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“Not this again.”
Aziraphale rolled over, dragging a hand up to arrange a curl out of place. It did not make a difference. He had several curls out of place.
Crowley blinked, meaning to protest but too put out to, and then too interested in what Aziraphale was doing leafing through his nightstand. He sat back against the headboard holding a pack of cigarettes Crowley was sure wasn’t there before the angel looked.
“I was saying…” Crowley tried again, hoisting himself up with an elbow and dragging a hand up to arrange an already impeccable hairstyle.
“Nonsense, yes, you were. Not the bird in a spaceship again, Crowley, please.”
“The bird was not in a spaceship.”
“It was. To get to the end of the Hot Cocoa Way or whatever.”
“Okay, now you’re just messing with me. You know it’s the Milky Way, right? I need to know you know this.”
Aziraphale raised his chin as he blew smoke in the air, haughtiness written all over his face drawn in serious straight lines. His puffy cheeks and short neck were still red. The edges of his offended act cracked starting at the corner of his mouth, then a mischievous shine sparkled in his eyes and Crowley wheezed, smacking his arm and muttering a jerk.
“I can be a rascal, too.”
“Oh, I’m sure you can. Give me that”, he extended a hand and Aziraphale did so. The cigarette tasted like oriental pipe tobacco, all Perique and just a small dose of Latakia. Crowley was not sure that kind of English blend meant to be roll in a cigarette, but the blend seemed to forget it was not supposed to come in a box.
“I believe it was the end of the Universe, where the bird was going”, he said as giving it back. There was a certain quality to watch the angel with a cigarette, anyway. Aziraphale was never good with pipes. The way he held them that was just… wrong. The raised pinkie and soft drags went well with the cigarette scene. “Pay more attention to my saunters, would you?”
“Always do.”
Aziraphale frowned when he took a new hit. From the corner of his eyes, he looked over, but said nothing to the new dose of Latakia suddenly found mixed in his cigarette. Crowley wasn’t expecting him to.
Crowley watched him smoke wondering if everything Aziraphale knew about this came from ridiculous books. He certainly acted the part, with the sheet draped around his naked body, the completely rumpled hair and all the things he said, the ridiculous sounds he made, the sudden crave for fags. If he weren’t already doing it before those clichés started to spread, maybe Crowley could indulge the thought that Aziraphale was just perfect because he was acting the part. That mischievous shine was dying and a new sparkle Crowley knew better took its place.
Aziraphale was thinking.
That was never good for anyone.
“It's been a while since we last did this, hasn’t it?”
Crowley stared at the ceiling, struggling to drag a date out of his mind and coming out empty-handed. “Egypt?”
“France. After you took a hundred years for beauty sleep, so… Sixteen, seventeen century?”
“Fran-? Oh. Oh, yes. I was ridiculously high.”
“No, you were ridiculously low. On floor level, to be precise. And covered in scales, but with arms and bits of hair somehow? Just dreadful to those poor dears who caught us.”
Crowley shot an unexpected loud laugh in the room, curling sideways on the bed to nudge his face against the side of Aziraphale’s arm. The angel slightly pushed him off, but he was smiling.
“You’re an absurd man, Aziraphale. Did you know that?”
“I’m not a man.”
“You protest that, but not the absurdity?”
He shrugged, and Crowley kept watching him, mesmerized by that absurd ethereal being. Aziraphale put the cigarette out in the ashtray that was not in the nightstand a minute ago – his pinkie, with that white gold ring with wings on it that Crowley gave him in the fifteen century because, really, that was just so Aziraphale, raised in the air – and moved to get out of bed. Crowley let him go, just now noticing he was still leaning against the angel’s arm.
Aziraphale dropped the sheet behind as he walked to the small bar. The entirety of Crowley’s bedroom wall was made of windows, the curtains wide open displaying the sun setting over London and painting the apartment a golden colour. London was beautiful at sunset. Even so, it was just background to the angel pouring himself a glass of brandy.
He scratched a very pale calf with his foot while at it.
“Do you want something?”
“What you’re having.”
He muttered a non-committal hum and served another glass. Crowley crawled closer to the foot of the bed, waiting with a hand up to get his drink. Handed the glass, instantly he took a large sip, but not Aziraphale, who wiggled the liquid in his, sniffing, appreciating, having it just the way it was supposed to.
“I’m sorry, dear boy; do you want me to put my clothes back on?”
Crowley thought that was the most outrageous thing he has ever been asked.
