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"Crowley!"
Delight. That was good. That was cool. Crowley kept his hands in his pockets, as he sidestepped to lean against the bookshop's nearest column, so as not to grope for it in pained desperation.
"Angel." Teeth gritted. "Miss me?"
"You're walking like a dolly peg, dear."
So much for acting like nothing was wrong, then.
"Nice to see you, too."
"Oh," the angel pouted, perhaps a little mockingly, "come now. The bookshop's not the bookshop without you slouching and scowling about the place."
Crowley snuffed.
"Well, that's a backhanded compliment if ever I heard one. 'S'like me saying 'oh, the Bentley's not the Bentley without Aziraphale's whopping great arse imprint in the passenger seat.'"
"Oh!" Aziraphale actually closed the book in his lap. (With his thumb between the pages mind, but still.) He was clearly transported with glee. "Do you really think so?"
"Ngrrr." Crowley levered himself off the column, and regretted it at once, almost toppling, and struggling to get his limbs beneath him, his hands still fisted in his pockets.
Aziraphale scrutinised him. From the too jagged jut of his elbows, to the restless, stiff way he was shifting his weight on his wide braced feet. Crowley did his best to only grimace the usual amount, hissing softly through his teeth.
"Dear me." Aziraphale set his book aside completely. "What ever has you so fractious, my dear?"
Crowley jerked one elbow and eyed a nearby statue.
"'Sss'jstm'hps."
"Your hips?" Blasted angel being so well versed in Crowlingo.
"Yeah, but, it's fine. Come on, angel. Let's go for a drive. Sun's out."
"Can you drive?"
"Well, the Bentley does most of the work anyway. Hurts less when I'm sitting down."
"Hurts?" Aziraphale frowned.
"A bit." Crowley lied. In truth, he felt as though his hip joints were made of rusted old saw blades. "I turned all snakey in my sleep, that's all. Just getting back used to having them."
"Might I heal them?"
"They're not injured." It was taking all of Crowley's concentration not to forget himself and pace the floor. He bobbed where he stood, and then wished he hadn't. "They're just—" Bloody useless. A hack job. A colossal piece of guesswork from a too long snakey brain. Very possibly on wrong. "I dunno. Seized up. Need oiling or something."
Aziraphale observed him for a further, quiet moment, and then he rose slowly from his chair.
He unhooked his cufflinks, placed them on top of his book, and then walked towards Crowley, pushing up his shirtsleeves as he came.
Crowley shook his head, rather as though in despair, wrangled a hand from his pocket, and removed his sunglasses, revealing the painful fondness in his eyes for his angel.
"What?" asked Aziraphale, running a hand from the crease of his arm to his wrist, a pale shimmer of gold on the heaven's thread hair there. "An angel can try."
He was making that face Crowley knew should have had him halfway to his knees. And he loved it. The playful, calm confidence of it. The fact it didn't matter if he didn't feel that way, because instead he felt so desperate to be hugged to within an inch of his life, that it amounted, almost, to the same.
"Be gentle with me, angel."
Aziraphale smiled.
"When am I anything but?"
He took Crowley's sunglasses first. Placed them aside at a statuesque Grecian's feet, and then, carefully, worked his hand from the pocket of his jeans. He didn't miss how Crowley flinched.
"Are you going commando, dear?" Crowley had no idea where the angel had learned that term, but he said it so very assuredly that it almost wasn't silly in the slightest.
"Nope." Crowley's hands were still fisted, but the smile he gave Aziraphale was lazy and faintly amused.
The angel eyed him knowingly, and lifted a poised mid-finger to thumb.
"May I make you a little more comfortable?"
Crowley's face said why not.
Crowley hadn't intended for the angel to see him in his underwear today, but it was never an unwelcome turn of events. A curt little click, and Crowley's jeans obediently faded from existence, with a parting caress to his bottom, he noticed, because Aziraphale.
Crowley ungritted his teeth, and fanged his lower lip between them, biting back a laugh that would have ruined the satisfying smugness of the moment.
Aziraphale had tried, for several seconds, maybe three, to keep his eyes on Crowley's face, but his hands had come gently to rest upon the demon's jeanless hips, and what he felt there had ravaged his resolve quite thoroughly.
"Right then—" he said, rather vaguely, his eyes taking Crowley's lovely laced silk knickers in, caught up a bit in the tuck of his balls. "Ally-oop."
