GO fic update: More Multitudes!
Jul. 10th, 2005 05:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vulgarweedOK, things are really coming together in the this story now. That makes me very very happy.
Celebrate with me: have something funny and pr0ny!
Some denizens of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
lower_tadfield have suggested the existence of a kink for Voyeur!Aziraphale, and there have been some lovely delicate, subtle pieces to that effect. Mmm. But this is mine, so it is neither delicate nor subtle. And it doesn't end too well for the angel. Definite R rating on this bit, for ellipsis abuse if nothing else.
Geeky wank-deflecting note: No one but me would notice this, but this is the first time I have actually made explicit reference to the color of Crowley's wings. This is a matter of some fandom dispute: he's often shown with black ones, and someone always rushes to point out that The Book says that demons' wings are just like angels' only usually better groomed. Yes, yes: I took this to mean they aren't the leathery batlike ones of stereotype. But there's no reference there to color at all, and so Aziraphale's white wings are just as much fanon, then, aren't they? Maybe they've got rainbow ones covered with eyes the way medieval artists often depicted them, yes? So I made an aesthetic choice. Crowley's wings are black here. Why? Because if humans had wings, the kind of human he pretends to be would have black ones.
July 1861
Along the Potomac, Virginia
I dote on myself, there is that lot of me and all so luscious...
It was hot — buzzing, sweaty hot, the kind of hot that squelches into the pores and sizzles there. It was so hot the deadly still air rippled visually at the edges of small clearings, and the drone of cicadas faded and rose limply as if it couldn’t quite be bothered.
In some ways this was good for what Aziraphale was trying to do — pick his way through the swampy woods utterly silently — because a lot of it relied on molecules and displacement, and it was easier to do when everything was swollen and expanded. That didn’t make it pleasant to have his clothes sticking to him, and an impressive array of different kinds of stickleburr clinging to them, and sweat and condensation plastering his hair in his eyes.
He drew the line at tolerating the mosquitoes. Nobody’d said he had to.
Not being seen was even more important than not being heard—he could possibly pass for a deer or a bear aurally, but visually was stretching it — and although he still felt it was cheating, he had ways of ensuring he wouldn’t be, at least by humans. Animals were another story, of course. As were other types of beings, some of which, or whom, he was well aware were riding with the Rebels these days.
The woods were supposed to be lousy with them, and yet he hadn’t seen a sign of a human soul all day. Either the Confederate camps were better hidden than humanly possible, or they didn’t exist at all, or else he was hopelessly lost. He knew perfectly well which possibility was the most likely.
He was terribly thirsty. For all the humidity in the air, it wasn’t doing him a bit of good where he needed it most, and none of the numerous grassy puddles he’d sloshed through in the morning were appealing, though, frankly if he came across one now…
As if in answer to that wish, he thought he heard bubbling. Yes, there it was, the unmistakable gurgle of a creek – up ahead, where land was higher and open woods rose up on little foothills. He headed towards the sound, upwards through dense thickets, oak and hickory and poplar twined around with green thorny vines. Something was beckoning him in precisely this direction.
Just as he was starting to get the prickling, uncomfortable sense that the something that was beckoning him was just a tiny bit on the eldritch side, he stepped in something simple and welcome: clear and cool and running fresh over round little rocks. He filled his canteen gratefully and swigged deeply before looking up ahead, up a hill. The little creek burbled its way down an incline, and halfway down it paused in a pool on the hillside, past a fall of flat boulders in a natural clearing. It looked like a lovely place to have a rest, and the angel very strongly considered it, but decided to move on.
Aziraphale had just stepped back into the trees when motion caught his eye. At the top of the largest rock, shining in the bright sun, a thick black squiggly line was drawing itself. It was a large snake - but then Aziraphale blinked, and it wasn’t.
Aziraphale slipped further behind the tree and into the underbrush. Crowley was looking proud and stylish in neatly-pressed Rebel grey, the sunlight catching brass buttons and steel sabre blindingly. With a little sigh, he stretched out on the rock and looked up at the sun unflinchingly, throwing his arms and legs wide and proceeding to, well, bask.
