Sunset ^beta

Aziraphale and Crowley had a second arrangement that they did not grace with a capital letter. It was slightly newer than the other, by about a hundred and fifty years.

It was nice to get out of London for a while. Nice to get out of England, period. Crowley never turned into a snake anymore, but the heat of Nevada wrenched the damp out of her bones and made her want to lie around in the sun all day.

Not that there was much time for sunbathing. Despite her profession (vocation? species?), she only actively looked for trouble on an infrequent basis, but she’d somehow gotten involved with a gang of robbers.

Yes, she. There were occasions where Crowley changed her corporation to a female configuration. Sometimes for aesthetics, sometimes for opportunities, and sometimes for the small-a arrangement. She’d gone out to America as a man (well, as a masculine-appearing entity, anyway) and had run into tales of a person named Calamity Jane, who she’d fancied imitating to some extent. You know, when you go on holiday you want to live a little.

The second arrangement was never actually discussed. It was tremendously freeing and something that boxed them both in, committed them deeply in a way they tried not to think about, ever.

But, of course, even on holiday there were expectations for a demon. Couldn’t just go and relax somewhere quiet — not that Crowley really wanted to relax somewhere quiet, that would be boring — you had to raise a little hell on earth. Although Crowley scrupulously avoided the actual hell on earth the American military was visiting on the rightful inhabitants of the country, she felt making her own little stagecoach-robbing gang fit the bill. Not so much work that she didn’t actually want to do it, but enough to give her something to focus on, and the constant potential for drama.

If asked, she would have strenuously denied that she was sulking about Aziraphale having said what he said with regard to the holy water. It was fine. It was whatever. He’d every right to say no and she had every right to think they shouldn’t speak again, maybe ever, as a result. (Or, more realistically, for about fifty years or so.) That was why the United States was a good place to go for this little working vacation: Aziraphale wouldn’t be caught dead this side of the Atlantic, or at least this side of the Mississippi. There probably weren’t more than six books in the state.

When the stagecoach finally came along and rolled past the edge of the cliff she and the gang were hiding behind, she raised up a fist and whooped, and they took off. The chase was pretty good, a nice exhilarating ride to liven up the afternoon as the driver tried to outmaneuver them, but as always, it ended with Skinny Adrian urging his equally scrawny mare alongside him and jumping onto the box to bring the coach to a halt.

She took out her pistol and fired up in the air as it was slowing and as the gang prepared for the real show.

As leader, it was her job to stand back, using the vantage point of her noble steed to look down on her prey, while her men controlled the stage’s nags, held the driver at gunpoint, and opened the door to usher out the travelers so their valuables could be taken. Except that this time, the door refused to open. Deadeye Bill tried to look cool while he pulled harder on the handle, but finally had to give in and bash it with the butt of his pistol as Crowley rolled her eyes. Embarrassing, this was. Finally he went to actually shoot the door, which was when she intervened. He’d probably hit at least one of the humans inside, and then there would be blood and it would be even more embarrassing. A subtle movement of her fingers undid the miracle that had been used to keep it closed, and hang on, if there’d been a miracle holding the door, that meant …

"Well, really!" huffed someone inside the stage, and then when the passengers disembarked, trembling and afraid, the last one out was a blond in a rumpled cream-colored traveling gown, not at all trembling and certainly far from afraid. She crossed her arms below her ample bosom and glared disapprovingly at the gang members on the ground with her. "I have a number of first editions in my trunk, and I do not intend to part with them."

"Here’s a tip, Aziraphale," said Crowley, tugging her bandanna down from where she’d tied it to hide her face to rest loosely around her neck. "If you’re being robbed, don’t start off by announcing what valuable things you have on you."

"Oh, Crowley!" The grumpy look melted off Aziraphale’s face in a way Crowley refused to dwell on. This was exactly the kind of thing she’d been trying to hide from, if she was slightly honest with herself. Aziraphale in peril, Crowley to the rescue, let’s go out for lunch, blah blah blah, and two drinks in she’s forgotten exactly what she’s angry about because Aziraphale’s chuckling and knowing that she’s caused that sound does something to her insides she doesn’t really appreciate. Fuck that. She didn’t smile back.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we’re here to relieve you of some of the excess money you’re carrying around," she announced, holding up the pistol in her right hand as a kind of warning gesture. "And jewelry. Anything of that sort. Gold pocketwatches appreciated, but you can keep the silver ones."

