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“I’m beginning to think you didn’t actually mean oysters,” Crowley said, looking around the cavernous room, which was dominated by a rather wonderful gilt-embossed statue of Venus with her arms aloft and breasts bare. The room thrummed with grandeur, all high domed ceilings and impressive marble balustrades, behind which a silk-curtained back room clearly extended a significant distance.
They were in one of the more notorious establishments of Petronius Arbiter, the eminent voluptuary. And Aziraphale had brought him here.
It wasn’t overtly an orgy. But the signs were there. That buxom maid’s pink cheeks and swollen lips; that swarthy youth’s toga askew at the neck, where a few pebble-shaped bruises were beginning to show. The steady flow of movement as duos and trios – and occasional larger, more raucous groups – went off behind the opulent rose-embroidered curtains, keenly eager, or re-emerged insouciant and slink-hipped, eyes satisfied, to descend on the lavish central tables again to quench new thirst or replenish their energies.
The smell of wine and fragranced smoke probably masked the evidence in the air for the humans, but Crowley’s tongue was tingling with it: he could find sweat and skin and brine and the salt-heat of urgency on every inhalation.
Some of the crowd were prostitutes, a few were patrician or other echelons of the upper classes, but mostly—these were legionaries. Half a regiment of military men, reclining on couches or standing around large tables strewn with plates of sugared fruits and mugs of dark wine, making eyes mostly at the circulating women, and occasionally – more covertly – at each other.
Crowley recognised a few bespoke temptations he’d delivered in recent times, though from their slack wine-glazed faces he doubted they would recognise him. If he’d known they frequented this sort of party he wouldn’t have bothered with the tempting. Pure of heart? He doubted it.
If he’d known Aziraphale frequented this sort of party…
To be fair, the angel now looked a bit pink. “Perhaps they aren’t running a restaurant today,” he said, offering Crowley the slenderest branch of plausible deniability he’d ever had the pleasure to witness.
A mischievous impulse overtook him. He gave Aziraphale his most serious look. “I’m afraid you’ve made a substantial mistake, here, Aziraphale,” he said, and the guilty colour redoubled in Aziraphale’s face. “Or perhaps you’ve been gravely misled? If you think I could ever—“
He paused, still unsmiling, watching the negativity of his words bind Aziraphale into flustered agitation as effectively as any physical touch.
“—ever mistake this den of iniquity for a restaurant,” he finished, and Aziraphale, practically writhing with discomfort, slowly digested what he’d actually said, and froze. A glimmer of hope broke through the clouds in his face.
“It’s not a restaurant,” he allowed. Then, with a degree of courage that Crowley had not adequately credited him for, Aziraphale said carefully, “Do you want to stay?”
Stay?! “And… sample what’s on offer?” All teasing aside, the prospect was dizzying. Crowley couldn’t keep an incredulous note from his tone. “Aziraphale. Do you come here often?”
“No!” Aziraphale protested, but he was still blushing and his eyes cut to the side, restless. “An occasional… foray. Into the affairs of men.”
“And prostitutes. And goats, probably,” Crowley said, just to poke a little more; that spurred a haughty sniff.
“Don’t be ridiculous. Anyway. I absolve them afterwards.”
“Of the sins of the flesh?”
“Of whatever drove them here.”
“Charitable. And do you absolve them while they’re still on their knees, or…?”
“Crowley! I should have known not to bring you here,” Aziraphale muttered, looking feverishly away, towards the door where they’d been admitted by a dark woman dressed in red silk with an impressive beaded up-do. She was currently waving in a grey-haired man who seemed to know exactly where he was going.
“Why did you bring me here?” Crowley let his voice carry a touch of his genuine amazement.
“You said you’d never tried oysters and you—you said you’d like to,” Aziraphale said, a weak note of accusation in his voice – weak but definitely present.
Crowley was really starting to enjoy himself. “I thought you meant the bivalve mollusc!”
“Did you?”
Did he? Had he? Hmm. Had he really thought that was the invitation the angel had been so slyly extending?
Nah.
“I never considered any ulterior motive or prurient interpretation of your suggestion,” Crowley said, which was technically true. Lucifer save him, he would go anywhere Aziraphale suggested these days; as it happened, it hadn’t occurred to him there was more on offer, and he hadn’t needed there to be. But this, ohhh. Now he had a few needs.