“Do whatever you want. Why?”
“Nothing, it’s just…” Aziraphale clicked his tongue, eyes glued to the London view. The yellow light made his blue eyes almost translucent. He waved a hand. “You keep staring, is all.”
“Does it make you uncomfortable?”
“Not really, I thought it was making you uncomfortable. I don’t mind. Clothes, I mean”, his shoulders rolled again, nonchalant, as he walked closer to the windows. Come to think, that was probably the first time Aziraphale was there with the curtains open. They did not have many businesses in each other’s bedrooms. That is, if Aziraphale even had a bedroom. Crowley knew he slept, it just did not happen often enough to make the need of owning a bedroom. The last time he was in there – the first time Aziraphale was in there – it was a calm, scary night and the world did not end. He had nowhere to go, bookshop burned to the ground. Crowley had nobody he would rather be with in that last and first chapter. He thought about the bird in a spaceship and how Aziraphale’s body had glowed like that in Alexandria many lives before. They really did not do that often. “My lot is not made to mind.”
“Pure and incapable of malicious thoughts?” His tone was heavy with sarcasm. Aziraphale, of course, didn’t catch it.
“Precisely”, he agreed, still playing around with the drink.
“Well, my lot is very capable of malicious thoughts for both of us.” The angel turned around. Even he couldn’t miss that purr in Crowley’s tone. His face converted into something that should be disapproving, but was working wonders for Crowley. Then Aziraphale smiled and ruined it. He walked towards the bed. The angel had fair dark hair over his belly and bellow, which Crowley always found odd, seeing his arms and chest and legs were as white as the ruined fluffy curls, as bright as a halo, against the setting sun.
He was not a man, but he sure looked like one.
He was not beautiful, as far as Terrestrial beauty standards go these days. Too round and too classic for this modern world. He was beautiful wherever the beauty standards were when the world started to change too fast for Aziraphale to catch on, and he was beautiful in all the ways Crowley could think mattered.
That was not him, anyway. Not the real him. Crowley has seen the real Aziraphale and has been seen by him in return.
“Enjoying yourself?” he asked the angel, since when he asked the question he really wanted to ask he got nothing but a shove.
“Can’t you tell?” Aziraphale shot back behind his glass, in a teasing tone Crowley couldn’t point exactly when the other learned how to use and wasn’t sure he ever wanted to know.
“Usually, yes. It’s different with… As you said, your lot. I can’t really say if you’re having an orgasm of praying for my soul.”
Aziraphale’s eyes opened wide in comical shock. “Crowley!”, he even looked up, as if waiting for Gabriel or, Hell knows, maybe The Almighty himself to come through the ceiling. “Don’t be blasphemous!”
“What? Are we really ignoring that Him given ecstasy it’s just a really good orgasm?”
“It is not!”
“It is, though. I have to say, I was not sure this whole deal wasn’t just a thing they invented themselves to pretend female orgasms don’t exist until I saw you put your hands on it in Rome. But I swear, Aziraphale, you do the same face. Your orgasm face and your ‘Fear Not, Human, Take this bit of Divinity’ face is the same face.”
“Wait a minute” he squeezed his eyes, coming suspiciously closer. “Didn’t I-… Catherine of Siena, I had a manuscript I had to pick up when the order came from Above, so I asked you to be a dear and cover for me.”
“Oh, yes. I just made her come really hard.”
“Crowley!”
“What? Do you think I can gift divinity, Aziraphale? Come on. Me?!” Just for show, Crowley blinked; the act was dramatically illustrative since membranes closed around his yellow eyes instead of eyelids. “And I didn’t fuck her, I just talked, made my head lighten up a bit, painted my wings white and touched her forehead. It worked out, didn’t it? You’re welcome.”
“Still! ” Some more muffled words were whisper into his glass as Aziraphale kept moving on the foot of the bed. He sat down, sighing. “I guess it did”, he smiled at Crowley, who beamed back at him. He waited until Aziraphale was back at looking over the city turning dark outside to peek at the curves of his body when he sat down, the way his thighs supported the weight. It was not just what he wanted to do with that body, it was how unpretentiously Aziraphale wore it; it was what he felt when those arms held him as their owner told him that many stupid things there near the end. Aziraphale didn’t fuck, he genuinely made love with all his being. Which tends to be a lot, since he was made of sugar, spice, and everything nice. It was annoying, really. Very much. That’s why they don’t do it often – or, at least, Crowley’s reason. It’s too much to remember how much Aziraphale can love him if Crowley just let him.
