Lust: intense romantic desire

Aziraphale is part of a book club. Of course he is - after all, he had invented them, as soon as literacy became the norm. He looks forward to their weekly get-togethers, a group of all ages and genders packed into his shop, gathered for the sole reason of discussing their assigned novel. They bring their own copies, obviously, because Aziraphale would be damned - no pun intended - if he let even one of his books cross the threshold of his shop, if only just for a moment. Humans were, intrinsically, good, but Aziraphale could not help the flare of worry that one of them would never return, taking his precious novel away with them forever.

Nevertheless, it felt good to have a chat with others about books. Crowley didn't read, and Aziraphale always felt uncomfortable discussing any book at length with his patrons, lest they become interested enough to buy them. The attendees were all dedicated and sweet, and he felt proud of the friendships that had popped up among them.

It was no wonder, then, that he invited Anathema to them. He felt bad for her, poor girl. Not long after the world didn't end, she had used her sizable family fortune to change renting Jasmine Cottage into buying Jasmine Cottage. She claimed that it was for a change of scenery, but Aziraphale suspected something different.

He'd noticed, fairly soon after they met, just how out of place she felt. She didn't have many friends, and her rather stilted social skills made it quite difficult for her to pick up more. She had him and Crowley, and the Them, as well as Tracy and Shadwell, the handful of times they had visited after the Armagedd-off. Other than Newton, she had only children and the occasional travelers to call her own. Not much of a social circle, in Aziraphale's somewhat hypocritical opinion.

Unsurprisingly, she had jumped at the opportunity to attend. She'd been attentive and friendly at the meetings since, if not a bit quick to speak over others. For the past few sessions, Aziraphale had thought it had been a considerable success.

Currently, however, he was beginning to rescind his previous assessment of the matter.

Hours after the others had left, the two were sitting alone in his shop. She had a hot cup of tea in her hands - only because Aziraphale had miraculed it to still be so, she hadn't drunk from it in ages - and was curled up on his half-century old couch, the soft tartan one with red linings that Crowley usually occupied. There are dried tear tracks down her face, remnants of the time before Aziraphale had managed to drag the source of her distress out of her.

"-and he can't text or call," she was saying, "because he can't pick up a phone without destroying it, but I don't want to go visit him, and I know I totally broke his heart so I'm not sure whether he'll ever come see me. I don't regret breaking up with him, I don't think, but it's the first real decision I've made without Agnes and she was the reason I slept with him in the first place!"

Aziraphale makes a small noise of sympathy as she barreled forward even as he was unable to stop his eyebrows raising. Once she had started, she hadn't made a single move to let him speak. After over half an hour of ranting, he has the sinking feeling that she is in need of a therapist rather than an angel.

"But I don't want to lose him because he's one of the few people I've been close to since the end of the world, and I don't want to go back to America either, because I don't know how to even talk to my family if it's not about something Agnes said. And I know they'll be mad at me if I tell them I burned the second set of prophecies Agnes sent after we saved the world -"

"You did what?"

"- but I'm not sure I would be able to resist telling my mom that: I already can barely even speak to her on the phone! None of us know how to be anything other than descendants. I don't know how to make the right decisions without Agnes telling me what to do!"

She stops, taking a deep breath. "Well," Aziraphale stumbles over himself, still stuck on the fact that there had been more prophecies and Anathema had just destroyed them, "you must - you must - must remember that she - she was only telling the future, not creating it! All of the decisions you made would always have been your own; she only wrote down what conclusion you would have eventually come to-"

"I wish," she cuts him off, oblivious to his attempts at comfort, "that I had what you and Crowley have."

"I beg your pardon?"

"You know," her eyes slide over to his, "you're just so certain that you're in love with him. It's obvious. There's no doubt whatsoever. Just total conviction, and you did it by yourselves!" She slumps forward. "No 400-year-old book telling you to," she says into her mug.

For an immortal being, the words Crowley and in love with and obvious are taking quite a while for Aziraphale's mind to string together. "I'm-" he says, and then he stops.

