Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Aziraphale, please stop reading for a sec and look at this!” Anathema slips her shiny mobile, glossy screen up, over the frankly musty pages of the property law book Aziraphale has spread on the table. “Have you seen this? Is this who I think it is?”

Just a flick of his eyes down, and Aziraphale feels the froth of his blood rushing to the quite unfashionable paleness of his cheeks, a flush obvious to anyone within ten feet of him. 

“Anathema!” Her name comes out in a whispered thwack, just a of burst air. 

Aziraphale has maybe half a second to tip his face back, throwing a nervous glance in the direction of Mrs Nutter, the librarian. She has the uncanny ability to know where noise is being brewed, even when out of her sight. 

Two quick sways of his head, and he realizes they're all alone in their corner, while Mrs Nutter is busy tidying up books at the opposite end of the floor. 

She’s none the wiser. 

“Anathema,” he tries again, far more subdued, even if he knows there's a strain to his jaw and a pinch between his brows. “Hush, I'm trying to study. I have a test next week.” 

The back of his knees feels jelly-soft, regardless, and his hands curl tightly around a chunk of pages and the cover of the book, until the buckram rasps against the back of his knuckles. The screen seems to glow just for him, with a streak of redness and the slant of a rakish, gleaming grin. But Aziraphale rips his eyes away. He doesn't need this right now. 

At his side, Maggie pulls a chair up and flops into it, slipping her purse onto the table. “It is! It's him! I told you it was! I’d recognise that red hair and pretty face anywhere, after spending a year next to Az.”

She angles her head so she can stare directly at the tiny screen, now full of a bold, crimson font and the face of someone Aziraphale knows to the last line. Someone Aziraphale has committed to the cabinet of his memory, safeguarding the outline of him for when reality trickles in, cold and unforgiving. 

There's a jolting tremble deep in his belly, a quake that shakes off old, asphyxiating images in his mind, like crusted dust being poked after ages undisturbed: the crucifix above his bed and the ever-present blocky bulk of a black-bound bible over the coffee table. There are many more, so many more. Three hundred and sixty days of them, counted seventeen suffocating times over. He's tried to smash them all to smithereens, but it's difficult to doff off a whole life filled with claustrophobic boundaries, blood-hungry rules that dug into your skin like chains that left no passageway for indulgence. 

Aziraphale breathes, inhaling deeply the recycled air running through the AC that permeates the whole library. 

Even three years late, it takes him the long uncurl of seconds to remember that there's not a single sharp, tessellated edge in the curious glitter of Anathema’s eyes, nor in the soft tilt of Maggie’s smile. He's not at home anymore, no longer squashed down to minimal parts, pared down to nothing, trying to live his life pretending to be someone else. 

“Well yes, it's him,” he finally concedes, because it's ridiculous to deny it. Anathema and Maggie have been to his room more than once. “But I don't the see the point–”

Maggie cuts him off with a snort, leaning closer. “You don't see the point?”

Anathema makes an exasperated, complicated crunch of brows. “You should sign up, is the point!”

“Do not be ridiculous Anathema.” Aziraphale’s heart accelerates painfully. He feels his brows dip down as he tries to gather his rolling pen and battered notebook into his satchel, cheeks smoldering. It appears the study is not the thing that will fill today’s hours, damn it all.

“I'm not being ridiculous. This way, you could get to–”

“Talk to him,” Maggie barges in before Anathema finishes. 

But she's undeterred, brown eyes glinting, grinning so wide her cheeks bunch. “Fuck him. Touch him, for once. Who knows! Maybe they’ll decide the fresh, amateur face they need is yours.”

The idea, worn out by extensive use, burns with the weight of possibility, froths across Aziraphale's tongue like a good Cotswold – he can taste the liquid fire of it. 

To splay hands on him… 

He has imagined it, night after night on his bed through the last three years. Since he found porn that offered a window to a kind of knowledge of himself that had eluded him before. The explanation to why it had been so easy to pretend to be the dull, obedient boy who balked at sex, balked at porn in its mainstream form, finding the closeness of a girl lacking, the thought of a stifling kiss boring and, frankly, disappointing. 

It had all changed when he ran into Tony C’s videos, back in his last year of school. He hadn't meant to, but it had been easy to click on the joke link his mates had sent to their tiny group for a lark, just to face the sun-yellow letters of HungBoyTube across the top of the web page. And for the first time, Aziraphale had known what it was to scorch with the weight of a hard, painful erection disrupting the smooth flannel of his cream pajamas, while hiding in his room watching porn, using the second-hand mobile a friend had given him out of pity because Hell would have frozen over before his father let him have one. 

A cliché of a seventeen year old. 

Ensconced in his closet, Aziraphale had forgotten how to draw breath, how to stop shaking from his sweat-soaked neck to his freezing feet, watching Tony C’s lean thighs being grasped, pulled apart by many hands and coloured flushed from the pressure, being manhandled by three other men. They’d taken Tony's mouth and arse so roughly Aziraphale had thought about the stretch of Tony’s body around the first push of cock for days, about the oil-slick noise of skin on skin, so filthily deafening, arching around Tony's whines with his mouth stuffed full, his own cock red and stiff against his belly. 

Aziraphale had spilled inside his tartan boxers, without even slipping a hand below the threadbare waistband, before the scene was finished. Took minutes to breathe into the newness of something that had lurked in a foggy, formless unknown for a long time, now close enough to grasp, if he dared. 

Aziraphale did. He sank nails into it, marked it his. He finally stopped stumbling through the dark without a flashlight, and felt the same rushing bite of adrenaline he’d felt the first time the wind tickled at his hair on his first bicycle ride. 

All in all, Tony C had been the tipping point, the jump before the dive, the decisive steady weight on a long-wobbling scale. He’d carved his way into Aziraphale's core with the finesse of a cleaving blade, tearing him apart. 

And later that day, Aziraphale had felt the night pass with the mess of his clean, damp hair on a pillow, body stinging from a freezing shower that couldn't dislodge the images of silky russet hair running through his fingers, of kissing a stubble-rough jaw. The whole rolodex of Aziraphale's newly awakened needs had spread across lustrous-grey hours until dawn came with its ragged glow. 

It hadn't been only that Tony was pretty, though he was – gorgeous even: mouth a pout of red, and an arse that, for the first time, Aziraphale had imagined himself groping, sinking teeth into. No, it hadn't been only that. Aziraphale had gone to school with gaggles of handsome boys. And he’d looked, of course he had. But the thought of beginning a sexual physicality with the dream idea of any of them had been chased off by the guilt Father Chahidi instilled in him every Sunday. 

No. It had been the unabashed, unrepentant sensuality of Tony, of his co-stars, not asking for permission to exist or to pursue pleasure. The undeniable sexual intention of a man who offered himself up to be fondled and fucked and taken by other men, without a thought given to tameness or the social niceties Aziraphlae had always known. The more people, the better seemed to be Tony C’s motto. The grubby, polished obscenity of it all that was the polar opposite of the whole realm of Aziraphale's experiences had only been fuel to a candle flame desperate to roar. 

Enticing and filthy, it had been the punch of sex-shock, as something close and real, relatable, in the blood-red lust that Aziraphale had discovered could also be his. 

Aziraphale had learned to want, to feel his cheeks flush red, after years of living in greyscale. Realizing he hadn't really known all the curves and bends of his own heart until the experience left him flesh-starved. 

It had pulled at his belly, at that open space below his sternum where guilt had burrowed until it was part of the bone. It had hooked there and jostled it all, the years of denial.  Watching men enjoying Tony sexually so thoroughly, watching him ask for more, ever the teaser, and in a second Aziraphale had known what it was to yearn, to covet, even. He found he was drawn to flat, hair-shaded nipples, to the long slope of a throat with a hint of red stubble, to the sharp blades of hip bones narrow enough to be fully covered by the span of two wide, broad hands. 

More than anything, to tousled red hair and sparkling honey eyes. 

But Aziraphale is well aware that Tony C is only a persona of a person he'll never know, that being attracted to him is something he must have in common with the million other subscribers who follow him on socmed. Aziraphale has no pretenses of anything – it would be ridiculous, downright delusional, to expect to be acknowledged by the bloke, just because Tony's job is putting himself out there. 

There's a fourth wall for a reason, a one-way mirrored glass, impossible to break. 

Aziraphale is perfectly content to follow Tony C from afar. Considering any other scenario only brings a quake to his knees and a twist to his belly, like rancid food sitting heavy in the bottom of his stomach, undigested. 

Aziraphale finishes cramming his notebook into his satchel and crushes the property law book alongside it. 

“What do you have to lose?” Anathema tosses him the question with far less assurance. “Worst thing that can happen is, they don't pick you.”

“Or Gabriel finds out,” Aziraphale says, while levering himself up from his seat, while the flood of dread thinking of his brother jettisons across him like acid. “And then he tells my father.”

Not that he didn't know. Everyone at home did, after Gabriel found him kissing Robbie Henson after art class on their last week of school. A step Aziraphale had not been repentant of. 

Still, he doesn't want to remember what happened when Gabriel ratted him out,  his father’s fury. The only bright spot was knowing that no one could touch the money his mother had left him for college. That no one could take away his satisfaction in finding the spilling mouth of the maze he was no longer so lost in. 

But the last summer weeks had been torture with the bruised exhaustion of hiding again, of treading gently enough to avoid drawing attention. Waiting for the clock to tip him to eighteen, the age of majority. 

“Dear, you're already cut off,” Maggie says, softly, because she knows the whole story. She rubs a hand along the stretch of Aziraphale's forearm, over his white button down. “There's nothing else they can take from you. Not if you don't let them.”

He wants it to be true so badly that the air feels heavy in his throat, words jamming behind his teeth. But it's hard to shuck off so many years of learned silence, of having grown up ready to squeeze himself into a tiny space, stay unassuming and bland. 

The idea of claiming visibility is rash-inducing. 

Aziraphale bites his lip and looks down. Even his shoes are boring. “I think…”

“Yeah?” Anathema nudges the silence with a smile. 

But Aziraphale isn't ready. “I think I need to go to my room.”

Being Tony C’s biggest fan, Aziraphale is entirely aware of the recent publicity stunt surrounding him. He read of it first on Tony’s website, heard it from Tony’s own mouth in his last four Only Fans streams. 

Have you ever thought about fucking me? This is your chance! I'm looking for a young bloke with no experience…

The rest of the details were too crass for Aziraphale to let them spring up to his head right now, when he's trying to find his centre. 

He throws himself inside his tiny flat and shuts the door behind him, hears it rattle. The satchel slips off his shoulder and, only half aware, Aziraphale tosses it over the sofa, where it slides off the grey upholstery and thuds against the fawn rug. He still feels overwarm and strangely glittering, his whole skin prickling as if razed by pins and needles. 

