Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Crowley didn’t call off the church heist so much as he failed to get back in touch with his would-be crew in a reasonable amount of time. After that night in the Bentley with a certain angel and a vacuum flask full of liquid horror, he’d needed time to himself. Mostly he used that to smoke, to hug one potted plant like a child’s security blanket, and to murmur a most distressing phrase that called into question every action he’d ever taken and the relative speed thereof.

He had replayed the short minutes of his encounter with Aziraphale until the scene could have been taken from any one of the films he’d obsessed about over the years.

Of two things was he deeply certain. The first was that, despite everything Heaven told the angel to feel about the opposition, Aziraphale cared about Crowley. Perhaps not in the same ways or nearly as deeply and undoubtedly not for as long. But there was some thing Aziraphale felt that felt like a hot coal of hope in Crowley’s throat. He’d venture so far as to say there was a type of love there, insofar as angels were made of the stuff. However, this had been different than Aziraphale’s love for all creatures and creations. This came tinged with a metallic taste in the air.

Which brought him to the second fact. Whatever he wished to call it, Aziraphale’s fondness for him did not and likely could not ever be enough for the angel to do anything about it. Crowley was a demon. A hereditary enemy. Or he was supposed to be. And Heaven would not look kindly on any angel who went around showing soft gushy feelings for someone evil. Someone like him.

There was a promise in Aziraphale’s words that spoke of a future together, but when could that ever exist? So long as there was Heaven and Hell, the angel would live in fear. Crowley wanted to be enough but, systems of oppression being what they were, that wasn’t really on him, was it?

Aziraphale had to set the speed. And he’d pulled on the handbrake.

Once he’d sufficiently stored every fluttering glance and sigh, each thickly swallowed word, Crowley had snapped out of it. All together and all at once. The thoughts didn’t truly leave him--they never could--so much as they crawled into the creaking backseat of his mind to snack on a tub of popcorn and give mocking commentary at inappropriate moments.

He stalked about his flat, shaking off the cobwebs from both his mind and his dark little nest. When he caught his rumpled reflection in the tall glass of the windows, he miracled up a trim on his overgrown copper hair. His dusty turtleneck and slacks became fashionably new with a flick of his wrists. A few spritzes from the left-out brass mister and the plants were taken care of as well.

“Right then. What else?”

Crowley sauntered into his office. Neat little stacks of paper sat patiently waiting on the desk for his hellish attention. The Lord of the Files would want their paperwork some time this decade.

And in front of the papers was, of course, the tartan thermos Crowley couldn’t put off ignoring.

Ignoring...

Crowley tilted his head with the thought. A quick sharp snap brought an otherworldly noise to his ears as reality warped to his desires.

On the wall behind the desk and throne was a picture that looked an awful lot like the Mona Lisa. In the early sixteenth century, he’d shared a friendship of sorts with the artist. He’d even signed the sketch, Al mio amico Antonio dal tuo amico Leo da V. In a lot of ways, it was the famous painting. Or just as good. Better, in both Crowley and Leo’s opinions in the end. More than four and a half centuries later, the sketch was one of a dozen or so mementos the demon kept around. Fractional reminders of his long life and lives. Statues, vases, paintings, even some of the furniture, items of value on their own but more so because of what they touched inside the demon.

Now, Crowley pulled back the painting on newly minted hinges, revealing a large square-cornered safe set into the gray concrete wall that equally had not existed moments before. Oh, the safe had existed--pulled from a nearby manufacturer's warehouse that would have a mysterious shortage on their list at the next count--but that was beside the point.

The point was that, with the latest safe on the market, the thermos and the holy water inside it would sit safely out of sight and out of mind. Crowley could get back to business which didn’t involve messy complicated feelings.

He spun the safe’s dial, confident that when he needed the combination in the future it would come to him, and returned to his desk. His mood had already lifted sevenfold.

As Crowley luxuriated across the red and gold throne at his desk, he breathed deeply. Work! Work would be good for him. Or bad for him. Whatever.

He thrummed his spidery fingers on the point of his chin. What to do. What to do.

“Just a bit of fun to get back in the swing of things, eh? Nothing fancy.”

When Crowley’s percussion-seeking turned to the gilted edge of the chair’s arms, he remembered acquiring the furnishing right out of a particularly garish British bishop’s collection. And that set his mind back to his most recent brilliant idea involving houses of worship.

Robbing a church would be very fiendish of him.

“Yesss,” he hissed, gold-slick eyes widening with newfound purpose. “I’m a demon, after all. Might as well do demony things.”

He dove into calculating the potential fall out of desecrating God’s temple. Could he justify it? Absolutely. Any demon in Hell would see the validity of stealing sacred texts or reliquaries. But did the idea hold that certain je ne sais quoi that would mark it as worth his time?

What Crowley wasn’t able to ask himself, what he really meant was… Would it stand out, anomalous, on his record? Would it reveal too much?

Stacked up against all of his other brilliant ideas over the years, robbing a single church might seem to the lords of Hell as beneath him. He had a reputation. He was an innovator. Which wasn’t hard when so few demons spent time outside of their comfortably awful lives Downstairs. Being a field agent allowed Crowley to see the patterns, the bigger pictures, where his fellow Fallen simply couldn’t. They dealt in tidal waves and floods bent on claiming one soul at a time, confronting people with their darkness head on to catch or fail as they would. Whereas the Serpent? He’d made temptation into an art-form a hundred lifetimes ago. He was a thousand drops dispersed across a thousand buckets, gently nudging whole swathes of humanity toward the clear and definitive choice of ill-will and selfishness over that of light and good.

The bit about slowly boiling frogs came to mind. Was that true or just a metaphor? Crowley wondered. He’d never boiled frogs to find out. Could be they got out when the getting was hot.

He shook his head to rid himself of the distraction.

“Rob a church,” he said the words aloud to scent them. He wouldn’t be doing it for the holy water. That much was sure.

He’d need to be overt about it. Flashy but not too much. Nothing small for a chuckle like turning all the crucifixes upside down. But, done right, a violation in such a holy place? Why that just might upset the balance of an entire flock. And people who didn’t feel safe? In a house of God? That could ripple right.

Which was to say: it might not look like he was robbing the place out of spite.

He arched upward until he could stand. A mischievous grin tugged at the corner of his mouth as he checked for the keys to the Bentley--still in his pocket--and hurried out to go case a church.

He’d need to stop by Carnaby Street later, see if he could find a few acquaintances up for the task.

And this time he’d make sure no one snitched him out to any angels.

Chapter Text

When the demon finally reached out to the trio of humans and asked to meet again, he discovered that they’d assumed he had been in jail. After all, by their standards, six months was a noticeable stretch to be out of touch. Crowley had also gone radio silent after paying the makeshift gang an exorbitant amount of money up front. It made a certain sense that the police might have come knocking. And in London Soho, people like them were locked up with alarming regularity, regardless of criminal element or not.

But Sally and Spike were pleased as punch to be back on the job. Much to Crowley’s great disappointment, they even showed up early to his meeting at a low-ceilinged basement pub on D'Arblay Street. He would have preferred to be the one waiting as it added the right touch of mystery, so as he felt.

He’d be earlier next time. Maybe.

When Spike asked why he’d moved their meeting spot, Crowley explained that The Dirty Donkey was compromised. And, though he didn’t mention this part, the sleek matte black decor of the Smoking Lily Club, broken by a shock of red walls in the toilets, comforted him on a primal level. Plus, the place showcased a roster of psychedelic rock musicians on the cutting edge. The desire and creativity rolling off them was good for whatever passed for a soul among demons, Crowley figured.

“For your loyalty and continued discretion,” Crowley said as he slid an extra fifty pounds across the table for the pair.

Spike’s breath hitched and his eyes darted away as he took his share. Crowley smirked. His accidental snitch confirmed. But no matter. He wouldn’t hold that against the man. Besides, he needed this done and fast.

He’d go at the pace he set for once, and not risk Aziraphale hearing about another heist, even if it was a distraction the demon was after and not more holy water.

“So, we’re back on?” Sally said, twirling a cherry stem between her teeth.

“Yes,” Crowley said. “Tonight.”

Spike sputtered, choking on the ale Crowley had bought him. “Tonight?”

“Yesss.”

“As in… tonight tonight?”

“Tonight tonight. Assuming… Assuming Mr. Shadwell joins us,” Crowley drawled, throwing his words a little louder for the young man lurking beyond anyone’s natural awareness just outside the private room.

Sally and Spike cast their eyes toward the door in a mix of expectation and uncertainty. The wooden bead curtain clinked as the blonde, blue eyed Scotsman finally entered.

“There he is,” Crowley said lightly. “Have a sit.”

Unlike the last time the young man had arrived late to their meeting, Crowley saw that the air of smooth assurance had went and got itself wrinkled. Pity. He’d find another locksman if it came to that. Probably Shadwell was there for the pay Crowley had promised for each of his time like the others.

And, equally unlike the prior meeting, the man made no move to correct Crowley when he’d called him mister instead of lance corporal. Which the demon had done on purpose to get a rise.

“Find the place all right?” he asked as the... what was he, a witch-hunter of a sort? Funny. Crowley had thought that nonsense went out of fashion centuries ago. It wasn’t lost on him that, draconian laws and homophobia being what they were in London, a man like Shadwell might find himself on the receiving end of a very different kind of witch-hunt, particularly as he sat comfortably associating with a gay man and a trans woman at a table tucked away in a private room in a very secret cellar pub. Say nothing of the actual Hellsent demon he might end up working for.

There was no way the young man was so obliviously heterosexual as not to notice the company Crowley was keeping. Unless that’s why he was reluctant to step inside, into this den of sin.

There had apparently been a bit of a to-do in the community while Crowley was sorting out his thoughts regarding the night of their last meeting. Someone in Parliament got it in their head to decriminalize certain homosexuals acts between men--so long as they were being private about it, and there were only two of them, and a host of other restrictions not placed on men and women. Which all sounded like a lot of room for abusing the letter of the new law coupled beside a heaping helping of over-fascination with who consenting adults were doing in their free time.

It was all deeply distasteful to a demon who’d not only lived through every era of human history with its galaxy of experiences but who also spent decades at a time presenting as a woman or other genders beyond the one that earned him a Mister before his name. Without a demonic miracle to save his skinny arse over the past several centuries in London, how many times would a routine temptation have been discorporation risk, all because his gender offended the so-called moral elite?

The whole idea of only ever being man-shaped or woman-shaped--whatever the heaven that actually meant!--felt tyrannical to a being that wasn’t technically any of those. He was a demon, with certainty. Hadn’t been an angel for a long, long time. When the mood struck him to get pedantic, he might claim fallen angel. But none of those had bugger all to do with gender or sex or the like.

Crowley took a deep breath and shut his eyes, absorbing the music thrumming through his skin. Beside him, Sally chatted up the waitress as the woman took a drink order from the new arrival. Spike ordered a second round, not finished yet with his first.

