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While there are not many historians who acknowledge it, England in the period of 1540-1550 saw a remarkable rise in purity cults. Even fewer historians attempt to account for the startling number of these cults, whose founding tenet is that true physical and spiritual purity hold the key to unlocking the great powers of the universe, and whose fanatical members were willing to do impure things in order to imbue themselves with that true purity. Most historians are strictly concerned with the sensational details of the crimes these cults committed in pursuit of the great powers they believed were tied to purity. Historical books on this subject tend to rely on romantic hyperbole, and to use the whole movement as a heavy-handed metaphor for the political climate of the era. Those who do take a crack at what drove the resurgence of these cults tend to blame it on a convoluted mix of superstition and economic factors.
These historians should have consulted Aziraphale when they were outlining their theses on the matter, because he could have informed them of the much simpler reason behind the resurrection of long-dormant purity cults: one foolish mistake in a particularly beautiful wooded clearing in the early part of the previous decade.
In 1533, Aziraphale had just finished a new book and wanted to linger in the fiction for a little longer before he started another. So he had gone for a walk, gotten a little lost, gotten more lost, and stumbled upon a secluded park that he had never been to before. The beauty of it astounded him. As he looked around him, his hand flew to his heart without conscious thought prompting the movement. Sunlight dappled the verdantly green grass where it filtered through the broad leaves of the thicket of trees. A clear stream wound around the perimeter of the clearing like a ribbon on a present. The vegetation was almost unnaturally lush. There was a quiet that settled comfortably down on the entire scene, like a well-worn quilt. Above all, there was a serene solitude here, the kind that Aziraphale was finding less and less often as the Earth became more crowded.
Eden.
Aziraphale felt foolish for thinking it the moment after the word was formed in his mind. It was, of course, not Eden. It was just- similar. Not similar in appearance exactly, but he felt the same crystal clear calm settling on him. He felt so much at home that it ached in a deep and satisfying way. He relaxed. Tension melted out of his shoulders and they dropped in relief. His wings unfurled on their own accord and their feathers felt the sunshine for the first time in hundreds of years. He was entirely himself. He did wish Crowley was here. He wondered if he would be able to find it again to show it to him. Crowley must miss Eden too.
He heard a rustling in the foliage and he was momentarily stuck with a certainty that it must be Crowley, also stumbling upon this second Eden. He was instead surprised to see an unfamiliar man enter this clearing. The man was equally astonished to see him. He froze in his tracks and lifted a shaking hand to point at Aziraphale.
“Wh- wh- wh-” He was unable to complete his question, or even a single word.
Aziraphale followed his gaze. His wings. Oh, Gabriel would certainly have some words with him when he heard about this carelessness. Aziraphale snapped his wings back in so that they were no longer visible. He felt his cheeks redden. He tried to smile at the baffled man. “What a lovely place, do you know where we are?” he said brightly.
“You- you’re an angel!”
“Oh- no,” Aziraphale said. “I’m a regular person.” He stretched his reassuring smile a little wider.
“I saw your wings, you’re an angel! Of the Lord,” the man clarified accusatorially.
“Wings? What an interesting illusion. I think it’s the shadows here,” Aziraphale said nervously.
“An angel.” The man sounded almost angry now. Aziraphale took an involuntary step backward. “Come with me, I need you to do something for me. You have to come with me.”
“I- I have an appointment later,” Aziraphale said. “So sorry.” Gabriel was already going to be angry with him, so he snapped his fingers and miracled himself from the clearing. He appeared instantaneously in his bookshop.
“Well,” he said to himself. He was surrounded by his familiar books, and his favorite armchair was only a few steps away. “I’m glad that’s over.”
_________________________
Crowley sat across the table from him, watching as Aziraphale thoughtfully chewed his last bite of lunch. He had been silent as Aziraphale ate, as always. Aziraphale appreciated that in his dining companion; he preferred not to have to converse as he tried to enjoy his meal. As he finished chewing, he could see Crowley preparing his first remarks.
“You have really caused a stir this time, haven’t you?” Crowley asked. His tone was all delight. “I can’t go anywhere without hearing about the ‘angel in the woods.’ You really are more fun than I give you credit for sometimes.”
Aziraphale had to resist the urge to squash his cheeks with his hands to keep himself from smiling. He maintained as much of a dignified silence as he was able to. Crowley always took silence as an invitation.
“You should be more careful,” he said gleefully. “People will want to find this angel. Ask for miracles.”
They both laughed. The mood was not right for it, so Aziraphale did not attempt to explain the second Eden paradise to Crowley.
_________________________
Aziraphale awoke in the back of a cart with a sack over his head. He had a gag covering his mouth. Surprisingly, his hands were unbound. He realized why when he tried to bring his hands up to his face to remove the gag: he had been drugged beyond motor control. He then tried to spit the gag out of his mouth, but whatever they had drugged him with was the only master his muscles would obey and he could not manage it. His breathing quickened almost to the point of hyperventilation. That was the interesting thing about this body he wore; he did not need to breathe, but his corporeal form was committed to being a human body.
“He’s awake,” a man’s voice said from next to Aziraphale. He sounded surprised.
“I gave him a large enough dose to-” another man’s voice started before he was interrupted by the first man.
“Just give him another.”
Aziraphale wanted to struggle against the application of the drug, but he was incapable of it. Fuzziness overcame him.
He slowly came to consciousness again. Or perhaps rather he came back to awareness. He was naked and on the ground. There was soft grass beneath him and when he opened his heavy eyelids, he could see the stars above him. He was vaguely aware of people moving around him. He thought of the voices he heard on the cart. There seemed to be only two of them.
“What are you doing?” he rasped. He was glad that the gag had been removed from his mouth. But his throat was so very dry and the words were rough against his vocal cords like they were made up of sand.
One of the men approached him and Aziraphale tried to focus on his face. It was too dark and his eyes were too blurred. Was he crying?
“Try not to move,” the man said. His tone was almost kind. “It took us a lot of work to find you, and we don’t want to make any mistakes now.”
“There must be- some error,” Aziraphale said. Each word cost him more energy than he would’ve thought he possessed. He was also becoming aware of how cold he was, and he wondered what these men had done with his clothes. He wanted to ask them to return the clothes to him, but it was not worth the difficulty of vocalizing the request and he knew that they would not agree to it anyway.
“There is no error,” the man said. He was moving away from Aziraphale and his voice was almost unintelligible. “We’ve been looking for you for almost a decade.”
“For me?” The whole world was swimming and Aziraphale could hardly think. In fact, the only coherent thought his mind could hold was I wish Crowley would come, and this ran through his mind in circles, repeating and repeating.
“Yes,” the man said simply. Aziraphale realized that he was holding a knife in his hand.
“Oh,” Aziraphale said, his throat closing up in panic around the syllable. “Please-”
The man smiled at him, then used the knife to make a small cut on his companion’s palm. “Try not to move,” he repeated. Using his companion’s blood, the man began drawing or writing something on Aziraphale’s skin. He could feel each shape as if it were made of fire instead of blood. He began squirming, repulsed by the sensation. The man drawing the shapes had no patience for Aziraphale’s squirming; he hit him across the face and repeated his instruction not to move, this time angrily.
Before the last word of the man’s warning had reached Aziraphale’s ears, the man vanished completely. It was like he had never been there. The other man exclaimed briefly, then he too was gone. Aziraphale squeezed his eyes shut.
He flinched when he felt someone put a hand on his shoulder. The hand quickly withdrew.
“Angel,” Crowley said, his voice oddly flat. “Can you get up?”
Aziraphale’s eyes flew open. “Crowley?”
“That’s right. Can you get up or should I- do you need to be carried?”
Aziraphale could see his clothes, heaped in a pile at the base of a nearby tree. Crowley followed his gaze and went over to the clothes. He brought them to Aziraphale.
“They were cut off of you,” he said quietly. “I can’t mend them.” Aziraphale’s eyes were still too blurry to see his expression.
“Oh,” Aziraphale said. “That was a new jacket.”
Crowley took off his own jacket and wrapped Aziraphale in it. If Aziraphale had been in a better condition, he would have at least teasingly protested being dressed in Crowley’s black velvet jacket with its dramatically fashionable slashes and embellishments.
“I don’t think I can get up,” Aziraphale said.
“No need,” Crowley said. “I’m here.”
He carried Aziraphale a short distance, then he miracled them into Aziraphale’s bookshop. It was something like flying. Like when we flew together, when …. But that thought drifted out of his grasp before he could finish it. Aziraphale had a vague, distant feeling that he should be paying more attention, that he would want to remember this later. But his mind was wandering far away from him. He thought that the next morning, he would not remember the pressure of Crowley’s chest against him as he carried him, or remember the feeling that he was weightless in Crowley’s arms. His last conscious thought was what a shame that would be.