The conversation at the library hasn't left his mind. Half lost in the haze of it, he stumbles closer to the desk and slips down onto his chair to boot up his laptop. The enthralling spark of the fantasy has morphed into something hungrier, greedier, truer, as always happens when Aziraphale is protected by privacy. By the loose grasp of heat only, of need and desire. Things he hasn't dared to make unreservedly his while in public, not yet. More and more, he thinks of himself, and thinks queer with less blush on his cheeks, less quivering knees. Then forbidden tacks itself on, ruining his balance. 

He's still working on it. 

And Tony, the videos … they've helped. 

It isn't even that Aziraphale devotes many hours of the week to porn watching. The last few years have allowed him to wheedle out what he likes, regarding erotic content of different sorts. He's discovered he's quite partial to erotic literature, and finds the drive of a plot to be a necessary fuel to kickstart his desire. 

And yet, maybe by a pavlovian link, by plain old conditioning, or because of that brazen smile and gorgeous arse, Tony C remains a fixture in Aziraphale's porn catalog. A stripped-wire feeling sizzles in his belly whenever he watches Tony's randy, filthy videos, far removed as they are from Aziraphale's own current tastes. That’s probably because Tony was the one who broke down those first barriers regarding sexual desire. 

The one who showed him there was something more he could be, something he could claim for himself. 

Or maybe it's only because Aziraphale is maddeningly attracted to the bloke, despite knowing he's as unattainable as the stars overhead. 

Only a mirage, a stranger Aziraphale doesn't even know, in reality. 

But his fingers seem to know what he’s been looking for since Anathema slipped her mobile across the Land Registration Act in his book. They quickly find a hidden folder where there are only a handful of files, and he sees the cursor hover over the first thumbnail before he can stop himself. 

Aziraphale feels his whole body running loose, breath exhaling in a whiff that skims over the curve of his own mouth. Warm, so very warm. 

It's almost instinctual. 

There's a stifling pressure at the front of his trousers when he thinks of Tony C, a smile tucked in his lips through the camera. Aziraphale has watched every single video of his, solo or in groups, has a brilliant collection of images in his mind of the splay of Tony's body. Of the angle of his parted legs around broad hips, the curve of his trim waist, so easily grabbable, hands lifting full arsecheeks just to expose the always-shiny furl of that rim to be used and stretched, to find pleasure in it. In many ways, Tony C has shown Aziraphale the anatomy of sex between men. Unrealistic and starstruck-glazed, but unashamed. 

Aziraphale isn't made of steel. 

He enjoys the specific brand Tony sells in his videos – the group sex, with him as the only receiver, the full attention of the scope of the cameras on how his body jolts and shudders when fucked, the punch of heady moans that accompany the wet noise of a cock sliding out of him when it leaves his overworked rim, just to be replaced by another one. It’s a universe away from Sunday masses and the threat of the marquee of sin hung above the slightest sign of skin-hot closeness. 

A shivery tremor slithers up the back of Aziraphale’s thighs when he finally clicks Play. Oh, he's been missing this. 

It's one of Tony's lesser known videos. One he made when he was fresh in the industry, barely eighteen years old, a whole year before Aziraphale found him. It has nothing of the gleam and dazzle of post-production of the ones he's done for HungBoysTube, nor the raw obscenity of being taken by tens of men, as is now his brand. Instead, the scene is almost tame. But Aziraphale can't stop diving into the fantasy, as easily as if pulled by the undertow. 

The camera pans out over two running figures, the frames slightly grainy. 

It's a period scene, with Tony dressed in only breeches and a white, gauzy shirt, signature long red hair tied back. He's playing the young and naive thing whom the Lord of the Manor falls for. It's romantic enough to catch Aziraphale's attention, while Tony is brought into the forest at the back of the manor, where his lover fucks him amidst the ruins of a historically inaccurate picnic. 

Aziraphale has always been aroused by the way Tony looks in this piece: those huge, brandy-clear eyes, wide with surprise that he can relate to, while strong hands pull his breeches down, mouth soft and lush with colour when it's ravaged with a hungry first kiss. Tony whines when he's touched, as if it’s the first time, and Aziraphale can gloss over the man between his legs, imagining himself there, spreading long, pale thighs that should be warm to the touch. Until he could make Tony gasp and fall back on his elbows, hair fanning out like running silk over grass, out of its tie. 

“So lovely,” the man on the screen, blond and broad, says, “I’ve been wanting to have you since I saw you working in my garden.”

Tony whines again, teeth catching on the fullness of his bottom lip while his bare thighs fall lewdly open. “Oh, please, sir.”

The man doesn't waste time – Aziraphale wouldn't either – before pushing up Tony's shirt to expose his flat belly and the unbroken line where waist turns hips, then turns to a thatch of red hair with a stiff, reddened erection at the centre. 

Aziraphale always tenses hotly at this. 

In a second, the man is filling his own mouth with Tony's cock, making him groan and writhe with only a handful of wet, bobbing sucks. It's not long, not enough, not sufficient to give Aziraphale the idea of how it would feel to do it, to feel the silky warmth of that hardness butting against his own lips while long fingers dig into his unruly curls – before the man on the screen is pulling a vial of oil out of his pocket. 

Aziraphale is already hard and straining, hurrying to snag the zipper of his trousers  down and roll his pants down to circle fingers around the heavy weight of his cock. He's throbbing and hot, liquid beading at the tip while he ignores the sudden buzz of his mobile to the left of the laptop.  

Even self-pleasuring has taken him time to adjust to. The knocking down of self consciousness at the grasp of his own cock, the hot weight of it in his hand, a deliberate choice that has taken him months to grasp. 

Aziraphale's mouth drops at the feeling of his hand stroking the greedy jut of his erection, and he shudders at the wobbly groan that puffs out of him. 

In the video, Tony is angled in such a manner that everyone can see the curve of the arse that has made him so popular in his business. Small, but tight and round. 

There's a special care to this part that Aziraphale is grateful for, when the camera switches to show the generous spread of Tony's legs and the shaded space between his arsecheeks. He can see the long line of Tony's rising chest and twitching cock, the honest arousal on his flushed cheeks, in his gleaming eyes. But the whole frame is quite filthily fixed on how the man between his thighs grasps a buttock to lift it up and show the small, tight furl of Tony’s rim. 

Aziraphale thinks of himself doing this, of going slowly, dipping a single slicked finger inside carefully, as if this was Tony's first anal experience, as if this was the first time, or one of the first times, he's going to be stretched to be filled with cock. 

… And maybe it is, who can tell? Maybe that's why the scene feels so real, why it has gathered millions of views since it was posted. Because it offers the idea of Tony being reachable or relatable in his fumbling beginnings. Makes people dip fingers into the fantasy that it could've been them doing the honours, without having to try to match an impossible standard of lover. 

That’s definitely where Aziraphale's mind wanders to. More than; to firsts.

Aziraphale whines, and feels himself jerk and drip precome that he swipes with his thumb, leaving the skin tacky and sticky. He's going to finish unbelievably quickly, as always happens when he plays this video. 

He quickly drizzles lube over his palm and strokes himself, moaning at the squeezing drag. There's a clear view of Tony's tight hole, pink and slippery, being spread on broad fingers. It's nothing new, but Tony's face is. The scrunch of surprised lust, the delicate little O of his mouth, how he can't even speak when the large cock pushes against his rim stretching him impossibly, making him whimper. And then, expectedly, Aziraphale feels that telltale liquid heat in his belly when the man pulls out again in a wet drag, teasing the opening that gapes and then pinches slowly shut, flushed and lube-shiny when he does it again. And again. 

Aziraphale has only been intimate with two men in all his life – two boys his age after starting Uni, in back alleys while drunk off his arse, a couple of knee-tremblers - has indeed very little experience. So watching Tony's body naked, even now, still rings like high-octane surprise. The shade of muscle on the calves and thighs, the spread of red fine hair that catches the light to turn gold, and grows thicker around the base of a slim cock and full balls, the hard lines of narrow hips. It has no intention of being anything other than a sensual body, a more subdued form of teasing, almost inadvertent when compared with Tony's recent productions, but that holds a sliver of something Aziraphale was never able to have for himself: the unrepentant pleasure of a sought out, indulgent experience. 

It's viscerally sexual to see Tony's body responding so well to how it's being used. How his slender cock is hard, jumping wet against his belly, balls drawn up tight. How his reddened rim, stretched and open, spasms around the big fill it's taking. 

Aziraphale is already furiously hard and aching, tugging his cock with red urgency. His body clenches reflexively. The want that always blazes through him when he watches Tony hasn't been filed off by repetition. 

“God, you're so tight, so hot,” the man groans, trite but effective, gripping Tony by the back of the knees to have him fully on display for a million eyes. “Have to get you used to being penetrated by my cock before fucking you, sweetheart.”

Ludicrous how easy it is to see himself there, with his blunt-nailed grasp on those obscenely parted thighs, to fit his cock against that small rim and push in. Aziraphale knows how tight an arsehole is, remembers the squeezing clutch around his fingers when one of the boys had urged him to sink them inside him. Translating the vicious clench of it to his own cock is easy and torturous, makes his own fingers spasm around the throb of his stiff length. Feels his own balls tighten when he thinks of Tony C’s arse opening for him, spreading pink and slippery with lube around his cockhead. 

“Fuck.” His eyes flutter, while he thuds in impatience against his own knuckles. 

If he could’ve – if their firsts had matched – he would’ve spread Tony with gentle hands, would've stretched him on his erection until Aziraphale's own pelvis was solid against that soft arse, all of that cock his only two conquests had been seriously impressed by, inside him. And just imagining it still feels like crossing a line, burns like lava, aches like the destruction of foundations while the crumbling stone squashes him down. 

It's all the venomous bite of guilt that still threads in like vines. That squeezes when Aziraphale least expects it. 

At least here, Aziraphale can be brave. 

Less and less, it stings. It's easier to quash the bedlam in his head. And when he sees Tony’s thighs shake, just as his own breath, the rapid pushes of the man’s hips snapping against his pert arse, Aziraphale is entirely consumed in wildfire. 

Pleasure is new for Aziraphale, a friend only a few years in acquaintance that has become a tenant of his nights and days, of those hushed moments when there's no one else around. 

It crests. Pulls along his heartbeat and the rate of the air he allows in his lungs. 

Tony's breath catches on cue. 

Aziraphale's cock pulses in his fist, watching Tony's hand pumping his own erection on the screen. Aziraphale's belly twists with a shudder of molten heat, heart skipping away. Because Tony's mouth is open and red and whining and Aziraphale's buried in a tight arse, having sex with a man and enjoying it – enjoying it so much his balls spasm, and the rock-hard tension of his thighs loosens when he spills come in streaks all over his fingers and trousers, and he's blazing, incandescently lit. 

