GOOD OMENS: Goodbody; R, C/A

[sam_storyteller]

Summary: Aziraphael's new body is causing some problems.
Warnings: Light bondage.
Author's Note: Yes, I'm aware that the whole "bodies" thing in the Good Omens universe more than likely doesn't work this way, but it DID say that sometimes they have to go get new ones. And also I'm aware Buddhists aren't the only ones who are all over the reincarnation groove, but I sacrificed veracity for alliteration. :D

Also available at AO3.

***

Genetic memory. That was the theory. Aziraphael knew that on some level it was bunk, but human theories were funny and sometimes they even scraped up against the truth, though they rarely actually uncovered it.

He'd had his current human body for quite a while, since people who weren't, strictly speaking, people, could slow down the ageing process considerably. Crowley had felt that thirty-two was a good age to be for the last fifty years or so. But bodies did wear out and every so often one had to trade it in. They were pretty much prefab; reincarnation was strictly for the birds and/or Buddhists. You put in a request, the body was...well, not created, but sort of, and after a few preliminary fittings you swapped over.

He paced around the new body, looking perplexed. He rather liked the slightly pudgy, innocent-faced look; it never went out of style. And while he hadn't specified any of that, they'd always simply done it -- he was good return business, after all, and the ineffable knew everything.

This was so damn ineffable -- ha! He'd have to remember to tell Crowley that one. "Damn Ineffable".

It had the pale blue eyes and the halo of golden hair and the faintly disingenuous look about it; it had the proper number of toes and fingers, and a good nose, and it wasn't too tall or too short. It was just...

"He can't be more than twenty-six," he said.

"Well, make it last then," the workman replied. He was the sort who would hold a clipboard even though nobody in Heaven needed one, strictly speaking.

"No, it's not that -- don't you think he's rather...muscular?"

"Got to be, in this day and age."

"Yes, but I don't strictly speaking need abdominal muscles quite that..." he searched for a word, and settled on "Davidian."

"Davidian?" the workman asked.

"Michaelangelic?"

"Sorry?"

Aziraphael sighed. The body did fit, and it would be useful, and he could always wear loose jumpers.

"Put me in, then," he said.

And that was when genetic memory cropped up.

His old body, the one he'd just left, had been comfortably settled in middle age, and he'd been able to pretty much keep control of all the physical things. This new body was younger and a lot more...efficient, and it had ideas. And they weren't the sorts of ideas the old body'd had.

The old body had occasionally gotten ideas when a nice-looking woman walked by, or when one in particular of the waitresses at his favourite tea room came close enough for him to smell her perfume. The new body...

Well, he'd noticed it first when one of his favourite customers had come into the bookshop. There'd been a few moments of confusion, but Aziraphael remembered to announce that Mr. Fell had taken ill, and he, that is to say Aziraphael, was his nephew who was taking over the business, but Mr. Fell had informed Nephew Fell all about Mr. Wetherton's preferences, and would he like to see some engraved travel books that had just come in?

Mr. Wetherton, who was a well-preserved forty, had crisp silver hair that hung in his eyes just a little, and wore cologne, and tight jeans. Aziraphael had never noticed the jeans before, but Nephew Fell's treacherous new body could be reacting to little else.

A waiter at the Ritz had a just-barely-visible tattoo that his new body noticed.

A picture advert for some film or other (Aziraphael had never got the hang of watching films) featured a man with messy hair and high cheekbones and gold-capped teeth that absolutely captivated his new body. He had to start taking a different route to the bookshop in the morning to ignore the tempting advert.

But that meant passing by a gang of street punks who spent their mornings recovering from hangovers at the cafe on the new route, and one of them wore things that his new body definitely noticed. Tight white shirts with no sleeves (that must be absolute hell to keep clean, another, tidier part of his mind noticed) and eyeliner that made his eyes look hooded, and a black strap around his neck. It was enough to drive an angel to distraction.

He had avoided meeting with Crowley for a few weeks, hoping to settle into his new appearance before he had to face Crowley in it, but settling in wasn't so much the problem. He moved and talked confidently, and seemed as dextrous as he ever was. The thing was that when he stood in front of a mirror and tried to figure out if all his old expressions still worked...well, his body noticed his own body. That was narcissism, which he was fairly sure was a sin, but it was also merely an expression of appreciation of beauty, which was more in line with his side's mission statement, as it were.

Finally, though, he decided he had to ask Crowley. Crowley changed bodies every so often, and maybe he'd dealt with this before. After all, demon bodies were probably designed specifically for the sins of the flesh.

