âTrying?â Cal sniffed. âThatâs practically an insult.â
And prolonging the inevitable? Proving to be increasingly difficult on Calâs end. It wasnât like him to want to give in to his own temptation so soon when half the fun was seeing how far this could go before Oliver all but pounced on him. But that was the trouble with Oliver. He undid Cal quietly, by degrees, until Cal was laid bare and all that was left was wholly Oliverâs.
Cal shouldâve seen that coming. With Crowley came a 6000-year relationship â which, admittedly, had progressed at a snailâs pace, but at the same time ought to have provided Cal with some semblance of a blueprint of things to come. Somewhere in that 6000 years Aziraphale had snuck up on Crowley, though. The Arrangement started out in place of mutual practicality (and, frankly, selfishness, but who could blame them when there were so many earthly delights to behold) and ended with Crowley thwarting his own side to prevent Armageddon. Not for the preservation of Life or even his own flashy lifestyle, but rather for Aziraphaleâs peaceful one. The truth, when it came down to it, was very simple. Whatever came after the End Times would have been insufferable without the Angelâs continued existence.
6000 years be damned. Somehow Cal had gotten there in three.
And it didnât help, of course, that in situations such as this one Oliver handily proved that there was more than just a bit of a bastard beneath the angelic exterior. With at least one degree in English literature too many, Oliver was too smart not to know exactly what he was saying, even dressed up in his penchant for prim frankness. He was also too smart not to know exactly what saying those sorts of things did to Cal. Cal, whose unabashedly filthy mouth (and tongue) could spend just as much time speaking said filth as enacting it without so much as rising a shade above alabaster. Cal, whose ears rang and mind temporarily blacked out and blood rushed straight down the moment Oliver merely hinted at anything less than decent.
Yes, this was, indeed, a Problem. A Problem of the Highest Order. But Cal also couldnât deny that it was a problem of his own making, and what a deliciously wicked one it was.
There was a pause as Cal struggled to process the words coming out of Oliverâs sweetly deceptive lips. Sacred heavenly vessels. Honestly. Only Oliver could say something so provocative with such a straight face. Cal had to give him that.
⌠But not yet.
At the flex in his shirt Cal automatically reached for Oliverâs hand, betraying himself slightly, yes, but within acceptable margins. Cal wanted every part of Oliver he could touch, and wanted Oliver to know. Some said pride came before a fall, but a healthy bit of knowledge did the trick just as well.
âImmune, hm? I seem to remember defiling this particular heavenly vessel. With some regularity, in fact.â Cal cocked his head, just enough to let his lips brush Oliverâs neck as he spoke. âYes, Iâd say youâve been very bad, indeed.â