The whole anarchy of sensuality over the order of the brain — farthest thing from his upbringing. 

Seeing Tony unravel makes his knees lax. The ruin of that sheer shirt over sweat-soaked skin. The way his thighs remain open while the man between them chases his pleasure, and finds it with a choked groan, hands going curved round Tony's waist to press him down until he's grinding and smiling at Tony, who grins back. 

A curl of lips that Aziraphale wonders about the warmth of, the tilted slant of, in person. And he could, he could try, could just dare, with not a thought given to fear. With a juddery hand, he opens up the application for Tony's contest and watches the vacant, dotted line of the signature.  

But Tony is gorgeous and hot, and infinitely away. There's no way a wet dream can become something real. 

And his own family…

Aziraphale snaps back with the pull of a tissue out of the box to his right, panting ragged breaths. His head sags against the headrest. 

After a few seconds, he closes the laptop and hurries to the loo to clean himself thoroughly, tossing the used tissues to the bin. The mirror spits back his reflection with atrocious honesty. 

He's still a baby-faced git, slightly shocked by masturbation, suffering from the after-effects of a tightly-held collar made of guilt. 

He's the last person on Earth fit to belong in a porn studio. 

Twilight has arrived with a stroke of off-beat warmth that Aziraphale can feel while spread on his bed, burritoed in his quilted duvet watching a rerun of Antiques Roadshow. He's showered, eaten reheated saag paneer, munched on a bag of McCoys, and dressed in joggers and an old, soft blue tee he’s bought in the same design by the dozens. 

On the nightstand, a Magner’s bottle sweats condensation all over the wood, marking yet another pale ring that will meld into the rest. 

There are no classes tomorrow, and he's determined to use his free hours to slack off on duty and enjoy doing things that will give him no gain. Wasting his time idly on things his family would have disapproved of is proving to be yet another source of pleasure. 

A sharp knock on his door judders him out of oak frames and ancient porcelain. 

Aziraphale toddles out, sleepy and rumpled from the warmth, with bits of crisps on his shirt. He shakes them off like a labrador getting out of water. 

His voice rings out grumbled. “Who's it?”

The answer swings back even grumpier. “Why don't you pick up your phone, dammit?”

Anathema. And judging by the silvery giggling behind, Maggie must be in tow. 

Aziraphale stifles a chuckle and pulls the door open. “Ah– I put it on silent. I don't know where it is.” He waves back to the cramped space of his living room, where books, pens, and notebooks are scattered around, forming tall, precarious towers. He steps aside, drifting eyes over the two Smirnoff bottles Anathema has in her hand, and the Tropicana one that Maggie is clutching like a firstborn. “What is this? What are you two doing here?”

“I think we might have come on too strong earlier today,” Anathema says, sauntering in with the confidence of someone at the head of the student Union. 

Maggie scoffs , angling for the kitchenette. “You came on too strong, you mean.”

Aziraphale elbows the door closed, not knowing who to follow. Behind him, he hears the tinkling of glass and the soft thump of cabinet doors closing. 

Evident enough. 

With a swirl of her long skirt, Anathema flops on the sofa, setting the bottles on the low, bulky coffee table.  “Okay, fine, yes. Me, me, me. I, I, I.” She rolls her eyes and grins. “Anyway.”

Aziraphale startles back a step. Anathema's face isn't the harbinger of anything remotely tame. “What?”

“I bring a peace offering.”

“It rather looks like vodka.” His liver isn't a newcomer to the experience. After sloughing off his father's tight grip, Aziraphale had spent the next three months drinking his way from Guinness to Talisker, and all the array of spirits in between, until he could've heated his own flat through the winter with only the fumes from his mouth. As if he could've made up part of the lost time by guzzling down alcohol that burned like coals on its way down his throat. And sloshed in his belly. 

Made the day after fuzzy and fractured in his memories. 

Now, though, it's an occasional occurrence. Getting his head clear to memorize legal boilerplate and stop his brain from pummeling against his skull in the throes of a hangover feels like a priority. 

Anathema flicks her hand letting a sly smile perch on her lips. “Tomato, tomahto.”

Aziraphale's socked feet rasp along the carpet, closer to the secondhand Lawson, to then let himself fall down on a cushion next to Anathema. 

“C'mon, Aziraphale,” Maggie says, slipping out of the kitchenette with three plastic glasses. She plops down at Aziraphale's left and circles an arm around his shoulders. “Let's have a bit of fun.”

There's still a deep moat around Aziraphale, filled with overgrown guilt and the old, discoloured shape of shouldn'ts. But he’s spent years padding up against their bite, and he’s no longer in an old brownstone in Leeds, but in London. 

Filling his lungs with smog and freedom in equal parts. 

“Alright, yes,” he says, already uncapping a bottle. “Yes, let's have fun.”

As always, it's Anathema whom alcohol takes first. Aziraphale's on his fourth or fifth glass, can't really pin down the number, and the room is getting soft around the corners, and feverishly warm. 

“And I haven't seen him again!” It's the same story Aziraphale has heard nonstop for weeks from Anathema, and he smiles against the rim of his cup, stupidly, knowing he's lost control of the lips’ muscles. “The phone where I saved his number died, like, two hours later, so now I'm here sitting and waiting and dying, for the universe to throw me a bone.”

She falls back against the threadbare taupe velvet with a huff. Her speech is mostly coherent, but she's getting sulkier. Slurrier. 

Maggie blurts out a snort over the gurgle of more Tropicana. “At least you have someone to think about. All the girls I've met got bored of me so quickly.”

Aziraphale has to give it to her when it comes to trying, putting herself out there. He's pleasantly melted against the back of the sofa, and offers up, with a bit of hissing and a lot of unselfconsciousness, “Their loss, really. You're a wonderful girl, Maggie, and if you were a man, I'd date you in the blink of an eye.”

He mashes his glass against hers, causing the screwdriver to slosh over the back of their hands. Maggie giggles and Aziraphale stares at the little river of orange now puddling on his joggers. It should be upsetting, but his brain is having a hard time figuring why. 

“Thanks, Az,” Maggie says. “That's… sweet. I think. And likewise, if you were a girl.”

Anathema harrumphs, and declares, “And I'd date either of you. If I could see either of you as people instead of siblings.”

“Fair,” says Maggie. She raises her red cup, and shouts, “Here. To good friends!”

The three plastic cups find the course of intended collision, spilling more screwdriver, now over the coffee table. Tomorrow, Aziraphale will be feeling some kind of way about it, but Present Aziraphale thinks alcohol is also a good disinfectant, so why not? His flat will be so clean. Rug, coffee table. Oh, even the joggers. 

He sways back down to sit, and the room tilts until he finds the lamp in the corner mocking him in its askew angle. Or maybe it's him that’s the askew one. He groans. “Lord, I'm… sloshed.”

He might still be a ways away from rat-arsed. Ten yards away? Maybe twenty. 

Maggie shakes her head. “Far from it. You can talk? You're good.”

“Saw your brother the other day on campus,” Anathema adds, mixing more vodka and orange juice with frankly precarious steadiness. 

“Ugh. Of all the Unis in bloody London.” Bastard could've picked West London if he cared to get a degree. Why East? For that matter, why not better North or South? Gabriel had always been a North kind of bloke. East made no sense for Aziraphale. 

“Such a waste of hot ass.”

Aziraphale mashes eyes closed and groans again. He won't see whatever it is that Anathema is suggesting if he keeps his lids shut tight. Wasn't that how things worked? “That’s a visual I don't need.”

“Gotta be honest,” Anathema follows, relentlessly, “I’d jump his bones if he wasn't such a judgemental, homophobic asshole.”

“You might not know it, but you're so brave, Az,” Maggie butts in.

“You are.” Anathema swings her eyes back and forth. “He is! You are.”

“Oh yes. Extremely. Can't even stop shaking, remembering my father.” Aziraphale knows he's sulking, and complaining, and deflecting a compliment. All three of those things set such a low for the evening, he thinks he might be better going off to sleep. But his legs feel strangely un-solid. Gassy? The word floats away from his grasp. 

But even drunk, Anathema doesn't let him stew in self pity. “If your brother is half the asshole your father is, I'm totally with you.”

Aziraphale isn't afraid of Gabriel anymore. He might have been, back in school, but not right now. He's spent ages dissecting Gabriel’s character to know he isn't exactly brave either. Only hiding things better that he didn't want their father to find out. “Pffff.” He snorts. “Gabriel is nothing. He's… he's like a mean labrador.”

“A shar-pei!” Maggie offers after a quick sip. “Those dogs are evil.”

Anathema nods. “But less roll-y.”

The whole thing does make him smile. But there's also that messy, bubbly, and acidic feeling that swells up like reflux, pushing against his ribs. “I wish I could show them they're wrong. I'm so tired of being afraid.”

Of living and enjoying who he is only behind closed doors. Claiming the space he occupies only with his bulk. The barriers are still in his mind when he forces himself to be unassuming, to be silent, to be proper. 

Maggie instantly slips an arm around his shoulders, while Anathema threads their fingers together and says, “Oh, baby. You don't have to! They can't do shit to you. That's all in your head.”

It is. Fears and old jagging words. The lacking will to kiss another man in public, everyone else be damned. He's incandescent with knowledge, with the same kind of electric spark in discovering that he’d felt when he'd figured out how to read at five years old, without any help. 

He doesn't need his family’s help or approval. “You're right, fuck, you are right.”

Aziraphale downs a whole cup and laughs. 

“That signing-up thing slinking into your head now?” Anathema asks while she refills his drink.  

Maybe. Maybe not. 

The whole idea of doing anything sounds terrifying. 

He deflates like a pinched balloon against the back of the sofa once more. “Why is Tony not living next door? He should! Like in that movie. It’d make things easier.” It would. They could run into each other while going to the same grocery shop across the street. And they’d reach for the same Dove shampoo bottle – Tony looked like a Dove sort of bloke, not an H&S one – and all would be good from then on. 

It's Anathema's sizzling chuckle that cuts the fantasy off. “You kidding? Knowing you, you wouldn’t even have talked to him after a year.”

“What? No, I would! I mean, I wouldn't be creepy, trying to be in his business because he deserves his space. But I would've said hello if we crossed paths, of course I would, why wouldn't I? Something like oh, hello Mr Tony, I'm a huge fan.” Aziraphale even makes the voice, polite and calm and smooth. He’d be so smooth the light would bounce off him like glass. 

“Gosh, I love you,” Anathema laughs, “But I've never met anyone with less drip.”

Aziraphale makes a hoarse, wet, and harsh noise in his throat, similar to a splutter when one is too drunk to splutter correctly. 