Aziraphale was looking an appealing mess of despondent and uneasy, worrying his lower lip with his teeth to a plump, shiny pinkness. Crowley wanted to take it between his own teeth and suck.
“We should leave,” Aziraphale said, rising all at once and making as if to sweep back toward the main door. “I never should have—this was a mistake. We should—oh.”
Crowley’s hand had shot out, grabbed Aziraphale’s wrist. Aziraphale twisted back, staring at it and then at Crowley’s face.
“Crowley,” he said, uncertainly.
“Not that way,” Crowley said, tugging him with gentle force, a delicious sensation of warmth rising as Aziraphale stumbled after him. Flustered enough to just go with it. Was he really doing this, steering Aziraphale through a heavy side door and into the relative privacy of a stone corridor running towards the back of the building?
Oh, he really was.
He led Aziraphale through one gloomy, narrow stone corridor, then chose another, Crowley hurrying them on, ushering Aziraphale in front; mostly to feel the warm pressure of their bodies being compressed as he squeezed past.
“Go on,” he said, and then, as another door opened ahead of them, hissed, “wait!”
He grabbed a fistful of Aziraphale’s toga, yanking him back.
He felt the slippery thin cloth in his hand pull taut and then strained as he took Aziraphale’s weight, and on impulse he put a little demonic twist into the gesture. There was a low harsh noise as the fabric ripped under Crowley’s fist, shocking a gasp out of Aziraphale—and slightly shocking Crowley as well, for that matter: how tantalising that felt. The tension followed by the giving way. The tearing.
The corridor’s new occupant, a woman wearing the outfit of a Vestal virgin and the expression of a businesswoman, gave them a curious glance but hurried on past without a word.
“Close,” Crowley said, though even he knew he was just filling space. If anyone impolitic had seen them, they would have dealt with it. Still.
“Go on,” Crowley said, watching with renewed hunger – his blood pumping hard, heat thickening his cock – as Aziraphale preceded him through the final back door of the building, and into the geometric light-and-shadow of the street beyond.
The fabric was hanging down around Aziraphale’s bare shoulder now, trailing. Neither of them fixed it, though it would take the barest brush of a miracle to mend. Let it look like an accident, an oversight, exposing Aziraphale’s skin like this, the twin vertical grooves where his wings should be, all the more obscene in the stark late-afternoon daylight.
The side-street was dusty, deserted, secluded. Nevertheless, it was brighter out here than inside, and Crowley found himself almost squinting in the light after the enclosed darkness, grabbing for Aziraphale’s wrist again.
He didn’t put on his glasses.
“What? What?” Aziraphale was saying, sounding increasingly alarmed, as Crowley let the strength of his grip teeter between threat and promise.
“Stop,” Crowley said, making it a quiet command, and Aziraphale stilled immediately, only his gaze still darting around.
“What?” Aziraphale asked again, but the nervous energy was tamped down by something else now, like damp moss being forced down over red-hot embers. Smouldering, but far from alight.
Crowley wondered if he was concerned they’d be seen. He wondered if he himself should be more concerned. But a simple glamour hid them from human eyes. And—fuck it—if Hell came knocking, he’d tell them he was working diligently on corrupting a key member of the heavenly host. Whereas if Heaven poked their noses in—welllll, yes, then he’d be in trouble, he would have to make himself scarce, but it would surely be Aziraphale having to answer the awkward questions. And that really seemed like more of an Aziraphale problem than a Crowley problem.
And if they could just get on with it, whatever this was, any awkward questions could be shelved for later. Right now, they were alone in a paved alleyway that still smelled of thyme and sun-warmed fig-leaves and broken orange rinds, despite the dwindling sunlight and the enveloping cool shade of overarching marble.
“I need to get this straight,” Crowley said, letting his voice drift downwards until Aziraphale was craning to hear him, bringing that intriguing repressed vibration of his right into Crowley’s personal space. “You invited me for oysters, but you did not mean oysters, you meant ‘oysters’, an analogy for the pleasures of the flesh – in which you thought I’d never partaken. At which point you invited me, not to a restaurant as implied, but to an orgy, which seems to be largely populated by meretrices and wayward soldiers?”
“Yes.” Barely more than a whisper, shivering despite the warmth of the day. “It does seem that way, doesn’t it?”