On closer inspection, sex is just such a human thing. The appeal of luxury is overrated when you can feel the world as they can. Usually, sweaty flesh just makes Crowley think of his job, and Aziraphale just doesn’t have it in him without an effort.
He has felt close to him in a number of occasions that did not involve lack of clothes, but…
But, it felt right to make that statement in the human way after everything.
And, even now, it was not about the lack of clothes.
“What you mean, my lot?” Aziraphale said a while later. “Are you tempting many angels lately?”
“Nah, just the one. That’s enough holiness in my sheets, thank you very much.”
The angel laughed. Damned Someone, it is true what they say about angels laughing. At least just this one.
“Hey, I was thinking…”
“If I know what eternity is, yes, you said it before.”
“No. I mean, yes, that, but right now I was thinking you should try it as a woman someday. They have a whole organ just for physical pleasure, you know? No refractory period too. Multiple orgasms. It’s really nice.”
Aziraphale seemed to consider it, nodding thoughtfully. “Now, that’s something that I haven’t done in a while”, he commented with a short snort.
“Orgasming? But you said you weren’t praying.”
“What? No! Crowley, can’t you really tell when a man-shaped being finished? That can’t be good for your job.”
“Not when I’m clean before I can appreciate the stickiness of it for the thirty seconds it can be appreciated before one realizes sex is gross!”
“I meant being a woman.”
“Oh. Yes. It has been some time I last saw you in a skirt. I mean, kilt aside. Proper woman clothes. What was that? Japan?”
“That’s right.” Aziraphale’s eyes lost focus at the bottom of his glass.
They didn’t stay in Japan long, with the war and politics somewhere else catching Above and Bellow’s attention. Aziraphale went there for the stories, but stayed for the food. Crowley went there because Aziraphale sent a compelling letter and he was bored to the bones. He said he stayed for the onsen. He remembers the mountains, the fields and the smell of the growing rice. He remembers Aziraphale taking painting and calligraphy at the time, and watching her do her girl’s hair and teach them to behave. He remembers the girls and what happened to them when the war came blasting through the door. He wouldn’t see Aziraphale again for two hundred years after he left the country on a boat, alone. They weren’t even supposed to be there, but Aziraphale wanted to see the manuscripts. She said there was always room for God’s work when Crowley argued Japan had too many Gods already. None of them helped. Aziraphale couldn’t do much, either, but Someone did she tried.
“Why were you never a woman again?” he asked that instead of asking if being a woman reminded him too much of the cruelty of men.
“I don’t know. It’s kind of uncomfortable, isn’t it? Those bags of fat on your chest? Certainly not good for my back.”
“I was going to say not even the gayest man alive would call a woman’s breasts ‘bags of fat’, but you probably invented all the gay man clichés.”
“That’s not true. They taught me the Gavotte.”
“Good, so you know that was a homo club.”
“I’m not that naïve, Crowley. They’re just so nice, the dears. So polite and caring.”
“That’s because they wanted to get into your pants, Aziraphale.”
Crowley was half expecting to hear his name exclaimed in another highly disapproving tone, or some salty remark about how he didn’t need to be rude, but none of those came. Instead, the angel twisted his nose and raised his chin before taking a sip of his overly sniffed brandy.
The glass in Crowley’s hand hasn’t been refilled once, although it should have at least twice from the amount he was taking each time he leads the glass to his mouth.
“So, who was it?”
Aziraphale lightly shook his head. “I beg your pardon?”
“The discreet gentleman who managed to bed you.”
Once more, the angel’s eyes were lost in time at the bottom of his glass.
“William”, he said. There was some sweetness in his voice making Crowley want to pat him on the back. “Nice chap. Not so original with his poems, but he was a good speaker. You just couldn’t take your eyes off him. I believe you’d have liked him.”
For the lack of something better to say, Crowley said that sure, he believed it too.
Aziraphale curled his lips in a shade of a smile and gave Crowley that pat in the back he didn’t receive. Their skin touching reminded him of how material the angel was. Crowley leaned in, then he leaned away.
“Amazes me that you still have the stomach for it”, he said refilling his glass for the third time without getting out of bed. “Humans”, Crowley clarified, Aziraphale observing him with a confused frown that soon melted into understanding.
“I’m still in this world, my dear boy. You know how these things go. I don’t think there’s a single thing a six thousand years old being hasn’t tried at least once.”
