Archive of Our Own

The world around Aziraphale was a bit blurry at the edges.

It wasn’t just the low lighting - illumination relegated solely to the ornate chandelier hanging above his head in the center of his bookshop - though it certainly didn’t help. The false flicker of electric candles cast foreboding shadows, mock firelight dancing ominously over the quartet of columns surrounding him. The movement gave them a sapient, almost lifelike air - a regiment of cold, stone-faced guards keeping silent vigil over their captive angel, holding his chains taut, keeping him knelt in the exact center of the sprawling circular rug beneath his knees.

Though Aziraphale’s eyes were open, all that existed to his clouded mind was sound. The rough heave of his own breath. The sharp click of snakeskin boots behind him. The sultry drag of leather against the wood floor, then the thin pile of the rug. The deep, commanding voice, its familiar sibilant undertones crackling like infernal embers:

“How many was that?”

“T...” Aziraphale’s own voice shook, tense with the strain. His mind was fuzzy, his thoughts distant. All he could think of was the ache in his shoulders, and he blearily wished he could relax his arms, but the chains holding them perpendicularly aloft gave no quarter. “Twenty... f-five?”

The distinct ‘snap’ of a whip cracking against the floorboards behind him told Aziraphale that he may have miscounted.

“Six!” Aziraphale hurried to correct himself, the word humiliatingly close to a terrified squeak. “S-six, twenty-six, I’m sorry, I-“

Suddenly, there was a hand in his hair, clenching deathly tight and yanking his head back until his neck couldn’t crane any farther, his wide-eyed, slack-jawed expression cast to the bookshop ceiling by his captor’s rough handling. A pair of cold, slitted pupils were fixed on him, glaring lethally bright behind dark circular shades. Aziraphale hadn’t even heard him move.

“Hey, hey, hey, don’t apologize...” Crowley cooed down at him. His tone was soft, but oh did it sting. “’S my fault, thinkin’ I could trust you to keep proper count once we really got started.” he absentmindedly dragged a finger along the soft give of Aziraphale’s jawline, then down his neck to revel in the trilling prestissimo thrum at his pulse point. “You’re too far gone to think now, aren’t you, angel?”

Aziraphale swallowed hard. He tried to say ‘yes’, he really did, but all that came out was a hiccup and a helpless little ‘mhm’, his hips answering with a feeble cant backwards in search of more pain. The movement pulled another broken noise from Aziraphale, thighs clenching reflexively as he fought to keep his cock from bobbing, as every slight shift reminded him of the stifling pressure around its base, the thick brass cock-ring pushing painfully back against his scrotum.

Crowley stole a look downwards, affecting pity. “Yeah, I know.” he said, the thinnest suggestion of a smirk playing at his lips. His expression steeled, though, and his fingers pressed more insistently at Aziraphale’s neck. “But, you need this - told me so yourself. And I promised I’d give it to you, didn’t I?”

Aziraphale only whimpered, so Crowley tightened his hold on Aziraphale’s hair, wrenching a sobbing moan from wet, teeth-marked lips.

“Didn’t I?!” Crowley shouted, eyes sharp and unforgiving behind his shades.

“Yes!” Aziraphale shrieked, voice alight with some ineffable mix of fear and exultation.

Now, that made Crowley smile. “Good man.” he gave Aziraphale’s curls one last tug before loosing it, and Aziraphale’s head fell limp against his chest. Crowley was still smiling as he returned to his place a few strides behind Aziraphale - and frankly, the smile was more terrifying than his flat, icy stare had been. “Now, after all that confusion, I figure we’d better start again.” Crowley swirled the whip’s tail against the floor, ostensibly to reacquaint himself with its handling, but really to warn Aziraphale of its impending use.

“Try not to lose count this time.”

Honestly, Aziraphale wasn’t wholly certain how things had gotten to this point.