_________________________
“They said they had been looking for me. For nearly a decade.” Aziraphale’s throat was still dry, despite having finished three cups of warmed milk.
Crowley picked up his cup several inches off the table and then set it down again. He spun it in circles between his hands. Aziraphale had offered him the drink in a bit of a panic when he had awoken earlier that morning and been slammed with all of his half-memories from the previous night, and then slammed again by the surprise of seeing Crowley sitting at his bedside. Crowley had seemed just as flustered as Aziraphale as he had accepted the drink, and he had taken not one sip of it since.
“Who were they?” Crowley asked.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know.”
“I was hardly in any condition to inquire.”
Crowley’s expression darkened and he did not reply.
Aziraphale, feeling very embarrassed and inadequate even as a kidnapping victim, pressed on. “If you had not dispatched of them so quickly, we might have asked them.”
Crowley reeled back, then leaned forward again quickly. He worked his way through several different monosyllabic sounds before finding the one to begin his retort: “Should I have left them to finish their work? Should I have just-“ he spread his hands apart with his palms upturned “- ignored it?” Crowley’s voice had risen to his octave of indignation and he expanded the syllables of ig-nored into something that was more like ig-no-or-ed.
“I’m only saying. We may never know who they were or what they wanted with me because you decided to transport them to the arctic circle.”
“That’s- hang on, how did you know that’s where I sent them?”
“That’s where you always send them, Crowley.”
“Well. It’s the best place to send them.”
“It certainly is not! I can name sixteen better places off the top-”
“What are we talking about?” Crowley exclaimed as he stood up so quickly that he sent his chair toppling over behind him. “You were abducted, they were going to sacrifice you! And they said that they had been planning it for a decade.”
Aziraphale opened his mouth, then closed it again and looked away. “We don’t know that they wanted to sacrifice me,” he said quietly. He looked back up at Crowley to see Crowley drop his gaze pointedly to Aziraphale’s chest, where the man had drawn sigils in his blood the night before. As if awakened by Crowley’s gaze, the symbols – which Aziraphale had only been partly successful in washing off of himself – grew warm and prickly on his skin. He fought the urge to scratch at them.
He was very tired. His head still pounded from whatever those men had given him. His body ached and he wanted to peel off his skin where they had written on him. “The only thing those blackguards did manage to sacrifice was my favorite jacket,” he said forlornly. He had just read the word blackguard for the first time recently, and had been eager for a circumstance when he might use it. But doing so now brought him no particular contentment.
Crowley stopped pacing. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “I’m sorry.” He sighed and righted his chair so he could sit in it again. “They did not cut it along the seams so a tailor will not be able to repair it. And I cannot even miracle it for you because the knife they used…” He made a gesture with his hands that seemed to say I can’t explain it, but trust me.
Aziraphale nodded resignedly. They sat in silence for a long while. Then Aziraphale said, “Whatever they wanted, it is all over now. All it cost me was my clothes.”
“I suppose so.” Crowley sounded miles and miles away. As far, perhaps, as the arctic circle.
_________________________
Aziraphale should have been more on his guard; he would be the first to admit it (to anyone other than Crowley, of course). But months and months that felt like years and years had passed since he had feared for his corporeal form at the hands of those men, the symbols had washed off ages ago, and the sun was shining. The memories of that night might as well have been the plot of a nasty book he once read. He could convince himself that they were nothing more than that.
He and Crowley had not spoken about the incident since. In fact, they had not spoken at all. Crowley had left behind his jacket, the one that he had covered Aziraphale with during his rescue. Aziraphale had hung it in his wardrobe and he saw it every morning when he dressed. He did not think about putting it on again, but he would always run his hand over the jacket to feel the texture of the embroidery.
He would have to return it some time. Perhaps the next time he saw Crowley. Perhaps another time.
He was enjoying the novel sensation of the sun on his face after a lingering, stubborn winter when a woman’s voice cut through his pleasant solitary musings.
“Excuse me,” said that agreeable voice. “Would you be able to give me aid?”
Aziraphale turned to see the very picture of lovely feminine distress, the kind that galvanized shining knights in old tales. Her blue eyes were wide and her pink lips were parted slightly in a silent demure gasp. Wisps of her blonde hair that had escaped from under her French hood and enhanced her vulnerability.
“Yes, of course,” Aziraphale said. He offered her his handkerchief. Her eyes were dry, but he thought she may begin to cry as she related her troubles to him.
She accepted the handkerchief. “Oh thank you,” she said. “I’m afraid I’m lost. I don’t recognize a thing around me.”
Aziraphale nodded sagely. “This city can be so confusing. Where can I direct you to?”
She gave him the name of a house several neighborhoods away, then paused and looked down timidly as she added, “If it would not impose too much on your day, would you be able to accompany me? I do not know these streets like you do.”
Aziraphale was embarrassed that he had not thought to offer, and sorry that he had made her ask. “Of course! Of course.”
He offered her his arm and they set off on their way. The poor lady kept looking around them, probably trying to get her bearings. He guided them around the next corner, taking a well-known shortcut through a quiet alley. They made it three steps into the shadows when a man jumped out from a doorway and smashed Aziraphale over the head with something heavy.
As his consciousness leaked away, he saw his damsel in distress shoulder-to-shoulder with his attacker, talking in a low, conspiratorial voice. So she had been a lure. At least, Aziraphale thought in his last conscious moment, she was not in any danger.
_________________________
He awoke.
His hands were bound with manacles, his legs were bound with rope. He was laying on a stone table. His head was pounding and there was a bandage around it. He must have bled where they hit him. Not again. He tried to say it, but he was gagged. He began to struggle against his bindings.
The clanging of the manacles must have alerted his captors. Within moments, he was surrounded by a small group of men in old-fashioned white robes.
Aziraphale made unintelligible noises against his gag. But he stopped struggling. He did not want to be hit again, like last time.
The man standing near his head said, “Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?”
“Hebrews 1:14,” intoned the rest of the assembly.
Aziraphale rolled his eyes, forgetting the seriousness of the situation for a moment. Quoting scripture! He sniffed indignantly.
The man placed his hands on Aziraphale’s head. “I saw an angel flying in midair, and he had the eternal gospel to proclaim to those who live on the earth—to every nation, tribe, language and people.”
Ungag me then, and I’ll proclaim the gospel to you, Aziraphale would have said if he had not been gagged.
“God’s most pure creature is the angel,” the man said, breaking from scripture. His words maintained that rehearsed feel to them that his quotations had. “He made the angel for us. A vessel of His divinity from whom we may learn and gain purity.”
Everyone in the room looked expectantly at Aziraphale, who was embarrassed by the attention. He was very glad that these abductors had left him his clothes. The man’s words put him ill at ease.
The man continued. “God created angels for us to take as a teacher, but also to supplement our purity when we fall short.”
Aziraphale could not parse the man’s meaning, but his stomach clenched with dread. Whatever he meant, this man’s words could not portend good things for Aziraphale.
The man gestured down at Aziraphale, encompassing his body in one broad sweep of his hands. “This is for us.”
Aziraphale couldn’t help it, he began to fight against his restraints and speak into his gag. This must be a mistake. They had to let him go. He had never asked Crowley how he had found him last time, and it seemed like too much to hope for that Crowley would find him now. But he hoped, hoped, hoped for Crowley. He needed him.
He could not miracle himself away from here, or even out of his gag without Gabriel knowing. If Gabriel asked him about it, he would be forced to admit that he had revealed his wings to a human and brought this upon himself. Gabriel would be furious with him twice-over. He would take his chances with these men, thank you. If only they would take his gag out, he was sure he could make them understand their mistake.
A dozen pairs of hands reached toward him to help restrain him. Aziraphale did not manage to free himself, he only managed to hit his elbow on the stone table and send sparks of pain shooting down his arm all the way to his fingertips. He sagged against the table.
He tried to make eye contact with the men and plead with them with a look. They averted their eyes, looking to their leader. Aziraphale craned his neck to try to look at the leader as well. Their eyes met. The leader smiled at him, but the smile communicated no warmth.
“It’s time,” the leader said, still looking into Aziraphale’s eyes, “to harvest the purity that God has sent to us in this angel’s form. Know that He wishes for us to have it.”
Aziraphale vigorously shook his head back and forth.
The leader drew out a knife. It was unusually long and the hilt was inset with dark stones that were so inky black that they looked like holes more than embellishments. The blade itself was perfect, and it gleamed a sinister metallic gleam. Aziraphale could not say why, but he knew that this was not a normal knife made by human hands. This was not a knife he would recover from if it met his blood.
Crowley, please, where are you?
The man said, “Be still.” He brought the knife to Aziraphale’s throat- to cut his collar. He made quick work of Aziraphale’s clothes, only a few months old and purchased solely to replace those that he had lost before. He squeezed his eyes shut as the men peeled his clothes off of his body.
