Archive of Our Own ^beta

"I know what you smell like."

This, from a tipsy, stressed-ridden Crowley, floundering with the panic engendered by existing in a world mere days away from armageddon and feeling powerless to stop it. This, after Aziraphale had bristled with excitement and trepidation in equal measure when his barber had suggested he try a new cologne days earlier - one that was similar enough to his established scent to slot in neatly with his existing grooming products, yet just different enough that the people, or rather, person who knew him well would immediately sense a slight change in his presentation.

Years on, it was a statement Aziraphale recalled with perfect clarity, because beneath the clipped tone, the hurried delivery, the Scotch-tinged brashness of Crowley's words lay the mention of a concept Aziraphale rarely contemplated: Crowley's exceptionally keen sense of smell, which was one of the blessings - or rather, curses, depending on Crowley's perception of it - accompanying the territory of being somewhat a snake at all times and entirely a snake when one so desired. Further still beneath the surface lay a very hopeful truth indeed, a logical consequence of the concept under the first layer; the truth that Crowley, whether against his will or with determined intention, was intimately familiar with Aziraphale's scent.

Crowley enjoyed the way Aziraphale smelled. Aziraphale knew that much, because after the apocalypse-that-wasn't, once the two of them had begun to acknowledge their affection for each other and spend time together openly, Crowley seemed unafraid to take comfort in it. Shoulders pulled back and glasses slipped off his nose with ease, Crowley would inhale deeply as he entered the bookshop each evening, his lean, rounded chest rising and falling with leisure and indulgence. The moment Aziraphale would rise from his seat by his bureau to fetch a bottle of wine, Crowley would slink towards the armchair and curl up in it, pitching his neck sideways so he could nestle his cheek into the soft, worn fabric, which undoubtedly bore not only the smell of old leather-bound books but also the unassumingly cosy scent of the grey cotton cardigan which Aziraphale tended to wear about the shop. Then, later on in the evening, once the two men were sat chatting in the back room, with Aziraphale eating the majority of the food he had plated up for Crowley to enjoy after he had consumed his own portion, Crowley would find an excuse to scrape his chair closer to Aziraphale's side of the dinner table. There would inevitably be an eyelash tickling Aziraphale's cheek, a stray crumb resting beside the top button of Aziraphale's waistcoat, a piece of lint balled up on Aziraphale's cardigan; gracefully, Crowley would lean in to right the imperfection, and in doing so, the tip of his nose would brush the pale blond nest of Aziraphale's hair, which he washed three times a week with pear scented-shampoo and eucalyptus-infused conditioner.

Sometimes, sauce would smear across Aziraphale's cupid's bow, or runaway droplets of wine would tint the skin beneath his mouth a sinful red. These developments were always pointed out by Crowley for Aziraphale to correct himself; Crowley never ventured anywhere near Aziraphale's lips, his chin, his neck. This was the way Crowley wanted things between them, Aziraphale surmised - innocent, sympathetic, courteously withdrawn. Chasteness as an understatement, desire as a convict in exile. Tenderness above and below the belt.

The present they had carved out for themselves was beyond Aziraphale's most ardent hopes, he knew. He had never, in all his time on Earth, anticipated that they would be able to do this - to meet more than once every few months, to walk side by side on the street without intermittently glancing behind them, to droop their shoulders and recline their heads in one another's company, relaxed and unhurried. It was more than Aziraphale could ever ask for, and he was endlessly grateful for it.

And yet, there was something else Aziraphale wanted, insatiable as he was. Something which nagged and tugged at Aziraphale's brain, urgent and high-pitched as a child being dragged past an ice-cream van. Something which made him thankful for the fact that he and Crowley took their meals together in his own home, so he could cover his lap with a cloth napkin when Crowley tipped his head back and exposed the flush of his neck in order to down the dregs of a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon, or canted his hand to one side and run the backs of his sylphlike fingers idly over the tablecloth. Something which frightened him in its persistence, horrified him in its wickedness.

The desire to have more of Crowley. Not only to bear witness to his pleasure, but to become an active participant in it. To take command of the blooming petal between Crowley's legs, to know intimately the tight, hot entrance which lived beneath it. To bundle Crowley into his lap and take him by the jut of his hips, to hum whispered promises into Crowley's ear until Crowley purred like a spoiled kitten and bit down on his own lip with drooling hunger. To kiss and taste until he understood comprehensively the diverse palette of the man before him, the silken sweat and the saccharine slick. To unsheathe his length and discover what Crowley would decide to do with it, whether Crowley would plant himself face-down with his ass in the air and offer up his dripping cunt or beg Aziraphale to fuck his mouth before anything else; whether Crowley would take his thickset cock in hand and cradle it without reserve, or whether he would ask for a visual demonstration of the way Aziraphale worked himself when he was alone.

The desire for this particular sort of intimacy in and of itself was not the thing that concerned Aziraphale; rather, it was the possessive undercurrent which threaded through each facet of his desire. The incessant, pressing need for control. The twilit twist of power that Aziraphale dreamed of achieving as he pictured looming above the love of his life, who, in his dreams, lay warm and wet and quivering and greedy before him, was enough to prickle his skin with wonder and flush his cheeks with humility. Power not for power's sake - he was a principality, not an archangel - but power in knowing . Power in taking, and in doing so, giving. Power in pleasing, power in protecting, power in providing. Power in protecting Crowley, in taking care of him, in shielding him from all harm. Power in seeing Crowley's carnal needs were met - and Aziraphale knew he had them, just knew - while allowing Crowley to express things which were buried deeper than he gave himself credit for in the process.

If Crowley did not want this at all, or did not want this from him , Aziraphale could live with it. Truly, he could. For the first time in his eternal life, he felt that he was not living on borrowed time, that sneaking around was no longer a required component of his survival. He no longer had to storm off through medieval mists alone, or pass polemical notes in public parks, or clamber reluctantly out of vintage cars that he really wanted to sit comfortably inside all night, each time weighed down by the knowledge that he had broken Crowley's heart yet again. Finally, finally, he could openly treasure his great love, and he couldn't be happier. Therefore, the rational side of his mind was aware that any fulfilment of his own carnal wants would be a happy bonus, and not a compulsory facet of their relationship, were it ever to come to pass, and yet, in the darker, clawing recesses of his head, Aziraphale ached with it. Dreamed of it, clamoured for it.

It pleased Aziraphale greatly that Crowley liked his scent, that Crowley was at ease around his essence. Truly, it did. At the same time, though, he longed for a reality in which Crowley associated his smell not purely with comfort, but with something entirely more unsavoury. With selfish, grasping want . With memories of bites pierced into the soft give of Crowley's stomach, wobbling knees, milky thighs which grew to ache from spreading, wide and hopeful, for hours on end. With slick and spit and sweat and, fuck , maybe Aziraphale's own spend, sheening Crowley's lips or adorning his chest or gushing out of his-

Perhaps this last prayer was too much to hope for. Still, Aziraphale wanted to know if this development were possible, or even favoured by his retired-demonic counterpart.

Aziraphale was almost finished with his daily perambulation around Soho by the time he came to the conclusion of his contemplations. Just as he was turning onto Whickber Street, from the opposite end to his bookshop, buckets of lashing rain erupted from the dark grey clouds which had shrouded London all day long. Entirely without either an umbrella or an awning under which to shelter, Aziraphale ducked into the nearest shop - Chang's, an establishment run by an elderly man who sold strange and exotic plants to the people of the city. After greeting Aziraphale warmly, Chang launched into a guided tour of the wares he was purveying, and Aziraphale smiled and nodded along politely, glancing out of the window every once in a while to determine whether the rain had begun to ease up yet.

Just as the rain stopped and Aziraphale prepared to duck out of the shop with an empty promise of returning soon, Chang drew his attention to a flowering succulent nestled among the zinnias. Its leaves were long and slim, with different shades of green striping horizontally across them, interrupted intermittently by flashes of pale grey. The flowers it bloomed were a pearl-white, emerging from the centre of the plant and climbing high as the tall leaves, seemingly clambering over one another to reach the highest peak. The plant seemed almost elegant in its tall, slim nature, imposing in its ambitious height for a household succulent, unexpectedly luscious in its rich greens and pearl whites. 

Aziraphale imagined that, could the plant move, it would not plod forth ungracefully, but slither smoothly through the room. Altogether, it brought to mind something he couldn't quite put his finger on.

"These succulents make good gifts because they constantly surprise the people who live with them with their resilience," Chang explained. "In fact, only with neglect do they bloom quite so beautifully."

Now, that definitely reminded Aziraphale of someone, though he hoped that the object of his thoughts was free of the sorts of conditions which naturally led to the need for resilience, now that Heaven and Hell were off their backs.

"It's a Dracaena trifasciata ," Chang clarified. "A snake plant."

Oh. That would explain it.

"It is only a mature snake plant which flowers, as you can see here." Chang gestured to a few more snake plants clustered towards the back of the shelf, which had not bloomed yet. "Only after a snake plant has been given lots of time to grow in a very snug area does it actually shift its energy from creating leaves to blooming flowers."

"I see," Aziraphale replied, the shopkeeper's words a strange comfort to him in the face of the development of the relationship he had just been contemplating.

"What's more, they smell absolutely divine when in bloom. Here, see for yourself." Chang lifted the pot of the plant carefully off the shelf with both palms, and Aziraphale obliged, ducking his neck slightly to inhale the scent of the flowers. It did smell beautiful - of vanilla, and jasmine, and honeysuckle all at once - and its scent was soothing, not an assault on the senses but a gentle suggestion.

It wasn't often that Crowley received gifts of any kind, and Aziraphale had a feeling he would enjoy adding this particular specimen to his ever-growing plant collection.

"I'll take it.”

Aziraphale cleared his throat and rolled his shoulders back as he rang the brass serpent-adorned doorbell to Crowley's flat, the snake plant resting in a gift box in his right hand. Turning his left hand palm-upwards, he raised his wrist to his face and inhaled deeply, smiling as he breathed out again, the aroma of honeysuckle, vanilla, and a hint of jasmine wafting between his nostrils.

It had felt a little strange and more than a little pathetic to rub the scent of the snake plant's flowers onto his forearms and neck moments earlier. However, if Crowley noticed the change - and, with his spectacularly heightened sense of smell, he undoubtedly would - and showed some sign of approval towards it, Aziraphale could consider this odd endeavour a success, and conclude that he might just have to return to Chang's the day following for a snake plant of his own to keep in the upper storey of the bookshop.

The fact of the matter was that usually, Aziraphale smelled... musky. Maroon blending into beige, leather-like, warm and inviting and vintage. Ordinarily, he smelled of a nobleman's private chambers, of the sorts of libraries which contain moveable ladders littered across the shelves. Today, he smelled lighter, sweeter, of fresh air and verdant gardens and tropical beaches - all things which Crowley enjoyed immensely.

Perhaps, because the scent he was bearing originated from a snake plant in particular, it would remind Crowley of days gone by - of languorous, hot days occurring just after the genesis of Earth, when winter hadn't been invented yet and Crowley would while away his days in his serpentine form, basking in the arid sunlight along the eastern wall of Eden... the side of the wall upon which Aziraphale happened to spend most of his time. Perhaps it would encourage Crowley to reminisce fondly about those simpler times, times when they first began to understand that they could not be seen together, and yet chose to ignore this fact anyway. Perhaps it would inspire a particular kind of playfulness in Crowley that Aziraphale hadn't witnessed for millennia - an exuberance that was delightfully carefree in the flirtation and cocky teasing it engendered.

The door swung open slowly to reveal a particularly sleepy-looking Crowley. He had chosen to manifest the sort of hair he had been partial to sporting about thirteen years prior - when he had been tasked with delivering the Antichrist - and it fell tangled and untidy about his shoulders. He was donning a royal-blue pair of silk pyjamas, with the top three buttons of his shirt undone to reveal his freckled collarbone and a smattering of soft, dark hair on his curved chest. His slender feet were bare, toes curling onto the polished concrete floor.

Aziraphale had never seen Crowley in his nightwear before; further, he had never seen Crowley so relaxed, regardless of the circumstances. He attempted to stifle the overwhelming urge to bundle Crowley into his arms and hold him close, to feel how soft and warm his demon was when he had just woken up.

"Afternoon, angel," Crowley slurred with a lazy grin. "Thought we weren't meeting till...?"

"Seven o'clock, I know, but I was passing by Chang's earlier today, and- well, I came across something that I thought might be… up your street, as it were."

How ridiculous it felt to admit, indirectly to Crowley and directly to himself, that he was entirely unable to wait until the pre-agreed time at which they were set to meet, before presenting Crowley with the gift. How silly of him to come knocking on Crowley's door when he knew he would see Crowley later that day, especially because Aziraphale hadn't even visited Crowley's flat since the night before they had each faced Hell and Heaven after averting the apocalypse, whilst disguising themselves as one another.

"Sorry, I'll just leave this here, and then I'll-"

"Don't be silly, angel. Come in." Crowley nodded his head backwards in the direction of the flat's interior, and Aziraphale stepped inside and eased the door shut behind him. 

The flat was exactly as he remembered it, pristine and lead-coloured and flashy and masquerading as a home barely lived in. Well, one thing was new, it seemed - the absence of Crowley's old-school answering machine. Aziraphale chuckled internally as he revisited the memory of Crowley explaining how he had trapped Hastur in the answering system two years earlier, just as Aziraphale had been leaving a rather pertinent message.