Overall, the tone in among the community in Soho was one of dancing on knives, daring the blades to cut. They were scared, but that was no reason to stop the dance. They would always exist, homosexual and bisexual people, trans people, and yes, people like Crowley. They’d stick to the shadows that welcomed them in from the dangers. They’d scatter when the judging light fell upon them.

The waitress flashed a second glance at Sally and smirked as she left to grab more cherries and the drinks.

Those holier-than-thou would attempt to smite what they didn’t understand. But there would be life. And love. There would be laughter even under humanity’s endless cruelty toward itself.

It was inescapable. Sacred.

Ineffable, Crowley thought bitterly.

He was getting maudlin. That wasn’t what he wanted. This was supposed to be fun. He was having fun. Not thinking about nearly six millennia of watching the kids grow and play and learn and being so star-struck by them. He had to get back into character.

With deliberately slow movements, Crowley counted out the bills for the third of his moral misfits. The young man’s hand went up as he did so.

“Mm-yes?”

“Six months and not hide nor hair of ye,” Shadwell said, blue eyes attempting to pierce beyond the veil of Crowley’s round dark glasses. “And now here ye are. Askin’ to rob a church still. On short notice. How do we know you’re not on to set us up?”

These were troubled times. But weren’t all times?

The demon stopped the smirk that threatened at a corner of his lips and kept a mask of neutrality, back in character. “Mr. Shadwell, if I--”

“Lance Corporal,” the younger man interrupted quickly.

Ah, yes, everything back in order. “Lance Corporal,” Crowley permitted. “I am not in the habit of betrayals. If you’re uncomfortable, the door is always an option.”

Beneath the table, Spike’s foot shuffled at talk of betrayal, tucking beneath the man’s chair. Crowley almost felt bad for the needling.

Back to business.

Crowley turned his head pointedly to make sure that Shadwell knew he was waiting for a response. Which he got, as the locksman leaned back in his seat, settling into his well-worn Stockman coat for the duration.

The demon appraised the others. Sally leaned forward, eyes bright under make-up as flawless as her sleek updo. Spike, with his wide shoulders tight beneath his tweed jacket, still retained a glint of excitement in his amber eyes.

Humans. Lovely, wonderful humans. Crowley had missed this. Their lives were matchsparks in the night, not even bright enough to reach the stars, and yet how they burned. So alive! Moving lightspeed and breath-stuck, potential awfulness at every corner.

I mean I am lit’rally asking them to trust me with their lives, and they’re bloody doing it!

It was all very demonic of him. Perhaps not the artistry he normally fell into. And none of them were squeaky clean souls destined for Upstairs. But he’d needed this. With them. Wash away the drought on his tongue.

Once the waitress had delivered the drinks and another bowl of cocktail cherries, Crowley took out a folded map and spread it across the table, not waiting for anyone to clear their glasses and bottles. They anticipated his need quick enough.

One long finger jabbed at a street corner in northeast Soho. “Meet here at midnight,” Crowley intoned.

Sally asked, “Anything you want us to bring, boss?”

Boss. Ha. Crowley liked the sound of that.

“Have a change of clothes. Black. And gloves. Beyond your normal gear, I’ll have all you’ll need.” And if he didn’t, he’d conjure it from the boot of the Bentley without hesitation.

Each of the little gang took careful note of the location. By design, it was near several churches. Until the time came, mum was the word on the precise location. It wasn’t that Crowley expected Spike or the others to run off to tell Aziraphale in particular, but the angel had had an accursed amount of luck the last time. No use risking it.

Crowley rolled up the map and stood to leave. “Midnight. No earlier. No later,” he said, each word clipped and final. “Enjoy your drinks.”

The beaded curtain clinked behind him as he left the small room, sauntering down the slim hallway toward the dance floor near the stage, which was little more than a few wooden pallets in a corner. The dream-like quality of the music snaked around Crowley’s thighs and hips and up to crush his chest, where the electric guitars jammed alongside the drumbeat skip of his heart.

If he could, Crowley would have enjoyed nothing more than to slip into one of the booths or take a seat at the bar proper, indulge in sloth idling away the evening clapping for the rockers, bask in the pulse of livingbetween the men and woman that made up the club’s clientele. Another night. He still had a few last minute preparations to make.

He was at the top of the narrow flight of stairs, coming up from the cellar, when Shadwell caught hold of him. Quite literally.

Crowley stared down in disbelief at the hand wrapped around his wrist that held him back from leaving out the back of the shop the Smoking Lily lived under. He curled his lips in a sneer, stifling a most unnatural hiss from forming.

The audacity.

Shadwell very quickly released him, a flash of fear crossing his features that Crowley found pleasantly appropriate given his actions.

The demon tugged down the cuff of his jacket. “Midnight, Lance Corporal,” he said in a chastising tone.

“So’s you said. I was…” Shadwell sucked in a breath, the full weight of Crowley’s displeasure seeming to have taken a moment to hit him. Haltingly, he ventured, “Have ye sorted the score?”

Crowley’s thick eyebrows raised high beneath the fringe of his hair. “Does it matter?”

Shadwell didn’t say anything, just waited, patient. Perhaps still stunned by whatever impulse had led him to think he could touch Crowley without his permission.

When it was clear the young man wasn’t going to budge though, Crowley heaved a sigh.

Fine.

“There’s a rare bible on the premise. I don’t know which it is, so…” Crowley peered down at the locksman as he said grandly, “We’re taking all of them.”

“Stealing bibles, Mr. Crowley?”

“Will that be a problem?”

Crowley truly didn’t mind questions. Normally, he encouraged them. Had been doing so from the very start of it all, if anything. Knowledge was good. Or bad. He never had figured that part out. Regardless, knowledge was power, so they said.

It was the right questions that mattered. He wasn’t sure that the lance corporal was indeed asking such. Other questions seemed to linger behind his teeth. Those questions were the ones Crowley would answer, if the young man ever got the courage to take a bite, see what the questions tasted like.

They stared for a long moment. Or rather, Shadwell stared at dark lenses like a man confronted with a language he couldn’t read and then found he had in fact never been able to read any language in the first place: confident to try, conflicted over whether he was making any progress.

Crowley took the opportunity to study the human’s face. It was a quick study. Dusty blonde hair coiffed with care, a few days scruff about his sharp chin and surprisingly rosy cheeks, worry lines already forming at the corners of furtive blue eyes. Searching for… something. Some permission.

Ultimately Shadwell found what he was looking for--or decided he didn’t need it--and slipped a hand-rolled cigarette from behind his ear. He lit it and took a drag.

“Verra good then,” Shadwell said, not sounding like he believed himself. “Midnight, boss.”

“Not a minute earlier,” Crowley repeated, barely avoiding a grumble as he took his leave at last.

Chapter Text

There were times, if he wasn’t paying attention and a moment hit just so, that Crowley could ignore he was a demon. They happened more often than he liked to admit, the longer he was away from Hell. It was a flicker of a thing. A skipbeat heart stop. A breath shuddered. Lashes down, lashes up. But those times did exist and he wasn’t sure if he should treasure them or curse them.

Crouched atop the roof of a church he was robbing, Crowley had one of those weightless moments, free-falling in a pleasant way like drifting asleep. The roof, for starters, didn’t burn with consecration. There, he was someone else and yet wholly himself. Someone human, named like him: Anthony J. Crowley. He was taking a drag from a cigarette, the burn pleasant, the nicotine calming. Just a simple man doing a bad thing.

Hello, fellow humans, his brain said, nice weather for a robbery, eh? Mild night for December. Bet we could count the stars from here.

Nearby, the very human Spike carefully lowered the equally human Sally down on a thick twist of rope that Crowley had provided to the man’s exacting specifications. Beside Crowley, the last of his human companions busied himself on lookout. Shadwell’s original role in the caper quite swiftly finished once he’d picked the lock on the side gate and then jimmied open the slim window Sally was presently suspended beneath with a large sack in hand.

She would reach a walkway above the aisles that circled the second floor. From there she’d head down to the altar and the nave and the sanctuary—Crowley wasn’t sure what the actual names of the places were, having only been inside a church the once and without a diagram—and then to the offices. She had clear instructions to gather anything with B-I-B-L-E on the cover.

If any of the crew thought Crowley was strange for wanting to steal all the bibles, they kept their mouths well and truly shut. He’d said there was a rare book that his contact wanted and that was that.

Twice in the space of a breath, the demon Crowley realized he’d inadvertently thought about the angel he was trying not to think about.

And just like that, he remembered what he was.

Being Fallen wasn’t the sort of thing any demon could truly forget, of course. The weight of damnation and the empty lack of Grace always came back full force. The brunt of it.

Wings useless meat at their back, cracked against the howling winds of The Fall, feathers ripped and singed, burning and burnt. Hellfire, harrowing in its first glimpse, worse than any nightmare humans could concoct. Sulfurous oceans hungrily licked every inch of their body as the undertow dragged them out, scraping their marrow on the craggy bottom. The scent of their abandoned screams, the taste of their flesh as it blistered. They abandoned their traitorous shape in an impossible search for one that might not burn.

Crowley’s tears had turned to salt-sand in unblinking eyes, the green stolen from them without the light. The stems of them stretched pale and long, etiolated, searching for the sun. There were no hands left to reach for what they could not have, what they needed for desperate survival in that endless space of glacial fire. There were no more fingers—to claw off the rot on their viperous mouth, the wails stuck firm in their throat like a fishbone, like blood gone to clot.

He chokes on the memory every time. Maybe one day it would dislodge and he could vomit whatever got stuffed inside him, perdition’s foie gras.

Fat chance that.

Crowley shook away the half-smoked cigarette. The smoke of it blew phantoms of craterous dust beneath the memories of the chipped fingernails that came before the snakeskin. He went very still, struggling not to swallow down the bile of ancient history.

What could he touch? What could he see? What was real? Focus. Focus.

The noise of the rope as it slid through Spike’s hands grated against his own skin. The smell of decaying food and piss-mopped corners rose up from the city even there by a holy building, flaring against Crowley’s nostrils.

Ridiculous, the demon thought, calming with each connection made to the squalor of life around him. What brief shining lives those humans had. Marvelous. Offensive.

Even if they signed in Downstairs at the end of it all, none of the humans would know torment like the Fallen had. Not in a million lifetimes. And that was the only true blessing left, far as he could figure.

“Ye good, boss?”

Achingly slow, so words didn’t rush to escape his squeezed throat, Crowley turned to the locksman. Look at him, he has no idea. Lucky kid.

The demon made a noise. Then tried again. “Thinking,” he managed. He even sounded steady with his liar’s tongue, wonder of wonders.

Shadwell nodded and returned to the binoculars, a pair older than he was. His attention flickered back to Crowley at intervals.

The demon pointedly watched Spike, dressed in all black like the rest of them. The man’s muscles rippled beneath the fabric, strength earned from hard work at the wharves. His brow beaded with sweat until the luxurious cloud of black curls at his crown sparkled with it.

Like stars in the night sky, the demon thought, heart full of yearning.

When Crowley’s moment of horror had finally and fully washed away on the autumn breeze, all the sights and smells and sounds and tastes and thoughts pushed back down to normal—well, normal for a supernatural being—he asked, “What’d you do?”