“Richard, the cup,” the leader instructed.
Aziraphale kept his eyes closed. He heard footsteps approaching and then someone was lifting Aziraphale’s head up off of the table and the lip of a cup was being pressed to his lips. He did not want to drink, but the liquid soaked into his gag and he couldn’t help it. It tasted mostly like honey, but a richer honey than he had ever had before. Despite himself, Aziraphale was fascinated by the flavor. After the first drop hit his tongue, he found that he had a voracious appetite for more and he drank the entire content of the cup eagerly.
The effect was almost immediate. He began to feel heavy all over, like stones were being stacked on each one of his limbs and his chest and his head and his eyelids, entombing him. He felt very slow. He took an experimental breath and it felt like his lungs might fill and fill and fill and fill and fill with air forever. He might fill with air until he was light enough to float away like a- a- what was thing that floated?
A great distance away, he could hear the sounds of people talking, but he did not know what they were saying. The sound was coming from so far away that by the time the words reached his ears, they had eroded beyond recognition.
Aziraphale took another ages-long breath. Something had just been frightening him, but he could not remember what it was. He was not sure how long ago that was. He was not sure if he was still under threat. And it was not too unpleasant, this sensation. He could shut out all sensation all together and retreat into the abyss of himself.
From nowhere came a voice. “It’s me,” Crowley said. “Can you hear me?”
“Of course I can hear you,” Aziraphale answered. “Hello.”
“Can you open your eyes?” Crowley’s voice sounded odd.
Aziraphale, who did not realize that his eyes were shut, opened them quickly.
Crowley’s eyes.
That was what he first saw. Crowley’s glowing, golden eyes with no white visible. Golden like honey, like the visual analogue of the drink they had given him. Crowley’s bright eyes were like the antithesis of the darkness he had been in a moment before. The antidote for it.
“Right,” Crowley said, sounding embarrassed. “Let’s just get out of here, shall we?”
Aziraphale had been speaking aloud, he realized. Or perhaps Crowley could read his thoughts. It was not so far-fetched. Crowley knew him like no other. He could probably read Aziraphale’s every thought and mood on his face or in his movements. He could probably smell it on him.
“No,” Crowley said in a pained voice. “You’re saying it out loud.”
Something flashed in the corner of Aziraphale’s vision. He looked down – his heavy head lolling on his neck – to see his gag burning in Crowley’s hand. Crowley was burning his gag. He probably said it out loud: Crowley, you’re burning my gag. The flames were flickering around it in slow motion and Aziraphale had just enough wherewithal to know that it was not the result of the drink they gave him, the flames were moving outside of the regular tempo of time. Like Aziraphale’s mind.
Aziraphale did not realize that he was reaching for the flames until Crowley grabbed his hand and held it back. “Don’t touch it!” he exclaimed. Aziraphale’s eyes fell to their joined hands and rested there. “That’s hellfire, what are you thinking? Come on.”
He tugged on Aziraphale’s hand and helped him sit up. He must have unbound Aziraphale when he ungagged him. He helped Aziraphale stand, then led him out of the room. The cultists were still standing around them, frozen in place. Their eyes followed Aziraphale and Crowley as they walked in between them and out of the room.
“What will happen to them?” Aziraphale wondered.
“They abducted you, don’t worry about what will happen to them,” Crowley said.
“Crowley, don’t- don’t….” There was a heaviness in his head that was weighing down his tongue and his eyelids and… and….
_________________________
Crowley was sitting next to Aziraphale’s bed when he woke up. The image of the woman who had asked him for directions came into Aziraphale’s mind. She had been the perfect distressed damsel. Ripe to be rescued.
“Good morning,” Aziraphale said to signal that he was awake and not because it was a good morning.
“I have been thinking and I have narrowed it down to two possibilities,” Crowley said, as though they were already mid-conversation. He wasn’t looking at Aziraphale. “The first is that this is the work of Hell. I haven’t heard anything about it from the home office, but I can ask around a little and see. The second possibility-“
“It wasn’t Hell,” Aziraphale interrupted. “At least, it didn’t seem like it.”
“Well, then the second possibility-”
“They said it was because God sent me to them as a vessel of purity.”
Crowley swung around to look at him for the first time. “They what?”
Aziraphale wanted to hide underneath his covers. “They said that God sent them an angel to supplement their purity.”
Crowley snorted. “Oh, ‘purity.’ Putting aside that ridiculous notion- they know you as an angel? How?”
“They didn’t say,” Aziraphale said, looking around the room. He wasn’t lying; they did not say. And if Crowley did not remember Aziraphale’s slip up with his wings a decade ago in the woods, then he was certainly not going to remind him. “They gave me the impression that they were going to drain my purity somehow and take it for themselves.”
When he glanced at Crowley, his looks were serious. Aziraphale could see the thoughts flying around Crowley’s mind like a flock of birds. From Crowley’s expression, they were ravens and not doves. The silence stretched on. Aziraphale searched for something to say, something to distract Crowley from the peck of his dismal thoughts.
“I don’t usually sleep,” Aziraphale said.
Crowley looked up at him. His face softened with surprise or confusion. “What?”
“I haven’t slept so much in the last two centuries as I have during these- incidents. I think that I might make a habit out of it. The sleep, that is.”
Crowley titled his head thoughtfully, and it was an echo of his movements as a serpent. Aziraphale felt another pang for all that was lost in Eden. If it had not been for Crowley’s temptation of Eve, if it had not been for Aziraphale giving Adam his sword- this line of thought was a clear-cut path through the verdant growth in his mind, like a well-trodden trail. He walked this path frequently: what might have been if he had been a better angel.
“So you like it? Sleeping?”
“Sometimes. I tried to sleep after last time, but it was not restful. I think it is whatever they drugged me with that lets me sleep so well.”
Crowley smiled for the first time. “These people are going to turn you into an addict. Who knew you would go in for drug-induced sloth.”
He was joking, but Aziraphale quickly sat up and struggled out from his covers. He realized that he was still fully naked.
“Oh,” he said, blushing. He made a half-movement to get back under his blankets, then put his chin up and went to his wardrobe. He dressed himself quickly, not even thinking about the fact that another one of his favorite jackets was laying in ribbons on the floor of a cult’s dungeon. He was certainly not thinking instead about how he had never been nude for so long before, and that Crowley had been there nearly the entire time.
The other angels would laugh at him if they knew of his modesty over this borrowed human form, if they knew that he felt a pointed vulnerability knowing that Crowley had seen it. As if it meant that Crowley could see something secret about him. He blushed deeper.
Once he was safely layered in textile, Aziraphale smoothed his hands down the front of his jacket and turned to face Crowley again. Crowley was polishing the dark lens of his glasses with his handkerchief. He put the glasses back on.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Crowley began. He paused, as if reconsidering what he was about to say. He shook his head at his own thoughts. His face said forget it. “I’ll look into this, angel. Just stay out of sight for now. Can you do that? Just until we know it’s over.”
Aziraphale almost opened his mouth to say, but surely it is already over! and was prepared to merrily argue the point with Crowley until they both felt more like themselves. But the strain in Crowley’s voice and the stress pinching his lips stopped Aziraphale’s mouth.
“Have I thanked you yet?” Aziraphale said after a pause. “For finding me again?”
“No,” Crowley said. “And don’t.” All of the doors in Aziraphale’s apartment and in his bookshop downstairs closed as Crowley spoke.
He didn’t use his big, scary demon voice. It wasn’t the don’t-let-Hell-hear-you-calling-me-good voice. It was the voice he had used when he had just moved to London permanently and Aziraphale had offered to put him up while Crowley searched out stable accommodations. Which, in Aziraphale’s mind, had only been fair considering that Aziraphale had written him several long letters persuading him to establish a permanent residence there. It was simply the right thing to do, to offer him a place to proverbially hang his hat until he could find his own place.
Aziraphale felt a similar rush of indignation now as the one he had felt then. He was only doing the decent thing, and Crowley was thwarting him. Typical demon, Aziraphale thought huffily.
“Well, I do so hate for my personal troubles to impose on you like this,” Aziraphale sniffed. He placed emphasis on nearly every word. “Perhaps next time you should not vex yourself with my concerns.”
Crowley regarded him coolly. “Not vex myself?”
Aziraphale felt hot and prickly with embarrassment now- with irritation, he told himself. “Yes, it seems like quite a strain on your time and effort so perhaps- don’t,” he finished lamely.
“Don’t,” Crowley repeated. The doors locked themselves and unlocked themselves in the bookshop below as Crowley arranged his next sentence. “ Don’t interfere with the men who are trying to destroy you for your purity?” The last word dripped in irony.
“Not if it’s so much bother for you,” Aziraphale said, turning away haughtily. “Anyway, I never asked you for your help and I am perfectly capable of handling myself. I am, after all, one of the Lord’s angels and I do have certain- certain capabilities. For situations. So thank you, but you know. No need, moving forward.”
