Sex and the City, 19th century-style
Jun. 11th, 2005 08:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vulgarweedI know this must happen to other people, yes? You're working on some long intricate plotty thing, and then you just have to get the friggin' pr0n out of your system.
Another reason to love this fandom: it's really funny when one's Muses and the metaphorical angel and demon on one's shoulder are the same critters. Kinda cuts out the middle-entity, doesn't it? It was actually Aziraphale who insisted the hardest on this one, though he doesn't exactly come off as winning this round...except in the most convoluted of ways.
From the "Containing Multitudes" Civil War setting, though I have no way of knowing if this scene actually occurs at the right time for it to, if that makes any sense, so it may well be a permanent outtake. Or not. It was simply the city, really, and which city it is should be obvious to everyone who's ever been there. I love stories where places are characters. This is practically a three-way.
Your standard-issue Saturday-night Crowley/Aziraphale historical smut, nothing all that special. :D
City of Hurried and Glistening Tides
The city was humid and smelled of the sea, not an entirely clean smell but a wild one, sinking through the more foetid steet-level air with a certain primal clarity. Down here the streets were less crowded than Aziraphale had expected, but from time to time a woman with bold makeup and a red dress down to here floated by, sometimes laughter or a drink spilled from a dim-lit window. Sometimes they passed at the level of their feet a door that led down to a dark den from which the roar of harsh laughter and the reek of alcohol blasted them like a sandstorm.
For all the other things it was, there could be no question the city was alive in its own right, a restless and terribly alert collective mind that was greater than the sum of its countless moving parts.
No wonder Walt was so energetic, Aziraphale thought, if he felt he had to capture all of this. But it wasn’t the best time to be thinking of him, really, not with the way Crowley’s hand on his arm tightened whenever they passed one of those rough, brawly establishments. Aziraphale smiled to know that if he dared to suggest Crowley’s gesture was both unconscious and protective, the demonic wrath would be swift and terrible — switching just as easily to an attempt to pitch him down one of those short flights of stairs, perhaps, right into something rather like a human version of a dogfighting pit. Well, as Falls went, it would be rather ridiculous.
Aziraphale didn’t imagine they’d be messed with anyhow. Since they were such an ill-matched pair – he in his workers’ homespun, Crowley in his fine black frock coat — surely they’d be assumed to be up to no good already. And no doubt the demon would be far, far better at imagining various and sundry types of no good it could mean, but Aziraphale was already blushing terribly at some ideas of his own. Fortunately he could pass it off as reflection from the street’s windows, many of which were lit in red.
“Crowley,” he finally asked, and his voice was huskier than he’d thought it would be. “Why exactly are we here – I mean, besides the pub, it was very nice…”
“Why not?” Crowley asked, his reptilian eyes shining openly. “Is there somewhere else you’d rather be? Probably, but I love this place. They’re so ingenious and shameless. There’s an opium den right around that corner” — he gestured down an alley lit only by Chinese lanterns — “and in the daytime there’s a shop where a man from India sells spices and silk and if you know how to ask for it, some dried tiger prick in case you’re feeling a little limp lately, and not too far from here is a shop of a woman who reads Tarot cards and sells little luck charms and claims to be a Gypsy but is really a half-Seminole from Florida whose daughter is the mistress of a Congressman — well, several, actually - and has been selling secrets to the Rebs since before most people knew there were secrets to be sold. Do you understand?”
Oddly enough, Aziraphale did. Completely. That was what had been setting him ill at ease since the train debarked: not only was the city sentient, it wanted. It didn’t matter what it wanted — and everything under the sun was covered somewhere in its canyons — the desire itself was the point. That was how it grown up so fast and so dense and so tall and spread itself out further and further by the day like some kind of insatiable carnivorous ground-cover plant, reaching higher and higher at the same time like…well, Aziraphale remembered Babel. These folk were cannier, more shrewd and earthly, but really not a jot less ambitious.
The city rang in his head like the ocean waves, and the chant was downright maddening. Reach out. Take it. Try it. Be bold. Be curious. Why would it be here if it wasn’t meant for you?