It had probably started - as many of their ‘Arrangements’ had - with something innocuous. Maybe Crowley had caught on to how Aziraphale would dig his nails into his palms to calm himself when he was stressed. Maybe a well-placed clap of a demonic hand on the small of Aziraphale’s back had stirred a blush too vivid to be ignored. Maybe one night Aziraphale had been pacing the shop, rambling about who knows what - how such-and-such angels wanted this-or-that, how their unending observance was terrifying enough to drive him to tears - and maybe Crowley had given him a smack on the temple, a last-ditch attempt to reorient Aziraphale in the present.

And maybe, rather than looking at Crowley in fury and affront, Aziraphale’s face had softened, relaxing in a kind of blissful capitulation borne from the impact of a firm, trusted hand. And maybe Crowley’s eyes had lit up behind his shades, realization striking him square on the back of the head.

Aziraphale liked pain. Better yet, Aziraphale needed pain - that incendiary flash of material agony, the stinging shock of something so utterly corporeal, was a mechanism Aziraphale had come to depend on when he needed to drag his ever-chattering mind back down to the Earth he loved so very much, to the present moment rather than the whorling, shifting Nothingness of Timeless Heaven. And if letting a demon slap him silly also happened to be a perfect excuse to get one particular demon’s hands on him, to give him a passing hint of the intimacy he so craved, then by God he’d take it.

If he couldn’t love his darling demon as loud as he yearned to, couldn’t hold those gorgeous hands so calloused by Hellfire, couldn’t kiss those damned venomous lips, then he’d find his own ways to show his devotion. He’d offer himself, body and soul, to Crowley’s diabolic tortures, let him bruise him and break him and wring orgasm after glorious, world-rending orgasm from him, even if those orgasms came only from the exaction of pain.

Of course, tracking down when exactly the whip had gotten involved was beyond him.

“gh-AAA!” Aziraphale’s shout echoed the snap of the whip, the terrific mix of sound ringing through the bookshop like the clangor of bells. This blow had struck across both Aziraphale’s buttocks, carefully placed to intersect a slew of other bright-red, smarting wounds - Crowley’s aim was sadistically accurate, especially with his favorite weapon.

It was a hefty leather thing, perhaps 4 feet in length, and its end sported a thin, flat tail terminating in a sharp point, which aptly categorized it as a ‘devil’s tail’ whip. Crowley found this amusing. Aziraphale found it exhilarating.

“Ohh, you needed it bad tonight, didn’t you?” Crowley was practically chuckling as he watched Aziraphale buck and writhe in his bonds, fruitlessly fighting their hold as the pain rocketed through him. Of course, he could simply free himself. Any occult being could. Child’s play, these human chains.

The thrill came from the choice to remain shackled.

“I knew you did. Sounded positively wrecked on the phone. Why d’you think I got here so fast, hm?” Crowley said, whirling the whip up over his head to deliver a particularly damning strike diagonally down the breadth of Aziraphale’s back, right shoulder to left hip. “I knew how bad you needed me to come over here and carve you up, leave you choking an’ sniveling in a heap of blood an’ cum. Finally take the edge off the fuckin’ day you had by getting beaten into a pretty little pulp.” he relished Aziraphale’s choked cry, stopping to watch him ride it out. He did so - as he always did - beautifully, muscles rippling as his back arched into that perfect, sinful C-curve.

Crowley hummed, a warm, indulgent noise echoed by the drag of the whip against the floor. “Say it. Tell me how bad you want it.”

Aziraphale swallowed, and when he looked up, Crowley was in front of him. His dark form towered over him, a wicked expression peering down from above his genuflected devotee, and Aziraphale couldn’t help but think of the frightful grotesques carved into the capitals of a church’s columns - a demon overseeing the sins of the penitent flock.

“I-I do. I...” Aziraphale struggled to keep his voice even, his eyes fluttering down the line of Crowley’s body as he spoke. “Please. It’s been... awful, just awful.”

The black lace button-up Crowley wore was a feast for the eyes, the lace tatted into a series of delicate monstera leaves that hugged his body like the dew-dropped depths of a tropical forest. Aziraphale’s mind swam. Had he worn that for Aziraphale’s benefit? Did he want to look good for him? It was almost too much to consider.

