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It started as a joke. Just a little prank, as many of Crowley’s worst ideas did.
Crowley ran into Aziraphale often during the height of Rome. It was the place to be, for temptations and blessings alike, and it had been long enough in their acquaintance that they were not in the habit of ignoring each other – nor smiting, or the demonic equivalent – when such an encounter occurred.
It started with oysters.
On perhaps the thirteenth accidental meeting in Rome over the past several years (not that Crowley was keeping track, of course), the two were walking together through a busy market square when Crowley felt the small holy surge of Aziraphale performing a miracle, and they looked around for the direction of it. “What was that?” they asked when there was nothing obvious.
“Over there.” Aziraphale subtly indicated a couple of young girls, maybe mid-teens, who were sitting near each other, discreet in a corner of the market.
“What about ‘em?”
“Can’t you feel it?” Aziraphale shook his head. “Apologies, of course you can’t. Only, there’s so much love between them, and I wanted to give them a little encouragement.”
“For what?”
Just as Crowley spoke, one of the girls leaned in and kissed the other’s cheek. They smiled at each other, and their lips met in a shy press.
“You made them kiss each other?” Crowley asked, incredulous.
“Of course not! I only offered a bit of bravery and peace of mind. To do otherwise would be a violation of their Free Will,” Aziraphale protested.
“Good. I worked hard to invent that, you know.”
“You didn’t – nevermind.”
Crowley watched the two girls take each other’s hands as one led the other out of the busy square and down a passage to somewhere more private. Curiosity coursed through Crowley’s veins.
“I’ve never kissed anyone,” they commented idly.
Aziraphale made an odd noise, and Crowley looked at him in surprise. The angel had swiftly gone red and was staring. “Surely, for temptations…?” Aziraphale asked.
“Eh? Nah. I don’t specialize in those sorts of temptations. Lust and such fancy.” They couldn’t resist the tease and leaned in. “If I did, you’d know by now, sweet angel.”
Aziraphale placed a hand on Crowley’s chest to hold them at bay. “Oh, I know you don’t go in for that any more than I do, but surely kissing would be useful to – I don’t know, help persuade a target? Even if you don’t follow through on anything?”
Crowley shrugged, but not enough to dislodge Aziraphale’s hand as they folded their own behind their back, enjoying the small point of pressure. “Never seemed necessary so far,” they mused. “Besides, I wouldn’t know how.”
“I suppose that…makes sense.”
Crowley surveyed Aziraphale’s blush with interest. “Have you ever kissed anyone, angel?”
“N-Not in the way you’re thinking,” he said. “Only according to whatever local customs are appropriate to participate in. But never anything too close. It didn’t seem becoming of me, to over-involve myself under false pretences.”
“Could try with me.”
“Pardon?”
And here, Crowley made a mistake, the sort they made so often when their own schemes came back to bite them. “Kiss me, angel,” they tempted – unofficially, that is – leaning over that hand and into Aziraphale’s space. Their noses brushed.
“You foul creature!” Aziraphale shoved hard, causing Crowley to stumble back – though Aziraphale also tugged at their robes so the demon wouldn’t fall backward. “Don’t be so absurd! I would never kiss you! Stay thy wicked lips! Er, tongue!”
Crowley felt vaguely that they should be hurt by that, but it wasn’t as though they had entertained the idea before now, so no long-harboured desire was being cast aside – and besides, the way Aziraphale was looking at them was the same way he made eyes at food he ached to taste and wine to sip.
“How stalwartly you withstand me,” Crowley drawled, smiling at Aziraphale’s scowl.
“You’re an extraordinary bother.”
“You think I’m extraordinary?”
“Oh, Heavens.”
Their banter continued well into the night as alcohol joined the conversation, making eyelines wandering and lips red. Imaginings of breaching distance clambered closely to the surface of their slurred words. Yet, neither acknowledged the moment of sparks, nor the new want it had planted in Crowley’s chest.
But, of course, Crowley’s couldn’t simply leave it alone.
It became a running joke of theirs, as the centuries rolled together. Occasionally, usually when alone, Crowley would catch Aziraphale’s eye and say forbidden words. Like a scab, an irritant that stung and soothed at the same time. A reminder of an idle dream for late and lonely nights – and a reminder that it wasn’t theirs to share in.
It would have been wiser to let it go unsaid, but Crowley was not the sort to content themself with silence.