And he turned around and looked at Crowley, and he understood again, and the rank air suddenly smelled like apples. Well no, it wasn’t an apple really. It was a fig, wasn’t it? Or maybe a pomegranate…
The truth was, he was the one leaning back against the wall, his hands gripping Crowley’s coat. He wasn’t being pushed, at least not at first. No, it wasn’t fruit. The alley smelled of fish and urine and cinnamon. And now of Crowley, pressing in against him. Now it tasted of him too, and Aziraphale found that kissing him back so hard and so hungrily was so, so much better without all that doubt in the way.
Crowley snapped his fingers once and the nearest gaslight went up and then out in a blast of glass and flame: unnecessary but dramatic. He barely paused for an instant with his tongue dancing over Aziraphale’s teeth, lighter and more playful than the angel would ever have guessed. His body was anything but, holding Aziraphale fast against the old brick and slowly starting to grind against him, his knees bending a little, one thigh insinuated between Aziraphale’s legs. The angel just grasped harder, slipping his hands under the coat and up and down Crowley’s back.
They broke apart for a second, both breathing now and rather raggedly at that, and looked at each other for a charged moment.
“Aziraphale,” Crowley purred hotly into his ear, pronouncing his name like a lush obscenity, “If I didn’t know better, I’d think some tempting was part of your fantasy.”
“You know me, you old serpent,” Aziraphale confessed, twitching a little as sharp teeth investigated his earlobe.
“I will - Biblically,” Crowley’s voice vibrated against his ear, and Aziraphale started to crack for real as that demonic mouth roamed lower, down the side of his neck to his throat. Aziraphale threw his head back, and closed his eyes when the sky looked too close above the dark hair of the creature working on him so shamelessly.
Exhilarating and fearsome business, letting long-thwarted desire just happen like this, in a place all too ready to incite it, and it was all clear why he’d resisted so long; for with humans Aziraphale nearly “passed” in his own estimation, all his grudging efforts to reach comfort with his almost-human body becoming worthwhile, becoming ordinary and earthily happy. But he wasn’t fooled now and neither was Crowley - their bodies recognised each other, their grasping, singing nervous systems pulsing with a fire far older and vaster, one that threatened to incinerate the whole poor unsuspecting alley with barely-controlled volleys of the divine and the diabolic.
They were both of angelic stock, after all.
Still, it was the human tricks they were using, like Crowley’s hands moving on him restlessly, shirt buttons vanishing, braces pushed off his shoulders, one fingernail circling a nipple for a while before pinching…Aziraphale cried out at the sharpness of the hunger that brought, pushing his lower body against Crowley’s rather wantonly.
“Mmm, you like that?” Crowley laughed, repeating it again and again to prove it was true until Aziraphale was almost silently sobbing, fighting his own helplessness. “You know what? I’m going to get you off, right here and right now. You’re close. Just hold on for the ride.”
“But-“
“That’s what I want,” said the demon decisively, as if Aziraphale’s trouser buttons had never been there at all, his hand contracting and releasing around taut, heated flesh with a frightening skill…well, Aziraphale thought, he must have done it to himself a lot, and a new wave of heat shot through him again when he imagined watching that. And then his thumb was there and it was a little bit wet, and the pressure was unceasing and the rhythm was flawless, and…Aziraphale just threw his arms around Crowley’s neck to keep from collapsing, leaning on that thigh that pressed against him there, and…
“That’s it, angel,” purred Crowley almost subsonically. “That’s it. Come for me.”
And Aziraphale’s body obeyed him, the force of it pulled violently through him as he stiffened and shuddered, his breath stopping sharply, arms clenching spasmically around a partner he didn’t have to worry about killing by accident.
(Had he been able to experience this from Crowley’s point of view, he might have questioned this assumption. The swelling of his aura, a rare and lurid shade of an unearthly colour,* enveloped his immediate surroundings, brick wall and demon and everything, with crackling, slightly renegade celestial force. Crowley actually felt himself obliterated for a millimillisecond, but it quickly calmed down into a sensation of having his every atom individually tickled as the light passed through him and dissipated — disconcerting, but not actually unpleasant.)