“I couldn’t think of anything else all day. Just... just y...” words weren’t coming easy to one so accustomed to biting them back. Especially when he couldn’t tear his eyes from the buckle of Crowley’s trousers, couldn’t keep from imagining what they might be concealing. Was he making an Effort? Could Crowley feel his wanton breath along the length of his cock, or over the dripping folds of his cunt?^[1]

“Oh Crowley, just you, doing whatever you want with me. Please, you can hav...” he buried his gaze into the floor between Crowley’s patent-leather wingtips, blush overwhelming his features, his final plea little more than a whisper, “Please keep hitting me. I need it."

Crowley scoffed, somewhere between condescension and adoration. “As if I’d deny you.” he reached down to grip Aziraphale’s face with one hand, pressing firm hollows into the plush of his cheeks. “I promised, didn’t I? To take proper care of you when you’re all worked up...” he bent at the waist, and Aziraphale could just make out the glint of golden irises behind inky shades. “To hit you ‘til you forget how to say ‘woe is me’.”

Their faces were so close. They were sharing breath. A mere centimeter and their lips would be touching.

If only.

Aziraphale couldn’t see it, but Crowley’s hands were shaking.

As relaxing as it was for Aziraphale, this sort of play always got Crowley delightfully keyed-up. It wasn’t just the torture - though the torture was undeniably delicious - it was the damn performance of it all. The careful shackling of Aziraphale’s wrists, the complex miracle of the chains holding him up, the delicate weaving of lascivious words meant to drive Aziraphale slowly, irresistibly mad. Even buttoning up the placket of his lace shirt had gotten Crowley all warm between his thighs. Now, hot blood was thrumming audibly in his ears, and his hands were physically itching to touch those gorgeous bits of marred scarlet, to trace the fresh, throbbing marks he’d laid across Aziraphale’s back.

And Crowley’d never been all that good at resisting temptation anyway.

Crowley’s eyes fluttered shut behind his shades at the first touch of his hands to Aziraphale’s skin. He groaned in time with Aziraphale’s helpless little shiver as his fingers swept up the undulating planes of raised welts, his fingerprints rough enough to scrape over raw flesh like fine sandpaper. Oh, but Aziraphale felt Divine - Crowley imagined he could drop to his knees behind Aziraphale, could let his mouth follow along behind his hands, kissing along stretches of wounded skin, lapping at bleeding welts. Would Holy blood scald his tongue? Would Aziraphale beg him for more, beg to taste him in turn? How thrilling it would be to flaunt that line, to give in to blasphemous temptation as he aided Aziraphale through his penance.^[2]

How dangerous.

Still, what he couldn’t worship with his lips, he’d take with his hands. Well, his hands and... other things.

Speaking of, Crowley’s next implement materialized in his open palm more or less unbidden - he wasn’t sure whether it had been he or Aziraphale who’d thought it up, whose mind had lingered on the bright, prickling sting delivered by a freshly-sharpened Wartenberg pinwheel, but he was eager to put it to work.

Crowley made his way around to Aziraphale’s front, brandishing the tool with a sly, fang-tipped grin. The moment Aziraphale’s eyes landed on the pinwheel, he moaned. “Oh, dear, yes.” the words fell blessedly unabated from Aziraphale’s lips, like he hadn’t so much as hazarded an attempt to hold them back. Like he welcomed this tiny display of want, of open, unguarded desire.

“Yeah? Thought you might fancy a change.” Crowley was aiming for cold and domineering, but his corporation betrayed him. His face flushed, and he felt the tips of his fingers warming with unhallowed energy, his claws manifesting from the unseen ether as his focus fled from his physical presentation. But, a pointed clench of his fists had them reshaping once more, vicious keratin blades retracting back until his fingers were rounded and humanoid again.

