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It was a quiet moment, the first that they had gotten since this whole business had started. The afternoon sun filtered through dust particles and diffused the late afternoon light across the front room of the bookshop. It fell on two tall piles of books stacked on the floor and cast tall shadows behind them, criss-crossing the image of the angel and demon sat in front of them.
Crowley picked up Persuasion. He seemed to be weighing it the book in his other hand, lensed gaze swinging back and forth between them; the other book was Carmilla.
“Is there even a kiss in Persuasion?” he frowned, looking across the little semicircle they made at Aziraphale, who glanced up from his own open copy of Anna Karenina, and coloured inexplicably.
“Er—no,” he said, “but it is a love story, after all. All good for inspiration, in case your…ah, clever little plan doesn’t work out.”
Crowley frowned deeper. “Now why are you talking like you’re doubting me, angel?
“Well, as I said, it just sounds unlikely. One nice kiss, and—poof. I mean, I’ve seen thousands of humans kiss for all sorts of reasons, and a vanishingly small percentage of them fall in love as a result.”
“Hmph,” Crowley hmphed. He took his glasses off and laid them to the side, so as to not impede his scowl. Aziraphale looked up at the movement, and tsked.
“Oh, don’t pout.”
“I’m not pouting,” Crowley hissed. “I’m…thinking.”
Aziraphale hummed doubtfully and went back to his book pile. They were ostensibly searching for inspiration to craft Nina and Maggie’s perfect first kiss, to make them fall in love and explain away their Gabriel/Jim cloaking miracle that had apparently worked a little too well. Maggie was already and reliably hopelessly gone on Nina, so they were at least halfway there already, and humans were so suggestible. Surely all Nina needed was a bit of…well, inspiration.
“Oh, this is a lovely one,” the angel said suddenly, sighing. He held up The Wrath and the Dawn. “Although recreating that would require quite a few more weapons than I’m sure either the girls have on hand…”
Crowley leafed through the Virginia Woolf he was holding. He found the passage he was looking for, held it aloft and cleared his throat. “Then came the most exquisite moment of her whole life passing a stone urn with flowers in it,” he read. Aziraphale’s head snapped up. “Sally stopped; picked a flower; kissed her on the lips. The whole world might have turned upside down! The others disappeared; there she was alone with Sally.” Crowley put Mrs Dalloway on the much smaller Maybe pile. “That seems doable, doesn’t it?”
He looked up at Aziraphale, who was watching him with a strange expression on his face, like surprise, and interest, and alarm mixed together like paint.
“What?” he asked sharply, reaching instinctively for his glasses. Aziraphale seemed to shake himself.
“Nothing,” he said, quickly, and smiled blindingly, if not a bit widely, at Crowley instead. Crowley frowned once more and shoved his glasses back on his face, glaring at the books.
“I was…ah…”
Crowley looked up again. Aziraphale had spoken, quietly, and the demon raised his eyebrows at the suspicious flushed quality that his skin had taken. “Yeees?” he drawled, turning a bit on the floor to face Aziraphale, who wasn’t looking at him. Quite determinedly so, it seemed.
“I was thinking…well, I had a thought…a fancy, even—well, no, not—”
“Aziraphale.”
The angel flushed deeper. Interesting. “S-sorry.”
Crowley felt the niggling of concern in the base of his stomach at Aziraphale’s obvious anxiety, but he didn’t think it could possibly be anything that horrid. This wasn’t a horrified Aziraphale; this was an Aziraphale caught chained up in the Bastille, or at the wrong end of a gun in a church, or fumbling what should be a fairly foolproof magic trick. This was an embarrassed Aziraphale.
“Angel,” Crowley said slowly, abandoning whatever book he had in his hand to turn his full imposing force onto Aziraphale. “Out with it.”
“Well,” the angel dithered, “it’s only that—they’re humans, and quite probably have had…some, if not…lots…of kisses before.”
