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Chapter Text

Things ease, as perhaps they were bound to. It had become too intense, too driven, although Aziraphale cannot imagine who he thought might challenge him.  Had become about making Crowley prove something, rather than simply savouring his subjection.

Affection trickles back as he lets the demon recover, curled up on his mattress or with his head against Aziraphale’s knee, ready and willing to be used, despite everything. Crawling up onto the table to be tethered without question.

Aziraphale doesn’t pretend it’s a punishment this time. Doesn’t tell himself Crowley deserves it. It’s pure pleasure to make him sob, to leave him bruised, to pound into him afterwards.

He allows him to rest, still tied up, sits and reads and tries to parse the sense of urgency that had him pushing so much, so fast. Treating time as if were finite.

The bitterness of experience, he supposes. Centuries of stolen moments that ended too soon.  How can he really be certain his possession of Crowley will not be questioned?  Will not be ended?

That, though, is not the fault of Crowley - who had always adored him, and perhaps still does.

Who lets himself be packed quietly away in a collar box, a fraction of his usual size, and brought to a peaceful little place on the coast, a place where no-one knows them, and no-one need ever find out Crowley is there at all.

Aziraphale confines him to the bedroom at first, tethered upright with his arms against the cross beam that runs the length of the low ceiling, or flat on his back in the queen-sized bed. Brings him down to the living room – a snug, lamp-lit room, all pale greens and deep russet tones – purely to have him on his knees, his mouth warm and sweet around Aziraphale’s cock, tongue coaxing when it is ordered to be and still betweentimes.

It is a week before Aziraphale lets him out in the garden. Allows him to wander just a little, never going out of sight. Encourages him to take the other deckchair and hands him just half a glass of wine to sip.

It’s more obvious, in this setting, how quiet he’s become, how cautiously he moves. Holding his glass more carefully than he used to, cupping it rather than suspending the bowl carelessly between fingers and thumb and waving it about.

Everything about him is soft. Unemphatic. Deferential. Still he will talk when the angel wants him to talk, stumbling over words.

Aziraphale lets the sun go down before he leads him back inside and takes him up to the bedroom again, strips him naked and beats him comprehensively, face down on the bed, switching at whim between paddle and cane and strop, until only the back of his head and neck are left unbruised.

Then he orders him to roll over. Shivering, frightened, tears streaking his face, Crowley does.

Aziraphale straddles his face, rests his weight forward on the headboard, and has Crowley fellate him until he comes.

Chapter Text

Aziraphale has never had a holiday before. Or at least, not one he has chosen for himself, that wasn’t where he had to be on business for upstairs.

In truth he doesn’t do much that is different from what he would do at home. Perhaps an ice cream. A walk to the beach when everyone else is gone.

During which Crowley puts up a good front but is clearly uneasy, agoraphobic, even in this quiet place.

Has spent so long locked away. Seeing no-one. Nothing. 

Physically uncomfortable too, nothing between the rough cotton of unfamiliar jeans and his bruised and tender skin.  

He walks as if in a daze, wondering what it means that Aziraphale has brought him here, is talking to him as though he were – as though – as if it were years ago.  As if he hadn’t spent the morning with cord tethered tightly around his cock and balls, face to the floor, hips elevated, Aziraphale tugging him up again by that cord if he dared relax.

The angel is talking about a steam train trip. Says that of course he doesn’t expect Crowley to endure all that. He can be shut safely in his case, sit snug in Aziraphale’s pocket.

Crowley wipes his eyes with the back of his hand, keeps walking. One step and another, another. He’s done harder things. Endured – oh so very much harder things.

It was cruel to bring him here, to give him a taste of what he used to have. Of what he had once thought they might be to each other. It makes it so much harder to ignore what he has become. 

The air is hot, thick, the colours are overwhelming. Grass and sea and sky. The breeze makes him want to tangle his fingers in his hair, prevent it brushing against his shoulders and neck. Instead he walks. One step and another, and another, and forces himself not to think of how he must walk all the way back.

When Aziraphale stops and seats himself on the bench Crowley drops as if all his strength has failed him at once. Aziraphale continues talking, pointing out a boat, a windsurfer, a cloud. Politely ignoring the tears as they streak down Crowley’s face. He has these moments, sometimes.

He always recovers.

Chapter Text

A different club, a secretary with fewer scruples, a room with a drain in the floor and a sink on the wall, a ring gag with a hollow phallus that opens out into a shallow funnel.

Crowley’s head is fully back, his throat exposed, his long hair pulled and plaited and tethered so tightly that his forehead hurts. Broad straps bind his arms to his sides, a chain his collar to the floor.

They do nothing to hide his bruises, but the men who frequent this place are untroubled by that.

Some ignore him completely. Prefer to piss in the drain or the sink as though he were not there.

Others let their eyes linger, but no more.

Most though, a steady trickle, have used the funnel, faces amused or indifferent or wantonly cruel depending on their temperament. Crowley has been slapped more than once, used as an ash tray as well as a urinal, jacked off into, forced to swallow.

One man even used him with a hand wrapped around his neck, slowly squeezing, until air bubbled up through the gathering piss. Crowley had come close to using his powers that time, had almost hypnotised the man into leaving him be. That is, after all, why Aziraphale has only bound him physically - so that Crowley can protect himself if he really must.

But it must only be a last resort - and the angel will be able to tell if it isn’t. Which, in the end, it wasn’t. Even if Crowley’s throat had ached afterwards, for hours, and his stomach had felt heavy and cold, and sick, his vision blurred.

The men come more regularly as the nights go on, knowing where to find him. Some in twos or threes. They play games, aiming at the funnel, splashing and swearing – at Crowley, at each other. A few deliberately miss, hitting his chest or aiming up his nose. It’s funny, to them.

Aziraphale visits on and off, both when others are there and when they aren’t. Watches but doesn’t interfere.

From their reactions – or rather, from the lack of reaction - Crowley is fairly sure the others can’t even see him.

Once alone, confident of remaining alone, he loosens the chain a little - enough to sit Crowley up on his lap, rocking into him in steady thrusts. He tightens the chain again when he’s finished. Leaves him fresh and clean for the next user.

He doesn’t say much. Vague comments about how Crowley should take this chance to learn. To be generous.

‘Better you than a man. Likely more than one man, given how long you’ve been here. You should be glad to be sparing someone that.’

Crowley is not glad. His face is wet, constantly, eyes dripping tears, mouth saliva. His shoulders and neck muscles spasm with pain, his knees abrade with kneeling, his jaw clenches and aches. The repetition of each day makes his head fog, and yet the humiliation drags him back from that place each time, alert to the gagging reality of human creatures letting out their waste into him. It might be weeks since Aziraphale left him here. He can’t tell.

He begins to recognise some of the faces. The ones who get bolder the more they see him. Who threaten not to stop at piss, who kick him in the ribs and make him wonder exactly what Aziraphale would consider a last resort.

As if summoned – perhaps he has been watching all along – the angel appears, still apparently invisible to others; although they cease at once, clearly under his influence, and move out in single file.  

Crowley sobs as Aziraphale touches him, cracking completely - heaves and writhes and pulls on his chains.

‘Hush now. They’re gone. They won’t be back.’ A few strands of Crowley’s hair have worked free from the braid and leather fastening, and Aziraphale curls the thin lock around his finger, tugs gently to ensure he has Crowley’s attention, ‘and it won’t be much longer. I’ve missed having you about.’

