Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Aziraphale crossed the threshold as though stepping into judgment. The door closed behind him with a hush that felt intentional, as if the room itself were drawing a breath. The air was thick with candle smoke and old dust, rich with the faint tang of metal beneath the scent of aged paper. Shadows clung to the walls like bruises, deepening around the shelves and the silent armchair that watched from its corner.

Thick velvet curtains concealed the windows and prevented any light and warmth from coming in, and any dread and sound from getting out.

The rug yielded under his socked feet—soft, treacherous, the chill of the floor seeping faintly through the weave. Each step seemed too loud, though the room was silent save for the slow, dreadful beat of his heart and the faint crackle of a dying wick. Fear prickled beneath his skin, not sudden but familiar, an old companion returned. Someone would come. He knew they would. He could feel it in the air: pressure before a storm, the moment the sky holds its breath.

Then he saw it—the ominous box. Large, black, and brutal, a dark sentinel sitting atop the imposing oak desk. Its metal skin caught the candlelight in cruel, sharp lines. Bolts pinned it shut like restraints; its edges were scuffed and scarred, as if it had been opened too many times, and never gently. Even from across the room it radiated menace, a dark threat wrapped in iron. He knew it was meant for him. He knew it would hurt. He didn’t flee.

His breath came shallow and careful, as though even sound might summon what waited. The quiet grew heavy, thick with intent. The shadows seemed to inch closer, pressing at the edges of his vision.

And so, with dread settling cold and certain in his chest, Aziraphale stepped to the centre of the rug and sank to his knees.

It was a slow, defeated descent, the hardness of the floor biting his skin through the fibres of his clothes, hands trembling at his sides. He lowered his gaze — not in prayer, but in surrender — and waited for the inevitable footsteps that would follow.

Time lost its edges. The candles guttered and burned lower, their wax pooling like small, patient clocks — but Aziraphale could not have said how long he knelt there. Minutes or hours, it made no difference; dread had stretched the world thin, until only his heartbeat and the quiet hum of waiting were left keeping him company.

Then — the soft, deliberate click of the latch.

The sound was nothing, a whisper of motion, but it struck him like a blow. His whole body went taut, breath catching in his throat. He did not turn. He did not dare. Every instinct screamed to look, but he knew — he knew with a terrible certainty — that his eyes must stay down, that stillness was his only shield.

Footsteps. Slow. Controlled. The air changed with them — sharper, charged, carrying the faintest trace of something hot and dangerous: leather, smoke, a promise ablaze beneath restraint. Each step was that of a predator’s pacing.

Crowley — though Aziraphale did not allow himself to think of the name now — was moving behind him, circling. The sound of his boots on the rug was muted, but Aziraphale felt him — an electric pressure against his back, a current that drew the air out of the room. He imagined amber eyes glinting in the half-dark, fixed upon him, assessing, deciding.

The pauses between those steps were unbearable, thick and trembling with anticipation and fear that pressed at the edges of his composure. Aziraphale’s fingers curled against the fabric of his trousers, grasping for steadiness. His pulse thundered in his ears, gaze lowered, throat tight — the weight of the moment coiling around him. And he waited.

Crowley stalked around Aziraphale’s perimeter as if contemplating something once cherished and now fallen into ruin, disdaining even to let his hands drift near the blond curls. Smoke from the candle sconces curled above the bookshelves, and the glisten of wax — some of it white, some spattered red — clung to the edges of the mantel like frozen breath. The room had grown impossibly small; each sound landed sharply in the charged air.

The demon stepped away from the kneeling figure.

Aziraphale flinched at the scrape of metal against wood — the first bolt drawn back. The lid of the black box creaked open, its groan low and merciless. He did not dare look, but the sound alone was enough to conjure visions: gleaming edges, honed steel, cold intent. The hush that followed was worse than noise, broken only by the faint rustle of fabric as Crowley unfurled something — a length of cloth, perhaps, spread across the surface of the writing desk.

Then came the placement. One sound at a time. A careful rhythm: the clink of metal laid down, the drag of a weight shifting slightly, the muted tap of something unyielding meeting wood. Each note landed against Aziraphale’s skin like the strike of a bell. He could hear Crowley’s measured breathing, the subtle movements of his hands — deliberate, meticulous, terrifying in their patience.

Aziraphale’s pulse hammered at the base of his throat, loud enough that he feared it might betray him. Every small sound — the faint hitch of a boot on the rug, the soft brush of a sleeve — sent a jolt through him, made him want to rise, to flee.

But he didn’t.

Aziraphale’s breath caught somewhere between his chest and throat, and a tremor began in his hands that he couldn’t still.

