Work Text:
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Water laps against the feet of the pier; the great structures that reach down into the river. It is a soft, natural sound, unlike anything in the rest of the city. Beyond the pier, the world hums with life. Cars flash, windows gleam, horns honk. Everything is fast and loud and sharp. Already, at six o' clock, the air is full of diesel and dust. The smell of bitumen will join it as the sun rises overhead but, for now, all Crowley can smell is the river lapping with the morning tide.
The demon comes here to sit and watch the sun rise. Pale light will to gold around seven, heating the concrete, rising in waves over broken slabs. Crowley likes to watch plants push up through cracks, likes to watch the ants trail back and forth, searching for food. He likes to watch the humans trail back and forth from the pier, also - seeking refuge from the city, seeking expression.
Sea salt and diesel. A tin can coasts on the waves beyond the pier, bumping against a broken post. The noise is a momentary blip in the natural sound of the place. A bird stops pecking at a crisp packet and looks over to check it out, then gathers its wings and flies away.
Crowley watches the tin bob on, feeling the sun warm the skin of his back.
He is not wearing a shirt. He is not wearing very much of anything, really. Most of his clothes are lying on the second floor of the tumbledown building behind him, beside the mattress where he and last night’s companion slept. Crowley had wandered outside in just his briefs to find the sun.
He does not worry about the exposure - such a state of undress is common, down on the piers in the summer. By noon, there will be a handful of humans lying around, stripped down to their skins. There will be a handful more, later, come to watch them or to cruise for sex.
It is a mixed crowd. Young people looking for company, the older crowd looking to meet up, musicians, dealers, artists. Crowley knows a sculptor who is greedily guarding a pier just a block down from where Crowley is staying - making his masterpiece by cutting negative shapes from the great steel structure. He knows a number of photographers, too, and a young man who comes here with a video camera to film clandestine meetings in the shadows.
It is not really about the sex, Crowley thinks, watching the tin bob off downstream. The humans think it is, they think that’s why they come here. They build elaborate rituals around the act, sew it into their culture and identities, but what they are really interested in - nine times out of ten - is the exchange of power. The give. The take. The voyeurism of watching that exchange.
Crowley had come here three months ago, on a job - a banker who Hell wanted to disgrace - but had hung around because of the possibility of this space. Because of these degenerate buildings, half skeleton and half light, which reminded him of spaces he had known throughout history. Places which emerged from nowhere, when the circumstances aligned. Where freedom blossomed.
Things have changed over the last ten years. Both here and back in London, it is no longer illegal for these young men to seek one another out. The political landscape is shifting, social class boundaries being eroded as marginalised peoples campaign for equal rights. It is a wave that emerges over and over again, in human society, and Crowley likes to ride it. Quite apart from it being a demon’s job to stir rebellion, he likes the feeling. It is nice to belong to something.
So, Crowley decanted from London to Paris, and then from Paris to New York. He rioted and leant some of his best philosophy to the young people writing speeches and manifestos. He made friends with the people of the piers and the people of the penthouse apartments, lacing chaotic magic through all they were doing. He is a demon, after all. And work is work.
Aziraphale would probably disagree with that last statement, Crowley thinks, squinting up at the sun. Aziraphale would have all sorts of arguments as to why the work of a demon was different to that of a carpenter, or a shepherd, or a fisherman, but the angel has arguments prepared for all eventualities. That's just who he is.
For Crowley’s part, he believes that work is just work. He’s stood in the ranks of both Heaven and Hell and he’s pretty sure the main difference is aesthetic. There are truths that are acceptable to speak, in Hell, which are not acceptable in Heaven but the rest is similar. There is hypocrisy – a dozen agendas at play. Everybody just wants to win and, regardless of where you clock in, there is no sitting in the sun. No breathing in the morning air. No river lapping against wood.
Crowley's brethren, down in the abyss, could never understand the beauty of life on Earth because they do not understand nuance. There is only black in Hell, just as there is only white in Heaven. But Earth is not like that, Crowley thinks, wrinkling his nose to nudge the sunglasses up his face.
It is half past six and the city has not slept. It has only dozed a little, the cast of humans turning over with the sun. The ones who rise now do so industriously, moving at pace carrying messages, delivering food, cleaning offices, changing shifts. There are humans in suits and exercise gear, humans carrying bags and cups of coffee, clutching hands of children, shouting goodbye to lovers. There are restaurant workers rushing to catch trains, artists hailing cabs. Office workers pacing the streets like ants, like bees. Busy, busy.
Crowley yawns, scratching the side of his belly.
Turning his eyes north, he scans the next pier upriver. There are two humans sitting on the end, naked, passing a cigarette between them. Occasionally, when the breeze drifts just right, it carries the lilt of their conversation towards the demon, but they are too far away to understand individual words. They sound warm, though. Friendly.
Crowley wonders if they have spent the night here, together, in the shadows of the run-down warehouses. He wonders if they arrived with the dawn light, to seek out company before returning to their wives and their office jobs.
Crowley has no opinion on whatever sins they might be committing together. He is the orchestrator of the original sin, after all, and in town on Hell’s orders. He can hardly cast a stone against adultery -- not as he is lying through his teeth about what he’s really doing, down on the piers...
See, on paper, Crowley is doing a bang up job of evil. He sends reports back to Hell every few days, expounding on all the evil he has inspired. The riots, the drugs, the humans who get led into the trucks to be robbed at knifepoint; Crowley has taken credit for anything that crosses his path. In reality, however, his involvement has been minimal. He laces a bit of chaotic magic here and there. He gets a little too involved in the humans’ personal lives. But mostly he just sits in the sun and gets high.