He doesn’t do anything more though. Not this time. Just settles the demon down and leaves him to his fate.

Chapter Text

Aziraphale keeps Crowley safely tucked away in the dungeon for some time after that, the sigil confusing and sapping him, but only to a point. Aziraphale has become skilled in knowing when to use it or leave it off, to keep Crowley just as exhausted as he wants him, but lively enough to be satisfying. To be Crowley.

He was perfectly serious when he said he missed him. Likes to keep the demon’s head on his knee in front of the fire while he reads, playing with his hair. Passive under those caresses, obedient as they become less gentle and more demanding, and trembling lightly after, the taste of cum still in the back of his throat. 

Sometimes Aziraphale will have him crawl up into his lap, as best he can, so that the angel can kiss him. Something else the angel says he has missed, although it was his choice to withhold kisses for so long. Crowley is hesitant at first, sure he will get it wrong somehow, will be unable to relax and let his body take over, but its not as hard as he expects. He still wants to be kissed, to be petted. The rest is instinct, and following Aziraphale's lead. 

Nothing else changes. There are days where he is barely touched, days in the crate, days where he is left burned and bruised. There is little pattern to when or why, and he doesn't seek one. Is glad of the days when his head drifts, and his corporation feels unreal, and he's not tempted to try and think. 

Aziraphale pulls him back though, with words and expectations. Teaches him to tie himself up, close his own wrists in cuffs of leather, tugging them tight with his teeth or the very tips of his fingers; pull on knotted rope that gathers and contracts and stretches his limbs wide, spring metal latches and ratchet metal teeth until they bite, immovable, into his skin.

Often, after that, he lets Crowley sit with his helplessness awhile, wrists behind his back or thighs stretched wide apart, hobbling and exposing. Scared again, as Aziraphale’s pleasures grow more intense - a pattern Crowley does, at last, spot - but so good.

He will gag himself, blindfold himself, chain his slender neck to his tender scrotum and even set the clamps when Aziraphale wants to give him shocks, trembling as he picks them up, flinching as they snap shut. Aware of Aziraphale's heavy gaze, his eager expression, his voice,  instructing or encouraging or hurrying him along.  

There's never any indication of how long it will last. Whether it will start slow or if he will be cast straight into the fire.  

The tally of time in Aziraphale's little book has become valuable to him again. He tracks the days in tiny squares, crossing them through in different colours to demonstrate how long Crowley has been without orgasm, without a trip upstairs, without a single uninterrupted night’s sleep - and also in numbers, wildly disparate, that show how far Crowley’s time has come adrift from real time again. Months in days, days folded into quarter hours.

He adds up this time too, as Crowley begs and breaks with the regular pulse of electricity through his body. Repeats himself in squeals and pleas, writhes and struggles in the snare he set himself. Sobs as Aziraphale leaves him, aware, perhaps, that they will be moving differently through time, and his will not be the faster ride. 

When he returns to Crowley he gags him. Ravishes him. Resumes the cycle. Stays, for a while, and watches. Gloats. Tells the demon what a beautiful sight he is.

Without any confidence - or real interest - in whether Crowley can comprehend it. Crowley seems too far gone now to register much of anything at all. Staring at the space between his legs, shuddering sharply with each shock, keening into the gag relentlessly. Lost. Animal.

Still the angel drags it out, abandoning him at intervals, tweaking at time. Or sitting in his chair and playing deliriously with himself, deliberately frustrating himself, so that it will be all the more intense when he does allow himself to come.

It is weeks, perhaps months, in Crowley’s head, before he is allowed anything resembling sense again. Coming back to himself over days, on cushions and in his cage, given food and time to sleep, and finally, kneeling and bowed before Aziraphale’s chair.

Sometimes, Aziraphale thinks, the demon seems more feline than snake, all angles and fluff and hesitation. Nervous eyes that glance up and skitter away, and just for a second there’s something. Something.

A trick of the light no doubt, but if not, then something very, very wrong. Eyes that look too dark, too round.

Aziraphale takes a firm grip of Crowley’s chin and turns his face up again, orders him to keep his eyes open, makes sure he cannot hide.

No, nothing wrong. Or not more wrong than it should be. Slit pupils, golden eyes. The eyes of the damned. Perhaps not as fiery a gold as they have been before, but that, surely, is the last remnants of weariness

Surely.

Chapter Text

On the whole Aziraphale thinks he would rather let demons at Crowley than angels. Angels would want to destroy him quite literally. The demons are having more fun, clearly too much fun, with him alive.

He has hung him up by his wrists and spread his legs with a bar but left him naked otherwise. Not even a collar or a blindfold or a gag. There are nothing but industrial buildings on this road. The walls are thick and the fences are high.

The demons won’t mind what noises Crowley makes. More coherent, more awake, than Aziraphale has allowed him to be in weeks. Aware it’s not really a kindness.

Crowley had known this was coming, but perhaps not really believed it until it was upon him, surrounding him, biting and mauling and clawing. Lashing him with rope ends and a stiff, spiked, whip.

This, though, is just foreplay. Crowley shrinks into himself as a fetid yellow tongue unravels from the mouth of the demon directly before him, presses against his abdomen and scrapes it’s way up over Crowley’s chest hard enough to leave a long, abraded line; curls up back in the dark, abscessed mouth long enough for the demon to swallow, to savour, and then rolls out again, lingering around the curve of Crowley’s chin only a little more gently, dragging and flattening up across his face as he whimpers, finishing at that sharp little widow’s peak.

The demon bubbles and boils, tentacles pushing the stocky shape of him out in all directions, widening and lengthening and reaching, enwrapping and squeezing Crowley. Slithering greedily into his mouth and throat and anus, pushing him up on a pillar of glistening muscle until he’s set rocking.

A smaller demon scuttles forwards then, sparks spilling from claw-tipped fingers, setting them to dance over Crowley’s balls, cracking with magical fire - and as he shudders and tries to scream, the tentacles push and pulse deeper, clearly visible through the thin skin of his throat, the flat absence of his belly. Crowley convulses, rattling the chains, and is pushed up until his toes leave the ground entirely.

They beat him again like that, swaying on the thick length of a tentacle like a tree trunk, slipping deeper with each shudder, the chitinous surface seemingly impervious both to the blows that go astray, and to Crowley’s teeth as his jaw spasms, forced impossibly wide.

Claws dig into his scrotum, tugging and sparking again, and Aziraphale is forced to adjust himself slightly as Crowley jolts and writhes and tries to scream, as the tentacles tighten and drag and pulse in what is clearly some form of climax - swelling again before they throb a final time and withdraw, already shrinking. Dribbles of fluid escaping as they gather themselves into the demon’s pelt again.

Crowley is barely standing, coughing wetly, fluid trickling down his chin and thighs. Begs, briefly, as a fat hand, a muscular forearm, pushes inside him, finding him lax but not so lax that violence is not needed. Bludgeoning up whilst others tug Crowley down, some of the smaller demons clambering swarming up his legs, adding to the weight, wrapping around and, Aziraphale suspects, frotting themselves against the muscles of Crowley’s thighs and calves.