How had it come to this?

The thought arrived unbidden, a whisper beneath the clatter of Crowley’s careful work. He had been an angel once — still was, in name if not in nature — a creature of light and purpose. And yet here he knelt, head bowed before a darkness he himself had beckoned in. Somewhere, somehow, he had wandered too far to ever find his way back.

He remembered the first fracture — the first moment he had chosen mercy over obedience, love over fear — and how Heaven’s silence had followed him ever since. No voice. No warmth. No forgiveness. Only absence, vast and echoing. He had reached out for the familiar comfort of certainty, of rule and divine order, and found only emptiness where once there had been song.

And so he had turned, slowly, inexorably, toward the only other presence that had seen him — the serpent with the burning eyes and the reckless heart. And now that same presence circled him like a flame starved of air, and Aziraphale could not decide whether the tremor that seized him was fear, or longing, or the terrible conflation of both.

The scrape of metal on metal snapped him back. He flinched, pulse leaping. The dread in him deepened, sour and metallic, until it felt as though it had a physical weight, pressing low in his chest. He wanted to pray, but the words would not come — his lips moved soundlessly, and Heaven, long since turned away, offered no reply.

Aziraphale had fallen so far. And yet, even in the pit of his stomach, some terrible part of him knew he would not rise, would not move, would not yield — not yet. Not while Crowley was still there.

He felt the weight of Crowley’s gaze — a silent command that burned without words. His muscles tightened of their own accord, spine straightening, posture pulled taut. The familiar ache of the rug pressed into his knees, but he didn’t shift — didn’t dare. He knew that stillness was the only thing left he could offer.

A velvet silence unfurled — the kind that comes before lightning strikes. Crowley moved with leisure, every motion sharpened by control. From the inner pocket of his coat, he drew a single leather glove — soft, black, impeccably cut. It was a delicate affectation, like a duelist dressing for a reckoning already decided.

He slid his fingers into it one by one, the supple material creaking faintly as it moulded to his hand. The gesture was unhurried, almost sensual in its precision, and yet it carried a terrible menace — a performance meant for the trembling figure before him. When the glove was fully seated, Crowley flexed his hand once, then pulled the wrist snug with a snap so sharp it shattered the silence like a shot.

Aziraphale flinched violently, a choked whimper breaking from him before he could swallow it.

Crowley paused, as if tasting the sound, and then at last approached. The boots came to rest just at Aziraphale’s periphery, a darkness swallowing the pale oval of his downturned face. For a long moment, the room held its breath. Then, with gentle but implacable force, Crowley placed a hand at the nape of Aziraphale’s neck.

The glove was cold, the pressure inescapable. Aziraphale’s breath shuddered in his chest. He did not resist when Crowley’s other hand produced the collar: thick banded leather lined with something softer, brass fitments gleaming like the fangs of a beast in the candlelight. Aziraphale had seen collars before. This one was like no other; it was heavy, severe, bespoke. He understood, with a rush of dreadful clarity, that it had been made for him.

“Be still,” Crowley murmured, voice low and unhurried. There was no need for a threat. Aziraphale could barely find enough air for words, let alone for defiance.

Crowley worked with efficiency, the buckles of the collar sliding open with a whisper. The glove splayed possessively against Aziraphale’s throat and set him perfectly upright. Then, with a motion void of any hesitation, he led the collar close and fastened the first clasp. The material bit cold and foreign against Aziraphale’s skin. The pressure was not yet painful—it was, if anything, measured and almost gentle—but the click of the lock left no ambiguity.

It was the sound of the small brass tag—engraved, Aziraphale was certain, —settling against the hollow of his throat that undid him. His hands went white-knuckled on his trousers as the final pin was driven home.

Crowley’s fingers lingered, drawing a line along the seam as if appraising the fit of his work.

With choreographed slowness, Crowley withdrew, leaving the collar heavy on Aziraphale’s neck. He paced behind again, hands clasped together — a judge presiding over some bleak initiation. The silence seethed with a thousand unspoken things that crowded Aziraphale’s mind, but he fixed his gaze downward, breathing in the thick, deliberate stillness. He wondered if he looked pathetic, and if that would appease or provoke Crowley more.

The shame he felt was cold, but the room’s silence began to seep into him, dulling the frantic edge of thought. He knew what followed. He’d been here before. There would be instruction now. Rules. Discipline. And punishment. After the labyrinth of indecision and perpetual fallenness, there was something almost merciful in knowing exactly what was expected of him: to endure.