No. Not those. Crowley would readily bring Aziraphale untold abundances of pain with any number of implements, would rip his own arms open and weave a flogger out of his sinew just to beat Aziraphale with it if he asked. But, not those. Because Crowley knew that if he ever unleashed his demonic manifestations on Aziraphale, if he were to finally sink his bare claws into that soft, sumptuous skin, finally feel it give under his cruel grasp, feel angelic blood seep up between his fingers, Crowley might just do something truly horrible.

Like ask to be made his.

The first touch of the spiked wheel to the skin just below Aziraphale’s cuffed wrist sent a sympathetic frisson of tingling lust through Crowley, only growing as he crept the wheel up along the length of Aziraphale’s arm towards his shoulder. Aziraphale sucked in a breath, releasing it on a high, tightly-drawn whine as the pins danced over his shoulder, up the nape of his neck. His skin immediately pebbled with gooseflesh, and Crowley swore he could feel for himself the brilliant stabs of biting pain he was doling out with the wheel. It made Crowley want more, so he took it, rolling the wheel just as slowly down Aziraphale’s other arm.

Really, it wasn’t as if Crowley didn’t want Aziraphale like that. He did, quite deeper than he’d ever wanted anything, come to think of it. True, it was wholly unrealistic. Sacrilege, they’d called it - it just wasn’t done. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t nice to imagine it. What it could be like.

Next, Crowley brought the wheel to Aziraphale’s chest, hovering startlingly close to one of his nipples. Aziraphale drew in another anticipatory breath, but right before the pins touched that sensitive, rosy-pink skin, Crowley paused. “Say please.”

Aziraphale’s throat quivered. “Pl...” the rise of his chest nearly brought the pins down on his nipple, and his eyes rolled back, his head falling limp against his shoulders as he exhaled on a strung-out, “Oh, Crowley, please.”

And when Crowley set the pinwheel to Aziraphale’s pec, rolling firmly across his right nipple, Aziraphale properly hissed. He shook violently in his chains, though remained still enough to keep that wheel right where it was, letting Crowley trail it up over the quickly pebbling skin.

“Ahh, there we are, that’s a good boy...” Crowley chuckled, rewarding him with a complementary roll across his other nipple. He pressed a bit harder there, Aziraphale’s nipple thickening and curling up around the spokes in a way which almost felt greedy, like his very corporation was grasping at the pins to pull them deeper into his skin. The keening groan he coaxed from Aziraphale’s taut lips was absolutely glorious.

Crowley’d like to think he’d be... damn him, but Crowley would be kind, if given the chance. He’d cover Aziraphale in sweet, loving kisses, hold him close, unwrap him slowly. Do it proper. A small - but increasingly vocal - part of him believed he might not be capable of it, of giving this precious, elysian angel the kind of serene, soul-baring affection he deserved, but he’d be damned all over again if he wouldn’t be discorporated trying.

“You’re so tense, angel.” Crowley said as he once again moved behind Aziraphale, words skating hot over the shell of Aziraphale’s ear. “Deep breath, now.” he said when he noticed that Aziraphale hadn’t taken one in quite some time. He waited until the apex of Aziraphale’s inhale before he brought the pinwheel to Aziraphale’s tailbone, rolling the wheel all the way up the length of his battered, oversensitive spine.

Aziraphale’s exhale morphed into a hapless shriek, a shocked sound that was almost Crowley’s name, but pain and pleasure bore quickly down on Aziraphale’s throat until it was really more of a timorous squeak. The pins caught sadistically on the lacerations left by the whip, sending explosive rushes of delicious anguish out along his nerve paths and leaving specks of blood in their wake.

Something grey and twisted-up in the center of Aziraphale’s core began to release its hold, his overwrought aura sighing contentedly into the sensation. Even so, his body remained tense, his aching muscles drawn taut as a bowstring.

“You’re only making it worse, y’know.” Crowley said of the tension, and Aziraphale shuddered because yes, he did know. He wanted worse.