For the first five or ten minutes of the meeting, while the ducks in the pond waited patiently for their bread, Crowley laughed and laughed and laughed, without Aziraphael even having opened his mouth, which was probably bad. Crowley had taken one look at the leading-man face and the loose jumpers that were clearly not doing their job as well as they could, and he laughed.

"New body, Angel!" he hooted, when he'd found his voice again. "Looks like you upgraded too!"

"I didn't ask for it," Aziraphael mumbled, a little hurt -- he hadn't thought his last body was at all deficient, and wasn't sure the new one was an improvement.

"Of course not, I can't imagine you would. This is my idea of cosmic humour," Crowley said. "How many propositions have you gotten?"

"What?"

"Girls giving you their phone number? Lustful stares on the street?"

"Not that I noticed."

"No, you wouldn't," Crowley said, still amused, and Aziraphael was horrified to find himself noticing the way the skin crinkled around Crowley's mouth when he smiled. He wondered idly if Crowley took off his sunglasses, the skin would crinkle around his eyes, too. He hoped so.

"Angel? Hi?" Crowley whistled a little to get his attention. "You were staring. Are you all right? I mean it all fits right, doesn't it?"

"I have to go," Aziraphael stammered. Crowley licked his lips to say something, which only made things worse. "Right now. We'll have lunch...er...sometime."

"Are you sure everything's working?"

"Yes," Aziraphael said desperately. "Maybe a little too well, but I can always get a...I can always swap out or something. They'd give me my old body back -- "

"Oh, that'd be a shame."

Aziraphael's undignified retreat backwards was momentarily checked. "What?"

"Well, it's nicer than the last one. I think."

Aziraphael fled.

Crowley had impossibly high cheekbones like the chap in the film poster. Crowley had crisp black hair that occasionally curled down into his eyes.

Crowley wore leather. Crowley wore black. Crowley wore black leather. Crowley probably wore things like that young man at the cafe wore, when he was out perpetrating wiles for Aziraphael to thwart. Aziraphael never wore black, or leather.

Crowley was his other ha --

Crowley was his opposite. His opposite.

For three days Aziraphael buried himself in his books, but even then he couldn't escape; the shop was attuned to him, and every so often, in the shelves of bibles and prophecy-books, he'd find copies of the Kama Sutra or old rugby calendars and then it was all over for the day while he went and had a lie down.

On the fourth day, Mr. Wetherton asked if perhaps Aziraphael wouldn't like to have lunch sometime, and would he call him? This was Mr. Wetherton's personal number. Mr. Fell's Nephew would be interested in seeing the library he kept at his townhouse sometime, he thought.

On the fifth day, he overtipped the waiter at the Ritz, even though he was dining alone. Well, the man had winked at him, and told him how nice it was to see a guy his age who actually knew what wine to order with peppered shrimp paella.

On the sixth day, Crowley came to the bookshop.

"Getting on all right, Angel?" he asked, leaning on the counter across from Aziraphael, who refused to look up from his cataloguing of the damage on a very old copy of Chaucer.

"Fine, thank you," Aziraphael replied. "Did you need something?"

Crowley snickered. "Why, did you?"

"Hm?" Aziraphael looked up. Crowley was smirking and his hair was curling in his eyes.

"Thought you might still be having issues with the new model," Crowley said, waving a hand at Aziraphael's chest.

"No, I seem to be doing all right."

"Just making sure. I was thinking of getting a new one myself pretty soon. What do you think?"

"No," Aziraphael blurted. Crowley looked surprised.

"Sorry?"

"It's a good body and it's still got ages of use in it," he fumbled.

"Yes, well, wastefulness is a sin," Crowley pointed out. "It's sort of what I do."

"But I'm sure you inspire all kinds of lust -- "

Aziraphael stopped in horror. He had not just said those words.

"You think?" Crowley asked, apparently oblivious, studying his hands. "I thought I was getting a little rusty in that department."

"No, not lu -- rusty at all," Aziraphael heard himself say.

"Are you sure you're all right, Angel?" Crowley asked, circling the desk to lean against it, hip inches from Aziraphael's knees. Aziraphael shifted on his stool. "You look sort of peaky. You really should get adjusted."

Aziraphael would have liked to make certain adjustments at the moment, but not with Crowley there.

"Genetic memory," he blurted. "The new body kept some things it shouldn't have when I moved into it."

"Oh?"

"They've made it too human."

Crowley's gaze couldn't be pinpointed, behind the glasses, but Aziraphael realised, suddenly, where he was looking.

"You've got -- "

"I know! I know! I keep trying to stop it!" Aziraphael blurted. "It just happens and I have no control over it at all, and it doesn't even happen at the right time -- "

Crowley looked confused, which was a first.

