Things That Will Never Happen
Title: Things That Will Never Happen
Rating: PG
Fandom: Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
Characters/Pairings: Aziraphale/Crowley secret relationship
Warnings: Cavity-inducing angst.
Summary: Crowley and Aziraphale can't touch.
Crowley arrived at the restaurant fashionably late. It wasn't that he wanted to keep Aziraphale waiting, or to miss out on a few minutes of his company, but he had been arriving fashionably late for centuries now, and he intended to keep it up. He parked illegally, more out of habit than necessity, and strolled in. Aziraphale had taken a table in the back.
Crowley stood there for a minute, watching. The angel hadn't noticed him yet. Candlelight played over Aziraphale's face. He had already ordered a bottle of wine, which Crowley knew would be exquisitely well chosen, and was sipping it while he waited. Crowley drank in the angel's relaxed posture. The intelligent gleam in his eyes. The way his pudgy fingers curled around the bowl of his wine glass. Everything about him, really.
When he sat down, Aziraphale looked up and beamed. The pleasure in his face made Crowley's heart leap. "So good to see you, my dear boy." Their feet brushed under the table and they both pulled them back.
"Hi," mumbled Crowley, suddenly shy. He ducked his head to inspect the menu. Aziraphale poured him a glass and he took a gulp. "How's business? Been spreading much virtue and glad tidings lately?"
"Oh, here and there." Aziraphale prattled on for a bit about his work at the local hospital, and described the lost soul who had wandered into his bookshop the prior week. "I could see how unhappy she was, and I was able to offer her some spiritual consolation." He leaned forward. "I even sold her a book."
"The ultimate sacrifice."
"And how about you?" Aziraphale asked. "Infernal wiles going, er, well?"
"Oh, I caused a ten-car pileup on the M25 today. You might have heard about it if you watched the news." (Aziraphale never did.) "Traffic was backed up for six hours. People were getting out of their cars and threatening each other. And I made all the horns just slightly louder than they needed to be," he added with pride.
"Oh dear," said Aziraphale, a crease appearing between his eyes. "Was anyone -- ?"
"No casualties," Crowley muttered, running his finger down the menu and landing on something with bolognese sauce. "All miraculously unharmed."
He could sense Aziraphale's smile without having to look up. "You know, Crowley --"
"Don't say it."
"You really are --"
"Spare me."
"I could kiss you sometimes," Aziraphale said, still smiling.
Crowley swallowed. He glanced up. "I could kiss you back," he said.
Their eyes locked.
They had kissed once. Just once. It had been more of a dry brush of lips, but Crowley counted it as a kiss. He had been the one to pull away. Panicked. Babbling. We can't. They'd find us out. You'd Fall. Don't ask me to be the reason for your Fall. And Aziraphale had nodded slowly. And that had been that.
Since then the Arrangement had acquired a new unspoken rule. They did not touch, unless their hands happened to brush by accident, which happened more and more often these days. No more handshakes. No more clapping each other on the back. No more leaning drunkenly on each other's shoulders. Definitely no kisses.
"May I take your orders, gentlemen?" The server appeared beside them, pen poised, and the moment passed.
When they had ordered, Crowley sipped his wine and gazed into the flame of the candle on the table. The restaurant was playing a Mario Lanza song. Lately it seemed like all the music he heard was about love. He had put a random tape in the Blaupunkt the other day, fully expecting to hear Best of Queen, and had been taken aback when it turned out to be The Cole Porter Songbook.
Aziraphale was watching him. "You know, dear ..." The angel paused. "I wish things were different too."
"Well, they're not."
"Because I really would like to kiss you." The earnestness in Aziraphale's voice would have been comical under other circumstances.
Crowley could feel a flush creeping up his neck. "Yeah?"
Aziraphale ran a finger over the rim of his glass. "Do you know how I'd do it?" he asked quietly.
Crowley looked up. It might be the candlelight or it might be some angelic inner light, but he could see fire dancing in Aziraphale's eyes. "How?" he croaked.
Aziraphale took a thoughtful sip of wine. "I think I would cup my hands around your face first. Stroke my thumbs over your chin, your jawline, your cheekbones ... did I ever tell you you have exquisite cheekbones, my dear?"
