I hate sunscreen
RatedM, Ineffable husbands, suggestive themes, fluff
Check out this artwork by @virtualcarrot. I am blow away at how well it fits this little fic! What an inspiration!
“Oh, no!” Aziraphale wailed, reaching for Crowley and looking devastated. “It’s even worse here than at home!”
He wrapped his plump fingers around Crowley’s wrist and allowed himself to be helped from the Bentley. Crowley had been too late to open the passenger door; the Car had beat him to it.
“Isn’t it grand?” Crowley exclaimed as he pulled the Angel to his feet. “Just like old times, eh?”
Wearing his blue and white jumpsuit with the yellow straw hat tilted at an artistic angle, Aziraphale was better dressed for a garden party than a beach day. Still, Crowley couldn’t fault him for wanting to go out in style; he looked marvelous.
The Angel stared at him as if he’d canceled Christmas, Easter, and the Feasts of all the Saints.
“What?” Crowley said, offering his arm for Aziraphale to take. “I like it hot.”
The Angel produced a clean white handkerchief and wiped the sweat over his top lip, none too convinced but willing to make a go of it. “At least there’s a sturdy breeze,” he sighed. “Still. I’m worried about the ice cream.”
Crowley had forgotten about that. He snapped the fingers of his free hand and magicked the treats from the freezer box in the bookshop into a very nice basket in his hand.
“I thought you took care of that.”
“Shh,” Aziraphale hissed, looking over both shoulders as if someone might be able to tell. “That’s my one allotted miracle for the day.”
Crowley kicked his foot back and the door shut behind them. “If you’d stop telling me when you use your daily miracle, you could do as many as you like and I’d never know.”
Aziraphale gasped, shocked at such a suggestion. One corner of his mouth twitched into a barely there smile, a little bit sarcastic. “But that would be dishonest.”
“Yup. And I’d love it.”
The two stepped out together across the hard-packed gravel of the drive and headed for the sandy spanse of beach. They were meeting Nina and Maggie to escape from the scorching heat. Crowley was good wherever, but his roommate, with his intolerance for all things uncomfortable, had grown fussy and irritable. And so, they left the city for the coast, Crowley slouched comfortably behind the wheel, Aziraphale hiding, terrified, behind his hands.
As they neared the end of the path, Crowley disappeared his shoes and stretched his toes as wide as they would go, while Aziraphale messed with his hat in the wind.
“Come on, Angel,” Crowley said, encouraging his friend along. “Get barefoot and let’s go. I want to see if I can surf without a board.”
“Nonsense. The waves aren’t big enough for any type of — oh!”
Aziraphale recoiled and leaped off the sand.
“What? What is it?” Crowley’s heart rushed into his throat, ready to defend his friend from fiends or foul beasts or both.
“The sand!” the Angel cried, pointing at the offending attacker. “I nearly burned my feet!”
Crowley closed his eyes and said a few choice but highly appropriate words, crouched to catch Aziraphale behind his knees, and then lifted him into a bridal carry.
“Anthony J. Crowley! You put me down this instant!”
It wasn't going to happen. “A dot Zed dot Fell. Why should I?”
His friend squirmed, but Crowley held fast, the ice cream basket still looped over one arm.
“Be — because. I can walk just fine by myself.”
“Yeah,” Crowley agreed, setting off over the scalding surface. “But you’ll caterwaul the whole way and the humans are watching.”
People were watching, gawking at the pair of them like they’d never seen someone carry another in a fit of chivalry over a desert. Aziraphale swiveled his head madly, made up his mind, and slung one arm around Crowley’s neck.
“Very well. But make it quick. Humans tend to see displays of affection like these and think — well — they’ll think —“
Crowley kept trudging through the sand. He quite liked the weight of the Angel in his arms, the warmth of his fingers on his neck.
“Spit it out. What will they think?”
Aziraphale lowered his voice so only they two could hear. “They’ll think we’re an item.”
Crowley shifted the Angel higher as he did a little Charleston. “Two peas in a pod, that’s us!”
His friend exhaled in disgust and held on with his other arm, too, hands clasped together at Crowley’s collarbone.