Someone is still beating his back with rope, keeping a steady rhythm, untroubled that everyone else seems to have moved on to the next stage. Or that a short plump demon with a cock almost as fat as the other’s fist has begun to fuck Crowley to a completely different pulse, knees turned backwards to get more leverage.

So much going on. Aziraphale can barely keep track. The smaller demons clutch and gibber and nip at the back of Crowley’s knees. Talons touch his chest, carve sharp but shallow lines down it, reach for his balls, dig and pull. Aziraphale smells blood, even over the other smells – sulphur and dirt and demon sweat and sex, and still Crowley is being fucked.

Crowley is sobbing, throat raw as he begs Aziraphale to make it stop, as he promises to be good, tells him he loves him, please, he’ll do anything. Anything but this.

The other demons mock, understandably enough. Crowley is a weakling, gone soft. Crying, howling. Not even a demon anymore. They call him unnatural. Wrong. Spit and kick his legs out from under him.  

The next cock is thin and overlong and barbed, goes in easily but makes Crowley howl as it slides back out. The demon is almost skeletal, a thin film of skin over bones that seem randomly chosen from human and goat anatomy. The eyes are pure goat too, the narrow beard matted.

The demon takes Crowley slowly at first, giving him plenty of time to both anticipate and suffer, and when he does speed up Crowley’s legs fail him again.

It makes no difference. He is held in place, trapped - hard, thin fingers wrapped like wires around his thighs, digging in. The crescendo leaves him hysterical, struggling, saying no - please please no, stop, stop, stop.

Aziraphale doesn’t need to tell them to ignore it. They don’t require, as humans might, his reassurance. There is no hesitation, no question of scruples, no fear they will have nightmares later. They are the nightmare.

They also don’t need, as humans do, to rest. Aziraphale has granted them eight hours and will only interrupt if it looks like Crowley might pass out and spoil their fun.

Or they go very much too far, and he has to spirit Crowley back to the bookshop where these creatures cannot follow.

Neither is necessary, at the last. They leave sated. Pleased to have blacked both Crowley’s eyes and left him crossed and recrossed with cuts from the lash, with a wrist sprained, his lip bloody, his scrotum tattered, and his cock limp from where he was forced to come, shaking and revolted by himself.

He is slick as well, smeared with the dirt that seems to cling to the other demons, and also, of course, with their - emissions.

Aziraphale cleans him with a wave of the hand, fixes the wrists and black eyes, and cuts Crowley down.

He collapses to his knees, would fall to his face if Aziraphale didn’t catch him, blinks up through bleary eyes and swollen eyelids.

‘A necessary sacrifice.’ Aziraphale tells him.

He does not explain further. That he is buying good will. That if there is this much contact, this much communication, there may be more in future. A tip off, should above or below be planning anything again. Even – eventually - some space for diplomacy.

It makes no difference, of course. He would have wanted Crowley to suffer it regardless, and he is not obliged to provide an explanation.

Instead he simply brings them home, and settles in his chair, and with those images of profound violation still fresh in his mind he fucks Crowley’s mouth as hard, and as deep, as he can physically manage.  

Chapter Text

It’s painlessly done. There’s not even a blade involved. No wound. Just a smooth, unbroken gradient, curving down from Crowley’s waist. Hairless beyond the fine fair fuzz that also decorates his upper arms and thighs (the hair on his lower limbs is darker, redder, like the hair on his chest, the trail that now stops, abruptly, where it used to open out again).

Crowley might always have been that way. Sexless, as angels are meant to be. As dolls are, however dramatic their pert, plastic curves or squared jaws.  Sensation dulled and blunted, even as he is buggered, as Aziraphale hits that tender spot inside and there is no answering throb, no escalation, no fire.

No chance to lose himself in arousal, and still less orgasm. Instead, Crowley is conscious, present, registering every thrust, every clutch and muttered imprecation.

There is no frustration, but still less is there pleasure.  Crowley is a receptacle, and nothing but.

Betweentimes Aziraphale lets him be, gagged but not otherwise bound, thoughts spinning, bruises and burns blooming before they fade. The former remind Aziraphale of ink in water, blurring ochre at the edges, paler in the middle. The burns are red and angry, scab over and peel, then go shiny and stretched-looking, and at last swallow themselves from the outside.

Its been a long time since Crowley went unblemished - beyond the unmistakable stain of the fallen, of course. A long time since he was near to full strength. Aziraphale enjoys it. Makes Crowley ride him, Aziraphale’s hands curled around his waist, pressed against his ribs, feeling the flex of them beneath his palms.

He can count almost every one. All those valleys and bones. They give when he presses, as though Crowley were hollow inside, just waiting to be filled. 

He stills when Aziraphale tightens his grip again, taking over for the last few thrusts before he comes.

As soon as he has caught his breath he pushes Crowley off him, back. Climbs over him and presses his hands down on Crowley’s shoulders, holds him there.

For a moment nothing happens, and then the miracle catches and he is changing Crowley again, starting at the demon's fingers.

He doesn't need to look to know that they're folding, contracting, rooting into Crowley's palms - which then bend again, creasing across and hinging into his swivelling wrists.

Unlike the other, this is not painless. Crowley can feel the tear as his muscles shift and fold, the burn as bones shrink and split, and his arms ravel themselves up into nothing. He jolts under Aziraphale’s hands, blunt sounds that should be sharp shrieks swaddled in the gag. 

He judders again as Aziraphale slides down, presses his palms to Crowley’s hips - but instead of the agony he expects there is a warm fog rising in his head, a heaviness behind his eyes, a slow spinning. He has one last coherent thought - that Aziraphale is sedating him, and he should be grateful for it – before he falls unconscious.

Crowley wakes to find himself limbless. Not even a tail. Nor a bump to mark where each of his arms and legs were.

The second thing he notices is the binding upon his powers, and from that the collar that Aziraphale is likely using in place of the usual armlet.

He doesn’t notice that he has a vulva until Aziraphale touches it - but then it jumps to the forefront of his attention, wet and tender, already well-used. An echoing soreness in his backside means he’s been plugged ungently with something.  

‘I’m glad you’re awake.’ Aziraphale says mildly, still fingering Crowley, although the demon can’t possibly need it. Aziraphale had dispensed with his refractory period whilst his plaything was unconscious, used that doubly-helpless body until it was loose and sodden. 

Which is why Aziraphale is now left feeling lazy and sated and disinclined to thrash the demon as he intended to.

Tomorrow will be soon enough.  

Chapter Text

Like this, there is no obstruction to the cut of a lash or the thrust of a cock. No hiding possible. Aziraphale rolls Crowley over with his foot, face up or face down, as wanted. Holds that skinny torso in place between his hands or tight between his thighs. Keeping it steady as he commences the flogging. Short, staccato blows that he can feel in the flex of the demon beneath him. Hear in the distress as he grows quicker, sharper, more brutal.

Standing provides more leverage, more power, but kneeling is intimate. He takes his fill of both, admiring the flush of pinks and purples, the cushioned softness of Crowley as the lash does it’s wicked work. The warmth and shudder as Aziraphale pushes into – through – it.  

Limbless, Crowley is easily picked up and carried, pressed down onto the machine in the alcove, just one band around that skinny waist to prevent collapse as the ridged phallus Aziraphale has chosen drives relentlessly in and, more painfully still, withdraws.