“Kiss me,” they demanded with a smirk as the two exited a pub together, King Arthur’s England a dark and gloomy place. Their armour was shed for the night, with all the symbolism that carried. Aziraphale only rolled his eyes and didn’t acknowledge them, shifting the conversation to the antics of one of the knights.
“Kiss me?” Crowley asked, teeth flashing in the darkness of the ruins they’d met in as they formed the Arrangement. “It’s the proper way to seal a contract, you know.”
Aziraphale scoffed, nervous hands tugging at his tunic. “Is that what you devils are convincing folks of these days? And here I thought we had to sign our name in blood in your book of captured souls.”
Crowley made a thoughtful expression. “Now there’s an idea. Dagon would be way into that.”
“Kiss for the road?” Crowley taunted as they parted ways in some little 14th century village.
“Will you never let up on that?” Aziraphale replied, turning his white horse away and down the trail without awaiting a response. Crowley cackled to themself and urged their black Stallion in the opposite direction.
“You should kiss me,” Crowley slurred as Aziraphale dragged their alcohol-soaked body to an inn during the Inquisition. “’S only fair.”
“And how do you suppose that to be the case?” Aziraphale asked tiredly, his grip on Crowley’s waist unrelenting and steady. Crowley clung back in a way that they had no wherewithal to be embarrassed about for the time being, though the desperation of it would haunt them for centuries to come.
“’Cause everything’s awful ‘n it’d make me feel better?” Crowley attempted.
They didn’t expect that to work or anything, but Aziraphale’s lack of reply was a little disappointing.
Yet, sometime later, when Aziraphale finally got Crowley lain on a cot, the angel kneeled beside them and gently pushed their short, matted locks out of their face. Crowley gazed up at him through lidded eyes, thinking about holy devotion as Aziraphale bent to lay a kiss on Crowley’s forehead.
Next that Crowley awoke, Aziraphale was gone. They miracled themself clean and booked it out of Spain. At least the trip hadn’t been a total waste. Though it was sure to be a one-time thing.
“Shall we?” Crowley whispered in Aziraphale’s ear. They were seated close together in the balcony section, the Globe stage below them grand fodder for romantic envisionings.
“Hmm?” Aziraphale hummed, not listening as Romeo entreated his Juliet.
“Let lips do what hands do…” Crowley murmured, amused when Aziraphale turned bright red and pointedly leaned away from them.
The doomed lovers kissed on stage, and Crowley watched Aziraphale, instead.
Without looking their way, Aziraphale gently took up Crowley’s hand from where it hung and pressed the palm to his mouth in a swift and brief show of private affection. Crowley couldn’t manage a reply, throat blocked with feeling. Well before intermission, Aziraphale excused himself and didn’t return.
Crowley felt no need to see the play to its tragic, inevitable conclusion.
“Kiss me, angel?” Crowley requested after a lunch date of crepes. Aziraphale sighed fondly and pecked their cheek, not unlike the French style, though there was a bit more pressure. More contact. More lingering. He rushed off after, saying something about needing to collect some vital manuscripts.
“You know how,” Crowley said with a smile that wasn’t quite the smirk they were going for.
Aziraphale, who had just foolishly said “However can I repay you?” after Crowley gifted him chocolates in honour of his bookshop opening, glanced out the door where the Archangels had just exited. “I suppose they’re unlikely to come back so soon,” he murmured, seemingly to himself, and unexpectedly kissed Crowley’s other cheek, balancing out the one from seven years prior.
He avoided Crowley’s eye, the demon looming with a tender expression, overwhelmed by Aziraphale’s small moment of forward bravery.
“You’d best be going, lest Gabriel returns,” Aziraphale whispered, contradicting his earlier observation. Crowley didn’t take the bait but took the hint and made themself scarce.
There was a kiss to Crowley’s chin, a quick and darted thing after dropping Aziraphale off at the bookshop, dawn filtering over a Blitz-ed London.
To their shoulder when slumped together, drunk on something expensive and ill-advised in 1968, when Aziraphale came by Crowley’s new flat to talk the Arrangement (though Crowley suspected it had something to do with the thermos tucked behind Mona Lisa, from a night when Crowley hadn’t dared to ask).
There were two during the years before Armageddon, working together on the Dowling estate and continuing their meetings off the grid of their assignments. From a gardener to a nanny’s glove, and to the temple when a demon accidentally fell asleep on the sofa.
When Crowley sat in a bar, surrounded by bottles, they wiped a tear from the gold-leaf title of the book and kissed its soot-smudged cover. They wondered why they had never tried to kiss Aziraphale back. And if he would have let them.