“Az. I have got to agree with this one,” Maggie says, patting his knee. “If you’d met Tony by chance, you'd have run in the opposite direction. It's okay. Not everyone acts alright around a crush.”

“Especially with crushes,” Anathema reiterates. 

Oh, that's– 

Aziraphale’s cheeks flood with warmth. “I don't have a crush!”

“Mate, we’ve seen your blu-ray collection.”

“That’s why you turned beet red at the idea of signing up and opening the door to knowing him. Or right now. It's okay, Az– Aziraphale.” Anathema takes another swig. “Damn, I think I'm drunk.”

But Aziraphale is already springing up from his spot. He doesn't have a crush. A crush implies feelings, implies knowing a person, and his ridiculous attraction is only that. He isn't afraid of meeting Tony. Not at all. “What? That's – I'll prove it!”

Anathema and Maggie are so engrossed in mixing themselves another screwdriver, they don't question his departure. 

He rushes to his desk, where his laptop is ready for him. The click-clack of the keyboard is a soothing reiteration. It's easy to fill in the form from the webpage, and to upload a picture where he looks less boring than usual. Wearing a navy button down instead of white. It's strange, how the slog of his brain lifts off for a second when he confirms his email, upload his uni card for identification. Should he? His index finger answers for him, and the boat has sailed, the train has left the station, and other transportation metaphors too complicated to grasp right now. 

His email pings with a new mail. And there. 

Confirmation. 

Aziraphale rushes back to the living room, where Anathema is snoring and Maggie is completely absorbed by her mobile. 

He drops to his knees in front of them, pushing the coffee table back. The screen is full of the confirmation email. “See? Not a crush.”

Anathema flails awake and sets eyes on the screen with such an intensity, Aziraphale can see the letters glinting off her glasses. “Oh my god. No way.”

“Jesus!” Maggie's mouth falls slack. “You did it!”

“I was only caut– cout– careful of my family not finding out.” Aziraphale is smiling so wide, the curve of his own bunched up cheeks takes space in his line of vision. The soaring rush of his own choice gallops like gunpowder in his veins. “But you were right – you both were. They can't do anything! And it's not like they'll choose me. I mean.” A flicker of dread pushes through the fog of dizziness in the tail end of his tirade. A second swells, uncomfortable in his belly. “Will they?”

Aziraphale throws a glance back to the screen where the confirmation glows green and very fucking real. The haze of alcohol lifts, if barely. 

What did he just do?

Chapter Text

Lord, he's here. 

There's a violent quake in Aziraphale’s chest, making his heart beat so rapidly he's afraid he’ll keel over. 

He looks over to the other side of the street where Anathema's little silver Subaru is on hold, while she and Maggie wave their hands and send him ridiculous iterations of thumbs up through the window. 

Aziraphale swipes and jabs at the screen of his mobile, then shakes it for good measure. 

He isn't deluding himself, the mail is still there, no matter how many times he closes the damn app and reopens it. 

You've been pre-selected!

But even now, he isn't entirely convinced the people at Tony's crew haven't made a huge mistake, picking him among probably hundreds of other men better suited to be in a place like this. More handsome, with better social skills, better physiques. Men who don't hold fear like a ball of treacle in the belly just thinking about touching other men.   

Just thinking about seeing Tony in the flesh is doing a number on the sturdiness of his body, on the sureness of his sinews. Whole body going off-kilter and hot, sparkling with trepidation. Imagining the weight of one of those hands in his, the clear cast of his bright eyes, how that red hair would burn wine-dark on the curves, up close. Having the gift of seeing him without the glass barrier of the screen. 

Most of all, Aziraphale longs to know all the what ifs.

Maybe he's leapfrogging yards ahead. There's no guarantee he'll reach the endline. 

Pre-selection is a keyword here. 

Aziraphale tugs down his argyle vest with curling fingers, yanks the door open, and strides inside. 

“Name and identification?”

Aziraphale's barely past the door of the office that swallows up the whole sprawl of the sixth floor, an inconspicuous glass panel with only HBT written on the laminate to the left. 

Bold, yellow, familiar letters. 

An intimidating-looking woman, reeking efficiency, slips in front of him without a pause in  typing on her mobile. 

Aziraphale’s heart beats up a storm. “Hello,” he says, and tries not to wince at how cracked he sounds. “Good evening. I'm here for the casting, I got a confirmation e-mail–”

The woman cuts him off with a tired little huff, though her face doesn't shift into anything but bored disinterest. “Of course you did. Again, name and identification?”

The e-mail had mentioned bringing some sort of ID, so Aziraphale plucks out his wallet and slips through old receipts, searching for what he's looking for. “This is my pass card? I'm not sure if that's enough, I do not drive. I'm Aziraphale Fell.”

His thumb glides over the smooth card in a nervous twitch, before he offers it forward. 

The woman’s brows hike up so high, they almost melt into the line of her locks as she curls lax fingers around the card Aziraphale is sliding into her palm. She fixes dark, shocked eyes on him, before the corners of her eyelids scrunch in slyness. “Oh, so you're real and really didn't make that up. Thought you were pulling our legs with that name. I'm gonna call you Az. I’m Nina, Crowley's manager.”

Aziraphale blinks amazement at the whole interaction. “Nice to meet you.”

She seems to set focus back on the card, while her thumb swipes furiously, tapping intermittently on her mobile. “Let me check… yep, yep. Got your clean bill of health here with your application, and all checks out,” Nina says with a smirk. “Anyway. You're next in line. It's just to show us what Tony will be working with. What you can give us.”

All Aziraphale's senses come to a stop. “Excuse me, show us?”

Completely unfettered, a block of ice falls to the bottom of his stomach. 

“Yeah, me and the director,” Nina explains as if it was the most logical thing in the world. And of course it is. This is an industry, with many people roaming about the mainstay fantasy. It doesn't help to ease the way Aziraphale's stomach knots. “The cameraman too, of course. Don't worry, you're cute for a bloke. Exactly what we're looking for.”

Aziraphale pushes past the rock in his throat by the skin of his teeth, enough to draw air. 

His throat is dry and his voice pushes up, almost reedy. “And– and Tony?”

Nina is back to attacking her mobile. “Nah, sorry, mate. He ain't here. If you pass the pre-selection, though, that's another story. You'll be seeing plenty of him then.” Aziraphale isn't expecting the slow, unspooling disappointment that he quickly tries to grind between his molars. Should he run away? Pull back? It all seems so sharply discouraging. But Nina flicks her gaze up and grins. “You enter the scene now, c’mon.”

Yanking back and away flashes through his brain for a second. But years of following the current, of always nodding along, make it impossible to shamble out of the hallway Nina guides him through. 

The room he’s shepherded into has soft blue walls and dark brown furnishing. The lights are on, a normal, comfy honey glow to them that doesn’t manage to provide Aziraphale any peace. He's guided to plop down on a large, black sofa set at one side, and the leather of it crinkles, as he sits and tries very hard to not shake out of his bones. 

What is he even doing? 

One quite conspicuous-looking tripod with a camera stares at him, with its glossy, modern shine. A cyclops of a red light is the only indication that it is, in fact, working. There’s a man behind it, looking almost timid with his thick-frame glasses, glancing at Aziraphale only once before pivoting his gaze back to the camera. 

Aziraphale’s stomach lurches. 

Just in front of him, Nina sits in a chair, next to another man that Aziraphale has never seen. 

“So, Az,” she asks, looking into the screen of her mobile as if it held all the answers of the world. “You're twenty…?”

“Twenty-one,” Aziraphale answers on autopilot, just a touch airy. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the camera is fixed on him. On each twitch of brows and tick of jaw, probably for posterity, so he tries to relax. 

“And why did you sign up?” It's the man who speaks now. 

Aziraphale's palms are clammy with sweat. He has them tightly clasped together, as if he could transfer the nervousness of his whole body into the squeeze and clench of his fingers. He's always been good at talking, even if not about the things that matter. But the question paints brushstrokes of red and gold across his mind, colour on blank canvas, brings to the fore that twisting nudge under the sternum that he has come to expect when he thinks of Tony. 

“I’ve been a very big fan for quite a long time,” he says, voice hushed, tipping his chin down. There are many things he isn't keen to show, things that must be painted on the arches of his brows, the depth of his eyes. He hopes no one can read him as he continues, “Tony's videos… they helped me to grow into what I am now.”

Nina hums and gives him a smile that holds a speckle of understanding. “And that is?”

“Gay,” Aziraphale says simply, face smouldering. It's the first time he's voiced it out so loud to a stranger. The first time he's grabbed the word in his hands, and claimed it with vicious assuredness. “And quite happy about it.”

There are fine tremors skidding over his belly, running up his back. The lights are not entirely stripping, just an insinuation of colour slanting across the room, but Aziraphale has never felt more exposed. 

The man next to Nina smirks and levers up, moving to the camera. “That’s very good. Now, why don’t you show us what you'll be offering to the camera if we pick you. Why should we select you?”

Aziraphale's jaw clicks shut. 

He isn't oblivious enough to misunderstand what the man means. What's expected of him right now. 

Aziraphale isn't a stranger to masturbation, to the heady sensation of his own hand curled around his cock. But the experience has always been something penned in by four walls, something he isn't sure he can tackle so easily in less than three minutes– the man doesn't seem very patient. 

He has to show himself off. Part of him, at least. He only needs to take his cold fingers to the front of his trousers. Pick open the button at the front, and tug his zipper down. 

But his arm refuses to move. 

Why on Earth did he sign up? He's never been the kind of foolhardy, boisterous man who has a ridiculous sense of boasting about his own cock or sexual prowess. 

God, what did he think would happen?

His mouth feels chapped by dryness, and his heart seems about to punch through his ribs. 

That old familiar cold spreads like hoarfrost. He isn't sure this isn't the worst idea he's ever had. He's not someone who's ever been asked to offer pieces of himself to anyone. Even the boys he’d fumbled with in those alleys… it’d all been so short, such clipped moments, full of harsh breaths with no time to think through. But the desire to be chosen froths up, and vyes with the tremendously heavy tar of fear.

Aziraphale's tongue butts up against his teeth. “I–”

He's always been so terribly pale, he knows the bite of warmth must be wrecking his complexion entirely. Cheeks accusingly red, neck incandescent. 

His belly is so tight it weighs like lead. 

The director, because it must be him, coaxes him again, “Relax, love. Just unzip your trousers and go at your own pace. There's some lube on that small table to your right– You have to work the angle. Just do what you’d do in private.”

Turn on a video, think about Tony. Dig teeth so hard into his lip that no one around can hear he's enjoying himself. Grow restless with each pump of his fist as he refuses to crumble so quickly, thinking about his own mouth pressed tightly to the angle of a narrow chest. 