Although it was not, by London standards, a cold day, the flat was so warm it felt humid, and Aziraphale registered, once he had slipped his shoes off, that Crowley's heated floors were hard at work. Images of Crowley, in snake form, slithering around the flat with heat caressing the gloss of his belly, wiggled through Aziraphale's mind. The idea that Crowley had curated a home in which he could comfortably be himself pleased him greatly.

As Crowley sauntered ahead, swaggering through the office and approaching the corridor which led to the kitchen, Aziraphale allowed himself to take in Crowley's figure from behind, observing that Crowley's pyjama bottoms hung low enough off his frame that a small part of his lower back was visible from above his trousers and below his shirt. Once more, Aziraphale cleared his throat, as if to banish any subsequent thoughts which might-

"Sorry, I just realised I'm..." Interrupting Aziraphale's train of thought as if he knew precisely the direction in which it was heading, Crowley spun round as he spoke, running a hand through his hair and glancing down towards his clothing. "D'you want me to get changed?"

"I wouldn't dream of it, my dear." Largely because, from this angle, I can see the tiniest sliver of your hips, as well. "You are in your own home, after all, and you should be comfortable."

"Mmm, alright." Crowley grinned again, a knowing sort of grin which sent blood rushing to Aziraphale's cheeks.

Perhaps the fragrance was working already.

"Tea?"

"Always," Aziraphale joked. Crowley snorted as he rounded the corner. A clatter could be heard as Crowley presumably set his cast-iron kettle down on the hob. Meanwhile, Aziraphale placed the box on the desk and lingered by Crowley's- well, throne, pondering whether or not to sit down. After all, it was the only chair in the room; evidently, Crowley was not accustomed to receiving guests.

A few minutes later, Crowley returned with two steaming mugs of earl grey. By this point, Aziraphale had decided that he would take a seat on the throne, and Crowley leaned over him in his seat to place their mugs on the nearest coasters. As he was bent over in the process of doing so, while Aziraphale tried exceedingly hard to keep his eyes focused on anything but the lean smoothness of Crowley's body, Crowley stopped in his tracks.

"New cologne?"

Aziraphale gulped so conspicuously that he was certain it must have been audible. "You could say that." He punctuated his sentence with a clipped, nervous laugh.

"Smells good." Having accomplished his task, Crowley stood upright again. He hooked his trousers over his thumbs and pulled them over his hips so the band of the pyjama bottoms hugged his waist, leaving the skin of his lower torso entirely concealed, licking his lips with his wet, pink tongue while he did so. Then, as Crowley moved to fasten the undone buttons on his pyjama shirt, Aziraphale's eyes wandered up to his face and noticed that it had flushed deeply. As had his throat, apparently, Aziraphale observed as Crowley moved to rub the back of his neck. While Crowley did this, he shifted on his feet, and- was he squeezing his thighs together?

With great reluctance, Aziraphale tore his gaze away from Crowley's figure and back onto the box. All of a sudden, Crowley seemed self-conscious, and if Aziraphale didn't know better... flustered. Had the fragrance of the snake plant really had such an effect on him?

Crowley joined Aziraphale in casting his eyes over the tall rectangular box sitting on the desk. "Now, wass'this?"

"Open it and see," Aziraphale urged, and then, as if to compensate for his prior boldness and evade disappointment, he added, "It's nothing, really."

"Don't sell yourself short, angel," Crowley reassured, taking the lid of the box in hand and easing it open. The four sides of the box fell dramatically to the side, landing on the surface of the desk. (Perhaps Aziraphale should have miracled a more understated object in which to present his gift.)

Staring at the gift with eyes that suddenly seemed wider than they had been seconds earlier, Crowley tugged his bottom lip between his teeth. "Is that a snake plant?"

"It is indeed. You really are quite the botanist, Crowley." Aziraphale folded his hands together against his belly and beamed. That was, until he searched Crowley's face for a little longer and observed Crowley's eyebrows knitting together, teeth pressing harder into the skin of his lip.

Initially, Aziraphale had interpreted Crowley's incredulous expression as a sign of pleasant surprise, but from the way Crowley was now stood with his eyes entirely unblinking, Aziraphale could only read concern in his companion's body language. Within seconds, Aziraphale's mind devolved into a panic. Oh, Lord, I've overstepped. I've been too forward, haven't I? It's not exactly a bouquet of roses, but it might as well be.

"'Ziraphale, I-"

"You don't like it?"

"'Course I like it. S'really thoughtful, Az, thanks." Tugging on the collar of his pyjama shirt with the tips of his fingers, Crowley began to drag a palm back and forth over his chest. "Lisssten, angel, could you run to the cupboard over there and grab me a bag of soil? I always change the soil for my plants as soon as I bring them home, and-"

"Of course." Gosh, had he offended Crowley in some way by bringing him this plant? Was there some insensitive connotation of which Aziraphale was unaware?

Aziraphale planted a hand on each armrest of the throne as he moved to stand up. It might have been a trick of the light, but Aziraphale could swear, as his eyes became temporarily level with Crowley's neck, that he saw the bright afternoon sunlight glinting off Crowley's collarbone, which was no longer pale and freckled but metallic and glistening and... red. Crimson, blood-hued red. Then, the tip of Crowley's tongue emerged from his mouth again, only this time, it seemed to flick, quick and thin, across his lips. If Aziraphale had been given a second longer to discern what he'd seen, he would say it appeared to have a slit running down the middle.

As he turned to move towards the cupboard, Aziraphale's breath caught in his throat. He heard the sliding of feet across the office floor from behind his back; it was a slippery sort of sound, almost the sort of sound he imagined... scales might make when traversing polished concrete.

What followed was the sound of glass doors sliding shut. The source of the sound seemed to match the rough location of Crowley's bedroom.

Fuck.

It was possible that Crowley was surprised by Aziraphale's unexpected appearance, and so filled with disdain towards the gift, for reasons unknown to Aziraphale, that his only solution was to hide. Alternatively, it could have been that Crowley was so touched by the gift that he was overwhelmed with it.

Then, there was the third option. An option Aziraphale struggled to make sense of in his racing mind.

Whatever the truth may have been, Aziraphale knew he had caught Crowley off guard, made him feel out of sorts. Maybe Crowley even needed help. Regardless, it was Aziraphale's responsibility to right the situation.

Turning away from the cupboard before he could even open its door, Aziraphale tiptoed towards the bedroom, before realising it would probably be more gracious of him to make it known beforehand that he was approaching. He clacked his heels deliberately against the floor with considerable volume after that, pausing in front of the glass screen doors leading off the corridor and into Crowley's bedroom.

"Crowley, my dear?" Aziraphale called, doubt bordering his words. "Are you in there?"

All Aziraphale could make out, as he squinted in order to see beyond the glass and into the low light of the bedroom, was a large pile of pillows and thick velvet blankets, mostly black or grey or dark blue, and all evidently very warm and soft. It looked like the unmade bed of a person who ran cold at night, that was all. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Needless to say, there was no response from inside the room. Still, Aziraphale slid the glass doors open anyway, sensing that his demon was nearby, even if the room appeared to be empty of all life (even plants).

Slowly, cautiously, Aziraphale took a step into the room, ensuring once more to clack the heel of his brogues so that Crowley could hear him coming, if indeed he was approaching Crowley at all. "Is everything alright?"

More silence. Aziraphale's eyes began to grow accustomed to the relative darkness as he took another step, and then another, walking further into the room until he had reached the foot of Crowley's bed. He looked around him, examining every corner and shadow for a potential sign of Crowley. Just when he was close to giving up and searching the rest of the flat, acknowledging that his perception of Crowley receding to the bedroom was incorrect, he decided to sweep his eyes over the bed one more time. Glancing at a corner of the blanket pile, a flash of deep red shone back at him before retreating as quickly as it had appeared.

"Is something wrong?" Aziraphale's voice softened, and he spoke quietly and carefully. "Are you in trouble?"

A muffled voice emerged in a belaboured groan from beneath the blankets. "S'nothing, angel. M'fine."

"It certainly doesn't sound like nothing. What's the matter? Have you taken ill?"

"Not as such, just... prob'ly best if you leave, 'kay?"

Tentatively, Aziraphale began to make his way round the side of the bed, turning ninety degrees to the right so he stood opposite the headboard. "Are you sure there isn't anything I can do? Clearly, I'm the one who... caused whatever it is that's going on."

Crowley spoke again, and this time, it was a little too muffled for Aziraphale to make out.

"Will you come out of there, dearest? I didn't quite catch that."

Through all those layers of fabric, Aziraphale heard Crowley's next response loud and clear. "Nghhhh, if you really wanna help, you come in here ."

When Aziraphale had woken up that morning, he hadn't anticipated clambering into a pillow and blanket fort with Crowley as one of the actions he would perform during the course of the day. It was quite odd, really, and yet he found himself removing his bowtie and waistcoat before he lifted one corner of the bottom-most blanket to join Crowley on the bed.

With caution and uncertainty, Aziraphale rolled his body onto the mattress, lying down beside Crowley but taking care not to touch him by accident in the process. It was dark under the blankets, and Aziraphale was unable to see anything but the aureate glow of Crowley's golden eyes, and the occasional glint of red across Crowley's body, which was still largely covered by his set of pyjamas. The whites of Crowley's eyes seemed to have been swallowed entirely by the golden yellow of his pupils, and his lids seemed further apart than before, which made his eyeballs appear inhumanly large.

Puzzled as Aziraphale was by Crowley's request, history had proven that he was not averse to following suggestions, or indeed instructions, by his demonic counterpart that he could not immediately make sense of. Therefore, Aziraphale simply placed his trust in his companion and waited for Crowley to explain, his hands lying at his sides and his legs straight as he lay facing Crowley.

"I've-I've seen plants like that," Crowley began, his words tumbling over one another, as if they were competing in a race whose finish line was far away from his mouth. "Came across one by accident once. Touched one of the leaves and it... reminded me of old times. Felt my scales wanting to come out, my tongue splitting down the middle. I managed to keep it under control, 'cause there were humans around, but I swore to myself I'd avoid them from then on."

The cotton pillowcase beneath Aziraphale's head rustled as he nodded along.

"I've never seen one flower before. Didn't know they could flower. Stupid of me not to do my research, I s'pose." As Crowley spoke further, Aziraphale could hear his teeth clattering together as if they were chattering with cold. This, combined with the soft vibrations emanating from the mattress, indicated to Aziraphale that Crowley was shivering. Under all these blankets, he was clearly freezing. It occurred to Aziraphale that he had always thought snakes didn’t shiver, but then, he had to bear in mind that Crowley wasn’t all snake yet.

Yet ? Where had that come from?

"So, yeah, erm, you came in and the- the scent of the flowers must've been so strong it rubbed off on you, but I didn't know what that smell was till I opened the box."

Though Aziraphale was almost certain that Crowley couldn't see where his eyes were focusing, he felt the need to avert his gaze from Crowley's face, anyway. His cheeks burned, despite the fact that Crowley evidently didn't think he had transferred the fragrance onto his skin on purpose.

"All I knew was it smelled... nice. Really nice. And then, when the snake plant was exposed to the room, I realised... its scent must carry pheromones. Which is weird, cause actual snakes don't usually transfer pheromones through the air." A pause, then: "I dunno exactly why I couldn't control it this time, but it's made my snake form wanna come out, like-" Crowley sucked a breath in sharply through his teeth. "Like it's time to mate."

Oh, Christ . This is not what Aziraphale had intended at all. Of course, he had wanted Crowley to like the plant, to enjoy the scent it brought along with it... but Aziraphale had hoped it would inspire laidback, confident affection, not humiliation and distress.

Beneath this rueful regret, however, lay something darker, something hungrier. Something which ticked and twitched with gnarling curiosity at the idea of Crowley in that state.

Aziraphale pushed it away.

"Crowley, I didn't know, I swear to you, what can I say to make you-"

"Don't worry, angel," Crowley assured, but he was beginning to shiver more intensely even as he spoke. "I know you didn't know. Jussst... I didn't only hide in here 'cause I was embarrassed."

A pause, and then: "You're cold, aren't you?"

This time, the rustling of fabric could be heard from Crowley's side of the bed, as it was his turn to respond to his companion's words with a nod.

"Usually, I'd grab some blankets, put the heating on blast and curl up on the floor, but with you here, that would've been... weird, I guess." Crowley was still speaking abnormally quickly, and he sounded... not exactly pained, but extremely uncomfortable.

"Right. Because walking into your bedroom to find you like this wasn't 'weird' at all," Aziraphale joked.

"Ha-ha, angel."

There was a buzzing kind of quiet between them, for a moment. Then, Crowley broke the silence, with a cadence Aziraphale would almost describe as timid. "Will you hold me for a while?"

Perhaps Heaven was right and Aziraphale was becoming a little too human for his own good after all, because right then, his heart skipped a beat.

"Think it'd warm me up, that's all. Unless you-"

"Of course, dearest," Aziraphale interrupted, hoping to exude utter confidence despite the overwhelming bout of excited-cum-nervous nausea suddenly assaulting his throat. "I am here to help you in whatever manner you require."

The two shuffled nearer to each other, then. After a minute or two of them lying facing one another, close but not touching, breaths rising and falling in sync, Aziraphale reached an arm round Crowley. It would be slightly awkward in the physical sense, Aziraphale knew, cuddling in this position, and Crowley seemed to know it too, because he pressed his torso without ceremony to Aziraphale's body and eased Aziraphale onto his back. Following this, Crowley draped himself over Aziraphale, his chest flush with Aziraphale's chest and his left leg swung over Aziraphale's thigh. Using his elbows, Crowley pulled himself even closer and nuzzled his face in Aziraphale's neck.

