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Olympia was sweltering, sticky and swarming with people, come to celebrate the majesty of the human body and pay tribute to Zeus.
They’d been doing this for a few centuries now, but Crowley— well, Crawly, back then— was attending for the first time, on orders from Below. He was bored by the frivolity of it all, put on edge by the crush of bodies all around, and was trying to get his quota out of the way as quick as possible, so he could slink back to Athens and his comfortable, spare lodgings there.
And then he spotted a familiar face in the crowd at the wrestling stadium, and suddenly leaving was the last thing on his mind.
He weaved through the stands until he was right behind the angel. With a flick of his hand, he dismissed the elderly man sitting next to him off to urgently relieve himself, and then settled in soundlessly on the bench.
“I really don’t see what the big deal is,” Crowley drawled, hoping that this would finally be the time that the angel jumped or gasped or flinched away from him, taken by surprise at the appearance of his wily Adversary. Unfortunately, it was another let down. Crowley received only a slight raise of the eyebrows and a faint, distracted smile in return. He forged ahead, determined to make a dent in Aziraphale’s bland contentment. “Just a bunch of naked humans writhing about,” he went on. “There’s not even any singing. Boooooring.”
“But Crawly— it’s just wonderful,” Aziraphale said. “That boy down there, the light-haired one?” He pointed to the floor of the stadium, where two youths, one blonde and one black-haired, were grappling with an intensity that overflowed out into the stands, drawing up roars from crowd at every contact. “He’s been training for years to compete in the Olympiad. Comes from a family of athletes in Croton. Just a tremendous talent, don’t you think?”
“They way I see it,” Crowley said, with a dismissive wave of his hand, “if I wanted to watch a bunch of humans press oily bits up against each other, I’d go to an orgy. The food would certainly be better.”
This succeeded in drawing a blush out onto the angel’s cheeks. He popped a fig into his mouth from the plate on his lap and chewed primly, determinedly focusing on the action down below and not on Crowley, who was giving his all to sprawling as languorously as possible across the stadium bench.
“What are you doing here, anyway?”
“I’m meant to be making sure he wins,” Aziraphale said, pointing at the light-haired boy, who had hooked an arm around the neck of the darker one and was trying— well, succeeding now— to force him to the ground.
“Looks like he doesn’t much need a hand,” Crowley offered, as a cheer went up and the referee called the first point of the match in favor of Aziraphale’s side. “I’m no expert, but he seems to have it well under control.”
“He is very good,” Aziraphale agreed. “It’s a pleasure just to watch, isn’t it? The human body is such a marvelous thing…”
Crowley grunted, noncommittal. “Bit of a weakness in the left knee, though,” he said, stretching his demonic senses out to probe at the scene. “Might go down at any second. Hm. I could give him a bit of help…”
“Help? How could you help?”
“Could have him gouge his opponent’s eyes out. That’d do it.”
Aziraphale gasped, scandalized. “That’s not allowed, Crawly! It’s against the rules of the Palé— no biting, no hurting the eyes or genitals. There was a whole speech about it at the start, you were late, you missed it. He’d— he’d never!”
“Ah, but I could tempt him into it,” Crowley said, and then grinned. “A bit of blind rage. Wrath, as they say. Who says that’s not why I’m here in the first place?”
The angel looked so exquisitely put-upon at the very thought that Crowley might cause rules to be broken , it didn’t even matter that Crowley was really planning on doing nothing of the sort.
“You can’t,” Aziraphale insisted. “If you try, I’ll— I’ll—”
“What, wrestle me into submission?”
Instead of saying anything, Aziraphale ate another fig. It was fascinating, how he could imbue such a mundane act with such distracting sensuality. Did he even know he was doing it? Crowley certainly wasn’t about to tell him.
“Come on, you can’t say you haven’t thought about it. I mean, I’d imagine that’s what they teach you up there, isn’t it? Thwarting 101?”
“I suppose so, but I— can’t imagine it would be the most efficient method. Not for me, at least.”
“What?” Crowley laughed, and stole a fig from Aziraphale’s plate. “C’mon. You could take me. I’m surprised you haven’t tried.”
“Oh, no, I don’t think I could. I’m, ah.” The angel gestured at his midsection. “Quite soft, as these things go.”
Crowley frowned at this. “But you’re an angel,” he said, almost insistently, mouth half-full of fig. He swallowed, then specified, “A Principality.”