Spike hadn’t heard him. Crowley hadn’t meant for him to, anyway. He was busy doing his part.

“Beg pardon?” Shadwell asked. He kept his eyes trained on the streets below, watching the few cars for signs of trouble.

Crowley rolled his head to one side, peering just barely over the top of his round glasses, not that the man could see.

“You were in with Narker.” He watched as the young man swiftly licked along his bottom lip in agitation. Then the demon added, “Last I’d heard, he’d done a stretch down in Ford. Mm, they catch you drumming?”

The corner of Shadwell’s lip twitched up. “Eh,” he said, eloquent.

When the man lowered the binoculars, Crowley pushed his glasses back up the curve of his nose. Shadwell wasn’t turning to look at him though but rather at Spike, who leaned into the slim window to whisper down to Sally. She was making her way from the landing, free of the rope and off on her mission. Swift as a cat.

Whatever the Lance Corporal was waiting for, he turned away after a moment, narrowing his steely attention on the demon he mistook for a man. Shadwell’s gaze flickered up Crowley’s legs to his bony knees, avoiding his face, and enunciated plainly, “Gross indecency.”

Crowley arched a thick, dark eyebrow, leaving it open for the young man to continue as he liked or to drop it.

All Shadwell added was, “Cops’ll fash a’body for a smile noo. Dee ye ken?”

Crowley frowned. The locksman’s accent made a bloody mystery of his words at times. But Shadwell took his look to mean understanding and silence crowded between them once more, the young man returning to his look-out and the demon pondering him. Pieces falling into place.

So. He hadn’t managed to find the one straight man in Soho’s underground clubs.

Like found like, after all.

Spike handed around a flask as they waited for Sally. Crowley offered the men cigarettes. Shadwell kept his eyes pointedly on the empty streets.

“How much,” Spike asked as he waited for the woman below to return, “do think this fancy bible goes for?”

Crowley gave an elegant shrug. “Not my department.”

“Right. Guess it wouldn’t be.”

“Meaning?”

“Well, I mean… I shouldn’t have asked. You don’t look like the book type.”

Crowley twisted his lips, not unhappily. “Didn’t realize that was a thing.”

The demon was about to ask what a book-type looked like exactly, when there came a sound from inside the church. “Caw-caw!”

Spike angled his head into the window then turned back to Crowley, who had stood to approach. “She’s got the loot. Bringing ‘er up.”

It was almost over and only then, with the gal looping herself into the holds of the rope and the bag slung over her shoulder, did Crowley feel the edge of excitement winding itself around his stomach. Cautiously, he leaned further into the window, wondering if he’d feel the burn.

God’s house did not reject him just for looking.

As Spike hauled Sally upward, Crowley stepped back but kept his gaze out across the pews and aisle below.

Shouldn’ta done that, he thought, reeling away from the edge of a memory more than a score old. He could feel his soles begin to ache in his snakeskin shoes, just an echo and nothing new.

As he turned, Crowley caught Shadwell watching him, hazy. The demon straightened up, careful not to favor either foot. Had to maintain the cool, the aloof, the boss. Not a witch. What do witchfinders even do these days?

“Right.” Crowley headed back for the ladder they’d used to get up there in the first place, striding with purpose and authority to cover for his momentary lapse in judgment—looking into a church, really! “Let’s get those bags in the car, shall we?”

Shadwell jumped to assist, taking the satchels from Sally’s shoulders as she came into view. “Here you go, lassie.”

Crowley didn’t wait for the trio, instead descending with a quickening pace. He caught the excitement again and used it to shove away silly old things like doubt and daring rescues.

Behind him as he rushed to the Bentley, he heard the bags drop to the ground. The sounds of one, then two, then three sets of feet clamoring down the ladder. He winced: success had chased away the human’s ability to be subtle.

He started up the car with a snap, left the lights off, climbed into the driver’s side, and pulled her closer to the church’s side gate.

That’s when Crowley saw the copper on the beat down the road, strolling and unhurried. They weren’t made yet.

“Fun,” the demon hissed. He leaned across the front seats and threw open the passenger door. His crew was struggling with the various accouterments of crime, as it were. “Leave the ladder! Get in!”

Sally snapped her attention down the road and saw what Crowley had. “Oh, bugger. Boys, let’s go!” She heaved her bag of books up higher into her arms and rushed for the open door. 

Spike dropped his end of the ladder, kept the second bag of bibles under his free arm, and chased after her. “The boot! Someone get the boot!”

A snap of Crowley’s fingers and it was done.

Shadwell let the ladder clatter to the ground and followed Spike.

Crowley grumbled as the cop finally took notice. “Let’s go, people!”

He might have been grumbling but the serpentine grin across his face told another story, especially once the officer started to run toward them.

Shadwell slammed the boot shut as Spike squeezed himself into the backseat with Sally, red-brown leather creaking against his size. The locksman had barely pulled the door shut behind himself, tucking his legs up quickly, when Crowley shifted the Bentley into gear.

He threw a toothy grin at a terrified Shadwell in his passenger seat. “Everybody, hold tight!”

His foot hit the pedal and he laughed, speeding by the flustered policeman as fast as those wheels would take them. Because if there was one thing Anthony J. Crowley knew, it was how to drive like a demon.

Chapter Text

After paying out the final hundred pounds each to his crew, the drinks back at the Smoking Lily were on Crowley. As much as they liked, he assured them when the first round arrived.

“I’ll settle the tab with the barmaid later,” he said, voice low. “Drink up. You’ve earned it.”

As Crowley turned to exit the small private room, Sally called out in her cockney accent, “You’re not joinin’ us then?”

The demon paused and considered, arching thick brows beneath long emberflecked fringe. All three of them were looking at him with that same expectant expression as he swayed, deciding.

Crowley didn’t quite know what he wanted to ask but why was the main question that threatened to loose itself from his tightened jaw. The job was over. Wasn’t that where this ended? He’d gotten the chance to pull off his heist, robbing a church in Soho. And any lingering fear that it was merely a spiteful thing had faded.

Crowley hadn’t lied: there was in fact a rare bible in their haul... somewhere. And he did have a contact who wanted it. He’d merely left out the part where no one was going to pay him for it, and his antiquarian didn’t yet know that they wanted it. None of which held any concern for the humans.

So, why?

Spike raised his glass. His smile danced on the edge of laugh. “Come on, boss. It was a hell of a time!”

“Aye. Yer a stoating getaway driver,” said Shadwell, who was somehow the most subdued of the three of them. “Have a bevvy with us afair ye do another disappearing act?”

Despite the casual lean he affected in the booth, the Scotman’s hooded gaze was all-consuming. He tilted his glass toward Spike’s, not taking that burning blue out of Crowley’s darkened vision. The men clinked their drinks together. Wheaty beer sloshed over the edges. They chuckled like amiable old friends.

It occurred to Crowley that, for all he knew, they might actually have been acquainted before. The lot of them had to all know Julian, Crowley’s middle man on these sorts of deals. Thinking back to their first meeting on a late June evening, neither Sally nor Spike had appeared particularly suspicious when Shadwell showed in Narker’s place. The locksman’s talk of witches and warlocks had barely registered as scandalous to the doubting pair.

Yeah, all right, fine, the demon thought. Let’s see how this plays out.

Still deep down suspecting ulterior motives, Crowley grabbed the edge of the chair he’d relinquished. “I’ll need to get the haul back to my safehouse,” Crowley lied, “but I can spare time for one drink.”

Sally sucked in a breath, suddenly grinning wide. “What’ll you have? I’ll tell Hattie.”

Crowley quirked a brow at her eagerness. With a quick miracle, there was a pack of cigarettes inside his jacket pocket when he reached for it. “Nn… Whatever’s drinkable. A bottle of that.”

She laughed as she stood, smoothing out the honeycomb patterned mini dress she’d changed into once they’d arrived back at the underground pub. “Sure, boss. Best they got. On it.”

Before Crowley could light his cigarette, two things happened: first, Shadwell slid a Zippo over to him, unprompted, blue eyes sparking in the dim. Second, as she passed him, Sally pat one gymnast’s strong slender hand against Crowley’s shoulder. He held his breath against the touch, willing away the instinct to recoil and chastise.

They were all getting a little too familiar. A bit at ease.

And so what if they are? the demon thought and reached for the offered lighter. That’s the point, isn’t it? Blend in. Inspire mischief. Can’t do that moping about your flat, now can you?

“So,” Spike said as he leaned across the table, “that car, huh?”

“Mmyes.”

“Real beaut. Nicked it, did you?”

Crowley took a moment to light his cigarette, flicking the old metal Zippo closed sharply before returning it to the blonde opposite him. He took a long drag. He’d always relished the burn, the taste that lingered on his tongue, ash where and when he chose.

He shook his head at last, exhaling smoke, and answered, “Had her since new.”

Spike scoffed. “The hell you say!” He elbowed Shadwell beside him, causing the man to choke on a mouthful of his drink. “Had it since new, he says?”

Shadwell blinked away tears, catching his breath as he coughed. He grinned at Spike and cast a quick, questioning glance at the red-haired demon. “Is ‘at guid? I’m nae a motor man.”

This was uproarious to Spike for some reason.

Crowley said, “Care to let us in on the joke?”

“I should ask you!” Spike wiped at his sparkling dark eyes. “How old’s that Bentley? You in nappies when you bought it?”

Ohh.

Crowley made a show of twisting his features and waving off Spike’s amusement with his burning cigarette. “Yeah, yeah. Funny man, you. No, of course, I didn’t buy her. She was…” Wait, how old do they think I am? “M-my grandmother’s. Got her right off the line. Hell on wheels, the old bird was. Loved that car.”

“Your gram?” Shadwell said, “She left it tae ye, did she?”

“Uh, you know, to my father.” A smirk played at the edge of Crowley’s lips. He’d helped build the damn cosmos; he could keep a family tree in order for an evening. “He passed young. In the Blitz. Bomb. Dropped right on him.”

Spike winced, a moment of embarrassment considering itself on his face. “Oo. Sorry, mate. My sis says she ‘members the bombs. Bad times.”

“Terrible business,” Crowley agreed. “Was in a church actually, yeah, when it happened. St. Dunstan-in-the-East, down the Square Mile.”

It didn’t take much for Crowley to conjure the images from that early May evening more than a quarter of a century hence. That night, the bomb-sick London streets had shuddered with smoke and brick dust even before the Luftwaffe rumbled toward their last major attack of the war.

In the cathedral and in her ruins, the demon had cataloged every huff and sigh, each bit of outrage and dawning understanding, the crunch of stone beneath boot and the creak of leather, the parted lips and fingers brushed. A strange sad night made beautiful beneath flames and air raid sirens.

Memorizing his history had always been important for Crowley. With such a long life, if he blinked too hard the less detailed memories became like dreams, evaporating on sunbeams. So he didn’t blink very often, and made a museum of the most important memories in his flat.