Crowley spotted the two girls and made a beeline in their direction. Maggie waved hello from under a hat so floppy and so large that it made her look like a faerie mushroom seated on a beach chair throne. Nina stood behind her, that sly smirk on her mouth, crossing both arms across her chest. Both wore bathing suits with loudly bright colors, Nina’s beautiful espresso-brown skin glistening while Maggie’s paleness gave Aziraphale a run for his money.
Crowley carefully dumped his friend into a chair when they reached the shadowed sanctity of a pair of umbrellas. Then he sneered at Nina’s smug face.
“What?” she deadpanned, pretending as if she didn’t have something scathing and horrifyingly true to throw at him.
“You,” Crowley handed her the basket and looked over his glasses. “Not one word.”
Her eyes flickered to Aziraphale where he and Maggie were busy trading sunscreens. She zipped her lip and said nothing.
“Right.” Crowley stripped off his shirt and tossed it over the end of Aziraphale’s lounge chair.
He flexed his biceps. “A little stretching before we tackle the surf.”
Maggie laughed. Crowley flexed his calves.
Nina whistled. Crowley arched his back with fists on hips, and glanced up at Aziraphale. The Angel was seated on his chair next to Maggie fanning himself and looking rather flushed.
It made Crowley smile. Nina grinned too, coyishly, at Aziraphale. He thought perhaps she had a bit of the Devil inside.
Crowley quite liked her.
“Shall we surf?” he asked, holding out his arm for Nina to take. She shook her head and pointed at her mouth; Crowley had forbidden her from talking.
“Oh, fine.”
With another swish of his hand, Nina could speak again. “I’ve already been. We were just about to unpack lunch.”
Crowley glared at her, knowing full well she intended to join in with the gossip. And he’d thought she was different.
“Fine,” he hissed again and reached for his ankles, stretching them one at a time back to his thighs. “Your loss.”
He took off, feet digging into the molten sand, spraying his back as he ran. He accelerated until he met the water’s edge, then signaled for a wave and dove into its depths.
It was heav— no. No, of course it wasn’t.
It was dreadful.
He coaxed the wind a little stronger, and wave after wave a little higher. Until the humans spilled into the water to join in his evil plan to thwart the sun’s attempt to fry them all in exchange for a bit of fun.
After several spectacular barrel rolls, Crowley emerged from the water and made his way back up the beach. The three friends were tittering on like a gaggle of geese, ceasing the instant Aziraphale spotted him.
Crowley scowled and peered at them over his glasses, swiping back his disheveled hair into perfectly coiffed rebellion.
“Aziraphale?” he commanded, crooking his finger and motioning for the Angel to follow. “Get in the water.”
The voice he used on his plants never seemed to work on his friend. Aziraphale simply laughed at him, leaned forward, and pulled him down to sit by his side. He held Crowley’s hands with mischief in his eyes. A quirkily adorable tic in his cheek.
That’s when Crowley was attacked from behind.
Nina slapped a load of thick, slimy whiteness on the Demon's back, while Maggie poured it like syrup out of a bottle over his shoulder. Aziraphale laced his fingers in Crowley’s, and all he could do was howl.
“No! Stop! You’ll ruin my carefully crafted skincare routine.”
“That’s silly,” Aziraphale huffed with a grin. “We’re only trying to prevent the long-term effects of sunburn.”
“That’s what I’m talking about!” Crowley shouted even more loudly. “I like skin cancer! It gives me a challenge!”
With uproarious laughter, Maggie and Nina backed away, turning and shuffling off through the sand. They left Crowley unevenly covered in the loathsome white stuff, under the care of his equally despicable and scheming counterpart.
“I hate sunscreen,” Crowley growled with clenched teeth while Aziraphale laid hands on him. He worked the awful substance in a circular motion, as if trying to bond it to his skin. It was foul and horrid, and his friend smiled and smiled and smiled.
That was when Crowley realized the Angel was actually enjoying himself.
“Hold still,” he cooed, squeezing a pea-sized dollop onto his thumb and smearing it across Crowley’s cheek. “Almost done. Just a smidge more –”
The Demon watched as the grin on his friend’s face reflected in those warm, brown eyes, spilling over into the gentle way he used his fingers, careful not to blind Crowley. Aziraphale had always been the caretaker, the empathetic one, soft. It did things to the Demon’s insides that had nothing to do with anything at all but . . . him.