He heard the rustle of Crowley’s jacket as the demon crouched beside him, close enough that Aziraphale could feel his shape in the air — the heat of him, the outline of shadow against the rug. Aziraphale closed his eyes, lest he be tempted to seek out Crowley’s amber gaze.

The demon’s gloved hand settled again at the base of Aziraphale’s skull.

“You know why you’re here,” Crowley growled, words curling round Aziraphale’s fragile composure. “Don’t you?”

Aziraphale managed a nod. He suspected it would not suffice.

“Say it.”

The command landed with a terrible calm. Aziraphale exhaled, a tremor shaken loose from deep within. “Because—” The vowels tangled and stuck; he had to scrape the phrase away and begin again, shaping the words one by one. “Because I…” His tongue heavy, his throat constricted by the collar, he forced himself onward. “Because I failed. Because I am… yours, now.”

Quick as lightning, Crowley’s fist closed in Aziraphale’s curls and yanked his head back. The pain was sharp, and Aziraphale yelped — but he kept his eyes tightly shut.

“Because I am yours now what,” Crowley snarled.

“Because I a…am yours now, S…Sir,” Aziraphale stuttered.

Crowley released Aziraphale’s hair, and his head dropped to his chin.

“Good,” he said. There was something like pride in his tone, though Aziraphale did not dare to meet his eyes to confirm it. “Yes. Yes, you are.”

Mine.

Chapter Text

Crowley hissed, the word dripping with a possessive heat that scorched the air between them. His thumb dug into the tender hollow behind Aziraphale's ear, not caressing but claiming. “Yes. You are mine.” Each syllable carved like a brand. “And you'll behave?”

Aziraphale swallowed. The metal of the tag pressed cool and unyielding.

“Yes, Sir.” The words emerged as surrender, blood-warm and inevitable.

Crowley’s satisfaction was palpable as he loomed above Aziraphale, radiating a cold, merciless power that seemed to drain all warmth from the room. The demon's shadow stretched across him like a shroud, marking the immeasurable distance between what they once were and what they had become.

Aziraphale's consciousness splintered, each shard reflecting his disgrace. His fingers twisted bloodless in his lap, knees grinding against unforgiving floor, ribs constricting around a heart that hammered like a trapped thing. Heaven flickered through his mind—a cold, sterile light he would never touch again.

“Colour?” Crowley asked, voice mild as milk.

Aziraphale was torn out of his thoughts by the question. He opened his eyes, wide and waterbright, but kept his gaze low.

“Green, Sir,” Aziraphale said, his voice not much more than a tremor.

“Safeword?”

“Apple, Sir,” the word was heavy with meaning.

Crowley's smile unfurled slowly—predatory, possessive, terrible in its beauty. “Well,” he whispered, leaning so close that Aziraphale could feel breath against his ear, "he remembers how to speak. Good."

Crowley stalked the perimeter like a wolf circling wounded prey, each step deliberate, eyes never leaving Aziraphale.  The leather of his glove cracked like a whip as he clenched his fist.

“Y’know,” he drawled, voice dripping honey over broken glass, “the way your skin flushes when you're terrified makes my mouth water.” His smile sliced the air between them—all teeth, no mercy. “I can smell your fear like perfume.” His tongue flicked briefly against his upper lip. “It's intoxicating.”

He struck like a snake—suddenly behind Aziraphale, so close his breath scorched the angel's nape. Heat radiated between them, an inferno barely contained.

“Look. At. You.” Each word a separate blade. “Shaking like Heaven's perfect puppet with no strings.” He bent until his lips brushed Aziraphale's ear, voice dropping to a venomous whisper. “Tell me the truth,” he demanded, yellow eyes burning, “do you still pray to them in the dark? Do you think if you bleed prettily enough, they'll come to reclaim their broken toy?”

The question sank into Aziraphale's flesh like fangs. His breath stuttered, a faint, broken sound.

Crowley moved again, boots whispering over the rug. “Nah,” he went on, almost lazily. “They’ve left you to it, haven’t they? All that obedience, all that shining virtue…” His voice dropped to a razor's edge. “And in the end, it was fucking worthless. Just like you.”

He paused beside the writing desk, gloved fingers brushing the edge where the implements lay waiting. He picked one up. Aziraphale dared not imagine its shape or purpose. The room swam with the certainty of what would come next: the apparatus of correction, the act of discipline. Punishment or absolution. Perhaps both. It didn’t matter. Aziraphale would endure it. The collar against his throat told him so.

“How pathetic,” Crowley snarled, eyes blazing with cold fire. “You still kneel there like a dog waiting for its master's forgiveness.” He smirked. “But there is no salvation for you. And you know it.”

