(no subject)

[a_fell]

I.II.III.

Consciousness descends on him by inches, and with the growing light that has been edging onto his pillow comes the growing awareness that the other side of the bed is empty.

There's a terrible crick in his neck, as well; he remembers waking with a start after drifting off over his book last night, Crowley still snoring blithely on beside him, and crawling under the covers rather than waiting any longer for the demon to wake. He's slept the night through, and while he can see that it's still early morning outside, daylight has fully broken across the water.

He sits up carefully, rubbing at his neck as the crick fades. The suitcase abandoned last night is nowhere to be seen, but Crowley's watch is on top of the dresser, and a few of his own handkerchiefs are folded in a neat pile nearby. Someone's unpacked, then. He looks again at the sky out the window, frowning; it can't be more than nine yet.

He stands carefully, considers making the bed, and just as quickly discards the idea. He'll do it when he's getting dressed, perhaps.

He wanders into the kitchen with a vague idea of making some tea, discovers a bowl of apples on the counter, and glances out the window for the culprit. There on the veranda, hair lifting gently in the breeze, is Crowley.

Comments

[aj_crawley]

Crowley hisses, hands scraping down the bedclothes.

"I'm not sure I do." His words come a little fast. Not tumbling over one another, but - quick, and not entirely distinct. "You're clearly up to something."

[a-fell.livejournal.com]

"Slander," he says, matter-of-fact, and manoeuvres himself around until he can duck past the curtain of dark wings above them and plant a kiss on the back of Crowley's neck.

"And, mm. Libel. I'm just trying to improve my 'powers of retention,' as you said."

As he speaks - between words, in fact - he trails kisses and tiny nips of his teeth down Crowley's spine, long and straight and inviting.

[aj_crawley]

The window's open. It doesn't feel at all like the breeze has picked up. But there's no other reason, no other explanation for why the waves outside are suddenly roaring so loudly in Crowley's ears.

"No," he says. "No, look, I mean, you don't. This isn't what I meant."

The muscles in his back are bunched nearly solid.

[a-fell.livejournal.com]

Aziraphael trails his unhurried way back up Crowley's spine before responding, then puts a hand back into the elbow join of Crowley's right wing and leaves it there.

His words are murmured into the back of the demon's neck.

"I know," he says, "I know what you meant. Plenty of time later, if you want. Just relax. Plenty of time."

His voice dissolves into a murmur while his other hand works, warm and unrelenting, at the knotted muscles below the join.

[aj_crawley]

"I, nnn." A shiver ripples across Crowley's back, unfurling from beneath Aziraphael's hand and rolling up his spine towards his neck and down (much closer) to the small of his back. "I know, but - "

There's a flush rising in Crowley's face again, as his palms splay and strain and push against the sheets.

[a-fell.livejournal.com]

"Shhhh," he says, still gentle and quiet, as though he's trying to calm a spooked horse.

"Relax," he repeats. "Just relax."

He can't quite manage the leverage necessary from this angle, so he raises his head to carefully exchange his right hand on Crowley's wing for his left, shifting his weight slightly to the right. Running his right hand down long, shining feathers, he carefully presses the wing down toward the mattress.

[aj_crawley]

Another tremor, in the wake of Aziraphael's touch, and something that has the shape of a moan - except there's no sound to it, but only a wide, shaky exhale.

It's just that they haven't ever - they have, but never like this, Crowley spread on the mattress and no - no other -

(There's a moment, between one jumbled uncertainty and the next, where Crowley wonders with brief, absurd clarity just how in hell the last few minutes got turned around so quickly.)

[a-fell.livejournal.com]

He's grateful, if he thinks about it, that there's already a sort of pattern laid out for this. He's never doubted that Crowley trusted him, but the rare moments when the demon shows it are nearly always the times when it's both of them together.

(This really is meant to be all about you.)

He feels so unprepared.

But Crowley is slowly relaxing - or at least is less actively fighting him - and this intense, solo focus slowly begins to feel less foreign. He uses a light touch across what he can reach of the soft underside of the wing, here working deeper into tense muscles, combing his fingers over and over through long, long feathers at the wingtip, and here the short, downy ones closer to the shoulder. It would be easy to lose himself in it if he wasn't focussed so intently on Crowley's reactions.

[aj_crawley]

It depends, perhaps, on the definition of 'relaxing'; every time Crowley thinks he's found a moment of stillness, a moment to centre himself and maybe try and actually breathe, Aziraphael does something that has him t-twisting his fingers into the bedsheets, taut and trembling.

He isn't loud.

(His forehead rests in the crook of his elbow; if there's a sound from him now, it's muffled in the rumpled duvet.)

[a-fell.livejournal.com]

Ironically, this may be why Aziraphael is so carefully listening, watching Crowley's fingers for every movement, every twitch in the bunched muscles of his back.

He works backward now, dragging his fingers more roughly against the feathers' natural growth. And here he distinctly remembers the way Crowley blew across them, how incredible it felt, each pinion warm and tingling. He leans in and breathes carefully on the light down where the wing joins the back.

[aj_crawley]

That -

The not-so-gentle scrape of Aziraphael's hands back - back through his feathers gets a one-two-three of short, sharp gasps into the bedclothes, but that -

(It feels like Aziraphael's breath, Aziraphael's warm and soft breath is curling down every fibre in his shoulder, and every short, delicate feather near the base of Crowley's wing stands up - )

That was loud.

I can't, Crowley thinks. It's a litany; I can't, I can't -

[a-fell.livejournal.com]

Paradoxically, it looks like Crowley is getting more tense, not less. He frowns slightly, turning his head to whisper nonsensical soothing noises into Crowley's ear.