“And how’s that working out for you?”
“I may have overstepped,” Aziraphale said quickly, and pressed his lips together, cleared his throat. “Presumed.”
Crowley could smell the fresh tang of sweat beneath the remaining folds of Aziraphale’s toga where they swathed his body, right up to the rent revealing his shoulder and upper back, where the skin gleamed. It was mesmerising.
“Do you think?”
“Mm-hm,” Aziraphale said, and Crowley was fairly sure from the angle of his jaw and the pitch black eyes that he was just as uncomfortably aroused as Crowley was, but you could never quite tell without asking.
And Crowley did not like to ask.
“Well,” he said, and shrugged. “You weren’t entirely mistaken.”
Aziraphale’s gaze snapped back to Crowley’s and held there.
“But what a risk,” Crowley breathed, enjoying the war breaking out on Aziraphale’s face; that naked hope wrestling with a visible prickling of shame. “Does your lot know you’re down here merrily propositioning the other side? Or the humans, for that matter?”
Aziraphale set his jaw, cheeks blazing. “They don’t care what I do. They’ve made that perfectly clear. So I… do what I like.”
Such a change, from the nervy paranoia he’d exhibited back in Mesopotamia. All that fuss about right and wrong, lies and damnation. Sides. Crowley supposed those archangels had treated him as a bit…. disposable. A bit unimportant. But had Aziraphale’s response to a few snubs really been an adolescent-style fit of pique, complete with reckless promiscuity?
“Fascinating,” Crowley murmured. “And what you like is… demons?” Quite the little rebel.
“No!” Aziraphale said, and then wet his lips, a nervous flash of tongue that made Crowley’s own lips tingle. “Well, not most demons. No other demons, actually. But you’re rather… pretty.”
“Rather pretty?!”
He saw Aziraphale realise that he’d scored a point against Crowley’s composure. A threat of a grin flashed. “Very pretty.”
Crowley felt a rising need to strike back, and hard. “Military men, then, is that the appeal?” he asked, his voice soft as a viper and full of fangs. “An anonymous, morally blank fuck you can make good afterwards—or make them forget?”
He could hear his own words were a contemptuous drawl, designed to draw blood, but somehow they didn’t even seem to be scratching the surface. Yes, Aziraphale was lightly squirming, but that wasn’t quite the response Crowley was looking for.
He dug in a little harder: “Or, even better, make it worth their while? Make them spread their legs for you and then pay it back with divine absolution?”
“They don’t—they aren’t the ones,” Aziraphale said abruptly, cutting off just as fast, and Crowley went very still.
Now that sounded a lot like something Aziraphale had let slip.
“Ohhhhh. So they take you into that back room.”
A ragged exhalation told him he’d got it right this time.
Crowley’s mind filled with images of the very many things he’d thought of doing to Aziraphale over the years, especially recently, especially since the business with Job; and the apparently pointless restraint he’d shown, holding back. Always keeping his distance, deferring, giving him space. And for what? For Aziraphale to come give it up to the drunk dregs of a Roman legion?
“Angel,” Crowley said roughly, barely recognising his own voice. “Get down on your knees.”
His cock was swollen hard and urgent already; the speed with which Aziraphale dropped just made it pulse.
Crowley pushed the fabric of his clothes aside, stepped close, as Aziraphale looked up at him and licked his lips again. An edge of that earlier defiance was back in his face, but it melted clean away as Crowley stepped closer, wrapping his hand around his cock and guiding it into Aziraphale’s mouth.
He half expected to wake up at that moment, from some cursed aphrodisiac-induced fever dream, but no; it was real, the slide of his cock between Aziraphale’s plump warm lips, trapping his tongue against the base of his mouth as Crowley’s fist curled into Aziraphale’s feather-soft hair.
He kept pushing it in until he felt Aziraphale jerk, mouth flooding, Aziraphale’s hands rising uselessly to pat at the fronts of Crowley’s thighs. And Crowley knew angelic strength was a thing, right, just as surely as he sensed that Aziraphale had no intention of using that strength on Crowley. Oh, he could if he had to. But this was a being who had been seeking out soldiers for absolution. He didn’t want to be the one with the power.
Crowley pressed one hand to the marble wall, the other to the back of Aziraphale’s head, and gave him a few slow, deep thrusts. Fuck, yes.
