, Aziraphale had an undertone of “Oh, well, you know how it is,” which he used as an excuse to trail off and leave the story unfinished, and Crowley used as permission to not probe further. As a result, Crowley had a thoroughly incomplete sexual education from Aziraphale’s anecdotes:
“All that shame over a little blindfold! You should have seen the look on his face when I told him some of the other toys people use.”
“A whole basement of--well, I’ve seen rooms like it before, but never quite so...Some of the devices were positively medieval.”
“The things he wanted to do with a rosary. It’s more common than you’d think. I try not to judge but obviously I couldn’t...Well, I’m sure it’s very vanilla to you.”
In those moments, Crowley wanted nothing more than to squeeze Aziraphale’s hand, look him in the eye, and say “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
The first time a tape turned into The Best of Queen, Crowley thought it was a peculiar manufacturer’s quirk. Humans were fallible creatures, so why should their technology be perfect? It made perfect sense that Lou Reed’s voice would morph into Freddie Mercury’s. He assumed it was a one-off defect.
Then it happened again, and he figured it was just a thing that happened, like spilling coffee or stepping in dog shit. He brought it up in conversation--”Yeah, like when tapes that’ve been in your car for a while turn into The Best of Queen .” People would laugh. He thought it was empathetic laughter at a shared inconvenience.
He couldn’t remember when he realized they thought he was joking, actually inventing the experience whole cloth for the sake of humor. However, once he did, he got downright scientific about it. He got a little black book and recorded every tape he bought--title, artist, price, length, song tracks, genre of music, year of release, weight, measurement, date of purchase. That last bit of datum turned out to be most important.
Then he’d listen. He’d try to go about as normal, but as soon as he heard Freddie, he’d swerve, grab the book, and scribble the time and date down.
Sometimes he’d pull over.
Eventually, he figured it out: it was every two weeks, like clockwork.
Demons fucked dirty and sloppy and bloody until carnal and carnage were the same word. Angels engaged in intercourse primly and chastely until sex was sexless. Humans, notoriously, fucked every way imaginable, everywhere, with anything, spread out across the spectrum between angelic and demonic and off the spectrum, up and down, left and right, creating new dimensions.
Still, none of that appealed to Crowley. Not demon-style, certainly not angel-style, and none of the infinite varieties of human-style.
Humans made everything sexual, but Crowley couldn’t manage for anything. Not any piece of genitalia, nor any other body part for that matter. Feet were one of the top five most popular sex bits, which was baffling. They were on the ground all day and, as a former snake, he could attest that there was nothing sexy about that. Places, he’d gone through a list of them--hospitals, agorae, the fertile bed of the Nile--and none aroused him. Elaborate scenarios humans concocted, involving sexy nurses in inappropriate workplace attire with inexplicable whips--nothing.
Even Aziraphale, a stodgy-seeming bookkeeper with his persnickety habits and old-fashioned clothes, managed to fuck his way through the Algonquin Round Table, on the round table, and still have the stamina for a dinner party with Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas.
Crowley liked to watch long before liking to watch became the punchline to a joke that had no set-up, as if being an audience member and not a participant was one of the strangest things a human could come up with, sex-wise.
He preferred to call it observing. After all, that’s what he was on earth to do.
He didn’t like the private act so much as the public build-up: a light flutter of a hand on a waist, knees knocking together under the table, a joke that landed and an appreciative response. Humans were good at conjuring something out of nothing—non-physical things, like ideas and relationships. Connections happened in places where they were supposed to happen, in bars and on blind dates and cotillions and such, but also in gloriously unexpected places--elevators, restrooms, banks.
That’s what he liked about humans: their lives were short so they wasted no time, or they’d find someone else and make do, and even if they did spend their entire lives pining after one person, that wouldn’t last long, either, because they’d be dead soon enough.
I don’t mind spending every day
Out on your corner in the--
Crowley shoved his entire hand into the cassette deck and tore the tape out, then threw it out the window, the little reel fluttering in the wind like a black Maypole ribbon.
“Maroon Five? ” He shouted. “Why the fuck do I have Maroon Five ?”
He liked those Roman bath houses, and he figured if he were ever going to get it done, the first time, they were the perfect place. There was very little build-up. Everyone knew what everyone else was there for.
He found himself admiring the statues and the architecture more than the bodies, which was a shame, because that's what he was there to do. When he caught people staring at him with interest, he'd give them a confident smile and a little wave, and then turn back to the carvings on the columns.
"Crowley!" He heard a familiar voice exclaim. He froze. It was exactly who he thought it was. "I'm surprised I haven't run into you here more frequently."
"I go to a, uh, well, this one is not my favorite. I go to the other one."
"Of course," Aziraphale said, his brow furrowed.
"It's just, this one happened to be on my way today, so I decided to stop by. Nice column, innit?"
Aziraphale looked down abruptly, then up at the structure that Crowley referred to.