“Mmm, beautiful,” the face next to his was smirking as Aziraphale gradually swam back up to his surface, his boneless body safely supported. “Think I found your flaming sword.”
“You…I…I was afraid for so long…I’m sorry,” he babbled.
“Don’t be,” Crowley said. “To tell you the truth, I was too. Just a little.” Aziraphale’s eyes widened to watch him licking his hand clean very theatrically. “After all…” he gestured with that particular hand, “I thought there was a slight chance you might burn me, frankly. Very much the holy of holies, isn’t it?”
It would have been difficult for Aziraphale’s face to flush more than it already was, but it made a heroic attempt. Still, he couldn’t let himself be bested that easily, so he was vaguely offended when Crowley seized his wrists and pulled his hands away from the demon’s trouser front, where he’d been digging with every intention of reciprocating and then some.
“What are you doing?” Aziraphale asked.
“If you can tempt, I can thwart,” Crowley said, his smirk deepening. With a flourish he pulled an absurdly expensive pocket watch from his only-slightly-disheveled waistcoat. “Why, look at the time! I have a secret meeting I can’t miss. Shipping stocks – now that’s a fun field.”
“Oh, you bastard!” Aziraphale hissed most unangelically. “You can’t just…”
“Of course I can. I know you’ll get home safely and I can, shall we say, take care of myself just fine. Lunch tomorrow?”
“Er…sure,” Aziraphale could feel his own eyes narrowing. Oh, there would be Heaven to pay.
Crowley cupped his cheek with one hand and kissed him gently. Aziraphale caught his wrist. “Just promise me this, Crowley – no awkwardness, please.”
“That’s really rather rich, coming from you. You’re the one who’s taken five hundred years to admit it.”
Aziraphale watched him go, his swollen lips still tingling, unable to hold back some admiration when the alley’s mouth filled with his wings.
~fin~
*ultraoctarine.
***
OK, off to see Revenge of the Sith again.
Another reason to love this fandom: it's really funny when one's Muses and the metaphorical angel and demon on one's shoulder are the same critters. Kinda cuts out the middle-entity, doesn't it? It was actually Aziraphale who insisted the hardest on this one, though he doesn't exactly come off as winning this round...except in the most convoluted of ways.
From the "Containing Multitudes" Civil War setting, though I have no way of knowing if this scene actually occurs at the right time for it to, if that makes any sense, so it may well be a permanent outtake. Or not. It was simply the city, really, and which city it is should be obvious to everyone who's ever been there. I love stories where places are characters. This is practically a three-way.
Your standard-issue Saturday-night Crowley/Aziraphale historical smut, nothing all that special. :D
City of Hurried and Glistening Tides
The city was humid and smelled of the sea, not an entirely clean smell but a wild one, sinking through the more foetid steet-level air with a certain primal clarity. Down here the streets were less crowded than Aziraphale had expected, but from time to time a woman with bold makeup and a red dress down to here floated by, sometimes laughter or a drink spilled from a dim-lit window. Sometimes they passed at the level of their feet a door that led down to a dark den from which the roar of harsh laughter and the reek of alcohol blasted them like a sandstorm.
For all the other things it was, there could be no question the city was alive in its own right, a restless and terribly alert collective mind that was greater than the sum of its countless moving parts.
No wonder Walt was so energetic, Aziraphale thought, if he felt he had to capture all of this. But it wasn’t the best time to be thinking of him, really, not with the way Crowley’s hand on his arm tightened whenever they passed one of those rough, brawly establishments. Aziraphale smiled to know that if he dared to suggest Crowley’s gesture was both unconscious and protective, the demonic wrath would be swift and terrible — switching just as easily to an attempt to pitch him down one of those short flights of stairs, perhaps, right into something rather like a human version of a dogfighting pit. Well, as Falls went, it would be rather ridiculous.