"Aziraphale?" Anathema finally asks as the silence grows worryingly long. "You okay?"

"I'm not in love with Crowley," Aziraphale says, and that, at least, is true. He's known Crowley for over 6000 years, knows him as well as he knows himself. There's no sentiment in the English language - or any other, to be frank - that truly describes Aziraphale's feelings towards him. In love with, though, has a very particular connotation that he can't find himself quite grasping.

It's a bit frustrating that that's what makes Anathema's mood change. She sits up, one eyebrow cocking. With an upward twitch of her lips, she's the opposite picture of what she was not two minutes ago. "Really?" she asks, in a way that's very much not a question.

"I - yes, Anathema, really. My feelings towards Crowley can't actually be -"

"You're saying you don't have feelings for Crowley? Romantic ones? I can see it all over your face, every time I see you two together, which is almost every time."

"No!"

Playfully, Anathema asks, "Never even thought about him that way?"

In France, 1763:

It's not like Aziraphale has never faced the threat of discorporation, but it's the first where he lacks the simple option of simply removing himself from the situation. Under the threat of Gabriel's recent reprimand, he runs the risk of being recalled to Heaven if he used another miracle, frivolous or no. Discorporation wouldn't even matter, then. The resulting stack of paperwork would be the same height.

Then time had frozen by no means of his own. There was no other being who could have possibly have the ability or motive to do so, but Aziraphale allows Crowley to open the conversation anyway. After all, it could easily be taken that Aziraphale had specifically orchestrated this situation in order to invite him out to lunch and accidentally let it get wildly out of hand.

Which is absolutely not what happened. Aziraphale is quite sure of that. Mostly.

What Aziraphale had not been expected was the way Crowley was sprawled on the bench, in dark peasant's clothing with only the flickering torch light to illuminate him. Even when he sat still, leaning against the cold stone walls, his posture has glaringly unnatural. It was if he had once been a being with no physical form, who eventually gained a physical form with no limbs, and then rapidly shapeshifted into a physical form with far too many, and even after more than 5000 years was still quite unsure as to how to use them. Or something like that.

Crowley arises immediately with a snap when Aziraphale thanks him in their own careful way of doing so, prowling over to stand very, very close to him. Aziraphale's mouth is worryingly dry as he stares into Crowley's black glasses. Perhaps he himself is quite unsure as to how to handle a physical form either.

In London, 1941:

Aziraphale has, in his own fateful words, been played for a sucker. Rose - Greta - had appeared so earnest in her cause, so desperate to end the war, that he had easily agreed to her somewhat overly-complicated plan. It does, actually, appear that she was exactly as earnest and desperate to end the war as he had anticipated. She just, as it so happens, is on the exact opposite side of the fight that Aziraphale had expected. Humans continuously amaze him, even in the worst of ways.

There have been many, many times that Crowley has appeared from seemingly nowhere to weasel Aziraphale out of a tight spot. However, he has never been more dramatic than now as he loudly picks his way across the ground in order to get to Aziraphale and his regretfully Nazi acquaintances. Aziraphale does feel quite horrible as Crowley continues to bounce around the floor in an attempt to stop himself from burning into ash even as he threatens the others. After all, Aziraphale is an angel and it despairs him to see the ones he cares for in pain, especially for his own sake.

Therefore, he knows that the polite thing to do would simply be to pick up Crowley in order to remove his direct contact with the church's consecrated flooring. That, he feels, would be a much more comfortable way to get one's point across, even if it may be somewhat embarrassing to issue serious warnings whilst cradled in someone else's arms.

And it's not like Aziraphale has never held Crowley before. But every previous instance had occurred while Crowley was a snake and had initiated the contact himself. He claimed that it was because Aziraphale was warmer than any London weather. Whether those assertions were true or not, Aziraphale was not going to ask.

He'd never really touched Crowley in their human forms for an extended amount of time before. Crowley had always been so cold, the few times they had physical contact whilst human. He wonders if he would be warmer if they were wrapped up together, against the humid night air. He believes that with Crowley's cold nature, it would certainly be a more enjoyable sensation for them both.