The night before they swapped faces, Crowley didn’t have the guts. Or maybe they couldn’t face the rejection again. Not when it mattered so much, now.
***
“Hey, angel?” Crowley called.
Aziraphale was lovingly stroking his restored books somewhere deep in the bookshop, likely assuring himself that everything was put to rights properly. Crowley had been making themself a menace from the sofa, but they went quiet when Aziraphale moved out of their line of sight. Only the sounds of shuffling and small delighted exclamations now and again kept them from trailing after Aziraphale like a pathetic pup.
“Yes, Crowley?” Aziraphale reappeared from between some shelves in the opposite direction of where he’d first journeyed.
Crowley grinned carelessly – tiredly, splayed out over cushions that knew their body’s contours. “Kiss me?” They lifted a hand to indicate the back of it.
For a moment, Aziraphale’s expression was so open and aching that Crowley wanted to cut their own tongue out for putting it there. But then it shuttered closed, replaced with something searching, and Aziraphale stepped close enough to take up Crowley’s hand in his own and kiss the knuckles, feather soft.
Crowley was about to say something more when Aziraphale fell delicately to his knees atop the worn, old rug.
“What?” they began, but Aziraphale didn’t let them speak, only kept that loose grip, his other hand lifting to carefully cradle Crowley’s cheek with caressing fingers, a thumb sweeping just below the demon’s exposed golden eye.
“You’ve been tempting me,” Aziraphale accused on a whisper.
“Hardly,” Crowley managed.
Aziraphale shook his head and kissed them.
Crowley’s chest seemed to cave in on itself, all the air and light in the room evaporating as soft lips met their own in a gentle touch. Didn’t know a kiss could do that. The fingertips of manicured hands were tilting Crowley’s head just so, heat building in their stomach, and holy something or other, Crowley was going to die.
But not right now. They were busy. It crossed their mind that they should kiss back.
Oh. Yup, that was even better. Okay. Gosh. Not bad for a couple of supernatural entities with no real kissing experience to speak of.
Crowley’s free hand settled astride Aziraphale’s neck, encouraging him to stay just as he was. Warmth, closeness, peace – in that instant, it was all Crowley knew. The fulfilment of a promise never made.
A joke that hid more truth than honest words.
Figured, really, that the bastard of an angel had heard it all along.
When Aziraphale eventually pulled away, Crowley opened their kissed mouth to speak, only for a squeak – no, no, definitely not that, a grunt, yes – to escape. Aziraphale ignored this and pressed light kisses to Crowley’s cheeks, forehead, and nose while the demon gaped, unmoving and unresisting to the attack. Akin to a touch of holy light, each one cracked open everything vulnerable Crowley had ever tucked deep.
“I should’ve done this back in Rome,” Aziraphale murmured.
Crowley couldn’t stand the sight of a kissed Aziraphale, leaning over them with sparks in his sea eyes. “For the best you didn’t,” Crowley croaked. “Probably wouldn’t have let you stop for the past two thousand years.”
Aziraphale chuckled. “I could start that timer now, if you like.”
Crowley pouted theatrically. “I only get two thousand years?”
Aziraphale only rolled his eyes and kissed his demon again, longer this time. Crowley would’ve been just fine never coming up for air again. You know what, screw the cosmos, all that nonsense could burn out and they’d still be right here on this grand ol’ sofa, lips suctioned together for all time. Aziraphale’s hands were both on their face now, and Crowley’s arms were wrapped around their angel’s shoulders, and there was nowhere else worth being.
It crossed Crowley’s mind that their plants might miss them, eventually. And Aziraphale might want some expensive and fancy dessert later on – he got so cranky if he didn’t eat regularly despite not being able to, technically, be hungry. So, they’d have to pause for a little bit at some point.
Perhaps in a century or two.
However, when Aziraphale eased back this time, Crowley developed their theory further with the acknowledgement that initiating the kisses was also part of the enjoyment. Maybe they should scatter the kisses between everything else they loved. Quantity kisses, Crowley liked that idea.
Aziraphale looked rather smug, and Crowley realized they’d been gazing with a dopey expression for a full, silent minute.
Crowley propped themself on one elbow and, just for that look, they kissed the angel this time. Take that.
From Aziraphale’s enthusiastic response, he didn’t seem to mind.