"Ally—?” Oop! went Crowley, indeed, hoiked off the floor, by those unassuming hands, and brought God-sure, and steady as he went, hitched and hithered, until he was docked in a strong, bare harbour of forearms, his legs hung blessedly limp, like draped fabric, about his angel's hips.
Aziraphale's hands were supporting his bottom, fingers laced casually beneath it, having smoothed out the silk that had bunched there with a series of prim little tugs, the same way he would neaten his own bowtie.
His face bore that look of irrepressible self congratulation, as Crowley – with his own arms resting equally casually, elbows on velveted shoulders, and forearms trailing down a postured back – tried to hide the slight hitch in his breath as his hips gave a furious throb, and said: "Show off."
"Am I hurting you?"
"No more than standing was."
"I thought perhaps they might need opening up."
Crowley wound his arms around his angel's shoulders, and squeezed, because he knew the intention had been entirely sincere, for all it sounded dirty.
Aziraphale shifted a little, kneading the muscle of Crowley's splayed haunches, watching his face very closely and seeing the faint little flinches he couldn't quite disguise.
With a nod, he kissed up under Crowley's tight jaw, and said, kneading more carefully:
"Let's get you settled."
It should have been painfully undignified for a demon to be carried about like a lank limbed cat in the arms of an angel, but Crowley had, some time since, decided that dignity wasn't worth much in his world. He nosed at the ear of his angel, and rested his head on that cotton fluff hair, and tried to focus on the lovely, worked in warmth those hands were giving, and not the grating, blunt sawn pain below.
"There we go." Someone help him, he loved how his angel always had to narrate for himself. The there they were going, in this case, being the memory weathered sofa in the angel's office nook.
"Mind your knees, dear. That's it." Crowley hadn't done anything other than let his limbs go where the angel's hands placed them. It was nice to take credit for stuff though, especially when the angel said, earnestly: "There. Lovely job."
Crowley scoffed. Just a bit. Just for show, and then hissed as Aziraphale adjusted the tilt of his hips.
"Sorry, petal. Just angle them— There, that's it."
Crowley sighed through a noseful of curls, as his bottom was eased back carefully, a lovely, slow dip sinking low in his spine. Something tight released there, and Crowley poured bonelessly over the angel, from shoulder to lap.
"Ssss—" he said, which was not what he'd meant to say, but the tone was enough for Aziraphale to give him back a soothing hum.
"That's better, isn't it? Mmm?"
It was, but the angel had started to burrow at his throat, breathing in the hollow, and that was a thousand times better, so he swallowed and murmured: "Keep doing that. Please."
Aziraphale nuzzled the bob of his throat. His hands had started kneading Crowley's hips once more, but this was not the that his demon meant, and the shape of his smile said he knew it. He humoured Crowley's arching neck with idle, close-mouthed kisses, mumbling soothing things whenever the pain made his breathing catch or hiss.
"Breathe for me, love," he said twice, when the demon hadn't noticed he'd been holding in a lungful of air, and then: "That's the ticket," and "There's a lad," for all the world as though he'd attained some grand achievement by obeying.
"This might feel a little warm, dear, don't fret."
Crowley couldn't have fretted by then if you'd dared him. The pain was still there, but he seemed to be farther away from it, somehow, as though he were double exposed on top. It wasn't entirely his now, and the angel could lick him with heavenly flame, if he liked, just so long as he kept Crowley floating, half above the pain.
It was warm. And it wasn't quite healing, but it was some manifestation of Aziraphale's grace. His palms felt like heavenly heat pads, which wasn't exactly romantic, but did sonnet worthy wonders for the pain.
"'Sssnice—" Crowley sighed, drowsing on the very edge of consciousness, aware through the dark of his eyelids of a faint idea of light, as though a candle had been lit across the room.
"'R'you glowing?" he slurred, leaden headed on his angel's shoulder now.
"My hands are, yes," Aziraphale soothed. "Your hips are too."
Crowley made a small, bright noise that sounded close to wonder.
"Like a glowworm—" he mused, as he drifted, away from the pain, deeper into the hands of his angel. "Glowworm'sss never glum, 'cause the sssun shinesss out their—"
"Sleep, dear."
And by the time he woke, the pain was gone.