He could have sung sonnets to those three mortals of the night St. Dunstan-in-the-East fell. Crushed by a demon’s desire to save an angel from a triptych of German spies. But he restrained himself, tucking the poetry into the lining of his pockets.

Shadwell raised one devilishly pointed brow and said, “Yer fowk hae a peculiar connection with churches, it seems.”

“Aw, well, was there to help his friend.” The demon dropped his voice lower to add, “Nazis had targeted the poor fellow.”

The men recoiled and winced. But Crowley had them entranced, caught in the sparse narrative peppered with more truth than lies.

He waved aside the jackboot phantoms of their childhoods like he was telling a bedtime story. “Lucky, uh, he was with MI5, working the double-cross on them.”

He had been.

“Heard about his friend, got there right on time.”

He hadn’t. He had in fact been early. Early enough that Crowley had seen Aziraphale in a new jacket and hat just ducking into the archway of a side door, a leather strap in his hand bound around a tidy stack of items. The demon recognized the parcel even at a distance. They were books of prophecy, the angel’s oldest and favorite collection. And he was just… just bringing them into the church! To agents of the Führer, who were going to murder him over them! All in some misguided attempt at Doing Good.

It had shattered Crowley’s heart, truth be told. Eighty years had stretched taut between them. Eighty years of never talking, never seeing each other. It wouldn’t have been so strange in the early days. Not such a long time, he knew. And he’d been asleep--avoiding--for three-quarters of it. But he hadn’t been wounded by past partings, unsure of his place in Aziraphale’s life or if the glass would crack beneath him to shift closer again.

With almost a century lost, he had begun to panic and spiral. The guilt. Oh, Crowley was very good at guilting himself. Held many a gold medal in the act. He’d berated himself over how he could have stopped the whole sodding clandestine meeting thing before it ever began... if he’d only gone and apologized after his, erm, nap. But he hadn’t reached out, no no, he’d let the fear of Aziraphale rejecting him a second time seep into the pages of himself, smearing the ink until he couldn’t trust the shape of the letters. It had taken some of his contacts joking about a fool with a bookshop who was getting himself murdered that night for Crowley to realize: oh no, they’re talking about my fool!

In the shadows of the bell tower, Crowley could have called out, but he’d choked. Aziraphale’s name had gone dry in his throat from disuse. So he’d paced the street, dreading to hear a gunshot before he could overcome his doubting heart. Without the risk of discorporation, he didn’t want to know how long he’d have kept circling at a painfully safe distance.

When the demon had finally screwed up his courage and made it up the steps, he’d hesitated again. A different more primal fear then. A jittery minute was spent testing how far he could go before he felt the consecrated ground rushing at him; testing how best to stand the burning as it rejected him, screamed at him, the demon Crowley, the spitting hellthing in his sharp suit daring to defile such a sacred space.

In the end, Crowley would walk down a hundred more church aisles if Aziraphale needed him. His feet would hate him for it, but they already begrudged their existence so... not much would change there.

Spike said, “His friend get out?”

“Still around, actually. Real nice chap.” Crowley willed lightness into his voice to cover his fondness. “Of course, the bomb got the Nazis. National security remained safe and I got Mary. Was a real miracle: debris didn’t even think about touching her. Not so much as a scratch.”

Spike let out a tight breath. “Your dad was brave.”

Crowley nodded because it was the right response.

“Aye, I’ll drink tae that.”

As the men clinked their glasses in another toast and Crowley took a drag of his cigarette, Sally slipped back into the room. Two drinks came with her, one in a martini glass and the other in a long-stemmed champagne saucer. Neither was the bottle of beer Crowley had expected. The young woman set down the three-olive martini by her seat and her first untouched drink before turning to Crowley with a yellow-orange cocktail. Sugar dotted the rim like stardust. A curling lemon peel dipped a comet on the glass edge.

Martini’s probably stirred anyway, thought the demon.

Spike said, “Must’ve been hard when he died.”

“It was a long time ago,” Crowley said gently. He took the offered champagne glass from Sally and murmured to her, “Went all out, eh?”

She sat down and crossed her well-muscled legs over each other. “Easy when I’m not footin’ the bill.”

Crowley could appreciate that. He took one more long breath of smoke, hoping to mask the worst flavors that lingered in him. Drinks were less offensive than food, always, but it never hurt to prepare for the worst. That was, in a lot of ways, Crowley’s modus operandi. Hence the whole business of wanting to rob a church in the first place. The first time.

As he tested his drink, a soft moan crept unbidden into the back of the demon’s throat. Ohh, he thought against velvety brandy ribbons swirling in time to sweet orange and tart lemon, hadn’t needed the cigarette after all.

Crowley savored a little extra sugar from the rim. The crystals were a March meltwater on his tongue, chasing away the dust of Eden. He’d need to order more drinks like it in the future.

He raised the glass to Sally. “Classy.”

She beamed and happily plucked out one of her martini’s olives by its wooden cocktail stick, ready to set about the arduous task of getting soaked.

“They’re turning it into a public gardens actually,” Crowley said to Spike after another blissfully sweet sip. “St. Dunstan-in-the-East.” And if he’d used a few choice miracles and a little palm greasing to get the site looked at, who was to say?

“Oh, yeah?”

Sally glanced at the men. “What we talking ‘bout?”

Over the top of his drink, Shadwell said, “Mister Crowley’s father.”

“A casualty in the Blitz, I’m afraid.”

“So,” Spike said, bringing the conversation back, “how fast the old Bentley go?”

A memory blazed to mind of rip roaring all over the city in the passenger seats of Bentleys and Bugattis. Crowley had indulged through countless bluelight mornings, basking in the hedonism--the cut-glass mosaics of the Gargoyle, dancing alongside princes and dukes, drinking with a Wilde niece and all the other bright-dark minds of the time--the Rome the demon could stomach more often than not.

The Bentley, Crowley’s Bentley, beautiful Mary, came after all that. She had never treasure hunted across the countryside with the decadent youth: she was the treasure. A souvenir for the memories of too many lights gone out.

“I, uh, my grandmother used to drive her at one-thirty but could get to forty. With a good enough hill to start.”

Sally gave an appreciative whistle. “How fast were you goin’ tonight, you think?”

You go too fast for me...

“Fast enough,” Crowley said, cutting off the cinema reel flickering to life behind his eyes.

Maybe there’d been a bit of curtness in his tone. Something rough-hewed and real. Crowley saw, in a quickdart glance of sympathy, that Shadwell was the one to apprehend it. And that look, that soft pity from too sharp blue, did in the demon in ways that he wanted nothing to do with. Get that warmth from your eyes. I’m no fire burning bright. I’m the cold dirt-heavy earth.

Crowley set down his drink and straightened in his chair. He schooled his voice into proper disaffected menace. “That’s enough about me for now, yeah?”

An extra bit of influence seeped into his words as, with a flick of his forefinger, he dragged up power. In case any curiosity lingered.

The sad part was this: safely tucked behind the assumption that he was regaling them about long-dead relatives, Crowley found he would have gladly talked about his exploits with his crew on that night. But he was too close to the uncut gem of truth talking about himself in the modern day. That way laid thoughts Crowley distinctly did not want looming over him in that club, with its drink and music flowing.

He’d need to get back to proper demoning when the sun scoured away his illusions, but until then…

Crowley took another sip of his perfectly sweet drink and sat back just to listen. Listen to the lovely mortals with their complicated lives. Those mortals whom he had no intention of corrupting, not any further at least.

But when had his intentions ever counted for anything?

Chapter Text

The conversation was light, comparatively speaking to what Crowley might otherwise have talked about over wine in a bookshop. But the three, it turned out, did know each other. And while their histories were not as extensive as his own, the demon took pleasure in hearing them catch up. Sally talked about dress shopping in Soho—something Crowley quickly picked up on hadn’t been as easy for her a few years before when she’d been assumed as a man-shaped human. Spike talked about his family and, with a little prodding from Sally, his on-again off-again something with Julian.

Shadwell held a hand to stop him. “Julian? Owns a shop down Carnaby?”

Spike grinned and drank while Sally filled in for him. “Jules always did go for the big buff types, didn’t he?”

“Aye, that he did. Noo that ye mention him,” Shadwell said, “Julian’s the one what recruited me back in the summer.”

Sally and Spike both cast a wide-eyed look at Crowley. His middle man found out, there was no point in back-tracking. He would, however, need to request that the tailor stop sending his would-be boyfriends out on heists.

The demon said, “Didn’t steer anyone wrong, did he? No?”

A flush crept up Spike’s ears as he stumbled over his answer.

“Least now I know why they got back togeffer,” Sally said. She nudged her foot far under the table at her friend’s shin. Spike looked every bit the cat caught with the canary but refused to meet her teasing eye.

The trio traded stories of Julian—legendary parties in abandoned warehouses, LSD shipments intercepted, failed underground art magazines. When Crowley made to leave after he finished his cocktail, Sally waved down Hattie for another. A second drink turned into a third and fourth. And while the demon could handle a fair bit more than humans, he let himself feel the intoxicant. It was a practice he’d been in since the common era, keeping up appearances. Half-pretending he hadn’t crawled from the pits, hiding his nature behind black onyx and glass.

Plus, when it came to acting like the humans, he liked how often a little drink could be healing, relaxing. That divine madness. He tried to avoid the worst of it—even with Aziraphale, his most consistent, beloved drinking buddy, it was more to take the edge off and not to get absolutely blasted. A few particularly unpleasant times being arseholed had taught him not to get too far gone lest he want to shout down a god that wasn’t listening.

On the order of not listening, Crowley didn’t know what the humans were laughing at, too soaked in baselines and brandy. But through their snorting and giggling, shimmering blue eyes flickered candle-bright and glassy, snagging on the demon and holding him as well as any ritual. Shadwell’s lips turned up at the corners, like he knew a secret and didn’t Crowley want him to tell it, and what would he like to do to make him talk?

He’d played this game before. Crowley was a demon, after all. A natural at picking up strong emotions. Hostility, despair, terror, sure. But with the Arrangement, he’d found excuses to hone his sense for joy, hope. Love.

Lust was easy to spot in all its different shades. Some humans were given to it several times an hour. Crowley never understood it by technical terms, but he’d been a deft hand at exploiting it when necessary. Mixed like paints on a palette, they all turned to browns, some more beautiful than others. Was it playfulness and a tinge of curiosity? Or bitter loneliness? That particularly nasty grief and boredom?

Such emotions aimed at others only ever needed the tiniest bit of encouragement, and they’d pay out in rippling success. Easy to send memos back to Accounting on those.

It was when the humans turned their curious eyes on him—her, them—that Crowley felt like an interloper. Divinity touched the mortals through their connections, and who was he to reach for that? All he ever did was muck about. Fascinating, warm, fleeting humans, they had no place keening after hellfire hair and sulfur-sick eyes. Touching the knife’s edge of original sin and promising him tenderness for a taste, for a night, for whispers of love. They didn’t want him . None of them had never wanted him. They all wanted the idea of him. And anyway it got painted, Crowley was most certainly a bad idea.