There is nothing particularly demonic about the situation here, Crowley thinks, watching the humans on the opposite pier. There's nothing particularly evil about the world at large - Earth is more complicated than that. But Hell does not read nuance and Crowley has stopped trying to make them.
He’ll take advantage of it though, he thinks. He is a demon. And work is work.
Pressing fingertips into his collarbones, Crowley concentrates on the sensation. On the way the sun scatters across him, warming his skin, burnishing it with freckles. He brushes through the hair of his chest, down to the skin of his nipples, where he is most sensitive, then lower. To the grooves of his ribs. To the indent of his navel - smiling at the detail of his human camouflage. So simple, unnecessary, perfect.
The river laps below him.
Crowley watches it, thinking about birth - trying to remember being born as an angel.
He can’t, so, he tries to remember being pulled from the sulphurous pits as a demon, instead. That memory is a newer one, bound in time, but still so ancient that Crowley can barely grasp it. And, as soon as his mind turns to Earth, it is eclipsed.
Crowley can remember his first moments on Earth with brutal clarity. He can remember the sudden pressure of air in his lungs, the searing brightness of the sun and that first taste of water. He can remember mud beneath his belly and the desert wind stinging his face. Sensation and emotion and a wonderful, terrifying realisation that he was part of it all - that being encased in a body made him part of this physical world.
Sliding his hand lower, Crowley scrapes his fingernails across the skin of his legs.
Legs were an unexpected bonus, he thinks, having been born into the world as a snake. He’s always been keen on walking. On feet and thighs and all that lies between them. He likes all of his body, really. The little patches of melanin that scatter his cheeks. The pink of his nails. The way his veins show up, blue, in the crook of his elbows. He likes the contrast of his human shape. Hard bone and soft fat. The bounce of muscle. The stretch of skin.
Despite the variety of colours and shapes, humans basically fit the same blueprint. Limbs and skin, eyes and heat. Crowley has always been fascinated. Has always liked the way they looked, pressed together; the same but different. Together.
“I thought I’d find you here.”
Crowley startles at the voice.
He shouldn’t, really. It is a familiar voice and he has been waiting for it all week, but he startles anyway.
Pushing himself upright, he cranes his neck, looking at the figure walking along the pier towards him.
“What the Heaven are you doing here?” Crowley grumbles, unable to keep the corners of his mouth from tilting towards a smile.
“Looking for you, of course.” Aziraphale is beaming at him as he looks around at the pier. "Lovely morning for it." He is wrapped in a pale suit, with a brown paper bag in one hand and a polystyrene coffee cup in the other. Crowley recognises the insignia from a shop down the road.
His stomach grumbles.
“It’s not easy to find, this place,” Aziraphale complains, wobbling closer over an uneven slab of concrete. “There are so many fences and no entry signs. It took me at least half an hour to get in. Though I suppose that is part of the appeal...” He looks around, at the steel frame of the building, at the falling-apart brickwork and graffiti daubed between broken windows. “I don’t suppose it’s structurally sound?”
Crowley leans back on his palms, grinning.
“M' afraid you just missed the architecture tour, mate. Next one isn’t till two.”
Aziraphale looks around, pursing his lips.
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
Crowley scans him, taking in the cravat at his neck. And the paper bag. His tongue can sense powdered sugar and coffee.
“That for me?” He asks.
“Oh. Yes!” Aziraphale smiles, all disdain forgotten. “A bribe. I hear that’s how things are done in ‘ the big apple ’.”
“It’s how things are done everywhere, angel. Always has been.”
He takes the bag though. And the coffee.
“Black, three sugars. Is that right?”
“Yeah.” Of course it is. As if Aziraphale would ever forget his coffee order.
Settling the donut bag between his crossed legs, Crowley lifts the cup to his lips.
He wonders, vaguely, what his colleagues would think, to see him accepting a drink from his hereditary enemy. He imagines the terrible curses that an angel might have put into the substance. The horrors that Aziraphale could inflict upon his earthly form. Not that any curse could be worse than what Aziraphale has already given him, six years ago, on the front bench of the Bentley, under the neon lights of Soho…
The demon takes another sip then lowers his cup to the concrete, nodding toward an overturned crate.
“Grab a pew.”
Aziraphale looks disheartened at the lack of proper furniture, but rallies almost immediately as Crowley offers out the bag of donuts.
“Oh, yes please. The little ones look particularly scrumptious.”
“Help yourself."
"Are you sure?"
"I'm hardly going to finish them all alone.”
“You do look as if you could do with a proper meal, Crowley.”
“That’s just my aesthetic.”
Aziraphale throws him a withering look.
“Well. Thank you.”
Selecting a powdered ring, he breaks it in half and arranges himself carefully on the crate to eat it.
He looks preposterously dainty with his toes and knees pressed together, jacket on despite the growing heat.
“So, what brings you to my side of the tracks?” Crowley asks, after a few bites are swallowed. “I thought you were busy in the financial district?”
“Ah.” Aziraphale flicks his eyebrows. “Well, ostensibly I am, you see? But I've taken on a few side projects while I was in the area. You know how it is…” Crowley does. “Anyway, I’m trying to find someone. A young man. He’s left home and his mother is terribly worried about him. I tracked him down to a local mission and then lost the trail. I was told you might be able to help.”
“Were you really?”
“Yes.”
“By whom?”
“A human at the mission. She said you knew everyone who came and went along the waterfront. She gave me a description.”
Crowley watches Aziraphale, wondering how much the angel knows about his work along the waterfront. It is temptation of a different kind than Crowley usually plays with. It is more personal. More intimate.