"You hadn't mentioned." Crowley was trying not to smile. He was fairly vain about his cheekbones.
"Remiss of me. In any case, no sense rushing things. Let me see, what next?"
"You'd get up close," Crowley suggested. His heart thrummed in his chest.
"Hmm," said Aziraphale. "Yes, I'd like to breathe you in. You have a brimstone smell when you've visited Hell lately. When you haven't, you smell of that aftershave of yours. Though I'm not convinced you actually need to shave."
Crowley didn't, but he liked feeling clean. "You smell of sandalwood when you've been to Heaven. And the rest of the time you smell like your bookshop. Sort of ... sweet. And dusty."
They were silent for a moment, sizing each other up.
"Next, I'd take those off." Aziraphale gestured at Crowley's sunglasses. "I want to see your eyes."
Crowley pulled off his sunglasses and offered them up to the empty air. They vanished with a tiny popping sound.
Aziraphale smiled. "I would start at the corner of your mouth -- right there." He pointed. "Slowly. Very small kisses. Very soft. Very dry."
"I'd open my mouth," Crowley countered. His mouth had fallen open already, and he could almost feel the press of Aziraphale's lips along it, feather-light, teasing.
"But I wouldn't take the bait, my dear. I would brush my lips over your philtrum. Kiss the tip of your nose. Little things."
"Then I would take matters into my own hands." Crowley took a fortifying gulp of wine. "I'd grab you and mash my mouth against yours. Lick your teeth. You have nice teeth."
"And you have nice fangs."
Crowley flashed a toothy grin. "You know what I'd really like?"
"What's that, dear?"
"I'd like to sit in your lap."
Aziraphale inhaled sharply. Crowley could see he hadn't thought of that before.
The server approached the table. "One fettuccine alfredo. One tagliatelle with bolognese." He laid the dishes before them, giving Crowley an odd look before he went. (People tended to give him odd looks when he wasn't wearing his sunglasses.) Crowley leaned back in his chair, a little disappointed at the interruption, his heart still racing. They settled in to eat.
"I'll bet you have a sssoft lap," whispered Crowley across the table. He twirled a bit of pasta around his fork. He wasn't hungry anymore. Or rather, he was hungry for something he couldn't eat, and it was maddening.
"I suppose I do," Aziraphale whispered back. "And you'd be at just the right height for me to run my lips over your neck."
Crowley felt his head tip back involuntarily.
"I'd hold you very close, my dear."
They ate in silence for a few minutes.
"I could take off your shirt," Crowley offered.
"Oh?" Aziraphale considered this.
"And you could stretch out your wings. It's been a while. Last time I saw them, they could use some grooming." Crowley chewed a bite of tagliatelle. "I could clean them up a bit. Straighten out the pinions. Run my fingers through the downy bits at your shoulder blades."
"Nobody's ever done that for me." The angel blinked his pale eyes. "What if I were to wrap my wings about your shoulders? Like a blanket."
Crowley pictured it and felt very warm. "Yes."
"And hold you," said Aziraphale softly.
"And hold me," said Crowley. He could almost feel Aziraphale's arms and wings pulling him in close, hugging him tight.
They had never hugged.
They ordered a single slice of devil's food cake for dessert. The tines of their forks clinked together as they ate. Crowley thought he could taste the faintest trace of Aziraphale's saliva. He lifted the wine bottle and swirled it around. "About a glassful left. Care to split it?"
Aziraphale nodded, and the wine vanished from the bottle, reappearing in their two glasses. "Thank you, my dear."
Crowley raised his glass. "Here's to things that will never happen." He tried to keep the bitterness out of his voice and failed.
Aziraphale touched his glass to Crowley's. Their knuckles brushed. They drank.
Crowley felt weary and disgusted with himself, but he wasn't finished talking. "I want to take you to bed."
"In the, er, carnal sense?" Aziraphale inquired.
"No. I mean I want to bring you back to my flat. I have a king-sized bed. Egyptian cotton sheets. I want to pull you under the covers and hold you as tight as demonically possible. I want to fall asleep in your arms." Crowley found himself gazing into Aziraphale's eyes for the hundredth time that evening. His chest ached. There. He had said everything.