This was not the way Aziraphale had expected Crowley to want to be held - in fact it was far better than Aziraphale's most optimistic expectations, and yet he felt he daren't push his luck in any way. So, he made no further advance than wrapping his other arm around Crowley so that Crowley was enveloped in his embrace. The cool finish of Crowley's scales pressed against Aziraphale's ankle and nuzzled into the base of his neck.

"Shoulda known you'd run hot, angel," Crowley murmured against Aziraphale's skin, and goosebumps pricked at the back of Aziraphale's neck at the sensation of it. The two men seemed to complement each other perfectly, with the warmth radiating from Aziraphale's body through his clothes instantly putting Crowley at ease, so Crowley's muscles loosened and his stance relaxed. Already, Crowley's speech was beginning to slow, too.

"Is that better, my dear?"

As long as you don't come to realise that I'm running so hot because I'm consumed with desire for you, then it'll all turn out fine.

"Mmm, definitely," Crowley confirmed lazily.

"Good."

"Maybe if we stay like this for a while, I'll warm up again, and then I'll be back to normal. That okay with you?"

"Certainly," Aziraphale lied. Truth be told, he did not want to ever let Crowley go now he knew how it felt to hold him. The experience lived up to all he had dreamed of across the millennia and more; it felt easy and fluid and yet firm. It felt natural .

They lapsed into another silence, and Aziraphale realised that Crowley was still shivering, albeit less dramatically than before. In an attempt to remedy this, Aziraphale searched for methods within his mind to generate more heat, and once he had recalled one, got to work. With one palm now resting between Crowley's shoulder blades, Aziraphale rubbed the other palm up and down over Crowley's back, hoping to generate just enough friction to ease the vibrations of his spine. After a few repeated motions like this, Aziraphale's little finger caught on the hem of Crowley's pyjama shirt as it reached the small of Crowley's back. He froze, preparing himself to extract his finger from the silken shirt without tangling things up further.

"S'good, but think it might work better if you-" Crowley lifted a hand from above Aziraphale's head on the pillow, where it had nestled into Aziraphale's hair, and bunched a fistful of his pyjama shirt up his hand before lifting it up.

"You want me to- under your-"

"You're quick on the uptake today, aren't you, angel?" Crowley teased. He allowed his shirt to fall onto the back of Aziraphale's hand once Aziraphale had followed Crowley's half-expressed instruction and pushed his palm up Crowley's bare skin. Scales of various sizes lay scattered up the path of Crowley's spine, and they felt impossibly smooth to the touch.

The tips of Aziraphale's fingers began to tingle with ecstasy as he continued his rubbing motions on Crowley's back beneath his clothes. He shouldn't find it so thrilling, so comfortable and yet so intoxicating, he knew, because this arrangement was one of convenience, of aid and basic kindness and nothing else.

He couldn't, shouldn't be selfish and ask for more. Even if Crowley seemed to be melting into Aziraphale's touch, his shivers quickly ceasing and his tongue vibrating with the occasional hiss. Even if Crowley was humming, low and catlike, between hisses, even if it felt as if Crowley was grinning against the skin of Aziraphale's neck.

After a while, Aziraphale's right leg began to seize up in a cramp. He shifted his thigh ever so slightly in an attempt to prevent the cramp from settling in, with Crowley's leg still hooked over his thigh. He hadn't dared to acknowledge this previously, but now he was forced to recognise that Crowley's cunt was flush with the firm muscle of his thigh, because Crowley whimpered once he had done so. Whimpered, meek and desperate and aching, and his whole body twitched along with his throat.

Aziraphale didn't dare move, didn't dare speak. His tongue hung heavy in his mouth and his limbs suddenly felt weighed down. He was certain that it was only the pheromones, that business-as-usual Crowley would not want this, despite the fact that Crowley's own thigh was now pressing diagonally with gentle pressure into Aziraphale's vertical one.

"Crowley," Aziraphale managed eventually, shifting his body beneath Crowley's in a reluctant yet arguably necessary attempt to extract himself as he spoke. "Maybe I shouldn't-"

In working to move away from his companion, Aziraphale inevitably shifted his thigh again, and this time, Crowley bucked his hips without warning. Fucking humped Aziraphale's leg, his entire body twitching again, and Aziraphale knew Crowley would regret it once he came round, knew they had to stop this before-

Crowley bit him.

In Aziraphale's moment of panic, his vision had begun to blur and his extremities had begun to buzz with pins and needles, so he had barely noticed Crowley opening his mouth and flattening his undeniably forked tongue onto Aziraphale's neck, had barely noticed Crowley sinking his fangs- his fangs - into Aziraphale's supple flesh.

"Nghhh, fuck, m'sssorry, angel," Crowley hissed, his tongue flicking against the twin puncture marks now adorning Aziraphale's neck as if to lap up any blood which might bead on Aziraphale's skin. Even as he apologised, however, his thighs clamped on either side of Aziraphale's thigh and squeezed the muscle there, and now Aziraphale could feel the wet press of Crowley's cunt on his leg so acutely it made him lightheaded - or was that the venom doing its work?

Despite the fact that Aziraphale's neck and shoulder muscles were beginning to relax, that he was beginning to feel woozy and lazy and warm, his mind still wallowed in the mortification he was certain must be necessary after this recent development. "No, Crowley, I'm sorry. I- clearly, you don't feel safe around me..." Despite the fact that you're humping me and I know you know I'm hard, because your thigh is angled just right , directly below my dick. "Or else you wouldn't have bitten me."

Aziraphale hoped against hope that there was some alternative explanation of this, but his brain was unable to produce one. As if to confirm his estimations, Crowley began to retreat, then, slinking off Aziraphale's body and towards his own side of the bed, hissing quietly all the while - but not before Aziraphale felt the skin and scales on Crowley's body alike begin to grow even colder to the touch than they had been before.

"You should get up, angel. Walk out of this room."

On one level, Aziraphale knew this; knew he should be respecting Crowley's space, that he shouldn't be taking advantage of Crowley's altered state... and yet, every fibre of his being fizzed with the venom, now. It had spread quickly, efficiently, and it felt like the tail-end of a massage, like the first sip of one's third cocktail of the evening, like the steam from a sauna sinking into one's skin. It felt enticing and languid and hot; in other words, it felt like an invitation, not an attack. Aziraphale wanted nothing more than to surrender to it, to pull Crowley back into his embrace and discover more intimately how Crowley's tight, soaked cunt felt, this time against his bare skin.

"Seriously, Aziraphale. Get up. Now."

With limbs weak and tongue heavy, Aziraphale battled the soothing caresses of the venom within his body and laboriously shifted off the bed. He straightened his spine and planted himself on his feet again, attempting desperately to ignore the incessant desire to lie back down.

"Truly, Crowley, I'm sorry, I just- will you come out from under there and talk to me? Tell me what I did wrong?" More specifically, tell me why you bit me as if I'd burned you and then humped me like you desperately needed my cock immediately afterwards.

"No can do. S'bessst if you don't sssee this." Crowley's voice emerged wrangled and muffled again, now Aziraphale was no longer under the covers with him.

"See what?" Aziraphale's limbs fought the urge to recline again. He squinted in the dark, attempting to focus his vision successfully on the pile of blankets under which Crowley still lay hidden. "What's happening, Crowley?"

"M'sssorry I bit you, angel," Crowley called, louder this time. "The venom will wear off in a few hours, but until then, just- ah, fuck ."

Crowley broke off his sentence, making way for a sound Aziraphale found impossible to identify. It sounded like snapping and popping and slithering and sucking all at once. The outline of Crowley's figure under the blankets seemed to grow, seemed to expand, both outwards and upwards, the sound gaining volume in a steady crescendo until Aziraphale, quite without thinking, clamped his hands over his ears. He felt the polished concrete floor shake beneath him as a heavy thump pounded at the foot of the bed. Then, as the sound stopped, so did the growing of the figure outline beneath the covers.

Peering round the foot of the bed, Aziraphale wondered if Crowley had fallen out somehow, had gone tumbling to the floor.

All he saw, poking out from beneath the blankets, was the end of a huge, black, glossy tail. From what Aziraphale could see, the bulk of it seemed about as wide as his own torso, which descended into a tip which was defined to a point - a point whose surface was large enough that Aziraphale could run a finger over it. The tail gleamed in the dark, sparkled as if it was somehow aware that it was strangely alluring and darkly fascinating.

Aziraphale looked away from the tail and towards the top end of the blanket pile, where he knew Crowley's head to be - or, at least, where he knew Crowley's head had recently been.

"Crowley?"

Silence. Then, spoken in a moan that sounded frankly teenaged: "Told you to go awayyy, angel."

"Are you alright in there?"

This time, Crowley's words were punched out between laboured grunts. "Nnnnngh, m'fine. Just-"

"You don't sound fine."

"Don't worry about me. J'st-just go home 'n' wait for the venom to wear off, 'kay?"

Aziraphale reckoned he knew when Crowley was lying. There was a buzz that ran through Crowley's voice when he spoke confidently, a consistent, rumbling low pitch... and when Crowley was clearly uncertain, or covering something up, he tended to express himself in fits and starts, to speak with alternately high and low notes singing out from his voice box.

Stepping closer to the bed till his knees bumped against the frame, Aziraphale made a valiant effort to ignore the intermittent pulses of his straining dick. Tried to banish all presence of the warmth, the lilting softness that enveloped the rest of his body, though he knew it would be a fruitless endeavour. Aziraphale kept repeating the words I'm here to help in his head over and over, lest other sentiments creep in and catch him unawares. Sentiments regarding those shimmering scales and that forked tongue and that massive tail.

Sentiments which rendered him no better than a rutting animal.

"I think I should worry, Crowley. I think you need help. And I'm going to take these blankets off, now. Alright?"

Another wounded moan. Aziraphale snapped his fingers, and the blankets vanished, collecting in a new untidy pile in the far corner of the room.

Crowley had transformed. He had retained all the snakelike features his top half had developed when he first came into contact with the scent of the snake plant; in fact, more scales now seemed to dot the contours of his bone structure, including his cheekbones, as well as the balls of his shoulders. His eyes burned an even brighter, more incandescent yellow as they stared back at Aziraphale. His pyjama shirt had vanished into the ether, leaving him naked from the waist up, and naturally from the waist down, because that was around the spot where his torso ended and his tail began. The top of the tail, with an underside bearing the crimson shade of red like the scattered scales adorning his upper body, formed a v-shape at its base, framing the soft swell of Crowley's stomach, its beginnings running parallel with Crowley's bellybutton.

Crowley lay on the bed, still but for the occasional twitch of his tail, with his arms above his head, hands adorned with black shining claws. His hair splayed out in scarlet waves on the pillow, and his back was slightly arched, the rounded peaks of his chest on prominent display. His forked tongue, which appeared to be considerably longer now than it had been a few minutes ago, lolled out of his pink mouth. Aziraphale didn't know where to look; his gaze flitted between the curve of Crowley's spine, the smooth sheen of his lower stomach, the aureate glow of his eyes. He dared not allow his gaze to wander further downwards; if Crowley had felt self-conscious before, God knows how nervous he must have felt now.

"Didn' wan' you to sssee me like this," Crowley managed.

Though Aziraphale's first instinct was to protest - which would have been genuine - more than anything, he needed Crowley to explain. Needed to make sense of the reason why Crowley's tail was slowly uncoiling as Crowley spoke, why it was unfurling until it was completely straight, trailing off the bed and all the way to the doorway of the bedroom. He needed to understand why Crowley was now bucking his hips repeatedly as his tail unfurled, why he was turning his head to one side and whining, like a bitch in heat, into his own palm.

As Crowley endeavoured to explain, his speech was interrupted every so often by grunts and cries. "When you were holding me- I was warming up, it was helping, but- but we were so close , and you still smelled of the plant, and it was making me-"

Aziraphale nodded, to show he understood what Crowley meant, so Crowley did not have to delve into the particulars of how his body had reacted to the scent of the plant. Instead, Aziraphale interpreted the phenomenon in his head, the venom in his blood having evidently now cycled up to his brain.

It was making you desperate, Aziraphale thought. It was making you want to mate. Not just generally, not just in the abstract, but right now.

"-Well, ya know, and then I bit you without even knowing I was gonna do that, cause sometimes snakes bite their ma- sometimes snakes bite when they're ready... and as I bit you my tongue registered your pheromones."

Even Aziraphale knew that snakes used their tongues to smell. Everything was clicking into place now - at first, Crowley had comprehended the smell of the snake plant with his nose, with a human aspect of his corporation... but as Crowley had grown more snakelike, so had the use of his senses.

"Has this..." Aziraphale knew he didn't have to gesture to Crowley's thick, glossy tail to convey that that was what he was referring to. "... Happened before?"

"Few times, yeah. Only when I'm- doesn't matter." Crowley paused for a moment before continuing, wetting his lips with his forked tongue till they glistened. He was now balling his hands into fists and releasing his clawed fingers again repeatedly, his head still turned to the side in an evident attempt to evade eye contact. His hips continued to buck ever so slightly without warning every once in a while, and each time they did so, the tip of his tail twitched.

"Anyway, erm, s'really embarrassing, but if you insist on staying... I need your help again."

"Anything, my dear."