Quiet, private, and altogether unassuming. 

“I don't know–” Aziraphale wants to shape out words, but he can't focus on anything other than the wild roar of his heartbeat in his ears. Has no idea what to say. “Perhaps, I'm not–”

Nina is engrossed in her mobile, the director taking the lead. 

He tuts at Aziraphale, cutting him off. “C'mon. Touch yourself. Just a little bit for the camera.”

The whole room is soaked in practical indifference, dull and edgeless. No one here would be surprised by anything he decides to do. And Aziraphale thinks about the courage it takes to slip the clothes off your body, expose your soft angles for strangers to enjoy. Break that fragile warmth that lives between cloth and skin, and let yourself sink into a bed, a surface, other people’s bodies, by the weight of the attention of a million eyes. 

Belonging to the lens of a camera for bright-short minutes. 

Aziraphale has never been so courageous. “I don't know if I can.”

He lets the words out, small and cracked, chin tipping down to his chest, half waiting for the people here to send him packing. 

He can't make himself tear his eyes from the round curve of his cuticles. 

There's a new sound in the room. A door clicking open and shut, maybe one of the people here leaving before he's invited to do the same. 

“What's going on here?”

Aziraphale lifts eyes at the sudden snap of that voice, that familiar voice that grazes along his skin like the slip of a soft breeze through grass. 

The sight gut-punches him like a fever dream. It's the slow awareness of blinking awake after a long sleep, while the body gets used to the weight of the limbs, the skin, the rush of gooseflesh that flares like pin pricks all over. 

All physical. 

Aziraphale isn't sure he's not imagining it. 

Because it's Tony there, here, close enough Aziraphale thinks he can finally see the shade of amber of his eyes, can make out the golden strands of hair streaking through red. 

With that mouth, soft and pink and glistening. 

Aziraphale's seen him before, a thousand times over, but the reality kicks any fantasy out of his mind. Clips and videos, the distance of running frames with all their post-production and airbrushing, hadn't done Tony justice. He's almost impossibly stunning, from the curve of his head to his black-painted toenails, and pale feet in white sandals. 

Worlds away from any mirage. 

Aziraphale's whole body flushes warm as if lit by coals. He tries very hard to swallow down the gasp that's formed beneath his tongue, and he's cut back in half just to try not to draw attention to himself. But it's galvanising to actually set eyes on the liquid sway of Tony sauntering into the room, dressed all in black, with his tight yoga pants and loose crop top. Aziraphale fixes on broken images, feeling his insides shake: the long line of Tony's legs, the slope of a curved, naked shoulder, the column of that pale neck, entirely bare now, Tony having tied all his long hair up. Perfect to expose the dangling line of a star earring that swings when he walks, a detail that Aziraphale has never seen in any video. 

Tony’s flat belly smooths down into the sharp crests of hinted hipbones that hide below the waistband, and make Aziraphale want to grind his molars to smithereens. 

In the flesh, Aziraphale hadn't expected to find himself so viciously moved by just seeing him. That the experience would be so devastatingly arousing. 

“Leave us alone. I wanna talk to him,” Tony says to the people in the room with an air of command. Sharp and almost stern, without the softening of Dolby Surround giving him an air of false pliant helplessness. 

This is what Tony really sounds like. Confident and proud and sure. Voice a lot lower and smokier than the high-pitched cries funneled through the mics in his movies. 

Aziraphale's heart almost runs away from him, at the ludicrous, impossible nearness. 

“You sure?” It's Nina who asks, raising a perfect brow. 

Tony tips his head to face her in gorgeous profile. “Yeah. Close on your way out.”

No one utters another word, leaving in a silent trail. There's not a single question to his authority. It seems that off the set Tony is someone entirely different from the one-dimensional man that moans and whines while bouncing on cock after cock after cock. 

He's sure of himself, as Aziraphale has never been, has the control of this profession of his like he had leather reins looped tight around his fingers. 

The only thing that hasn't changed is that Tony is, on and off the screen, extremely hot. 

Hot enough that Aziraphale feels that telltale loop of heat in his belly, hardening and heavy, settling on his hips. He isn't sure whether to suck in a breath or keep blinking like a deer caught in the headlights. He must look extremely stupid. 

Tony sways in until he sits on the sofa to Aziraphale's left, leaving Aziraphale with the very difficult task of coordinating his thoughts while his attention is fixed on the extremely narrow strip of black leather between their thighs. 

Lord, they're so close.  

Tony grins, soft mouth drawn up in a curve that Aziraphale finds himself desperate to follow with his fingertips. That plump bottom lip teases him mercilessly, while his gold earring glints. “Hey mate, I'm Tony Crowley, but here around, everyone calls me Crowley.”

Crowley.  

A real name, a real face. 

One more piece earned, just another crack in the one-way mirror. 

God, Aziraphale hopes he won't fumble this completely. 

He tries valiantly to let himself relax into a smile, and succeeds, if barely. “Very nice to meet you, Crowley.”

That sly smile doesn't waver. Offers even more: a gleam of teeth, and a slash of tongue that has Aziraphale breathing fast. “And you're Aziraphale, right?”

“Yes.” The nodding tags along the word. 

“Gosh, that's a name with character.” To– Crowley lets out a grunting little snort that, for some reason, has Aziraphale aching in tenderness. “Said you're a big fan, eh?”

“I am,” Aziraphale answers, airy, heart twisting behind his ribs. 

Crowley tilts his head, and a glossy lock of hair escapes his updo, falling next to his cheek and earring. Aziraphale clenches his hand in a fist to not touch, wanting to perhaps find out if it’s as silky as it looks. 

That isn't allowed. 

“Can you name any movies I've made that you've liked?” Crowley asks, almost teasing, tipping himself closer. “C'mon. Share with me a little.”

Aziraphale blinks a few times. It still feels unreal to find himself next to the man that has filled his dreams and wishes since he learned what wanting was. There's a trembling to his lips, a smile that doesn't quite settle on his mouth – wavering, just like all of him. He takes in the lines of Crowley's face, now suddenly in touching distance. The shade of pink of his mouth is even more appealing up close, the spray of freckles across cheeks and nose giving him an air of boyish guilelessness. 

It's difficult to remember he's seen so much of Crowley, and without meaning to his mind latches onto the question asked, onto the image of Crowley sprawled on grass, bare, slender thighs spread out obscenely. 

Aziraphale's cheeks burn with heat. “I– I quite enjoy your whole catalogue, to be honest,” he says, a bit breathless. He swallows, thinks he can continue, “But my favourite was one of the first clips you filmed. The historical one with you as a… stable hand.”

Crowley's dark brows hitch up almost to his hairline. “Really? That's– wow. That was so low budget I didn't think anyone would remember it. It's been, what, five years since I filmed that.”

There's the wisp of a chuckle in his voice and Aziraphale can't help but answer, “It made an impression, despite the… the wrong scones in the basket, clearly baked with baking powder.”

Crowley snorts. “Gosh, you're really something else.” He tilts his mouth into a smile. “You into history, then? Regency? Victorian stuff?”

“Regency over Victorian, actually.” Aziraphale wrings his hands, feeling them soaked in sweat. 

“An Austen fan, I'm sure.”

“Over the Brönte sisters, I'm afraid.”

It's as easy as conversing with a friend. 

Crowley twists at the waist, until he's almost sitting sideways facing him. Interested. It coaxes Aziraphale to tilt as well, as if to meet him in the middle. Prove he isn’t absolutely gone entirely stupid on the way he looks, startled down to his soles. 

When Crowley speaks, his voice is a velvet rasp. “And tell me. Why did that video make such an impression? Why did it stay with you? Liked how my arse looked in that film?”

Aziraphale's lungs are tight, with Crowley staring at him with that tongue-in-lip grin. 

“No. I mean yes. I mean –” Lord . It escapes him almost despite himself, in a tumble of a sentence, “It’s because you looked very real, and rather stunning. ”

His heart pulses in his ears. 

Crowley hums, “Did I?” He slides closer until their knees push against each other, until Aziraphale can feel the heat of him, smell the intoxicating twirl of leather of Crowley's cologne. 

God, they're so close, Aziraphale is sure he can see Crowley's pulse jump in his bare neck. 

“Not that you're no longer stunning, or– or real,” Aziraphale babbles, because he doesn't know what to say. How to stop quivering inside. “You are. Quite striking and real. Now, I mean. And also before.”

Great.  

But Crowley's grin shifts into a smirk while his hand slips down to find the round of Aziraphale's knee. Folds over it, dragging a shaking breath from Aziraphale's insides. “Striking, eh? And what is it that you find so striking about me, Aziraphale?”

Eyes, hair, mouth. Being more base: thighs, cock, arse, chest. All of him, from the uneven hairline to the delicate feet. Aziraphale's spent his life making a study out of Tony– Crowley's body and face, the shades of his performance, but right now, with eyes fully peeled open, Aziraphale feels himself like the subject in front of a camera. 

He wonders if it pleases Crowley. He wonders what he sees in him. 

His eyes flick down to his own lap and he answers, honestly, quietly, “I don't know if I’d be able to separate a part I prefer from the whole of you.”

The hand on his knee gives a light squeeze that sends a jolting shock through Aziraphale's whole body. He's slowly processing the weight of those long fingers he's seen curl around cocks, dip inside Crowley's own body, now through fabric but on him. 

“I'm so glad you signed up, y'know?” Crowley says, and it sounds like velvet sliding across skin. 

Aziraphale has to look up. “You are?” Lord, how can this man send his pulse skyrocketing with only a glance? Striking doesn't even come close. Confident and gorgeous and unreachable. Like stretching fingers for a star. Aziraphale knows he won't ever come close to him and embarrassing himself is something he won't do. “And yet I think… I think I made a mistake.”

Crowley's hand falls away from his knee, a little crease between his brows. “Why d’you say that?”

“Because I can tell I'm not what you or your director and manager might be looking for.” Nothing is farther from the allure and sensuality of a porn movie than him with his million and one issues about intimacy, and the sort of inability to loosen up the collar at his neck. Longing for disappearing. “I'm so very sorry.”

Crowley deserves someone so much better for his work.  

Aziraphale turns away and lifts from the couch, ready to spring out of this office and mope all the way to his flat, after stopping at Sainsbury’s for a bottle of cheap whisky. 

But Crowley finds the lax hang of his fingers with his own, and the sudden interlock of them robs Aziraphale of breath and thoughts. 

“Wait. Aziraphale.” Crowley doesn't pull, but Aziraphale sits back regardless, with their hands joined and his heart kicking a riot. Their knuckles bump, palms kissing with their many lines crushing on each other. “You were my choice.”