“There,” Aziraphale said with finality, looking up from his work and zeroing in on Crowley’s eyes. “All finished.”
There was a long, long, longish long long silence, and the sound of the waves and seagulls screaming like people and humans screeching like birds all drifted into the background. The only thing Crowley could see, or hear, or smell (other than that disgusting lotion), was Aziraphale.
The Angel refused to look away, and Crowley could do no such thing either. It was like two lonely souls reached out for each other and made some kind of connection they didn’t tell either one of their hosts about.
But Crowley didn’t have a soul, so –
Eventually, finally, Crowley was able to break it off. “OK, now my turn to do you.”
Aziraphale went redder than the flower on Maggie’s sunhat. He looked down and away, lips pursed to prevent relishing the moment. Crowley couldn’t help but notice how particularly curly the cherub’s hair was, how absolutely pure his skin appeared. There was something about him that positively glowed. It made the Demon's stomach do a funny gurgling thing, like a dozen girls giggling.
That would never do.
Crowley snapped his fingers and Aziraphale’s prudish skin-covering outfit transformed into the tiniest, itsiest-bitsiest, yellow-polka-dotted bikini ever made. His lovely white skin bloomed out into the open, exposed under the rainbow umbrella and freed from its conservative container.
Aziraphale, as was to be expected, shrieked.
“Ah! Crowley!” He scrambled to cover himself with the oversized beach towel, yanking it out from under both of them, upsetting the ice cream basket, and tipping over his foolish pink drink. “Put it back!”
Crowley shifted to the other lounge chair, magicked the basket and drink into place, and smiled approvingly. He would never in a million-billion years admit to it, but he quite liked the corporeal body Aziraphale had adopted.
“Do it yourself if it bothers you that much,” he teased, pushing buttons he knew he shouldn’t, but doing it nevertheless.
Aziraphale fumed at him. “You know I can’t! I’ve already reached my one-miracle limit!”
Crowley leaned over and fingered the edge of the towel that poked up into the Angel’s chin. He rubbed the smooth dimple just under his lower lip, and Aziraphale swallowed audibly.
“Promise you’ll come swim with me,” the Demon countered, not unkind. “Promise me, and I’ll dress you in foamed neoprene from neck to ankle and you can snorkel with the bloody dolphins.”
Aziraphale wouldn’t look at him. His eyes shifted left to right as Crowley held his chin in place, thumbing the ridge of his bottom lip.
“All right,” the Angel said, quietly, sweetly. As if he were accepting an invitation to dance, or agreeing to a moonlit walk through a private garden. What could Crowley do? He snapped his fingers once again and outfitted his friend with shirt and swim shorts in an attractive pale green and blue tartan.
Aziraphale assessed his attire with reluctant admiration, looking briefly at Crowley, and smiled.
They swam. They dove. They surfed. Aziraphale turned out to be very good with the surfboard that Crowley appeared out of nothing, putting much less effort into it than would normally be required. Crowley suspected the Angel had listened for once and used a little miracle or two. It pleased him beyond words.
The four friends ate the posh still-frozen ice cream with appreciative moans and groans while Aziraphale shared his chair with Crowley. Thighs touching, legs swinging in sync, Crowley could feel Nina watching them and thinking things. But he didn’t care.
The ride home was pleasantly quiet. Aziraphale stuck his left hand out the window, the right on his thigh. Crowley fought the urge to reach over and take it, to slip his fingers into the Angel’s and make him understand what it was like to be needed.
Because Crowley needed him. There wasn’t any point without him.
Back in the bookshop, Crowley ascended the stairs while Aziraphale farted around with his books. He stripped to his skin and took a cool shower, then checked to make sure Jim wasn’t lurking in the hallway before sauntering naked into the bedroom. He flopped like a wet fish on his back on the bed and waited.
Something was different. It wasn’t just Jim showing up in Gabriel’s body with more questions than answers. It wasn’t just the overall feeling of dread, of something utterly and completely wrong. Crowley felt that all the time. This was something different.