Their current situation should not allow Aziraphale the time to deeply fantasize about how exactly it would be like, their bodies pressed so closely together, touching each other in so many ways. He decides to do so anyway.

The moment slips away when Crowley tells Aziraphale of their need for a real miracle to survive the incoming bomb, which certainly requires more concentration than he would ever attain with the extremely attention diverting sensation of a demon in his arms. Unfortunately, he's still distracted enough to forget about his beloved books of prophecy and takes the time to fret before Crowley hands them to him, safe and sound.

Crowley offers Aziraphale a lift home, where he resolutely proceeds to spend the entire drive not thinking about the way their hands had briefly touched, or his unvoiced desire to ask Crowley to stay the night.

In Soho, 2008-2019.

Aziraphale and Crowley have both lived in London for almost two centuries. It makes sense, then, that they'd occasionally seek out each other's company. After all, there is no one else they're close to, even among a city of millions. For thousands of years, Aziraphale could not think of one single being that knows him nearly as well as Crowley does.

However, it's only until they begin enacting their plan to stop the Apocalypse does Aziraphale realize just how little time they'd spent together before. As the years march on, Crowley begins to slowly carve out his own space in the bookshop, inserting himself as a consistent presence in Aziraphale's existence. He's around often enough that he becomes a familiar face to the patrons, where before he had tended to make himself scarce when seen with Aziraphale for an elongated period of time. Their lunches - at the Ritz or otherwise - together increase tenfold. It's … nice … Aziraphale admits, having a constant companion. His friendships with humans tend to be fleeting and border on impersonal. His relationship with Crowley is anything but.

Of course, quite a bit of that time together is whilst pretending to be a nanny and a gardener. Semantics.

It's during their time alone - breaks from their jobs, time briefly frozen so they have enough time to catch their breath, remind themselves exactly why they're going through all of this trouble - that Aziraphale enjoys the most. The moments where Aziraphale delicately cards his hand through Crowley's secretly fluffy hair, when Crowley casually drapes his body over Aziraphale's shoulders in order for them to look at the same thing. Moments like these, warm and easy and familiar, that neither ever discuss but continue to do.

Aziraphale wonders about those times, if Crowley ever means anything more by it. He knows Crowley well enough to know that he's wondering the same thing. They do not break their silence.

In the present with only Anathema for company, he knows that there are hundreds of more examples that he can't bring himself to remember. "No, not particularly."

"I mean, every time I see him, even. Wow. Can't stop thinking about those hands, and I just wanna run mine through his hair, so completely gorgeous. I've never even seen his eyes like you have so, but the rest of his face more than makes up for it. And the way he moves, just so confident, especially with that saunter of his. Don't even get me started on his clothes, leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination. I just get so hot and bothered - "

"Enough," he tells her firmly. She has a grin on her face - she'd be a good tempter given the chance, he thinks. Good thing it would never work on him. He flicks his tongue over his lips; she watches the movement with rapt attention. "He doesn't - that's not -"

"Just give us a horizontal surface, I mean -"

"Anathema!" he exclaims, half-rising from his seat. She giggles at his mortified expression. "I can't say that I've never thought of Crowley in such a manner, in - in the past-"

"So you admit it!"

"-but if I had it would be none of your business!"

Anathema does not look chastised in the least by his outburst. Instead, she sets down her tea - still full, still hot - and dramatically looks at her wrist, where a watch would be. There was not one. "Well," she says. "I should be off, then. It's getting a bit late." She stood.

Aziraphale blinks up at her, thrown. "Would you like me to call you a cab?" he asks, hesitant.

"Nope!" Anathema says, popping the p as she does. "Listen, Aziraphale," she sounds somewhat more serious than before. "I slept with Newt not even an hour after meeting him. You've known Crowley for, what, all of human history?" She adjusts her glasses, looking down at him. "There's no point in waiting. And besides," she smirks, "have you seen the way he looks at you?"

It's only after she's gone and Aziraphale is finally alone that he answers, "Oh, yes, I most definitely have."