“Sure…”
“And…and here we are…trying to engineer the perfect one,” Aziraphale said, eyes darting between his restless fingers picking at his trouser leg and Crowley. “When…when…” he seemed to run out of steam here, and looked miserably at Crowley.
“I don’t follow,” Crowley said honestly, and Aziraphale huffed irritably.
“It just seems silly. They have so much experience with this sort of thing—and—and we don’t!”
“Oh,” Crowley said, and understanding sank in slowly. “Oh,” he said again.
“Although—” and here Aziraphale’s expression morphed into terror—“I’m assuming you don’t have experience with—with—”
“Kissing?” Crowley said, dryly as he could, but feeling more and more like he couldn’t get enough air into his lungs. Aziraphale paled, and then blushed again in a way Crowley really struggled not to find cute. “You would…be correct.”
“Right,” Aziraphale said, visibly relaxing. His expression cleared. “Good. I mean. Well, not—I—”
“Was that all you were thinking?”
Aziraphale looked away again and cleared his throat needlessly. “In fact, it wasn’t. I was wondering…if it wouldn’t be sensible to…to gain some experience.”
“You want to kiss someone,” Crowley surmised thickly. He was feeling quite odd. Warmth collected in his face and his palms started sweating, totally at odds with the horrible chill he felt expanding in his insides, seeping into his bloodstream.
Aziraphale looked at him then, confusion drawing his eyebrows together. “No,” he said slowly, as if Crowley was being exceptionally stupid. “No…I was suggesting I kiss you.”
It was as if Beelzebub had flashed him. Well—no, not quite, but the shock must have been written plainly on his face because Aziraphale turned bright red yet again and balled his hands into fists.
“But—I mean, of course we don’t—it was only a suggestion!” he said, his voice pitched rather high and breathless, his expression one of abject misery as he looked pleadingly at Crowley.
Say something, his brain hissed at him, and the ice in his chest broke open and warmth flooded in its place. His limbs regained the ability to move.
“So…we would…kiss,” Crowley said, apparently still working out the equation in his head. “In order to…”
“To see what the optimum conditions are,” Aziraphale finished, excitement rushing back into his tone. “For example, your thing with the rain is clever, but it also seems very likely to get them both all wet, and humans do tend to find that unpleasant.”
“Right,” Crowley said, and his head seemed to be filled with a kind of static. There was something happening to him that he couldn’t quite get a handle on, and Aziraphale would surely notice before long. Some small part of him wondered if he should be acting more offended in Aziraphale’s lack of faith in his plan, but it was overshadowed by the part that thought that perhaps something quite novel and sinister was happening to his brain; while he could normally be counted on to object to nearly every facet of Aziraphale’s schemes in the past, he found he suddenly couldn’t come up with a single reason as to why this wasn’t a fantastic idea. “Right. Yeah, okay.”
Aziraphale blinked. “Okay?”
Crowley pushed himself up to his feet, looking expectantly at Aziraphale. “I said okay.”
“Oh!” Aziraphale squeaked, and then scrambled to stand as well. They were about three feet apart now and stood awkwardly staring at the other, neither moving closer.
“Remind me how these things start?” Aziraphale said, laughing weakly. “I suppose humans tend to be a lot closer when it happens.”
“I think that’s the physics of the thing, yes,” Crowley replied. “Is there a particular scene you want to recreate?”
“Oh…” Aziraphale said again, and looked back to the books as if he’d quite forgotten they were there. (Well, Crowley thought, miracles abound.) “Usually, things sort of kick off with some sort of—confession, I suppose. A love confession, or one says something terribly clever, and the other throws themselves—” he broke off with a cough, seeing Crowley’s raised eyebrows. “But, ah, we needn’t bother with all that, I think.”
Crowley nodded, and they continued to stare at one another until, struck with sudden inspiration, Crowley miracled a flower into his hand: a pale yellow rose.