He heard Aziraphale showering as well, singing in his angelic falsetto. It was wholly domestic, fluffy in a sickening sort of way. Precious and fragile and fraught with –
“Oh, dear god!” Aziraphale shouted at the door, covering his eyes and turning away as if he’d been burned. “Crowley! What are you doing?”
His hair was wet, tight curls hugging his scalp. He wore his bathrobe, even though the upper floor was still sweltering in the heat. Just like Adam in the garden of Eden, he still harbored that sense of guilt, unable to shake off the feeling of being ashamed.
“Angel,” Crowley barked, slipping his hands behind his head. “You’ve seen it thousands of times. The human body is a work of art, after all.”
“It’s not right, and you know it!” he argued. Aziraphale was in the mood to argue. “Put it away or roll over. Otherwise, I’m going to sleep in the car.”
He referred to the snake the Demon wore on the outside, the pleasurable one, lying curved in a slight arc as it rested against his belly. Crowley growled and rolled over. “Fine. I’ve rolled over, your Grand Prudishness.”
Aziraphale entered the room slowly, approaching with averted eyes and opening his closet to hide inside. “It’s not prudish to be decent.”
“I am decent,” Crowley said, unsure whether fighting was a good idea or not. They’d had such a lovely day, it would be a shame to ruin it. But ruin it, they always did. It was to be expected.
The Demon watched Aziraphale through the slightly open door as he kept himself modestly covered, slipping into his nightgown, grunting in something like pain as he did so. He hung up the robe on a hanger and emerged to face Crowley.
His eyes slid over Crowley’s bare backside, and he squeezed them shut like a child. But Crowley had noticed something. Under the transparent white of the gown, Aziraphale’s skin was flaming red. It glowed through the fabric like blood under skin when light passed through it. And the grimace on the man’s face, as he walked sideways to his side of the bed, was very difficult to ignore.
Apparently, the shirt Crowley had provided did nothing to protect his skin.
Apparently, Maggie’s all-natural sunscreen was a complete flop.
“You’re sunburned.”
“I know it.” Again, Aziraphale’s answer was short, aggressive. He flung back the covers and inched into the bed, wincing and gasping as he touched the sheets.
Crowley felt the burn, understood the dry crackle of pain as it lanced through every pore. He didn’t exactly want his friend to be in agony, so he suggested another miracle.
“No!” Aziraphale practically shouted, then corrected himself more softly. “No. I’ll be fine. Just need a good night’s rest.”
“Yeah, that’ll work wonders,” Crowley snarled, checking his attitude and magicking a bottle of aloe. “Come on, gown off. I’ll smear some of this not-at-all-miracled lotion on you so you can get some rest.”
The Angel turned his head and very pointedly avoided the Demon’s posterior. “Aloe? You sure it will work?”
Crowley read the back of the bottle; one of the ingredients was a kind of painkiller. He opened the cap and poured a little onto his hand, then reached for Aziraphale’s arm to gently roll up his sleeve. “Here. Let’s test it.”
Again, the Angel shrieked. How it didn’t alert Jim was unbelievable. But the door remained closed, and Aziraphale panted and sighed as Crowley readjusted to a seated position. Watching and waiting.
“Better?” he asked, trying his best to sound like he didn’t care in the least. His friend looked at him frantically several times, until he finally pushed himself up and sat at the edge of the bed, feet dangled over the side, back facing Crowley.
“Be gentle,” he begged, actually out-and-out begged. The gown came up over his head, and the tender scorched skin of his back and arms was laid bare to Crowley’s view. And all he could think was –
“Ouch.”
“Yes, to put it so crudely; ouch.” Aziraphale chuckled; a good sign the chance of another war of words had been thwarted.
Crowley took his time, applying the blue cooling gel to the Angel’s back, shoulders, biceps, and forearms with small, careful strokes. He didn’t rub it in as Aziraphale had done with the sunscreen, just smoothed it on like icing a deliciously plump and sugary cake. One delicate inch at a time.
The Angel grew goosebumps over his entire body, and Crowley inched closer to offer his warmth. Not close enough to touch, just enough that his natural body heat radiated outwards and into his friend’s space.
