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" - and so I told him I had no intention of staying to watch their absolutely ludicrous posturing display," Crowley finishes, to Aziraphale's clear amusement.
"Oh he must have been horribly put out by that."
"Serves him right, it's predictable is what it is." Crowley tries to judge how much wine is left in his glass and whether it's worth getting a refill. He's fairly sure they'd finished the bottle already so he'd have to pull one from the back, the angel hates that, says it ruins his system.
Aziraphale's amused noise takes on a considering air over his own glass. "Have you ever done it before?"
"What, made a show of it for attention?" Crowley frowns. "Course I have, you've seen me do it even, easiest way to lure them away, isn't it? They're wired for it, can't help themselves."
"No, have you actually ever done it." Aziraphale emphasises the last two words in a way that makes it clear enough what he means. Though he offers the rest of the question anyway. "Plumbed everything in, gone through their mating cycle. All the chemicals and pheromones and so forth, just to see what it's like?"
The words are casually offered, but there's a serious air to them, the pause for an answer strangely intense. Which tells Crowley this isn't a passing thought, or simple curiosity. This is something that Aziraphale has spent time considering, the wording of the question carefully put together. Crowley feels strangely caught off guard. It's not like it hasn't come up before, but the angel had seemed to hold the same opinion as him. Had found human sex necessary but a bit too complicated, sticky and unpredictable to get overly close to.
But now he's not so sure.
"No, haven't tried it. It always seemed a bit messy, to be honest," he says - because what choice does he have but to be honest? "A lot to go through just to see what it's like from their end. Besides, I'm a demon underneath all the human bits, aren't I? It's probably not a good idea for me to risk losing control like that. Not without knowing if I could - nrgh, sober myself up doesn't work, does it - rein the body back under control maybe? Not to mention the thought of accidentally forming some sort of brief physical bond with one of them." Crowley grimaces. "No, it all feels a bit distasteful." He watches Aziraphale, but the angel is being strangely tight-lipped about what he thinks, expression interested but refusing to give anything away. Crowley doesn't like it, there's a sense that he's being lured into talking. "Oh I'm not saying I haven't borrowed the right pheromones here or there to give me a persuasive edge, let myself smell like I want company to get one alone, or like a nightmare to get rid of trouble. But letting myself actually feel it all -" Crowley stops because a sudden horrible thought occurs to him. "Have you?"
Aziraphale doesn't answer for far too long.
"Aziraphale?" There's an edge to Crowley's voice, it's not jealousy. It's not just jealousy - but the thought of Aziraphale doing something so wholly human, of leaving himself so vulnerable.
"I did," Aziraphale says quietly and Crowley can feel his nails digging into the arm of the chair, leaving scores in the wood that the angel will be furious about later. "Briefly and in a secluded place with no possibility of a human stumbling across me," Aziraphale finishes.
Crowley remains still in his chair, but his hand reluctantly returns to normal. He still can't help himself from pulling a face at the idea of it though. Aziraphale shut away somewhere, going through that on his own...Crowley's seen well enough how miserable it can be. There's a reason that there are curses designed to do exactly that.
"You never told me." The words come out harsher than he means them too. Not that he has any right to - to demand anything from Aziraphale. It's not like Crowley doesn't have his own secrets.
"I was curious," Aziraphale says, as if to protest comments that Crowley hasn't voiced but were clearly expected. "We'd watched them for so long and we so rarely took the opportunity to properly experience things that were so vital to them, to try and understand them better."
Crowley doesn't have to spend three days curled into a ball of sexual misery, pain and despair to understand the human condition.
"What's there to understand, it's biology. They're made that way. We know that better than anyone. Besides, they can suppress it now if they don't want to deal with it - which again, I have no idea how I got the commendation for." Crowley glares into his wine while Aziraphale rotates the ring on his finger and looks strangely hurt about the whole thing. He hates the thought that the angel might regret telling him. Or worse, that he might not confide in Crowley next time.
Though Aziraphale clearly wants to talk about it now. Satan help him.
"What was it like?" He tries to sound curious and nothing else.