Aziraphale swallowed down a healthy pool of spit which had gathered below his tongue at the prospect of Crowley needing him, gulped at the sight of Crowley's elbow straightening out as he ran one hand down his body. Though he could feel himself doing it, he was powerless to stop his eyes widening when they beheld Crowley brushing the tips of his claws over his neck, his chest, his waist, his belly, and then- and then, a slit which ran between the scale-plated crimson of his hips.

"Under the bed. S'a box."

"Of course."

Aziraphale tore his eyes away from the curved edges of Crowley's claws as they pressed gently at the slit, as if to re-familiarise themselves with it after a long absence. He crouched down, still on the left-hand side of the bed, and spied a black box just beyond the edge of the bed-frame. Without having to clamber forth on his hands and knees, he fetched it and placed it down on the bed beside Crowley.

Finally, Crowley looked at Aziraphale again. His claws still flicked at the space between his hips, but the slit had opened, now. Emerging from the slit were two hooded hemipenes; both small and round and thick. Below them lay an opening that Aziraphale could only assume, from sleepless nights spent watching David Attenborough documentaries, was a vent. It looked sweetly pink and shimmeringly wet and impossibly fucking tight and Aziraphale felt a white-hot flame ignite in the depths of his stomach at the sight of it.

"Open it."

It took a moment for Aziraphale to realise that Crowley was referring to the box, and not... Christ . He obeyed, reaching for the metal clasp on the box and lifting it, before easing the lid open.

Inside the box lay a large, shining forest-green dildo. A rabbit vibrator, too, and nestled into a red cloth, a ball-gag, along with a pair of soft wrist cuffs married together with a short chain.

Aziraphale blinked.

"I'll explain," Crowley declared, his tone teetering upwards as he spoke, from a regular pitch into a tinkling whine. "Just- take out the green one, please."

The green one. Crowley couldn't even bring himself to speak the name of the object Aziraphale was now lifting from the box and offering to his companion with an outstretched hand. In that moment, Aziraphale felt he had misunderstood Crowley as an individual completely, all these years. He had always expected that Crowley would be forthcoming, unabashed, when it came to discussing matters of lust - in his eyes, it was probably just another sin, after all, just another day at the office, as it were - and yet…

"Keep holding it."

Withdrawing his hand, Aziraphale tightened his grip on the shaft of the dildo. He blinked again, and, as he had done earlier, waited for Crowley to explain further.

"Y'know how I said my... body thinks it's time to mate?"

Slowly, Aziraphale nodded.

"Well, erm, the- the hissing earlier - and the biting, of course - that was my body m-mimicking how male snakes show interest in a potential mate."

Thus far, Aziraphale was only just about managing to keep up. In fact, it required all his concentration to keep his gaze away from the smooth concave of Crowley's bellybutton, from the respective pads of Crowley's forefinger and middle finger, each pressing lightly into one hood of his little hemipenes. Refraining from looking into Crowley's face, too, was becoming increasingly difficult as Crowley's brow furrowed and his jaw dropped open, the soft muscles of his rounded chest flexing as he arched his back further off the bed and his hips trembled with spasms.

"'N' then, a female indicates r-readiness to mate by ssstraightening her body out and waiting for it to align with..." He trailed off before continuing.

So that was why Crowley's tail had uncurled before him. Crowley had historically presented as male and female when passing as human, so it shouldn't be a surprise to Aziraphale that Crowley's snakelike self also felt inclined towards both male and female traits.

"I couldn't help it, it happened and my cl- well, my cunt needs to lock with something now ."

With that, Aziraphale glanced down at the dildo he was holding.

"Usually, I jussst stick that thing in me and put the t-telly on for a few hours till my body thinks it's done."

Aziraphale swallowed thickly. Despite his burning curiosity, he didn't ask Crowley to explain the presence of the box's remaining contents. The experience which Crowley had just described appealed to him, felt acceptable for him to digest, because it did not involve some other being. The bubbles of venom in his veins popped with stinging snaps at the thought of Crowley doing this to himself, fucking himself on a fake dick and watching Golden Girls throughout like it was nothing. However... the thought of somebody else using the rest of the equipment - enclosing Crowley's wrists in the cuffs, easing the gag into Crowley's mouth - made Aziraphale feel startlingly close to vomiting.

"Thing isss," Crowley continued, "S'hard enough to get the thing in with these claws. And right now, I reckon m-my hands aren't sssteady enough to even hold it properly."

Finally, Aziraphale allowed himself another proper glance at Crowley's centre, at the delicate tremor of Crowley's fingers as they stroked over the bulbs of his hemipenes. Aziraphale's gaze fell upon Crowley's free arm, still adjacent to his head, and observed that it, too, was shaking from the wrist up.

Fucking hell. Crowley was too gone to even hold anything steady, too desperate even to fuck himself effectively. If his body was this stretched-out and loose-limbed already, God knew how destroyed he would be by the end of this.

"So, erm... Could you help me g-get it in?"

Oh, God above.

Aziraphale shouldn't've been surprised, had to have known that this had been where Crowley's monologue had been leading, but still, his mouth fell open in shock at the prospect of it. The venom stroked at his cheeks and pinched at his biceps as if to say, This is real, this is not a dream, this is happening.

"Are you sure?" Crowley was too far gone not to need this now, but Aziraphale still had to ask, had to give him another chance to back out or offer an alternative. He almost asked whether Crowley could do it himself by using a miracle, but miracles required full composure and mental stamina... neither of which Crowley currently possessed in abundance in that moment. Then, he almost offered to perform a miracle that would take care of the matter himself... but that felt wrong, somehow. It would have come across as apathetic, reluctant, uncaring, three things Aziraphale absolutely was not.

Crowley pushed out a grunted breath. "Y-yeah, angel. M'sure." His unblinking yellow eyes flitted down to his core, and Aziraphale followed them. The pink walls of Crowley's vent pulsed ever so slightly as Aziraphale fixed his gaze upon it again.

Then, before he knew it, Aziraphale was kneeling on the bed, shuffling closer to Crowley until his knees were nestled against the base of Crowley's tail.

"Just... just try to relax, my dear," Aziraphale assured, feigning confidence so that Crowley didn't have to. Crowley nodded, turning his head to one side as he had done earlier and drawing his fingers away from his hemipenes.

Aziraphale wielded the dildo, angling it towards Crowley's... cunt, the demon had wanted to keep calling it, though David Attenborough had taught Aziraphale that it was specifically called a cloaca. First, Aziraphale brushed the entrance of the vent with the dildo lightly, accidentally sweeping it over the bulbs of the hemipenes, too, in the process. Crowley grunted laboriously, and Aziraphale felt himself apologising profusely over and over. Next, Aziraphale pushed the dildo gently at Crowley's entrance and felt very little give in response.

"Are you sure it will go in without...?"

"S'alright, Casanova. S'not like a human one." Despite his wet-lipped, keening state of desperation, Crowley snorted. "It'll go straight in. Just needs another push."

Once Aziraphale had opened his mouth to reply, no words emerged. He was too absorbed in the sight before him, of the hemipenes practically throbbing with heat, of the head of the dildo slicked to shining with Crowley's want, to muster up any words to indicate he understood. Moving his wrist back and forth in a subtle stroking motion, Aziraphale pushed at the vent again, and again, slowly, patiently, gently, feeling the vent walls start to give and welcome the dildo in, all the while feeling the venom sparking in his blood, singing in his heart till it charred with words like fuck and oh and why can't it be me?

Never, in all his eternal life, had Aziraphale been jealous of an inanimate object, let alone one made of silicone plastic. And yet, here he was, gradually easing a sex toy into the man he had loved his entire life instead of giving said love of his life the one thing he had not given yet, and wanted to desperately.

When Aziraphale's left forearm had almost worked the dildo all the way in, he felt a brief tickle against the skin of his outer wrist. He glanced at the pertinent area on his arm, and spied Crowley's clawed hand retreating from the area out of the corner of his eye. 

Had Crowley wanted to reach out and touch but stopped himself before he could commit to acting on this desire for more than a split second? Had Aziraphale been too rough with him, too distant, too clinical?

A quiet groan of relief from Crowley accompanied the moment when the dildo bottomed out inside his tight cunt. All short, shallow breaths and sweaty palms, Aziraphale had not dared to look up at Crowley's face since he had begun this endeavour, and when he did, he was met with a gaze whose intensity he had not seen in Crowley's eyes since Crowley had introduced him to food thousands of years ago by way of an ox-rib. Crowley wiggled his hips as if to make himself comfortable in his new position, the dildo now mostly submerged inside him. As Aziraphale's eyes swept up Crowley's figure, he observed that beads of sweat had broken out on Crowley's sternum and rolled down to his stomach.

"You can gag me, too, if you want." As Crowley spoke, his clawed hand was already finding its way back to his hemipenes. "Ssso you don't have to... hear."

Aziraphale bit down on his tongue until it bled at the thought of Crowley's lips growing swollen and reddened around the ball-gag which lived in the black box, of Crowley's eyes crossing in his head while his cries, pleading and honeyed, dissolved into muffled whimpers because of it.

Not that he would get to see that if he did agree to it.

Besides, that was the last thing Aziraphale wanted. Evidently, Crowley had frustrations to work out, and he wasn't going to interrupt that. He shook his head a few times to indicate his disagreement with the idea.

"But could you... stay in the flat until it's over? Jussst in case I-"

Stay in the flat. Not in this room, clearly, but elsewhere, tucked away from the action. The venom hissed within him in protest at the thought.

"Absolutely. Of course." Aziraphale clicked his fingers and the flatscreen TV on the opposite wall to Crowley's headboard switched on, to a channel he knew often reran classic Bond films. At the same time, the remote to the TV appeared in Crowley's idle hand.

Then, Aziraphale said some very difficult words; ones that rivalled the words he had spoken at the bandstand two years earlier, in terms of the extent to which he did not really want to say them.

"Well, I'll leave you to it, then. Please give me a shout if you need me."

"Ngggh," Crowley grunted in reply.

Aziraphale backed off the bed and turned to leave the room on slightly shaky legs. He had just about reached the doorframe, where he made to step over the tip of Crowley's tail, when the demon spoke again.

"S'a few booksss in that cupboard, angel. Top shhhelf."

Stopping in his tracks, Aziraphale turned his head ninety degrees to one side. "Thank you, Crowley," he crooned softly as he left the room.

Aziraphale's steps back into the office and towards the cupboard resembled a walking manner not unlike that of a zombie. He felt resolutely disconnected from his surroundings, every nerve in his body now kissed by the venom and screaming urgently for Crowley. He had the unshakable feeling, as he opened the door to the full-length cupboard, that he had made the wrong choice by leaving Crowley alone in that bedroom... but preserving Crowley's dignity was more important. Wasn't it?

When Aziraphale glanced upon the contents of the top shelf, he smiled a soft smile despite his distress. Piled untidily in a stack was a selection of Aziraphale's very favourite books; Vanity Fair , Moby Dick , Mrs. Dalloway , A Room with a View , and so forth... they were not the time-worn first editions Aziraphale was accustomed to reading, but paperbacks, coated with dust to illustrate that they had lain there without interruption since they had been purchased.

Lifting himself onto the balls of his feet, Aziraphale grabbed the topmost book, Jane Eyre . It was one he hadn't read in at least half a century, whose plot he had forgotten just enough about to enjoy reading anew on that particular day. As he did so, he spied the thin paper of a receipt poking out of the top of the book, wedged between the front cover and the title page. He drew it out its hiding place and beheld a list of all the books which stood before him, along with the date printed at the top of the receipt, which was one from the end of summer in 2019. Crowley must have purchased the books after the night they had planned to switch identities, in case Aziraphale ever returned for an extended visit.

Closing the cupboard door with a harder slam than he had intended, Aziraphale swivelled round to face the rest of the room and marched over to the throne. Uneasily, he sank down onto its seat, placing the book on the desk in front of him. The cups of tea which Crowley had made for them earlier sat beside the book on the table, cold and grey. He drummed his fingers on the book's cover, eyes immediately glazing over as he stared directly ahead of him. Though he had just gone through the motions of selecting a book, he knew that reading it would be a challenge. All Aziraphale could think about was the ghost of Crowley's claws on his forearm, the sweetness of the groan Crowley had uttered when the dildo had fully entered him.

The venom was needling at his nerves with flaming abandon. It was a fight to even keep his limbs anchored in a seated position and prevent them from leading him back into the bedroom. However, he knew he must resist, for Crowley's sake.

Aziraphale opened the book, willing his eyes to buzz back into focus as he cast his gaze over the timeline of the lives of the Bronte sisters which began the book. He swallowed down a healthy gulp of saliva, his eyes scanning the dates and annotations and yet not transmitting the information to his brain. He knew it all anyway, but that was by the by; the point of the endeavour was to focus on something, anything, but the mental picture he had quickly formed of Crowley, easing the dildo into the tight squeeze of his cunt with the flat of his hand and then out of it again with the undersides of his fingers, while his tail coiled around a nearby bedpost.

Moving on to the introduction, Aziraphale flicked ahead and noted that it was forty pages. Once again, there was probably no historical context or literary analysis in here with which he was not familiar, and yet, he struggled on. As he fought his way through the quoted passages and their accompanying analyses, his foot began to tap in a hurried, irregular rhythm on the concrete floor, causing his leg to bounce up and down frantically. To steady himself, Aziraphale placed a palm down on his thigh so quickly that it caused a slapping sound to erupt from the area. It helped a little, to press his palm into the meat of his leg, but it did not stop the twitching entirely.