“OK,” Crowley grunted, sounding not at all confident. “Lie on your stomach so I can get the rest.”
Aziraphale obeyed, slowly, shyly, as if he were committing an act so mortifying he couldn’t bear to be present. Crowley took this personally, with a clutch in his chest. He rectified the horrible feeling with honesty.
“I think you’re gorgeous,” he whispered, unable to make his voice work as he wanted. “Everything about you is gorgeous, Angel. Nothing at all to be ashamed of.”
Aziraphale jumped when Crowley’s knee touched his hip, the little indent where his juicy thigh met the bulge of his backside. The skin was white over the two generously perfect orbs, protected from the sun by the fabric of his swim shorts. But the rest, the backs of his thighs, his calves, were lobster red like the surface of his back.
“Sorry,” Crowley hissed as he touched the point where the Angel’s lower back met his waist. His friend jumped, caught surprised. Driven by a sudden mad desire to comfort him, Crowley pressed a firm hand to the pale surface of one glute. It was cool, with fine white hairs, soft and squishable.
Aziraphale tensed, and Crowley was struck with the kind of guilt that only Angels felt. His friend, his loyal, frustratingly stubborn Angel, wasn’t friendly with his own body.
“Shh,” Crowley hushed, leaning forward to press his mouth to the two delicious divots at the base of Aziraphale’s spine. The Angel shivered, making the most beautiful moaning noise. Low and slow, it reverberated through his body, vibrating Crowley’s lips.
“Crowley,” he sighed. “Crowley –”
There wasn’t any stopping now. Crowley kissed the tender white skin again and again, sliding sideways, covering inch by paper-thin inch. Loving the pretty sounds from his Angel’s mouth, working both hands down the voluminous curve above his thigh crease, pulling his substantial cheeks apart, so very carefully.
A fire was burning low in Crowley's gut now.
“Aziraphale,” he sighed. “So beautiful. All of you. Beautiful.”
Aziraphale turned to push up on one elbow, curving his spine to be able to see properly. His gaze dropped into Crowley’s lap and he uttered the tiniest most adorable squeak.
“I think,” he paused, dragging his gaze away as if it were truly painful, and making the hardest of eye contact. Crowley watched as the brown eyes turned the blue of the heaven-bound Angels. “I think, maybe, you should finish my legs?”
There was a hint of hope in it, the barest glimmer of a smile. He was redirecting in the gentlest of ways, suggesting but not refusing and definitely not running away to hide in his closet again.
Crowley thought about Jim down the hall, about Nina and Maggie and their blossoming friendship. Aziraphale was his friend, and he didn’t want to lose him.
There was a shared look of understanding; it wasn’t the right time, the right place. But there was hope. Hope that their friendship might turn into something more meaningful, even closer than they had been since Crowley moved in.
All of it was disgustingly nauseating, and Crowley absolutely loved it.
“Sure,” the Demon assured with a close-lipped smile. “Anything for you, Angel.”
Aziraphale beamed openly and sank back onto the bed, his cheek pillowed in the ridiculous marshmallow of a thing he called a pillow, while Crowley slathered the cooling gel over his legs.
When finished, the Angel inhaled and exhaled heavily, all the tension gone out of his muscles, his tendons loose, his skin cool to the touch. If Crowley hadn’t known better, he’d have thought Aziraphale had gone to sleep.
Crowley looked him over from head to foot, memorizing every fold, every bulge, every blessed inch of bloody skin. How was he supposed to act normally after this?
(As normal as a Demon could be while secretly in love with someone so very opposite.)
“Thank you,” Aziraphale whispered into his much-too-soft pillow. “Thank you, for everything.”
It was so aggressively fluffy that Crowley had to shake his head to snap out of it.
“You’re welcome. But I’m not done yet.”
Aziraphale frowned and tipped his chin up slightly, opening his eyes to question.
Crowley couldn’t help it; he had a reputation to uphold. The snake inside coiled itself around his heart, squeezed with all its might, and suggested something that was entirely on point.
His tongue forked and his throat formed a seductive hiss.
“I am a demon, after all. Still have to do the other side. Time to flip.”
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