Title: Safety
Author: Black Crystall Draygon
Pairing: Aziraphale/Crowley
Fandom: Good Omens
Rating: PG-13
Note: Written February 2007 during a drabble-war with my Evil Twin. (Originially posted on Valentine's Day.)
Summary: Crowley comes to a realisation while lying in Aziraphale's bed.***
Crowley took a long drag from the cigarette dangling from his fingers, then exhaled in a slow rush of breath, sending smoke pluming towards the ceiling. Aziraphale, asleep with his head on Crowley's shoulder, wrinkled his nose in distaste but did not wake.
The demon smiled and closed his eyes, enjoying the warmth from the body beside him and the dull recollections of pleasure that still throbbed inside him, making his limbs and eyes heavy. Aziraphale shifted a little closer, his breath hot against Crowley's fevered skin. Crowley looked down at him.
Aziraphale's face has lost most of its laughter-lines and worry-lines, but somehow seemed no less ancient. Sleep had parted his lips, damp curls had fallen over his forehead and cheeks, but they served to make him look more angelic rather than less. Crowley looked away and took another drag of his cigarette and wondered if he would look the same if he hadn't fallen.
He wondered if Aziraphale had ever been on the brink of falling, and how different things would be if he had. But then he dismissed it -- Aziraphale was good, and proper, and had funny ideas about morals and consciences*, and liked tartan and books and smelled of dust and was Crowley's only friend.
He was Crowley's only friend.
A sudden and disconcerting feeling of protectiveness slammed into Crowley with almost physical force, and he gasped. Aziraphale's eyes flickered open for a moment; he pressed a kiss to Crowley's pale skin and muttered, "Shh, 's safe. G'back t'sleep."
Crowley stared down at him for a long while, letting the cigarette in his fingers burn itself out into wisps of smoke and drop ash onto Aziraphale's quilt. He had not realised until now just how much the angel meant to him -- even the frantic kissing and the desperate rock of flesh against mortal flesh hadn't brought it home so sharply, like a twisting knife in his human heart.
He had been planning on waiting for a few hours, until midnight -- or dawn if he was feeling generous -- then slipping out of Aziraphale's arms and down the stairs and out to the Bentley. But every time he tried to extricate himself from the angel's gentle embrace, Aziraphale sighed and his fingers, sliding off Crowley's skin, tensed up as if to hold him back and he couldn?t bring himself to leave the warmth or Aziraphale's bed or the protection of his arms.
For all he told himself he didn't want to stay, he knew that he could never bear to go; to leave the safety of the angel's bed was to leave Aziraphale vulnerable and alone, and Crowley's new and unexpected protective nature would not allow that.
He would not admit that he was in love, not for another few hundred years, but he would stay in Aziraphale's bed until morning, with cigarette smoke curling into the air to leave the lingering scent of tobacco, and the angel's head resting lightly against his shoulder.
*He believed that they actually existed.
***