It's just a mirage, the quick selection of a signup sheet with enough information to be useful, and a conveniently attractive photo. Crowley hasn't really chosen him, with all his bends and nooks and crannies. It's only the illusion of perfect words Aziraphale has been starved to hear. 

But he can't help the rushed gasp of disbelief, the utterly pained breath. “I… I don't follow.”

“From all the applications I reviewed, you  were my choice,” Crowley says, attention fully on him. His smile has softened from the playful grin to something almost intimate. A secret for the both of them. “Nina chose some, same as Eric, the director, chose others.”

It means something, must mean something, even if Aziraphale's mind spins a mile a minute in dazed surprise. 

His brows furrow, despite himself. “Why?”

At this, Crowley laughs. He pulls his hand back but Aziraphale doesn't have time to resent it, finding it open and spread over his chest the next second. Warm through his argyle vest. “I mean, you're ridiculously gorgeous, and not acting as if everyone should bow at your damn feet for that alone, and that's always a huge bonus in this business. Can't take that for granted.” Crowley smiles, lips entirely kissable, and heat branches out through Aziraphale, lighting him up completely. “You'd look amazing in front of the camera. And the pic you sent? Best smile I've seen in ages. And you're honest with yourself, what's better than that?”

It's coddling, coaxing– it's not real. But the fizzing satisfaction is. How Aziraphale's heartbeats are about to spill through his open collar. 

Crowley's looking at him with a sort of expecting interest that Aziraphale's only experienced perhaps twice in his life. It's dizzying, like the oxygen-loss of a fall, leaving him slow and glittering. 

Aziraphale pours out, washed in heat, deflecting, “I don't think my smile can ever come close to yours.”

“Really? And what's so special about my smile, would you say?” The corner of Crowley's mouth bends up to give him a wry grin.

“Well, that it's always there,” Aziraphale answers. It all comes out on auto, “How you always curve your lips just so, even when you're in the middle of a scene–” He stutters on silence for a breath, “It's very ah, very–”

“Striking?” 

Crowley's foxfire-eyes seem to glitter gold, voice gone raspier, a bit playful. 

Maybe Crowley's mocking him, or just carefully discovering Aziraphale has lost all upper brain functions by his closeness. Aziraphale's sure he shouldn't be mentioning anything as silly as being attracted to a smile, not to someone who’s made sensuality a business. 

He’s sure he could be spotted from outer space by the brilliant red tinting his whole upper body, from chest to forehead, but Aziraphale badgers on, “Yes, I find it captivating. Please, don't tease me.”

There's a complicated scrunch of lips and nose in Crowley's face. The minute curve of brows, the slight part of the mouth, before Crowley curves in, leans, says, “May I kiss you?”

Aziraphale’s brain fills with static, mouth hanging open. “What?” 

“You said it was a mistake, you coming here.” Crowley smiles again, the bastard, and Aziraphale feels hot all over, like on that first night hiding in his closet, with the dazzling strike of revelation on a screen, written over a beautiful man Aziraphale hadn’t thought could be real. Crowley nudges just a breath closer. “Would you let me show you? I think I wasn't wrong about you, Aziraphale. And I think you didn't make a mistake coming here, either.”

It’s as if his mind had been made up years ago, because Aziraphale leans in, doesn’t think when he crushes his lips to the pink softness of Crowley’s mouth in a kiss that rattles him entirely. Scorches him. The heat of Crowley’s body stifles the fear in him, the scent of him wafting off the loose lines of hair brushing Aziraphale's cheek while his stomach sizzles– an unknown sort of clench that he's never felt before. 

He's kissing the man of his dreams; the impossible, beautiful man that has led Aziraphale out of the maze of his own inhibitions. 

Crowley gives a little stuttered gasp, a faint, quick rush of air as if he hadn't expected it, but receives him with a swaying of body that has Aziraphale’s heart kicking his chest. It's a hard press of mouths, until Crowley opens his lips in a feverish push so Aziraphale can tongue in and taste coffee along that warm, hot mouth. 

Sliding inside him. 

It has Aziraphale's cock hard and pulsing in less than a second.  

God, what is he doing? He's thrown himself over Crowley like an animal, glazed with want, as if he were a thing. 

Crowley isn't here for him to pleasure himself. 

Aziraphale pulls back, breathless. “God, I'm sorry–”

But Crowley slips a hand up his cheek, until the tips of his fingers sink into the soft hair at his temples. “Don't be. Didn’t I ask you to do just that? You can touch me all you want. Do you want to touch me?”

It's a fantasy, but knocks the world from under Aziraphale's feet. 

Crowley sounds velvet-soft and blazing with intent. The words tremble in soft puffs between them. And Aziraphale can't stop looking at the rubbed-pink curve of those lips he's just kissed, the plane of Crowley's shoulder that has escaped his crop top. 

The honeyed eyes that beckon. 

All in terrifying closeness. 

Aziraphale has wanted him since the first time he saw Crowley kneeling on all fours with his hands clenching around black silk, just for other men to have him, and the guilt and fear and shyness crack down the middle, fizzling away. Leave him open and exposed enough to say, “Very much,” all rough words. 

It's Crowley who kisses him this time, climbing onto Aziraphale's lap, shoving his thighs open with liquid easiness. The position robs Aziraphale of air, gasping for a inhale that, when it comes, is full of Crowley. 

Sweet, and sharp, and real. 

The kiss comes with elegant hands that clutch and grasp at Aziraphale's curls, driving Aziraphale to answer in kind. He can't stop himself from curving his hands around that bare, smooth midriff, from dipping his tongue inside Crowley's mouth when he feels it open. 

“Yeah, that's it, let it out,” Crowley says, words crushed wet against Aziraphale's teeth. “Show me what you want.”

It's an undeniably sexual kiss. The first step of a move of bodies meant to end sweat-soaked and streaked in spend. Aziraphale has very little experience, no benchmarks for pleasure, but he knows he's never been kissed like this. Whole bodied. With every bit of sensitive skin into the game. Mouth, hands, hips, tongues, gorgeous thighs that hitch and squeeze each time Aziraphale can't help but thrust up into the openness of Crowley's splayed legs, cock so hard he's sure he's going to push through his trousers. Must be making a wet ruin out of his boxers. 

And it all falls on him, clogging up his mind. That this is really, actually Crowley: the pervasive scent of his mint shampoo and the quivering swallows of throat that announce he's really affected. Little details and secrets knocked out by closeness that Aziraphale could have never known through a screen. 

Aziraphale moves his hands up Crowley's sides, touching the flexing outline of his waist and ribs below his crop top. He stops just where his torso widens, so he can relive the road back down to memorise what he knows is the opportunity of a lifetime. His mouth is already searching for the thump of Crowley's pulse, kissing the hard cord of tendon to then suck at the hollow at the base of his throat that tastes like the salt of him. Crowley whines in his hands, and rolls his hips down, rubs Aziraphale's erection with that perfect arse of his still dressed in those obnoxiously tight yoga pants. 

The sensory details slosh over and fill in the outline Aziraphale has had in his mind about Crowley. The taste of him, the smell of his hair on the curls that hang, silky and out of order– that warm-sweet whiff of skin, the barely-there touch of a rush of air in his mouth, even the brushing tinkle of his star earring against his cheek. His fingers find the small of Crowley's back where the dimples he's fantasised about are set above the waistband. And Aziraphale touches them, glides fingertips over them while his mouth finds Crowley's one more time. A mess of tongues and spit-slick lips. 

It's leagues away from the only two short, lukewarm experiences he's had with other men, ramping up his arousal to smouldering in less than a second. Every little thing Crowley does is tinder added to a roaring fire, impossible to quench. 

Crowley's almost grinding down on Aziraphale's stiff cock. Rutting the beautiful curve of that arse, until Aziraphale is thrusting up mindlessly, wet mouth slack around nothing. 

“C'mon, don't you wanna fuck me?” Crowley's arms lace around his neck while he gasps punchy little hits of breath. “I can feel you want me.”

There's no shame in wanting, there can't be shame in wanting him. 

“Fuck.” Aziraphale's hands curl tightly around Crowley's hips, a harsh flow of air running out of his mouth. “Yes, very much. God, you've no idea.”

Crowley grins. Lovely and wicked. 

He pulls away for a second to stand, making Aziraphale whine in loss, hands falling down onto leather. What follows is an exercise in restraint.

Crowley pulls down his pants and underwear– a lacy number that tangles with black lycra but catches Aziraphale's eyes enough to notice it's barely clothing. Just a few slashes of delicate lace for the back and waistband, and a stretch of cotton at the front. 

He isn't imagining it. He isn't dreaming it. 

His own fingers curl and gnarl like claws to not shoot forward and grasp the heap of clothes that rest on the floor. Wanting to test their texture and save that too. 

The thing is, he isn't in love with Crowley, the person behind the screen. They've just met. But Aziraphale knows, too, that this man has lived in his mind for years, has made a home there. Aziraphale's sexual desire holds the shape of Crowley from the instep to the last, unruly strand of hair. Aziraphale isn't in love with him, but he knows he holds a crush the size of a continent inside, that it’d be difficult to deny himself the chance to have him. 

So much of Aziraphale's life has gone by seeking approval– at home, at school, with himself. But here, now, with Crowley, all the raw physicality of his own body seems to burn without guilt. 

And that. 

It's the canary in the coal mine telling him he's teetering on dangerous territory. 

It isn't love, but a close cousin of it. 

Crowley's standing in front of him naked from the waist down, mouth pulled up on a smile. Aziraphale is hot, throat so dry it's as if he had chugged sand for lunch. 

Of course Crowley's stunning, he already knew it. 

But reality gives the tableau of him a glaze of skin-lush, askew perfection. His hips are angular and narrow, gorgeously shaped, and he has a small scar on his lower abdomen, appendicitis probably. Aziraphale is stunned to see it, to realise there are still things to discover. It must've been erased for the videos, even though he finds it gives Crowley the grounding appeal of a next-door-boy. 

“You're stunning,” he says, again, because he can't shut up, watching the hard line of Crowley's cock angled upwards, those thighs he wants to sink fingers into flushed and smooth-looking. 

He's seen Crowley bare and fucked out countless times. Has seen him being used by man after man after man all with a grin on his lips. Aziraphale has the exact frame of reference of what it is to see Crowley's buttocks parted by more than a pair of hands, come dripping from him. 

But the lack of a screen makes heaps of layers fall through the illusion. The beautiful vulnerability of his imperfect angles. The too-sharp canines, the silly gaspy little snort before his laughter solidifies, an almost-faint scar below his left brow.

Aziraphale likes him like this so much it hurts, turns him dizzy and sore with realisation. 

Crowley's smile turns fox-like. “You already said that.”