Aziraphale reached across the table and --
Crowley snatched his hand away.
"Sorry!" the angel mumbled, pulling away too. "Sorry, dear. Didn't know what I was doing. Just acting on an unconscious impulse, you might say."
"Right." Crowley stared at the tablecloth.
"I suppose I was going to hold your hand." Aziraphale looked miserable.
"I would give anything to hold your hand right now," Crowley told him fiercely. He clutched the edge of the table.
"Almost anything, my dear."
"Almost," Crowley agreed.
Aziraphale insisted on paying the bill over Crowley's protests, and they stepped out into the cool night air. The angel paused in front of the Bentley and leaned down to run a hand over the car's bonnet. His touch was slow and deliberate.
"What are you doing?" Crowley asked.
"Nothing, dear." Aziraphale got in. Crowley watched as he stroked the sides of the leather seat. Then he reached over to lightly grip the gearshift, letting his fingers trail over the knob. Then he laid a hand on the glove compartment, his thumb toying with the latch. Crowley shivered, understanding. Every caress Aziraphale gave the car was intended for Crowley.
Crowley found it hard to concentrate on his driving.
When they reached the bookshop, Crowley parked (illegally) so he could walk Aziraphale to the door. He half-hoped the angel would invite him in for drinks, but he sensed that would be dangerous.
"Well," said Aziraphale, "good night."
"Yeah." Crowley wondered if he looked like a lovesick puppy. Probably. "Ciao."
They looked at each other one last time, and then Aziraphale shut the door softly but firmly behind him.
Crowley went home. Or rather, he went back to the flat, which was about as homey as a combination high-end furniture store and plant nursery. He curled up in bed and wrapped his several-thousand-thread-count sheets around himself as tightly as possible.
When he finally fell asleep, he dreamed of a snow-white feather, perhaps the tip of a long wing, hovering less than a centimeter from his face. It came so close to brushing his skin that he could feel the tiny air currents it stirred with every slight movement. In his dream he wanted to reach out and seize it but he couldn't, his arms were trapped at his sides, he could hardly breathe.
Rating: PG
Fandom: Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
Characters/Pairings: Aziraphale/Crowley secret relationship
Warnings: Cavity-inducing angst.
Summary: Crowley and Aziraphale can't touch.
Crowley arrived at the restaurant fashionably late. It wasn't that he wanted to keep Aziraphale waiting, or to miss out on a few minutes of his company, but he had been arriving fashionably late for centuries now, and he intended to keep it up. He parked illegally, more out of habit than necessity, and strolled in. Aziraphale had taken a table in the back.
Crowley stood there for a minute, watching. The angel hadn't noticed him yet. Candlelight played over Aziraphale's face. He had already ordered a bottle of wine, which Crowley knew would be exquisitely well chosen, and was sipping it while he waited. Crowley drank in the angel's relaxed posture. The intelligent gleam in his eyes. The way his pudgy fingers curled around the bowl of his wine glass. Everything about him, really.
When he sat down, Aziraphale looked up and beamed. The pleasure in his face made Crowley's heart leap. "So good to see you, my dear boy." Their feet brushed under the table and they both pulled them back.
"Hi," mumbled Crowley, suddenly shy. He ducked his head to inspect the menu. Aziraphale poured him a glass and he took a gulp. "How's business? Been spreading much virtue and glad tidings lately?"
"Oh, here and there." Aziraphale prattled on for a bit about his work at the local hospital, and described the lost soul who had wandered into his bookshop the prior week. "I could see how unhappy she was, and I was able to offer her some spiritual consolation." He leaned forward. "I even sold her a book."
"The ultimate sacrifice."
"And how about you?" Aziraphale asked. "Infernal wiles going, er, well?"
"Oh, I caused a ten-car pileup on the M25 today. You might have heard about it if you watched the news." (Aziraphale never did.) "Traffic was backed up for six hours. People were getting out of their cars and threatening each other. And I made all the horns just slightly louder than they needed to be," he added with pride.
"Oh dear," said Aziraphale, a crease appearing between his eyes. "Was anyone -- ?"