“And?”
“You— you know.” Crowley was nearly mortified at having to explain this. “You’re a platoon leader. A— a warrior. You did have a sword…?”
“My dear, I wear a human corporation just as you do,” said Aziraphale. He held out his hand contemplatively, flexing it in the bright Hellenic sunlight, and Crowley watched the veins play underneath his skin, the golden glow of the pale hairs dusted across his knuckles.
Crowley knew he was staring, but he couldn’t help it. He ran into the angel so rarely. Like a desert plant, he’d evolved to drink up every second of their encounters, efficiently store the sights and sounds of them away, and ration them out over the dry decades that stretched out interminably afterwards.
“Unless I am to draw on the Almighty’s power to accomplish one of Her miracles, I’m at the whims of physics and anatomy just like everyone else in this stadium.”
“... How inconvenient.”
“Exactly! Yes!” Aziraphale tutted. "There was this human, Jacob, about a millennia ago— oh yes, of course you’ve heard of him— well, I was meant to subdue him physically, to prove the supremacy of the Almighty, you see. That was my assignment. But I'd eaten rather a lot earlier and so it all went a bit topsy-turvy. Too many olives, I think. And, er, the wine… Anyway, I wasn’t supposed to, but I ended having to spare a tiny miracle to even bring the match to a draw, and that was only after it had gone on all night long.”
“Sounds like a great big bore of a gig,” Crowley pronounced, though he was currently the least bored he’d been in decades, looking out at the oiled, naked men twisting and tussling in the center of the stadium, and imagining, quite involuntarily, an image of the angel grappling with some bearded old Hebrew, sweat dripping from his hairline, muscles straining and breath coming in quick huffs…
Aziraphale said, “It was God’s will,” which jerked Crowley back to reality pretty effectively. He rolled his eyes at Aziraphale, and the angel sighed. “I got quite the dressing-down from Gabriel afterwards, but in the end it turned out She was pleased, so I must have done alright— oh, look at that!"
Crowley looked. The referee had raised his hand, indicating the end of the match, and declaring the light-haired boy the winner. Around them, the crowd went mad, whooping and hooting and shouting praises to the gods.
“He won. Great. Job done, now let’s get out of here, there’s this wine merchant here I know from Athens set up outside, best stuff on the peninsula, I’ll buy us a jug, yeah?”
Aziraphale fiddled at his ring, clearly distressed by the situation at hand. “But— but he won without my help. You distracted me, you demon!”
“Well, you don’t need to tell them that,” Crowley suggested, bravely. He’d been working on a theory, lately, that Hell didn’t really care who did the stuff they wanted done, as long as it got done— perhaps he could convince the angel the same rang true for Heaven.
“Of course I do!” Aziraphale snapped back.
Crowley tried again. Surely someone who’d had no problem giving away his sword to a pair of humans in need, against orders, would have no trouble understanding the basic fundamentals of subterfuge. “It’s all the same to them, isn’t it? Easier for you to just say you did it! Why not?”
“Why not? I— I really can’t believe you’d suggest such a thing!” The crowd had begun to rise and disperse, filtering out of the stadium towards the track for the footrace, the next event, and the angel stood as well, fussing with the belt of his chiton. “If you’ll excuse me, Crawly, I have further business to attend to elsewhere.”
“Right. Sure. Peace out, then.”
As soon as Aziraphale was out of sight, Crowley flung himself down onto his back, stretching his legs into the seat abandoned by the angel, and pushed the heels of his palms into his eyes with a groan.
It’s not like Crowley had been angry, to find out that Aziraphale couldn’t sling him over one sturdy shoulder, bear him down into the dirt, pinning him with ease and ceding no ground.
It’s just that— well. Down in Hell they always went on about how weak and piddling the angels were, and Crowley knew propaganda when he saw it, thank you very much, so he’d always just gamely assumed the opposite, and built up the idea that the fluffy, pink-cheeked angel he ran into more and more these days was something of a secret strongman.
He may or may not have been idly toying with the concept late at night for centuries, in campsites and caves and underneath endless starry skies.
And being disabused of this notion was rather like having a lovely iridescent soap bubble, one that floated in front of your face and made everything look nice, popped without warning, revealing a rather dull and mundane reality.