"Don’t be ridiculous," said Aziraphale, loudly. She must have remembered that they weren’t speaking to one another. "Friends, there is nothing at all to worry about. We’re all perfectly safe."

It was always hard to put her feelings into words, the deep irritation Aziraphale could cause in her and the deep need she felt to keep him — well, also her — safe looping around into an ourobouros, which was the perfect word for it because it made Crowley want to open her jaws and just swallow herself into oblivion. She was suddenly very furious that Aziraphale would dare to tell people that she was harmless, just smugly standing there like she knew Crowley wouldn’t inconvenience her, and so Crowley swung herself down off her stallion and stamped over to Aziraphale and shoved the barrel of her gun under the angel’s chin.

"I could send you right up to heaven," she snarled, ignoring the horrified gasps from the other passengers and the barrage of whispers from her own gang, who’d never seen her lose her cool because Crowley simply Did Not Do That. "Don’t tempt me."

But Aziraphale didn’t look a whit ruffled. "I really wish you wouldn’t. The paperwork would be so annoying."

This was, probably, not a conversation to be having in front of humans. Crowley could have stopped time for a moment and had a good yell, just to get it out of her system, but she didn’t really feel like doing that. Instead, she turned away from Aziraphale and made another announcement. "Right, you’re all free to go. Whatever. But this one is coming with us."

"And my luggage?" Aziraphale asked in that way that wasn’t really a question but was the hint of an order, and Crowley fell for it as usual.

"Yes, yes, get her luggage, Satan forbid she goes without her first editions." With a sigh, she put her pistol back in her holster. "We don’t take prisoners," she announced to the quaking passengers who didn’t have a clue about what was going on. "In the general way of things. But you can let them know in Crystal Springs that this is what the Londoner does with mouthy victims — she takes them back to her hideout."

"To what purpose?" Aziraphale replied frostily, and one of the other passengers put up a hand.

"We’re actually on our way to Elgin," he said, and Crowley shot him a glare.

"You can let them know about it wherever you’re going," she snapped. "And not knowing the purpose is part of the point, people’s minds will just — never mind. Just get out of here, you lot!"

"So you’re called ‘the Londoner’?" Aziraphale went on as the travelers got back on the stagecoach as quickly as possible, before Crowley changed her mind. "That seems rather silly."

"I’ve lived in London a long time," said Crowley, distracted by trying to find something to look at other than Aziraphale. "Seems like as good a name as any."

"But it implies that you’re from London, and we both know that you’re no such thing."

"Well, what am I supposed to call myself, then? To properly reflect my demonic origins?"

"Hellspawn Jim?" suggested Aziraphale, in a very isn’t this obvious tone. It actually was very good, so Crowley changed the subject.

"Right," she said, and mounted back up on her horse. "Get up here."

"I’m hardly dressed to ride."

"Don’t care, you’re a prisoner now, how else do you think you’re getting back to the hideout?"

"Well, I don’t know, but —"

Crowley clicked her fingers, and Bill jumped forward, probably happy to succeed at something to regain some outlaw-honor. He seized Aziraphale at the waist, wrapping one arm around her and using the other one to boost her up across Crowley’s lap. Aziraphale shrieked, of course, and kicked ineffectually, but landed smack dab on the target, and Crowley tried not to notice all the bits of Aziraphale’s soft body that were pressed up against her thighs, particularly the bits that swelled up over the top of her corset in this position.

"Crowley! This is demeaning!"

"You had a choice, and you decided not to come quietly." Oh, she shouldn’t have said that. Saying that reminded her of the small-a arrangement, and how sometimes Aziraphale did come quietly, gasping but not letting out so much as a whimper, and how sometimes she came very loudly indeed.

The second arrangement was a brilliant piece of logic-chopping. The corporations we were given are male, or at least male-seeming, it went, so if we alter them from, hmm, factory settings, it’s essentially like we’re not ourselves. We’re off-duty. And so nothing we do in them really counts.

So it was okay to, for instance, fuck in them.

When they both happened to be female at the same time, it was like being in a completely safe pocket universe, and they would of course never discuss or even refer to what happened in that pocket universe when they were back in real life. That would have ruined everything.

Crowley relented after about half a mile, and helped Aziraphale sit up sideways in front of her on the saddle. Aziraphale complained that the saddle horn was probably bruising her thigh, and Crowley pointed out that Aziraphale’s bustle wires were digging into hers, and then they went quiet for a bit.