Now the angel had to be stuck wondering if the demon were acting in an official capacity. Was he standing - or rather lying - sentry for some immense battalion that blockaded the entire forest between here and Manassas? Or was he on the wander between assignment and assignment, or up to something more nefarious, or…
Well, he didn’t look particularly nefarious at the moment. He was fidgeting, though, and scratching at his collar.
All thoughts of what Crowley’s nefarious role in a diabolical plan (that might involve hindering travelers) might possibly be briefly left Aziraphale’s mind when Crowley gave a happy little wriggle on his rock, and his uniform appeared folded neatly beside him. He was no longer wearing it - or indeed, anything at all but his gun belt and shiny high boots.
Just in case, Aziraphale supposed as his mouth went dry again for an entirely different reason, and he slumped slightly against the thick hickory tree beside him. His knees were not operating at their peak of powers.
Crowley had seemed to settle himself perfectly for a moment, and then changed his mind and sat up briefly, stretching his arms above his head and leaning first this way and that. With a sigh, he threw his head back and stared up at the sun. As he lowered his arms, his wings unfurled wide and proud, and he lay back again slowly and carefully with wings spread across the stone, absorbing the light. The brilliant sun cast his skin whitish-gold, and brought out blue-purple iridescence in his hair and his feathers.
Many times over the millennia, Aziraphale had wished he could paint. He had memories now, of Carravaggio’s skilled hand, over his own, with charcoal tracing the V-line of a perfect male hipbone on paper, saying softly, see, follow this with your eyes, as if you were touching…
Aziraphale had slapped him. Fresh.
His hands traced those same lines absently now on the tree’s rough bark. It wasn’t going to slap him, after all.
The demon was so insouciantly graceful, even doing almost nothing, spreading himself out in some kind of sleepily sybaritic reptilian photosynthesis. He snuggled his back against the warm rock as if it were a soft mattress, one hand reaching up past his wing, over his head, the other resting low on his belly, fingertips just barely touching the line where dark curls started.
Aziraphale groaned without a sound, the hickory’s bark pressing creases into his cheek.
Both beings were half aware of the sun’s lazy movement over the course of time.
Crowley gave a little stretch, a little undulation on the rock, and his hand moved languidly as the part of him Aziraphale had worked hardest to avoid staring at stirred to sleepy life. The angel watched Crowley’s face open smugly, smiling seductively at the sun with his eyes closed as one hand tugged teasingly, the other moving over his chest in complete, unselfconscious self-worship.
And Aziraphale could feel, in sympathy, that skin smooth and hot, trembling beneath his touch. He realized with some mortification that bitter taste in his mouth was bark. He was actually chewing on the tree.
Get a grip on yourself, he ordered.
Like he’s doing?
Oh. Oh bloody hell. Crowley’s body thrashed sinuously like a swimming snake, his hips rising and falling now, one knee bent upward and legs parting…
And Aziraphale ached. His own trousers tight and itching, the tree pressing unyielding against his own swelling.
He’d felt this before. It was the year the potato crop failed across the sea to the west, and he was off to give what aid he could, and he thought it might be time to wake Crowley again, to let him know there was trouble, and if…
He’d found the demon naked, half-tangled in wrinkled sheets, and probably having just this sort of dream. It was warm in the room, and Crowley’s skin was shiny with sweat and his breathing came hard and fast, and just like now Aziraphale was afraid to make a sound. If he shattered the calm he feared he’d break his own resistance, and then…He’d thought he understood desire and sex and all that, thought he’d got a handle on it — it wasn’t really that big an effort all told, it felt rather natural for the most part like so many other human things — but not like this. Not this sudden ravenous hunger of his own skin, blood running hot, something insatiable trying to slink its way out.
He’d made himself walk away then, do his work, and almost forgotten. (Sable was the most terrible of all the Horsepersons, Aziraphale had thought then, speaking of hunger. And he had a way of making all other wants seem irrelevant).
Bless the demon, he took his sweet time about it, in no hurry, obviously skilled at driving himself mad. Still he was up on his knees now, head thrown back, panting, making sounds that only an angel could have heard from this distance.