In a quick flex, he's back on Aziraphale's lap with the elegant turn of limbs of someone who's made his body art. But this time, Aziraphale is very aware of his own ruined seamline, and his own jerking thighs still trapped in corduroy. He's extremely aware that the shyness and embarrassment– the borrowed guilt from his father– is being tumped over with Crowley's heat. 

When Crowley speaks again, his voice has the uncomplicated easiness of pleasure darkening it already. 

“Can I?” Crowley places hands on his belt, while guiding Aziraphale's lax fingers to grasp his naked hips, to squeeze his full arse. To relish the way his fingers press divots into the round curve of it, pulling his arsecheeks apart without meaning to. Obscenely greedy. 

Leagues away from the limits of that brownstone in which he grew up. 

It's easy to understand what Crowley's asking. 

Aziraphale nods, because words have faded. The mere hovering of those hands has his heart kicking out of him. It's the unspoken eagerness of it all, the hunger of seeking fingers to reveal him for eyes that want him, and has his breath curling hot and sharp beneath his tongue. 

He watches as Crowley slips his belt open, the metal tinkle of it loud. His eyes don't stray, all golden attention set on Aziraphale's face, in the pace of his breathing. This is by far the most intimate sexual encounter he's had, and how careful Crowley seems to be. 

There's the snag of the zipper, the slow tooth by tooth drag of metal and Aziraphale whines. Hears himself groaning. Unable to not sink thumbs into the hard tab of Crowley's hips. 

“Crowley.” He's choking on it, on his own need. Fuck, he's going to come without even being inside him. 

Aziraphale digs his fingers in, proprietary and intoxicated, until he's palming handfuls of that arse just to rut into it. Shameless. Shivering his pleasure into the sharp line of those collarbones, and then closer. Directly into the hollow of that beautifully long neck.

It's immediate in its exquisite feel. Near. Full of sweet-sharp sweat and heat. 

Aziraphale wants to claw closer, wants to kiss Crowley again until his own lips are ruined and bruised. 

It doesn't seem he can have enough of him. 

Crowley makes a soothing noise. Kisses the soaked line of his hairline where Aziraphale feels pearls of sweat gathering. Smug and in control while rocking into his clothed cock and pushing against his warm palms. “Just one more sec and I'll have you inside me, sweetheart. Think you can bear it?” And then he tips forward, lips on Aziraphale's ear, “Think you can last very long before leaving me fucked open and full of your come?”

Aziraphale feels the quick flush of blood running south, over his pale belly, and pelvis, skin pink under his own blond thatch of hair. 

No. Definitely not. 

He'll make a wet ruin out of Crowley at the first thrust. This is what he's dreamt of on many messy nights. Waking up on soaked sheets that he had hurriedly scrambled to throw in the washer before anyone found out. Blaming food falling on the bed for the mishap. 

Aziraphale makes a ridiculous, high pitched noise while he watches Crowley's naked tensing thighs, feels those slim hands slipping below his own waistband. The hem of his crop top shifts when Crowley moves, making Aziraphale more ravenous for the shaded line of muscle that climbs up his chest and Aziraphale wants to discover more of. 

God, he's never been so hard in his life.

“Please.” It knocks out of him whiny. He isn't even sure what he's asking for. But Crowley must know, because he slips warm fingers below the cloth of boxers and trousers, pulls them down. Aziraphale has the presence of mind to lift his hips, let the fabric run down until trousers and boxers are pooling at his feet. 

Lord. 

His cock juts out hard and dripping wet, flushed to the point it looks painful, hot to the touch. 

Crowley's pupils widen to ink coins. 

“Fuck. Fuck, why didn't you tell me you had a huge dick?” He doesn't sound angry but greedy. Hungry. He sinks teeth into his lush bottom lip. “Shit, I wanna sit on your cock so bad– you're gonna leave me ruined for everyone else, aren't you preppy boy?”

Aziraphale knows his own size, that Crowley isn't lying. Hearing him saying it, though, is like getting blown apart into miniscule specks. He feels his own cock jerk and spit precome, while Crowley curses and reaches sideways, to a small table next to their sofa. Aziraphale had ignored it entirely at first, but there's a box of tissues and a full pump bottle that Crowley uses to get his palm wet before leaning in again, curling fingers around the too-hot stiffness of Aziraphale's erection. 

The pulse of it is lewd when it pairs with a spill of precome that Crowley easily thumbs over. Smears it lazily with the lube, pulling the uncut skin. For the first time, Aziraphale is being good, he's being satisfying, his body craved, if the hazy gleam over Crowley's eyes is any indicator. 

He jumps in Crowley's hand, hips kicking upwards. “Crowley. Oh, you–”

“Just let me lube you up a little bit more, let me feel you,” Crowley says, a hand curling around Aziraphale's neck to bring their foreheads together. “Can take you just like this.”

Just like this. No preparation of any kind. 

A man used to being stretched so wide on the regular. The thought alone is enough to fry Aziraphale's mind. The immediate reality of what's about to happen has him almost dizzy from his breathing gone all wrong. He mourns not having the chance to sink his fingers inside him, though. To not feel the heat and tightness of him on his knuckles. 

Heavens, he's never felt so hungry. 

Crowley rises on smooth thighs, setting knees firmly on the sofa to the point of squeezing Aziraphale's hips with their knobby points. It doesn't matter, none of the discomfort matters. He's still grasping Aziraphale's cock to guide it between his buttocks, but the movement is a slow tease of sensation: a wet drag over Crowley's taint, pushing beneath where his balls are starting to harden, delaying it. All amidst little gasps and soft, reedy breaths, while Crowley's toned belly pulls in, the tendons at the sides of his pelvis drawing themselves wickedly, just to remind Aziraphale that Crowley's body is always the mainstay, that he's art as much as he's skin and beautiful bones.

The sight of it is enough to make Aziraphale's own thighs lock in knotted muscles. That pinched waist and slim cock, those sharp hips that could cut glass. 

He has Tony C about to sit on his cock. 

Aziraphale gasps, fingers digging indents on the give of that arse, dipping in the meat of it, unreservedly obscene. He's sure he must be leaving Crowley marked with half moons of nail bites. His mouth falls slack. “God, please– Crowley–”

The fiend– because Aziraphale now knows he's a fiend– is slicking himself up using the tip of his cock. Rubbing over and over on the soft giving texture of his rim, while Aziraphale is sure he's about to cry from frustration each time he feels himself skidding over that hot, pinched hole.  

He flings eyes up, desperately searching for a reprieve to the frothing arousal in his belly. But seeing Crowley's smile, cheeks pink and slow-blinking is a ruin to his heart. 

He has no more time to ache. There's no more waiting. Because Crowley's suddenly pressing the round throb of Aziraphale's cockhead to his softened rim, pushing down on him in a slippery glide that has Aziraphale hardening his jaw until he's halfway inside. 

He's pulsing. 

Aziraphale has done this before, but it’s never felt so daunting. Allowing himself what people had told him he shouldn't want. Asking for it, begging for it, even. 

Fuck, the grip of Crowley's body. The wet, hot, clenching clasp of that arse. God, the stretch must be monumental, he's sure he can feel Crowley's hole giving rhythmic little squeezes around him. Tensing and releasing to adjust to the penetration. 

Aziraphale garbles a groan, a teeth-gnashing noise of sexual desperation, hands opening Crowley's arse in reflex to fill him deeper. Crowley whines, moans, and Aziraphale has to watch it, needs to watch how it happens. How Crowley sinks down on him with a swaying of hips, has to tie the visual of Crowley's open mouth with his own erection disappearing past the pink of his hole. 

It's not the best angle by a long shot, but it's enough to feel Crowley tightly seated on his thighs, rocking mindlessly, full of cock. A thousand rewatches hadn't prepared Aziraphale to have him squirming on his lap. To see the shine of spit over the soft redness of that wicked mouth, how his own heart is kicking a riot.

His belly clenches with the vertigo of air loss. He's stopped breathing entirely. 

“There, sweetheart, breathe. You're all the way inside me now–” Crowley grins, a little hazy. Moans and lifts just to fuck back down while Aziraphale whimpers at the excruciatingly tight clutch. “So good… Shit, I can feel you in my fucking throat–”

Jesus fuck, he's inside Crowley. Sunk balls deep into the body he's been watching and wanting while hiding himself away. Each touch until now has felt glazed over by guilt, but then Crowley dips down and kisses him again. 

And oh. 

It's this. This, this, this.  

Sex and sensuality and the openness of taking what he wants without anyone there to tarnish it. Making it real. The closed circuit of intimacy and raw sex, something Aziraphale has craved without really thinking it. 

Guilt and pleasure have always warred in him. But the old memories are nothing but falling detritus, drawing pins plucked out from them, until Aziraphale finds himself breathing clearer. Thinking clearer.

Feeling clearer. 

Feeling just Crowley. 

Aziraphale drinks him in with an open mouth and buzzing lips, until Crowley pulls back. 

He bites air until his molars hurt. “You're very… very tight.”

There's no embarrassment at sounding so shaken. Crowley's extremely hot and tight, and the next second, he bends his legs until he's setting feet on the sofa cushions. Held up on Aziraphale's cock by his strong calves. 

“That's kegels for you,” he says, grins, flushed beautifully. 

And then he starts bouncing. 

The whole room closes down to just Crowley. 

The circle and roll of his hips is surreal. How he makes rough noises of hunger and pleasure and surprise, mixed in a smoky twirl, taking Aziraphale all the way to the base in each drop down. Aziraphale knows his own face is streaked entirely full of amazement. His gaze pings from the push of him inside Crowley, to the slap of Crowley's cock against his own sweat-damp belly, up to the place where all that red hair is becoming undone from the yanked-back bun. He's shamelessly squeezing handfuls of that arse trying to guide Crowley, even if he knows it's not necessary. 

Crowley knows how to ride cock, making Aziraphale twitch each time he ruts down, has him throbbing inside him. Wicked thing, he grinds slowly as if to show Aziraphale how much he relishes it, that the strained noises of arousal are not for show. 

Through the screen, there were so many details lost. Aziraphale now has Crowley's scent all over: shampoo, cologne, sweat. A multilayered, wonderful scent that has his heart galloping out of order. And the noises. No filters or mics or post-production equalisers. Just Crowley panting quietly, without added loud whimpers on cue, rising barely over the dirty wet squelch of Aziraphale's cock thrusting up into his arse. It's an entirely different shade of sound that Aziraphale is only just learning. 

This is nothing like he’d imagined putting hands on Crowley would be, and all the better for it. 

Crowley moans when he's stretched open on the downstroke, hands gone tight on Aziraphale's shoulders. The pace of his bouncing is steady– quick, hard pushes of slippery, clenching squeezes that cause Crowley's prick to leak all over his pubes. Aziraphale lets out a tiny whimper, a wavery curse too faint to really sand off any edge. He wants to lean down, to take Crowley's cock into his mouth, to suck him off with his own fingers buried in his arse until he's coming. 