Crowley is panting, slipping deeper as the thing drives up, every ounce of weight on that one point, eyes wide and wet. Aziraphale mops at the tears, the mess of saliva where the gag digs into the side of the demon’s mouth, brushes a kiss against a forehead that tastes of salt sweat.

‘Quiet now.’ He murmurs, stroking roughly over Crowley’s scalp. The demon’s hair is short at present, shorter than it has ever been, just a soft red fuzz really, and the texture still a novelty. ‘Be good for me.’

The angel takes a small drink back to his chair by the fire, turning it so that Crowley will not be in his line of sight, and spends a pleasant hour or two with a book of old maps, the steady beat of the machine and occasional whimper only background until he is ready for Crowley again.

His awareness of Crowley – the connection he has been increasingly conscious of for a while now, the thing that makes him certain he could locate Crowley anywhere in the world quite effortlessly – is even less obtrusive. Just a quiet assurance that Crowley is there.

It only coalesces into knowledge of something more when the angel chooses to reach for it, laying down his book and resting his head against the back of the chair with his eyes closed, the taste of Crowley’s distress and discomfort, the confused repeating buzz of his mind, gently rising through his consciousness.

He palms himself absently through his trousers. The demon’s individual thoughts are not decipherable, but the angel can tell they’re tangled and ashamed, fearful and yearning. Can feel the way they intensify as he stands and walks towards Crowley, cups the demon’s chin and tilts it up so he can meet those golden eyes.

So bright, even red-rimmed and shadowed with exhaustion.

‘You’ve been quite good.’ Aziraphale tells him, and now he can taste relief in Crowley’s thoughts, and a little shame, perhaps because Crowley isn’t sure he’s been good, perhaps because there is still enough sanity in that head to appreciate how twisted this all is.

Crowley topples, of course, as the strap is removed, but Aziraphale is there, already lifting and carrying his abbreviated love over to the chair, sitting Crowley in his lap, nothing but his trousers undone, pulled down out of the way as he lines himself up and drives deep in at once, where Crowley is loose with being fucked but bruise-fat with it too.

It doesn’t take long. He sets Crowley down on the carpet this time, within reach, and goes on with his book.

It’s a loose pattern at first. Crowley is moved from the floor to the machine, from the machine to a spot before Aziraphale’s chair, back to the machine again, over the course of days. Sometimes the angel just lets him sleep - Aziraphale has new tenants, new acquisitions, times he cannot be indulging himself with Crowley.  

Besides, it’s good to remind himself there is a world outside still, changing all the time. New shopfronts, new world leaders. Neighbours he can help in blessings and small nudges on to the right path. It is important, he knows, that there is still free will in their actions. 

For those who are lost, he can only mitigate their impact.

He still plans for Crowley to be his assistant in this, at some undefined point in the future, but for now he’s happy having such a simple toy to play with. Even more portable once he takes the size down a little, in increments, until the machine is rather more devastating - and Crowley correspondingly louder.

Aziraphale scolds the demon for that, slams the door behind him and says he’s going to read upstairs instead, but he’s not truly cross.  It’s more that he enjoys the apologies when he comes back, the tearful, tender blowjob he gets from Crowley before he lets the demon collapse into sleep.

When Crowley wakes it’s to the grip of fingers on his jaw, the push of a fresh gag – one with a ring –into his mouth. He whimpers, disorientated, unable to see through the blindfold he must have slept through. Rolled over partway so that Aziraphale can fasten the buckles more easily.

He’s pushed all the way over, face to the mattress, before Aziraphale acknowledges he’s awake. Just a quiet murmur of ‘there you are’ before he reaches out for Crowley’s essential self, demonic self, and tugs at his wings, bringing them out, cresting Crowley’s shoulders, unfurling.

Smaller of course, as Crowley is smaller, and even finer boned. Aziraphale runs fingers over them from root to tip, considering. Concludes that only the humeri are solid enough to set a binding around. A silver hoop on a silver chain from which he can hang Crowley, raising him up from the floor to dangle at arm’s length.

‘A bauble,’ Aziraphale carries Crowley before him, like a lantern, as he mounts the stairs to the bookshop, hangs the demon at the same turn of the staircase he used before, and stands back to admire it, still pleased with the effect.

‘Beautiful.’  

Chapter Text

Aziraphale luxuriates in uncomplicated possession over the next week. Unhooks his toy to play with it regularly, discarding it diagonally in his desk tray or tucked between two cushions where it can’t roll away. Mostly though he hangs it up again like a model aeroplane and admires it.

January is always quiet, but quieter this year even than usual. No-one comes to the bookshop to interrupt them. The phone doesn’t ring. Aziraphale takes longer, more luxurious sessions, holding Crowley in place between his thighs as he sits, dangling from hoops and buckles, throat contracting and wet and glorious.

For the moment he has closed himself off to Crowley’s thoughts, prefers to forget Crowley’s personhood. It might be a doll in his hands, warm and trembling and always ready.

He loosens his hold only long enough to shift his grip again, feels the few choked breaths Crowley is able to take, escaping warm and intimate against his skin before he is pulling the demon tight in again.

‘So urgent, the demands of these bodies.’ He muses, words blurred both with lust and the blood pounding in Crowley’s ears, ‘such violent cravings for things we don’t even need.’

Another shallow withdrawal, a deeper thrust, a groan of satisfaction. Crowley is smothered, light-headed, swallows again without conscious thought, drawing another low moan from the angel.

‘Tongue.’ Aziraphale says. That too is swollen, squashed, as it slides and presses obediently, just at the root of him, unable to coil back any further, Crowley’s jaw twitching under the strain. Aziraphale adjusts his grip again, becoming conscious of just how long he has been sitting like this, his fingers growing stiff with clutching.

He’ll have to stop soon, but for now it is sufficient to move one hand to the back of Crowley’s head, to squeeze a little more firmly with his knees.

Crowley’s wings try to flare, fail and fall still.

Only when Aziraphale does begin to move with purpose, back and forth in Crowley’s narrowed throat, cock striking the same spot repeatedly, does the demon comes to life in his hands again; fluttering and frantic.

Naughty really, but gorgeous too. Layering something fresh and frenzied over the steady acceleration of in and out.

Afterwards, thrumming and weak with pleasure, he finds he can’t be moved to even simulate anger.

Only holds the demon close, insists every drop is swallowed, and allows himself to grow soft before he withdraws.

He tidies later still. Puts the demon back in it’s accustomed place, picks up the feathers loosened in the tussle, plumps cushions. Considers, again, that he will have to reopen the shop at some stage.

His mind running on these familiar tracks, his body performing it’s accustomed actions, he doesn’t really take in, at first, what is strange about the feathers he has set for the moment in his pen cup, the sun piercing through the gap above the window blind and lighting them up.

Making them gleam where no gleam should be.

Aziraphale is back across the room in four strides, gathering them to take them to the window, to see them in full light.

They are a dark copper, it is true, but they are definitely copper, bright and shining. Not brown, or grey. Still less black.

Surely Crowley can’t be…

Aziraphale doesn’t complete that thought. It’s too ridiculous.

Even if it were possible, it would certainly be a sudden thing, just as sudden as falling was. A tip of the scale and a rush upwards into light. It wouldn’t happen by increments and leave the demon something in between. Not least because there is nothing in between to be.

Why now, anyway, even if it were… if Crowley was...