Eventually, Crowley cleared her throat and made some conversation. Her irritation had faded, leaving fondness in its wake, which was still somewhat irritating but not to the same degree. "So, what’s a nice angel like you doing in a girl like this?"

"What?" Pure incomprehension. Crowley sighed.

"Why are you traveling around the United States in female form?"

"Oh. Well. There are rumors of a particularly fine set of incunables owned by a collector in San Francisco, and I shan’t bore you with all the details, but they would make an excellent addition to my own collection, so I’m hoping to get him to part with them, one way or another."

"Incunables … ?"

"Early printed materials! I’ve told you this so many times."

"Right, right. And you need to be a woman for this because … ?"

When Aziraphale fidgeted, it made Crowley’s mouth go dry, and then she automatically tightened the arm holding Aziraphale up in case she overbalanced, which made it go drier. "I have found," she said delicately, "that, sometimes, visiting certain collectors en femme, as it were, gets them off their guard so I can convince them to sell if they’re unwilling."

Forcing the image of Aziraphale being wide-eyed and winsome at lecherous old men out of her mind, Crowley made an inarticulate noise to indicate her approval of underhanded methods and her sarcastic surprise that an angel would do any such thing. Aziraphale hooked an arm behind Crowley’s neck without being at all winsome about it, apparently just bracing herself to stay on the horse. Was she thinking about their physical proximity at all? Or the fight that they still hadn’t discussed at all?

The hideout was a mess, but fortunately that was the kind of thing Aziraphale barely noticed in everyday life. Crowley had a taste that ran to black marble and oak panelling, but that sort of business wasn’t on offer out in the wilds; she was lucky to have a house with two floors and all the walls standing without any holes in them (except for the bullet hole where Skinny Adrian had had that accident while cleaning his gun the other day. The boys were still talking about how miraculous it was that he’d managed to miss his head despite looking down the barrel with one eye squinted shut). “Upstairs with you,” she ordered Aziraphale as soon as they were inside, and received a scowl in response. Well, they would probably have words to exchange thagt shouldn’t be said in front of humans, so it was better to get up there. At least scowling meant that they’d probably fight some more, rather than anything more dangerous.

Crowley’s bedroom was tidier because she liked it that way, with a cactus in a pot on the windowsill striving to hit a benchmark of an extra inch in height every three days. Aziraphale sniffed at it, then wiped imaginary dust off the counterpane and seated herself on the bed before setting her chin high and looking around at the whitewashed walls and the handful of yellowing, crackling prints the previous owner had tacked to them.

Leaning against the wall, Crowley stuffed her hands in her pockets. “The boys are being quiet downstairs,” she said for want of anything better to remark on.

"I suppose," said Aziraphale, casting a demure look downwards, "they assume you’re having your way with me."

Crowley had finally, finally managed to stop thinking about the potential for enacting the other arrangement, so the suggestion hit her like a runaway locomotive. She stared a moment. "They — what?"

"Well, I’m no expert, of course, but I assume that most of the time, when a dangerous brigand takes a woman captive and brings her, unaccompanied, to a room with a bed in it …" Aziraphale trailed off, and traced her fingers over the quilt. "Most of the time, I assume, it’s for indecent purposes." There was the tiniest lilt at the end of the sentence, almost making it a question, and Crowley swallowed.

Aziraphale never asked for it. Aziraphale barely even referred to what they might do when they’d both changed into women. In general, Aziraphale preferred to hint for anything he wanted rather than suffering the indignity of having to ask for it and possibly being turned down, and she was no different when it came to sex. There was a safety for both of them in not talking in specifics, and, as generally became relevant when they were both female, in pretending that Crowley was in charge and Aziraphale her victim.

So Crowley obliged.

(Crowley did not like to think very seriously about what might happen if her superiors got wind of all this, but sometimes she did permit herself a madcap daydream about arguing to a tribunal that she was violating and corrupting an angel. It’s just that she had to stop before she got to the part where they started to commend her for it, because that made her feel sick.)

As Aziraphale was already helpfully seated on the bed, Crowley was able to push her down onto her back easily and safely, and she got the satisfaction of staring directly into startled blue eyes about a foot from her own. “Oh,” gasped Aziraphale in apparently genuine surprise at the sudden movement.