It is not just about sex - though the demon occasionally uses that to his advantage. Crowley’s work is about finding the cracks in humanity and tracing them back to where they run deep. It is about placing the tip of a knife into those fault lines and applying pressure. Sometimes the humans break, sometimes they don’t. Crowley’s goal is change.
Aziraphale’s goal is quite different, Crowley thinks. An angel does not enjoy the same sort of latitude as a demon.
“How did you know it was me?” He asks, eventually. “The person the human was describing?”
Aziraphale considers him.
“I’ve known you a long time, dear boy. I know the physical attributes humans tend to comment on. And there are only a handful of six-foot-something redheads who wear sunglasses at night, even in New York.”
“You’d be surprised.”
The quip is rewarded with a twitch of pink lips.
"Either way,” Aziraphale dips his head. “I knew you were in town, so I was working to an advantage.”
“How did you know I was in town?” Crowley asks, as though he doesn’t know. As if he hasn’t been waiting for Aziraphale to catch wind of his latest project and turn up, to seek him out.
“Oh, something Michael said the other day. She was bitch-” Aziraphale catches himself, rephrases. “She was talking about your work on Wall Street. Apparently one of her long-term plans was thrown off track and she's a bit put out about it. She sent me over to rectify the situation.”
“Gosh, did she?"
Inconveniencing Michael was a pleasant surprise. Crowley hadn’t known it was Michael’s project specifically. He hadn’t been sure he had accomplished anything at all, at that bank. It had felt a bit of a wasted week. The humans hadn’t seemed any more evil than when he arrived, but pissing off an archangel wasn’t to be sniffed at. Especially when it was Aziraphale who got sent in to clean up the mess…
“Well, that’s made my morning,” the demon grins, leaning back and taking another bite of donut. “Michael on the back foot and all. I didn’t know that it was archangel business. I was just faffing around.”
“Well, I could have done without your faffing,” Aziraphale frowns back. “I had plans this week, Crowley. I was going to finish binding that new copy of Candide.”
“You poor thing.”
“And I had a lunch appointment.”
“Ohft.”
“And New York is terribly stuffy this time of year. You know I don’t like the heat.”
“Liar," Crowley accuses, without venom.
“Well, perhaps.” Aziraphale’s eyes cast around the scrubby pier, at the discarded bottles and broken steel. “I can’t say this is the heat I would have chosen, though. Couldn’t you have caused some fuss over in Rhodes? or Crete?” His eyes flit back up to Crowley’s and the demon has to fight the desire to laugh.
Noted, he thinks, straightening the corners of his mouth. Noted, angel. Next time, I’ll stir some chaos in one of your preferred holiday spots. Somewhere you can stroll through markets with little baskets of fruit. Somewhere we can bump into one another and exclaim over the odds, and order a flagon of the local wine before wandering off into the hillsides to flop down amongst the trees.
Perhaps somewhere where they could revisit coves they had used to visit as younger creatures... where they could relive old stories, draw their wings out, bask in the sun...
“You can ditch a few layers, you know,” he tells Aziraphale, gesturing to the empty pier. “There’s nobody around. And nobody would mind, if they were.”
“Oh no, I couldn’t possibly,” Aziraphale blinks, eyes dipping down below Crowley’s collarbones, along the stretch of his naked torso.
The demon can’t tell how far down, but he hopes it is as far as his nipples. (His hips, his thighs). There is something undeniably powerful about being desired by Aziraphale - a creature who spends his days sampling the finer aspects of human creation. There is something undeniably sweet about the way the angel catches himself, how he forces his eyes back up and leans back into conversation.
“Michael got them all started, anyway,” he clears his throat, looking pointedly away. “It was a fiasco. I had to listen to forty five minutes on ‘proportional conflict resolution’ and how demons ‘used to stay in their lane’ in the good old days.”
“Did we?”
“Mm?”
“Stay in our own lane?”
“Oh, I don’t recall.”
“Suppose we might have been a little less adventurous…”
“I imagine that's just wishful thinking. Anyway,” Aziraphale rolls his eyes, “she started Sandalphon off about some new system to monitor celestial and infernal movements down on Earth.”
A momentary rush of panic threatens to disturb Crowley’s otherwise perfect morning.
“New system?”
“Don't worry.” Aziraphale assures him. “Even if the idea does get traction, it would take upward of a thousand years to implement. The amount of paperwork involved would be enormous.”
“So, I don’t have to head south for the winter just yet?” Crowley asks, relief pooling around him.
“No, I think you're in the clear.”
Crowley grins, stretching his legs out and crossing them at the ankles. The warmth of the concrete is pressing up into him, soaking through the cotton of his briefs. The river laps, below.
Half a minute of companionable silence passes, during which the demon remembers sitting beside Aziraphale in a number of states of undress; wrapped in a robe, a loincloth, a kilt, (and, on a few occasions, nothing at all). The fabric changes, the trappings of humanity change. But it is always the same sun. Same skin. Same angel.
“It’s a shame the rest of your lot haven’t figured out bribes,” he tells Aziraphale, nodding towards the almost finished bag of donuts. “It would save them a lot of bother.”
“Mm.”
“Keeps us from having to duke it out every time we meet.”
“Have we ever ‘duked it out'?” Aziraphale asks, eyes flashing playfully.
“Hard to say.” Crowley fakes a frown. "It has been a very long time.”
“It has.”
“We are very old.”
Aziraphale smiles, turning his face towards Jersey.
“We are.”
He looks tired, Crowley thinks, admiring the furrow down the centre of the angel's brow. He knows that Aziraphale does not sleep — that neither of them need to sleep — but the skin around his eyes looks a little more drawn than usual.