But, if I’m being honest, Crowley thought as he turned his ear toward the open door, and the song coming in hard and zinging, I’ve been running on bad ideas all night now, haven’t I?

His devilish grin spread like wildfire across the table as he prepared for a little sleight-of-hand. “Let’s take this party outside, shall we?”

It was hardly a temptation to get them to dance. People liked to dance, for the most part. Even the ones who hated it, Crowley had found, could still enjoy a bit of swaying to music when the mood struck them. It was puritanical views of what would and wouldn’t be dignified—usually matching up to how much parents thought any particular move looked like they were watching their kids simulating certain adult activities—that caused hesitation. Or otherwise some strange sense of embarrassment that, thankfully, Crowley had never had installed.

He couldn’t see what was so hard about just flailing about a bit. Plenty of people—and demons—who weren’t exactly good at dancing still acted like no one was watching. Because they weren’t. No one cared. No one was judging. And if they were, they could sod off. In Crowley’s opinion, dancing wasn’t about being good at it. Some dancing sure, but not at underground clubs damn near closing time with the band showing no sign of stopping and management not about to tell them otherwise. No, dancing was about being alive. About reveling in whatever body one had been blessed- damned- saddled with.

Crowley set his tumbler at a round booth and tucked his black paisley jacket across the back edge. He sank into the equally black leather seats, delighting in the fresh creaking sound. An old instinct brushed against his skin, and he wanted to shed it, become a snake, and slip down between the cushions, let the bass lull him into hedonistic dreams. He mused that he might never turn human-shaped again if he let the serpent writhe.

His crew melted into the crowd, swaying and laughing. Beautiful. Wonderful. So alive. Look at them go.

He didn’t want this to end. Not for his people. So if the owner had been considering calling it a night, they changed their mind very suddenly. They would still lock up at two, yes, but to keep them all safe behind those barred doors. The drink would flow until all the epiphanies of Dionysus’ ecstatic children had died and risen, god-ridden and divine.

When there was no attempt at a police raid, it would come as a welcomed mystery and dismissed without scrutiny.

“Come hae a dance, boss!”

Still basking in the glow of his misdeeds, Crowley shook his head. The apple-red edges of his hair brushed against his glasses and he called, “The music’s enough.”

But Shadwell strode to the booth. He leaned low and close, so he could be heard over the music. The smoke sweet scent of his clothes coiled around Crowley’s senses. “Yer nae gun to ruin your reputation if anybody sees ye having fun, eh?”

Crowley was about to give an excuse but stopped when the young man raised his eyebrows, silently punctuating his question. Challenging: dance with me.

Ohh. Still on about that, are we?

Crowley had thought the change of scenery, into a sea of debauchery over the intimacy of the backroom, would have pointed his locksman’s lascivity at a more appropriate and eager partner. He’d thought wrong. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t paid attention; he had. When he tallied up the catalog of glances that evening, he’d come up short is all.

The demon adjusted mentally for the persistence. Harmless bit of flirting. Not the sort of thing I can mess up. Bless it, do I even remember how?

When out on a job for Hell, Crowley didn’t enjoy it: the witty repartee and casual touches, the compliments and lingering looks, they came to him like a script. A tired play on its six thousandth night, the actor beat, the audience eating it up. Even if sometimes it felt like the whole bloody mess of it was only there for people to find ways to fuck up their lives: lust and love and sex and devotion.

He so rarely tried on the costume as plainclothes. It was hard to find that tantalizing combination that got him asking new questions of would-be lovers. He had to be sure; he couldn’t risk them. He was fragile of ego and damning of touch. They had to come to him freely, no temptations, no wiling. It had to be safe, safe as he could make entangling a demon. Negotiations, fine, but no deals and no promises for more than he was interested in.

With all that aside, most miserably to him, the mortals he’d entertained had all been close enough in the first place to whatever Crowley might call his type.

His canvas had always been streaked and whorled blond over blue.

Technically, he thought, I’ve already tempted him, haven’t I? Got him robbing a church. That’s business.

Yeah, but there’d been no word of anything further, he countered. You know, nothing more. After. Technically.

Could he dance with the young man on a personal technicality?

It’s a dance. In a crowd , he argued. This isn’t proclamations of eternal adoration. No land and cattle, and taking me home to mum. One dance?

And you want to.

So he relented. No, that’s not quite right: he changed his mind. He liked to dance, he reminded himself. And in a crowd, all the better. No one danced well in a crowd.

“Dancing.” Crowley agreed, “Yeah. Sure. Fine.”

Thrice, the promise he could make. The promise he could keep.

When the young man offered his hand, the demon raised a pointed eyebrow in refusal. He was perfectly capable of standing on his own.

Shadwell laughed, undeterred, waiting, unwilling to leave the table without him. But Crowley had made a promise; he would keep it.

He flowed from the booth, rolling his head, craning his neck to ease imaginary tension that a presumed-man of his apparent age might have buried there in the muscles. Then he dragged up a smile, a real one however thin, and gestured to the dance floor. Not that anyone could see the dance floor, crowded hip to hip and shoulder to shoulder as it were.

“After you,” Crowley said.

Like a satyr in the forest, Shadwell bounded back into the revel, satisfied that Crowley wasn’t going to plop right back into the booth. With a shake of his shoulders and a tap of his snakeskin shoes, Crowley wrapped the rhythm around his bones and sashayed after the pan-flutes.

He slid up beside Shadwell, smirking over his shoulder and following the young man’s lead. It wasn’t the style of the time to touch necessarily. Thankfully. It was no promenade partner dance. More free, a group dance. Touches happened, Crowley saw easily. Indeed, some partners took every opportunity to pull with frenzied hands and loop with fever-struck arms. Hips drawn close and eyes heavy lidded, lips against necks and jaws.

Crowley swallowed down the waves of love, slick and tender, and tried to groove along.

He saw Sally and Spike not far off in the crowd from where he’d begun to blend in. Within a few moments each had sidled up, commenting, pleased. Crowley forced down the self-conscious smile bubbling up his throat Gotta keep cool, aloof. Which frankly was harder than it had to be.

So he focused on his partner. Which might have been a worse idea.

On the dance floor, Shadwell closed his eyes from time to time, abandoning into the song. And when he did that, it was easier for Crowley to look at him, really look. The dark planes of his face, the scruffy beardstart. The lines of a hundred thousand smiles before that night. He was pretty in that rough sort of way.

Would he want me in a rough sort of way, too?

Crowley whirled away, nearly laughing at himself. But he had to admit: he was having fun. He could have stopped when the band ended one song and introduced another. He’d only promised dancing. He could have bowed out on the third and still been well within his word. But the band was baller. And it was just so damn good to let go. It had been too long since he’d really… rejoiced. He remembered how he used to find the largest bonfires to dance around, the loudest pubs to sing in. His too long hands had banged centuries of drums and plucked the sweetest strings.

He’d had so much less to lose back then.

So he stopped worrying for five seconds. His hips swayed against decades of spring-coiled anxiety, the daggers of Hell at his back, Heaven menacing in the distance. But no one was threatening him and all he held dear, no one had even laid eyes on his centuries, millennia, of wrongdoing. No, this was just humans. Just dancing with overheating bodies pressed near and no one in trouble, no one coming to take him away and ask him to explain himself.

There was no explaining the hot breath and saltsweat sting of the air. No one in the Nine Circles would have begrudged him that.

He danced in loose circles while the percussion thrummed a second heartbeat into his rib cage. His partner threw encouraging words and glances his way, open in his admiration. There was a wink in there, and Crowley laughed in earnest and drew closer.

Dancing. It felt so good.

When the lot of them were winded and thirsty, they collapsed back at the table, the crowd ringing in their ears. Crowley draped his longstock self in the booth, taking up space like he did on the floor, allowing it, not being small and unseen. His arms lingered across the back of the booth.

He needed to remember to cut a rug more often in the future.

But that was for future Crowley, as at present he had another more pressing matter that required his full and immediate attention: like how Shadwell’s dusty blond hair was very, very close to the fingertips of his left hand. When the young man leaned back, hooting at one of Spike’s comments, those blond waves brushed against his knuckles like a shiver.

But soft...

Crowley’s breath hitched. His serpent’s heart leapt to stay dance-pumping, reading too deep, forming sonnets at the touch, his starved skin screaming.

He could have reached out deliberately. Ruffled the hair at the nape of the young man’s neck above his dance-dampened collar. Just a tease. For the fun. For the touch of another life, the warmth, the answer to a question he wouldn’t ask because he knew he didn’t deserve it.

Tell me I’m not the worst, please...

“Another round,” Crowley called, reigning in a frantic pitch. He lifted his hand from against Shadwell’s hair to catch the barmaid’s attention.

Don’t think about it. It was nothing.

The barmaid, Hattie was her name, dragged herself over to them. Her shift should have been over, but even if Crowley hadn’t been messing with the club she would have served them.

The way her eyes lingered on Sally told the tale.

“Another round,” Crowley said again, twirling his fingers to include the four of them. “And then I think your boss ought to let you call it a night.”

He assumed a few notes into existence from his back pocket and pressed them into the young woman’s hand. She actually managed to look relieved.

As the table sang along to the music, people migrated from around the club, drawn in like… like whatever draws in people. They had recognized Spike and come to say hello. He was very popular, Crowley was finding out. Several of them crammed into the booth alongside him. They lit and passed cigarettes and joints. Then a pair of gals sought out Sally, complimenting her honeycomb-patterned dress as they climbed over the back of the booth to steal sips of her drinks.

It had become their own little party.

Sirens! Crowley thought suddenly, answering his own question from earlier. No, wait... Yeah. Sirens. Oh! Because of the singing.

As he chuckled to himself, Shadwell turned with those shining blue eyes. The flinted edges of them sparked against Crowley’s crumbled walls.

Crowley sighed at himself. Why should he be such a problem, this one?

Around him, the air hummed, all shiny and shocking. The good bits of humanity in that underdark swept away by those in the light. Sally flirted openly with Hattie brought their drinks, while Spike swayed to the music, dreamily watching his friends, feasting on the camaraderie and the belovedness thrown at his feet.

Someone raised a drink. They toasted.

“To a job well done!”

“Here, here!”

The whole table cheered, even if only four of them knew why. Their glasses and bottles clinked together above the table. Everyone was drinking, and laughing, and talking. Dizzying in their bacchanal.

Beside him, Shadwell leaned over the small distance between the two of them—that bit of charged air the demon had been keenly aware of—as if to say something. Crowley turned to catch his words but the young man’s lips caught his instead.

“Nn-y-”

A stolen kiss, firm yet fleeting, it left Crowley's lips parted and scorched.

The young man turned away. Grinning, because he knew what he did, but diving back into the conversation to pretend like he didn’t. Like he didn’t know how he has kissed a hellthing and stubbornly trampled all over Crowley’s good intentions.

No one had noticed. Or at least no one commented, hooted and hollered, or gasped in shock. This was fine.

Was this fine?

Oh, Somebody forgive me. Crowley blinked once and excused himself from the booth to catch the earth and put it back on its axis. I know not what I do.