Aziraphale was halfway through the introduction when he heard a noise emerge from the general direction of the bedroom, cutting through the faint sound of the television. It dissolved into thin air as quickly as it came, and at first, Aziraphale could not make out the nature of the noise. Then, it was repeated once, twice. It was not a relieved groan, not a faint whimper, but a growling keen; somehow low and high at once, gravelly and clear simultaneously.

Aziraphale pushed a punctuated breath out from his chest, which he hadn't noticed was heaving wantonly until that very moment. He hoped against hope that Crowley's utterances were ones of pleasure and not distress, but he had no way of knowing from his current position.

Perhaps both emotions were involved.

His eyes burned into the page as he mustered the wherewithal to continue reading. He began to rub his hand up and down his thigh, hoping the friction would alleviate some of the tension tugging at the sinews of his muscles. In doing so, his little finger brushed the bulge tenting his trousers, and a shiver tiptoed down his spine. He was so hard it was painful, a fact he had willed himself to forget rather successfully until that moment, when his ring finger joined his pinky in gently brushing his dick over his starched clothing, quite without his mental say-so.

Just as Aziraphale was turning the page from the end of the introduction to the editor's note, he heard a distinct thump emerging from the bedroom, not unlike the one he had heard earlier when Crowley's tail had first appeared. The force of the action was so strong that Aziraphale felt a faint rumble beneath his feet a second after it ended, from a whole room away. Then, another thump, this time sounding as if Crowley's tail was crashing against wood and not concrete, presumably one of the bedposts or the bed-frame, or, or- even the headboard, if Crowley's tail was twisting and flexing above him in an acrobatic expression of ecstasy. Then there was a third thump, then a fourth, and Aziraphale's dick seemed to pulse in time with them, his tip growing wet with precome all the while.

It took over five seconds for Aziraphale's thumb and forefinger to gain purchase on the page before him, so he could turn from the author's note to the first chapter. The venom had rendered his extremities numb and tingly now, as if he had pins and needles. Cracking the spine open so he could read the book without holding it, Aziraphale slammed the book down on the table. He rocked his core into the heel of his left hand, his right one white-knuckling the armrest of the throne. The thumps were growing fainter, but there was now a steady stream of wispy caterwauls emerging from the bedroom, unceasing and haunting.

Aziraphale read the first line.

There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.

Well, quite.

Aziraphale didn't believe in 'signs' anymore - he wasn't certain God carried enough concern for him either way to orchestrate them - but the contents of that first line certainly felt like one. Swaying from left to right slightly as he did so, Aziraphale tore his grip off the throne's armrest as he rose to his feet, as measuredly as inhumanly possible under the circumstances. As he stood up, however, all sound and vibration seemed to cease their emissions from the bedroom, as if Crowley had somehow detected Aziraphale's movement. Aziraphale froze where he stood, the throne pushed back from the desk behind him. He dared not even glance in the direction of the bedroom, despite the overwhelming urge to run back in there, lest he had alarmed Crowley by standing up and therefore ran the risk of further distressing him.

Then, a solitary word rang out from the bedroom, enunciated haphazardly and yet comprehensible to Aziraphale all the same.

"'A-angel?"

It dawned on Aziraphale, once he had opened his mouth, that his tongue had run dry. He registered that his throat seemed to have done the same when he croaked out a cracked response. "Yes, dear?"

"Come here?"

The venom pumping through Aziraphale's veins seemed to sizzle victoriously, despite the fact that the nature of Crowley's request was still unbeknownst to him.

"Right away!" Aziraphale assured, his voice still wobbly. His legs seemed to take control of themselves, then, hurrying towards the bedroom in the sort of scuttle a snake might make if it had suddenly grown legs.

Aziraphale attempted to take a deep breath before he reentered the bedroom, but found he was only capable of shallow gulps. He prayed, not to God, but to something , that Crowley wouldn't notice his shaking hands, his straining dick or his reddened cheeks in the darkened room.

The television was still on. Aziraphale clicked his fingers, and all noise emitting from it ceased. His eyes adjusted to the darkness quickly; Crowley maintained the same position in which he had lain when Aziraphale had left, only his tail was now curled in one continuous coil at his side on the bed. His entire upper body seemed to be glistening with a sheen of sweat now, and his hips were no longer twitching and trembling so much as writhing. He cast his golden eyes without reserve over Aziraphale's face and figure, his tongue immediately flicking upwards into the air as he did so.

The dildo was nowhere to be seen. It was the knuckles of Crowley's fingers, now, which pushed into the slick give of his vent. Crowley pumped them in and out, steady and unrelenting, whining tiny whines all the while, though they could only make shallow progress within his cunt. The corner of the pillow closest to Crowley's mouth was soaked through, with twin punctures presumably caused by his fangs, revealing patches of the cotton that lay within (of course, Crowley would never dream of using a feather or down pillow).

Though Aziraphale knew he should begin the conversation, he knew not what to say. He had questions, of course, lots of those, but more than that, there were statements he wanted to make. Statements which swam between his ears, rendered weightless by the rolling waves of venom which carried them.

Statements about what he wanted to do, about what he knew he must do.

Before Aziraphale had the chance to collect himself, Crowley broke the silence. 

"S'not enough," Crowley squeaked, all timid and quiet.

"Hmm?" Aziraphale managed.

"The... the fake dick. Usually it's fine." This time, Crowley spoke marginally louder, but his voice was still bordered with shyness.

Aziraphale glanced down at Crowley's centre again. He observed that, while Crowley pushed at his vent with his knuckles, the pad of his thumb was stroking the bulbs of his hemipenes languorously.

"Dunno why, but s'not working this time. M'not resssponding to it." Crowley's eyes flickered with something entirely unreadable. "I need a warm body."

"I see."

"Can't even use my fingers properly with these bloody claws. Still, feels better to have something warm, something moving ."

Aziraphale attempted to make sense of Crowley's words, his head pounding viciously. A warm body. Maybe the demon simply needed a bit of company, so his body could feel amorous enough once more to respond to the dildo.

"Would you like me to... hold you again?"

Crowley smiled, open-mouthed and beastly. His fangs glistened in the darkness.

"Need you to fuck me, angel."

Perhaps the confidence Crowley was suddenly exuding was feigned. Perhaps it was genuine. Either way, Aziraphale's still-wobbly knees knocked together with the sheer force of it as he processed what had been asked of him.

"Crowley, are you quite sure-"

"M'sure."

This couldn't be happening. On one level, Aziraphale knew that it was, and on another, he was tempted to pinch himself, as if this were a mad sort of fever dream (though he didn't make a habit of sleeping). Aziraphale's gaze swept over Crowley again, whose slitted pupils were dilating as he gazed back at Aziraphale, his hips still wriggling this way and that as he attempted to worked himself as best he could. Crowley seemed to want this in his current state, and selfishly, Aziraphale actively chose to give little thought to the prospect of either of them regretting it afterwards.

"Alright," Aziraphale agreed. "So... how do you want me?"

"Just... just come here, yeah?"

Aziraphale nodded quickly. He shucked his trousers down without ceremony to reveal a pair of boxers and sock garters before planting one knee and then the other on the bed. Crowley's eyes flickered towards his hips as if to beckon Aziraphale to straddle him, and Aziraphale obeyed, settling himself atop Crowley's tail just beneath Crowley's cunt. A contented hum rumbled from low in Crowley's throat as he took in the sensation of Aziraphale's weight resting on his tail. His hips mostly stilled, vibrating gently but no longer squirming uncomfortably.

"Now, let me-"

Gently, Aziraphale took Crowley's wrist in hand and guided Crowley's fingers away from his centre. Crowley grunted softly at the loss of contact, and then again as Aziraphale replaced Crowley's touch with his own, lightly brushing his fingertips against the opening of the vent, whose walls were contracting ever so slightly, waiting for something to latch onto and clench around.

Each of Crowley's hands made its way to Aziraphale's legs, and Aziraphale felt that light tickling sensation again as Crowley ran his fingers back and forth, claws combing through the thick, pale hair on his thighs.

“You sure you wanna do this, angel?” Crowley murmured, so sweetly that he could have dropped his words into a jar and sold them alongside sherbet lemons and pear drops.

The venom snatched at Aziraphale's heart within its fizzing grasp and he felt it skip a beat. "Of course. Just- just relax and let me help you, darling. Alright?"

Crowley cleared his throat and uttered a quick "okay" to demonstrate his agreement.

Aziraphale watched as Crowley's cheeks flushed around the scales speckling them, his eyes flickering, quick and uninterpretable, as they had done moments earlier. He hadn't meant to call Crowley darling . Honestly, he hadn't. Lost as Aziraphale had been in the disarming sense of affection which accompanied Crowley petting Aziraphale's thighs with his claws, Aziraphale had let it slip out... but he knew this wasn't part of the arrangement they had just agreed upon. Surely, Crowley had simply been kind enough to attempt to soothe Aziraphale's inevitable nerves with a gentle touch; there was no use in reading any more into it.

While his right hand continued to caress the entrance of the vent, Aziraphale tapped the hoods of Crowley's hemipenes lightly with his left. "How do these work?"

"Ngggh, well, they're sort of like- like T-dicks, if you know what that-"

"I'm familiar with the concept, yes." The cunt and T-dick combination was a genital configuration Aziraphale had often suspected and now knew Crowley enjoyed manifesting, from the way Aziraphale had felt a small, orbicular erection nestle against his thigh as Crowley had pressed his core against Aziraphale when they had held each other earlier. Crowley squeaked a quiet "ngk" sound at Aziraphale's interruption, and Aziraphale's mouth turned up at the corners slightly as he allowed himself to feel just a little smug for surprising his demonic counterpart with his knowledge.

"They're gorgeous," Aziraphale admitted, pulling their respective hoods back with his middle finger and forefinger to admire them more closely. They were coloured a romantic shade of pink, sumptuously fat, obscenely bulbous and engorged while they pulsed with want; on the whole, they were more imposing than human T-dicks, certainly.

"P-P lease , angel," Crowley scoffed.

Aziraphale raised his eyebrows. "I mean it." He released the hoods of the hemipenes to fall back into their partial cover of the bulbs. Then, he pressed a fingertip into each hood and began to make circular patterns, slowly and patiently, despite the urgency of the venom coursing through him with heat and desperation. At the same time, he used his right hand to ease two fingers gradually into Crowley's cunt. Crowley's hips bucked wildly once Aziraphale's fingers had pushed in as far as they could reach, knuckle-deep and further still, though there was still more of Crowley's core to be filled.

"How does that feel?" Aziraphale whispered with all the bashful politeness of a noblewoman's personal maid addressing her mistress during her first day on the job.

Crowley's hips lowered and then bucked again in a fluid grinding motion, his spine bending in a curve that would be impossible for humans but certainly within the wheelhouse of a snake. "Feelsss good , yeah."

Aziraphale edged his fingers upwards again, and then downwards once more once he had nearly pulled them all the way out of Crowley's vent. He repeated this motion, establishing a consistent rhythm, while he continued to use the fingers on his left hand to rub Crowley's hemipenes through their hoods. Meanwhile, Crowley continued to buck his hips, grinding his hemipenes harder against the pads of Aziraphale's fingers, and eventually, Aziraphale stopped rubbing the hemipenes entirely, instead electing to present the backs of his fingers so that Crowley could grind freely on them, applying as much pressure as he liked. Seizing the opportunity, Crowley rutted against each of Aziraphale's hands, his hemipenes quivering lightly as he was swiftly brought to release. Pausing his regular fingerfucking motions, Aziraphale entered a third digit into Crowley as Crowley came on his hand. The walls of Crowley's vent squeezed and relaxed with ardent strength, and, God , Aziraphale wanted to feel that on his dick.

He would, he knew, as this was what Crowley had asked of him... but not yet. He needed Crowley relaxed first, needed Crowley considerably less tense and considerably more trusting.

Crowley's claws scratched lightly at Aziraphale's thighs, his hips rolling more subtly now as he rode the waves of his release. "Again, angel, again, need-"

"Yes, dear boy," Aziraphale urged. "Don't be afraid to tell me what you need."

The sharp cut of Crowley's claws dug deep into the skin on Aziraphale's legs. His gaze had been fixed upon Aziraphale's eyes ever since Aziraphale had begun to work him on his fingers, but now, his focus shifted to the ceiling. Aziraphale waited for him to speak, slowing the rhythm of his fingers as he did so.

"Y-your mouth, please."

"In your...?"

"On my dicks." Crowley's brow furrowed as he spoke, the tip of his tail unfurling and rising from its resting position out of the corner of Aziraphale's eye. "Please?" Crowley repeated, this time with his pitch climbing higher at the end of his sentence as if it were a question. Meanwhile, the tip of Crowley's tail skimmed the flesh of Aziraphale's left leg, just above his foot. A surge of venom rushed to Aziraphale's ankle, as if to greet Crowley's tail, and suddenly, Aziraphale felt the lower half of his leg turn quite numb and heavy. It was as if the venom were priming his body to be wrapped up in Crowley's serpentine embrace; as if it were not merely encouraging, but ensuring his surrender.

Could it truly be a surrender if raising this particular white flag required yielding to an urge Aziraphale had never truly wanted to fight?