What was even worse was how he knew it wouldn’t change anything at all about what he wanted, and how he wanted it. Oh, well. C’est la bloody vie. At the very least he had a fresh ration of memory to live on, for the next hundred or so years before he saw the angel again.
Later, taking leaving the festival at last, Crowley made his way past the athletes’ quarters, and sensed a hot, sticky pulse of lust leaking out from inside.
Curious, he pulled aside the curtain of the changing stall and saw in the dark, clear as daylight thanks to his serpentine eyes, the two boys from the match earlier locked in an embrace— except this was no athletic contest, no bout in Zeus’ name. The light-haired one, the victor, was thrusting between the slicked thighs of the other, who was softly moaning as he pressed down.
“Typical,” Crowley said, let the curtain fall back into place, and went off to find some more wine for the road.
Some Time Later
The process of moving house, as Aziraphale and Crowley are learning, is not helped at all by being immortal creatures with infinite lifespans. As it turns out, miracles are no match for thousands of years of accumulated tchotchkes, and the finicky necessity of excavating them, sorting them, and arranging them in one’s new abode.
They’ve been unpacking for what seems like months— every time Crowley thinks they’re done, that the cottage is finally complete, and he can finally relax and focus on his garden, Aziraphale digs out another blessed box to go through.
“Look at this!” Aziraphale is saying now, holding out a commemorative coin, absolutely bloody ancient, stamped with the image of a man in an olive-leaf laurel, and Greek letters around its rim. “The Olympic games! The originals, do you remember?”
“Course I do, dozens of them,” Crowley says, squinting at the coin. “Let’s see… that must be from the first one we were at together.”
“That’s right,” Aziraphale sighs. “The fortieth Olympiad, was it? I remember… the figs were marvelous that year. There was a wrestling match… who won?”
“Can’t recall,” Crowley says. “Wrestling… yes, and I remember you telling me you weren’t as strong as I’d thought.” Hard to forget, the moment when all your dreams were dashed to dust. “Er, weren’t any stronger than me, I mean.”
“Oh. Yes, well,” Aziraphale says. “About that. I may have lied.”
“You what?”
Aziraphale smiles, and Crowley is an expert in Aziraphale’s smiles, he’s practically got a full taxonomy locked down. This one’s called Aziraphalus pudibundus, indicates abashment, nervousness, with an underlying layer of cheekiness atop that solid bedrock of ineffable bastardry.
“I— well. I didn’t tell you the whole truth, not exactly. I neglected to mention, ah… certain metaphysical aspects to the question. What’s the phrase… the tip of the iceberg? Yes.”
Crowley is circling Aziraphale now, treading a familiar path. They’ve gotten all new rugs in the new place; Crowley looks forward to wearing them down with his methodical, compulsive pacing, marking his territory, saying to anyone who dares bear witness: this is my house, this is my angel.
“Wanna prove it?” Crowley says, half a murmur, half a hiss.
A different smile, now. Aziraphalus avidus. Eager, coy, coquettishly offended. “Are you proposing a— a tussle, you fiend?”
Crowley shrugs, trying to remain nonchalant at all costs. “Could be,” he says. “Just curious. Always curious, you know me.”
“I do know you,” says Aziraphale. He gently sets the coin down on the mantle and proceeds to remove his cardigan, and rolls up his shirtsleeves with excruciating care and slowness.
Crowley knows the angel is fond of his little white lies, of course, but he’d never expected a reversal on this particular course. It would have been a little too close to blatant wish fulfillment, and Crowley’s already been topped up on enough of that for millennia to come, what with recent Events, and all.
It does make sense, though, upon reflection. Crowley’s structured the last millennia or so of his life around giving Aziraphale the opportunity to be who he wanted to be, instead of who Heaven made him to be, a category that clearly included exertion of certain expected attributes.
But if he’s comfortable enough to bring it up now, well. Who is Crowley to argue?
So he strips off his jacket and then, shamelessly, his shirt as well. A quick meeting of the eyes, a nod— and then with a gleeful snarl he goes for Aziraphale, aiming to knock him to the ground.
He succeeds; a subtle miracle cushions their mutual fall, and soon both their faces are red as they grapple, rolling around on that lovely new rug, furniture kindly and conveniently keeping out of their way.
Aziraphale fights like a soldier, all straightforward strategy, utilizing his bulk to his advantage. Crowley is sneakier, more limber, and more willing to use teeth.