Crowley unfolded himself from the chair beside Aziraphale’s bed, rising to a standing height that seemed several inches taller than usual for him. “Please yourself.”
And then he was gone.
_________________________
Now without the security that came from knowing that Crowley would help him, Aziraphale still was certainly not worried about leaving his bookshop, and he felt fully and assuredly capable of handling himself and any evil-doers who might wish to siphon off his angelic light, just as he had told Crowley he was. It was not, of course, fear or concern that kept him homebound in the following months; he was simply very busy with a transcription project that urgently needed completion. He had begun the project in 1295, but it simply had to be concluded before he could possibly give anything else his attention.
After he finished, he did a – very necessary – double and triple check of each page of the manuscript. Once that was over, the only thing left for him to do was take it to a book binder to be made ready for shelving in his shop.
Aziraphale dressed himself distractedly. He selected, at first, his least favorite of each article of clothing, but shook his head at his own cowardice before putting on his second favorite of everything. When he reached for a coat, his hand paused at Crowley’s jacket, still hanging in the wardrobe, then brushed on. The nice, deep gray coat that he’d had made up in France. Yes, that would do.
He paused at his threshold, then shook his head again. He straightened up and burst through his door onto the street. His head swiveled right, left, right, left, right. No one was looking at him and he forced a minute’s worth of deep, steadying breaths through the lungs of his corporeal form. The air was sweet and crisply cold. Lovely air.
Aziraphale turned his feet in the direction of the book binder and sternly told himself that he was to hurry there and back with no distractions. Despite the loveliness of the day, or the attractions of the shops, or the sweet smells from the bakery. He was on a mission. But when he had left the manuscript with the book binder and nothing odd or upsetting had happened, Aziraphale softened on himself. Oh go on then, he thought as he passed the bakery.
Emerging later from its doorway with his goods, Aziraphale decided to take the scenic route back to the bookshop. The scenic route took him only about a mile out of his way after all. He passed through a pretty little park, which made him think of the second Eden that had started this all for him. Well, if he was going to be specific it was really the first Eden that had started it, and the second Eden had just snarled a new tangle into everything.
He sighed. He had still not found that second Eden again. Perhaps it was like the first Eden, and he would never be allowed to return. A shame; he did still so wish he could take Crowley there one day, when Crowley resumed speaking to him.
Just as he had that thought, Crowley appeared from a building across the way as though summoned by Aziraphale’s thinking of him. For a moment Aziraphale thought that perhaps that was exactly what happened, the same way that Crowley always appeared when Aziraphale had been abducted, but the surprise on Crowley’s face when their eyes met dissuaded him of that fanciful idea. Crowley’s expression of surprise quickly evaporated and that same cool look he had worn during their last encounter replaced it. He nodded shallowly in Aziraphale’s direction, but did not approach, sauntering away in the other direction, shifting his stack of books from one arm to the other.
Stack of books. Aziraphale noticed only then that the shop Crowley had emerged from was, in fact, a bookshop. Not Aziraphale’s- someone else’s bookshop! “Well!” Aziraphale exclaimed. “Well!” He could have stomped his foot on the ground. He could have summoned a gale of wind to blow the offending bookshop off the face of the earth. He glared at Crowley’s retreating back as Crowley slipped around a corner and out of view. Venomously, he said to himself, “Well, good riddance.”
Despite what he had said to Crowley in his home about not requiring his aid in any future abductions, he had not, until this moment, meant it. Good riddance.
_________________________
Good riddance echoed in Aziraphale’s head as he slowly, foggily came to consciousness. What a strange sensation to feel so familiar to him. In fact, he was becoming such an expert on regaining his consciousness that he could tell immediately that he had been deprived of it through pharmaceutical means rather than physical ones. There, what a talent that was!
He sought his bearings. The last thing he remembered- what was it? Memories murkily assembled. He had been distributing alms to the poor of Cremona with Liutprand, eagerly soaking up his shocking and gossiping stories of Constantinople- no, no. That had happened six hundred years ago. Where had he been earlier today? And where was he now?
The latter he could at least begin to answer. He was laying on his back in a dark room without windows. He was, to his relief, fully clothed and had no gag in his mouth. He tried to move and found that he could do so with only moderate difficulty. He was not shackled, so he moved himself into a seated position. As he did so, he became aware of the other person in the room. A man of middle age and pinched features leaned against the wall, watching him.
“Oh, hello,” Aziraphale said. His voice was very strange, but at least he could use it. “I think there has been a mistake.”
“There is no mistake,” the man said. “And you’d do better to lay back down.”
“You see, I would rather not.” Aziraphale said in his strange voice, though his head was spinning so much that he wasn’t entirely sure that he was not laying down again already. “I think I would rather just go.”
The man laughed softly between his teeth. “I am sorry to say that you will not be going anywhere.” He put his hand flat on Aziraphale’s chest, making it clear to him through the swirling in his mind that he was, in fact, laying down again.
“I have to warn you,” Aziraphale said, trying to sound as cold as Crowley had during their fight, “that I have been in this position before.”
“Then I must warn you in return: I have been in this position before as well.”
More than whatever drug was coursing through his system, those words paralyzed him. His mind wanted to make sense of it, but his coherence was slipping away into a haze of drugs and fear.
“Oh, don’t-” he tried to say when the man took out a knife, but he couldn’t make the words audible before he was cutting away Aziraphale’s clothing. Why could they never undress him without a knife? His mind was being carried away by the drugs, and he was tempted to let himself go, but the fear of what he would find when he returned kept him sickeningly in the present.
Once he had been divested of all of his clothing, the man seemed to leave the room. Aziraphale heard a door close and a key turn in the lock, so perhaps he would be gone for a while. But as Aziraphale mustered the strength to sit up, the key turned and the door opened and again. It sounded as if many people came through it now.
The group conferred among themselves too quietly for Aziraphale to hear what they were saying. He felt oddly self-conscious of his nakedness even through the haze. The members of the group approached him, positioned all around him, and each began to trace something onto his skin with something wet. Then they sprinkled a grainy substance like salt or sand onto the wet drawings. It felt as though that made the symbols a part of his skin.
Panic surged in Aziraphale. So what if Gabriel would be angry with him, he was going to leave and he was going to leave right now! Squeezing his eyes shut, he called up the miracle to transport him back to his bookshop, but it wouldn’t come. He could feel it fighting to get through those symbols on his skin. Gritting his teeth and using every bit of strength, he dragged the miracle through.
He felt the miracle become real and sighed in relief and opened his eyes. But he was there still in the dark room with those people. Hanging in the air above him hovered his miracle, real in a way that it should not be: a golden, glowing orb hovering just above him. His arms were too weakened to reach for it, though it felt immensely wrong to leave it hanging there.
The assembly of his captors looked at it in awe. The man who had been there when Aziraphale awoke said, “It is as we were promised.” He reached out a hand and touched the orb with his finger. The orb pulsed a bright, blinding light and he yanked his hand away as though he had been burned. But his expression was triumphant. “Get the chalice,” he ordered. Several of the group fought among themselves for the honor of scooping the orb out of the air.
Tears rolled down Aziraphale’s cheeks. Why had he quarreled with Crowley? He literally could not remember the cause. His mind was thick with the drug and couldn’t find that memory. Oh Crowley, Crowley, Crowley…. He was not dying, he was nearly certain of it, but the theft of his miracle felt very much like a kind of death.
The group began to file out of the room until Aziraphale was left with only the man who was there when he awoke. “Very well done,” the man said. “Be sure to do more of the same when we return. To think, I may not even need to use this.” He held his knife in front of Aziraphale’s face to be sure that he saw the long blade, the dark stones set in the handle. “I will, however, keep it at hand. In case I do need to use it.”
“What happens if you use it?” Aziraphale whispered.
The man gave another soft laugh through his teeth. “I thought you said you had been in this position before.” He sheathed the knife, then traced his fingers along a symbol on Aziraphale’s skin, causing him to shiver, sickened. “Before I go, let’s help you to sleep, shall we? You’ll need your strength later.” He took a small bottle from his robes and dripped some of its liquid onto Aziraphale’s lips. “There. I wish you sweet dreams, Angel.”
Aziraphale jerked on the slab. No one had called him angel beside Crowley, not ever . He wished he could go back to when that was true. He wished Crowley was here to call him angel instead.
Whatever the man had dripped onto Aziraphale’s lips quickly began to take effect. His mind filled with sand, as though what coated his skin had seeped into his brain. He was losing consciousness. He was an expert at this.
There was a very loud crack and a burning taste in the air. The drug pushed Aziraphale into nothingness.