Aziraphale forces himself to face it, unpalatable as it is. There had been moments before. Moments he had dismissed as his imagination. He cannot ignore this.

If Crowley were rising, why would it be now?

In linear terms, disregarding all his twists and abuses of time, and counting from the day Crowley made that oh-so-foolish promise, it has been approximately five years. Even before that there was a period of estrangement from hell. If there was ever a point at which Crowley were deemed ‘good’ that would surely have been the right moment.

It makes no sense. Besides, there must be other possibilities. Perhaps Aziraphale’s own angelic power is leaking through their connection, adulterating Crowley’s corporation. Perhaps some odd form of purgatory, where he is burning the hell from Crowley through pain.

Anything rather than…

He ought to be pleased, he supposes, at the thought of Crowley rising. He would have been once. Now he just worries – knows for a fact – that they cannot possibly continue as they have been if Crowley becomes an angel again.  It would be unseemly. Dissatisfying.

And besides, he couldn’t possibly hide a new angel from heaven. He’s powerful now, but he’s not omnipotent. Something like that would echo across the spheres, and once they knew Aziraphale would never be allowed to keep him.

Oh, it’s nonsense, all of it. he’s building this up out of nothing. A moment where Crowley’s eyes looked dark, a few demons teasing Crowley that he wasn’t one of them anymore, an odd lot of feathers.

Aziraphale carries them downstairs to shut in the drawer with the others and resolves to not think on it again until he must.

It is not the first resolution he has made that he expects to break.

Chapter Text

Crowley behaves no differently, at least. If he is aware of any change within himself he has chosen to ignore it. Still an obedient pet after he has been allowed to surface, his limbs and length restored, his genitals reshaped, the collar with the binding symbol removed.

He doesn’t question Aziraphale’s exasperated thrashing of him when it comes, doesn’t wonder at Aziraphale’s fierce reiterations that Crowley is a demon, wicked, fit to be punished eternally. Has no reason to think there’s anything more behind it than there usually is.

Aziraphale half wishes he would. Notice something wrong, ask how he can help. Like he used to.

It is only half a wish though. There would be nothing Crowley could do. Whatever is happening is no more in his control than Aziraphale’s. Perhaps even less.

Aziraphale thinks it over again with a pen in his hand, the notebook he had dedicated to Crowley now within ten pages of being full – which seems rather more portentous than it had - jotting down what one might call lines of inquiry if one were feeling generous.

Ask Demons?  Ask Heaven?!

He has no faith in the honesty of any of those beings.

Research sigil again.

As though anything might have changed.

He hesitates to write his next thought. Leaves a space. Takes a breath. Puts it down.

Worst Case Scenario.

He underlines the words, puts a dash: Crowley is rising, inexorably, and it is beyond my control.

There. It’s out, on the page. There is nothing to be done with it, no more thought required to be given to the possibility. Aziraphale has not come to terms with the thought of losing Crowley, but he has acknowledged it. Faced it.   

Other possibilities.

• Crowley is rising due to mortification of the flesh (on paper this looks ludicrous, but who knows, it has certainly been done with saints) – over which I do have some measure of control.

It is also a ready-made excuse, should Aziraphale ever need one.  Since these changes must be positive, why would he not continue with what seemed to be causing them?

• Crowley is not rising but the suppression of his demonic powers is making him appear less demonic.

In which case nothing need be done.

How can I test which it is?

Leave him unbound for a period of time and see if he continues to change?

An unsatisfactory experiment. Crowley has been changing very subtly, likely over years.

For the first time since he began it, Aziraphale has an impulse to tear a fresh-written page from the notebook. To rip it across and across again until it becomes nothing more than confetti and then scatter it to atoms. The words sit stark, black, almost smug in their neat cursive lines.

Instead he crosses it through, cancels it in one long slash.

The truth is there is nothing Aziraphale can do – no experiment that will really make a difference.

Later, when he has calmed (when Crowley has helped him calm in the only way left to them both) and come back to the book, Aziraphale finds he has left a small space at the bottom of the page, just an inch or so that his strike-through has not reached.

In it he writes one word. Each letter precisely spaced. 

Patience.

Chapter Text

Even the thought that he might be accelerating whatever is happening is not enough to deter the angel from vice while he can still be vicious.

Even the acknowledgement that it is vice. That’s its not – something else. something palatable. Excusable.

Or the spiral of his thoughts around the same conundrum, reaching the conclusion that is no conclusion, that he can only wait and see (a phrase he detests).

In all this Crowley is warm and reassuring. Pliable in every sense of the word. Slakes the angel’s desires, soaks up his frustration and fury. Bruises heal. Tears dry, wounds scab over in exhausted sleep.

Aziraphale finds himself grateful for such constancy. It may not be permanent, but it still feels it. Crowley is as wax when Aziraphale caresses him, tells him how sweet he is, how pretty, how perfect, and still scuttles to obey when the angel is firm, or angry - not, he sometimes admits, angry with Crowley in particular, although of course Crowley will bear the brunt. 

He lets the demon’s hair grow again, astonished how long it takes to get to it’s full length without help. He knows he'll chop it all off one day, but for now he likes to play with it, plait it, coil it around his fingers and pull Crowley in close.

Crowley’s metamorphosis is slower even than his hair. A faded freckle or two over years – and that might have happened anyway. The copper is still very much there, proof that Aziraphale didn’t imagine it – but it doesn’t increase. 

Aziraphale thinks about sharing again but somehow it is never the time. Is accosted by demons, persistent as black beetles even after the sixth time of declining, and threatens to smite them. It works for a while. 

He begins buying his own particular demon clothes again: a short skimpy top edged with red lace, a slinky, silvery kilt. Waist training corsets that leave him breathless, underclothes with holes in strategic places. It’s fun to dress Crowley up, to slide his hand beneath the drape of cotton or play peek a boo through some flimsy jet-spangled net.

To leave, sated, just gently nudging the tempo as he leaves the room, so that Crowley has barely caught his breath before the angel is returning, refreshed and eager to continue. A trick one can play for days, again and again, and watch one’s victim wear thinner and thinner, dropping with tiredness, almost unable to crawl where one tells him.

Still trying to though, locked into the habit of good behaviour.

Crowley has barely recovered – has not, in fact, truly recovered - when Aziraphale decides they need a holiday again, brings him stumbling upstairs in a borrowed jumper and old jeans far too tight over his swollen and bound-up balls. 

Even filtered through the blinds the early morning light makes his eyes water. Outside it is worse. Crowley needs the angel’s steady arm to guide him to the car, to open the door for him and buckle him in.

He drops almost at once into sleep again, too tired to be curious, snoring softly. It makes Aziraphale remember all over again how fond he has always been of Crowley, despite everything. He forgets, sometimes, lets it get buried beneath everything else Crowley is to him now.   

There’s no-one else, quite definitely no-one else, he would ever wish to be with in this way.

They have arrived by the time Crowley wakes again. 

Aziraphale doesn't ask what he thinks of the cottage - even if Crowley had an answer it would likely only be what he knew Aziraphale wanted to hear. 

It is not the same one that Aziraphale took for their last holiday together – their first holiday together – but it is on the same pattern. Striking distance of a small town in case Aziraphale gets bored, sturdy whitewashed walls, the sea close by. 