Chapter Text

Somehow, despite the booze and the music and the rush of blood swirling in his ears and persuading his legs to sink into the Earth, Crowley found the lavatory. The red walls were thick painted, wincebright; the black tile beer-coated, sticking to his soles. He cowered over the porcelain sink, ran the water cold as it would go. He shoved shaking hands beneath and tried to breathe.

“Pull it together,” he hissed at the man-shaped being in the mirror. “You’re having fun. Didn’t think you would, but look! Just a bit of fun. Good distraction. Good--”

Distraction. From Aziraphale.

Aziraphale. Sitting beside him in his car. The edges of them, shoulders to hips, unfairly close, close enough to touch. Yet a million miles away under the same electric lamps.

“Shit.”

A knock sounded on the door.

Crowley snarled, “Give us a minute, mate.”

The demon gripped the side of the sink. You had your fun. Time to go. Pay the bill, slip out, get Mary home in one piece. Try not to think about... things you don’t want to think about. Maybe another nap? Sure, nap. Easy. No worries. Big scary demon. Hiss-hiss.

You got this.

But as Crowley turned off the faucet and dried his hands, he remembered the angel’s hand grazing against his own. Twenty-three weeks ago, give or take a few days. It had happened when he took the gift he hadn’t asked for. That venerated skin feathered against him, firebranded the memory into his unworthy flesh.

What if that is the last time?

Crowley huffed at himself. Ooh. Yeah, you don’t got this.

The door to the lavatory nudged open and Crowley snapped, “I said give us a minute!”

The demon threw what he expected was a devastating glower at the patron daring to intrude on his self-pity, sharp fingers poised to snap, to slam shut the door and miracle up a fix on that lock.

The shimmering eyes peering back at him--blue, oh, they’re so blue against all this red--were increasingly familiar. “What if I fancy more’n a minute?”

Crowley stepped away from the sink as though bit. This was not, in his opinion, part of the cunning exit he’d psyched himself up into.

The Scotsman leaned an arm against the doorframe, taking in Crowley’s long lines under heavy lashes, approval laid bare. Intent, as well. A rakish smile settled on Shadwell’s lips. Lips Crowley had kissed. Or been kissed by. Whatever that was. And Hell, that was more than Crowley had dared with the angel in literal ages.

Fuck. Fuck, shit, shit. Fuck. Why was his stupid heart in his stupid throat?

The door shut gently behind the mortal as he entered the small room. Crowley was suddenly, achingly aware of the dimensions of the lav. How his calves knocked up against the lid of the toilet, that the intricate beveled glass window barely peeked out to ground level. That there was certainly not enough space for him to slip past the young man who had turned to the sink to wash his hands.

So a demon of Hell flattened himself against the farthest wall of the too small room, failed to meld into the paint with the other scrawled messages and rallying cries inked thereon, and took to affecting an air of patient detachment. All the while his pulse shuddered against his jaw.

He feigned sudden interest in the time, shuffling up the sleeve of his ribbed turtleneck to check his watch. Its seconds slid by, numbers bold and easy to read on the black moving bands, and he liked that normally but was especially fond in that second, and the next one, and the next. Because it meant he didn’t have to fight his brain to try to read slender metal hands and teensy Roman numerals while Shadwell grabbed paper towels from the washroom dispenser, bringing him closer again.

“So there’s a thing,” Shadwell said, catching Crowley’s notice both in how light he sounded and how frightfully close.

The demon lifted his head. The young man was there before him--yes very close indeed--and reaching up to touch his face, utterly bedazzled.

No, not the glasses!

Before Crowley could get out his protest, that wandering hand flicked aside a curly lock of hair just over his right ear. His little serpent branding, not his actual snake-eyes, had done the charming. Not that that knowledge could reverse how Crowley’s own hand had flown faster than his words, nor how his fingers clamped terrorstruck onto the young man’s wrist through his shirtsleeve, quieting that liquid courage curiosity.

The seconds on the demon’s watch slid by with audible clicks. Measuring them out, straightening the folds. Was this enough? More? Or less? Just say the word. You only get to cut once. Be certain.

Be certain.

Crowley relaxed his grip as he searched Shadwell’s face. Devoid of malice, exposed and upturned like a daffodil to the dawn.

And they were, technically, touching and Crowley didn’t hate it.

Don’t hate it? That’s not exactly a glowing endorsement.

No. No, what he’d meant was that no fulsome maw had opened beneath him and gnashed its poisoned teeth into his guts. He wasn’t queasy. Decidedly not ill. That left room for… well, for anything.

Eleven seconds had passed.

Shadwell turned his hazy gaze away from Crowley’s, observing the hand gentling on his poised wrist.

When the hunger rolled up and over the demon’s senses, he sucked in a breath through his teeth: he knew how it felt to starve, eaten away, no end in sight, the bottomless hole inside indebted to the promise of crumbs. A balance that never came due.

But this wasn’t tossing a bone to a stray mutt. This was a table spread in a forest, those pan-flutes playing again. But he couldn’t teach a man to fish. How could he? He didn’t like fish at the best of times, let alone going to trudge out into a stream to catch the filthy stuff.

All at once, his several trains of thought ground to a halt. A guarded hand fell to the knife of his hip and guided him closer, the distance between them vanishing as tailored black linen met earthy corduroy.

Their chests rose, crowded together, breath sharp beneath the still pulsing music outside.

Shadwell’s eyes flitted like a bird in a cage asking which way laid freedom. They ranged over Crowley’s lips, and tested for his eyes in the glassdark, then caught on fingers still cautioning and encircling a wrist. They perched at last where they’d started: those parted lips.

He’s worried he’s wrong. No more stolen kisses, then. The pace was Crowley’s to set.

And he hadn’t hated the kiss in the booth. Just caught a little off-guard was all, not intentionally tempting and all that. He’d only promised dancing. Yes, there was still time to turn everything around, openings wide enough to laugh it off, and chide how drunk the young man had gotten. Or maybe he’d draw up a few pointed glares at those hands near his hair and cradling his hip--confident, steady hands, there to catch him if he falls--and thread a darker promise between his words so the lance corporal ran off before he got into any more mischief.

But there Crowley went again, downplaying that he could possibly have an opinion on the matter.

Do you need a hand-written invitation? Maybe a ballad espousing the many ways in which he fully and completely consents to tearing each other’s trousers off?

Fact the first: there had been a kiss. Fact the second: Crowley wanted more of that. Did any other facts even matter? No?

So it was settled.

Crowley dropped the young man’s hand and rushed to claim his mouth. He gripped his face to slake the harvest-hungry palms. When workworn fingers tangled into the thick of his hellscorn hair, tucking in behind his ear and holding fast, Crowley resisted purring his delight.

He leaned into the touch even as he stayed focused on the shivering edge of teeth dragged across lips, the brush of hair, the firm press of a tongue. The woven taste of salt and wheat, of sugar-dipped citrus and smoke, like a net around him, dredging him from the depths.

How long has it been? Since the Twenties at least. Before the Bentley. Satan help him, it wasn’t like he craved the mortals on the regular but… But when the right-enough ones were there? When he wasn’t in a foul mood for decades? When they thought they could make the promises he wouldn’t? Oh, he’d realize how deep the cracks had dried in his riverbed skin.

Ravenous, Shadwell circled his arm at Crowley’s waist and gathered him closer.

Yesss.

The demon’s sharp-boned edges blunted against a smooth expanse of warm muscle, too many layers between them.

Hesitation and expectations were caution thrown but for his ancient touch-starved brain saying yes. Yes.

Yes, anything. Everything. Just don’t stop, not yet. Kiss me again, lick me hollow. Chew me up and bleed me dry. Mix me into your bone dust and soak me into your marrow, all I have to give is yours tonight, tonight, I did this to you, let me make it up to you.

The room was still too small. They rolled against the walls, stumbling against the waste bin and the sink and the exposed corner pipes, as eager hands fumbled with thick leather belts and needy hips dug together.

Crowley surfaced for air, managing a stray thought that was actually worth having. “Wait,” he said, holding tight to his purpose despite how the young man’s lips, since freed, skimmed his exposed jaw. An approving noise escaped his throat before he got back in control. “N-not here. Lock. The lock.”

Shadwell glanced at the broken sliding bolt. If he had any ideas, and his openly amorous look told Crowley he had a few, the demon didn’t give them time to surface. He shushed the mortal with a hand over his mouth--a mistake, a tongue instantly against his fingers, heated and slick--and grabbed him by the arm.

By the arm, yes, not the hand. They weren’t teenagers sneaking around at some sweet sixteen party. No. They were grown ups sneaking around an underground haunt, thanks much.

The wailing music tripped their feet, but it couldn’t catch them as they wove down the hall to the private room, still not in use. By yet another miracle. Crowley shut the door and threw the lock, shaking to his veins. He brushed off the sense of the other clubgoers like snowflakes on his roughshod shoulders. His heart stuttered for the dozenth time that night.

He could do this. He wanted to do this.

When the demon Crowley turned to the young man, all pink flushed and coil-tensed, desire struck him breathless. Alone, alone, at last. With their iron heated cores inching inexorably closer, that magnetism summoned across their skin with every touch, they could be apart no more. There was no need to hold, to wait. No rules were being broken. No hearts either.

They toppled together.

Chapter Text

Every slip of the tongue and hard press of fingers sent shocks through the demon’s skin. He breath caught. The music of the club pounded behind them.

Crowley crushed his mouth against Shadwell’s, leaning down several inches between them while the young man arched up into him. He settled devoted palms across that sharp-jawed face, thankful, honored.

Shadwell slid his hands under the demon’s skinny ass to pull him close, getting a leg hooked around his hip for it. He ran reverent hands along the cool tailored fabric of fashionably slim trousers, kneading the shaking thighs beneath. A shift of his footing, a determination of purpose, and he’d scooped under those thighs, hefting Crowley up and backing him against the locked door, mouth latching onto the exposed pulse of a throat, licking beneath the edge of his wool turtle-neck.

Crowley sputtered. Words, what were words? Who needed them? He wound his limbs tight, needing to be closer, to burn in the fire they fed together.

“Booth,” he managed to squeak and the young man nodded.

Tilting Crowley up in his arms, it was clear that Shadwell wasn’t exceptionally strong--not like some people who the demon knew--but he wasn’t a weak man by any stretch of the imagination. Delightfully muscled enough to take them both a few confident steps toward the booth. He plopped Crowley down there beside the table, nudging it out of their way. Half-empty bottles and glasses clinked and wobbled, metal scraped across tile.

Crowley laid back on his elbows, hawk-eyed behind his silver-edged shades. He didn’t want to misread things. He didn't want to miss any indication that he’d made a mistake, that this man had figured out he was an eldritch horror, starfallen, and regretted every kind word between them.

Then Shadwell paused and stared, wanting to speak, those steady hands unsure as they sat hooked into Crowley’s belt loops.

“W-what?”

“Is just… Uh, glecks oan or aff?” Shadwell tapped the side of his own face, indicating Crowley’s glasses.