Crowley's words had been music to Aziraphale's ears. While he would have been honoured, privileged, to lick and taste inside Crowley's cunt, he had quietly been cradling the hope that Crowley would desire an entirely different undivided focus for his mouth. One that involved pressing the balmy cushion of his lips to the hooded shields which valiantly protected the sacred heart of Crowley's pleasure in a kiss of eternal gratitude, and then sweeping the flat of his tongue over the crests of the pink-hued orbs which lay shuddering beneath those shields, one by one.

"Yes, dearest. Of course." Without further ado, Aziraphale began to withdraw his fingers from the clench of Crowley's vent. The mourning helplessness with which Crowley wailed at this development pricked little holes in the steadfast twin masses of Aziraphale's lungs. Breathlessly, he insisted that everything would be alright. "No, darling, I know, I'm sorry, it's just for a moment, so I can-"

Suddenly, the tip of Crowley's tail was no longer caressing the inner side of his ankle, because it was busy thrashing against the nearest bedpost, causing the entire bed-frame to shake beneath and around them. "Az, don't leave me, please , m'gonnafucking-"

As rapidly as he could manage, Aziraphale shimmied downwards until his face was level with Crowley's core, his fingers no longer inside Crowley's vent or firmly resting against Crowley's hemipenes but still stroking both parts of Crowley's centre gently to remind the demon that he wasn't going anywhere. "Shhh, I know, I know, you're doing so well, aren't you, dearest, you're-"

"Angel!" Crowley sounded almost pained in his cry, increasingly distressed with each passing second.

Aziraphale wasted no time in pushing his fingers back into the quiver of Crowley's vent, which welcomed his return by fluttering gracefully against his knuckles. "It's alright, it's okay, I'm here, I'm here," Aziraphale promised, his nose now hovering millimetres above Crowley's navel. The low timbre of his words seemed to vibrate through the air and throb lightly upon the veiled surfaces of the twin dicks, and Crowley thrusted into the air in response, his dicks bumping lightly upon either side of Aziraphale's cupid's bow as a result.

"Gosh, those beauties are sensitive, aren't they?" Aziraphale asked, and Crowley nodded frantically in confirmation. "Are you quite certain my mouth won't be too much?"

Already, Crowley had begun to grind mindlessly back on Aziraphale's fingers again. "Erm, dunno, no one's ever actually- s'okay if you've changed your mind, I just wanted-"

Crowley cut himself off mid-sentence when Aziraphale pressed a tender kiss to his hemipenes both at once.

"Oh," Crowley whimpered, so softly it was barely audible, his hips growing lazier and calmer in their aim to feel Aziraphale's fingers deeper inside him.

Opening his mouth, Aziraphale dragged the silky, wet underside of his lower lip from the bases of the bulbs all the way up to their peaks, the tips of his bottom teeth grazing the skin of the dicks as he did so. A shiver erupted from the centre of Crowley's spine and sent his torso twitching, his tail making contact with the bedpost once more, this time with a far meeker thump.

Aziraphale paused before he continued. His torso was currently pressed to the scaled mass of Crowley's tail. His hips were raised slightly so his crotch was not touching Crowley's body - the last thing Crowley needed was to feel how painfully hard Aziraphale was, though he must have abstractly known it due to the presence of the venom. That could absolutely not become the focus of his current endeavour. He was here to help Crowley, to soothe him, to provide, not to impose or to take.

But, oh, how Aziraphale wanted to take. More than ever before. How he wanted to press his dick into the slick pink cradle that lived at the centre of the breathtaking, desperate creature before him, so deep and loving that they were both stunned into speechlessness by the gorgeous, writhing obscenity of it.

"Angel?" Crowley enquired, snapping Aziraphale out of his contemplation. "C'n you... undo your shirt? Sorry, s'just the buttons are kinda ssscraping on my ssscales..."

Aziraphale tipped his head upwards to face the demon and nodded once. "Right away." With the hand that wasn't fucking Crowley on curling fingers, he fumbled for the buttons of his shirt between his human-shaped body and Crowley's snakelike one. He heard a faint grunt emerge from Crowley's mouth at the sensation of his knuckles stroking against the cool, smooth finish of Crowley's scales as he made to undo them. "Would you like me to remove my undershirt, also?" Aziraphale berated himself mentally for sounding so clinical... but perhaps that was the safest approach. Crowley hadn't asked for romance, after all.

Crowley's blown-out pupils flickered back and forth across Aziraphale's face, raised just above his hemipenes, for a moment. Then, he nodded quickly.

With a wave of Aziraphale's hand, his cotton undervest disappeared off his body and reappeared across the room, neatly folded on the floor. His now-unbuttoned shirt remained rolled up past the elbows and clinging to his shoulders. The venom surged to pool in Aziraphale's upper body as he felt his broad chest, the firm roll of his stomach, pressing bare against Crowley's crimson scales. It was calming to him, somehow, the glossy, fresh cold of the scales offsetting the burning heat of Aziraphale's hair-fleeced chest, the meandering grooves of the stretch marks on his belly. The sensation of Crowley's scales on his skin was a balm, of sorts, to the raw sting of the venom still coursing fervently through him.

Crowley appeared to enjoy the contact, too, because the tip of his tail drooped, then, and curled in a ring around Aziraphale's ankle - committing to the contact this time, instead of merely flirting with the prospect of it as it had done on his leg earlier.

"There you are, that's better," Aziraphale cooed, content to have alleviated even a fraction of Crowley's discomfort. After he observed Crowley smile a tiny smile, he ducked his head downwards again and pressed a second kiss to Crowley's dicks, open-mouthed this time. The kiss had more strength to it than the previous one, more urgency. Aziraphale followed it with a fleeting flick to both bulbs of the hemipenes with the tip of his tongue, and then another, and then another, matching the rhythm of his pumping fingers which remained inside Crowley's vent.

Crowley's hips began to pick up speed again. "Shit, yeah, like that, only-"

Aziraphale replaced the tip of his tongue with the flat of it, pressing it firmly into the bases of the bulbs and licking a steady path upwards before starting again in a repeated pattern.

"Yeah, yeah, fuck, Azira- ah ," Crowley stuttered, exclaiming in pleasure when the angel planted a palm on his left side, cupping his hipbone and guiding him so that his grinding focused less on Aziraphale's fingers more on the wide surface of Aziraphale's tongue, which stilled to allow Crowley to work himself on it more easily.

While Aziraphale felt the engorged bulbs of Crowley's dicks rutting deliciously against his tongue, he breathed deeply through his nose, sending small shivers rippling across the base of Crowley's tail, all the way up his scaled sides and through to his shoulders. Meanwhile, the tip of Crowley's tail slithered in a coiling motion up the course of Aziraphale's leg, skimming the back of his knee and coming to rest on the tensed muscles of Aziraphale's upper thigh, just below the swell of his ass, which was still covered by his underwear. There, it ran back and forth over Aziraphale's skin as if to pet him in reward, and Aziraphale's entire leg practically swelled with venom, so comfortably numb that he knew it to be utterly immovable.

He wondered what Crowley's tail would feel like coiled all the way up to his neck.

Perhaps Crowley had been wondering the same thing. "Whennnyougonna fuck me, angel, m'ready, how much longer?"

Naturally, Aziraphale did not reply immediately, because doing so would involve withdrawing his tongue, and Crowley's dicks were currently pulsing on it with a more delicately acute release than their previous one, beating as one like two halves of an anguished heart. Aziraphale's own heart felt as if it might burst from his chest as he listened to Crowley whimper hurried pleases intermittently, while the walls of Crowley's vent tightened in begging squeezes around his fingers.

Aziraphale had wanted Crowley relaxed, had wanted Crowley completely trusting, before he acted upon Crowley's request in earnest. Though some of the knotted tension in Crowley's body seemed to have dissipated each time he rode out a release, Aziraphale may not have relaxed Crowley as much as he had hoped - but he realised now that this was an impossible task to achieve without delivering on his promise. His promise of finally listening to Crowley's body and granting it was it was begging for, of tricking Crowley's snakelike side into believing that he was fucking the demon to breed him.

After all the time Aziraphale had had to process this, he still felt lightheaded at the prospect of it.

In terms of Crowley's trust... Aziraphale could only hope he had earned it unreservedly. After all, Crowley's self-consciousness and embarrassment seemed to have largely melted away; whether this was due to Aziraphale's attempts at providing comfort and relief, or sheer desperation, or both, it was not only relieving, but also absolutely intoxicating to behold. If this was how drastically Crowley let himself go while he wasn't being entirely satisfied, Aziraphale couldn't even begin to imagine the physical, audible manifestation of complete ecstasy within the snake demon. The venom bubbled impatiently within him at the thought that, shortly, he would not have to imagine.

Once the fervent pulses of Crowley's dicks subsided into faint quivers, Aziraphale slowly withdrew his tongue from Crowley's centre and curled it back into his mouth. This was not the way he had imagined having his first taste of Crowley; he had pictured a soft kiss to lips which tasted of rich red wine and high-end straight cigarettes and a sweetness as golden as the blazing fire of Crowley's eyes. He had not pictured bowing his head in deference to not one but two pink, velvet-smooth dicks, which twitched hot and briny on his tongue.

Nevertheless, it had been an honour, and, if this was the only part of Crowley which Aziraphale would ever get to taste, he was grateful it had been a part of him which needed his help, which relied on his selflessness and skill.

Ultimately, it was greedy to want more than this. Already, he had received more than he had ever bargained for; although it wasn't under tranquil circumstances, he had seen Crowley naked and bared and vulnerable, had seen Crowley pleasured and moaning and bursting from the centre outwards. He would do as Crowley had asked and fuck him till he was satisfied, and then they would return to their regular dynamic; timid breaths caressing flushed cheeks as pieces of lint were brushed off faded waistcoats.

He could handle that, he reckoned. He had done it for six millennia.

Aziraphale finally responded to Crowley's previous question. "You've done so well to wait this long, dear. If you are ready, then so am I."

Before Aziraphale had even finished speaking, he began to feel the tip of Crowley's tail uncoiling from its helter-skelter position around his thigh and calf and receding to the other side of the bed. As if grieving the loss of Crowley's tail on his body, the venom began to cool, and Aziraphale could feel sensation returning to his leg.

Withdrawing his fingers from Crowley's vent for a second time, Aziraphale used the hand that had cradled Crowley's hip to lever himself into a straddling seated position on Crowley's tail. He shimmied upwards to the base, where he had sat previously as he had first fingered Crowley. With a flick of his hand, his boxers were removed, joining the undershirt on the other side of the room. He felt it was only fitting to shrug his shirt off his shoulders, too - if Crowley was lying naked and exposed before him, the least Aziraphale could do was show that he was willing to match Crowley in kind.

Aziraphale's veined, thickset dick hung heavy and slick-tipped against his thigh. Crowley's lips parted upon drinking in the sight of it, the twin tips of his forked tongue flitting out of his mouth, and Aziraphale swore he spotted Crowley's pupils dilating a little more. Although the departure of Aziraphale's fingers had rendered Crowley's vent achingly empty, he had received no complaint as he had done earlier, but perhaps this was solely due to the married senses of relief and anticipation which Crowley must have been feeling, knowing he was about to be filled with something far more satisfying. In fact, Crowley's hips had ceased to move at all, for the first time since he had made his transformation into his current form earlier that day. A strange sort of calm had seemed to befall him, when Aziraphale had just learned to expect the opposite.

"Bloody hell," Crowley breathed, claws ghosting the shaft of Aziraphale's cock. "Do you always manifest the dick of a fucking pornstar?"

Aziraphale cleared his throat. "Is it big enough, then? Long enough?" Aziraphale deflected, but his line of enquiry was a noble one (if that was a word which could be applied to this situation). He needed to know whether his 'effort' would satisfy the requirements of Crowley's current need.

"Mmm," Crowley purred, eyes focused on Aziraphale's dick, where his thumb now rubbed the slit of Aziraphale's head, careful to keep the claw attached to it out of the way.

"And you're quite certain you can..."

"Yes, I can fucking take it. I know'm tight, but-" Crowley stopped speaking mid-sentence as Aziraphale took hold of Crowley's wrist and placed Crowley's hand upon his knee. At the same time, he took his length in hand and pushed himself up off his haunches a little, pitching forward just far enough to outstretch his left arm and lean against the headboard once he had let go of Crowley's wrist. He guided his tip towards Crowley's vent, pushing it lightly against the entrance once he had done so. Crowley gnashed his fangs on his bottom teeth and moaned, elevating his hips to meet Aziraphale's cock until Aziraphale felt his head sink ever so slightly into the give of the vent. "Fuck, please ," Crowley whined, elongating his vowels such that he almost sounded bratty. Meanwhile, Aziraphale felt his skin begin to warm as he took in the sensation of entering Crowley for the first time.

"Just relax, now, Crowley," Aziraphale urged, pressing the heel of his hand harder into the headboard as he pushed further into Crowley's vent, steady and consistent in pace. Crowley's hips dropped into a more natural position, his back straightening. He gasped, a gulp of the hot air which filled the darkened room whistling past his fangs and into his mouth, as Aziraphale eased deeper and deeper inside him. "Good girl, you're doing just wonderfully." Crowley hissed in surprise, reacting to Aziraphale's acknowledgement of the feminine aspects of Crowley's snakelike self - and, by extension, human-shaped self - by flicking his tongue further out of his mouth, his lips twisting into an open-mouthed smile. "Yes, you're taking me perfectly, sweet girl," Aziraphale murmured fondly. It was a challenge to form a full sentence, feeling how obscenely tight and enchantingly warm Crowley's vent felt wrapped around his dick, his skin growing hotter with passion by the second. It was an even greater challenge, still, to maintain a neutral tone of voice, to speak to Crowley as if he were anything but the love of Aziraphale's life in every sense possible, and Aziraphale was resolutely failing at this task. Half of him hoped Crowley would put down his amorous manner of speech to the venom, and the other half wished Crowley would see the truth of it.

