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“I have no idea what you are afraid of,” Aziraphale said, because it was clear Crowley was afraid. The demon was sitting with conscious elegance, legs crossed at his ankles, not at all in the relaxed slump he usually used in the shop’s backroom. It was irritating, and also endearing, and Aziraphale had long ago stopped trying to untangle the two responses when it came to Crowley.
“I’ll harm you,” Crowley said, in reasonable tones.
“If you think you are capable of doing me serious harm, my dear, I’m afraid you are rather flattering yourself.” He looked Crowley up and down rather pointedly, then down at himself. A skinny being in a fallen state compared to a solidly built angel in a state of grace.
“No need to be insulting about it.” Aziraphale fancied Crowley’s posture relaxed just a little.
“Then what? You’re afraid your saliva is laced with hellfire?”
“I’m more worried yours might be holy water,” Crowley muttered.
“So it’s not really me you’re concerned about after all.”
“Don’t be stupid, and don’t sound so smug.” Crowley ran his hand through the carefully unkempt looking black waves, turning them into actually unkempt black waves sticking in all different directions. There were two locks in the middle sticking up at angles like television antennas.
The scale was definitely leaning towards ‘endearing’.
Aziraphale looked at the bowl of nuts on the coffee table, next to the novelty angel nutcracker Crowley had bought him one Christmas. All the easier to crack nuts were gone, and the Brazil nuts, as often happened with nut selections, were left. The centres were tender and delectable, but it was so hard to get to them through the shell without destroying the fragile insides
“What are you afraid of?” he asked again, patiently.
“I’m venomous, you know.”
“Then don’t bite me.”
Crowley carefully looked everywhere but at him. “Might not be able to help myself.”
“I trust you,” Aziraphale said, patting Crowley’s knee encouragingly. It was bony under the expensive mulberry silk and wool blend trousers, or what would have been expensive trousers if Crowley bothered to actually buy them. The boniness tipped the scales even further towards ‘endearing’, and for some inexplicable reason added a solid weight of ‘arousing’ as well.
Whatever Aziraphale had dreamed or feared about Crowley’s response to a whispered “May I kiss you?”–which ran the gamut from gentle murmurs to mocking laughter, from being shoved passionately against a wall to being shoved away and not spoken to for decades–he had not expected to be sitting in the bookshop still discussing it twenty minutes later. Stone cold sober, too. He had clearly underestimated the hard shell the demon had grown around his soft interior.
But Crowley had not said no. He could have said no at any point, but he had very, very noticeably not said no. He was sitting there, closed away in a hard shell,not saying no.
Just not saying yes.
“So how do you think you will harm me?”
“You’re too intelligent for this. You’re an angel, I’m a demon.”
“Yes, yes. We established that back in the Garden of Eden.”
“Consorting with demons. Not exactly encouraged in an angel, is it?”
“We have been consorting together for centuries. If we were going to get cold feet, perhaps before averting the Apocalypse would have been appropriate. I’m at peace with consorting with you. What I want, very much, is to kiss you.”
“Cause I tempted you,” Crowley said under his breath.
Aziraphale blinked. “When?”
“Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed? Even once?”
“I’m sorry, dear boy.” He wanted to say that Crowley tempted him just by existing. He wasn’t sure if that would be complimentary or just rub salt into the wound. He decided it was safer to say nothing.
“I am the bloody Serpent of Eden. I tempt. That’s what I do.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt your professional pride.”
Crowley said something that sounded like nrrghgurgle.
“Are you worried you will tempt me into carnal sins of the flesh?”
This time it was more like nrrghdsplt. “How can you just sit there, sipping bloody tea, and say things like that?”
“Well, someone has to say them.” Aziraphale hesitated. “Unless you don’t want to me to kiss you.”
“It isn’t–it’s not… Oh, angel, you are hopeless.” Crowley pushed away Aziraphale’s rather nice coffee table with his snakeskin boots, and flounced out like a slighted soprano.
Aziraphale sighed, picking up the spilled nuts from the bowl. Perhaps it had been a bad idea after all. It might be months before his demon spoke to him again.
Still. Crowley, with mussed up hair and sharp suit, flouncing, was adorable. And he had, very definitely admitted to wanting to be kissed. The sweet dear boy.
Better to leave him for a while. In the meantime, nutcracker in hand, Aziraphale remembered reading that it was much easier to crack Brazil nut shells without cracking the insides if you let them sit for a while in cold water, chilling.
A fortnight later, a Bible arrived. It was a 1599 Geneva Bible in exquisite condition, and Aziraphale’s hands trembled as he unwrapped it, despite the ominously snake themed wrapping paper.
At least, it had been in exquisite condition, until someone had gone through it with a green fluorescent highlighter, marking all the passages about fornication or the Serpent of Eden.