Crowley wanted to give him worse. And if Aziraphale were his - oh, they could find so many new ways to hurt him. Better ways, ways that involved whispering sweet, adoring nothings while staining soft angelic asscheeks crimson, or beating his hole pink and puffy before spearing it open on a thick demonic cock, or pressing biting kisses packed with unfathomed infinities of affection into inflamed, abused skin.

If only.

By now, both of them were panting - Crowley from the exertion, Aziraphale from the strain. Their corporations - for one reason or another - were thoroughly worn-out, trembling with the thrill of their exchange, of giving, of receiving. Even so, they both knew Aziraphale needed more.

And they both knew Crowley was far from done.

Crowley snapped his fingers, and Aziraphale yelped as the chains holding his arms aloft suddenly tightened, yanking him up off his knees as if he didn’t weigh an ounce. Soon enough he was standing up straight on shaky legs, arms still held tight in their perpendicular T-formation away from his beaten, bleeding torso.

Nothing happened for a time, long enough for Aziraphale to take a few deep breaths. The prickling, slightly itchy tingle of the Wartenberg pinwheel was still dancing across his skin, mingling with the stinging remnants left by the whip such that his whole body was buzzing in a state of constant ache. Though, even with all this marvelous pain, Aziraphale knew full well they hadn’t quite run the gamut when it came to all the different types of paradisal agony. His mind spun around an assortment of indulgent sense-memories, wondering just what Crowley might have in store for him next. Had the room not been pin-drop silent, he may have missed the unmistakable ‘click’ of a snake-head belt buckle being undone.

The sound of thick leather sliding free from Crowley’s belt loops drew a full-throated moan from Aziraphale, his cock pulsing visibly within its brass bondage.

Crowley couldn’t help it - he smiled. “Mm, I know - this one’s your favorite, isn’t it?” he placed the folded tip of the belt against Aziraphale’s skin, letting him feel the toughness of the leather as he dragged it slowly up the curve of his ass.

Fuck, it was warm, seductively warm from a day spent slung around a demon’s sinful, slender hips. Being nearly 2.5 inches wide and made of real, rough cowhide, the belt would certainly do some delightful thuddy damage. “Saved it special for you. Know how much you love it when I bruise up this pretty arse.” Crowley said.

The word ‘special’ carved a brand into Aziraphale more lasting than any weapon in Crowley’s arsenal could.

“’S gonna smart something fierce against all these lovely welts.” Crowley let the belt slip deftly off Aziraphale’s skin, then brought it up to issue a perfunctory smack against his own palm. Crowley hissed, and Aziraphale whimpered.

“P... please.” Aziraphale arched back into the space where the belt had been, sheepishly offering himself to it. To Crowley.

Crowley was laughing now, a sound that should have cleaved through Aziraphale with a potent stab of humiliation, but instead warmed his heart with the ardent affection simmering below its condescending tone. “Fuck, you’re a right obedient thing when you know what you want. Beggin’ for it, pushin’ your arse back like a little slut...” the filthy pejorative slid off his tongue like hot molasses, backed with just a hint of his trademark sibilant rasp. “Just that desperate for your favorite toy, eh?”

Aziraphale nodded. They both knew why - at least, Aziraphale hoped Crowley knew - why this tool was the most coveted in Crowley’s proverbial armory, why Aziraphale would pant and whine and grovel on his fucking knees just to feel the unforgiving snap of its bruising leather. He loved it for its primary purpose, for whose lithe hips it rested on day after wondrous day.

The belt was his favorite because it was Crowley’s.

“Remember to breathe, angel.” Crowley said, waving the belt once more through the air before bringing it down hard against Aziraphale’s ass.

Aziraphale took the first round of strikes like a fucking professional. His stance was unfaltering, and rather than bucking away from the blows, he leaned into them, savoring every stomach-turning thud of the belt against his brutalized rear. On the fifth, he shot Crowley a look over his shoulder, a grinning, fussy, almost playful sort of thing, a silent challenge - ‘is that all you’ve got, dear boy?’.

Right. Time to turn up the heat, then.