"No casualties," Crowley muttered, running his finger down the menu and landing on something with bolognese sauce. "All miraculously unharmed."
He could sense Aziraphale's smile without having to look up. "You know, Crowley --"
"Don't say it."
"You really are --"
"Spare me."
"I could kiss you sometimes," Aziraphale said, still smiling.
Crowley swallowed. He glanced up. "I could kiss you back," he said.
Their eyes locked.
They had kissed once. Just once. It had been more of a dry brush of lips, but Crowley counted it as a kiss. He had been the one to pull away. Panicked. Babbling. We can't. They'd find us out. You'd Fall. Don't ask me to be the reason for your Fall. And Aziraphale had nodded slowly. And that had been that.
Since then the Arrangement had acquired a new unspoken rule. They did not touch, unless their hands happened to brush by accident, which happened more and more often these days. No more handshakes. No more clapping each other on the back. No more leaning drunkenly on each other's shoulders. Definitely no kisses.
"May I take your orders, gentlemen?" The server appeared beside them, pen poised, and the moment passed.
When they had ordered, Crowley sipped his wine and gazed into the flame of the candle on the table. The restaurant was playing a Mario Lanza song. Lately it seemed like all the music he heard was about love. He had put a random tape in the Blaupunkt the other day, fully expecting to hear Best of Queen, and had been taken aback when it turned out to be The Cole Porter Songbook.
Aziraphale was watching him. "You know, dear ..." The angel paused. "I wish things were different too."
"Well, they're not."
"Because I really would like to kiss you." The earnestness in Aziraphale's voice would have been comical under other circumstances.
Crowley could feel a flush creeping up his neck. "Yeah?"
Aziraphale ran a finger over the rim of his glass. "Do you know how I'd do it?" he asked quietly.
Crowley looked up. It might be the candlelight or it might be some angelic inner light, but he could see fire dancing in Aziraphale's eyes. "How?" he croaked.
Aziraphale took a thoughtful sip of wine. "I think I would cup my hands around your face first. Stroke my thumbs over your chin, your jawline, your cheekbones ... did I ever tell you you have exquisite cheekbones, my dear?"
"You hadn't mentioned." Crowley was trying not to smile. He was fairly vain about his cheekbones.
"Remiss of me. In any case, no sense rushing things. Let me see, what next?"
"You'd get up close," Crowley suggested. His heart thrummed in his chest.
"Hmm," said Aziraphale. "Yes, I'd like to breathe you in. You have a brimstone smell when you've visited Hell lately. When you haven't, you smell of that aftershave of yours. Though I'm not convinced you actually need to shave."
Crowley didn't, but he liked feeling clean. "You smell of sandalwood when you've been to Heaven. And the rest of the time you smell like your bookshop. Sort of ... sweet. And dusty."
They were silent for a moment, sizing each other up.
"Next, I'd take those off." Aziraphale gestured at Crowley's sunglasses. "I want to see your eyes."
Crowley pulled off his sunglasses and offered them up to the empty air. They vanished with a tiny popping sound.
Aziraphale smiled. "I would start at the corner of your mouth -- right there." He pointed. "Slowly. Very small kisses. Very soft. Very dry."
"I'd open my mouth," Crowley countered. His mouth had fallen open already, and he could almost feel the press of Aziraphale's lips along it, feather-light, teasing.
"But I wouldn't take the bait, my dear. I would brush my lips over your philtrum. Kiss the tip of your nose. Little things."
"Then I would take matters into my own hands." Crowley took a fortifying gulp of wine. "I'd grab you and mash my mouth against yours. Lick your teeth. You have nice teeth."
"And you have nice fangs."
Crowley flashed a toothy grin. "You know what I'd really like?"
"What's that, dear?"
"I'd like to sit in your lap."
Aziraphale inhaled sharply. Crowley could see he hadn't thought of that before.
The server approached the table. "One fettuccine alfredo. One tagliatelle with bolognese." He laid the dishes before them, giving Crowley an odd look before he went. (People tended to give him odd looks when he wasn't wearing his sunglasses.) Crowley leaned back in his chair, a little disappointed at the interruption, his heart still racing. They settled in to eat.