The garden is just coming into it's green as well. Aziraphale huddles them both in a blanket and a wicker chair on the brick patio with a mug of tea between them – mostly for himself, but a few sips for Crowley – listening to the distant cry of seagulls, the quiet after London’s busy winter.

Crowley’s jeans are almost too tight to unbutton one handed, but the zip by contrast slides open with the barest touch, strained by the pressure beneath it. It takes very little to make the demon’s cock grow firm in his hand – Aziraphale is no longer sure it’s even arousal these days. It might just be mindless obedience – and not very much more before Crowley shudders and comes.

Aziraphale scolds gently, makes Crowley suck his fingers clean – the air in the garden is colder with wet fingers, and he wraps them around his mug to get them warm again – and then slither down to his knees on the damp brick patio, head and shoulders still warm and swathed and close as Aziraphale pops his own buttons beneath the blanket, but everything else chilling rapidly.

He daren’t rush the job, or skimp, but he is grateful when Aziraphale simply takes a firm hold of the back of his neck and makes all his practice redundant. He feels exposed out here, in this unfamiliar place with it’s no longer familiar daylight, and this will make it quick, will get it over with.

Indoors he is stripped again, stood in the lintel of the redundant scullery door – it has all been knocked through now, kitchen and scullery, but there are still two doorways – and bound with his arms apart and over his head, but that is a fear he breathes daily, no longer even thinks about.

Even the appearance of a new toy, shaped like a blunt spear, metallic, gently humming with electrical power, does no more than make him blink.

At first.

Chapter Text

Part of the pleasure of a holiday, Aziraphale is finding, is coming home again. To be amongst familiar things: tall cases of books to choose from, the desk lamp lit cosily against the dullness of the day outside, the tick of the grandfather clock, the knowledge that Crowley is underneath the floorboards, quietly hidden away.

If he tries, Aziraphale can sense him still, awake but… absent, somehow.  Something in there blunted and – well, one can’t really call it regression, since there is nothing to regress to. Angels are made fully formed.  

Aziraphale wonders, half his mind on scanning shelves and weighing up whether he’s a Regency mood or a Bloomsbury mood, what Crowley’s mind was like before… well before.

Fizzing over like a firework? Neatly compartmentalised? Random, precise? A slalom between the two states?

Now it’s a little like a music box, running in well-worn grooves. Not quite the same pretty tune each time but terribly familiar.

Like Crowley’s words, tumbling over each other sometimes: the same pleas, the same promises, jumbling and forming new patterns but not really changing from experiment to experiment, place to place.

The way his resilience cracks, just subtly different each time, the way his body moves, still sinuous but dropping into angles and edges when he’s forced to be upright – like he was in that doorway.

Not the ideal place to keep him, really. Aziraphale had masked his face, conscious of Crowley’s eyes as he moved from kitchen to living area and back again, but there was still the turn of the demon’s head, trying to hear, the taut height of him, stretched out as he was. The awareness of how anxious he was in this strange place.  

Betweentimes, anyway. The electric wand had been efficient distraction. Not as violent as the machine they normally use, but with the benefit that it was something Aziraphale could wield, hold in his hand and feel the connection as he applied it to Crowley’s thigh or belly or balls, the give and flinch of each differing part of him, adjust it between settings with a flick of a thumb or a thought, so that Crowley could never be quite sure what to expect from each touch – a pleasant buzz, a small pop, or something very nasty indeed.

Aziraphale had pulled up a kitchen chair after a time, made himself comfortable, make it clear he was planning a nice long session. Had rummaged in kitchen drawers and cabinets (the cottage was well-stocked, he must remember to leave a good review) and pulled out metal weights and tin foil, paring knives and a garlic crusher, a spirit stove and emergency torch and tealights, a spatula with a long, flexible handle.

Had laid them all out on the table that first day, while Crowley was still trembling from the first dose, spread them before the widening eyes he’d want to mask later, confident that Crowley would say nothing, do nothing, to spoil it.

Still, it would have been nice to have somewhere else to keep him. Perhaps, Aziraphale thinks, he should get his own cottage on the coast. It would be nice to have somewhere to escape to when London gets a bit too lively. Somewhere truly private he can furnish as he’d like. A bit of a garden – Crowley might still enjoy the plants, if the surroundings become familiar enough.  

Yes, he’ll get onto that tomorrow. In the meantime he takes down a copy of To the Lighthouse to sink into until dinner.

After which he’ll be eager (rather than just tempted) to visit the dungeon again.

Not for anything elaborate this time though. He had made a masterpiece of Crowley back in that cottage, returning to the canvas repeatedly, painting him in welts and bruises, dotting him with burns, patterning him with nicks and cuts in all the most tender places.

Then the shocks, making him flex and sob and shiver, weights swinging dizzily between his spread thighs, jerking his bruised and battered balls back and forth with them, his cock bobbing, fat with the winding end of a dough hook inside it.  

At last, drooping and weary, he had almost fallen headfirst into the boot of the car, had slept all the long drive home.

So, that impulse to crush and break sated for the moment, it is enough to make Crowley heave himself up over the edge of his cage, and bugger him before leaving him again.

Upstairs Aziraphale finds a demon at the bookshop door.

This time he doesn’t send it away. He did want their goodwill, after all.

Chapter Text

Crowley is neither more nor less co-operative than he was the last time Aziraphale let him be violated by his fellow demons.

Aziraphale has bound his arms behind his back this time, set him on a mat in the middle of an empty gymnasium, bound his hair up tight to his head and added a posture collar for good measure.

There is a long, dark demon who casts no shadow who makes particular use of that, raising Crowley in the air or forcing him face down to the floor.

There are more of them this time, but many are the same ones as before. The very tip of that thick rough tongue Aziraphale remembers has already pushed between Crowley’s thighs and is busily scraping his balls raw – a gritty meaty sound evidence enough as it works back and forwards over the same tender flesh – whilst someone else is up to their studded wrist cuff in Crowley’s arse, and already pushing past that point.

The demon – his demon – is left kicking in a futile sort of way, mechanically, then flinching his upper body just as pointlessly as his mouth is dragged firmly up cratered thighs and over a crusted and pustulent cock.

Aziraphale prefers not to speculate as to the taste, but Crowley is already gagging. Possibly even trying to bite, but the thrust of a talon between his back teeth soon stops that. Others catch in the roll of hair, tug his head back as the bird demon ravishes his mouth in quick, sharp thrusts. Yet more anchor themselves by clutching at Crowley’s arms and shoulders, leaving streaks of blood behind where they’ve torn the skin.

Quick, but violent, and when he’s finished Crowley’s mouth is weeping yellow and black down his chin, his chest racked with coughs as he tries to bring the foul stuff up from his throat - but there is already a tentacle winding around his head, pressing between his teeth, making it impossible to spit anything more out, another edging beneath the posture collar, pulling it more tightly against his throat, choking him that way as well.

Crowley’s eyes are streaming, his legs kicking again as another tentacle pushes itself into his arse, pulsing and fattening as it works itself deeper, rolling and shaking him between the two limbs, even lifting him off the mat, suspended on his side, the bulge of the things inside him clearly visible.

The smaller demons swarm them both, swinging up and clinging to Crowley’s back, his calves, his waist, biting shallowly, adding to the weight as he is tilted and pushed, quite clearly, from his arse in the air down onto the monstrous length in his throat, and back up again to drive the second length deeper.