The next strike was hard enough to break the scab on one of Aziraphale’s whip wounds, and fresh blood ran down over the new, blooming bruises there. Three more were sufficient to get Aziraphale moaning again, and after a punishing blow across both cheeks, Aziraphale gasped in that way which he only did upon reaching a certain precarious edge.

At that gasp, Crowley froze. “Oh, no you don’t.” he snapped his fingers, and Aziraphale cried out as his brass cock-ring squeezed impossibly tighter around his base. In a flash, Crowley was in front of him, coaxing his chin up with two fingers, warm-grey irises forced to meet gleaming, shaded gold. “You’ll cum when I say you can cum.”

Aziraphale choked on air, his chains jingling lightly as he rode out the frightful shocks of gripping pain brought by the forceful theft of his orgasm. His cock - now flushed a deep magenta, almost purple at its tip - twitched fitfully, and the veins running up his length bulged, throbbing with frantic rushes of blood.

“Awww, would you look at that...” Crowley cooed with an air of mocking, looking pityingly down at the display. Aziraphale sniffled, turning a deeper shade of red under the scrutiny, and Crowley smirked, a single fang slipping out to dig into his bottom lip. “Y’want it so bad your cock’s fuckin’ weeping for it, huh?” he brought the folded end of his belt to the shimmering ring around the base of Aziraphale’s cock, dragging the leather slowly up the underside of it. He relished the way Aziraphale tensed up, body drawn taut in expectance of more pain.

Expectance, but not fear.

“You really do love this.” Crowley flicked his wrist, tapping the belt against the tip of Aziraphale’s cock a few times.

“A-ah! Cr...” Aziraphale shrieked, knees instinctively turning inward in a fruitless attempt to guard himself from something they both knew he craved to the point of delirium.

When Crowley drew his belt away, Aziraphale’s cock twitched, a fresh dribble of precum running down its length to mar polished brass.

“Fuck...” Crowley swore, barely more than a rush of air. Something dark and decadent turned in Crowley’s gut, desire twisting its way up from his groin to coil somewhere around where the shriveled remains of his soul sat.

The desire to drop to his knees and gag himself on that gorgeous cock.

But, no. No. Couldn’t. No touching, not there. Crowley had seen Aziraphale cum more times that he could count, watched him squirm and shiver and shake apart, watched his cock weep brilliant bursts of spend, his cunt gush with sticky-sweet slick. He’d even seen him cum without any Effort at all, his orgasmic throes manifesting in a wave of unbidden tears streaking lewdly down his face.

But, he’d never gotten to feel it.^[3]

Before Aziraphale could recognize the movement of Crowley’s arm, the belt came down on him again, this time painting the side of his right hip a blazing bright-pink. Aziraphale wailed, face raised to meet the eyes of his tormentor, eyes blown solid gold behind those damned shades.

Aziraphale’s cock leaked, and he shut his eyes, wincing at the light patter of precum dripping onto the floor between his feet. Sickening, how filthy he was, how positively profligate. Sickening, how it made his heart soar.

Crowley hissed approvingly, pacing around once more to face Aziraphale’s rear. “Yeah, that’s right. You want more, don’t you? Greedy fuckin’ thing.” he asked, as if he didn’t know. He could see it on Aziraphale’s body, could hear it in his voice, could taste it in the fucking air. But, he wanted to hear him say it.

“Yes, yes, please.” Aziraphale was panting, hips kicking back in eager expectance. Pretense was gone now, his descent into the hazy, hypnotic stupor of submission eroding any remaining sense of propriety. “Please, Crowley, I need it. Give it to me. Give me more.”

Dammit all, but Crowley loved it when Aziraphale got greedy, put that beautiful, desirous, selfish mouth to work asking for what he really wanted. He wondered if Aziraphale would be just as greedy for him - keening at the sight of his cock, drooling at the tantalizing shine of his cunt, hungry for any exquisite combination of the two. Would he beg to taste him, to suck his essence from his swollen clit? Would he snivel and plead for Crowley to spear him open on his cock? Would he ask Crowley to cum inside him, to mark him at his very core?