“Who was it you needed information on, anyway?” He asks - though he suspects he knows who Aziraphale is searching for. He smelled the angel’s magic all over the human the moment he stumbled into the place.
Aziraphale’s eyes dart over, relieved to be back on topic.
“A young man called Samuel. ‘Sammy’, to his friends. About five foot seven, light skin, brown eyes. He’s only just arrived in town.”
Crowley knows that. Knows the human’s story. Knows the taste of his skin.
There is a veneer of professional competition in why he does not immediately share that information with Aziraphale, but there is something personal, too. ‘Sammy’ is twenty one and terrified but Crowley does not think a miracle, to return him to the safety of his mother and church, is the best thing for the boy - not when it would mean signing away all he could ever be.
Crowley eyes his counterpart.
“What do you want him for?”
“I was doing some work at the mission.” Aziraphale frowns at the river. “He came by, looking for somewhere to stay.”
“Let me guess - no room at the inn?”
“No, we were full for the night.”
“Your lot need to come up with a new plot device.”
“It’s nothing to do with my lot, Crowley.”
“Mm.”
“I just thought he could do with a hand. I gave him a number to call, to see if there were any beds the next day, but he didn’t get back in touch and nobody’s seen him since.”
Because he came to the pier instead, Crowley thinks. Brown-eyed Sammy, with his well-scrubbed shoes and his cheap jacket, all his worldly possessions tucked in a messenger bag under one arm. He had come here looking for anonymous connection and abandon, and he found Crowley.
In the darkness, surrounded by harsh music and the soft light of the moon, Crowley had watched the young human navigate his new world. He had tasted Aziraphale’s magic in the air around the boy. And just when it had looked like he might be putting himself in danger, Crowley had stepped in.
Drawing Sammy aside, Crowley had offered the boy a cigarette and talked until the more predatory humans had dispersed into the night. They talked for hours. First, about what Sammy was doing in New York. Then, about the scene down on the piers. Then, as night's shadows shortened and the moon rose overhead, Crowley had led Sammy up a stair at the side of the old warehouse, to show him the view over the North River.
Feet dangling over the abyss, they had sat in the lee of an old billboard and Crowley had pointed out the stars, naming them, lacing the moment with magic.
A gift of knowledge to drive a thirst for more. It was an age-old trick. One of Crowley’s favourites.
Crowley tells the angel about it all, watching as Aziraphale’s throat bobs in a swallow, as his eyes fix in the middle distance.
“Was he a temptation?” He asks when Crowley is done.
Crowley shakes his head.
“Nah, just a personal project. Same as you.”
“And where will your magic lead him?”
“I don’t know.” Crowley’s magic is made of curiosity and desire. It could push the boy to discover things about himself that he might never find on his own. But it could ruin him, too. “He’s still got hope. Pair that with curiosity and a person can get just about anywhere.”
“Is it always so unclear, what you do?”
Crowley fancies there is accusation in the question.
“Isn’t it for you?”
“Perhaps.” Aziraphale’s lips press together. Then he sighs. “Oh, I don’t know... Our directives just seem so much stricter.”
“This wasn’t a directive.”
“No…”
“I just thought he needed a push. Same as you did.”
“But you didn’t choose the direction?”
“I hardly ever do.” Crowley shrugs. “Most of the time, humans are already facing the way they want to before I get involved. All I do is push them into taking the first step… tweak the circumstances a little.”
The silence continues to hang between them, but Aziraphale’s frown slowly softens.
“So he’s not a temptation?” He asks, eventually.
“No.” Crowley shakes his head.
“And Hell does not wish him any harm?”
“Hell doesn’t even know he exists .”
“Okay.”
“Does Heaven?”
Aziraphale shakes his head.
“No, no.”
Crowley breathes a sigh of relief.
“Good. No conflicts to work out, then. No need for ‘proportional conflict resolution’.” He tilts his head, trying to win a smile.
He gets a flicker of one.
“Indeed.”
They watch one another for a few moments, then Aziraphale reaches down, finding the polystyrene coffee cup and lifting it to his lips. Crowley watches his throat bob in a swallow, something like envy burning in the pit of his stomach.
“Still warm?”
“Mm. Would you like-?” The angel offers out the cup.
“Yeah.”
Crowley takes it, fingers wrapping around warm plastic. Nails digging in. He takes a sip. The coffee is indeed still warm - still perfectly, miraculously warm.
“Did you find a place for him?” He asks, as Aziraphale goes back to fussing with the hem of his waistcoat. “At the mission?”
“No.” The angel gives a little sigh. “Not at the mission, but there is a boarding house on west eighth. The couple there are willing to take him on long term. He’ll need to find a job, or go back to school, but it is a chance to get off the streets. To have a future. A life where he doesn’t have to be afraid.”
“I wonder what that’s like.”
It is meant to be a joke, a quip, but Aziraphale’s eyes meet his with too much understanding in them. Too much warmth.
Shame burns through Crowley, bitter on his tongue.
“You just missed him, anyway,” he mutters, searching for a change of topic. “The boy. He left half an hour ago.”
Aziraphale’s eyebrows slide up.
“He was still here? This morning?”
“Yeah.”
He had arrived at seven and was in Crowley’s company by seven thirty. They spent the rest of the evening together, the boy laughing at Crowley’s jokes, leaning closer and closer until all the demon could see was his eager brown eyes — soft brown, like a doe’s, or a rabbit’s. Then, the human had moved closer and his hands had found Crowley, too. Soft human fingers tangled into the fabric of Crowley’s shirt. Soft human nose pushed into the side of his cheek.
