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"...ijits in the garden center car park who don't have the first idea -- no, scratch that, don't have the first, second, orthird idea how far their bloody snow blower is hanging out the boot --"
Crowley's pushing the door of the flat closed as he's talking, unwinding the scarf around his neck, bending down to untie the laces of his winter boots. The fact that Aziraphale isn't actually there to hear him doesn't register until he starts to pull off his coat and glances around the first floor of their flat only to see there's no angel to be found. The embers of an evening fire carefully banked in the hearth, and the soft glow from the light above the kitchen sink, are the only signs that either of them has been home since teatime.
"Aziraphale?" Crowley asks again, just to be sure, because he knows Aziraphale is here: it's after nine o'clock on a Tuesday evening, there's no book thingy currently on, and Aziraphale hasn't been with Crowley in Tadfield so, ergo, Aziraphale must be here.
Crowley hangs up his coat on the peg and takes a taste of the air. Nope, Aziraphale's definitely here. Just not tucked into his accustomed corner of the sofa, by the fire, where Crowley had anticipated seeing him upon arriving home. Had been looking forward, in fact, to finding Aziraphale there. With one of those soft fleece blankets over his knees and a book in his hands, a rapidly cooling cup of tea at his elbow. If Aziraphale had been sitting there, Crowley could have occupied the two remaining sofa cushions and tucked his toes underneath Aziraphale's warm thigh -- or dropped his feet in Aziraphale's lap -- or even pillowed his head on Aziraphale's thigh and listened to the sounds of Aziraphale reading to the end of a page and then turning over the leaf to begin another. It had been a tiresome day, and the peace of at home with Aziraphale would have been a welcome coda.
Feeling put out by the lack of Aziraphale waiting up for him, Crowley glares once more at the empty sofa, then slouches into the kitchen. The taste of Aziraphale is a bit stronger here. At least to Crowley, who has spent actual millennia refining his ability to follow the taste of Aziraphale anywhere. Laying out the tea things for their breakfast had likely been Aziraphale's last stop before retiring. Crowley brushes a finger down the polished silver of a spoon, flicks out his tongue to identify the tea -- a whiskey black -- that Aziraphale chose for the morning, then sweeps a glance over the rest of the tidy counter.
He's been in Tadfield since Sunday, working with Newt to make the cottage habitable for the holidays. Warlock's term ends in less than a fortnight and there's no pleasure to be had huddled by the Aga because the kitchen's the only room in the house warm enough for human children and snakes. They had an open invitation to stay with Newt and Anathema, of course, but the gravitational pull of Aziraphale and Warlock's combined hope that they celebrate Christmas at their own new home is a force Crowley is helpless to resist. He's found himself doing horrifying things like contemplating the best window for a Christmas tree and looking up recipes for eggnog on his mobile.
There's a plate sitting by the drainboard, with a slice of spice cake on it. A glass and the bottle of Glenlivet stands suggestively next to the plate. A note -- rich indigo ink on thick cream paper -- in Aziraphale's neat, spidery hand reads: Welcome home, my dear. Eat and drink. Then come to bed. I'm keeping it warm for you. Unsigned, but it had been millennia since Crowley needed a name spelled out.
Crowley breaks off a piece of the cake as he's pouring the whiskey, then washes the one down with the other. The whiskey is a bracing heat that, perversely, makes him shiver with renewed consciousness of the seeping, damp cold of early winter. He tips a second dram into the glass and knocks it back with another bit of cake, licking the heavy maple cream glaze from his thumb and smiling to himself at the vision that bubbles up -- Aziraphale enjoying his own slice earlier that night by the fire.
The warmth of the whiskey in his belly makes him aware of how heavy his limbs feel, how endless the drive back from Tadfield in the afternoon darkness had seemed. He's driven it dozens of times since That Night and still finds it difficult. Especially without Aziraphale -- healthy, whole, reading quietly in the passenger seat, hand warm on Crowley's thigh -- along for the drive. Alone, the way is full of the unfriendly ghosts of might-have-been futures. Even standing in their kitchen, the taste of Aziraphale at the back of his tongue, Crowley feels the need for reassurance. He leaves the rest of the cake uneaten and slips quietly up the stairs.
Their bedroom is dark, only illuminated by the light filtering in from the London streets, when Crowley pauses in the doorway. Their bedroom. He remembers this building when every join in the beams, every brick, was new. It had been the fifth London home of AZ. Fell, Booksellers, built just in time to display Miss Austen's first book in the front window. He had stopped in after Aziraphale's first day of business and they'd shared a bottle of whiskey between them in front of the fireplace in Aziraphale's new sitting room. It was be the late nineteenth century before Crowley even set foot on this floor. He wonders how long this bedroom has been a bedroom. He can't properly remember the first night he spent in this bed, after the nightmare of almost losing Aziraphale -- not to mention absolutely everything else -- and then getting him back again. He just remembers the waking, the relief of Aziraphale's taste all around him, the dragging exhaustion pulling him back into unrestful sleep, the waking -- then sleeping -- then waking again.