“Oh, good boy.” Crowley said, half an exalted groan. He reared the belt back once more, bringing it down deathly hard over the backs of both Aziraphale’s thighs. Where he knew it would hurt the worst.

When the blow landed, Aziraphale screamed, and Crowley’s ashen heart soared at the familiar shape of it.

“Crowley!!”

And oh, how that scream was everything. Crowley would do anything, would scratch and tear and bite and hurt however Aziraphale liked best, if the reward was to hear Aziraphale screaming his name.

“Yeah?” Crowley was smiling now, his timbre long since overtaken by the sinister, sizzling vocal markers of the Bottomless Pit. The involuntary spasms of Aziraphale’s beet-red cock, the sobbing moans piercing the air as he thrashed, had told Crowley much. “You wanna cum?”

“I...” oh, how he wanted to. Aziraphale could hardly stand it, the wanting. He heaved a breath, rattling thick in his throat, but the words didn’t budge from where they’d lodged in his windpipe.

“Say it, angel.” Crowley goaded him, tapping the belt against Aziraphale’s ass to test his aim, a thing which he did only before administering a truly savage strike. “Say it and I’ll let you. Promise.” as the last word left his lips, he swung once again, hitting a cluster of crossed wounds on the high point of Aziraphale’s right asscheek.

Aziraphale howled, a wet, hearty sob of abject anguish. Then his voice dropped pitifully low, a barely audible stammer of “I-I... I want-“

Another strike rang out, the belt curling torturously around the curve of Aziraphale’s upper thigh. Agony doubled on agony.

“Louder!!” Crowley shouted.

“Yes, I want it!!” Aziraphale screamed - properly screamed. Around them, Aziraphale’s precious books rattled fitfully on their shelves, quaking in time with the fervent shout of the Divine. “I want it, Crowley, please, please, I want to cum for you...” his head fell back on a delirious moan, lolling uselessly between his shoulder-blades and letting Crowley catch a fleeting glimpse of his blushing, downright maudlin countenance. His next cry shook the chandelier above him, electric candles sputtering with a surge of occult power. “Please let me cum for you!”

Crowley shuddered as the plea whipped through him, eyes darkening with the abrupt dilation of slitted pupils.

For him. Aziraphale wanted to cum for him. Aziraphale’s orgasm was his.

The last blow he delivered was gut-wrenching. He brought the belt down in a burst of infernal strength, laying a precise path along the backs of both Aziraphale’s thighs with cruel, Machiavellian accuracy. At the same time, he lowered his off-hand, the impact of the belt echoed by a clear, sharp-

Snap.

The sound echoed near-preternaturally through the bookshop, followed immediately by the soft ‘click’ of an unseen juncture splitting open down the center of Aziraphale’s cock-ring.

The brass ring fell to the floor with a dull, metallic ‘thunk’, and Aziraphale’s aura ignited.

His cock swelled with a rush of blood that kicked him directly into an Earth-shattering orgasm. Aziraphale bucked and writhed and screamed, spend falling in perfect pearlescent ribbons across the rug as the chains holding him upright clattered under the ceaseless struggle of his frenetic limbs. Above them, the chandelier flickered, its electric candles jittering chaotically between off, on, and something which produced more light than the wattage was capable of supporting. A few of them exploded. And still, Aziraphale reveled.

Crowley watched on, lips parted in awestruck shock. He may have cum in his trousers, or maybe not - every inch of his body was so doused in waves of rolling ethereal pleasure that he honestly wasn’t quite sure. All he knew was he never wanted this feeling to stop, but was also convinced that his corporation may rip apart under the strain.

He would welcome discorporation in return for this blessed rapture.

For time, there was nothing - the room, now almost pitch-black with all the lost candles, was eerily still, the ring of sentinel columns standing silent watch around the pair of panting, overwrought celestials. Soon, though, a trembling hand was raised, a feeble snap from fingers still half-clawed triggering the deafening ‘shnk’ of manacles unclasping, a miracle at last freeing Aziraphale from his bonds. As the restraints released, Aziraphale crumpled, and Crowley leapt to loop both arms under him, slowing his descent to the rug below. Aziraphale whimpered in his grasp, which only made Crowley clutch him tighter, pull him closer.