“I took credit for the temptation of Guinevere, if you remember,” he said, twirling it in his fingers. Aziraphale tracked his movements with open hunger. Hm. “It wasn’t very difficult, though. She loved Lancelot, she was just waiting for…some kind of permission, I guess. And one day, fresh from some knightly adventure, he stopped on the way into the castle and bought a rose from a devilishly handsome street merchant—” he winked at Aziraphale, who gave him a look—“and handed it to her, in the courtyard when they were alone.”
Crowley stepped forward, closing the distance between them in a single stride. He held out the rose silently to Aziraphale, who took it also without a word, gazing appreciatively at the petals. “She was the queen. Oh, she had jewels and silks and gowns, treasures, and whatever she didn’t have that she could want, Arthur was bound to get it for her, if she was the sort to ever ask. But Lancelot wasn’t offering any of that. He just gave her this.” He nodded at the flower in Aziraphale’s hand. “Same as a million lovers before him. And after,” he added, as an afterthought.
He wasn’t really sure why he kept telling the story. He didn’t need to, surely he’d told this one before, on some drunken night in, and it certainly didn’t matter, it had no relevance to them, but Aziraphale had looked up from the rose to look at him with this awestruck expression that made Crowley keep babbling on.
“So, he gives her this rose, as a formal favour. A knight’s favour, not something given lightly, you know. So…she has to thank him, somehow—"
“Crowley,” Aziraphale interrupted, quite firmly, “kiss me.”
It was simple, after all that—Crowley stepped minutely closer, brought his hands up to cup Aziraphale’s face, closed his eyes behind his glasses and brought his lips to what he really hoped were Aziraphale’s.
They were, he thought, in relief, and the kiss lasted exactly long enough for relief to be replaced by a sudden punch of longing so intense he nearly gasped, and though they didn’t really move their mouths much, he heard what sounded like a soft hum come from Aziraphale as hands moved to settle gently on his hips, sending a thrill of something fizzy and bright through his entire body.
Then, Aziraphale broke the kiss with a slightly sharp intake of breath, and Crowley felt the loss immediately—he didn’t remove his hands from Aziraphale’s face and the hands on his hips stayed there as well. They stood there, still, and quiet, and Crowley had forgotten what they were trying to accomplish with all of this, and didn’t much care to remember.
He opened his eyes slowly to find Aziraphale gazing at him, a mixture of shock and desperation on his face, and his eyes kept darting from his lips to his glasses.
“Was that alright?” Crowley asked, and Aziraphale blushed intensely.
“It—I think—yes,” he answered, haltingly, looking like there was a lot more he was trying to figure out how to say.
Crowley waited, lips tingling where he’d just been kissed.
“I think we should do it again,” Aziraphale said determinedly, after a moment. “I’d very much like for your glasses to be off. I think that would be more—um. Accurate. Neither Nina nor Maggie wear glasses, in any case.”
Aziraphale wants to kiss you again, Crowley heard, and he woodenly reached up to remove the glasses he almost hadn’t realised he’d still been wearing. “Don’t think either of them have eyes like mine either, angel. If you’re pretending.”
Aziraphale stared unwaveringly into Crowley’s eyes. He had never been frightened or put off by them—and the demon knew this, since he barely reacted to them on the Wall nor the thousands of other times he’d seen them; but Aziraphale let the silence call Crowley’s bluff for him.
I’m not pretending was not said out loud, but Crowley heard it anyway.
Aziraphale tilted his entire self upwards, one tentative hand going to the back of Crowley’s neck as an anchor. Their eyes fell naturally shut as the tips of Aziraphale’s fingers pushed up into the back of Crowley’s hair, cool on Crowley’s warm scalp.
That same desire, simultaneously old and startingly new, danced through him giddily as their lips met for a second time. The hand on the back of his neck squeezed, this time successfully forcing a small gasp from him and regrettably separating them—but only for a breath, before Aziraphale searched his face with wide, desperate eyes.