Crowley is probably howling, but there is no sound, not even the strangled noise that would escape a gag.  

Someone finds a length of leather – a belt, most likely – and the small demons scatter as they ply it, dropping off and then clambering up Crowley’s front again where they are out of the way of the beating. The blows fall evenly, steadily, wherever the demon can find a free strip of skin, follow Crowley down as the softened tentacles withdraw, empty, and Crowley crashes back on the mat, the imps dropping off and rolling out of the way.

Crowley flings himself back, scrambling to get away from the hands that reach for him, but the dark demon has already caught him by the collar, dragging him back, and Aziraphale tells him to behave, sounding more bored by his antics than angry, and he can do nothing but submit.

Dawn finds him pale and shaking, barely able to stand even with help. He stumbles down steps into a cellar, Aziraphale’s hand on his arm, unable even to wonder where they are going. Is led through a door that takes him – only this once, Aziraphale tells him – into the bookshop.

He barely hears it. Already he is changing, shrinking, bonds dropping off him, limbs fusing, scales erupting all over.

A small, black snake, a thing Aziraphale can gather in his two hands and drop into a terrarium and leave in plain sight. Can close the lid on, and be certain through virtue of the symbol etched into that lid, will stay where it’s put.

He doesn’t sexually interfere with Crowley like that – although soon he finds the in-between stage has potential at this smaller size, that he can trap his hemipenes outside his body and suspend him from them, shuddering and trying to coil protectively around them – but it amuses Aziraphale to have him there. To have people in the shop again with him there. To lock the main door behind them and take him out and make him something more like himself, soft skin and bright hair, something Aziraphale will pin down with one hand and breach with the other, making him ready, will smack with a ruler only half the length of himself, will bind round and round with a length of tape, and lock doubled over in an attaché case, and take about to book fairs and restaurants, setting it snugly between his feet as he eats his meal.

Of course he’s not always upstairs, and regular customers will ask after the snake when it’s missing. Aziraphale's responses are always variations of the same thing. It’s too much stimulation for him sometimes, being in the shop, he says. People tap on the glass or insist that he’s not like any other snake they’ve ever seen and they want a closer look.

At the cottage – once purchased – he has a smaller space still. Just an old fashioned goldfish bowl with sand in the bottom, a book and weight set on top less to keep him in (he wouldn't dare escape) than to make sure the space is kept as small as possible.

For the full size Crowley he has a closet built. Slatted doors and a solid rail fixed at top and bottom that he can tether himself to, stretched out or seated or doubled over. Aziraphale likes to make him gag himself too, likes to finish up with a vibrator or a volley of electric shocks before he closes the door on him. 

They stay for weeks in the summer, every year, and often at spring and harvest festival too. There are no close neighbours, but there are people close enough that they start to think of Aziraphale as a fixture, greet him in the small high street of the nearest small town, offer him lifts and gifts of garden produce, ask him when he’s leaving London for good, then.

Some, nosier still, ask whether he has a lady friend, a fella, someone anyway. 

Yes, Aziraphale says, there's someone back in London. Perhaps he'll come down one day. 

At his feet, in his case, bound hand and foot, the best part of a pencil buried inside him rubber end first, Crowley remains oblivious. 

Chapter Text

Aziraphale spends almost twenty years looking in the wrong place for the next visible change. If anyone were watching – some omnipotent being more interested in the absurdities of an angel than the fact the human race has barely scraped through another decade without starting world war three – they might almost find it funny to see the time Aziraphale wastes on manifesting Crowley’s wings, looking in his eyes, mapping his freckles.

The truth is, the angel has never inspected himself a fraction as often. A glance in the mirror to check he’s tidy before he goes out. Trips to the barbers. The odd frivolous moment of dressing up.  

The appearance of a grey hair – a hair darker than all the rest – might have gone unnoticed for some time. Probably was.

Finding it, though, is enough to make him look for other changes, and now, if someone were watching, they would see consternation, the slow unfold of wings before the mirror, the turn and tilt of them in the light, the fret of one palm against the other as the angel tries to take in what it means.  

Objectively speaking the new feathers are quite pretty, not coming in random as the demon’s did but edging each wing with the palest shade of milky tea, soft and subtly pearlescent.  

But they are not white, they are not the feathers of an angel, and there is not just one or two.

If it is meant to be a warning, an instruction to stop, Aziraphale feels it’s hardly the most explicit.

He supposes he should be more afraid, but he remembers the fall too well. This, he is certain, is not how it happens. Gradually, painlessly.

This is something else. Something, he is sure, to do with his connection to Crowley. Something else being shared besides demonic and celestial power. 

And while he wouldn’t want to be a demon – a thousand times no – Aziraphale finds himself singularly untroubled by the thought of no longer being wholly angelic. Of drifting, like Crowley, a short way towards some mid-point that is neither demon nor angel.  

Rather likes the idea actually. They might be the only two of their kind, separated out from the host and the swarm in their own small category.

Yes, that’s distinctly appealing. It could almost be a sign that they belong together, rather than an indication that anything is wrong.

Certainly that is what he will tell Crowley if he ever notices the changes.

Aziraphale flourishes his wings again. Admires them, now the shock of them has worn off, and then tucks them away.

Chapter Text

Nothing happens to challenge Aziraphale’s version of events. Changes in the world outside barely touch them. Oh – some things do, of course. The coldest winter in London since 1963 coincides with the pedestrianisation of Oxford Street in memory of the mayor who first proposed it, and a ‘frost fair’ is held all down the length.

There is a renaissance in print magazines, and the short story form.

The first club Aziraphale chose to show Crowley off at closes and reopens under new management. The scrupulous young secretary has gone – no longer young, but presumably still scrupulous – to work for a firm of engineers.

By now though Aziraphale is spending more time in the other club – the one that remains almost exactly as it always had been, with it’s lush curtained booths, scuffed and padded rooms for privacy, horrible concrete chambers with drains for the messiest scenes. Men begin to recognise them, approach Aziraphale with suggestions, fantasies, urges. Things their own subs have vetoed, or things they wouldn’t even suggest to anyone else.

Some ask if Crowley will be willing. Others clearly understand that Crowley is a cipher in this. Still Aziraphale pretends the demon will be consulted, not wanting to encourage such wickedness.

The answer, though, is almost always yes. If Crowley can’t manage his own behaviour – and Crowley is far better at behaving for humans that he is for demons – Aziraphale is happy to step in. Wind back memories, pause time, give the demon ten minutes to calm before he forces his tears to dry, takes him completely in hand, his body obeying the angel’s wishes despite the quaking and nausea inside.

Even his pulse dropping down.

Internally, especially the first time, things are worse than before – Crowley is shocked, terrified, distraught. All his flight instincts heightened at finding his body is in no way his own.

None of it shows. None of it can. He is literally a doll, a device, lips turning up at the corners as far as the gag allows, eyes half closed. Trapped inside this too solid flesh, waiting for time, and the human punters standing over him, to resume their assault.  

‘Yes, that seems to work.’ Aziraphale says. ‘Now, since I can’t leave you here completely defenceless, I shall be sitting in this corner.’ A flick of the wrist, an armchair and a patch of carpet, incongruous and somehow obviously invisible to others, ‘and I shall also be controlling your reactions.’

Tears still sting Crowley’s eyes, but fail to fall. He tries to turn his head, to make a sound, to appeal. He can do none of it.