Aziraphale wanted to be closer. Right up there, in fact, right up against him, replacing that hand with something, anything of his own. He could almost feel those lean thighs wrapped around him, Crowley’s body bucking up beneath him. That’s what was different, what scared him: his sudden wild impulse to ravish. He wanted to make Crowley scream.
And he had never felt…well, not like that…Not so fiercely. Or so thoroughly. Or with such conviction that if he ever let go, let it happen--
Crowley’s body was frozen, then twitching roughly, his wings beating with great thumps as he came, and Aziraphale scraped off bark in his hands, breaking his nails, panting softly in helpless longing.
--that he could come to and find a hundred years had passed while they were immersed in each other. They’d both be in big trouble. It might even be worth it. And that, that just wasn’t…
Snap!
A twig. Aziraphale had forgotten all about the silence.
He was in big trouble. He was looking directly into a muzzle of cold steel that Crowley was aiming with remarkable accuracy at something he couldn’t even see.
Well, now Aziraphale had quite a choice. He could come out with his hands up now, or he could simply freeze and try to keep all his agitated molecules utterly still and hope Crowley would decide it was just some little woodland creature, or--
Blam. Blam.
Ow. Ow.
That was the third option. Aziraphale had no idea Crowley was such a good shot even in a post-orgasmic haze. Beginner’s luck, must be. Getting discorporated was the next best thing for such a situation if no cold bath was available, he supposed. And if Crowley’s bullets hadn’t killed him, the mortification would have done anyhow, or at least he would have wanted it to.
(Alas, the demon was curious, and what he found in the thicket sent him on a two-day frenzy of laughing, cringing, and cursing Aziraphale’s name in seventeen different languages including many long-dead types of thieves’ cant. He found it all quite motivational a few days later at Bull Run.)
Aziraphale awoke a week later in a charity house in Washington, with a nun looking down at him disapprovingly. The paperwork had been expedited, though. Clearly Heaven was very very concerned about matters down here, or simply wanted to know as little about the circumstances as possible. Deed done by demon in Confederate colours, the report said. Close enough.
He’ll probably get a commendation, Aziraphale thought. He owes me one.
~fin~
Tonight's writing in progress: Famine and Pestilence rendezvous in Richmond. (Yes, I am very much enjoying picking apart my home state, for the record.)
Celebrate with me: have something funny and pr0ny!
Some denizens of
lower_tadfield have suggested the existence of a kink for Voyeur!Aziraphale, and there have been some lovely delicate, subtle pieces to that effect. Mmm. But this is mine, so it is neither delicate nor subtle. And it doesn't end too well for the angel. Definite R rating on this bit, for ellipsis abuse if nothing else.Geeky wank-deflecting note: No one but me would notice this, but this is the first time I have actually made explicit reference to the color of Crowley's wings. This is a matter of some fandom dispute: he's often shown with black ones, and someone always rushes to point out that The Book says that demons' wings are just like angels' only usually better groomed. Yes, yes: I took this to mean they aren't the leathery batlike ones of stereotype. But there's no reference there to color at all, and so Aziraphale's white wings are just as much fanon, then, aren't they? Maybe they've got rainbow ones covered with eyes the way medieval artists often depicted them, yes? So I made an aesthetic choice. Crowley's wings are black here. Why? Because if humans had wings, the kind of human he pretends to be would have black ones.
July 1861
Along the Potomac, Virginia
I dote on myself, there is that lot of me and all so luscious...
It was hot — buzzing, sweaty hot, the kind of hot that squelches into the pores and sizzles there. It was so hot the deadly still air rippled visually at the edges of small clearings, and the drone of cicadas faded and rose limply as if it couldn’t quite be bothered.
In some ways this was good for what Aziraphale was trying to do — pick his way through the swampy woods utterly silently — because a lot of it relied on molecules and displacement, and it was easier to do when everything was swollen and expanded. That didn’t make it pleasant to have his clothes sticking to him, and an impressive array of different kinds of stickleburr clinging to them, and sweat and condensation plastering his hair in his eyes.
He drew the line at tolerating the mosquitoes. Nobody’d said he had to.
Not being seen was even more important than not being heard—he could possibly pass for a deer or a bear aurally, but visually was stretching it — and although he still felt it was cheating, he had ways of ensuring he wouldn’t be, at least by humans. Animals were another story, of course. As were other types of beings, some of which, or whom, he was well aware were riding with the Rebels these days.