"Doesss it feel... okay for you?" Crowley hissed.

Okay was a vast understatement, of course. In actuality, he didn't have the words to describe how natural, how bewitching, how fulfilling it felt to be inside his demon; he was now so hot he was beginning to feel feverish, sweat seeming to steam off his skin, saliva pooling in his mouth and rising in waves onto his tongue. He nodded, perhaps a little too eagerly, in confirmation.

"And the venom?" Crowley asked, brow furrowed.

Aziraphale ceased to sink himself further into Crowley for a moment, pausing his pushing movement to stop and think. He focused on each part of his body one by one, expecting to feel the sting, the bubbling, the burning of the venom somewhere or other. He realised, however, that all sign of it within him had disappeared, as if he had sweat it all out with the sudden feverish heat which had overcome his body - a heat which now seemed to subside upon the utterance of Crowley's words. The venom's job, it seemed, had been to get Aziraphale here... and now he had arrived at this stage of their coupling, its presence was no longer necessary, as it were.

"Don't worry about me, darling," Aziraphale reassured.

Another darling . Berating himself internally for being unable to keep a lid on his ardent affections for a single moment, Aziraphale resumed pushing into Crowley. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, he intended to remind Crowley to relax once more. "Just-"

"Ah, fuck," Crowley interrupted, throwing his head back, the tip of his tail lifting off the bed and vibrating in the air. It took Aziraphale a second to register that he had actually bottomed out, so soft and thin was the veil at the base of Crowley's vent. A wet sucking sound emerged from their married centres as Crowley's walls clamped tautly around Aziraphale's dick, just when Aziraphale thought it wasn't possible for Crowley's cunt to feel any tighter. "S'working now, didn't do this last time, my body thinks-"

Thinks I'm your mate , Aziraphale wanted to say. There was no sentimentality to that statement in this particular part of the animal kingdom; snakes, David Attenborough had taught Aziraphale in various different ways over the years through BBC documentaries, are solitary creatures, who only tolerate the continued presence of another snake during the course of mating. Aziraphale tried exceedingly hard to remember this fact as he waited for the end of Crowley's sentence and shifted his thighs slightly, adjusting to the sensation of being buried so deep inside the vent. He knew he couldn't, shouldn't hope there was any deeper significance to this for Crowley other than getting him out of this pheromone-induced bind. The very existence of that hope was unfair on both of them, for different reasons.

"-well, ya know what I mean," Crowley finally finished. Aziraphale smiled weakly.

They remained still, for a moment, growing fully accustomed to this new type of closeness, Crowley's curved chest rising and falling more calmly than Aziraphale had seen it all day. Once he had begun to push inside Crowley, Aziraphale's right hand had departed from his dick and settled on the concave of Crowley's sweat-sheened stomach. Now, that same hand moved to cup Crowley's waist, where he found the scales which decorated it shifting subtly beneath his palm.

"Are you ready?" Aziraphale asked in a whisper.

"Yeah," Crowley confirmed at an even quieter volume.

Carefully, Aziraphale pushed his knees further into the mattress and felt his thigh muscles flex as he began to draw his dick back. The movement was somewhat smooth due to the abundance of slick Crowley was cradling in his cunt, some of which now coated Aziraphale's shaft. Still, he had pulled no more than halfway out when Crowley cried out softly in alarm.

"Are you alright? Is this uncomfortable?"

Crowley shook his head. "No, s'just- please don't go any further. Need to fffeel you deep, for, erm, my body to understand."

Fuck. Aziraphale's eyebrows knitted together. He bit his lip. "Alright." His hips rolled forward as he pushed deeper inside Crowley again, focusing on the slow crawl of the scales beneath his palm on Crowley's waist. It was heavenly, in the human sense, feeling Crowley's cunt welcome him so tightly, but at the same time, going this slowly was torture.

Ever since he had entered Crowley, Aziraphale's gaze had been focused on the dark grey wall in front of him. As he pulled partway out a second time, he allowed himself to steal a glance down at Crowley when he felt the tickle of Crowley's claws as Crowley stroked at his round belly.

"Fffaster, angel."

Aziraphale's breath hitched. "Are you sure?"

Crowley nodded breathlessly, tipping his head upwards so the sharp jut of his chin rose into view, drool dripping from his fangs and onto his skin. God , how Aziraphale wanted to suck the skin protecting that jaw into his mouth, to taste the salt of Crowley's sweat mingling with the sweetness of Crowley's saliva on his tongue. Instead, he continued to streamline his focus into the sensation of Crowley's scales beneath his hand, pressing his palm harder into Crowley's side as he elevated himself on his knees just far enough to pull halfway out again, faster this time. He was careful to measure his speed precisely as he pushed back in again, without pausing for Crowley's benefit as he had been doing previously.

"Does that hurt?" Aziraphale crooned, bearing down on Crowley's middle so the tip of his dick pressed harder into the veiled skin at the base of Crowley's vent, deep and indulgent.

"Nah," Crowley gasped, claws scraping the crest of Aziraphale's stomach, trailing powdery white marks behind them on his skin. "Just like that, fuck." The scales on Crowley's waist seemed to spasm, then, not so much crawling as jumping beneath Aziraphale's hand, and Aziraphale almost flinched at the abruptness of it.

Aziraphale fell into a steady rhythm after that, pumping deep into Crowley with swift drags of his hips. Each time he hit the base of Crowley's vent, Crowley's tail thumped against the mattress, far gentler than Aziraphale had grown to expect. Crowley's emissions of pleasure no longer manifested in wanting whines but low-pitched moans; moans which were often stifled halfway through their utterances by Crowley's fangs sinking into the surface of his tongue. Crowley's claws flicked into the air and away from Aziraphale's skin, his palms replacing them on Aziraphale's torso, where they ran over the surface of his belly lightly, occasionally pressing more strongly into his flesh and then receding as quickly as they had done so.

"You mustn't restrain yourself on my account," Aziraphale punched out his words between heavy exhalations.

For a moment, Crowley did not reply, but Aziraphale did not alter his pace. The slick gliding of Aziraphale's dick within the anchored embrace of Crowley's vent felt positively divine , so much so that Aziraphale worried that fucking absolutely anything else was utterly ruined for him (not that he had made a habit of it in recent centuries); there was a grasping, selfish part of him that wanted to keep going for reasons entirely departed from helping Crowley, a part of him whose sense of righteousness was inflating by the second because it now had proof that taking Crowley apart this way was even more delicious than Aziraphale could have dreamt.

"Don't wanna scare you," Crowley whispered, pupils dancing back and forth over Aziraphale's face with his head still tilted upwards.

"However you need to express yourself," Aziraphale lilted, rutting into Crowley a little more strongly than before as if to illustrate his point, "I can handle it."

Crowley yelped at the sensation of Aziraphale's stronger movements and his entire tail shook from base to tip, his hands flitting to Aziraphale's forearms where they clung on for dear life. Aziraphale bounced atop Crowley's body slightly as Crowley quaked beneath him, but he maintained his position, sweat beading upon his brow as he continued to move with this new speed and strength. As he did so, Crowley's tail continued to tremble softly, as if it were a wind chime fluttering in the breeze.

Aziraphale understood that Crowley had taken his advice when he registered the tip of Crowley's tail stroking at the small of his back, as if it were seeking permission to touch Aziraphale in earnest. Aziraphale stroked the scales adorning Crowley's waist in confirmation, and not a full second later, Crowley's tail began to snake around Aziraphale's middle, starting at that spot on his lower back. It twisted, steadily yet languidly, in encompassing loops until the tip of the tail reached the centre of Aziraphale's collarbone, where it settled in that crescent as if it were a tranquil wanderer, come to rest in a hammock beneath the stars, on a night clearer than anyone could remember.

Throughout this process, Crowley had been watching Aziraphale's body in evident fascination, as if his tail were an entirely separate entity. His moans, though no longer stifled during their natural course, were still quiet, still restrained.

At first, the presence of the tail was akin to that of a new boyfriend's leather jacket hanging about one's shoulders. Casual, slack, easy. However, as Aziraphale's pleasure began to build to new heights while the tail subtly angled him further forward, he felt its smooth coil tighten around him, pressing with unassuming strength into his chest, clinging onto the proud arch of his belly.

"How... s'that good?" Crowley gasped between the groans Aziraphale elicited from him by pumping into him without restraint.

"Fuck, yes, it's good, Crowley," Aziraphale gushed, voice rasping rougher than either being was accustomed to.

"You... really?"

It was as if the fact of being wrapped up in Crowley's tail was bringing Aziraphale closer to Crowley, not only in shifting him forward so his dick hit the quivering veil of Crowley's vent at a slanted angle, producing an even more satisfying sensation than the previous one; it felt intimate in another manner, a manner which had less to do with the plunging obscenity of one man's dick spearing another's soaking cunt and more to do with a startlingly innocent lover's embrace.

Aziraphale wondered how Crowley could even question such a thing... but then, he recalled Crowley's earlier confession - the one which established that no one had set their mouth to his hemipenes before. This might be his first time in this form with another being more respects than one.

"Crowley," Aziraphale panted. "Look at me."

Crowley's gaze shifted from the tip of his tail to Aziraphale's eyes, head still thrown back. Lifting his fingers off Crowley's waist, Aziraphale took Crowley's chin between his thumb and forefinger and eased it downwards until Crowley's head lay in a more natural resting position. Crowley's lips were ever so slightly parted, and he was still crying out low and silky every few seconds.

Aziraphale paused when his tip hit the base of Crowley's vent as he spoke and stilled himself there. "Has anyone ever fucked you like this before?"

Crowley's gaze skipped above Aziraphale's head, and Aziraphale pressed the pad of his thumb into Crowley's chin slightly harder to remind Crowley to maintain eye contact.

"N-no, angel," Crowley breathed, jerking his hips to grind the base of his cunt directly against Aziraphale's tip as Aziraphale retained his position.

To Crowley, like this probably meant in snakelike form. To Aziraphale, it meant something else entirely; what he had meant to ask, in actuality, was, Has anyone ever fucked you like you belong to them? And, by extension, like they belong to you?

In what universe could that feel anything short of mind-numbingly good ?

Either way, Aziraphale hoped it answered Crowley's question as his dick throbbed at the sensation of Crowley grinding the soft, wet depth of his core against Aziraphale's tip, watching Crowley's mouth fall further open as he grunted gutturally.

"Louder," Aziraphale instructed. You owe me this, he wanted to say. There is one thing of which you must not deny me, and it is the manifestation of your pleasure.

Aziraphale drew his dick back, not nearly as far as he had been doing previously, and pushed forth into the give of the veil once more. Gentler this time, and yet, Crowley seemed to respond more strongly to this movement than the last one Aziraphale had made. His back arched, and in doing so, his dicks brushed against the lower curve of Aziraphale's belly, exposed beneath a twist of snake tail, which sent the walls of his vent fluttering and his forked tongue rolling against his lower lip.

Aziraphale's own emissions of pleasure had thus far been limited to strained grunts and the occasional hitched breath. Now, he was uttering louder and longer sounds, his moans seeming to fall in time with Crowley's gasps, Crowley's dainty cries, which split the thick muck of the darkened humid air most delicately, and yet with overcome abandon at the same time.

"That's it, good boy," Aziraphale encouraged as he reestablished a regular rhythm. This one was slower and more thorough than his previous pattern, so deep that it felt not so much like an act of urgent lust as one of irrepressible love. A love which had become increasingly difficult to hide when the sleek tresses of Crowley's hair, the cream-clotted slope of his throat were within arm's reach, pleading silently to be touched while Crowley came apart beneath him. A love which, beneath its innate desire to nurture and provide, wanted to see what would happen when it chose to unravel its subject for the sole benefit and enjoyment of its own passion.

Instead of wrapping a hand around Crowley's neck or running his fingers through Crowley's hair, Aziraphale released his hand from its press against the headboard and clutched the scaled ball of Crowley's left shoulder, his right hand still gripping Crowley's chin. In doing this, Aziraphale pinned Crowley's upper half firmly to the bed, sending Crowley's arched back falling down onto the mattress, so his hips had to work harder to meet the roll of Aziraphale's tip onto the veil of his vent. The pads of Aziraphale's fingers dug into the soft, clement skin covering Crowley's shoulder blade, while droplets of sweat which had formed on his forehead dripped from Aziraphale's nose and into Crowley's open mouth. Crowley caught the droplets on his tongue, the tip of his tail vibrating atop the hill of Aziraphale's collarbone, craning his neck and angling his head up despite Aziraphale's grip on his chin, ensuring that more drops trickling from Aziraphale's face could fall between his lips.

As Aziraphale gently stroked Crowley's chin with his thumb, he felt the warm, smooth skin beneath his hand almost instantaneously grow sleek and cool, fiery-red scales breaking out not only in speckles along Crowley's jawline but also on the tip of Crowley's nose where faint freckles had been, just as Crowley scrunched up said nose in undeniable embarrassment.

"M'sssorry," Crowley hissed. "S'prob'ly not exactly a turn on, ang-"

Crowley's sentence was cut off when Aziraphale lifted his forefinger and middle finger to Crowley's chin and eased them into Crowley's open mouth, pressing their pads into the flat of Crowley's tongue. Crowley whimpered onto Aziraphale's fingers, fangs framing his knuckles as they glinted sharp and translucent with spit in the low light.