“It’s quite nice,” he said, breathlessly, and Crowley nodded helplessly, and they were at it again, abandoning any pretence of restraint.
Crowley wound his arms around Aziraphale’s waist, bending slightly forward so Aziraphale could relax against him.
They couldn’t seem to separate for more than half a second at a time—less drinking sips from each other’s lips than they were gulping them down, turning messy and imprecise as they let instinct and pleasure guide them entirely.
Crowley was clutching the angel against him now, but any worry that Aziraphale was being held against his will was assuaged by Aziraphale flinging his arms around Crowley’s neck to deepen their kisses, groaning and gasping in a way that was making Crowley’s head spin.
Neither of them noticed when the door jingled, but they did jerk and fly apart when—
“OhsweetFUCK—”
Crowley’s vision cleared from a blurred haze of light to the image of a shocked and mortified Muriel, who had clasped their hands over their mouth in horror. Crowley suspected this was due to their inadvertent foul language than the sight he and Aziraphale must have made, but one could never be too sure with the Upstairs lot.
“Do I need to summon Hellfire, angel?” he murmured, though Muriel heard him (of course) and their expression morphed to one of terror and slight indignation.
Aziraphale shot him a look. This look was also at once familiar and new, because while the sentiment behind it (you bad serpent, all bark and no bite) was age-old, seeing it coupled with a heaving chest, mussed curls and swollenly pink lips had a dizzying effect on Crowley. Before he could even think about how to act on it, Aziraphale turned back to Muriel.
“What—My dear, what are you doing—" but his question was left unfinished and his mouth was left hanging open as his gaze swung down to the scrivener’s hands, carrying a takeaway tray of coffee.
Oh. Right.
Muriel now looked very concerned.
“Mister Crowley sent me for coffee,” they squeaked, looking as though they would like to vanish into their shoes. “About…ten minutes ago?”
“Yes,” Aziraphale said at once, smoothing his ruffled waistcoat down with both hands and wiggling a bit so he regained his normal impeccable posture. “Yes—yes of course—and—and Crowley and I were—were—”
“Kissing?” Muriel supplied helpfully.
“No!” they both said at the same time, and then blanched at the obvious lie.
“We were experimenting,” Aziraphale said desperately, looking to Crowley for help, who was starting only now to grasp the enormity of their imminent peril. “To see—to find the best ways for humans to fall in love. Without—without miracles.”
“It didn’t work,” Crowley said quickly. “Failed experiment. Dreadfully unsuccessful, in fact.”
“No need to mention it in your reports,” Aziraphale added. “None whatsoever.”
Muriel absorbed this silently, innocent eyes swinging back and forth between them. They seemed to be contemplating something, and as Crowley held his demonic breath and seriously reconsidered Hellfire, he wondered if this angel knew how they held the fate of both he and Aziraphale in their hands. Their fate and their coffee, in fact—far too much power for any one being to have. Finally, Muriel’s expression cleared.
“Okay!” they said brightly, and re-shuffled the coffees so the small cup (six espresso shots) was facing Crowley. “’Satan’s Special’ for Mister Crowley, and one London Fog for Mister Aziraphale. And Miss Nina said I should try this—called a ‘Pumpkaspice La-tay’, but I might just…sniff it instead…”
Crowley let Muriel’s friendly chatter fade into his mind as the tension in his body uncoiled. He exchanged a look of marked relief with Aziraphale before remembering himself and sauntering over to take his drink from Muriel. They handed it to him, looked him up and down and then tilted their head curiously, like a golden retriever.
“Mister Crowley?”
“Mm.”
“What does kissing feel like?”
Aziraphale spluttered into his cup. Crowley blinked at them, and then replaced his glasses so they were firmly in place before walking back over to his pile of books.
“Here,” he said, grabbing the next one off the pile and handing it to Muriel.
“Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging,” they read, and then looked up delightedly. “I only know one of these words!”