"I'll bet you have a sssoft lap," whispered Crowley across the table. He twirled a bit of pasta around his fork. He wasn't hungry anymore. Or rather, he was hungry for something he couldn't eat, and it was maddening.
"I suppose I do," Aziraphale whispered back. "And you'd be at just the right height for me to run my lips over your neck."
Crowley felt his head tip back involuntarily.
"I'd hold you very close, my dear."
They ate in silence for a few minutes.
"I could take off your shirt," Crowley offered.
"Oh?" Aziraphale considered this.
"And you could stretch out your wings. It's been a while. Last time I saw them, they could use some grooming." Crowley chewed a bite of tagliatelle. "I could clean them up a bit. Straighten out the pinions. Run my fingers through the downy bits at your shoulder blades."
"Nobody's ever done that for me." The angel blinked his pale eyes. "What if I were to wrap my wings about your shoulders? Like a blanket."
Crowley pictured it and felt very warm. "Yes."
"And hold you," said Aziraphale softly.
"And hold me," said Crowley. He could almost feel Aziraphale's arms and wings pulling him in close, hugging him tight.
They had never hugged.
They ordered a single slice of devil's food cake for dessert. The tines of their forks clinked together as they ate. Crowley thought he could taste the faintest trace of Aziraphale's saliva. He lifted the wine bottle and swirled it around. "About a glassful left. Care to split it?"
Aziraphale nodded, and the wine vanished from the bottle, reappearing in their two glasses. "Thank you, my dear."
Crowley raised his glass. "Here's to things that will never happen." He tried to keep the bitterness out of his voice and failed.
Aziraphale touched his glass to Crowley's. Their knuckles brushed. They drank.
Crowley felt weary and disgusted with himself, but he wasn't finished talking. "I want to take you to bed."
"In the, er, carnal sense?" Aziraphale inquired.
"No. I mean I want to bring you back to my flat. I have a king-sized bed. Egyptian cotton sheets. I want to pull you under the covers and hold you as tight as demonically possible. I want to fall asleep in your arms." Crowley found himself gazing into Aziraphale's eyes for the hundredth time that evening. His chest ached. There. He had said everything.
Aziraphale reached across the table and --
Crowley snatched his hand away.
"Sorry!" the angel mumbled, pulling away too. "Sorry, dear. Didn't know what I was doing. Just acting on an unconscious impulse, you might say."
"Right." Crowley stared at the tablecloth.
"I suppose I was going to hold your hand." Aziraphale looked miserable.
"I would give anything to hold your hand right now," Crowley told him fiercely. He clutched the edge of the table.
"Almost anything, my dear."
"Almost," Crowley agreed.
Aziraphale insisted on paying the bill over Crowley's protests, and they stepped out into the cool night air. The angel paused in front of the Bentley and leaned down to run a hand over the car's bonnet. His touch was slow and deliberate.
"What are you doing?" Crowley asked.
"Nothing, dear." Aziraphale got in. Crowley watched as he stroked the sides of the leather seat. Then he reached over to lightly grip the gearshift, letting his fingers trail over the knob. Then he laid a hand on the glove compartment, his thumb toying with the latch. Crowley shivered, understanding. Every caress Aziraphale gave the car was intended for Crowley.
Crowley found it hard to concentrate on his driving.
When they reached the bookshop, Crowley parked (illegally) so he could walk Aziraphale to the door. He half-hoped the angel would invite him in for drinks, but he sensed that would be dangerous.
"Well," said Aziraphale, "good night."
"Yeah." Crowley wondered if he looked like a lovesick puppy. Probably. "Ciao."
They looked at each other one last time, and then Aziraphale shut the door softly but firmly behind him.
Crowley went home. Or rather, he went back to the flat, which was about as homey as a combination high-end furniture store and plant nursery. He curled up in bed and wrapped his several-thousand-thread-count sheets around himself as tightly as possible.
When he finally fell asleep, he dreamed of a snow-white feather, perhaps the tip of a long wing, hovering less than a centimeter from his face. It came so close to brushing his skin that he could feel the tiny air currents it stirred with every slight movement. In his dream he wanted to reach out and seize it but he couldn't, his arms were trapped at his sides, he could hardly breathe.