_________________________
When Aziraphale awoke, Crowley was not at his bedside. Blearily, he wondered if this was unusual or usual. Why should Crowley be there? Memories began to present themselves. The dark room, the knife, the miracle that didn’t work. Were these memories or dreams? They felt like memories, but then shouldn’t Crowley be here? Crowley was always here when Aziraphale awoke after being captured.
He moved about under his blanket. Something itched at his skin and his last hopes that the terrible experience had been a dream evaporated as he discovered that the symbols were still painted onto his skin in that sand-like grit. This propelled him out of his bed and to his washtub where he scrubbed and scrubbed until every grain was gone. He would send his bedclothes to the laundress and if a single grain of sand remained in them after that, well, then he would burn them.
Now that he was clean, he wanted only to be dressed. He plundered his diminishing wardrobe and tried not to miss the set of clothes left on the floor of that dark room. Fashions would soon have rendered them all outdated anyway, he told himself firmly.
Dressed, he began to descend the stairs into his bookshop. A sudden noise from below made him freeze. Between heartbeats he was struck by the thought that he did not remember how he returned home from the dark room. Perhaps those men had brought him. Perhaps they were here now, making noise in his bookshop. He took a tentative step backward up the stairs.
Crowley crossed the base of the staircase, a cup in one hand and an open book in the other. He looked up and saw Aziraphale. “You’re awake,” he said.
Aziraphale lowered the hand that had sprung to his heart. “It’s you.”
“Me? Of course it’s me, who else would it be?” Aziraphale didn’t say anything and Crowley tilted his head, serpent-like. “I can ease your mind about those men. You won’t see them again.”
Aziraphale stayed where he was on the stairs. “Are they dead?”
Crowley gestured for him. “Come down, angel.”
He didn’t move. “Crowley, are they dead?”
“Yes.”
Aziraphale couldn’t decide if he was sorry to hear it, and he resumed descending the stairs down to Crowley.
The cup, it turned out, was for him. He held it between his hands, letting its warmth seep into him. Crowley draped a blanket across Aziraphale’s shoulders and settled into the chair across from him. He watched Aziraphale from over his steepled fingers in the pose he watched when Aziraphale was eating, though there was a different tenor to his attentive look.
“Thank you,” Aziraphale said awkwardly. “I said not to come, but I am glad that you did.” Crowley waved his words away and returned to his watchful posture. Aziraphale took a few more careful sips under his gaze. “I mean it, Crowley. I am grateful.”
Once again Crowley batted away his words like they were buzzing flies. But he seemed pleased. He leaned back in his seat and let Aziraphale finish his drink in silence. When Aziraphale’s cup was empty, Crowley took it back to the kitchen and brought it back again full. He handed it back to Aziraphale, but this time did not sit. Aziraphale gestured invitingly to the empty chair.
“I have an appointment,” Crowley said quietly. “But I will be back in a month. If you’ll allow it.”
“Oh,” Aziraphale said, thinking of their quarrel. “Of course I’ll allow it, Crowley. You’re welcome here.” He wanted to ask about Crowley’s appointment, but he didn’t. Something for Hell, no doubt. Something he shouldn’t know about.
Crowley nodded at him, shoulders relaxing. “Then I’ll be back.”
_________________________
A country acquaintance of his – who was primarily a business contact – wrote Aziraphale about a country estate sale some miles from London at which the deceased’s library would be made available for auction. Would Aziraphale like his acquaintance to represent him at the auction? Would Aziraphale like to attend the action himself? Aziraphale debated the matter briefly with himself before succumbing to his strong desire to go. At the time of his departure, he wrote Crowley a letter explaining his errand and left it on his own desk in the back of the bookshop. Halfway down the block, he turned back, retrieved the letter, and burnt it to ash with a candle. He was at nearly the same point on the road when he had to turn back again to extinguish the candle.
The estate was a perfect country seat, and Aziraphale found himself idly fantasizing about what life here would be like. He did not, even in his fantasy, believe that he would discover another Eden in the tangled woods surrounding the home.
He was pleased to find that he was able to amble around the library unencumbered by a chaperone or companion. There were some very fine texts here. Among the scrolls and wood-bound tomes, there were a few books with newfangled pasteboard covers, which Aziraphale was as of yet undecided about. Book binding itself was still so new, only perhaps a few hundred years old, and already these expeditious artisans were tweaking and changing the craft. Then again, the pasteboard was aesthetically pleasant and nice to have against one’s hands. Aziraphale stopped to ponder a pasteboard volume of Song of Roland.
“Hello, Aziraphale.”
Roland clattered to the ground as Aziraphale jumped. Gabriel was beside him, dressed in the white robes that his corporeal form had worn for centuries. Aziraphale looked around them fretfully for witnesses. “Oh, Gabriel! Hello!”
“Hello,” Gabriel said again. Despite all his years with his body, Gabriel had not yet quite mastered a smile that seemed human, and Aziraphale felt increasing nervousness looking at him.
“How wonderful to see you,” Aziraphale said, for something to say.
Gabriel nodded, as if he had known that it would be wonderful for Aziraphale to see him. “It’s been a few years, hasn’t it?”
It has been nearly two hundred and fifty years, but Aziraphale was not going to be fastidious. He nodded instead, smiling with his lips pressed tightly together.
Gabriel smiled alarmingly back at him for a moment, then abruptly dropped his grin with a sigh and rubbed his cheeks as if they were exhausted from the effort. He picked up the book Aziraphale had dropped in surprise. He turned it over in his hands, then discovered the cover and lifted it experimentally. He frowned. “I don’t know what was wrong with scrolls. Scrolls were perfectly fine. And the way you could hold one up and let the whole thing unroll all the way to the ground when you wanted to make a point- that was perfect. But no, humans needed books.” He pronounced the last word with disdain. Aziraphale swallowed uncomfortably and wondered if Gabriel knew of Aziraphale’s earthly profession.
There was a noise beyond the door, causing Aziraphale to start. He was anxious to keep Gabriel out of sight of the other auction-goers. In his archaic white robes, Gabriel looked the very image of the contemporary conception of the angel, and Aziraphale did not want any of those men to hear about a second angel. No one entered the library, but Aziraphale was not at ease.
He became aware that Gabriel had been speaking and he was looking at Aziraphale expectantly.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that,” Aziraphale offered apologetically.
Gabriel sighed. “You really are an odd one, Aziraphale. Most angels pay attention when an archangel is speaking.” Aziraphale blushed and couldn’t think of what to say. Another person approaching in the hall caused him to tense until their footsteps faded once more. “What? What is it?” Gabriel said exasperatedly. “Are we not supposed to be in here?” He looked as though it would be completely unsurprising if Aziraphale was trespassing.
“No, no. It’s just- well, the thing is-”
Gabriel made a rolling gesture with his hand that said spit it out.
“We aren’t trespassing,” Aziraphale said. “But we do have reason to fear discovery.”
“Which is?”
“Apparently,” Aziraphale said, lowering his voice, “there are some- some- some villains about who have been targeting angels.” Gabriel’s eyes focused immediately on Aziraphale. “These blackguards have it in their minds that if they kidnap an angel they can siphon off all of their heavenly light and take it for themselves.”
“No!” Gabriel gasped, hooked.
Aziraphale nodded solemnly. “It is shocking.”
Gabriel leaned in. “How do they find angels?”
He couldn’t very well tell the utter truth. Aziraphale thought of those men who had tricked him with the woman in distress. “They set traps for them. They pretend to be in need, and when an angel comes along and wants to help-” He clapped his hands together signaling the angel springing the trap, causing Gabriel to jump slightly. Aziraphale felt oddly and deliciously well-attended. The Supreme Archangel’s rapt attention was ambrosial. “Then they whisk the angel away to a dungeon and cover him with Satanic symbols.”
“To corrupt his vessel? To separate him from his light?”
Aziraphale nodded gravely once more, though his assent was as much conjecture as Gabriel’s assumption. Though, he rationalized, it did make a great deal of sense. “And once the vessel has been corrupted, they withdraw all the purity from the angel. That’s what draws them in the first place, you see: the purity.”
“Wow,” Gabriel said softly. “Wow.” He looked down at his robes, then around them, examined a portrait on the wall, and miracled himself into an identical outfit. It was some fifty years out of fashion, but at least his feet were no longer bare and it was certainly less attention-catching. “Have you ever seen any of them?”
“Yes, I have. They have captured me many times and attempted this,” Aziraphale said with great self-importance, though prior to this conversation, threats of death would not have been sufficient to extract this confession to Gabriel specifically. “They have never been successful though,” he added, in case it was not self-evident.
The look Gabriel gave him took a moment for him to parse; he had never seen admiration in an expression Gabriel directed at him before. It was such a profound shock to recognize that it nearly made Aziraphale nervous.
“Because of your ‘purity’?” Gabriel said it nearly as ironically as Crowley had but he still looked impressed. Impressed and thoughtful.