And Crowley had been aware of the power differential — even if he had been leaning away from it all night — so he had pulled back, telling the boy that he did not owe him anything. Sammy was twenty one and beautiful and the world was a huge wide place. Crowley told him so once, and then again, but Sammy knew what he wanted. He told Crowley so in soft, confident words.
So, they spent the night together, in a makeshift bed of sheets and pillows up on the second floor, and they had woken to light streaming in through the broken windows.
“He’s off to speak to someone about a job,” Crowley tells the angel. “A kitchen, up on tenth.”
“Right.”
"Not a bad gig, by the sounds of it."
There is a long silence.
“Is he safe?” Aziraphale asks, eventually, not quite looking at him.
“Yeah, he’s safe.” Everything that happened to the boy last night was safe. Crowley had given him a taste of knowledge, and a share of his good weed, and what Sammy will eventually rank as his third best orgasm. (The demon has the advantage of time and practice on his side, but he believes in leaving room for improvement. It doesn't do to top a human out at twenty one…) “I even lent him money for the train, so he can get to the interview on time.”
Aziraphale’s eyes slide over, irises pale in the sunlight.
There is rebuke in his gaze and it’s not about the dangers of public transport. It is something else, Crowley thinks. Something much more personal.
Crowley can see hurt, and longing, and confusion. He can read the complicated dance that the angel is putting himself through, because he performs the steps so many times himself.
Jealousy comes first, hot and sharp.
Jealousy over the spaces in their lives they don’t get to share. Jealousy of those who get to fill those spaces.
Want comes next, dull and bitter.
Crowley is good at want. (And he does not pretend this is because he is a demon). The older he gets, the more he wants, the more he desires from this world.
He does not want to be a human. It's not that simple. Crowley is happy in his own skin. He likes what he is. He’s good at it. He just wishes his identity was not an impediment to a future with more options.
He thinks Aziraphale feels the same.
And that is where confusion hits, really, because Crowley is not exactly sure what Aziraphale wants from him.
On the good days, Crowley imagines it is similar to what he wants; a world where they can exist without fear; where they can meet without pretence, spend time together and share space. A future where they can finally admit — finally, finally — that ‘this' is important. That ‘they’ matter.
On the bad days, what Crowley thinks is not worth repeating.
“Do you think he will come back?” Aziraphale asks, still not quite meeting the demon's eyes. “To the piers?”
He won't ask about the sex, Crowley thinks. He can’t. They are not allowed to be accountable to one another in that way (in any way, really), and Aziraphale takes the rules very seriously.
“Probably.” Crowley pushes the thought aside. “Humans explore. It’s how they work these things out.”
“It’s a terribly dangerous place to be working things out.”
“I know that. I’ll keep an eye on him.”
“Hm.”
“Two eyes. As often as I can.”
“And what happens when you leave?”
“I’ll make sure he falls in with the right crowd. There are some good people down here, whatever they say in the tabloids.”
Aziraphale exhales slowly, through his nose.
There is a long silence.
“At least it’s not illegal now, I suppose.”
Crowley tongues at his teeth, gaze darting away, over the water. The river laps — quarter the speed of his heart.
Beat-beat, beat-beat.
He does not know what to say.
They do not talk about this. They have never talked about this. Crowley can remember all of the pubs and inns they have sat in, throughout history, not talking about legislation that has been drawn up and dashed on the subject of sex. The places they have drank and eaten and not talked, while human society shifted around them.
He thinks of all of the creatures who have been punished for want and love. He thinks of sitting in the driver’s seat of the Bentley, under the washed out red of Soho, fingers resting against the lid of a thermos flask. He thinks about metaphors and parallels, and all the rest of it.
Skin in the game, he thinks. That’s why they don’t talk about it.
“You never know,” he mutters, to the angel. “They might stick around this time — the laws.”
“Perhaps.”
Aziraphale does not sound very hopeful.
Crowley supposes he has a point. The cultural acceptability of queer expression has waxed and waned for six thousand years. Perhaps it is too soon to tell.
“At least the world is more connected now,” he shrugs, unable to hold his silence. “A hundred years ago, a human couldn’t have imagined picking up a piece of plastic and calling someone in another country - communicating in real-time halfway round the world. Now, they can fly anywhere in a matter of days. Surely that will help? That connectivity. They can't not see how similar they all are when the world is right there on a platter.”
“Perhaps." Aziraphale still looks doubtful. "One can certainly hope."
“Yeah.”
Silence hangs, not awkward but not comfortable either.
Crowley wonders what the next two hundred years will hold. He wonders whether he and Aziraphale will be sitting in some new building, in twenty-seventy, commiserating over some new human regime. He wonders if there will be anything left of the Hudson piers and the men who sought refuge in them. He supposes there won’t be. Space is at a premium, already, and these humans are likely to leave descendants.
He wonders where he and Aziraphale will be living, in two hundred years. Whether they’ll be based in London. Whether Aziraphale will still have the bookshop. Whether their human populations will overlap. Will they see one another at all, he wonders, or will they regress into what they were in the old days — crossing paths every fifty years, sharing a skin of wine before returning to their solitary lives? Was everything doomed to be temporary?
“I’m glad he bumped into you.”
The comment tears Crowley’s eyes from the water.
“Eh?”
Turning, he finds Aziraphale still staring down at his own hands but wearing a softer expression.
“Sammy,” he clarifies, with the tiniest glance up, towards Crowley. “I’m glad he bumped into you, instead of someone else. I’m glad you've been looking out for him.”
“Oh.”