“You’re right. Indecent purposes.” Crowley shifted up to hold Aziraphale’s wrists on either side of her head, straddling her body with a good bit of air still between them. No — there was no turning back at this point. Better to just go all the way. With a click of her fingers, Aziraphale’s wrists were pulled together, out of her hands, and up toward the center of the brass bedstead, a length of red silk wrapping itself around them to anchor them there. The motion was swift and even a bit more forceful than she meant it to be, pulling Aziraphale about a foot up the mattress.

“Oh dear.” Aziraphale squirmed, pulling against her bonds and coincidentally pressing the many layers of fabric over her thighs up against Crowley’s dusty dungarees. “I am quite helpless!”

If Aziraphale could still engage in bad dramatics, she wasn’t being acceptably ravished. Crowley would have liked to rip her bodice open, but then there would be complaints about damage to the creamy wool, so she carefully slid each cut-steel button through its buttonhole despite her deep-seated need to get to what was underneath it; once she’d done it, she pulled the edges apart and took a good look. Aziraphale’s corset cover was gorgeous, lace upon lace upon lace and a square neckline that showed a hint of the cleavage bursting beneath it, but it was obvious there were still multiple layers to get through, bless it all.

Crowley took a moment to put her hands on Aziraphale’s waist, though, noting the contrast between her own tanned and calloused skin and the crisp white cotton, and then sliding them up the corset to the heavy swell of her breasts. It made Aziraphale take an unsteady breath, and that was satisfying — a real reaction at last, no theatrics. Crowley drummed her fingers over the soft flesh and permitted herself a smirk.

“I might just cut this right off you,” she mused, and was rewarded with an indignant squawk.

“Crowley! It’s new!”

“You don’t like new clothes.” Her hands traveled back down to Aziraphale’s waist, encased in twill and whalebone beneath the flimsy cotton. But it was still warm, and shifted with Aziraphale’s breathing, and there was something intoxicating in it. “You hate new clothes.”

Aziraphale squirmed some more. “My most recent lady-clothes were from 1836,” she admitted. “I made some friends on the voyage and they were very insistent on taking me to Lord & Taylor once we disembarked, because apparently I looked ridiculous.”

Silently, Crowley thanked the shipboard friends.

“Right. Well.” Her fingers plucked at the mother-of-pearl buttons, careful not to rip anything. This time, though, she didn’t peel back the edges. She’d save that for later — and besides, all of the skirt waistbands were holding it shut. The simplest thing to do was to bury her hands beneath Aziraphale’s hips (ignoring how it made her stomach do flips) and unhook the overskirt and underskirt, and unbutton the topmost petticoat. From there, she could easily tug them all down over Aziraphale’s lightly bucking hips, along an underpetticoat, and off and to the floor. At a slightly distressed noise, Crowley sighed and miracled them all over the back of a chair. The bodice disappeared to rejoin them, as Crowley really wanted to see Aziraphale in nothing but her underthings. Oh, that bustle wasn’t part of the fantasy. Easy enough to unbuckle from the front, though, and pull out the collapsed wire structure from beneath her.

Then Crowley sat back on her heels, put her hands on her own hips, and looked down at the product of all her work: Aziraphale, pink and flushed and with her soft arms exposed, disconcerted and awkward at being looked at so frankly. She always got like that when this happened, as though each time were the first time and she still couldn’t believe that Crowley wanted to get her naked. It would be something to discuss, if they were allowed to discuss this (not that Crowley really knew what she’d say in the event), but instead Crowley focused on proving the point through action and excited utterance, which was allowed.

Now she pushed the edges of the corset cover to either side, and it hardly got her anywhere because Aziraphale was wearing so many bloody layers.

The funny thing was, Crowley usually wore pretty nice clothes. The latest fashions. The finest silks. If she were the one lying half-dressed on the bed, the chemise’s neckline would duck low and skim an inch above the corset, which would be red satin trimmed with black lace. Aziraphale, though, didn’t care about what she was wearing, and it showed. Her corset was that beige they called “putty” and her chemise demurely covered her practically up to her neck. Crowley definitely didn’t bother with drawers when she was in a dress; Aziraphale’s were thick white cotton and went to well below the knee.

But, personally? Aziraphale’s prudish layers and practical fabrics drove Crowley to distraction in a way that nothing else did. Undoing them was like unwrapping a present, and they made the soft skin underneath even more precious.