"Yes, quite," Aziraphale said, now red from head to toe and everywhere in between. "Sturdy architecture here, very firm. Well, enjoy your stay!"
Scores of poets, scattered throughout centuries, unknowingly shared the same muse. They didn’t know that, when they described their ethereal lover as an angel, they were comparing an actual member of that species to an idealized version of his kind. Aziraphale was littered throughout literary history, in so many poems that they could be connected like stars in a secret constellation. And how they raved about him--you’d think he bequeathed writers with sex the way he’d gifted humankind with fire.
Crowley claimed he didn’t read, but that was just to annoy Aziraphale. He liked non-fiction. Not popular non-fiction, not the digestible crap written for the masses. He liked thick academic texts with plain black covers and the title written in austere, utilitarian lettering. Instruction manuals.
Fiction was all thrifty young seamstresses living godly lives in the face of temptation or being punished for not doing so, or long-winded seafarers talking about whaling. Nowadays, it was about siblings reuniting at their childhood home to argue about inheritance.
Sometimes he’d pick up an old book of poetry and skim through some verses about laughing flowers or the sky on a winter’s day, and then he’d invariably come upon an ode to clever blue-green eyes that contained the unworldly beauty of centuries, and he’d slam the book shut and read about toasters.
I’m a rolling thunder, a pouring rain,
I’m comin’ on like a hurricane
Inside my heart is breaking
My makeup maybe flaking
But my smile
He wanted to put a fist through the dashboard. Who the hell did he have to smite to listen to AC/DC in peace?
1960’s gay bars were rife with lapsed choir boys. They wore their work suits as comfort or T-shirts as disguises or leather as costumes, but their nervous eyes gave them away. Sometimes they smelled of a woman, sometimes of marriage, usually of moral quandary. Crowley thought of Aziraphale’s refrain: “I try not to judge.” These humans were in a bad situation, with nowhere to flee or fall. They could only escape to these little minefields that like-minded people carved out.
Crowley gravitated to them. They’d go from the club to a cramped bathroom stall or to a secluded area of an empty park, and Peter or John or Paul or some other unbearably-Biblically-named blonde would already be hard, was hard before he even saw Crowley, hard with whatever potential he thought the night had. Crowley was slow to rise, and sometimes it was only through sheer will and dark magic that he managed an erection.
Then they’d grind and neck and rub against each other, Joseph or Aaron or Joshua displaying a hunger that Crowley tried to mimic. Then one or the other would pull away, or both at the same time. You’d think the mutual synchronicity of the decision would make it less awkward but, in fact, it did not.
Bible Name would either fix his pants and scramble away without another word, or awkwardly bid farewell, or collapse in on himself crying, burying his face in his hands as if that hid his despair. Crowley would sit next to him for a bit, trying to decide what to do. Inevitably, his mind would drift to what Aziraphale would do in this situation, if he’d comfort the man and how. Maybe Aziraphale never found himself in this situation before. Maybe Aziraphale was so gifted with easy connections and instant sex and could gift others with it, too, and never wound up with a crying person next to him.
Crowley would sit there for a bit, deciding, and then depart.
Moon River, wider than a mile
I’m crossing you in style someday
If Crowley didn’t want to feel an ache of melancholy, he wouldn’t have made the conscious, deliberate decision to rifle one-handed through his box of cassettes, pull out Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and shove it into the cassette deck, then, would he? The pang was perfectly welcome, if unexplained. After all, as a demon, why should he connect (another awful word) to whatever it was being expressed in the song? He didn’t even know what it meant. Feelings were a strange contagion, and Audrey Hepburn and Moon River were rats carrying the plague.
Point was: he needed this moment in the car, listening to this song, and every line that continued in Audrey Hepburn’s dulcet voice was a sweet relief.
Two drifters off to see the world
There’s such a crazy world to Steve walks warily down the street with the brim pulled way down low
“ACK!” He squawked, squeezing his steering wheel.
It was enough to make him want a new car.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart, I didn’t mean that,” he told his Bentley. It wasn't her fault.
Aziraphale slammed Crowley against the wall in the privacy of his bookshop, sending the Waughs and the Whitmans tumbling off the shelves. Crowley could hardly keep track of their hands, but he finally had the presence of mind to fumble around, trying to get Aziraphale’s pants off, if not the dexterity to succeed.
Crowley didn’t make a snide comment about how they waited until after the end of the world to fuck, because, to be honest, he thought he’d have to wait longer. He also didn’t mention that if the world hadn’t almost ended, they probably wouldn’t have done this at all.
Aziraphale finally realized that Crowley needed a little help, so with a couple of quick, efficient movements, Aziraphale got them both in the nude. Crowley did not dwell on how practiced those hands were compared to his own clumsy fingers.That would've given up the game when they'd switched faces--all the angels and demons needed to do was ask them to demonstrate sexual prowess, and Aziraphale would've rocked someone's world and Crowley would've tripped over his feet. Except they would have assumed Crowley was the sex machine and Aziraphale was the klutz.