Crowley’s stomach gives a twist inside of him. His heartbeat lurches unsteadily.
Beat-beat-beat, beat-
“I didn’t mean to make it sound as if-"
“You didn’t.” Crowley cuts in, not sure what the angel is going to say, but he is absolutely sure he does not need to hear it. “It’s fine.”
“I was just worried about him.”
“I know.”
“I didn’t mean to imply that you would only be interested if it was a temptation.”
Silence.
“Yeah. Well.” Crowley shrugs, mouth twisting under the sudden weight of the moment. “It would have been a fair assumption. I mean, I am-”
He stops speaking as Aziraphale’s eyes settle on him, reproachfully.
I am a demon.
The words hang, unsaid, in the air between them. Crowley wonders how many times he’s used them as an excuse over the years. Wonders how many times Aziraphale has fixed him with that reproachful stare.
I am a demon, for Satan’s sake…
What do you expect? I am a demon.
What did you think I would do, Aziraphale? I’m a demon. Demon, demon, demon…
“I know what you are, Crowley,” Aziraphale murmurs, after a long pause. “And it would have been beneath you.”
And there’s the sucker punch to the gut.
Crowley blinks, squirming at the twist on his own words — the way Aziraphale turns self-deprecation to compliment.
Thick, hot emotion is pooling in his belly, filling his chest, until Crowley thinks he might choke on it. Mouth open, he searches for a comeback, for a confession, or something, but nothing comes.
“Besides,” Aziraphale tells his slack jawed face. “Demon or not, you’re far too kind.”
Kind?
The moment fractures.
Crowley gives a strangled hiss of consonants — fighting the urge to both laugh and cry simultaneously.
“Ugh.” He pulls a face. “God, you had to ruin it, didn’t you?”
Aziraphale raises one eyebrow.
“Ruin it?”
“Yeah. Kind ?!” The demon shakes his head. “You were onto a winner. You would have had me preening over myself for weeks but you have to go and ruin it with ‘kind’? Come on, angel, I thought you were a professional?”
To his relief, Aziraphale’s face breaks into a grin. He laughs. Pink on white, perfect smile.
And the day floods back in around Crowley. Concrete, river, sun.
“I was having a moment, there,” he hams it up, drawing another laugh out of Aziraphale. “Was feeling really evil and then you went and dashed all my hopes.”
“Apologies.” The angel’s eyes are twinkling. “I didn’t mean to dent your ego.” The tips of his ears flushed pink at Crowley's approval and that warms Crowley through. (Because he’s an idiot. A demon and an idiot).
“Should bloody well hope not.”
“It’s just hard to miss, at that size.”
“Ouch.”
Aziraphale laughs again, looks away.
Crowley watches the sun catching in his hair. He looks positively cherubic.
“Hmmh.” Lifting his face up to the sky, Crowley’s counterpart gives an enormous sigh. “Do you ever wonder how long it would take them to find one of us if we just disappeared? If we used no magic, left no trail?”
It is a concession to the conversation they could be having, Crowley thinks. What if it was us, hiding away from the world? Running away from our families and their expectations? (What if it were you and I, curled up in that nest of sheets, together).
“I dunno,” he replies cautiously, letting Aziraphale set the pace.
“I imagine it would take at least three weeks before they realise we hadn’t checked in.”
“Maybe a month.”
“Maybe two." Aziraphale's eyes look distant. The light is making halos in his hair. "And another few weeks before they would be able to track where we last were.”
“Yeah.”
Aziraphale stares up at the sky.
"Sometimes I envy them,” he whispers.
Crowley doesn't dare speak.
“Sometimes I want to pretend, just for a few weeks or months.”
There is soft need in his eyes.
In one sweeping moment, Crowley realises that he could push this, right now - that he could lean in and turn the angel’s face to his. That he could brush a fingertip along the angel’s jaw and tilt his mouth down to touch their lips together. He does not know, but he can guess how Aziraphale would like to be kissed. A mix of gentle and gentle control.
In one sweeping, reckless moment, he considers doing it. Leaning into Aziraphale’s mouth and pressing palms into his cheeks, leading the angel inside and up that narrow stair, to the room that no human could find by themselves — to the room that Heaven and Hell would take weeks to find. He imagines pressing Aziraphale down into the mattress there, bodies shaky with new desire, throats tight.
It would be different to anything they had done before, he thinks, with a flush, because they wouldn’t have to hold back. They wouldn’t have to pretend to be anything else, to be less, or more. It would just be them, the sweat prickling across their backs, their limbs braced together, their lips drawing electricity from their skin.
And maybe, maybe, Crowley could trace his lips along the inside of his friend's soft wrists, and up his arms, into the crook of his neck. And maybe Aziraphale would clutch him back. And maybe they’d laugh, giddy on the sound of breaths and the suck of kisses. And maybe Crowley would be brave enough to coax Aziraphale over onto his back and slide a hand down his side, to stroke him through arousal, and pleasure, to something he could rank alongside his better orgasms (because Crowley wouldn’t be holding back, this time. He has experience on his side and would make it good. He would make it so good…)
And maybe afterwards he would bury his face in the angel’s skin and let the decrescendo of their heartbeats carry him off to sleep. Let the love blunt the fear for a little while.
He won’t, though. He won’t push.
Aziraphale needs him not to. And the only thing that Crowley needs more than Aziraphale is to be what Aziraphale needs.
The pier hangs quiet around them.
The city hums in the distance.
The river laps.
“I’ve pretended to be human,” Crowley says. The angel looks around, surprise in his face - perhaps surprise that Crowley dared acknowledge the conversation, the emotion. “I’ve done it a couple times. Once earlier this century.”