The only movement, as Aziraphale crosses the room to sit down, conjuring a newspaper to his hand, is the rise and fall of Crowley’s chest, and that, Crowley realises, is because Aziraphale is allowing it.

After that little episode Crowley gets an undeserved reputation for being more or less unbreakable – although Aziraphale always loosens his control eventually, amused at the sense of achievement it seems to give people to force Crowley to scream.

Not that he doesn’t enjoy it himself.   

Then, as quickly as his interest quickened, Aziraphale grows bored of the clubs again, feels the contrary impulse to shut Crowley away, keep him quiet and confined and suffering even when Aziraphale isn’t present. Have him all the weaker and more distraught when Aziraphale comes back to him.

Fiddles with time so that Crowley spends long days tethered over the fucking machine, his arse impaled relentlessly, his cock throbbing inside the chastity device.

Aziraphale makes him count as well, sounding each number aloud until he can speak no more, shuddering and stammering, losing his place, half-dropping with tiredness, and Aziraphale finds that an excuse for worse punishment again.

In reality nothing Crowley does will make much difference. Aziraphale is in the mood now where each excess leads to another, and each only sharpens his appetite. Heals and does damage and heals and damages again.

He also knows full well that Crowley cannot be held responsible for his reactions. His head is nothing but fog, fear, slavishness. His body reacts without thought; becomes aroused, shivers and struggles and screams. Sobs and jerks and whimpers. Crowley has no conscious control of it.

Aziraphale scolds him anyway. Tells him it’s his own fault – and in his exhausted and pliant state Crowley cannot help but believe it. Apologises, weeping, repentant, adoring. So broken, barely able to think at all.

Aziraphale keeps him there, letting up only when he must.

Until that becomes too much of a good thing, as well, and then he fondles Crowley again, and lets him rest. Becomes generous, over generous, with attentions, careful touches, soft tones. Frees his cock and brings him off with coaxing words and near lyrical appreciation.

Tells him he’s forgiven, that the angel knows he tries to be good.

The truth is, Aziraphale has missed having him around. Likes seeing him, curled up in his bowl on the coffee table in the cottage or kneeling at Aziraphale’s feet in some silly flimsy frock from the market.

Likes, even, to talk to him sometimes. Just about small, inconsequential things. Chit chat.

Not asking for Crowley’s opinion, still less expecting Crowley to have one. Just thinking aloud but with the pleasure of having someone to address it to. The way anyone might talk to a pet, not needing or wanting a response.

Crowley understands that, lets the words roll over him without even a blink of those lovely eyes.

It’s just right, Aziraphale thinks. Just enough.

Chapter Text

It is rare now – and only ever when he’s asleep and dreaming – for Crowley to remember what it was like to feel powerful. He can’t guard his thoughts in his dreams, can’t always remember the truth of things.

He tries not to feel guilty. He doesn’t remember dreams for long, anyway. Doesn’t try to.

It is better not to try. Not to think. There’s even a kind of comfort in it.

Perhaps that’s why it takes him such a long, long time, even by their standards, to realise his angel is changing.

As always, now, Aziraphale already has the answers. Says it’s all quite simple.

Oh, he admits it worried him at first – for a decade or four – but it’s not just him, it’s both of them. Perhaps they will meet in the middle somewhere, he says. Even if they pass each other – well, they’ll still be ‘mortal enemies’ (he does the air quotes), won’t they?

It’s happening so gradually, there will be time to adjust.

Whatever happens he won’t let anyone part them, he says, and that’s all that really matters, isn’t it? (he does not wait for Crowley to respond).

Crowley doesn’t answer him. Doesn’t know how. There was a time he would have felt devastated at the thought of Aziraphale being tainted, but he just – can’t now. Can’t think beyond each day. The task in front of him, whatever it is the angel wants, and no more.

Fingers tightening around his collar and steering him so that he crawls at Aziraphale’s side, wrists and ankles chained loosely together, hampering movement.

The phallus is long. Curving up from a plate bolted into the floor, fatter at the top than the bottom. Crowley hunches down obediently in response to Aziraphale’s push between his shoulder blades, takes the thick end of it between his lips, his teeth, opens his throat as Aziraphale tugs him forward. Chokes and trembles but still crawls and crouches, lower, lower.

Hips rising as his head descends, soft broken-off sounds in his throat, his chest, the press of Aziraphale’s hand against the base of his skull, inexorable, holding him steady, making him accept it, tears streaming down his face.

‘Almost there.’ He coaxes, increasing the pressure just a little, just enough. Crowley’s throat constricts in reflex, an ache building and building in his chest, his arms folded under him, pushed back a little way by Aziraphale's well-shod foot, so that nothing can impede him forcing Crowley all the way onto the thing.

He chains him there, not quite kissing the floor, a short length of wire rope and a hefty padlock attached to his collar to prevent him withdrawing. Far more than is really needed.  

The touch to his balls is gentle, the faintest vibration, the slide of something soft-textured - a length, nudging and stroking, muddling him further with shivers of pleasure. Warm oil of some kind, massaged both there and backwards, just a little way in, still gentle.

Crowley is shaking, throat working, heart pounding, tears pooling beneath his chin. The vibrator is working faster now, shockwaves of sensation that echo in his thighs, his cock, heavy in Aziraphale’s hand as he reaches for it, squeezes and slides his fingers fully around it and orders Crowley to come.

It shouldn’t be enough, but it is. Aziraphale feels it jerk in his hand, wet and softening and slipping free. Slides his fingers through Crowley’s spend and adds it to the slick on the vibrator before he resumes using it, nudging it deeper this time, preparing Crowley slowly and thoroughly.

The press of it inside, turning, angling, makes Crowley sob and choke and sob again, unable to stop himself, caught in a loop.  Aziraphale ignores it, only works the vibrator deeper in, seeking the tender spot that would make Crowley feel so good under other circumstances, that must be so terrible, so confusing, like this.

There are more sobs when he finds it, and again as he buggers Crowley, the sound caught deep and thick in Crowley’s throat, clotted in his chest, high and thin in his nose. The shaking is violent now, sweat making Aziraphale’s hands slip against Crowley’s thighs as he tries to hold him. He knows Crowley is biting down on the phallus, at risk of chipping his teeth with each sharp thrust of Aziraphale’s hips.  

Sporadic at first, trying to take his time, make it last – but he can’t, he just can’t. He’s too addicted, too far gone. Grows quicker, and quicker, and then it’s just one moment, so good, but so fleeting, and the delicious exhaustion after.

Crowley’s balls are soft to touch, to squeeze and play with as he recovers. He even sucks one into his mouth, tongues playfully at it, gets it nice and wet and blows cold air on it once he’s let it swing free.

Then he stands, tidies himself slightly, and heads over to the mirror he keeps on the mantelpiece. Stands a moment in front of it.  

Despite his bravura in front of Crowley, Aziraphale still looks more closely at his reflection than he used to, wonders if the darkish spot at the edge of his left iris has always been there.

It’s true though that it doesn’t trouble him like it once did. As he has said to Crowley, they will have plenty of time if it happens – quite literally centuries to adjust. Hell won't interfere, he's sure. Heaven won't want Crowley back - it would just be an embarrassment.

Whatever else changes they will remain together. In whatever form that togetherness takes.

Aziraphale is quite, quite definite about that.