This time, when they separated, it was a mutual thing, a drawing apart so they could look at each other. Crowley rubbed at the heartburn in their chest. Silly corporation, getting all worked up over a little angelic snogging.
“Well, that was lovely,” Aziraphale breathed.
“Lovely?” Crowley parroted as they forced their uncooperative limbs to sit up properly. Well, as properly as they ever bothered sitting. “Nothing I do is lovely. I’m a demon. That was raunchy and debauched, that was.” It hadn’t been, at all, but it was the principle of the thing.
Aziraphale kissed Crowley’s knee in reply.
Damn, that heartburn was still going at it, huh. “Get off the floor, already. Nice touch, very blasphemous, but you’re too old for it.”
“I beg your pardon,” Aziraphale huffed, but he was smiling too wide for it to sound half as disgruntled as he likely intended. He accepted Crowley’s extended hand and transitioned himself from floor to the cushions, leaning bodily into Crowley’s shoulder when he settled. “You’re my same age, you know. Created before Time, and all.”
“Yeah. ‘S why I’m not rolling about on old dusty rugs makin’ out with demons.”
“Making ou – Crowley!” Aziraphale’s mouth fell open in a dramatic “O.” “How very dare you describe our first kiss in such a manner!”
“First?” Crowley hoped they didn’t look as wobbly as they felt as they clutched Aziraphale’s hand, slinging one leg over Aziraphale’s knees. “Those were at least three separate kisses.”
Belatedly, Aziraphale blushed, and Crowley allowed themself a moment to admire the sight. And another moment. Just…one more…
“Goodness,” Aziraphale murmured.
“Hmm?”
“The way you look at me.”
“Eh? Not looking. I don’t look at you. Ever. Just.”
“Yes?”
“Neh.”
“You look at me,” Aziraphale whispered, “like you want me to kiss you. All the time.”
Crowley swallowed thickly. “Oh. That look.”
“Mmm.” Aziraphale studied them in turn, that blastedly soft hand once again caressing the slight stubble along their jaw, a finger tracing the hollow below their right ear. Crowley shivered. The intimacy was overwhelming.
They spent several minutes in silence, during which Crowley’s eyes slipped closed, and they let themself get lost in the feeling of Aziraphale tenderly exploring their face with his hands.
“Crowley,” Aziraphale said.
“Eh?” they grunted, slivers of gold revealed as they beheld their angel.
“Would you have really kissed me, back then?” he asked, eyebrows curved inward, like the answer wasn’t obvious.
“Should’a kissed me in Eden,” they replied. “Might’ve fallen in love with you faster.”
Aziraphale looked awed, as though Crowley had just said something amazing, unexpected – precious. Crowley tried not to be embarrassed by their admission, despite the heat rushing to their face and neck. Whatever. Not Crowley’s fault Aziraphale hadn’t been paying any blessed attention for six millennia.
“I’ve…never been loved before,” Aziraphale admitted quietly, head ducked, like a confession to the altar of Crowley’s collarbones. “Not in a human way, at least.”
“Wrong as usual, angel,” Crowley choked. Oh, their useless tear ducts were misbehaving. They pulled Aziraphale into a hug so the angel wouldn’t see if the rebellious things decided to overflow.
Aziraphale returned the hug without hesitation, crushing the demon tight to his body. “I’m not usually wrong,” he denied, no bite to his tone. “That would be you, I’m afraid.”
“Could at least say it back, after I bared my soul and everything,” Crowley griped on a mumble.
Aziraphale chuckled against them, breath caressing Crowley’s neck. “You are a most precious and ridiculous thing, and I’m rather in love with you for it,” he murmured.
“’M not ridiculous,” Crowley countered weakly.
“You’ve been begging me to kiss you for millennia, darling.”
“Begging is a strong word. Give me some credit, angel.”
Aziraphale turned his head to kiss the serpent mark above Crowley’s jaw, and Crowley had very normal feelings about that indeed, yes. After another moment of simply holding one another, Aziraphale murmured against Crowley’s ear, the demon unable to bat the words away as they were directed right into their head, “Thank you for your bravery.”
For once, Crowley didn’t complain about being thanked. After all, their mouth was a little preoccupied, perching lips to every place Aziraphale had kissed them over the years. There was a lot to make up for, but it was a debt happily repaid. And interest, there was lots of interest. Would have to spend many years settling that.
When Crowley paused, their faces near, they whispered once more, “Kiss me.”
And Aziraphale responded without words.
So hey, as far as Crowley’s usual pranks go, this one turned out better than most.