He flicks out his tongue in memory. Aziraphale had been everywhere, as if Adam had reversed -- with a child's literal practicality -- the unbearable pastpresentfuture in which Aziraphale was nowhere. Aziraphale had slept beside him, had risen to rattle around the kitchen below making tea, had returned to the bedroom -- his bedroom, already becoming their bedroom, though neither of them spoke of it, not yet -- with tea, and a book, to read from cover to cover, then doze off for a spell before starting awake and beginning again. All the while wordlessly reassuring Crowley he was here, and would continue to be here.
Aziraphale has told him since how, on that first night, Crowley wouldn't let him go. How Aziraphale had climbed the stairs to his flat, then up to the bedroom, and crawled, bone weary, beneath the duvet with several stone of traumatized demon wrapped around him in snake form. He'd just miracled off his shoes. And they'd slept.
Crowley moves across the room now, quietly shedding his jumper, the shirt underneath, the vest beneath that. Aziraphale is an indistinct form beneath the duvet, on his back with his face turned toward the window. The glow of the street lamp on the tumble of pale curls at his forehead. There's his hand, as well, flung up and open in sleep against the dark burgundy of their pillowcases. Crowley pops the button on his jeans, pulls down the zip and shucks both jeans and pants in a single downward motion. He toes off his socks as he steps out of the rest. He should be cold, he is cold, and beginning to shiver with it, but Aziraphale's heat beckons, and Crowley wants nothing between himself and Aziraphale's warmth.
He's sliding into snake before he can stop himself, and wouldn't anyway because its been days since he's taken this form and Aziraphale's warmth is right there, waiting for him. The old wood floor is smooth and cold beneath his scales, but it's the work of moments to slide across the wide floorboards and up the bedpost.
The duvet is soft and his body sinks into it as he moves up the bed. Aziraphale is deep in sleep, murmuring softly as the disturbance but not truly waking. His human form seems to need sleep more regularly, now, in a way Aziraphale had ignored or resisted before; Crowley has wondered if Adam's reweaving of the universe had rendered them more human. Or perhaps Aziraphale had always needed sleep, but rarely indulged. Like he had once rarely indulged in touching Crowley.
Crowley reaches the top edge of the bedclothes and pauses for a moment to press his head against Aziraphale's cheek. Aziraphale makes a happy sound, shifting toward the touch, his hand on the pillow twitching as if he's reaching for Crowley in his dreams. Crowley lets out a hssssssssssss of breath and tickles Aziraphale's cheek with his tongue before gathering himself and moving under the duvet.
Beneath the bedclothes, Crowley's world narrows to heat and Aziraphale. Aziraphale has made good on his promise to warm the bed and Crowley ripples between the soft flannel of sheets and the worn blue striped pyjamas that are the only barrier between him and Aziraphale's ink-and-paper taste with just that hint of elderberries that suggests he's been dreaming of Crowley.
Crowley burrows in along Aziraphale's flank but even that doesn't feel like enough. So he pushes up over Aziraphale's hip to the warm valley between belly and knees where Crowley can coil heavy against his groin. In human form, Crowley might sling a leg over Aziraphale's thighs and slip his hand into Aziraphale's pyjama bottoms just to hold him. Feel the tickle of Aziraphale's curls against his fingertips and the velvet soft skin there, like no other part of Aziraphale's body. When Aziraphale is awake he responds to Crowley's fingers curled, just there, with a sigh that relaxes his whole body into the touch: thighs falling open just enough for Crowley to mold his palm, in belonging, where only he has ever been welcomed to touch.
Even in sleep, Aziraphale's body responds to the weight of Crowley there. He shifts and settles into the mattress as Crowley arranges his coils. Once the bulk of him is arranged, Crowley pushes his head forward until his nose nudges at the collar of Aziraphale's pyjama shirt. He drops his head and closes his eyes, then, knowing that he's as home as he will ever be.
Aziraphale knows Crowley is there even before he wakes fully. His mind swims toward consciousness already aware that his body is warm and at ease, weighed down with the familiar comfort of Crowley in his serpentine form.
He must have fallen asleep waiting for Crowley's return from Tadfield. It had been a long day in the shop; Sky was buried in her end-of-term revisions and the holidays were starting to bring in more customers than Aziraphale is used to handling on his own. He'd meant to sit up with his book, even once he'd moved to bed, but his eyes refused to stay open. It's become more difficult, since the end that wasn't, to go too long without mortal needs like food and rest. Even when he hasn't been using his grace. Aziraphale has wondered if, in the remaking of the world, he and Crowley were remade as well just a little bit more ... Earthy than they had been before.