Aziraphale's expression brightens noticeably at the interest. He rubs his hands on his trousers briefly, as if to consider the memory, or to find the words for it. Crowley wants to know if they were already friends when it happened, if they were close enough that Crowley could have reached out and touched him.
The angel pours them both more wine and Crowley can't help but wonder how long this story is going to be.
"It comes on suddenly," Aziraphale starts, speaking slowly as if to put his thoughts in order. "I was waiting for it to begin and I still found myself surprised by how quickly it affected my whole body. At first there's a sensitivity to the world around you - smells and sounds become so much more layered. My sense of touch improved dramatically, I couldn't bear clothes, and even the faint pressure of the air on my skin felt like too much. I was distracted by a near-constant need to feel everything, to roll around on different textures. A rather bewildering desire but I indulged it and found that it soothed the fury of my physical needs somewhat. My body was uncomfortably hot for almost the entire duration, terribly aroused and it felt unpleasantly small and tight, in fact I was plagued by a persistent feeling that my body was not entirely the right shape - though that may have had something to do with my ethereal nature? As if perhaps the heat left me in conflict with my non-corporeal body? There were certainly points where it felt like I was struggling to leave my corporation entirely."
Aziraphale is leaning forward in his chair now, as if he'd just been waiting to share this experience that Crowley had known nothing about.
"Oh we both know the biology behind the whole thing but to actually experience it for myself was overwhelming - and I'll admit, a little frightening. I wanted to be in the bed, but the shape of the bed was never right, something was missing, something I couldn't fix. I was frustrated and terribly thirsty and filled with a strangely consuming need to be filled in a way I knew perfectly well that I couldn't satisfy myself. There was a painfully desperate desire to be held down and gripped between someone's teeth, to be surrounded, to be soothed and to be - well, I'm sure you can imagine," Aziraphale finishes in a rush.
Crowley finds that he's spilled wine across his trousers, glares at it until it vanishes.
"It's a pair bond though, isn't it," he says, voice coming out far more raspy than he'd like. But he has to be speaking rather than thinking about Aziraphale deciding to just...just take himself off somewhere and have a heat to see what it was like. It leaves Crowley frustrated and restless and angry for reasons he refuses to name. "You can't do it properly on your own. It's designed so you seek out someone to go through it all with - and if you're lucky it's someone you would have chosen when you could make sensible decisions. You pair up and do the whole messy production of it together. That's the whole point." He frowns over at the angel, who's still watching him, expression inscrutable. "Alone defeats the whole purpose." Of course Crowley thinks about it, he can't help it. Aziraphale shut up somewhere, in a strange room, naked on a strange bed, shaking and moaning like a human in need. His hair damp with sweat, his mouth open, the core of him aching for satisfaction, desperate for someone to sink teeth into his throat and plug him full.
The glass cracks beneath Crowley's fingers and he smooths it out with a thumb.
"Who did you think about?" he asks.
The silence is painful and deafening, and almost six thousand years of unspoken words clog up the air between them. Aziraphale has gone pale, fingers twisting in his lap.
"I don't recall," he says.
Liar.
Crowley lets himself think about how he must have looked, his body soft and naked in the blankets, utterly gone to lust. His familiar, normally so careful fingers fisted in the sheets, moaning into a pillow while a hand worked desperately between his legs, trying to soothe an ache he'd invited. It seems almost obscene to picture him so vulnerable and so human, so helpless to his own desires. But it feels worse to picture himself there too, curled over the angel's back, hushing him gently while he worked those solid thighs apart -
"I've never done it," Crowley says slowly. "But I never said that I wouldn't." The words are out, they exist in the room, free-floating and without support. "Don't know if it would be a good idea. Hard enough controlling my impulses when I'm not biologically compromised, I don't know how this corporation would react if I let it be an Alpha. Probably too dangerous."
Crowley watches Aziraphale set his wine down between them, the half full glass abandoned on the table.
"For a human perhaps," he says carefully.
Had they ever been talking about humans? Haven't they always been talking about them.
"I don't know if I could. I don't know how much would be the corporation and how much would be demon," Crowley admits. "Aziraphale, I don't know what would happen."
Aziraphale's expression finally softens and it looks so fond and so hopeful. "If something did, would you regret it?"