The woods were supposed to be lousy with them, and yet he hadn’t seen a sign of a human soul all day. Either the Confederate camps were better hidden than humanly possible, or they didn’t exist at all, or else he was hopelessly lost. He knew perfectly well which possibility was the most likely.
He was terribly thirsty. For all the humidity in the air, it wasn’t doing him a bit of good where he needed it most, and none of the numerous grassy puddles he’d sloshed through in the morning were appealing, though, frankly if he came across one now…
As if in answer to that wish, he thought he heard bubbling. Yes, there it was, the unmistakable gurgle of a creek – up ahead, where land was higher and open woods rose up on little foothills. He headed towards the sound, upwards through dense thickets, oak and hickory and poplar twined around with green thorny vines. Something was beckoning him in precisely this direction.
Just as he was starting to get the prickling, uncomfortable sense that the something that was beckoning him was just a tiny bit on the eldritch side, he stepped in something simple and welcome: clear and cool and running fresh over round little rocks. He filled his canteen gratefully and swigged deeply before looking up ahead, up a hill. The little creek burbled its way down an incline, and halfway down it paused in a pool on the hillside, past a fall of flat boulders in a natural clearing. It looked like a lovely place to have a rest, and the angel very strongly considered it, but decided to move on.
Aziraphale had just stepped back into the trees when motion caught his eye. At the top of the largest rock, shining in the bright sun, a thick black squiggly line was drawing itself. It was a large snake - but then Aziraphale blinked, and it wasn’t.
Aziraphale slipped further behind the tree and into the underbrush. Crowley was looking proud and stylish in neatly-pressed Rebel grey, the sunlight catching brass buttons and steel sabre blindingly. With a little sigh, he stretched out on the rock and looked up at the sun unflinchingly, throwing his arms and legs wide and proceeding to, well, bask.
Now the angel had to be stuck wondering if the demon were acting in an official capacity. Was he standing - or rather lying - sentry for some immense battalion that blockaded the entire forest between here and Manassas? Or was he on the wander between assignment and assignment, or up to something more nefarious, or…
Well, he didn’t look particularly nefarious at the moment. He was fidgeting, though, and scratching at his collar.
All thoughts of what Crowley’s nefarious role in a diabolical plan (that might involve hindering travelers) might possibly be briefly left Aziraphale’s mind when Crowley gave a happy little wriggle on his rock, and his uniform appeared folded neatly beside him. He was no longer wearing it - or indeed, anything at all but his gun belt and shiny high boots.
Just in case, Aziraphale supposed as his mouth went dry again for an entirely different reason, and he slumped slightly against the thick hickory tree beside him. His knees were not operating at their peak of powers.
Crowley had seemed to settle himself perfectly for a moment, and then changed his mind and sat up briefly, stretching his arms above his head and leaning first this way and that. With a sigh, he threw his head back and stared up at the sun. As he lowered his arms, his wings unfurled wide and proud, and he lay back again slowly and carefully with wings spread across the stone, absorbing the light. The brilliant sun cast his skin whitish-gold, and brought out blue-purple iridescence in his hair and his feathers.
Many times over the millennia, Aziraphale had wished he could paint. He had memories now, of Carravaggio’s skilled hand, over his own, with charcoal tracing the V-line of a perfect male hipbone on paper, saying softly, see, follow this with your eyes, as if you were touching…
Aziraphale had slapped him. Fresh.
His hands traced those same lines absently now on the tree’s rough bark. It wasn’t going to slap him, after all.
The demon was so insouciantly graceful, even doing almost nothing, spreading himself out in some kind of sleepily sybaritic reptilian photosynthesis. He snuggled his back against the warm rock as if it were a soft mattress, one hand reaching up past his wing, over his head, the other resting low on his belly, fingertips just barely touching the line where dark curls started.
Aziraphale groaned without a sound, the hickory’s bark pressing creases into his cheek.
Both beings were half aware of the sun’s lazy movement over the course of time.