"Please relax and let me take you, alright, darling? Can you do that for me?"

Crowley whimpered a second time in response, his drool quickly soaking the broad lengths of Aziraphale's fingers.

"Would it help if I spoke to you a little more? Told your body what it needs to hear?"

Without hesitation, Crowley nodded a little nod. With force gathered from his centre, where his stomach met his tail, Crowley tipped Aziraphale's torso closer to him, so Aziraphale hovered horizontally, centimetres above Crowley's upper body. Following this, Aziraphale released Crowley's shoulder from his grasp and took hold of Crowley's scale-covered hip. Slowly, he eased it downwards so Crowley was no longer jerking in desperate movements to meet Aziraphale's tip. Now, with Crowley's hips stilled, Aziraphale increased the speed with which he drilled into Crowley, without moving so quickly that he forsook the opportunity to really feel the demure majesty of Crowley's lightly rippling walls, the rapid pulsing of Crowley's dicks against his belly. He ran the pads of his fingers back and forth ever so slightly within Crowley's mouth all the while.

It was difficult to gather his thoughts, now his face hung so close to Crowley's that he was able to examine in fine detail the intricate beauty of the scales scattered across Crowley's cheekbones, while the grip of Crowley's tail on his torso tightened ever so slightly with its clinging embrace. Nevertheless, he considered which words might align with the desires of Crowley's snake self, which sentiments might calm the thrashing urgency of Crowley's body.

"I've got you," Aziraphale whispered. "I'm looking after you now." He paused. "I'll keep looking after you until I've provided you with what you need. A little part of me, darling, marrying a little part of you."

Of course, I want all of you, really, Aziraphale thought. And I was wrong. I know now, with how right this feels, that I was wrong. I don't think I can cope with going back to the shy hand brushes and apologetic smiles of the past six millennia, and it terrifies me that I cannot predict how we shall move forward.

Crowley's eyes shined, gleaming and fiery, before him, far brighter than he had ever witnessed them, while he felt Crowley's front teeth sink into the flesh of his knuckles. They remained this way, the cut of Crowley's teeth digging into Aziraphale's soaked skin, for a long moment, until Aziraphale gradually withdrew his fingers, leaving Crowley's mouth dry and gasping.

"You needn't be frightened on my behalf, Crowley." Aziraphale murmured, bending his neck downwards until the two were a millimetre away from being nose to nose. Almost touching - almost - as they had never touched before. "You're so perfect like this, so eager and wet and stretched out for me."

For me. Aziraphale knew none of this was truly for him , but he found himself saying it anyway, as if saying it would make it true.

Crowley's tail twitched, from root to tip, squeezing Aziraphale even tighter in the process. His forked tongue danced from one fang to the other and back again. Aziraphale's eyes were transfixed by his scales, which seemed to be growing glossier and shinier by the second.

"You are irresistible like this, dearest. I can't deny it." Through the tight grasp of Crowley's tail around him, Aziraphale used the force of his knees and thighs to tip his belly back and forth across the bulbs of Crowley's dicks between thrusts into Crowley's vent, sending little throbs of ecstasy through Crowley's core after mere seconds of heightened stimulation. Meanwhile, he skimmed the wriggling scales of Crowley's left side with his palm, over and over, soothing the temptation Crowley must have been feeling to buck his hips again.

Though their noses weren't quite touching, he could just feel the friction between the skin of his nose and the scales of Crowley's. This was too close, too far, too honest. He wasn't sure what he had hoped to achieve in bringing about this nearness between their faces; whatever it was would undoubtedly be far too romantic for Crowley's liking, as the words he had just found himself speaking inevitably were. Crowley, who had earnestly asked for his help, and nothing more; Crowley, who had squirmed and blushed at the prospect of being this vulnerable; Crowley, who would categorically not calm down or unwind until Aziraphale had pulsed inside him, white and hot and abundant. Crowley, who must have known that this moment of release was approaching, from the way Aziraphale was suddenly struggling to maintain a stable rhythm as he dragged his dick back and forth within Crowley's vent.

This was no time for romantic gestures, much as Aziraphale would like to think otherwise, and thus, he tilted his head backwards so he was no longer practically bumping noses with Crowley. The entirety of Crowley's face now in view again, rather than the snatches of it which Aziraphale had had to steal with brief glances from close up.

Crowley was crying. This explained the elevated shining of his eyes that he had observed moments earlier, and shit , how could Aziraphale have been so lost in his own world that he had missed this? How could he have failed to notice, when he hovered so close to Crowley's face, that it was a cluster of glassy tears rolling down Crowley's cheeks which had wetted the scales of his cheekbones and granted them that increasingly shining quality?

"Am I hurting you?" Aziraphale enquired desperately, heart thrumming so hard that Crowley must have been able to feel it on the part of his tail which enveloped his chest.

Shaking his head, Crowley's mouth closed and then opened slightly as if he had something to say but couldn't quite manage to express it. Fucking hell , how speechless Aziraphale felt now, when seconds ago he had been gushing over the beauty of the man before him, the thrill of the experience he was currently undergoing. He didn't know what to do, and the only thing he could think to do in order to provide some comfort was actually the one thing he knew he mustn't; kiss Crowley.

It felt like hours went by, with his dick feeling as if it was about to burst with ecstasy and his heart feeling as if it were about to collapse in on itself; his mind could produce nothing else, and so he acted on his one prevailing thought. He ducked his head towards Crowley's, slowly enough that Crowley had the opportunity to react if this gesture was unwanted, and pressed a gentle yet fervent peck to Crowley's fang-adorned lips. Crowley's dicks quivered beneath Aziraphale and his walls clamped even tighter around Aziraphale's dick and fuck , Aziraphale was fucking close, and had he made Crowley come just by kissing him ?

At least Crowley wasn't doing it alone. Now, Aziraphale's hips had halted at the hilt of Crowley's centre and he was spilling without reserve into Crowley's vent, warm and slick, the wicked obscenity of his moans drowned out by a second kiss, spurred on when Crowley's forked tongue flicked out to beckon Aziraphale's lips to return to his. This kiss was sloppy and open-mouthed and greedy, loud with groans and whines, slippery with the smacking of lips, lazy in its slack-jawed rhythm. The grip Crowley's tail maintained on Aziraphale's torso slackened ever so slightly, and Aziraphale immediately mourned the shielding clench of it.

He didn't have to mourn for long, however, because the loosening of Crowley's tail around Aziraphale's middle occurred at the very same second that Aziraphale pulled away, just as Crowley's back arched again, and suddenly, Aziraphale was surrounded by flashes of matte black skin, breezy flapping sounds wafting into his ears as his peripheral vision became entirely occupied by a pair of large wings. Crowley's wings, certainly, but not the sheeny black feathered wings he had come to understand that Crowley possessed; rather, in this moment, his wings bore the appearance of ones comprised entirely of dark, coarse skin stretched over jutting bones. They brought to mind the wings of a bat, or, if one were to think more fancifully, the wings of a dragon.

Before Aziraphale's dick had ceased to pulse his spend into Crowley, a wet sucking sound emerged from Crowley's vent as Aziraphale felt the veil give way to a deeper hollow within Crowley's core. He was now clamped in so tightly that he was unable to move. He had known this would happen - locking, it was called - and he hadn't minded the prospect. One part of him had thrilled at the opportunity to be in such close physical proximity with Crowley for so long, hoping to foster a newfound intimacy in the process, and the other had simply realised it would allow them to have the evening they had initially planned to end their day with - an evening which granted them the chance to converse, to catch up, without interruption or interference.

Silence, for a bit, while Crowley's wings shrouded the two of them protectively and Aziraphale caught his breath. As he had reached his climax, Aziraphale had collapsed atop Crowley with Crowley's tail still wrapped around him. His head now lay just beside Crowley's, turned on its side to face Crowley's left ear; the two of them seemed quite comfortable like this. Beneath his languid exterior, however, Aziraphale reeled with the knowledge he had said too much, shown too much, in the last few moments, and there was no escaping it now. They would be here for hours, most likely, and they would therefore have to address the reality of what had just happened before too long.

"You didn't have to do that to make me feel better, angel," Crowley grumbled eventually.

"Do what?"

"Kiss me."

And yet, you kissed me back , Aziraphale wanted to say.

"M'fine," Crowley continued. "I know this wasn't part of the deal."

"No," Aziraphale agreed hurriedly. "No, no, it wasn't, but I wanted to, and-"

"You mean the venom wanted to."

Aziraphale blinked. "I'm sorry?"

"I know you did all this 'cause you had to, Aziraphale. You brought the kindness, the venom brought the passion. S'what it does."

"No, Crowley, I mean- it did make things rather more... urgent at first, but the venom wore off some time ago."

Crowley's brow furrowed. "Begpardon?"

Aziraphale paused, for a long moment. He reckoned there was no point in denying the truth anymore, now he had admitted that the venom no longer affected him. Then: "I've wanted this since Eden."

"Even when I spent vast quantities of time there slithering around on my belly swallowing frogs and lizards?"

"Yes, even then."

Crowley's pupils danced every which way as they examined Aziraphale's face. Frantically, Aziraphale searched for an interpretable emotion in his eyes, but he found no clarity among the shadowless darkness and gold dust which swam before him. Regardless, Aziraphale was certain that he had blown it all; either Crowley didn't want this sort of contact to continue, or he did, but this was not the way he had wanted to broach the subject.

"This is good," Crowley finally said. "I won't have to miracle little bits of fluff onto your waistcoat at dinner anymore." His hands were still fastened to Aziraphale's forearms, and he loosened his grip in order to run his palms back and forth over Aziraphale's wrists.

Aziraphale raised an eyebrow.

"You need to learn to take a hint, angel."

"Take a- why didn't you just tell me?!"

"I could ask you the same."

Aziraphale exhaled a breathy, relieved laugh. Meanwhile, Crowley snorted through his nose.

An easy silence befell them, the length of which Aziraphale couldn't be certain. After a time, Crowley spoke again, Aziraphale watching his face from the side as Crowley stared up at the ceiling. "I was scared, earlier. When I started turning. Usually, I have a better handle on it." His hands shifted from Aziraphale's forearms to his back, where he traced patterns into Aziraphale's skin with his claws. "Snake plants trigger some kind of transformation, but I only get like this when I'm really overwhelmed with lust. It's happened before when you've been... on my mind. When I've, er..."

"Touched yourself? Thinking of me?" Aziraphale fought incredibly hard to no avail to keep all sign of smugness from his voice.

Crowley dug one of his claws into Aziraphale's back. "You don't get teasing rights just yet, idiot."

Aziraphale feigned injury with an exaggerated "Ow!" and a sharp inward breath through his teeth.

"Anyway, yeah. I can usually get it under control pretty quickly, unless I'm alone and I'm really worked up... but there were a couple of times when I thought I might turn with you around. D'you remember Job?"

"Of course. Good man."

"That's the one. In his basement, when I encouraged you to eat that ox-rib, I was surprised you couldn't tell. I had scales breaking out on the back of my neck, and my eyes were..."

Aziraphale swept his hand back and forth over Crowley's scaled side, as he had done earlier, but this time far more languorously. "I suppose I was rather distracted in that moment."

"Mmm."

"I spent some time travelling Asia, a few thousand years ago. Just the classic temptations - getting farmers to steal livestock, sowing the seeds of rivalry between villages..." Crowley trailed off. "I missed you. A lot. Thought about you. And once or twice I may have got caught, erm, letting myself go out in the rice fields at night. Before I knew it, rumours started building that there was some sort of mythological creature called a naga flying about. Half human, half snake, with all the bells and whistles. Venom, wings, you name it." He snorted. "I found it funny, really. At first, I did jussst find myself growing fangs and scales when I got really worked up. But then, once the humans started exaggerating the rumours, I started to manifest more dramatic qualities when I turned."

Aziraphale hummed to demonstrate he was listening.

"Thought you'd never have to see me like this. I know it sounds ironic, but I thought if you did, you'd know how... human my feelings for you really were. If y'know what I mean."

Aziraphale swallowed to mitigate the sensation of the lump which had suddenly appeared in his throat.

"The pheromones from the plant definitely got this all going, but I wouldn't've turned like this if you hadn't been there. Don't think my body could handle the strength of my feelings. Tried to fight it off at first, but... you know the rest."

"I'm sorry, Crowley. This is all my fault. I know this isn't what you wanted, even if..." Even if you wanted me. Aziraphale was positively giddy at the knowledge of Crowley's reciprocated desire, and the image of Crowley rolling about in a dewy field beneath the light of the moon to come on his own fingers was not one that would leave him anytime soon. Still, he was riddled with guilt at the fact that he had caused Crowley so much trouble, even though it had been by accident. "I only thought you would like the plant," he explained. "That it might brighten your day." What he failed to mention was that he had applied the plant's scent to himself intentionally, and it had not rubbed off on his skin by accident.

Despite the fact that he hadn't told the whole truth, Crowley seemed to understand it. "Mmm, I know. And I did like it. It was a very thoughtful present."

Aziraphale's face lit up at the simple pleasure this confession brought him, while Crowley's wings flapped a couple of times in the air, blowing a light breeze into the little nest he had created to help cool them both down.

"Smelled really good," Crowley admitted, turning his head to face Aziraphale as he spoke. "But I like your scent better."