In any event, he'd fallen asleep. And heavily enough to miss Crowley's return. It's now deep night, even the never-silent streets of Soho almost quiet below them, and dawn still far enough beyond the horizon that Aziraphale can't yet sense its approach. He inhales, feeling Crowley's coils shift as Aziraphale’s diaphragm rises and falls. He's been dreaming, he thinks, catching at scattering wisps, of Crowley in The Garden. Although the garden had been in Tadfield. And Newt had been trying to plant ... Aziraphale frowns. Grape vines? It's been centuries since Aziraphale has owned a vineyard. It must have been that evening's fine Pinot Noir talking.
He flexes his left hand against the air, then sweeps the right between the sheets until the side of his thumb runs up against the smooth, scaled mass of Crowley's side. He breathes out a sigh, fitting his hand to the curve of Crowley's body where he spills over Aziraphale's midsection. Ah, there you are, he thinks. Right where you ought to be.
Aziraphale has always felt that Crowley's curves invite caresses. It took him so long, too long, to realize this specific invitation was meant for him alone. That, possibly (probably, definitively, eternally) Aziraphale is the only one who has been welcomed, in quite that way, to delight in Crowley's forms. That Crowley's methods of temptation -- for the world at large -- were heavy on the power of suggestion and misdirection. That he rarely depended on direct contact of any kind, and sensual contact perhaps rarest of all. And that Aziraphale's touch was the only touch he ever courted in earnest. That he’s ever courted at all.
Aziraphale runs his thumb along the curve on Crowley's endless spine and feels the muscles of Crowley's body respond to him even in sleep. He's conscious, now, of where on his own body Crowley has settled, a proprietary weight at the valley between Aziraphale's hips and thighs, the thin flannel of Aziraphale's pyjama bottoms all that separates Crowley's body from Aziraphale's skin.
It's here, in the gentle darkness, with the snake-weight of Crowley pinning Aziraphale to the bed, that a memory surfaces: the first time Crowley ever allowed himself to sleep upon Aziraphale. He had been a snake then, too; it would be centuries more before Crowley would sink into Aziraphale's arms to sleep in human form ("Give over half that blanket, angel," he'd say. Or, "If you think I'm taking the floor, angel, you're mistaken."). No, this had been back in those early years. Years when it hadn't yet been alarming not to see Crowley for months -- or longer. When Aziraphale had yet to admit to himself that every time one of his superiors said Crawly he had to close his lips over a snappish correction. When he had only just learned that Crowley's snake-speech might be a tongue meant just for him.
The first of many secrets, carving out a space in the universe meant only for the two of them. And God. Perhaps. Because God was -- Aziraphale believed then and still believes now -- everywhere. That space for two has expanded, since then; since Warlock, since Adam and Anathema, since ... since. The space that had once been the whispered words of a serpent, the barely-acknowledged laying on of Aziraphale's hands in Crowley's hair, has become so much more. And in the darkness Aziraphale feels it as a still-expanding universe of theirs.
He smoothes a thumb over the soft scales of Crowley's head. Crowley stirs but does not wake. Aziraphale remembers: The clay walls of a sleeping chamber, the rugs meant to keep a human body warm, the sound of herd animals shifting in their pens nearby. Aziraphale had been traveling for many months -- first with one family group, then another -- listening to stories. Humans had such fascinating tales to explain those things they did not fully understand -- or, as Aziraphale might phrase it now, those things they understood in a very different way from the explanations Aziraphale had been taught in Heaven. He found the human explanations fascinating.
Crowley had come to him, there, in that tiny mountain village -- finding reason to, this time, before Aziraphale had found a reason to find him -- and complained, extensively, in snake, about the climate, and the villagers, and the tastelessness of the local prey. About how resistant the locals seemed to be to Crowley's usual run of temptations. But he stayed. And stayed. And one night, just as the autumn air had begun to bring with it a hint of snow, Crowley had slithered into Aziraphale's room, onto Aziraphale's pallet, and pushed his way beneath the rugs to coil beside ... then against ... then, by degrees, as they both pretended that Aziraphale slept, upon the warmth that was Aziraphale's body heat boosted by an energetic angelic metabolism. Aziraphale had barely remembered to breathe.
He strokes down Crowley’s body now, in the dark of their present night, feeling the strength of him, the way Crowley pins him to the bed, keeps him here, anchored in this life they’ve won together. Crowley's tongue flicks out sleepily and he ripples forward until his head is pressed to the sleep-warm skin below Aziraphale’s ear and the curve of his jaw. Aziraphale hmmms softly, knowing Crowley can feel the rumble in his chest, and keeps on stroking in long, soothing sweeps of his palm. And somewhere between one stroke and the next, Aziraphale lets sleep roll back over him, knowing that Crowley will still be there when he wakes with the dawn.