For a fraction of a moment, Aziraphale thought about telling Gabriel about the second Eden he had found, but an impulse of good sense stopped him. Somehow, he knew, that information would destroy whatever esteem he had gained in Gabriel’s eyes rather than augment it.
“Well, Aziraphale,” Gabriel said. “You must be the exemplification of an angel. Very Heavenly.” His eyes were considering. It was like he was looking at Aziraphale for the first time. “Whatever you are doing must be the right thing, if it is drawing this kind of attention.” And Aziraphale had his marching orders, as it were.
Gabriel remained with Aziraphale for the entirety of the auction. He took his cues from Aziraphale, and though he very nearly bid an emperor’s fortune on a single woodcut poem – fortunately, those in attendance at the auction thought it was a joke at the expense of the deceased’s literary tastes and it had generated a chuckle among them – Gabriel did mostly only as Aziraphale did. It was something like being peers. It was unique in the entirety of their relationship up to this point, and Aziraphale held his breath for much of the day.
_________________________
Crowley returned promptly in one month from his departure. Aziraphale waved him happily toward one of his armchairs, with a mind toward telling him about his conversation with Gabriel, but his happiness diminished and all thoughts of pleasant conversation flew his mind when he saw what Crowley had brought with him.
“You do know that this is a bookshop, don’t you?” he grumbled.
Crowley set his stack of books down onto the desk next to him. “And I would have thought you’d be over the moon that I’ve taken an interest in your favorite pastime.”
“Over the moon?” Aziraphale tried the strange phrase out.
“Over the moon. I met a very interesting man by the name of Thomas Preston who said it. I don’t remember the whole quotation, but it was something like, ‘Hey diddle-diddle, the cow jumped over the moon.’ Very interesting, I would say. Imagine a cow jumping all the way over the moon. Think of the little cow shadow that he would cast on its surface as he jumped.” Crowley traced the cow’s imaginary trajectory with his finger in the air.
“Oh, very interesting,” Aziraphale prevaricated. He looked pointedly at the books beside Crowley.
“Alright, alright,” Crowley said. “You did ask about the moon bit, just to be clear.” He placed his hand atop the stack. “I have been looking into your cultist problem.”
“Did we agree that they are cultists?”
Crowley shrugged eloquently. “I would say so. You did say that some of them were wearing strange robes. And then there’s the sacrificing bit.”
“None of them ever mentioned anything at all about sacrificing me!"
“I suppose not, they just want to drain your angelic light and use it for themselves. Regardless,” he held up a finger to stem Aziraphale’s interjections, “I have been looking into them, as promised. And I believe that I have discovered something....” He pondered the correct word.
“Interesting?” Aziraphale offered drolly.
“Relevant,” Crowley said, sounding reluctant.
“Well?”
Crowley cleared his throat several times. He shifted in his seat, picked up a book from the stack and opened it to a marked page, then closed it, rose, and began to pace.
“What is it?” Aziraphale asked.
Crowley glared at him, opened his mouth, closed it, and sat down to open his book. Then he stood and went to pace.
“Oh, just say it!” Aziraphale cried.
“It’s- well, it seems to be a question,” Crowley said slowly and almost apologetically, “of virginity.”
“Virginity?” Aziraphale gaped. “My virginity?” He blushed deeply when Crowley nodded, which was perhaps, he reflected, a very virginal thing to do. “But- that’s none of their business!” This was a ridiculous thing to say, but he could not help but blurt it out indignantly.
“It is not,” Crowley said gravely, sinking back down into his seat. He did not appear to be holding back a laugh, but Aziraphale could not be certain. “Regardless, it appears that it is among the easiest ways for them to find you, and essential to the kind of ‘purity’ that they would draw from you. I can provide the citation for this, if you’d like.” His hand hovered above his books, ready to point to the line if called upon.
“None of my captors have, well,” – now it was Aziraphale’s turn to clear his throat – “tried to… alter my situation.”
Crowley had opened a book and was examining it intently. “I do not believe it would be at all useful to their ends to, ah, alter the situation that makes you valuable to them.”
“Oh.”
“However,” Crowley said, still looking so intently at the pages of his book that he may have been reading directly from them, “it may be useful to you. If your situation was altered, that is.”
Crowley’s meaning sat in the silence between them. “You are saying,” Aziraphale said eventually, “that were I not a virgin, they would no longer have any particular use for me and would leave me alone in the future?”
“You could end this whole business yourself,” Crowley said, looking up at him for the first time since broaching the subject.
“I would just need to be deflowered.” His chest felt tight. “Hmm, I see.”
“Are you… opposed to this kind of act? For yourself?” Crowley asked softly.
“Opposed? No, I am inclined in that direction, I suppose you could say.” He was hardly aware of what he was saying. “I’ve simply never….” He let himself trail off.
Crowley was still looking at him, as intently as he had been examining his books. “I am certain you would have no great difficulty finding a willing partner,” he said.
Aziraphale could not possibly blush any more deeply than he already was, so his blush remained unchanged as a new wave of embarrassment swept through him. “Well! How kind of you, Crowley, to concede that I am not so hideously unattractive that I would be unable to find a person who is interested in me in that way! I am so flattered.”
“No need to work yourself into a tizzy,” Crowley said. “Just pick someone and get the job done. I can think of several here in London alone who would be suitable and quite happy to perform such an act.”
Aziraphale sputtered. “Several here in London? I hardly even know anybody at all in London apart from you! Who- no, no, I do not wish to know who.”
Crowley tilted his head, his chin resting on his steepled fingers. “Really, angel, I can’t make any sense of your reaction at all. First you were offended when you thought I did not think you could find a suitable partner, and now you are offended when I assure you that you could easily find one. I can make the introductions, if necessary.”
“You will do no such thing!”
“Won’t I?”
“Crowley, how dare you suggest such a thing!”
“What- introducing you to new people?”
“Introducing me to someone with the specific intent- for the specific purpose of- Crowley! You know what I mean! It is base, beyond base! Such an introduction- out of the question!”
“Base? But angel, you have not even performed the act; can you be certain that it is base? Perhaps you will not find it so if you try it.” That damned demon was smiling.
Aziraphale’s face tried to turn even redder but found it impossible. He thanked God in Heaven that they were having this conversation now, and not one of the numerous times that he had awakened, still naked, following an abduction- a small miracle which allowed him to maintain a scrap of his dignity. “I am not,” he said to a spot on the floor between his feet, “as wholly unfamiliar with such things as you seem to believe.”
Crowley leaned forward in his armchair, elbows on knees. “Is that so?” He seemed for some time to be searching for what to say next. Eventually, “Then there should be no issue.”
No issue! Aziraphale trembled before the thought.
“Come on, angel, what is it? It seems straightforward to me. Choose a partner, perform the act, strike your name from the list of virgins that cultists pursue. Hey diddle-diddle.”
“But I- I don’t want to.”
“Don’t want which part?”
“You know which part!”
“I thought it aligned with your inclinations.”
“It does,” Aziraphale said miserably. “I just- I do not want to do it as you have represented it.”
“And why not? I know that it isn’t forbidden.”
Aziraphale lied, “I don’t know the reason.” He did know the reason, but he already felt so small and foolish that he could not bring himself to describe it. He could not say Gabriel just told me that I am the epitome of an angel because of this. And this was not even the whole truth; the whole truth was even more unfathomably unspeakable. Well, Crowley, you see, I have a much more romantic notion of the sexual act than something as utilitarian as you have detailed. I don’t think I could enjoy such an encounter as a means to an end, I only value it as an expression of the deepest admiration and respect for another. The little Crowley who lived in his mind rolled around in laughter.
The big Crowley who was in his bookshop threw his hands up in exasperation. “Do you not remember the condition you were in the last three times you crossed paths with these people?”
“Of course I-”
“Because I remember. I remember it constantly, Aziraphale.” The flames flickering in the candles grew brighter and slowed in their dances. The bookshop took on a red tone in the shifting light. “I was not drugged or incapacitated as you were. Therefore, I can remember it clearly. So you may understand why I am baffled- why I am flummoxed and mystified and dumbfounded and astonished and- and- well, you can look up some more descriptors for my condition later, but I am stupefied that you will not just do what is necessary to protect yourself, and prevent both of us from being in this situation again in the future.”
He was breathing heavily by the end of this speech, possibly from all of the large gestures he had been making with his hands. He and Aziraphale stared at each other for a long pause, the only sound in the room being Crowley’s breathing, which soon slowed and evened.
“But you will not listen to me in this,” Crowley said slowly. “So I suppose we will meet like that again.”
Aziraphale bristled. “If it is too much of an inconvenience for you-”
“Let’s not start with that again,” Crowley interjected lazily, settling into the careless coolness that he wore as comfortably as his skin. The candlelight returned to normal, and the light in the bookshop seemed less red and more gold. “You will not listen to me and I will not listen to you so we must meet like that again.”