And this was it. This was the moment that had ended dozens of other would-have-been-completely-adequate encounters over the past nineteen centuries. Each failed attempt left Crowley ever more grateful that he’d first put on the spectacles than anything else ever did, that strangely accurate litmus test of a person.

Crowley licked his lips, ready to slink out of the booth at the first scent of complaint. “On,” he said, no room for argument.

Shadwell nodded.

That was it. The end of the young man’s questioning and hesitation. Crowley nearly collapsed, soothed to his very soul, whatever was left of it.

The young Scot climbed up the booth. His mouth roamed across Crowley’s body through his clothes, charting the course. The demon surrendered, easing back, the leather creaking beneath their bodies. Teeth nipped at the line of his jaw, stiff beard bristles brushed against his skin. He writhed, sinuous, arching into the attention.

Crowley moaned. He ran a hand over the checked shirt, tugging it and the ribbed vest beneath upward, hunting for soft skin, that dance-hot lust-warmed skin, the swell and dip of the young man’s lower back, his sturdy spine.

Shadwell scooted up further, leaning on an elbow, threading fingers into the length of Crowley’s firebrand hair. He kissed him again, at last, tongues inconsolable together. Ah there it was, the missing piece, that something more tingling across the demon’s infernal senses: an ache to match his own, a loneliness rebuked. Staved off for one December night.

This is all right, isn’t it? We both need this. I’m not here tempting. One night. Just the one, it’s all I’m good for. It’s all I need. And then I’ll slither away and never bother-

“What dae ye like? What makes ye feel good?”

The questions twisted the demon’s thoughts away from the shores of wreckage.

“You,” Crowley crooned, beholden. The young man’s bashful laugh sparked straight to his core, so he tried a better answer. “I need your hands on me. Now.”

Blues eyes, drunken hazed, sparkled. Shadwell unknotted his already loose neckerchief and tossed it onto the table.

“Aye. That I can manage.” Those deftly maneuvering hands made short work of the trousers buttons and zip, and through a shuffle of fabric, he brought the length of Crowley’s hardening cock into the light.

Crowley drew in a slow breath. His eyes fluttered shut with the first drawn-out stroke of the young man’s hand.

“Hnn-mm.” He leaned into the fingers running through his hair. It was too intimate, too kind. Fuck, he couldn’t handle that. He whimpered. “That feels… Ohh.”

“Good?”

Crowley faltered around several words, settling instead on a high keening moan.

“Aren’t ye a bonnie thing. So vocal.”

Crowley hummed his approval.

The young man beamed. “Mm, aye, jist like that. I want t’hear ye.”

Oh shit… His cock jumped at the suggestion. If he were standing, he’d have been weak at the knees. Another being wanted to make him feel good. No, not just good, way more than that. Wanted him to let go, give in to the pleasure of his own body.

He could have purred.

But then, enjoying himself was what had been asked for, wasn’t it?

“Aaah,” Crowley cried out, unwinding. He canted his hips upward, fucking into the fist pumping steady and unyielding around him. He clenched his ass, legs quivering as he groaned louder, panting into Shadwell’s ear. “Harder. Unnh! Oh… Yesss. Ohhh, yes.”

“Och, ye look incredible like this. Do ye even know? Ye must.”

The words shouldn’t have warmed Crowley as much as they did. But you’re gentle, and you’re too terribly young. And even though the world’s dragged its nails through your veins, you’re still hopeful about clawing it back.

It was then that Crowley made the mistake of leaning back and catching a glimpse of the shining face above him.

Please, please, no, stop looking at me like that. Like I’m beautiful, like I’ve entranced you. He threw his arms around Shadwell’s neck, pulling him close so he didn’t have to see the scattered wide wonder. Don’t be the rest of them. Just let me… Let me enjoy the feel of you.

The feel of his hungry mouth devouring Crowley’s. His clever hand wresting shocks of delight with each luxurious, lingering tug and stroke. A leg thrown over the demon, possessively dragging him into the hard press of the young man’s cock straining against his narrow thigh. As Shadwell’s caution ebbed, grinding to the rhythm set by his hand, Crowley wriggled appreciatively. 

So close now.

Crowley’s breath stalled and stuttered in his throat. He pulled away from their kiss, head thrown back, chasing the sensations overwhelming him. “Hmmm. Oh, f-fucking hell.”

“There ye are,” Shadwell sighed. He rolled his thumb along the swollen, sensitive head, perfectly what Crowley needed, stroking deep and low. “Yer almost... Almost there.”

It was a worshipful sound, the man’s voice thrumming over the blood in Crowley’s ears.

“I-” Crowley cut off whatever denial squirmed in his chest. I demand, I request, I beg. “Kiss me.”

Shadwell was too happy and heady to comply. His tongue crowded the demon’s mouth, filling the spaces Crowley’s shaky breath could not, swallowing the reedy moans from his throat. Crowley bucked into his fist and stalled there, chest heavy with air he could not let go, he could not.

I will shatter against you if I let this go.

But I have to.

Crowley dragged his lips away from the kiss, crying out, blissburned. False stars shot at his temples as he spilled between the two of them. Ah! The mess he’d made of himself. Sinful thing. Hellthing. Burning bright and burning first. Red is seen to before all else, blue coming unhurried after.

They both shook, gasping for different reasons. Laughter rolled off them in peels. Shadwell placed soft kisses at the sweat-beaded forehead beneath the red fringe of Crowley’s hair, never peeking at the golden eyes over the edges of a demon’s glasses. And for Crowley, that made everything feel even better.

With a little encouragement, Shadwell sat back. Heart thundering and breath stolen, Crowley groped at the tabletop for a cloth to clean up--miracling away the evidence in the process, because really, he could not stand for stains on his outfit.

Now beside him, legs draped over the demon’s own, Shadwell hummed and watched through eyelids so heavy they nearly shut. Crowley thrilled at those cheeks gone flushed, lips cherry red and shining from their kisses.

This was... nice.

A hand rubbed idle circles on Crowley’s thigh, squeezing gently.

When the demon could no longer feel the aftershocks, when his shoulders stopped shaking and his legs would obey, he sat up. “Your turn.”

“Huh?”

The astonished look on Shadwell’s face told Crowley a dozen stories of the man’s past. Chief among them that he could do nothing more and the young man would still walk away supremely pleased with himself. Oh, you drunk fool. Didn’t expect anyone to see to you, hmm?

It wasn’t unheard of, in Crowley’s experiences, for younger men to find a kind of power there in getting off another man, in particular those in positions of authority and the like. He’d seen it plenty in the Roman days. Have a quick wank on their own after, call it a very fruitful night. Which was all well and good in theory, except for the part where Crowley wasn’t ready to ignore his blazing desire to get into the young man’s trousers.

The demon hooked one snake-skin boot under the seat of a nearby chair and toed it away from the table.

“Up you get,” he said. “Let’s go.”

Shadwell scrambled from the booth, making room for Crowley to step past. The demon took the opportunity to run his fingers up the inside of the young man’s trousers, palming the bulge at the front.

“Won’t you sit?” He gripped the front of Shadwell’s shirt and shoved him toward the chair. Crowley to encouraged him down with a finger on each shoulder.

Shadwell dropped, dazed.

In the low light of the private room, Crowley took a long moment to admire his night’s partner. All glinting blue eyes and golden haired youth, lips twitching in amusement. He was like what a Hollywood producer would cast if Crowley had waxed poetic on Aziraphale, and that unbidden comparison was too much.

No, Crowley thought resolutely, his hair is dusty blonde. His eyes are only blue. Shadwell was hard-edged, even with his youth; innocence long abandoned to satisfy whatever hunger lurked in his belly, all softness buried deep.

And that--you--are exactly what I want right now.

Crowley slipped his glasses onto Shadwell’s face. Before the young man could capture a look at yellow-stained eyes, a quick miracle skittered across the lights above the table. They flickered, two of the bulbs burning out with a hiss-pop. Shadwell startled at the lights, as Crowley settled onto boney knees before him.

His hips protested, aches as old humanity, and he couldn’t hide how he winced. But Crowley wanted this more than he wanted to avoid a little pain.

I shall pray here at your feet, a supplicant. With this devotion, shall I atone...

He smoothed his hands across the belly and thighs, and worked swiftly, undoing buttons and reaching into the young man’s trousers. Crowley wrapped long fingers around the base of Shadwell’s cock, grasping the silky smooth hardness.

“For me?” Crowley teased and ran his tongue along his lips. The noise that Shadwell made as Crowley dipped his head and took him into his mouth was damn near rapturous. And the demon groaned to hear it, digging his fingers into the young man’s hips.

He searched for a pleasant pace, sucking and licking his way up and down. Shadwell’s fingers skimmed through Crowley’s hair, tugging in a way that the demon enjoyed until he didn’t. He wasn’t interested in being told what to do at that exact moment, so he carefully plucked the hands from his head and set them to grope his arms instead.

The second time Shadwell’s hands tried to guide him, Crowley stopped. The demon set a firm grip on the young man’s cock and hissed, “Touch me again, and I walk out that door. Leave you to handle this.”

He emphasized his point with a hard squeeze on an upward stroke. Shadwell shuddered, breath hitching, eyes wide with lust and need behind Crowley’s borrowed teashades.

“Now,” Crowley said, “let me?”

Shadwell nodded with enthusiasm. He curled his wandering hands tight to the edge of the chair’s seat, fingers eventually working the corduroy fabric of his trousers, shaking, wanting to touch, fighting it.

Oh, Crowley really loved that. Loved that Shadwell took his set boundaries--they were not orders, he could disobey, there were just known consequences--and that it wasn’t easy but it wasn’t a problem. Crowley wasn’t getting any complaints.

He liked the respect it showed. He’d certainly had times where he wasn’t.

“Christ,” Shadwell blasphemed. “Hell.”

Crowley chuckled low in his throat.

“Yer feckin’ mouth.”

Crowley came up for air at that, a wide smile cracking. His scorching tongue ran along the head of the man’s cock, wet lips toying.

“Aa-ah,” the young man faltered. “Jesus, Crowley.”

A shuddering breath punched out of the demon at his name said like that . Something about it was like a curtain drawn back. Too revealing of the man-shaped being behind red velvet drapes. No, he didn’t want that young man to call him by his name while he was at his feet. But Anthony was for everyday humans. Mister Crowley was for employees.

Don’t want to know what being called ‘boss’ would do to me here. So Crowley did the quick maths in his head, adding the times to the temporary intimacy, and settled on his answer.

He cooed, casual, “You, uh, you can call me Tony.”

“Tony,” Shadwell said in that sweltering voice of his, trying it on. He chuckled.

Already, Crowley liked that name there better. He growled, ravenous.

The young man trembled, eyes closed behind the dark glasses as Crowley’s mouth slicked down the length of him.

There were no more thoughts for the demon beyond taking that throbbing prick as deep and as thoroughly as he could, slavering on his prize. His head bobbed and his throat rumbled. It was… It was all he could think of, that cock filling him, driving out all worries and plans and fears. Just that. Just that simple slide of his tongue flattening along the underside of a cock, slipping in and out, his mouth round and wet and welcoming.