Crowley’s senses told him to stop. He looked his senses square in the face and told them to fuck off.

“Right, easy now...” Crowley coached, guiding Aziraphale down until both of them were on the floor, Crowley’s limbs bracketing Aziraphale on all sides. Keeping him safe. “There ya go. S’all over, we’re done now, promise.” a hand swept up to shift sweat-stuck curls out of Aziraphale’s face, to calm him through the aftershocks. Aziraphale was still shaking.

“Crowley...” Aziraphale choked out, newly-freed hands fisting white-knuckled into the lace on Crowley’s chest, urging him closer, closer now. They were already as close as two beings could be, but it wasn’t enough.

Aziraphale was falling. He was lost, he was burning, overwhelmed at once by a horrific downward pull, a sudden drop from ecstasy to oblivion. Crowley’s grip was soft, loving even, everything that Aziraphale knew he could never have. The pain whorled in with the softness, with the desire, with the unforgiving weight of that huge, terrifying word that both of them thought but never said. Tears fell freely from his eyes, as they always did, but they’d never hurt quite like this. Never burned like this.

“I know, I know.” Crowley hushed, but no. He didn’t know. How could he? “Y’did so good, angel, were so fuckin’ good for me. Fuck, you know that, right?” his voice was small, measured, as if he were handling something fragile, something fit to shatter between them and be lost forever. “Let me... shit, lemme look at those...”

Aziraphale’s mind refused to wrap itself around the concept of what ‘those’ were, but a shaky demonic hand skirting over the ravaged skin on his back was indication enough. Crowley sucked in a sympathetic breath as he surveyed the damage, myriads of cross-hatching whip strikes now complemented by patches of mottled purple bruises. His skin was dusted with sweat, and the thick rivulets of dried blood still glistened with the fading luminance of angelic ichor.

Crowley set his hands carefully to the worst of the strike marks, focusing his essence to the tips of his fingers. The air around them tingled with something unnamable as Crowley worked, knitting skin and closing wounds and drying blood with the delicate sweep of his hands. When he heard Aziraphale’s quiet, grateful sigh, felt him finally start to relax where he was curled against his chest, Crowley smiled. Not one of those fake, plastered-on, sardonic smiles he wore for others. A real one.^[4]

For Aziraphale, it was the miracle that did it. The sensation of pure, unencumbered warmth working its way deep inside his veins, a scaly, tar-slick claw reaching down to pull Aziraphale out of the darkness and into the glow of ceaseless, ever-burning starlight. Their bare essences so close, brushing beatifically against one another in the impalpable ether. So nearly one.

Aziraphale wept harder than before, thick sobs muffled weakly through foliose lace, falling hot against infernal skin.

Crowley tensed above him, gentle caresses turning anxious, inquisitory. “Fuck, angel, ‘r you-“

When a pair of thin hands found the sides of Aziraphale’s face, coaxing him up out of the bramble of tear-soaked lace, Aziraphale gasped. For something was missing, blissfully missing - somewhere along the way, a karmic consequence of their tumble, Crowley’s glasses had been knocked away, his face at last clean of their damned obscurant darkness.

And there were his eyes.

A simple thing it was, that pair of glittering golden orbs beaming down at him, wracked with worry, their edges wet with the beginnings of tears. But within them were vast, unending multitudes, depths of ardent care 6000 years in the making. See me, they said. Take me, have me, love me.

The words ‘if only’ crashed familiarly against the inner ramparts of Aziraphale’s skull, but he banished them with a raucous, resolute ‘and thus’. In one desperate, decisive movement, he knotted a hand in the lace of Crowley’s button-up, pulling him in, closing the distance.

Aziraphale kissed him.

And Crowley - curse him, damn him, bless him - he kissed back.

[Footnotes]