It was almost impressive how much trouble, expense and mortal danger Crowley had put himself through in order to ruin a priceless book to prove a point. Endearing, Aziraphale told himself. Endearingly mischievous snake. The sweet dear boy. Aziraphale’s pampered hands shook with barely restrained holy fury.
A scrap of paper fell out. “See particularly Galatians 5:19.”
Right. That was it. It took every ounce of practice Aziraphale had not to swear.
He started talking too soon, realised it was the answering machine, and took a deep breath.
“Crowley, humans might be less worried about the original tempter if they knew what a ridiculous prude he was.”
There was a click as the receiver was picked up. “I’m not a prude. I’m trying to make you think it over, angel.”
“You are a prude. And how dare you point me to Galatians? Paul was an even worse prude than you are. If he even wrote that letter, which you know as well as I do that he didn’t.”
“Your lot seem okay with humans claiming he did.”
“My lot are beside the point. You don’t quote 5:21 at me when I share my most precious wine stocks with you.”
“No. I’m too busy staring at your thighs and trying to resist the impulse to dig my fingers into them and see what kind of noises you make.”
Fire exploded somewhere in the depths of Aziraphale’s thighs, as if they were responding to being talked about with such naked honesty. “I wish you wouldn’t resist. What kind of demon are you, resisting lust?”
“What kind of angel are you, tempting to lust?”
“It’s not just lust.”
“That’s part of the bloody problem!” There was a silence and Crowley said, more gently, “I don’t think you’ve taken enough time to think about it.”
“I’ve taken six thousand years. How much longer should I consider?”
Crowley choked back a laugh “Okay, okay. Point taken. And me, too.”
Aziraphale closed his eyes and tenderness swept over him. He could answer honesty with honesty. “I want to kiss you more than I’ve ever wanted anything.”
“Oh, Aziraphale.” No barbs on Crowley’s voice now, just a defeated sounding hiss. “That’s not all I want. But what I want most of all is not to harm you, and not to drive you away. I’m not losing you again.”
“You won’t. Just–just kissing. It doesn’t have to be a fuss. We could exchange a kiss in greeting and farewell. Just like–”
“A couple.” Crowley breathed, and his longing was something thick and painful down the phone.
“How much danger can I be in with a kiss?”
“You’d be surprised, angel.” Crowley hesitated. “Look, there’s this place just opened, old fashioned Italian cooking. Surprisingly decent wine list. You’ll like it. I’ll pick you up, and we could–maybe. First.”
Aziraphale understood and appreciated it. They would have somewhere to go. No reason to linger and be further tempted. “That sounds lovely.”
“That’s the worst of it. It does.” Crowley hung up.
Aziraphale probably should have been surprised when Crowley turned up awkwardly clutching a bunch of costly red roses.
The demon stepped inside and threw the flowers on a chair like he wasn’t sure how he came to be holding them, followed by his sunglasses, which Aziraphale found interesting. “Well, then.” His yellow eyes were round and terrified.
“Well, then,” Aziraphale repeated, in his kindest voice, despite his dry throat. He realised he wasn’t quite sure what to do with his hands. He tried placing them on Crowley’s thin shoulders, which seemed to work well, as Crowley stepped closer and, amazingly, put his own hands on Aziraphale’s thick waist.
“Hullo, angel,” he said, and his sharp-toothed grin flashed, and it was suddenly easy, really easy, to close the remaining gap between them and kiss his mouth.
“Just one kiss,” Aziraphale murmured against soft dry lips.
“I suppose we should cancel the dinner reservation,” Aziraphale said.
Crowley, sprawled over Aziraphale and lazily kissing his shoulder, shrugged with one of his liquid movements. “Never actually bother making them. How’s your back?”
“Sore.”
“Me, too. Unused muscle groups. It will get better with practice. Knees?”
“I should probably do something about the rug burn,” Aziraphale admitted, noting that Crowley was out of practice too, and wondering exactly how long the demon had been, well, not practicing. He certainly seemed to have known what he was doing.
“Poor darling,” Crowley said. He had certainly never used that endearment before. His hand trailed down over Aziraphale’s hip and thigh to find a knee and caress it soothingly. “I should have taken more care. You do have nice knees.”
“So do you.” Aziraphale pulled Crowley’s face up to kiss his lips.
“Just a kiss,” Crowley said bitterly, as their lips parted. “What harm could it do?”
Aziraphale stroked his hair, despite the amount of hair product in it. “Seems to be no harm done except some minor aches and pains.”
“I put you at risk. Again. I’m always putting you at risk.” He put his head down on Aziraphale’s shoulder. “You shouldn’t let me.”
“My dearest boy, it’s not a matter of letting. And it was worth it.” He scritched Crowley’s scalp with his fingertips, soothing with deep pressure. “You are worth it. You are always, always worth it.”
“Ssso are you,” Crowley hissed against his shoulder, and Aziraphale marvelled, once again, at the absolute tenderness inside that hard shell.
He was determined to keep his precious demon safe.