“This what you wanted then, in that back room,” he asked, and Aziraphale made a choked noise, screwing his eyes shut, fingers curling to fists against Crowley’s legs. “My cock down your throat while they watched?”
He felt Aziraphale swallow against him.
“Or one of them doing it,” Crowley suggested, letting the dangerous softness slither back into his voice. “Maybe you wanted them to warm you up for me.”
Aziraphale made a noise in his chest, pressing forwards, trying to move his head as Crowley slow-fucked his mouth; trying to go faster. Crowley’s cock pulsed again at the realisation, and he relaxed his grip in Aziraphale’s hair, letting him bob his head in an obscene display of eagerness that made Crowley’s balls tighten like he was about to spend. Far too soon; but then, centuries of restraint will have that effect.
“Steady,” he said gruffly, half to himself, and Aziraphale moaned around his cock, rearing up higher on his knees and grasping at the backs of Crowley’s thighs.
Take me, his whole body radiated, all defences down. Crowley saw red for a moment, at the thought that any one of those blasted humans had been witness to anything like this indecent display of sincerity.
Aziraphale wanted this so damned much. It was in every line of his face, his grip, his welcoming mouth: he wanted to be claimed.
“Oh, fuck,” Crowley muttered, and grasped Aziraphale’s face in both hands, holding him still as he shoved his cock into his mouth, sliding against the back of his tongue with every thrust. Sensation spiked through Crowley’s blood as Aziraphale went with it, taking him harder, face flushed with voracious pleasure, any and all restraint abandoned.
“Mmh, mmh,” Aziraphale growled, low in his chest, shivering and holding his mouth unclenched as Crowley pounded him, and then he was swallowing hard, taking the tip of Crowley’s cock deeper than he’d dared push before, and Crowley felt himself start to come. It was too much, feeling his cock slide into that unresisting hot tightness, his aching balls coming to press against Aziraphale’s chin; too much to see and feel and know. His vision flickered white-and-silver at the edges and he spent into Aziraphale’s mouth, feeling him quake and swallow around the jolts of heat that seemed to go on and on.
Crowley came back to himself gasping, both hands finding the cool solid wall again as his knees threatened to buckle.
He felt powerless, suddenly, still drifting upon sensation that ebbed and fluttered with every breath he managed to catch.
Aziraphale remained kneeling at his feet, a wild flicker in his eyes as he wiped his shiny now-red mouth and broke into a slow blinding smile.
In that moment, Crowley had no doubt as to where the power had transferred.
He’d wondered fleetingly if Aziraphale had come as well – seemed entirely possible, the way he’d carried on – but he looked untouched now, the flow of torn robes concealing any hint of obscenity, and as Crowley offered his hand and helped him to his feet, he could still feel that banked heat rising off every inch of Aziraphale’s exposed skin.
Aziraphale gave him an expectant look and Crowley wet his lips, trying to dip into his own hazy reserves of intellect. How did one string a sentence together, again?
He always wanted to curl up straight after sex, was the issue; design flaw of the snake within, he supposed. What seemed like an excellent idea during the crescendo—fucking standing up, say, or on a cliff-top, or, just imagine, embarking on some domineering game without taking the tiniest moment to get the rules straightened out beforehand—invariably landed him on his arse afterwards, when his spine had dissolved into molten honey and his brain followed shortly after.
Just—give me a minute, he thought, but Aziraphale was bright-eyed and flushed and right there in his space and as usual it was easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.
Crowley smoothed an arm around Aziraphale’s waist, drawing him inexorably in and kissing him until that urgent restlessness melted into pliancy. Aziraphale made needy little noises as his mouth opened with a shaky exhale, and Crowley felt like he’d been given tacit approval to do… well, pretty much anything he wanted.
And oh, this was what he wanted. Needed, even. Not so much the urgency, which was coming off Aziraphale’s body in waves, but the head-to-toe languid contact as Aziraphale sucked Crowley’s tongue and slid his arms around Crowley’s neck. Aziraphale tasted like the ocean—like oysters, Crowley thought, smirking into the kiss—and his hard cock felt like a brand against Crowley’s thigh, even through the various folds of clothing between them.