_________________________
Crowley was right that Aziraphale did not heed him, neither in his pleas for Aziraphale to divest himself of his pesky virginity, nor in his pleas for caution. Before he had left that evening, Crowley had paused at the door, arranging his cap and glasses. “At least try to be careful, angel,” he had said. “Say that you will be careful.” There was something hiding in his voice that Aziraphale couldn’t puzzle out. They had opened up some wine following their uncomfortable discussion of Aziraphale precarious virtue, and then opened some more. His head was pleasantly buzzing with the alcohol.
“I will, I will,” Aziraphale said jollily, waving him goodbye as he turned down the street.
Aziraphale was not.
He meant to be, really he did. It was not as though he enjoyed being captured and stripped and- well, he did not enjoy any of it at all. He certainly did not enjoy purchasing new sets of clothing so frequently as his previous and ruined clothing was left behind in one dark cell after another. But to sit in his bookshop endlessly was out of the question. He may as well return to Heaven if he wished a cloistered, tedious life of toeing the line precisely. And, though he would never admit it to Crowley and he had difficulty admitting it even to himself, since his meeting with Gabriel, Aziraphale felt a sort of prestige surrounding his vulnerability to these men. A prestige that would be reified by a repeated capture, perhaps.
Yes, he had intended to be careful, as he had promised Crowley he would be. He had, he had.
He was out on an errand when he paused at a park, struck by the beauty of it. It did not move him as that second Eden had – for one thing, there were far too many other people around – but it was lovely and eye-catching in its own way. As he stopped to admire it, he wondered errantly why humans were so keen to harvest his angelic pureness when the Lord had already given them something so wondrous as the world. He patted his pockets for the book he had slipped into one of them before leaving, and looked about him for a seat where he could settle down and read in the bright light of the morning.
“How beautiful,” a male voice beside him chimed, aligned with Aziraphale’s own thoughts.
Aziraphale agreed and nodded his accordance, turning toward the person who had spoken. He was a richly-dressed man some inches taller than Aziraphale and well-formed. In the mold of Aziraphale’s preference, he tended toward leanness and dark looks. Aziraphale considered him for a moment- as in he considered him for a moment. Then he blushed enough that he was sure to give away his thoughts. In the handful of times that he had visited with Crowley since Crowley’s discovery, neither of them had alluded to the question of his virginity. As Crowley had said, they would never agree on the matter, so Aziraphale resolved to say nothing and indeed to think nothing more about it. Naturally, it was therefore all that Aziraphale could think about every time they were together, and much of the time that they were apart, causing several moments of embarrassment for him, such as the one he found himself in now and was blushing deeply for. Fortunately, the gentleman was preoccupied with their vantage of the park and did not seem to notice.
Aziraphale’s curious mind played with the hypothetical consideration. What if he did? What if this gentleman was willing and Aziraphale was willing and they went to bed together and solved Aziraphale’s problem? He directed his imagination toward the first steps to his bed. He had spoken truthfully when he had said to Crowley that he was somewhat familiar with the acts two people could do together. He knew certain things and he could presume others, could imagine this gentleman undressing him and letting Aziraphale undress him in return. He could imagine what the gentleman might feel like under his hands. His imagination buckled slightly under the strain of imagining the gentleman’s hands on him, but it did not break the fantasy. His mind was equally timid and eager in its reveries.
Oh yes, he could do it.
But, at the same time, he could not. Crowley had left his research for Aziraphale’s perusal and after a thorough review – initially he was, admittedly, of the opinion that Crowley had gotten it all backwards somehow – Aziraphale did have to concede that this business would likely stop completely if his situation changed. It was logical, as Crowley laid it out. It was correctly reasoned and sound. More than that, it was alluring. The thought that he could, after being at the mercy of men and drugs and blunt or sharp instruments, reverse his situation and take back the reins of his life appealed greatly to him. And more than that, it was tempting. The thought of a pleasure of the earth that he had not yet sampled made him curious and alert in a way he did not know how to describe. His body knew something of it elementally, and he longed at times to know more.
But that was the trouble, wasn’t it? It was tempting. It was a temptation. The idea of it was delicious, it was something that Crowley was serving up appetizingly to him on a platter and saying go on, just try a bite, you have the perfect excuse with all this cultist business. Because Crowley could not help but be a demon. He did not mean to use Aziraphale’s vulnerability as a pressure point to tip him into another transgression. It was simply innate to him for him to do so. So, Aziraphale knew that he must not be persuaded into taking a little taste, not to smell the aroma nor admire the presentation. He would not be tempted. Not this time, not even to stop this madness. That was simply his duty as an angel.
“Damn beautiful,” the gentleman said quietly, as if to himself. But then he looked to Aziraphale. “What do you say?” As though he had not seen Aziraphale nod his agreement a moment ago.
“I agree that it is beautiful, but I must say that I do not hold with profanity, sir,” Aziraphale said primly.
“My apologies, sir,” the gentleman replied, sketching a bow.
“Not at all.”
“No, really, sir,” the gentlemen persisted, “it is very refreshing to meet another man of my own mind and inclination, and I have spoiled it by assuming you to be one of the new fashionable crowd and attempting to speak to you in the manner in which they do. Please, accept my apologies.”
Aziraphale was pleased by this. Him, Aziraphale, being mistaken to be one of the new fashionable crowd! He preened, wishing that Crowley had been at hand to hear it. He would find a way to allude to it naturally in their next conversation.
“Well then, apology most accepted,” Aziraphale smiled at the gentleman. He returned his book to its pocket.
They fell into step together as they made a circuit around the little park. The gentleman expanded on what he presumed to be their shared thoughts and inclinations, and Aziraphale smiled and nodded when called upon, and mostly did not listen too closely. The companionship was odd, but welcome. And perhaps he could do some kind deed for this gentleman who was being so warm to him. For now, he performed a very small miracle on the gentleman’s behalf, erasing an annoying splatter of mud from his boots that the gentleman had sighed over in passing during their conversation. He had the pleasure of the gentleman noting his good fortune several minutes later, and attributing it to the grace of God.
“Ah, sir!” the gentleman exclaimed suddenly, coming to a stop. “Is that a copy of Amadís de Gaula?”
Aziraphale did not realize that he had taken the book out of his pocket again. “Oh. Yes, it is."
“Do you read Spanish, sir?”
“Well enough, but this is my own translation into English,” Aziraphale said, a little proudly. “Amadis of Gaul. All three volumes.”
“Three? But then, you have not had the time to translate the fourth volume?”
Aziraphale gripped the gentleman’s arm. “There is a fourth?”
“Yes, and a sequel as well,” the gentleman said, and laughed. “Excuse me, but the expression on your face tells me that you have not heard of these additions. I am surprised; they were published in 1510.”
The feeling of the embroidery of his sleeve, the impression of the gentleman’s strong forearm beneath it- he had a flash of considering. He cursed Crowley for planting the seeds of these thoughts in his mind. Aziraphale released his grip on the gentleman. “Oh, I apologize. No, I had not heard of these additions, and I was somewhat overcome to hear you mention them as I have a great fondness for the original three volumes.”
The gentleman looked more pleased than he had at any point so far in their conversation. “Then you must permit me to show you my copy. I am returning home directly, you must accompany me.” He laughed again. “Though I suppose you had better tell me your name before you do so.”
“I am Fell, I am the proprietor of a bookshop.”
The gentleman bowed. “A very successful one it must be, if your taste is any indication. I am Harrell, and I am only an amateur enjoyer of literature.”
They clasped hands, smiling at the backwardness of their acquaintance, and found Harrell’s coach in an adjacent lane. It was a short drive to his home, and they passed that time conversing eagerly of their shared distaste for Gargantua et Pantagruel. Aziraphale hardly registered the house’s handsome exterior before he was swept into its handsome interior. They made directly for the home’s library and Aziraphale gasped at the size of it.
“Are you certain you do not also operate a bookshop?”
Harrell laughed from between the shelves. “Your approval flatters me, Fell. Ah, I found it.” He returned with the book, which Aziraphale had to exert great energy not to lunge at like a jungle cat. “Shall we drink a toast to celebrate?” He pressed the book into Aziraphale’s hands.
Aziraphale nodded absently, already flicking through the book’s pages and wondering what would be the most tactful way to ask to borrow it long enough to translate it.
Harrell pressed a cup into his hand and when he proposed, “To Garci Ordóñez de Montalvo and his wonderful work,” Aziraphale drank to it. He did not register the taste.
“I can see your eagerness to begin,” Harrell said, placing his own cup down. “Shall I read it to you?”
Though Aziraphale would have much rather taken it straight home to read to himself, it seemed polite to agree. They sat and Harrell began: “Contado os ha la parte tercera de esta gran historia en el fin y cabo de ella ….”