He straightens slightly to lift the wing in order to reach the feathers on the sensitive underside. Right here is best, he remembers, just beneath the slight ridge of bone at the leading edge, and another breath of air.

[aj_crawley]

Every, every crackling, electric nerve-ending in his wing and in his back is grounding in the skin and sinew and downy feathers around the join, and when Aziraphael's breath whispers across it again, something - something flashes, something s-shorts -

"Aziraphael," is all Crowley manages, before his hands clamp down on the baseboard, and everything

and everything

goes
(fiat lux)

[a-fell.livejournal.com]

Aziraphael presses his chest to Crowley's back even before the shudders have stopped, dragging his fingers lightly across feathers toward himself so that he can edge both his forearms just underneath Crowley's ribs, press his mouth to the back of his neck, and hold on tightly.

"Thank you, love," he says, but it's quiet enough that Crowley, close as he is, might not hear anything beyond a murmur.

[aj_crawley]

He can't tell if Aziraphael is speaking quietly, or if it's just the ringing in his ears. He's not sure if that's bedsheets filling his view, or whether, when his vision went white, it just decided to stay that way. And he can't seem to lift his head to find out. But he can feel Aziraphael on top of him, and he can feel his own ragged breathing knocking them out of sync - inhales mismatched, exhales uneven - and he can feel the slow, irregular motion of Aziraphael's chest against him. Against -

Each time: a soft moan.

[a-fell.livejournal.com]

He can hear Crowley's voice, just barely, feel uneven breaths beneath him, through a soft cushion of feathers. He presses more kisses to Crowley's hairline, to the top of his ear and the place just behind it that always seems to drive him crazy. To drive them both crazy, in fact; the angel loves this part of Crowley's body, and rarely gets the opportunity to be this close.

Carefully, his left hand reaches out and brushes over the other wing.

[aj_crawley]

It flexes gently under his hand - a movement that would have been a lot sharper, a lot more abrupt, but for the fact that every muscle in Crowley's body seems to have melted and come unstuck.

The demon makes a noise that sounds almost... surprised. At the fact that Aziraphael's carrying on, perhaps - or maybe simply that he didn't actually pass out when the angel kissed behind his ear.

[a-fell.livejournal.com]

The tiny twitches, the hints of an emotional map that he's been watching under the skin of Crowley's back are no longer a tight, solid mass of tension; Aziraphael smiles into his neck and tries to mirror his own actions on the left wing. Almost.

"All right, my dear?" he asks, a little more clearly. His right arm is still wrapped tightly around Crowley, but his left is dragging long, slow strokes down the feathers of Crowley's other wing.

[aj_crawley]

There's a shake in Crowley's chest that might - might - be a laugh.



When he follows it up with something else, his voice is too raw, too still-breathless to make out much. There's one word, though, that sounded distinctly like 'braincells'.

[a-fell.livejournal.com]

Aziraphael seems to take that as a 'yes.' At any rate, he doesn't stop what he's doing.

"Mm," he says, intelligently, smiling even more widely. "Not required, I think."

His hand pulls out from under Crowley just a little in order to prop himself up on hands and knees. His left hand slips under the larger feathers in order to tug - gently - on the smaller ones beneath.

[aj_crawley]

Crowley chokes out something that doesn't quite have enough consonants to be a curse, though it's not for lack of trying.

(The sudden jerk of his wing is rather more pronounced, this time.)

A pause; he sinks back against the mattress again. He's still flushed. His eyes, fever-bright, are wide. But most tellingly, perhaps, for its rarity: the hair at his temples is damp.

"You don't - " he breathes.

[a-fell.livejournal.com]

"I know I don't," he says, laughing into dark feathers. The laugh is easier to distinguish than Crowley's was, but not by much.

"I want to," he whispers into the soft juncture of his shoulder, just above the wing.

He drags his hand across the wing again, feather by feather, then reaches underneath just by the hidden, hard-to-find join.

[aj_crawley]

He's caught between reactions; one reflex says down, tries to push onto Aziraphael's smooth, clever hand beneath his wing. But the angel's voice, vibrating so tantalisingly close to the top of the join, feels so - so, that Crowley nearly whines when he stops.

(It's no great loss that he doesn't; it wouldn't have been much of a whine anyway. Again, and of a sudden, Crowley's breath is all stuck in his throat.)

[a-fell.livejournal.com]

His memory of this bit from before is something of a blur. All circuits were already overloaded, as it were, so now he's forced to improvise a little. He keeps the hand below the join moving smoothly and buries the other back into the larger feathers where he can tug a little without fear of pulling too hard.

He's never seen Crowley quite like this, spread like an open book beneath his hands, fragile pages and delicate spine exposed and perfect. Every movement is so, so careful. The constant, soft roar of the surf outside makes for a surreal counterpoint to his voice as he whispers something inaudible into Crowley's back, and the breath of air just skims over the top of the join.

It's an awkward angle, but he watches closely what little he can see of the demon's face.

[aj_crawley]

Crowley's mouth is open, but his eyes drift shut as another quiver surfaces beneath Aziraphael's lips and hands, rolling out beyond the angel's reach, beyond the edge of the bed, to the very tips of his longest primaries which twitch and flutter in the air above the floor.

One hand curls back around the bright, wrinkled bedsheets, but the other fists in his own dark hair. He looks like a colour study, half-done: pale skin, white sheets, and the two black inkstains seeping from his back, where Aziraphael keeps dipping and sifting and stroking his fingers - which he leans down to kiss, again and again, and comes away clean every time.