Crowley kissed him deeply until he could think approximately straight again. Or at least, think at his usual jaunty angle instead of in honest-to-Satan starbursts. Eventually he drew back, about to give Aziraphale his best cavalier smile and suggest they went somewhere more horizontally comfortable.
Aziraphale looked like he might discorporate on the spot.
Crowley raised his eyebrows instead, changing pace for the third time in as many minutes. “You look,” he said slowly, testing, “like a stiff breeze could bring you off. Need a hand?”
“Yes,” Aziraphale said, a delectable hoarseness to his voice that complemented the wild eyes very well.
Crowley dropped his voice as low as it wanted to go, and stepped a little closer. “And where would you like that hand?”
He brushed the front of Aziraphale’s chest, stroking interested patterns downwards until he felt Aziraphale start to arch his spine, then went up instead, finding the torn edges of his clothing and the hot damp skin above.
Aziraphale shivered as Crowley’s fingers drew trails through the sweat on his skin, but he didn’t even rub against Crowley’s thigh, let alone reach down for his own neglected cock. His breathing was turning soft and rapid, though, those subterranean vibrations of energy becoming more violent again.
Crowley’s hand slid down Aziraphale’s bare back, fingers delving into the smooth dips beneath Aziraphale’s shoulder blade, finding the burgeoning edge of one wing and stroking along it.
Aziraphale did gasp at that, turning his head against Crowley’s throat.
“Fuck,” he whispered, as Crowley did it again, stroking harder along the seam where skin rippled in to meet the suggestion of furled feathers with a ridge of bone beneath. He stroked into the shallow tight slant of it, probing, and Aziraphale gave a low shuddering moan like he was being dragged across hot coals: half agonised, half incendiary.
Crowley felt Aziraphale’s needy breath against his skin and couldn’t help but lean into it, offering him his neck. Aziraphale moaned again and sucked blindly, scraping his teeth against Crowley’s jaw as Crowley stroked in slow circles, systemically exploring, as if studying a map with fingertips alone.
Everything Aziraphale did was so intoxicating. There were acres of possibilities here. Crowley wondered what would happen if he turned Aziraphale to face the wall, braced him against it and dropped his mouth to the root of one wing. Probably something… dramatic.
“You look like the sort that could come without your cock being touched,” he said quietly, the thought sinking its talons into him and bringing his attention back up. He stopped fondling the nascent wings and caught Aziraphale’s chin between his fingers instead, turning his face to catch the gold remnants of the light, assessing. “I wonder what it would take…”
Aziraphale’s eyes were half shuttered. His lips were parted, slick. “Guess.”
“Not much,” Crowley said bluntly, and swiped his thumb across Aziraphale’s lower lip for the pleasure of dragging his mouth half-open.
Aziraphale’s tongue slid slowly across the tip of his thumb in return, a picture of insolent beauty, and something in Crowley abruptly snapped.
He pushed him back against the wall, sliding his knee between Aziraphale’s thighs, and pushed his thumb into his mouth as Aziraphale gave another of those dragged-across-hot-coals sounds.
“A little bit of force might do the trick,” Crowley said, against Aziraphale’s ear, “with a little bit of a promise… what if I turned you around, angel, would you like that? Would you spread your legs for me like you do for those legionaries?”
Aziraphale tipped his head back, panting around Crowley’s thumb. “I didn’t—that’s not what we did.”
Crowley felt almost embarrassed by the rosy relief that flowed through him at that admission, though he didn’t let on. “Answer the question.”
“Yes,” Aziraphale said immediately, pausing to give Crowley’s thumb a deliberate slow suck, and then pulling half off and exhaling raggedly; “yes, I’d like that; yes, you can turn me around; yes, I’d spread my legs for you.”
“Fucking hell,” Crowley breathed, his cock thickening as surely as if it was lying on Aziraphale’s tongue being coaxed into hardness again by his hot, silken mouth. “I don’t want to do this here.”
Aziraphale’s eyes flashed, and he reached up and withdrew Crowley’s thumb from his mouth entirely before answering. “Where do you want to do it?”
“Uh,” Crowley said brilliantly, reeling for a moment from the loss of sensation combined with the barrage of pictures Aziraphale had just conjured in his brain. “I—there’s a bathhouse nearby? We could—”
“Yes,” Aziraphale interrupted, and stalked off down the alleyway, dragging Crowley behind him by the wrist. “Excellent. Let’s.”