Shadwell gasped and muttered adulations, lost in Crowley’s ministrations. His fingers scrambled. He hovered shaking fists over flame red hair before remembering and finding purchase behind his head on the back of the chair.

“Christ, Tony. I’m…” Shadwell thrust in short quick movements, sending him deeper into Crowley’s eager mouth. The demon gagged and shut his eyes, reveling in each slam of the young man’s hips as he chased his release.

Shadwell cried out, his cock swelling and pulsing as he came, hot and hard, down Crowley’s throat.

For one lingering stretch of time, they stayed like that, bound in the communion between them. Until Shadwell unwound, relaxing, and Crowley slid off his cock with a wet pop.

The young man panted, sucking down cool air and shivering. His eyes were mercifully closed. “Hoo boy.”

“Agreed,” Crowley said, deeply content. He crawled to his feet, hissing as his knees protested.

On wobbly legs, he grabbed another cloth to clean himself of the saliva and the spill of his partner. There was still a mouthful of that third citrusy drink of his left on the table from earlier. He downed it. The sweet flavor sparkled.

He draped the cloth over Shadwell’s lap. With his long legs, he easily straddled the chair and leaned down. Shadwell’s eyes searched for Crowley’s in the dim light, but he was too bliss-struck and distracted. Crowley’s lips drew ever closer to his own.

Crowley stopped short of kissing him. “I’ll take my glasses back now, Lance Corporal.”

The young man sucked in a breath, and released his hands from the death grip he had on the chairback. He went to remove Crowley’s glasses from his face but the demon was already there, delicately plucking them away and replacing them where they belonged.

The young man licked his unkissed lips. “Tommy.”

“Tony,” Crowley corrected patiently.

Shadwell chuckled, an edge of nervousness. “Nae. I ken. I’m saying… Mah name. Thomas. They call me Tommy. Or Tom, if ye like.”

Well. Crowley grinned blithely. “If I like?”

“Eh.” Shadwell shrugged. “Jist… If ye like.”

“Mmm… Should I call you Tommy on the regular?” Crowley settled the few inches to sit in the young man’s lap, tree-branch arms draped over wide shoulders. He bent his lips close to the shell of his ear, breath hot as he asked, “Or only when I’ve been gagging on your cock?”

“I, uh…” Shadwell gulped.

Crowley caught the uncertainty. The man didn’t know where and if he could touch yet, and the demon leaned back. Letting him stay in that temporary discomfort amused him.

Then the young man said, “Yer suggesting you’d want to see each other more’n thenight?”

The raw openness in those dark blue eyes were a knife under Crowley’s ribs, slipping between meat and glancing off cartilage. Crowley staggered under his gaze. He sucked in a breath, mouth hung slightly. He didn’t have time to process everything running through his mind--all the promises not to involve himself again with the beautiful ephemeral humans, the way someone wanting to spend time with him always did him in--and instead gave over to it.

He kissed the young man with a fierceness to chase away the lonesomeness, pulling him close, their chests crushed firm against each other. Crowley dragged a hand down the young man’s arm until he had his hand, and guided him back to permission to touch freely. And so he did, his thief’s hands smoothing up Crowley’s back, pulling him deeper into the kiss, stealing into his allowances.

Chapter Text

At last, Crowley broke off to press light kisses along the young man’s brow. “We should really get back.” 

“Should we noo?” Shadwell wriggled beneath him, bucking up as a taunt.

Crowley gave a playful growl. “Yesss. We should. Before the owner locks us in for the night.”

“Wouldnae be so terrible.”

The demon arched his brow, unconvinced, and climbed off Shadwell. He adjusted his trousers, smoothed down his rumpled hair.

Shadwell stood as well. “Eh, yer likely right.” He stretched his back and craned his neck, tucked back in his vest and shirt, re-buttoned the corduroys. “Work in the morning wid hae mah head if I call in.”

Crowley retrieved the tossed cotton neckerchief from the table where it had landed in an overturned puddle of beer. He spared a bit of demonic will for its cleanliness. “Witch-hunting gets you up early, hmm?”

“Witchfinding,” Shadwell corrected as he moved the chair back to the table, “but nae. Stipends are right brassic in the Army. Man’s got tae pay his bills.”

Crowley didn’t ask for details, and didn’t push about how the locksman had just received a sizable sum for his services at the church. That wasn’t his responsibility or his business. Instead, he made a show of shaking out the pale scarf before looping it around the back of Shadwell’s neck.

“Dropped this.” He adjusted the young man’s collar around it and tied a loose knot, tucking the tails into the front of the blue-checked shirt. He ignored the knowing look he was getting.

“Much obliged.” Shadwell gave a quick swift slap to Crowley’s rear.

A little squeal trilled out of the demon. His ears burned. How did that keep happening?

They returned to the main area of the club. The music and the dancing had thinned out, leaving only the rock it til they dropped faithful.

At the booth, Spike and Sally held court in a smoky haze. The barmaid had let down her hair.

“Hey! They’re back!” Spike lifted a glass.

Sally flicked her gaze up Shadwell and then Crowley. “Have fun?”

The demon glanced at the young man beside him, ready to follow his lead whichever way he wanted to play it. But Shadwell was grinning wide, face flushed. A bit embarrassed but not ashamed.

I ruin so much, but not this. Not you. You had a good time.

Me, too.

One of the hanger-ons scooted farther into the round booth, making room for the pair. Crowley threw an extra swagger into his hips and slithered into the booth. He arranged his limbs just so across the bench-back, inviting Shadwell to slide in beside him.

When the young man took him up on the offer, Crowley wrapped an arm across wide shoulders and leaned in to whisper. “I think they noticed we were gone.”

Shadwell slipped his hand to Crowley’s thigh and dragged it down to his knee, squeezing. The demon tucked his foot behind the man’s ankle and dragged him nearer.

The chattered they’d returned to was quieter, more companionable. The late night honesty brought on by so many minds fallen asleep, leaving room for others to breathe. It felt warm and wonderful.

Crowley didn’t want it to end, that illusion. It was long past any stagecoaches turning into pumpkins but he could feel the night winding down. And that meant the end of so much more than just a successful heist.

“Look…” Crowley began, when there was a lull in the conversation. “I don’t typically use the same crew two in a row but…”

He’d spent time over the years with other humans. On the outskirts of their bands and troupes, their tight-knit circles opening shallowly to let him in just enough. He’d never had a crew before. Not like how the four of them could be. 

“Well, there’s other tokens I’ve been tasked with retrieving and…”

His comment lingered.

Hell, was he really coming up with excuses? He could do what he wanted. Was a demon, who was going to stop him? One church getting all its bibles lifted, that wouldn’t exactly echo into the ages. But a rash of robberies on God’s urban vacation homes? That had more staying power. A plague of pilferings, an outbreak of break-ins. That had to have some merit. Couldn’t hurt to have a handful of holy heists padding out the reports to Head Office, too, whenever he got around to dumping another stack at Filing.

Sally leaned away from Hattie to join them. Her black eyes sparkled, a churning Charybdis of lust and alcohol and excitement. “Wot you sayin’, boss?”

Crowley made a quick study of their faces, weighing Spike’s amusement and Sally’s interest. And Shadwell… Is he Tommy now? Tom, if I like?

Whoever he was to the demon, he had the least expectation on his face, just an open acceptance.

He could accept it, too. Fuck it! Why not!

All grinning sharp teeth, Crowley pushed up his round glasses with one long finger. He gestured his crew closer. His voice dipped obscenely, gone chaos incarnate. “I’m planning another one.”

* * *

Later that night--no, it was well into morning by that time--back at his flat, Crowley dropped the two satchels of stolen bibles onto his concrete floor. He sifted through the loot until he found what he was looking for, a copy of an old bible Aziraphale had gone on about for several years in the early eighteen-hundreds. That had been after the angel opened the bookshop. Those old glorious days of walks in the parks, and boat rides, and opera houses. Before Crowley had cocked it all up asking for… things he shouldn’t have.

What was done was done. No taking it back then.

He sighed and crossed to his Leonardo sketch. The safe behind unlocked with a few twirls of the dial. The metal hinges didn’t creak as he opened it. There in the hollow dark, the thermos winked back at him. He’d stared at that tan and blue tartan--shot through with red he’d noticed almost immediately--until it burned. But for a few hours, he’d actually managed not to see it every time he blinked.

It had been a long night. Sure, he hadn’t done much for several months before it. And he felt better. Truly. Everything had been invigorating.

Crowley put the antique bible beside the blessed thermos and shut the safe, locking his fond memories in there with them.

He’d put his heart on a shelf again. For how long this time?

He was a fool. Aziraphale’s words had held a promise, a future together. Crowley wanted to be enough but he couldn’t move against their keepers. All his plans were more reactive. He’d wait. It was all he could do.

Well, that and catch up on what he’d missed since late June.

He flicked on his full color television and lounged on his black leather sofa, stretching his legs to ease the tension. The demon lazed about, watching shows late into the evening. When a new Star Trek episode came on, he perked up, his attention piqued by the rapid aging mystery. He wondered how many other episodes he’d missed and when the new season had started.

Crowley idly noted that Spock wasn’t aging nearly as fast as the human, who were having a real bad go of it. Even when the mystery gets solved, he mused, the Vulcan’s going to outlast them all. Several of their lifetimes, I expect. Wonder if he thinks of the others like dogs? Or horses? Maybe parrots.

That’s when the phone rang. Irritated at the interruption--he better not miss what gave Chekov an immunity to the disease or so help him--Crowley crossed to his desk to answer.

He picked up the heavy receiver and hissed, “What?”

“M-Mister Crowley?”

His heart slammed hard in his chest. Shut up, you.

“Uh, Tony?” Shadwell murmured on the other end, “Feck. Mighta dialed wrong.”

Crowley dragged in a long breath and sat back on the edge of the desk. That was fast.

Something’s happening here.

He was trying. Wasn’t Crowley trying? Trying to go at Aziraphale’s speed. And… that speed was nowhere fast. Slow. Slow, not fast. That was fine. He could wait for his angel to find footing, sure and even. His heart could be could be patient. He hoped it wouldn’t take several more millennia, truth be told, but if it did? His love for Aziraphale would never waver, never had. It was deep and lasting.

And they had the Arrangement still. No one had called that off. Blessings and temptations always needed taking care of.

They’d meet again soon. Couldn’t stay away long, either of them. And Hell wasn’t rumbling in the distance yet, was it? Yeah, there was a chance for them. In the future. Of that--despite the hanging sword above his head asking when--Crowley was deeply sure.

In the meantime, he could think of a few pleasant ways to amuse himself that didn’t require any research or stake-outs or hush money. Probably would be very undemonic of him to turn down an opportunity so generously presented. Freely given, freely received.

“Yeah, no. Tom,” Crowley said warmly as he scooted back more onto the stone-top desk. He coiled the phone cord around his fingers. “Sorry ‘bout that. Right number.”

-END PART ONE-