Aziraphale didn’t imagine they’d be messed with anyhow. Since they were such an ill-matched pair – he in his workers’ homespun, Crowley in his fine black frock coat — surely they’d be assumed to be up to no good already. And no doubt the demon would be far, far better at imagining various and sundry types of no good it could mean, but Aziraphale was already blushing terribly at some ideas of his own. Fortunately he could pass it off as reflection from the street’s windows, many of which were lit in red.
“Crowley,” he finally asked, and his voice was huskier than he’d thought it would be. “Why exactly are we here – I mean, besides the pub, it was very nice…”
“Why not?” Crowley asked, his reptilian eyes shining openly. “Is there somewhere else you’d rather be? Probably, but I love this place. They’re so ingenious and shameless. There’s an opium den right around that corner” — he gestured down an alley lit only by Chinese lanterns — “and in the daytime there’s a shop where a man from India sells spices and silk and if you know how to ask for it, some dried tiger prick in case you’re feeling a little limp lately, and not too far from here is a shop of a woman who reads Tarot cards and sells little luck charms and claims to be a Gypsy but is really a half-Seminole from Florida whose daughter is the mistress of a Congressman — well, several, actually - and has been selling secrets to the Rebs since before most people knew there were secrets to be sold. Do you understand?”
Oddly enough, Aziraphale did. Completely. That was what had been setting him ill at ease since the train debarked: not only was the city sentient, it wanted. It didn’t matter what it wanted — and everything under the sun was covered somewhere in its canyons — the desire itself was the point. That was how it grown up so fast and so dense and so tall and spread itself out further and further by the day like some kind of insatiable carnivorous ground-cover plant, reaching higher and higher at the same time like…well, Aziraphale remembered Babel. These folk were cannier, more shrewd and earthly, but really not a jot less ambitious.
The city rang in his head like the ocean waves, and the chant was downright maddening. Reach out. Take it. Try it. Be bold. Be curious. Why would it be here if it wasn’t meant for you?
And he turned around and looked at Crowley, and he understood again, and the rank air suddenly smelled like apples. Well no, it wasn’t an apple really. It was a fig, wasn’t it? Or maybe a pomegranate…
The truth was, he was the one leaning back against the wall, his hands gripping Crowley’s coat. He wasn’t being pushed, at least not at first. No, it wasn’t fruit. The alley smelled of fish and urine and cinnamon. And now of Crowley, pressing in against him. Now it tasted of him too, and Aziraphale found that kissing him back so hard and so hungrily was so, so much better without all that doubt in the way.
Crowley snapped his fingers once and the nearest gaslight went up and then out in a blast of glass and flame: unnecessary but dramatic. He barely paused for an instant with his tongue dancing over Aziraphale’s teeth, lighter and more playful than the angel would ever have guessed. His body was anything but, holding Aziraphale fast against the old brick and slowly starting to grind against him, his knees bending a little, one thigh insinuated between Aziraphale’s legs. The angel just grasped harder, slipping his hands under the coat and up and down Crowley’s back.
They broke apart for a second, both breathing now and rather raggedly at that, and looked at each other for a charged moment.
“Aziraphale,” Crowley purred hotly into his ear, pronouncing his name like a lush obscenity, “If I didn’t know better, I’d think some tempting was part of your fantasy.”
“You know me, you old serpent,” Aziraphale confessed, twitching a little as sharp teeth investigated his earlobe.
“I will - Biblically,” Crowley’s voice vibrated against his ear, and Aziraphale started to crack for real as that demonic mouth roamed lower, down the side of his neck to his throat. Aziraphale threw his head back, and closed his eyes when the sky looked too close above the dark hair of the creature working on him so shamelessly.
Exhilarating and fearsome business, letting long-thwarted desire just happen like this, in a place all too ready to incite it, and it was all clear why he’d resisted so long; for with humans Aziraphale nearly “passed” in his own estimation, all his grudging efforts to reach comfort with his almost-human body becoming worthwhile, becoming ordinary and earthily happy. But he wasn’t fooled now and neither was Crowley - their bodies recognised each other, their grasping, singing nervous systems pulsing with a fire far older and vaster, one that threatened to incinerate the whole poor unsuspecting alley with barely-controlled volleys of the divine and the diabolic.