Crowley gave a little stretch, a little undulation on the rock, and his hand moved languidly as the part of him Aziraphale had worked hardest to avoid staring at stirred to sleepy life. The angel watched Crowley’s face open smugly, smiling seductively at the sun with his eyes closed as one hand tugged teasingly, the other moving over his chest in complete, unselfconscious self-worship.
And Aziraphale could feel, in sympathy, that skin smooth and hot, trembling beneath his touch. He realized with some mortification that bitter taste in his mouth was bark. He was actually chewing on the tree.
Get a grip on yourself, he ordered.
Like he’s doing?
Oh. Oh bloody hell. Crowley’s body thrashed sinuously like a swimming snake, his hips rising and falling now, one knee bent upward and legs parting…
And Aziraphale ached. His own trousers tight and itching, the tree pressing unyielding against his own swelling.
He’d felt this before. It was the year the potato crop failed across the sea to the west, and he was off to give what aid he could, and he thought it might be time to wake Crowley again, to let him know there was trouble, and if…
He’d found the demon naked, half-tangled in wrinkled sheets, and probably having just this sort of dream. It was warm in the room, and Crowley’s skin was shiny with sweat and his breathing came hard and fast, and just like now Aziraphale was afraid to make a sound. If he shattered the calm he feared he’d break his own resistance, and then…He’d thought he understood desire and sex and all that, thought he’d got a handle on it — it wasn’t really that big an effort all told, it felt rather natural for the most part like so many other human things — but not like this. Not this sudden ravenous hunger of his own skin, blood running hot, something insatiable trying to slink its way out.
He’d made himself walk away then, do his work, and almost forgotten. (Sable was the most terrible of all the Horsepersons, Aziraphale had thought then, speaking of hunger. And he had a way of making all other wants seem irrelevant).
Bless the demon, he took his sweet time about it, in no hurry, obviously skilled at driving himself mad. Still he was up on his knees now, head thrown back, panting, making sounds that only an angel could have heard from this distance.
Aziraphale wanted to be closer. Right up there, in fact, right up against him, replacing that hand with something, anything of his own. He could almost feel those lean thighs wrapped around him, Crowley’s body bucking up beneath him. That’s what was different, what scared him: his sudden wild impulse to ravish. He wanted to make Crowley scream.
And he had never felt…well, not like that…Not so fiercely. Or so thoroughly. Or with such conviction that if he ever let go, let it happen--
Crowley’s body was frozen, then twitching roughly, his wings beating with great thumps as he came, and Aziraphale scraped off bark in his hands, breaking his nails, panting softly in helpless longing.
--that he could come to and find a hundred years had passed while they were immersed in each other. They’d both be in big trouble. It might even be worth it. And that, that just wasn’t…
Snap!
A twig. Aziraphale had forgotten all about the silence.
He was in big trouble. He was looking directly into a muzzle of cold steel that Crowley was aiming with remarkable accuracy at something he couldn’t even see.
Well, now Aziraphale had quite a choice. He could come out with his hands up now, or he could simply freeze and try to keep all his agitated molecules utterly still and hope Crowley would decide it was just some little woodland creature, or--
Blam. Blam.
Ow. Ow.
That was the third option. Aziraphale had no idea Crowley was such a good shot even in a post-orgasmic haze. Beginner’s luck, must be. Getting discorporated was the next best thing for such a situation if no cold bath was available, he supposed. And if Crowley’s bullets hadn’t killed him, the mortification would have done anyhow, or at least he would have wanted it to.
(Alas, the demon was curious, and what he found in the thicket sent him on a two-day frenzy of laughing, cringing, and cursing Aziraphale’s name in seventeen different languages including many long-dead types of thieves’ cant. He found it all quite motivational a few days later at Bull Run.)
Aziraphale awoke a week later in a charity house in Washington, with a nun looking down at him disapprovingly. The paperwork had been expedited, though. Clearly Heaven was very very concerned about matters down here, or simply wanted to know as little about the circumstances as possible. Deed done by demon in Confederate colours, the report said. Close enough.
He’ll probably get a commendation, Aziraphale thought. He owes me one.
~fin~
Tonight's writing in progress: Famine and Pestilence rendezvous in Richmond. (Yes, I am very much enjoying picking apart my home state, for the record.)