Crowley rose up on her knees and crawled backwards down Aziraphale’s body; when she reached the angel’s legs, she shifted herself between them, pushing them apart, then slipped her fingers into the opening in the crotch of Aziraphale’s drawers and stroked. “Already wet? My, my.” Crowley wasn’t allowed to bring up feelings, or the past, or whether they might do this again sometime — but she was allowed dirty talk. “Eager for it, aren’t you?”

Pink bloomed across Aziraphale’s cheeks. “No, of course not!” (Dirty talk was not her strong suit. Which was, paradoxically, sexier to Crowley than the alternative. Why did earnestness have to do it for her?)

“I think you are,” said Crowley, deliberately dropping into an approximation of the drawl used by everyone else in her gang. It wasn’t very good, but it didn’t need to be. “I think you wanted a stagecoach robber to take you away and tie you to a bed.” She miracled the drawers away, and that left Aziraphale in just the right amount of fabric. You couldn’t muss up her clothes if she wasn’t wearing anything at all.

“Well, I don’t —” Aziraphale went even redder, and she tugged fitfully against her bindings as Crowley lazily toyed with her. She didn’t use a miracle, though. “That’s not — I mean, how can you really —”

Fingers slick, Crowley slowly drew them back, but left her hand under Aziraphale’s chemise. “All covered up from head to toe like a schoolmarm,” she said, and started to rub quick little circles around Aziraphale’s clit to make her squirm. “But I reckon you came out here to work in one-a them brothels. Or if you didn’t, you shoulda.” She leaned forward to loom over Aziraphale, and she knew what she looked like in her leathers, the grime only enhancing the overall effect. She grinned wickedly.

This was the delicate part. Aziraphale liked being menaced, but if the menace was too strong, she didn’t believe it, because she thought she knew that Crowley was nice deep down. She liked having her flaws dragged up, especially anything to do with her love of earthly pleasures, but certain flaws actively hurt when they were poked at and also ruined things. (One time in eighteenth-century Florence, Crowley had actually made her cry while trying to get her off mostly through talking. It had completely destroyed the mood, Aziraphale frantically making excuses and pretending nothing had happened, and it had made Crowley quietly seek out little chapels to burn her feet in as penance every day for a week until she’d — well, he’d — felt like he’d atoned. That was definitely a high-water mark in self-loathing on multiple axes.)

So Crowley kept Aziraphale’s legs pinned apart with her body, focused on the pressure and motion of her right hand while letting her left roam over that soft skin — thumb rubbing over inner thigh, fingernails scratching lightly on stomach — and kept leaning in close to hiss in her ear. The trick was to make what could be insults into praise. Overly plump? Crowley liked a good handful of arse. Slutty, wanton, and loud? She was so good at being fucked. And Crowley did and Aziraphale was. These stolen and unmentionable hours were sometimes full of the truest things either of them ever said.

Aziraphale came on Crowley’s fingers, and then again on her tongue, each time gasping and babbling alternate dear girls and foul fiend-type things. That there was a roomful of outlaws downstairs completely left her mind: all that mattered was the minutes ticking away before they both came to their senses, Aziraphale went on to the coast for his books and Crowley went back to not speaking to him ever again. When she brought Aziraphale off a third time, on her hand again but harder and faster, neither of them could manage any words. And that was that.

Just a brief respite to catch their breaths, and then Aziraphale was miracling her hands free and conjuring a handkerchief to wipe herself down. Crowley just leaned back against the bedstead, knowing she ought to do the same but not quite bringing herself to do it.

“Well,” said Aziraphale in a businesslike way, her cheeks still very pink and her hair a complete mess. “That was — exciting.”

It was. “Yeah.” But since they weren’t actively fucking anymore, it was time to change the subject. For safety. “I’ll have one of my guys get you to the nearest town. You can get another stage there.” It was weird to watch her dress in that body, it always was, but the layers were coming on now faster than they’d come off.

“Thank you! That’s very kind.” Aziraphale arched an eyebrow. “And that stage won’t be robbed?”

Crowley shrugged. “Not by me, anyway.”

Hardly ten minutes later, she was watching Aziraphale pull away in the gig they kept in the barn. She’d washed her hands by that point, but both of them still held onto a warmth they shouldn’t have had. The sun was starting to set, taking on that strange quality it had when there was still plenty of light but the shadows were stretching out into impossible shapes, and the one the gig cast was visible much longer than the vehicle itself.