Aziraphale’s eyes dance between Crowley’s, perhaps noting the dilation of his pupils and the red of his cheeks. If he looked down, Crowley thinks, the angel would notice the sweat in the dip of his neck, too. Would notice how his blood had redistributed itself, leaving his cock heavier and his chest flushed.
Aziraphale doesn’t look down, though. He keeps staring ahead, into Crowley’s eyes, his lips slightly parted.
“I’d just come off the back of some nonsense with Dagon and I was pissed off,” he curls a lip, “disenfranchised, done, whatever … The idea of heading back to headquarters and picking up yet another shit assignment was too much. So, I took off. Two months. Completely off the radar. No magic to leave a trail.”
Aziraphale is watching him with wide eyes.
“Where did you go?”
“There were three young humans that I knew of who were setting off on an expedition. To search for fossils along the cape of Africa.”
“Fossils?”
There is a mix of amusement and need in Aziraphale’s voice and it makes Crowley smile in turn, despite the bitterness of the memory.
Because it is funny, he thinks, warmth pooling in his belly. It is funny that they’re sitting here, an angel and a demon, talking about being human, because they can never truly understand what it means to be human. They might eat and breathe and fuck, but they aren’t human. They don’t feel the same pressure of time, the fear that comes with their freedom. The idea of expressing their needs on a purely physical realm, therefore, is silly, ridiculous really, but they want it… They want it, funny little weirdos that they are…
It makes Crowley feel all frustrated and desperate and grateful.
What were the chances of being posted down here, across from an enemy so perfectly suited?
“Yeah, fossils.” Crowley rolls his lip between his teeth, biting down just a little. “Dinosaur footprints, mainly. It was like…” he frowns. “Do you know the bluffs along the western side of the river, a couple of miles upstream from here?”
Aziraphale bobs his head.
“They call them the Palisades. Huge basalt bluffs.” Crowley holds up his hands, approximating a reasonable distance. “Four hundred feet high. You can barely see them in summer, through the trees, but they stretch fifty miles upstate.”
“And there are fossils there?”
“Yeah. It’s an old sill, a magma conduit.” Crowley feels excitement pull at him — the excitement he always gets when he’s talking about something he knows well, when he is confident about the next words to come out his mouth. “It was formed near the end of the Triassic period, when the land was tearing down the middle. Anyway, a similar thing was happening in South Africa. Big sedimentary basins and old cliffs. Some of the local kids found footprints in a quarry and these chaps I went with heard about it. So we got on a plane and headed south.”
“Goodness…”
Aziraphale is hooked into the conversation, eyes full of curiosity about where it will lead. He looks both hopeful that it will take them away from the subject of their tangled lives and fearful of it.
“Anyway, I spent three weeks out there, living in a tent, eating food out of tins. It was hot,” Crowley licks his lips, remembering the dust. The crispness of the evenings. The way the dew rose up along the wildflower coast in a haze as the sun rose. He remembers the dirt. The thirst. “You’d have hated it.”
“I’ve lived in a tent before, Crowley.”
A bark of laughter.
“I’ve seen the tents you lived in. This bears little resemblance.”
Aziraphale’s eyelashes do a half flutter.
Crowley’s stomach does the same.
“Well, did you find any fossils?”
“Loads.” Crowley runs a hand through his hair. He remembers every one. All of their names. He’d read the blueprints of their skeletons long before Earth was made. He can remember arguing with Michael about the feathers… He’d said the joke had too long a punchline. “They dug them out of the ground, bone turned to stone - the fingers and toes of creatures who lived a hundred million years before the first humans and their world began.”
A silence.
“What was it like?”
“Seeing dinosaurs?”
“No.”
“Oh.” He tilts his chin. “Not having Hell breathing down my neck?”
Aziraphale’s lips do that thing where they tighten without narrowing. A change in angulation.
Yes.
Crowley considers his answer. Considers the warmth of the concrete on his skin, the smell of salt and diesel.
At first, it had been terrifying. Days passed and he had been sure someone was going to turn up, to reprimand him for running off to another continent without a single, Hellish reason. Then, the days had kept passing and nobody had come. Nobody had noticed, or nobody knew how, without a magical trail to follow. Then, slowly, the realisation had hit him. Nobody was coming. Not anytime soon. Crowley could stay here — for years, if he was careful. He had left no trace. No note to explain his absence. There was no business going on, in the local area, that would draw Hell’s immediate attention. If he kept a low profile, Crowley could stay here for several lifetimes. He could make and remake himself as a human, travel slowly around the globe, living in the fringes of society. A small life, perhaps, but one free from the demands of his masters.
For the space of a few hours, he had considered it. Then a second, deeper realisation began to grow around the first — an awareness of all the things he would have to leave behind.
“It was nearly perfect,” he tells the angel, leaning back on his palms.
“Then why did you come back?”
“There were things I didn’t want to give up.”
He’s staring at the river but he can feel Aziraphale’s eyes on him. Wide and full of questions.
The angel doesn’t speak.
Crowley plays with a bit of splintered concrete, passing it between his thumb and forefinger. There is a pressure to keep talking, to stop the conversation from sliding back towards the intensity it had been brewing in before.
“I’ve given things up, before,” he ventures, eventually. “I know what that feels like. I mean, before ,” he puts heavy emphasis on the word — heavy enough to indicate the delineation between the fallen and the divine, “I worked in astral mechanics.”
“You made stars?”