The words didn't just land—they eviscerated, leaving Aziraphale's soul flayed open and bleeding.

His pulse hammered against his throat like a prisoner beating at the bars. The room contracted, air thinning as the candlelight retreated toward Crowley's presence—a black hole devouring even light. Aziraphale's throat constricted around unspoken words.

Crowley weaponised the quiet, stretching it between them until it vibrated like a wire about to snap.

“You want to say something, Supreme Archangel Aziraphale?” The title dripped with acid. “Anything?”

His name on Crowley’s tongue wasn’t gentle; it sounded like a blade drawn slowly from its sheath.

Aziraphale didn’t answer.

The silence deepened, swallowing the hiss of the candles and the muted ticking of the clock on the mantel. Crowley waited — half a breath, then another — expecting words, a plea, anything. But none came.

“Yeah, didn’t think so. You’re a coward.” Crowley turned slightly away, running a gloved hand over his mouth as if to erase the tremor that had slipped into his voice.

His gaze lingered on the curve of Aziraphale’s neck, the fall of pale hair in the dim light, and something inside him tightened — corrosive, unclean, aflame. The anger that followed wasn’t pure; it burned too close to shame. He closed his eyes briefly, gathering himself.

“Predictable,” he muttered. “Still thinks silence is a virtue. Fine. Let's see how long that lasts.”

Aziraphale shivered but dared not lift his head. Every breath he took felt borrowed, trembling through a body that no longer felt his own.

“Ready?” The word slithered from Crowley's lips with deceptive gentleness—velvet wrapped around a blade. No threat needed; the threat lived in the spaces between them, in the air itself.

Aziraphale's nod was barely perceptible, the collar's metal edge biting into tender flesh beneath his jaw. The weight of it anchored him to this moment, to this floor, to this surrender.

“Hands behind your back,” Crowley commanded, circling again. "Knot your fingers together. Tighter. Stay."

He vanished for a moment into a vestibule, reappearing with a large candle of deep carmine and a very small, silvered ladle, the sort of thing used by pharmacists or poisoners. For a moment, his eyes raked over Aziraphale's trembling form, pupils dilating until only a thin ring of amber remained, hunger barely contained behind the mask of control.

With measured deliberation, Crowley set the candle on the floor in front of Aziraphale’s knees. It was close enough to cast live wounds of light and shadows across the field of the angel’s chest. Time dilated into little compartments of dread. Aziraphale breathed—one, two, three deep breaths. Slow. Almost human.

Crowley's gloved finger traced the candle's rim, coaxing molten wax to pool. The ladle dipped, rose, hovered. A scalding drop struck Aziraphale's flesh. White-hot agony exploded across his hand. A strangled cry tore from his throat before he violently forced his body back into submission, muscles quivering with the effort.

“Colour?” Crowley's whisper cut through the roaring in Aziraphale's ears.

“Green, Sir.” The words tumbled out, raw and desperate.

The demon dribbled more measured dollops along the line of Aziraphale’s knuckles, the exposed wrist, the thin blue veins. Where it struck, the wax mushroomed into crimson bulbs, glossy as cherries, and left the skin underneath pink and stinging. Each droplet sizzled against flesh, branding ownership into the angel's trembling form. Aziraphale's teeth sank into his bottom lip until copper bloomed on his tongue, his eyes drilling into the floor as if seeking escape through the floorboards.

Crowley snapped his fingers once and watched dispassionately as Aziraphale's clothing dissolved into nothing but those absurd tartan socks and prim garters that ignited something primal and possessive in Crowley's core. The angel's chest heaved, utterly vulnerable, skin gleaming with sweat under the merciless scrutiny.

“Stay perfectly still now, don’t annoy me,” he instructed, each word a shard of ice. He plunged the ladle deep into the molten pool, withdrew it dripping red vengeance, and with mathematical precision unleashed a scalding torrent across Aziraphale's shoulder blades. The wax carved rivers of agony down the perfect curve of spine, claiming every inch of that holy flesh for Hell.

No, not for Hell. For Crowley, and Crowley alone.

The angel's body convulsed, muscles seizing as tears flooded his face, streaming unchecked down his flushed cheeks, his bitten lips parting in a silent scream.

Crowley froze mid-stride, something fracturing behind his serpentine eyes, and he muttered under his breath.

“Green, Sir.”

Crowley remained motionless, transfixed by the violent rise and fall of the angel's chest, the glistening trails of tears collecting in dark stains on the rug below. His fingers itched to soothe, to heal—to stop.