They were both of angelic stock, after all.
Still, it was the human tricks they were using, like Crowley’s hands moving on him restlessly, shirt buttons vanishing, braces pushed off his shoulders, one fingernail circling a nipple for a while before pinching…Aziraphale cried out at the sharpness of the hunger that brought, pushing his lower body against Crowley’s rather wantonly.
“Mmm, you like that?” Crowley laughed, repeating it again and again to prove it was true until Aziraphale was almost silently sobbing, fighting his own helplessness. “You know what? I’m going to get you off, right here and right now. You’re close. Just hold on for the ride.”
“But-“
“That’s what I want,” said the demon decisively, as if Aziraphale’s trouser buttons had never been there at all, his hand contracting and releasing around taut, heated flesh with a frightening skill…well, Aziraphale thought, he must have done it to himself a lot, and a new wave of heat shot through him again when he imagined watching that. And then his thumb was there and it was a little bit wet, and the pressure was unceasing and the rhythm was flawless, and…Aziraphale just threw his arms around Crowley’s neck to keep from collapsing, leaning on that thigh that pressed against him there, and…
“That’s it, angel,” purred Crowley almost subsonically. “That’s it. Come for me.”
And Aziraphale’s body obeyed him, the force of it pulled violently through him as he stiffened and shuddered, his breath stopping sharply, arms clenching spasmically around a partner he didn’t have to worry about killing by accident.
(Had he been able to experience this from Crowley’s point of view, he might have questioned this assumption. The swelling of his aura, a rare and lurid shade of an unearthly colour,* enveloped his immediate surroundings, brick wall and demon and everything, with crackling, slightly renegade celestial force. Crowley actually felt himself obliterated for a millimillisecond, but it quickly calmed down into a sensation of having his every atom individually tickled as the light passed through him and dissipated — disconcerting, but not actually unpleasant.)
“Mmm, beautiful,” the face next to his was smirking as Aziraphale gradually swam back up to his surface, his boneless body safely supported. “Think I found your flaming sword.”
“You…I…I was afraid for so long…I’m sorry,” he babbled.
“Don’t be,” Crowley said. “To tell you the truth, I was too. Just a little.” Aziraphale’s eyes widened to watch him licking his hand clean very theatrically. “After all…” he gestured with that particular hand, “I thought there was a slight chance you might burn me, frankly. Very much the holy of holies, isn’t it?”
It would have been difficult for Aziraphale’s face to flush more than it already was, but it made a heroic attempt. Still, he couldn’t let himself be bested that easily, so he was vaguely offended when Crowley seized his wrists and pulled his hands away from the demon’s trouser front, where he’d been digging with every intention of reciprocating and then some.
“What are you doing?” Aziraphale asked.
“If you can tempt, I can thwart,” Crowley said, his smirk deepening. With a flourish he pulled an absurdly expensive pocket watch from his only-slightly-disheveled waistcoat. “Why, look at the time! I have a secret meeting I can’t miss. Shipping stocks – now that’s a fun field.”
“Oh, you bastard!” Aziraphale hissed most unangelically. “You can’t just…”
“Of course I can. I know you’ll get home safely and I can, shall we say, take care of myself just fine. Lunch tomorrow?”
“Er…sure,” Aziraphale could feel his own eyes narrowing. Oh, there would be Heaven to pay.
Crowley cupped his cheek with one hand and kissed him gently. Aziraphale caught his wrist. “Just promise me this, Crowley – no awkwardness, please.”
“That’s really rather rich, coming from you. You’re the one who’s taken five hundred years to admit it.”
Aziraphale watched him go, his swollen lips still tingling, unable to hold back some admiration when the alley’s mouth filled with his wings.
~fin~
*ultraoctarine.
***
OK, off to see Revenge of the Sith again.
