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Sometimes, it goes like this:
Lying across from each other in the tired early morning, so early that the moon still prevails. Hands gently overlapping in the scant space between them. Crowley still doesn’t know why he has such a thing for Aziraphale’s hands, why it hasn’t died out by now. He also doesn’t know why he finds the angel’s stuffy old nightgown unbearably attractive, instead of silly.
He whispers. “Do you remember--”
===
In the Judaean Desert, long ago, Crowley has been given orders that, for once, explicitly demand that she discorporate her Adversary through violence. They’ve both been circling Jerusalem for a little while now, drawing closer each day with a reluctant, minute cinch of their paths… and Crowley has gotten caught up in the hot desert sands, the way they burn her feet and bounce heat back at her in a manner not too dissimilar to consecrated ground.
It feels right, somehow, the pain-- and unlike holy ground, it’s something she can heal, but she never does. She still wears black, the robes, drawing heat into her bones, and she’s almost giddy with it, the sun, like she still has serpent coils, and the sting, the searing--
She’s tackled from behind, knocked flat into the hot sands, and her hands claw between the fine grains as she’s overcome with euphoric unholy Wrath, towards both herself and her assailant. She coils and springs back, turns the tide, and pinned beneath her scaly limbs is him--
“Oh!” she gasps, and scrambles back, forgetting her orders. He’s beautiful, all wrapped in white as one should be in the desert, clean and damp with sweat. His face is determined, and just this side of sad.
“Good show, my dear,” he says grimly, and it’s been so long since she’s heard that voice, “but the game’s not over yet. Come on, stand up, there you go.”
“I’ve been ordered to kill you,” she tells him once standing, and takes note of his lack of surprise, how his stance is locked on the defense. “Oh, I sssee.”
“There’s nothing for it, I suppose,” rambles Aziraphale, and they begin to circle each other without really thinking about it. Crowley lets her body slink as she walks, her yellow eyes flash, and all she gets is a weary smile for her efforts. “We can’t have the Enemy in Jerusalem.”
“Don’t look so ssssad, angel,” she chuckles. She knows instinctively that they’re evenly matched, that they could be locked in battle for centuries if nothing gives. She’s already decided who’s going to win, but she’ll let it last a week for the fun of it before she takes the fall. “Do you think I’ll let you go over this? A fight neither of us wants?”
“Well--” Aziraphale’s voice stutters, but his pace does not. The circle cinches, reluctantly, and it’s so them that Crowley can’t help her crooked smile. “It does hurt quite a lot, my dear. Discorporation.”
He says it in the manner of someone who has just learned this recently. Crowley’s smile deepens into a too-wide serpentine grimace, a wicked parody of delight; when all the while, on the inside, she wants to find whoever taught him this lesson and swallow them whole.
“I know,” she purrs, as this was long before there was much of a queue for bodies and Crowley used to die all of the time just for the sheer hell of it, or sometimes for curiosity’s sake. “Where’s your sword?”
She’s dreamed about that blade, in her stomach, but she doesn’t see it now. Her eyes widen, and she speaks again, before Aziraphale can summon up some paltry excuse as to why he still hasn’t tracked down his God-given sword.
“Will you strangle me to death?” Those glorious hands, it suddenly seems like the only right way to go--
“My goodness!” Aziraphale exclaims, looking sick to his stomach, and he really, really hasn’t thought this through. Crowley abruptly stops having fun at this look, this miserable expression. “Well, what if you defeat me? It’s a distinct possibility… how would you do it, my dear?”
Crowley blinks, pupils thinning to near-imperceptible. It’s untenable. Unimaginable. This fight can only end one way, and her report will say: Most Certainly I Tried, I Tempted and Wiled, but Inevitably, the Serpent Falls Beneath the Heel of Another. Point to the Adversary, but Don’t Worry, I’ll Match Him Up Some Other Way.
Aziraphale interprets her lack of response as an implication of something abominable.
“Oh my, will you eat me?!?” he exclaims, blue eyes wide with shock.
Crowley trips on the hem of her robe and collapses into the sand hissing. “What?! Are you out of your blessed mind? You’d-- you’d give me indigestion, you angelic prick!”
Aziraphale sits down too, so they’re on equal ground, and Crowley is quickly losing sight of what’s happening, where this is headed.
“Oh, I just don’t think I can do it,” he sighs, scooping up some sand and pouring it over his fine shoe as something to do with his hands. “You are a wily serpent, most definitely, and an even wilier Adversary, but it seems very distinctly wrong to commit such violence.”
“It can’t be wrong if you do it, Aziraphale,” she says. “You’re an angel.”
“Just so!” he decides. “And so my choice not to do it is angelic as well!”
And so they argue, so on through the night and many more after that-- with brief tangents into little anecdotes Aziraphale has about new foods he’s tried-- until they’re both lying in the sand in the cooling night, their circle cinched quite tightly to the point where Crowley can see how Aziraphale has let little bits of sand get into his hair.
“I’m going to let you win, you know,” she informs him conversationally, and he gasps, placing a hand over his heart like something out of a book.
“That’s not right, Crowley,” he protests. “What would your side say? Besides, haven’t I just told you how much it hurts?”
“I don’t mind.” She smiles at his look of confusion. “Isssn’t it Right, hmm? Good defeating Evil?”
“You shouldn’t want that.” Angelic confidence. Sincerity.
“I want a lot of things I shouldn’t, angel. It’s in my nature to go against what’s expected.”
She knows that to Aziraphale, this makes a great deal of sense, with the Fallen being rebels and all that. However, it also directly contradicts his firm belief that demons are all of the same build and intention, as has been hammered into his head by the likes of Archangels such as Gabriel.
“Well…” he hesitates, clearly mulling this over. “Surely there’s some way to avoid this altercation altogether. Perhaps we can just say that we fought, and that our Adversary fled when the going got tough.”
“Hmmm. That does sssound like me.”
Aziraphale giggles. “Let’s do it, then! I won’t kill anything, which is very angelic of me, if I do say so myself-- and you get to secretly rebel against orders!”
===
“Stunning logic,” says Crowley dryly, in the present day. Aziraphale snickers.
“It’s still strange to me that you protested so vehemently to my finding a way not to have to kill you. What a strange creature you are.”
Crowley hisses and crawls on top of him, to sit across his hips. He knows that his skin looks excellent in the glow of the moon through the window. “Ssstrange, yes. But don’t pretend not to understand my motivations. As though I could ever hurt you, my angel, my lovelight--”
Aziraphale squeaks in delight and draws him close, trapping him against his chest like some overlarge, sharp-elbowed stuffed animal. “Alright, alright… but you’ve always had an odd yearning for pain, as well--”
“We are not talking about that,” snarls Crowley.
Aziraphale pouts. “It’s not in the manner of most lovers, at that. It’s in the manner of self-flagellation, which I can’t abide. I want you to feel nice, all the time, and especially around me.”
Crowley sighs. “I do feel nice around you, angel.”
“Yes, but you don’t let yourself feel as nice as you could. Oh, I wish you would just do as I say, for once!”
“You--” Crowley laughs and combs a hand though Aziraphale’s hair. “Okay, calm down. You win this one.”
“Do I? I don’t feel as though I’ve won.”
"That’s because you never have before, so you’re not used to the feeling.”
“Oh, you--!”
Aziraphale rolls them over, and Crowley lets it happen, grinning and scaly. “Now this is what we should have done in the sand. A fight of a kind.”
“Well then I would always win.”
“What-- not always! I’ll show you always!”
The ensuing battle is of the legendary sort, and certainly their superiors would be proud, if they were on speaking terms.