“That’s exactly my point.” That confused frown was back, this time bringing around short thighs going over one another as Aziraphale crossed his legs and rested an elbow in an arm, listening. He always did do that. Both listening and always. “You’re still here. They are not.” Then, before he could stop himself: “I have been thinking about this.”
Aziraphale opened his mouth and took a breath. He said nothing and closed it. Something was turning inside that dusty old head of his. “Is that your point with that eternity question you keep going back to?”
“In a way. Yes. Yes, it is.”
Crowley scratched the side of his face. He tried to arrange his sunglasses at the bridge of his nose just to realize Aziraphale took them off in the living room. The angel tasted tea and biscuits and although last time he tasted of wine and, shit, maybe absinthe, it was still so bloody familiar it made Crowley’s skin scratch all over. It was as if his corporation wanted him to let go this time, just this time, because it knew he was safe.
“I ran into your bookshop, you know? When it was burning.”
Silence.
Then, in a small voice it came: “My dear…”
It reminded him of the way he sighed and said William and Crowley hated that thought. He knew about William, and Kumail, and Sayid, and Oscar. Crowley had two different Judiths, an Adam both he and Aziraphale laughed about, surprisingly a Bartolommeo and non-shockingly a Morgana. It happened. Usually, the humans entered when they were left apart for too long. One time, when Aziraphale told him about William shortly after Crowley woke up and was, apparently, too drunk to hold on the memory, he looked at Crowley with crossing eyes and spat simply: “You were gone.”
It was not a statement of Crowley leaving him alone meaning Aziraphale grew lonely, of course. They weren’t that frequent in one another’s affairs to make a difference. Except they were, but they weren’t. Their constant was something else entirely other than time spent together. Before the Arrangement, Crowley could recall spending nearly a thousand years without laying eyes on Aziraphale again. A demon had to do something with his time, and apparently so did an angel. It was not that, thrown apart from one another, they grew anxious for human companionship. It would demine too much what they meant. None of his Judiths were merely a loss of Aziraphale. They were his, Crowley was theirs, and it was real, beautiful and brief. Sometimes it was too much, so much, he drifted away for a while. However, other times, here and there, rarely, but always extraordinary, someone came.
He didn’t need Aziraphale for that. That was not what Aziraphale was. That was not what the Arrangement was for.
They needed one another because eternity, when no one is there to remember with you, is just you dying over and over again until everything else fades and you’re standing on an endless road with nothing behind.
Lately, it felt like Crowley was missing something more.
Aziraphale had the same lines on his forehead that he raised in concern when Jesus was born in a stable because he was too drunk to book a room for God’s son.
“It’s you”, Crowley said, feeling a bit light-headed already for the brandy and smokes and something else that was more. “You are always here, no matter what. You are not going anywhere.”
Aziraphale gazed at him as if he wanted to cut off Crowley’s scalp and have a look at his brain. How desperately he wanted to know what the demon was trying to say.
“I don’t plan to”, said Aziraphale with a hint of playfulness. “That’s what we fought for.”
“Except…” Crowley sighed. “You know you don’t actually have to indulge in this for me, don’t you?” When Aziraphale opened his mouth to question, Crowley eyed the bed they were sitting on, the bedsheets on the floor and the combination of dark suit and tartan bowtie tangled together. “I know they expect you to, your Williams and such, when you pretend to be human with them, but I know who you are. We don’t do pretending, do we? This is not a thing we do to one another.”
Whatever Crowley was expecting for a reaction, it was not a splutter followed by a complacent smile.
“It was never an effort with you”, Aziraphale said it posing so relaxed and detached leaning an elbow on the bed that the demon wondered if he really meant it, or if he even knew the weight of what he was inferring. “I don’t think this is your thing much more than it’s mine, dear, which I hope doesn’t mean you appreciate it less when we happen to… You know.” It was his turn to wave a hand to the bed beneath them. “We don’t need to, but we don’t need to eat or drink either.”
“I only meant everything else is not middle to an end.”
“Never thought it was.”
“Good.”
“Good”, he echoed, slower and drowning in meaning as Crowley stared at those familiar, old eyes. That, right there, was the end. Crowley could see himself walking towards it to live over and over again. It was not the sensorial sensations more than it was just Aziraphale. Suddenly, Crowley wanted more than a shower to feed the ducks and listen to a conjunct of words put after one another in an order that made his corporation ache for relief as the angel’s arms held him close. They did not do that often. Crowley wanted to. It was not about the lack of clothes as much as it was about the lack of restrains.