"You know I wouldn't." Crowley bites down on the rest. You know I would tangle myself around you and through you so tightly they would have to carve me away in pieces. You know if I sink my teeth in you then they're never coming out. You know you have always been it for me. Since the first moment I saw you on the wall.' But the thought of expressing that devotion in a physical way, of having it all torn out of him against his will, is more than a little terrifying.
"Shall I shut up the shop for a few days?" Aziraphale makes the words soft, an invitation freely given.
Crowley knows that he could say no, that he could sit back and drink his wine and make amused noises, play it off as a joke. Aziraphale would likely never mention it again.
Instead he finds himself making a quiet noise in his throat, something agreeable.
Crowley watches his beautiful, stubborn, reckless angel get to his feet and tug his waistcoat straight. Looking every inch the fussy being he's known for six thousand years, and nothing like the love of his life who's proposing they both indulge in the messy, barely controlled chaos of a human joining. That could leave them twined so deeply around each other that separating may be impossible.
Aziraphale offers a hand and Crowley can't do a damn thing but reach up for it, slide his chilled fingers between much warmer ones. He doesn't know when he stood, when he took a step, but he suddenly has Aziraphale's hair between his fingers, his mouth under his own, the taste of angel against his tongue. Crowley can't remember if he leant to kiss Aziraphale, or Aziraphale pulled him down.
It doesn't matter in the end.
"Never used any of those parts before," Crowley confesses. "You might need to help me through it."
"I've heard it comes rather naturally." Aziraphale looks as shaken by the kiss as Crowley feels. "In the moment as it were. A very narrow sort of focus. A desire to be physically joined whatever the cost."
"I've already technically been inside you," Crowley points out and is relieved when Aziraphale coughs out a laugh.
"Yes, well, I suspect after a few days you'll be intimately acquainted with what being inside me feels like -" Aziraphale stops, his cheeks flushing a warm red. The noise that escapes him is soft and wavering.
Crowley slides his thumb over the back of the angel's hand, finds the skin warmer than he expects. "Did you start without me?" he asks curiously.
"I might have done," Aziraphale says weakly. Though, judging by the way his teeth bite at his lip, he clearly wasn't prepared for whatever Crowley's touch is doing to him.
Crowley draws him in, intrigued by the way Aziraphale immediately presses his face into Crowley's throat, giving a long shuddering sigh at whatever he smells like to an angel reckless enough to decide to go into heat for him. Crowley gives his own body a nudge, convinces the genitals that maybe human sex and all its scents and sounds and mess might not be a bad idea after all. It's been a while since they've been anything but ornamental, but they sluggishly obey. Aziraphale's familiar scent becomes something strange and alluring, liquid and warm in his mouth with the faintest vibration, like something divine melting on the tongue.
"Snakes like to stay locked together...for a while, when they mate," he breathes. "Is that going to be a problem?"
Aziraphale's hands find their way under his shirt, press to the flat of his stomach, sending darts of sensation through the skin.
"I shouldn't think so, that sounds lovely." Aziraphale straightens enough to kiss him again. "I don't expect it will be exactly the same for us anyway. There's always room for surprises."
Crowley can't help but laugh at that. Because isn't that a terrifying sentence.
"Lust makes you reckless, angel." Crowley realises just how many new things he's going to discover about Aziraphale. How many new things they're going to learn together.
Aziraphale, for once, is too impatient to be teased. "I would very much like to stop talking and go upstairs now."
"Thought I was going to be the one doing the mounting," Crowley says, with some amusement. "Isn't it my job to boss you around?"
"No, it's your job to satisfy me," Aziraphale says firmly. "And if you do a very good job I will let you spend a week buried inside me with your teeth in my neck."
Crowley's body stops obeying his commands. It rebels against him in a way that's both terrifying and stunning in its intensity. He can hear the way air hisses between his teeth, the way his eyes have swollen wide and yellow, and his tongue is now just a vibrating flutter in his mouth. He can feel the rush of his own blood, the tight grip of his human skin. His dick suddenly demands far more of his attention than it ever has before.
Aziraphale turns without another word and heads for the stairs.
Crowley follows him.