It was really hard to concentrate. Aziraphale noticed.
"You alright?"
"Yep," Crowley swallowed thickly. "It's just--just the adrenaline."
“Do you want me to conjure a bed?” Aziraphale asked. It hadn’t occurred to Crowley that there were no beds in the bookshop, just some tables and the floor. He didn’t want to waste another second, and he knew that a bed was not a prerequisite. They would hardly be the first to do it on a table in a used bookstore. Probably not even the first to do it on that table, in this bookstore.
“Er, no, that’s quite alright,” Crowley said, and then found himself splayed on the table. And waiting, listening to a crinkling sound. He craned his head toward Aziraphale.
“What are you doing?” Crowley asked.
“I’m putting on a condom.”
“Why?”
“Force of habit, I suppose. Many humans insist on it.”
Crowley cursed himself for breaking the rhythm, but then again, they both broke the rhythm, and they could pick it back up again.
“Oh, bloody hell, neither of us are human, I know I’m not going to catch anything from you.”
“Right, then.” The crinkling stopped. “Now, where were we? Just kidding.”
Aziraphale took the lead, helped them both into position. The initial penetration was a startle on principle, but once Aziraphale was in and Crowley was over the shock, he thought, Ah, yes, that is what it would feel like.
Crowley wondered if he should be doing more than letting the gyrations happen. And he had no idea when it would end. He should have read more books on the subject, should have given the diagrams more than a cursory skim, maybe watched a few more videos. But every time he tried to think about actual sexual intercourse, his mind reared back to their last wall-slamming encounter: Aziraphale calling him nice, and Crowley's response. He'd been an idiot then, but he'd grown. The Apocalypse would do that to you. He knew what was important now. He knew what he wanted.
“Tell me I’m nice?” Crowley’s voice came out as more of a whimper than he’d wanted, but he assumed that was due to the natural mechanics of it all.
“Nice? You’re good. You’re splendid. Th en Aziraphale was off on the entire bloody thesaurus, and suddenly the hype made sense. It was like the world had ended and had started anew with just the two of them. Crowley came with a shudder and Aziraphale followed, perfectly timed. It seemed very intentional, and Crowley wondered if Aziraphale could have--would have--just kept going until Crowley was satisfied.
If that were the case, it was a good thing Crowley discovered what he'd wanted.
Crowley sat up on the table, going through the fallen books. He smoothed the pages of Maurice, which had gotten rumpled in the action. Aziraphale could do it on his own, but he didn’t like seeing damaged books, and Crowley magicked the table nice and clean and sterile as Aziraphale stood up and put on his clothes.
“Was it worth the wait?” Aziraphale asked primly, fastening his cufflink.
Before Crowley could blurt out asking how he knew it was Crowley's first time, he realized, Aziraphale was asking if he, specifically, was worth the wait, and there was no way to tell him that the six thousand years for sex were nothing compared to the time between seeing each other, the days and years woven throughout centuries that they spent apart, the countdowns that started the second Aziraphale left and ended the moment they reunited.
“Was I?” Crowley asked.
Aziraphale walked over to the table, cupped Crowley's neck, and looked into his eyes with a searing earnestness that made Crowley want to scream. “You’re worth every second, always.”
Crowley wanted to say something. He opened and closed his mouth a few times but managed no more than a squeak.
“Er, going back a few seconds...Was I good?” Aziraphale asked, reshelving the knocked-over books.
“Top ten,” Crowley shrugged. He meant it as a joke. Aziraphale took it to heart.
“Ah.” Aziraphale fumbled around for more books to shelve and accidentally tripped over a chair.
“Actually, I’ve never done it before.”
“Oh.” Aziraphale sounded like he was trying to decide whether or not to sound surprised.
"So I guess," Crowley continued, "technically, you're the best I've ever had. And I'm certain you're the best I ever will have."
Aziraphale turned red and stuttered before managing a polite "That's very nice of you. And I think I can quite honestly say the same about you. Tea, then?”
Crowley didn’t know if that was part of a normal British ritual or just a patented Aziraphale quirk. As far as he knew, post-coital tea wasn’t a global human phenomenon, but what did he know? He'd been a virgin until an hour ago.
Crowley wasn't going to hold Aziraphale to the rule that the driver chooses the music. He kept a collection of soaring symphonies in his car for Aziraphale's listening pleasure. Unless Aziraphale specifically requested a contemporary (by their standards) music education, that was what they listened to.
Until the strings became the inevitable.
“Oh, bugger. Must be awfully frustrating when that happens.” Aziraphale frowned at the cassette deck.
Crowley shrugged. "I don't know. I've gotten used to it. And besides," he added with a fond smile, "there's worse bands."