Crowley couldn’t remember the last time he was truly seen.
“I thought you did”, he started talking again after a while where Aziraphale just curled a finger around a lock of hair and hummed what sounded like These Are the Days of Our Lives out of tone. The other raised his eyes. “That day, with the bloody fire. I thought you were gone. Not just shortly gone, but gone gone. For good. As if Above caught you or Bellow arrived first. Either way, I was never going to see you again.”
Aziraphale took a swing way deeper than his previous sips.
“Sure, at the time it was more about stopping the End of Times from happening, but lately I’ve… I’ve been thinking about it. Can’t stop thinking about it, every time I pick you up for a walk, I think... Can you remember the last time we saw this much of one another?”
The angel known to have a perfect memory took some time to think it over. Even so, he came back with an apologetic frown and a light touch to Crowley’s upper arm.
“Twelve years we raised the wrong child together. One year since the world didn’t end. A couple more since we settled down here in London. We were always in each other lives, angel, but it was never like this. And I was just thinking…” He put his hand over Aziraphale’s on his arm, taking in his warmth. “I drove in a burning car.”
“I remember. I saw it.”
“Yes. I drove in a burning car with nothing but will because I thought you were gone and I was alone, and if I ever let go I’d have nothing else. I…” Bright, yellow eyes looked up searching for some deeper meaning in the lines of the angel’s face. Crowley could only see more doubt. “Aziraphale, I can’t really picture anything to do with myself if I know you’re not in this world with me.”
He looked like he would cry. He didn’t.
“Crowley…” Aziraphale pulled him closer. “Oh. Oh, my dearest Crowley…” He kissed the side of the demon’s head, his temple, nose, and fingers, which he held tightly between hands when he looked at his eyes with the ferocity of an angel ready to take down Satan himself for his home or die trying. “I will always be here to share foolishness and a bottle of red with you.”
Crowley snorted, but he let himself be straddled and nuzzled back in bed, feeling the intensity of Aziraphale’s presence in a way he hasn’t in a long time. It could almost burn if any of them was not paying enough attention. The scratching was back. If Aziraphale was a colour, he would be yellow. If he was an image, he would be a cup of steamy tea and a rocking chair with an open book resting over it.
“Do you know what eternity is, my dear?” Aziraphale asked him from above.
“You tell me, angel.”
White wings filled the dark room as a glowing divine light banished all the darkness from sight. The sun was set, still, Aziraphale glowed warm sunlight. He was everywhere, everyplace, and everything. He was above him, but he was also inside of him, half-pulling, half-asking, half-compelling until the scratch was gone as his wings were out and the darkness was back. His corporation arched, tired, and Crowley let it be.
Aziraphale was everywhere, everyplace, and everything and Crowley was right there with him.
They travelled in places they knew and places they have never been. They fed ducks at St. James's Park and Aziraphale whispered to him things he has only mouthed before in the confidence of their sheets. They were in a sinking boat saying goodbye and exchanging notes where to meet again. They were dancing, laughing, and crying. Crowley listened to William’s poetry and was captivated by Wilde’s words on his tongue, then they sat at a table and Crowley showed how Judith fearless argued with men from around the world. He saw himself through his eyes and saw him through his, not really knowing the difference anymore but knowing they were beautiful. They were in a Queen’s concert, they were Gavotting in it, and they wrote a letter to the Pope in bad calligraphy. They sang a song none of them has ever heard before but both of them knew by heart.
Somewhere in the middle of it, Crowley knew what love felt like and it was unreasonably similar to many things he felt before.
He showed Aziraphale what hate felt like and it was very similar to many things he has felt before.
They saw the bits of one another they had buried deep within themselves and they looked like burning stars.
They saw home in each other eyes.
They were seen.
They woke up at a beach in the sunrise, the warm red light painting the sand warm tones of orange and red against the blue waves. Crowley felt his skin salty and his hair damp. He was in his leather armour but had no shoes on. His hair was long again. Aziraphale, waking up by his side, was wearing nothing but a kilt. Crowley knew there was nothing beneath it because the kilt was up to his belly and his legs spread. The waves crashing on the shore wet his bare feet.
He and Aziraphale exchanged a hungover look that had nothing to do with alcohol. The angel tried ungraciously to cover himself. He hiccupped; Crowley got up and looked around his surroundings.
At the distance, he saw a cottage.
By his side, he saw eternity.