“Ah– I never imagined –” His voice breaks off in a groan. 

Crowley sits holding him deep and rolls his hips, tightening around him. Sends Aziraphale's hands to cling hard to his waist to grasp at that damp skin, feet curling inside his oxfords. 

“Didn't you?” Crowley gasps, grinds, flexing in Aziraphale's hold in a way that makes his body slide across his palms, deliciously. “C'mon, tell me you didn't imagine this. That you never thought about sliding your dick in my arse.”

Of course he has. But it feels too forward and crass to babble it out without consequence. 

“C'mon, Aziraphale. It's good to want it. Nothing wrong with that.”

Aziraphale shifts and nudges himself that bit deeper, watching Crowley's lips drop in a juddery whimper. The tightness around the base of his cock is so good, he feels that tingling thrum rising up his calves, deltaing across his thighs, letting him know he's going to come so fast it's a little embarrassing. 

This is his one chance. Who knows if he'll get to relive this. Thinking about anything else but the hot, slick pressure around his cock is impossible, and yet– 

God, he wants to safeguard every bit of Crowley he can, because there's something therapeutic about this. How tethered he feels with Crowley's squeezing warmth around him, the weight of his own body glued to cheap leather and the now by a heap of long limbs and red hair– a pair of stunning eyes. 

Aziraphale tucks his lips against Crowley's pale throat, feeling the vibration of a moan through the skin. He starts moving. With intention, taking because he should, because he can. Until each sink in and pull, yank whimpers out of Crowley. 

No, there's nothing wrong with wanting this. “Fuck, I did,” he says, almost maddened, thrusting into that velvet, sucking heat. “Many nights. Saw you with other men and I wished I could be one of them.”

“Tell me what you imagined,” Crowley says, almost broken by the little ah s interspersed between the words. 

“To fuck you slow to savour it. Spending in you and– and remaining inside until I was hard again to have you–” Aziraphale gives three pointed, slow thrusts that make Crowley's body jolt, “ one.more.time.”

He pushes up a fourth time, tightening his pelvis and feeling himself thickening inside Crowley, to then release the tension when he hears a wobbly whine tear in Crowley's throat. And then he does it again. 

“Fuck– You feel even bigger. Feels like you're gonna split me open.”

His voice is nothing but a whiney thread that flows up to the roof. Aziraphale has lost all sense of rhythm, pushing into Crowley– spearing, rapid thrusts, that collide with the messy bounce of Crowley on his cock. Their thighs are sticky with running lube and sweat, and it all feels incandescently filthy in a way that has Aziraphale's belly churning. A deluge of pleasure under his skin threatening to break like a cloudburst. 

“Crowley, I'm going to come–” His balls are tight, so full, cock pulsing, “I'm–”

He doesn't want to come. Doesn't want to see it all end and find himself just holding Crowley's bare skin, his beautiful waist, knowing he has to let go. 

As if reading his mind, Crowley yanks back and lets Aziraphale's cock slide out of him in a wet jolt. Aziraphale is sure he sobs in frustrated desire.

He looks up, dazed and mute, not knowing what to do with his empty hands, with his overheated body and his erection demanding to sink into heat and tightness to get release. 

As sole answer, Crowley dips to kiss his mouth, his own cock jutting out hard. “Shh, it's okay, don't let it end yet. Cool down a bit.”

And then he turns around, to sit back down on his lap, trapping Aziraphale's cock between Aziraphale's own belly and the small of his back. 

Aziraphale knows the meaning of devastation then and there. 

“God, I want you so badly,” he says, coherent, though not knowing how. 

In a swift pull of fingers Crowley lets his hair tumble free, before tugging away his crop top. “Hm. Then have me.” 

Naked. He's entirely naked. 

He finds Crowley's waist, smooths palms across that long, arched spine, following the notch at the centre with a thumb. If having Crowley face to face was exquisite, this is mind-blowingly arousing. He watches the place where his cockhead is leaving glistening smears on Crowley's skin, the long shine of his hair tousled and falling messily across the flex of that back, fit with finely toned muscles. Aziraphale has to card fingers through, has to slip an arm around that waist to kiss a shoulder, to bury his face into those soft red strands. 

Cooling down isn't what's happening between his legs. 

“Please,” he begs, rocking into nothing– aching. Under his forearm, he feels Crowley's abs shift with a rolling shudder. “Please, Crowley.”

Finally, finally, Crowley takes pity on him. 

“Relax, sweetheart.”

Lifting barely, he reaches back to grasp at Aziraphale's cock to angle it just where he's soft from being fucked and flushed from use. The angle of it leaves it all fully exposed to Aziraphale's eyes: the round curve of his buttocks, how Crowley spreads an arsecheek, the slick pulse of his hole when he finally takes Aziraphale's cockhead inside. 

Hundreds of porn videos can't compare. It's the most arousing thing Aziraphale's seen in his life: the stretched rim pulled tight around him, the slow fluttering of it that Aziraphale can feel just under the crown of his cock. 

This must be Tuesday for Crowley. But the thought doesn't chafe, doesn't bite. It reassures him. That he's in the hands of an expert, someone who knows how to drive Aziraphale wild with only his body. 

Crowley’s hands go to Aziraphale's knees to find leverage and sink back down on his erection. The wet, tight slide is unbearable to feel and mind-destroying to watch: how that perfect behind swallows more of his large cock inside, the rim so tightly stretched Aziraphale has to touch it, has to rub a thumb around the squeezing spasm of the slippery edge. 

Before Crowley's full again, arse squished against Aziraphale's solid pelvis, whining with his long throat thrown back. “Still too close to coming?”

There's a rush in Aziraphale's mind that sets in like sudden drunkenness. He's never been impatient, always taught to wait. But he's boiling, can barely stand the pressure. Hot, slick tightness, the involuntary clutch of that hole when Aziraphale inches his hips unable to stop himself. He's suddenly black-eyed with lust, and he's moving before he realises it. 

“Yes, yes, I can't –”

He snaps his hips up, drives himself so deep inside Crowley, he sees him tremble, hears him keen. He fucks Crowley madly, pulling him down on each thrust by the waist where his hands fit like a belt made for it. 

Aziraphale has the breathless certainty of want under his skin. And the burn of desire is relentless. 

It's not enough. The position robs him of easiness and before he knows what he's doing, he's lifting from the sofa with Crowley on his cock, nudging him to his feet. 

Crowley makes a wet noise in his throat. But he's bending over, setting hands on the shaky backrest of one of the chairs left in the room. 

The bent curve of his back is filthy and the push is deeper than before, more satisfying. Aziraphale savours it all. Passes greedy palms across the sides, squeezes the give of an arsecheek to then palm it open just to see more, and twists fingers into that hair that runs over skin like wine. He doesn't stop pounding in, getting hotter from watching Crowley's arse jolt with each hitting smack of thighs, seeing one of those thin hands falling flat on the seat of the chair while the other is almost white from being curled around the back of it. 

“Fuck, yes. Yes, like that, that's what I wanna feel–” Crowley fucks himself back on each driving push, thighs shaking helplessly, words coming in pieces, a wavering break of noise.  “Shit, you're so good, so good. Take me like you want to– make me feel it–”

Aziraphale is gritting his teeth so hard, he's sure he's going to spit them out in pieces. He has Crowley's beautiful arse spread for his own pleasure, fucking it deep, his own cock so hot and sensitive he's not sure how he's lasted so long. 

And there's no one telling him that he shouldn't. Guilt has no space here. 

Crowley's head twists to the side and in the twirl of a second, Aziraphale can see the open o of his mouth, the real shade of pleasure drawn clear, and he's lost to just take and take and take. He fucks Crowley with singleminded desire, fucks him like he's never fucked anyone else, relishes the way he's sure Crowley's cock and balls hang and sway with the movement. 

He feels as if his own body were enveloped by heat, skin stretched so tightly over bones and muscles, Aziraphale's afraid he’ll tear through. His balls hurt, and that tingling, electric spark is already running in every joint and sinew, so he folds over Crowley, desperate to have all the possible contact, to touch him, grasp him, hold him. Crowley shifts, whines beneath him, and Aziraphale sets his mouth on the slope of his shoulder, hair sticking to his overheated lips, and breaks apart. 

He tips Crowley's face a little bit more just to kiss him in this threshold. 

It's dismantling. 

Aziraphale has run out of restraint, run out of self-control, and he buries himself deep inside Crowley, moans and quivers, spilling hot and messy where he's filling him. The tremors skid up his thighs and forearms, but he remains still mostly hard and twitching in Crowley, which is perfect just to feel the aftereffect of Crowley's orgasm in how his tight hole squeezes, how his heartbeats thunder through his skin, how Aziraphale can hear that punch-drunk groan, seeing Crowley's arm moving between his legs. 

Until it stops. 

There's a sliver of presence of mind in Aziraphale to tug Crowley back, so the two can fall down on the sofa, the position allowing Aziraphale to remain buried in Crowley's softly pulsing warmth. Not an end yet. He can feel the wet mess of his own spend starting to leak around his own slowly-softening cock, smearing over his pubes. 

“Fuck.” Crowley's heaving, laughter in his voice, hair fanned out and crushed between them. “‘S been ages since anyone has fucked me so good.”

This is a part of him Aziraphale has never seen. The slow-breathing calm of his silence, the gorgeous lassitude of in-between scenes. 

Crowley tilts his face again in profile: a luscious mouth and a sharp nose, all the long-fanned darkness off full lashes. Aziraphale can't do anything but kiss him. Sets starved lips on him, with the concussed longing of wanting something finite to last forever. 

In the aftermath, it's harrowing to think, Aziraphale might already be falling for this man he's just met an hour ago. 

“Thank you, for everything,” he says, when air is a steadier flux through his nose. 

Crowley decides it's the moment to stand up and break the peace of post-coital closeness, much to Aziraphale's chagrin. “Did I change your mind? I think you're pretty fucking good at this, Aziraphale. I think we’d work great together, as I just showed you.” He grins and grabs a box of tissues from the table, offers them to Aziraphale. Back again to business, as expected. “If you say yes, pre-selections are over. It seems I got everything I wanted with you.”

Me too, Aziraphale thinks, unbidden, for an entirely different reason. He's run out of excuses and he's ready to let Crowley shatter the whole range of his fractious hangups with only this touch. 

It's dangerous in an entirely different way than he’d anticipated. Being found out by his family feels like a vague, formless fear, easily dispelled when compared to standing on the precipice of Crowley's lips. Caught in his eyes. 

“So, what do you say?”

The answer bubbles out of Aziraphale's chest, unwise and honest. “Yes. I say yes.”