“Ang…” The endearment nearly escaped before he could catch it.

“Green, Sir.” Aziraphale's voice broke on the word, a shattered plea that made the demon’s chest ache. “Green. I want, Sir…”

Crowley gathered the scattered edges of his composure like a cloak around himself, hating how much he needed this, hating how much he hated it. He closed his eyes and inhaled sharply, nostrils flaring, forcing himself to savour the scent of fear and surrender.

His fingers trembled as he reached for the indigo pillar—midnight-black and forbidding, its wick fat with promise, stained with memories of past horrors. The flame caught with a hiss, and acrid blue smoke spiralled upward, carrying the scent of nightshade and belladonna that sliced through the red candle’s cloying sweetness of burnt sugar lingering in the air.

“We’re not done here, Supreme Archangel,” Crowley whispered, his voice rough with equal measures of dread and desire, pupils dilated to eclipse the yellow of his eyes.

Aziraphale braced, raw and alight, and at the first scalding stripe of blue wax along the pale small of his back, a whimper escaped—a sound so broken it made Crowley's corporation vibrate.

He carved his ownership with methodical violence. He marked Aziraphale’s shoulder blades and spine with lines of midnight-blue, ensuring that each new brand overlapped the memory of the red one before, creating a topography of submission across Aziraphale's trembling form. The wax pooled, then invaded—seeking every crevice like a possessive lover, claiming territory with brutal efficiency. By the end, Aziraphale’s body trembled with pain and the thrill of pattern, fever-blotched and shining. He was marked: a study in contrast, the crimson and indigo, a pale landscape beneath and the darkness above—a tapestry of exquisite agony.

Crowley set the candle aside. His hands seized Aziraphale's face, fingers digging into the hollows of his cheeks until the angel's lips parted involuntarily. “Good. Very good,” he breathed, his voice a ravenous growl as his thumb smeared a tear across the angel's feverish cheek. Crowley’s gaze was the dangerous, hunted look of a creature who’d found territory worth dying for.

“Now show me what you're really for.” Crowley reached into the trunk and withdrew a cat-o'-nine-tails, its leather straps gleaming like oil in the candlelight. He slashed it through the air inches from Aziraphale's face, the whistle of its passage making the angel flinch.

“Count for me, Archangel,” Crowley snarled, the first strike shattering the wax across Aziraphale's back into a constellation of crimson shards.

The angel's spine arched violently.

“One—thank you, Sir!” he choked out. Crowley's jaw clenched at the gratitude. The second blow landed before Aziraphale’s body could recover. “Two—oh God—thank you, Sir!” By the seventh, welts had bloomed where the leather had almost split the skin. Aziraphale's voice fractured into raw, animal sounds that Crowley felt like barbs beneath his ribs.

“I can’t—” Crowley's voice broke. He seized a fistful of white-gold curls while his other hand trembled. “I can't fucking hear you!” he tried again, forcing rage over his own ache. “Do I need to start again, Supreme bloody Archangel? Do I need to go on until my fucking arm falls off? Should I give you seven more—one for each fucking year you abandoned me to rot here alone?”

The words bit with hellfire. Aziraphale convulsed, a sob tearing from his throat. “No, Sir! Please! Se-seven! Thank you, Sir!”

“That wasn't so difficult, was it?” Crowley hissed, his breath hot against the angel's ear. “Do better.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Crowley cracked his neck with an audible snap and flung the flogger down, leather straps still vibrating with the impact.

He stalked a predatory half-circle, muscles coiled tight beneath black silk, before dropping to his haunches. The leather of his glove scraped against the angel's ravaged skin as he wrenched that tear-drenched face upward, his thumb digging into the hollow beneath Aziraphale's jaw, then easing the pressure.

“Colour?” The question came softer than he'd intended.

“Green, Sir,” Aziraphale sighed. It was a wet, shaky sound, strangled with hunger.

Crowley swallowed hard, fighting the urge to wipe away the tears.“Good. Now tell me what you are, Archangel.”

Aziraphale's pupils devoured the blue of his irises. “Your whore, Sir.”

A smile slashed across Crowley's face. “That’s right. You’re no longer Heaven’s little slut, are you?”

“No, Sir. Never again. Only yours. I serve at your pleasure now, Sir.”

“Good boy.” He reached into the open trunk again, retrieving a plug, glass and blue as a sapphire in a gold coronet, that seemed to pulse with the memory of flame. His fingers paused in their motion, suspended for just a moment, before he placed it on the floor between them, his gaze dropping to meet Aziraphale's worshipful blue stare.

“Now prove your devotion to me.”