"I just meant you've got to remember how to take care of it," he said.

"Oh," Aziraphael replied, in a very small voice.

"And a man your age," Crowley snickered, "doesn't generally do that by prayer alone, unless he's really, devotedly on your side. I see what you mean now, though."

Aziraphael winced.

"You could always take matters in hand," Crowley continued. Aziraphael closed his eyes and tried not to listen, but Crowley's voice was just as bad, low and silky and surprisingly deep, now he came to think about it.

"That's ridiculous, I'm an angel, we don't have base desires," he finally stammered.

"We do," Crowley replied, in such a strange tone that Aziraphael opened his eyes.

Crowley was standing just to one side of him, closer than he had been, and in those tight trousers, the thing Aziraphael had been desperately trying to suppress was all too evident in Crowley.

"Or I could take matters into my own hands," Crowley purred.

"I'm positive the Ineffable doesn't want that," Aziraphael replied. Crowley's left hand touched his neck, and when he didn't flinch away, rubbed it slowly.

"Why would He give you a body equipped with all the right parts, then?" Crowley inquired. "And all the right motivations, and I assume...all the right sensations."

"That's sophistry, people are always asking that, there are any number of answers -- "

"If you're a human. And you're not. Just in the body."

Crowley's other hand had crept up his thigh, and his thumb slipped over the bulge in Aziraphael's trousers almost accidentally.

Almost.

Aziraphael had a blindingly clear vision of just what Crowley would look like naked, and an equally out-of-nowhere image of how he himself would look, with Crowley. Being naked with Crowley.

He shot off the stool, into Crowley, shoving them both backwards into the wall behind the counter, only half-aware of what he was doing and only half-caring if he even did it right. His hands slid under Crowley's leather jacket, settling on his slim hips, while his mouth found Crowley's. This was even better than choosing wine with the waiter at the Ritz...

Crowley's body bucked up against him and his skin tingled, breath coming short and fast even though he tried to control it. If he could just get one more time like that, if he could get the feeling of Crowley's thigh rubbing up against him --

He must have made some kind of noise, because Crowley caught him by the shoulders and muttered "easy, Angel," into his mouth, before turning them both so that it was Aziraphael who was pressed against the wall, Crowley only touching him at shoulders and lips.

"You're too close," he said, and Aziraphael moaned in frustration. Crowley kissed him again. "Just wait a minute, you'll like this. I promise."

"Crowley," Aziraphael murmured, reaching for him, but Crowley laughed and pulled just out of reach, then returned for another kiss, hands on the angel's chest, holding him against the wall. Aziraphael heard the lock snick shut in the front door, even as one of Crowley's hands was working the buckle on his belt. The cool air of the bookshop tingled across his skin as Crowley undressed him -- most of him -- some of him, the really important parts that Crowley should please be touching --

Crowley dropped to his knees, and Aziraphael, confused, reached down to stroke his curly hair --

And then Crowley opened his mouth and Aziraphael realised that before was nothing, nothing compared to wet heat surrounding him, the sight of Crowley like that on his knees...he couldn't control anything, let alone the ripple of pleasure through his body as he experienced a moment of divine ecstasy that definitely shouldn't be possible for a demon to give him.

When he caught his treacherous body's breath, Crowley had straightened and was kissing him again, and all he could keep saying was oh, how good Crowley was, how wonderful that was.

Crowley, grinning wickedly, twined one of his hands in Aziraphael's and used the other to loosen his own belt. He leaned in and moaned against Aziraphael's neck as he guided his hand down to touch him, inside his trousers, as Aziraphael instinctively curled his fingers and made the short, sharp jerks that seemed to please Crowley if the noises he made were anything to judge by. Then they were coming faster, the soft little noises, and Aziraphael liked the way Crowley's body was pushing against his, and then Crowley swore and bit his neck and his whole body went stiff.

"Angel, angel, angel," he moaned. "Yes -- "

Aziraphael let out a breath, slowly, and slipped his hand out of Crowley's trousers. It was already clean again. Crowley clearly had done this before and knew how to keep his head --

Another bad pun to share another time.

Crowley nibbled on his jaw and nuzzled against his ear a little.

"Wasn't that nice?" he asked, kissing Aziraphael's earlobe.

"Oh, yes," Aziraphael replied.

"We could do it again. Whenever you're getting...ideas," Crowley suggested.

"I get them a lot."

"Good."

Aziraphael buried his face in Crowley's neck, inhaling his scent. "Crowley?"

"Mmm, Angel?"

"What are your thoughts on dog collars?"

END