#closed set

It won’t make things weird. Crowley had almost seemed as if he was begging, when he said that, and Aziraphale had promised, and now he had to keep his promise. He would order food, and make Crowley eat, and let him drink a little (not too much) wine, and insist he sleep.

I won’t let this change things, he thinks, hands on the old rotary phone, finger poised above the numbers. I won’t. 

But it would, he knew that, on some level down below his cells, down into the very subatomic structure of protons and neutrons, down into the essence of his angelic self, where he was vast and bright, that it would. Not so much the sex, not that, or at least not that alone. That might have changed things enough, had it been under different, less fraught circumstances.

But this wouldn’t be happening, under less fraught circumstances. Under less fraught circumstances, Crowley’s taste would not linger on his tongue. Under less fraught circumstances, they’d be off having dinner somewhere, getting drunk, and then Aziraphale would come home alone.

It wasn’t just the sex.

That was transcendent but messy and human. (And the way Crowley’s mouth had taken him was a psalm to the pleasure of being human that Aziraphale had never thought he might know but had thought of, so many times, had buried deep in himself for centuries, only revealed in the rubble of a bombed out church.) 

What it was, instead, that would change things, was that Crowley so clearly didn’t want it. Didn’t want him. That it was happening at the behest of hell—with Crowley so reluctant that his own body rebelled against it—was an abomination. 

I love you, he wants to say to Crowley, I love you and you are dying, and I will not let you die. I will not let you go. I will walk into hell again, and again, and again, every day for eternity. There is nothing you cannot ask of me now that I will not give. 

But it felt less like love, and more like violation. More like some sort of terrible joke at his expensive, when Crowley had shuddered at his touch. When Crowley had flinched when his hand had skimmed over his soft cock. When Crowley had snapped at him to leave his clothes on, face hard and unreachable. Yes, a wretched joke. That the thing so longed for would be in reach, but only in a form so twisted as to be unrecognisable. 

His own hands on the old Bakelite telephone seem unfamiliar, as if they belong to some other body. Blunt fingers, pale hair on broad knuckles. Hands he had skimmed over Crowley’s body. How does a demon like to be worshipped, he’d asked, with his mouth and his tongue and with these hands, and Crowley had responded with ... shock. Reluctance. Something like horror.  

He orders the Chinese food, and goes back into the other room. Crowley is still sitting on the couch, head thrown back, glaring balefully at the ceiling, pointedly ignoring the camera in the camera.

“I’ve got a nice white we can have,” he says, lightly, carefully. “Not too much though.”

“Leave off, angel,” Crowley says, but there’s no bite to it. 

“I shall not,” Aziraphale replies, and at least this feels normal. Close to, anyway. “You need to eat, and drink water, and rest.”

He aches to reach out and stroke his hair, to fold him into his arms, to tell him that Aziraphale won’t let hell have him, but instead he goes for the wine glasses.