But for all their differences— perhaps because of them— they are fairly evenly matched. For each of Crowley’s sly moves, Aziraphale has a steady, unavoidable parry at the ready; for each forceful blow Aziraphale tries to deliver, Crowley has a dodge and a twist.
Finally, Crowley has Aziraphale pinned, his long-fingered hands wrapped securely and comfortably around the delicate skin of the angel’s wrists, and he looks down, lets out a triumphant “HA!” at the sight.
He gets a thigh up between Aziraphale’s legs and the angel moans, softly, rocks down onto it, which is lovely, of course, but Crowley rather thinks the struggle’s gone out of him, which very much isn’t the point of all this. He noses into Aziraphale’s neck, lavishes that tender spot below his ear with a few long kisses, drinking in the scent and taste of the angel’s exertion.
“I’m serious,” he says, looking Aziraphale in the eyes now. “Prove it. Get the better of me. I want it, angel.” A pretty good elevator pitch, if he does say so himself. Nice and pithy. Very little in the way of begging, or groveling, or revealing the full pelagic depths of his desire.
“I don’t want to hurt you—”
“You won’t. You can’t, I promise. Bring it on.”
The barest moment of hesitation— and then Aziraphale leans up and presses his forehead to Crowley’s, and Crowley takes the cue, shifts and shucks his corporation like he’d done his jacket and then everything— flips.
The material plane rushes away and there’s the whoosh of wings from all corners, and Crowley feels a mild sense of loss as he’s compacted down into his true form, a long, sinuous rent in the fabric of unreality, infra-black and impossibly smooth and dense. He is cleverness incarnate, flexible and many-toothed, shimmering rather stylishly, a understated, elegant void. There are claws, scales, long filaments of shiny dark and glowing red that spread out from his glowing core like veins.
A shudder runs down his length as he stretches and solidifies, finding his footing here in the elsewhere, remembering parts of himself long-forgotten; it’s been a while since he’s done this.
As full awareness suffuses him, he realizes suddenly that the angel isn’t underneath him anymore. Angel, where are— Crowley begins, but then he is surrounded by light and flame and gold.
OH, GOODNESS, comes the loudest voice Crowley has ever not-heard. He’s incredibly glad he hasn’t got ears currently, otherwise they would have exploded at the first note of that call, like a thousand trumpets and a million lions roaring and above it all, a gentle, clear ringing, the purest of bells.
Above him— insofar as directions exist, in this place beyond places, time beyond time— a great and impossible shape is coalescing, rings of fire and marble pillars and wings with feathers bright like unending sparks of magnesium flares.
And Crowley has never been more aroused in his entire life.
CROWLEY? I CAN’T SEE YOU, Aziraphale says, all his eyes swiveling, the edges of his awareness desperately outreaching, searching.
I’m here! I’m here! Aziraphale! calls Crowley, projecting his aura as far upwards as he can, sending out smoke signals of want, all tool aware of how much neediness is bound up in those tendrils, but hardly caring, wanting nothing more than to feel that impossible, regal geometry meet his own oilslick infinity.
When Aziraphale hears him, points his array down, blasts Crowley with the fullness of his ethereal attention, Crowley nearly dissolves right then and there, swallowed up by the burning gaze of Aziraphale’s true form.
There’s a sound sort of like a chime of surprise, mixed with a thousand gasping voices, and the impression of endless eyes widening, glistening with adoration. YOU ARE SO BEAUTIFUL, the angel says—shouts—imparts.
Oh, fuck, says Crowley, experiencing a torrential, electric jolt of— of something, because it’s one thing for the angel to whip that out in the bed, all soft-voiced and infatuated, but to hear it from this tilting, whirling behemoth, at the volume of an entire solar system, is nearly incomprehensible.
Can you— oh, yeah, please, come here, I need you—
He feels his essence wilt at the edges as Aziraphale approaches him eagerly, deep-buried demonic instincts panicking at the clear and obvious approach of danger.
Aziraphale is stone and glass and facets of sapphire, mosaic and manifold, and every part of him reaches out to grab hold of Crowley.
And Crowley is immediately, involuntarily flexing and straining against his bonds, but Aziraphale has him held tight like it’s absolutely nothing, like Crowley is simply an itch he’s scratching, a mere accessory.
Crowley has about twenty times more senses currently than he does on Earth, but that hardly matters now— they’re all overwhelmed, all blinded by heat and majesty. He is laid bare as Aziraphale cracks him open, one flaring arc of feathered light reaching deep into the polished onyx center of his very self.