Aziraphale sounds impressed. Crowley feels a thrill, an instant desire to lean into the assumption and pretend he had been one of the seraphim who mixed helium and hydrogen into stars with his bare hands. (I mean, Aziraphale would never know… how could he? He could never check. Those records had been expunged…) But,
“Nah, I was in planning.” He flicks the piece of concrete away. “But I remember what it was like. To be up there.”
Aziraphale lets out a tiny sigh.
“I imagine it was beautiful.”
“It was.” He looks up. The sky overhead is a deep cerulean blue, Earth’s protective blanket of gas and particulates scattering every other wavelength — a veil over the universe beyond. “Honestly, there’s nothing else like it. It was endless. You could lose yourself in the colour and the light for months, just creating, building.” Crowley tilts his head. “But it was lonely, too. And cold. And if I had stayed I would never have seen Earth. I would never have become what I am.”
There is a furrow in Aziraphale’s brow - as if he’s struggling to understand how Crowley could talk about his Fall in a positive light.
Crowley decides not to address the point. He loves the angel and the Earth. He loves them differently to how he loved the stars, but he does not regret trading one for the other. Nor does he regret the questions that led him here. Aziraphale could not understand that, yet, but Aziraphale had yet to ask his own questions.
“I was ready to give that up,” Crowley continues. “But I’m not ready to let go of this.”
This.
Sitting on the concrete with the river lapping, Aziraphale at his side, sun baking his very human skin. Aziraphale’s eyes on his. The memories of them laughing in the bookshop. The taste of coffee and sugar on his tongue.
“I know it’s all only temporary,” Crowley stretches, feeling the crux of the conversation simmer around him. “But there will be other things after, you know? Different things.” He waves a hand vaguely. “And the stars will still be there, at the end of it all.”
A little of the tension leaves Aziraphale’s shoulders as it becomes obvious that Crowley is not going to push him, not going to ask for anything he’s not ready to say.
The warmth in the demon’s belly redoubles.
Aziraphale might not know what he wants yet, but that doesn’t mean he wants to give up on this either, Crowley thinks. Far from it.
“They’re up there right now,” he tells the angel. “Behind the sky, hidden by refraction. We can only see their greater light when nearer, lesser lights are hidden." He cannot help but grin as he catches the angel’s eye. “Tell me that is not a statement on the universe, Aziraphale.”
Aziraphale’s smile softens at the corners.
"In time, all things will be revealed.”
It is a quip taken from one of Heaven’s informational pamphlets. It makes Crowley’s lips twitch further. (Which, the demons suspects, was the intent).
“Yeah. Maybe."
“Mm.”
The air is full of quiet warmth and the sound of lapping water against the pier.
They sit in companionable silence for a good few minutes, finishing off the last half a donut and the dregs of the coffee - passing the cup back and forth between them.
Eventually, Crowley sighs.
“Well. Are you going to take me to lunch, or was this a flying visit?”
Aziraphale looks up from where he’d been examining the wooden crate.
His eyes sweep the demon.
“You’ll have to put some more clothes on, dear boy. I do have a reputation to think of.”
Crowley raises his eyebrows.
"I doubt this would even touch on your reputation, but okay.”
The disapproving frown Aziraphale throws him is softened by the fondness in his eyes. He’s smiling as he presses his palms into his thighs and stands, brushing his coat free of dust.
“Well. How about La Fonda del Sol, then? I’ve been meaning to go back.” His face lights up. “Or The Plaza? I hear they do rather excellent vol au vents.”
“I will never understand why a person can’t just order one meal rather than thirty six small ones,” Crowley grumbles, but he’s getting to his feet — and when he snaps himself a fashionable ensemble from the dust, he makes sure to include a wallet with a hefty wad of cash inside.
“Those tiny quiches…”
“Nothing wrong with a good hearty stew.”
“...or a wonderful vitello tonnato.”
Sorting his hair with one hand, Crowley motions for the angel to start walking with the other.
“Does this place at least have cocktails?” He asks, as they begin to head off down the pier.
“Crowley, it’s barely nine.”
“I’m still functioning on London time.”
“That would make it barely two.”
“I do know a place in the financial district that does a lobster and champagne breakfast…”
Aziraphale gives an affected little shudder.
“How gauche.”
Giving a snort of laughter, Crowley banishes the wrappings of their breakfast to the nearest rubbish bin.
“Snob.”
Aziraphale’s eyes dance over him.
“Drunkard.”
“Oh - speaketh the pot. A couple of wine coolers and you’re anyone’s!”
“Well, you’re welcome to test the theory,” Aziraphale tells him, as they fall into step — as their voices begin to blend with the sounds of the city, the pier fading behind as if left in another world. “But only after lunch.”
“Fine.” Hands in his pockets, Crowley doesn’t really mind where they end up, as long as it's in company. He really never has. “Lunch first.”
They walk west, shoulders brushing.
“I was thinking of trying to get tickets for the Palladium when I’m back in London. If you fancied it?”
“Sure, so long as it’s not Evita again.”
“It’s an adaptation of Victor Hu-”
“Ugh.”
“I’d like to give it a chance, Crowley. The reviews have been very harsh, but I always liked the novel. Won’t you give it a try?”
A sigh.
“Alright… alright, I’ll try anything once.”
“Oh, good.” A pause. “They do say that about you.”
“Who?”
“The inscriptions on lavatory doors, mainly.”
Crowley has to smother a laugh.
“It’s the sunglasses.”
"Or the general demeanour.”
“Or the hair. You know, I was thinking of growing a moustache."
“Oh, Good lord...”
“What? Don’t think I can pull it off?”
“I’ll answer that question after lunch, dear.”
“Coward.”
“Or after drinks.”
Another laugh.
“Alright, angel.”
.