Angel, what are you— oh—
HOW DOES THAT FEEL, DEAR?
Crowley’s edges vibrate and flutter as he squirms against the encroaching warmth of Aziraphale. It’s very nearly too much, but there’s not a lot he can do to hold the angel off— scratch that, there’s absolutely nothing he can do, and it’s incredible.
So he opens further, allowing Aziraphale access to the branching, bronchial darkness of his form, licks of pale fire exploring him passionately, breaking down defenses along the way with something that somehow resembles, despite lack of face and mouth, an enamored smile.
Feels amazing, angel, Crowley manages, somehow, in between waves of pleasure that grow and grow in magnitude as more of Aziraphale’s power comes to bear on him and in him.
NOT— TOO MUCH?
Crowley tries to shout DEFINITELY NOT with every inch of himself, knows he doesn’t have the words to convey the expanse of his feeling, so conveys it through thought and color, his void beating through with joyful red and silver, unconscionably gaudy but now is hardly the time for aesthetic consideration.
In response, he feels— hears— sees— a thrill of pleasure scintillate up Aziraphale’s elegant pillars, where they’re pressed against him. He considers asking did you just wiggle metaphysically? but the thought is whisked away before he can voice it, everything going white-hot as Aziraphale enfolds Crowley entirely. He has little choice but to sublimate entirely to Aziraphale’s vast light, let it pour crystalline and unstoppable through him.
And he’s an angel, yes, but Heaven doesn’t enter into it at all, no. Never has. The white wall that Crowley has clung to, spreading and growing across it like an invasive vine long given free reign, is solely Aziraphale through and through. The solidity of Aziraphale’s existence, the sheer ontological inertia of it, is a comfort like nothing else.
Crowley wants to be erased by it, undone totally by its inevitability. He really wouldn’t mind.
But Aziraphale, of course, is so effortlessly conscientious, angelic to the last, and now over and over he takes Crowley just to the edge of oblivion, that cliff of utter deprivation, before pulling back, allowing a moment of respite, and then plunging back in.
Like this, up close, surrounded and wholly encompassed, Crowley can see clearly each chaotic corner and overlapping impossibility that make up the angel. Cluttered and paradoxical even in extradimensional unspace and nontime; softness and steel, slowness and celerity all somehow coexisting.
But to Crowley, Aziraphale makes sense. All of him. The oddness, the contrasts. And most of all, the beauty. There is nothing in the universe he understands as well— and if he is the only one, well, all the more for him.
WONDERFUL, YOU’RE DOING JUST WONDERFUL, YOU’RE TAKING SO MUCH OF ME, MY LOVE.
Aziraphale pulsates through Crowley, in bursts of light and warmth and sheer, staggering power, filling up his infinite miles of dark arteries and crooked caves with blinding pleasure. Crowley is sure, now, that if he cried out, Aziraphale would not hear him, not above the roaring of rings of fire, the whooshing of wings, the movement of energy all around.
His normally overactive inner monologue has finally thrown up its hands and given up totally on description, coughing up a single quotation — so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us— yeah, very original choice, we get it— right before everything compresses, expands, compresses again, and in one great seismic wave, shatters into glory.
When Crowley slams back into his body, and finds himself above Aziraphale again, hands still clutched around the angel’s wrists, the incongruity of the position forces a laugh from him as his muscles give out almost immediately, and he falls to the carpet, riding out the aftershocks of an absolutely enormous orgasm. His trousers are soaked through, and somehow getting hard again is a real and present threat, even just lying there at Aziraphale’s side, thinking about what just happened.
“Right,” he mumbles, thick-tongued and woozy, “you win? ...I think?”
Aziraphale presses himself to Crowley, wraps an arm around him, warm and gentle and not scintillating or immense or on fire at all, which Crowley forces himself to be grateful for instead of peeved by.
“I may have come out on top,” he says, “but I believe you to be the victor, materially speaking.” Aziraphale runs the gentlest of hands up Crowley’s front, cleaning him up, with a sound that’s the barest fraction of the full rushing, chiming magnificence of moments ago.
“Mm. Fair enough.” Crowley looks to him and finds him smiling again.
And, oh— this one’s his favorite, it really is. Aziraphalus amans. The smile of a lover.
***