Harrell’s reading voice was smooth and confident, and Aziraphale began not to mind that he was listening rather than reading it himself. He could close his eyes and see the words painted into a living image behind his eyelids. To his distant surprise, however, rather than become more detached from the reality of the library as he fell into the fiction of the book, Aziraphale found himself becoming more in tune with it. The warmth of the fire became heat, and though his eyes were shut he fancied that he could tell the directions of the flames’ flickering by the dance of heat across his skin. Beneath his fingers, the fabric covering of the armrest of his chair was made of hundreds of threads that he could feel individually. Even Harrell’s breath, as it minutely disturbed Aziraphale’s hair, was like a gusty wind strong enough to send a ship across an ocean.
“Fell?”
“Mm?” He tried to open his eyes but his lids much preferred to stay shut.
“Did you enjoy the first chapter?”
He had read the first chapter already? But Aziraphale was certain that only moments had passed. “Oh, yes,” he said. The vibrations of his voice within his throat were fascinating.
“You seem tired, Fell. Would you like to rest?”
Rest? Would he like that? He thought of how his pillow might feel beneath his head, how he would be able to count the feathers in it by touch. How compelling that sounded. He was not sure he would be able to fall asleep with so many textures to explore from his blankets.
“You must use my bed.” Harrell pulled him to his feet and propelled him toward a door.
“Your bed?” Aziraphale asked, distracted by the feeling of his lips pressing together to make the b sound of bed and nearly forgetting how to finish the word. His tongue touched the roof of his mouth to make the d sound and he could feel every bump on his palate.
Harrell gave him a little push and he cried out, thinking he would hit the floor, but found himself instead sinking into the softness of a mattress. He struggled to orient himself – how had he come to be in the bedroom? – but there were a hundred new sensations that his mind wanted to investigate first. The mattress sagged and Harrell was to his left, hands on the buttons of Aziraphale’s jacket. A murky dark feeling started to rise in the back of Aziraphale’s mind and he understood.
“Oh, you are one of them,” Aziraphale realized aloud.
“One of who?”
“Those men who know- who think I am an angel.”
“You were right the first time, Fell. I know that you are an angel. A perfect angel.”
Aziraphale’s jacket was off. His shirt was off, he could feel the cool air of the room on his chest, giving him goosebumps. The change in sensation captivated him and he lost track of what else was happening for some time, not realizing until Harrell gave his face a little shake.
“Damnation, I gave you too much, didn’t I? You need to be alert for this to work.”
Aziraphale thought that he should be very, very scared. And he thought that there was a small part of him that was, but that part of him must be really very far away indeed because he was certain he would get lost trying to find it. How large was he? He felt expansive, crossing continents with his vastness. They would be able to see him from Heaven for surely he must encompass the majority of the Earth. “For what to work?”
Harrell did not reply. He was busying himself with something and Aziraphale became aware of the fact that he could now feel the cool air across his entire front, and that he was once again entirely naked. The mattress was much nicer to lay on than the ground or a stone slab.
Harrell moved close beside him suddenly. His body weight caused a seismic shift in the mattress, making Aziraphale seasick and causing him to flinch. Harrell laid a soothing hand across Aziraphale’s forehead as though he was a sickness-stricken child. “Now, now, Fell, I am not going to hurt you. I promise you no pain. Indeed, I would be more apt to give you pleasure. You may well find that you enjoy what comes next.”
Aziraphale thought that he should be able to interpret the meaning in Harrell’s words, but his mind was too occupied with the sensations of the world of blankets and sheets beneath him.
“After all, it is not as though you are using your virginity. I could put it to proper use; it is wasted with you.”
Oh, Aziraphale’s virtue. Yes, that was a topic of some scrutiny these days. Hadn’t Crowley been discussing it with him recently? Yes, yes, Aziraphale remembered. “No one wants my virginity,” he said confidently. “It would ruin their prize if I was not a virgin.”
Harrell laughed. “I see you have been speaking with Mollown. That is a stratagem that he and I do not share. He has many mouths to feed, as it were, and I am only concerned with myself. I have no need to preserve your virginity for future use. Quite the contrary, in fact.”
Aziraphale could not follow any of what Harrell was saying, and frankly did not see that it was as important as the feel of the buttons of Harrell’s jacket that were pressed against Aziraphale’s arm. If he could have moved, he would have gotten eye-level with them to examine them in every detail, perhaps take notes on their properties.
“There is nothing to worry about, my angel.”
My angel. That sent a jolt through him. He thought that he was not Harrell’s angel. He thought that no one but Crowley should call him that. He tried to marshall his wits enough to explain that to Harrell, but he was scattering under whatever it was he drank earlier. He needed Crowley to come, for Crowley would be able to explain it to Harrell. He needed Crowley to be here.
He turned his head and Crowley was there. It wasn’t that he could see Crowley there, but the room suddenly felt like it had Crowley in it. Aziraphale couldn’t explain it. He didn’t feel the need to. He relaxed. From what felt like far away he could hear voices, maybe even shouting. His attention was captivated by motes of dust floating in a beam of light, so it was difficult to pay attention to what they were saying.
“Aziraphale.” It was Crowley’s voice. “Can you stand?”
“I would imagine so,” Aziraphale replied. “I’ve done it before.”
“Would you please stand?”
Aziraphale considered it. It seemed reasonable and Crowley had said please, so he struggled to his feet. His muscles obeyed him, but every movement was like pushing through water. He hated to swim.
He rose and Crowley was right there. It was not that it was a surprise, but seeing Crowley with these perfectly clear drugged eyes revealed to Aziraphale a recognition that he was not anticipating. Whatever drug was coursing through his body was opening the door to the world of touch and sight and smell, and it made seeing Crowley different. No, Aziraphale realized, it made seeing him the same- the very same as it was to see him the first time, all those thousands of years ago, when they were both angels drunk on the newness of existence. It was the feeling of finding the second Eden. Aziraphale knew that you could never see the same bolt of lightning twice, but by God, what else was this?
“You’re the same,” Aziraphale murmured. He brought his hands to cup Crowley’s face, he brushed away the lines of confusion that creased his forehead as Aziraphale touched him. “You’re exactly as you were.”
“It hasn’t been that long since you’ve seen me,” Crowley said, pulling his face out from between Aziraphale’s hands. “I shouldn’t be any different.”
Aziraphale frowned. Crowley wasn’t understanding him. “No, I mean-”
“Get dressed. Here, your clothes are fine for once. Put these back on.”
Aziraphale had to be prodded and cajoled at every step, but finally he was dressed enough to be considered decent and Crowley redirected his coaxing with an aim to getting Aziraphale to walk. Aziraphale took a wobbling step befitting a newborn giraffe and Crowley hastened to steady him before he fell. This maneuver brought their faces close together and Aziraphale shivered anew at the lightning bolt of recognition.
“Just the same,” Aziraphale murmured, feeling like the first philosopher in existence. Had he and Crowley been Created first? They must have been the very first, all alone together in the whole universe and filling it full with just the two of them. “Entirely the same.”
“Yes, you keep saying that,” Crowley said, dodging Aziraphale’s hands, which were making for his face once more. “What exactly am I the same as then?”
“The same as you were,” Aziraphale said. How could Crowley not understand when he always understood everything else? “When we met for the first time at the Beginning. When you were an a-” Crowley surged forward to cover Aziraphale’s mouth with his hand. There was a moment of electricity, of being on the brink of realizing something, and then Aziraphale couldn’t follow that spark to his epiphany because Crowley was pulling the drug out, out, out of him and suddenly Aziraphale was himself.
He gulped for air, staring at Crowley. “I didn’t know you could do that.”
“Neither did I.” Crowley’s eyes were wide and wild. “Aziraphale,” he started, then trailed off. Aziraphale was looking down at the rumpled bed, at his sloppily re-donned clothing. His breathing was coming faster and more shallowly. Everything blurred as tears filled his eyes. “Aziraphale,” Crowley said again, this time quiet and soothing, “let’s go.”
It seemed supremely ungrateful to cry during one’s own rescue, but even Aziraphale’s fierce sense of propriety could not stop his tears. Crowley’s hands came up to adjust his collar. “Let’s go, angel,” he repeated. His thumb flicked upward to wipe away a tear that had rolled down Aziraphale’s chin. He smoothed down Aziraphale’s sleeves. “We’re leaving.”
Aziraphale walked half a step behind Crowley all the way home. After the heightened sensitivity caused by the drug, he felt almost numb now that it had been removed from his system. Was the sky not supposed to be bluer than this? Were the birdsongs not supposed to be louder?
Crowley led them into the bookshop and Aziraphale stared at his armchair for a moment. He took his book from his pocket and placed it on the armrest. He hadn’t remembered to take Harrell’s copy of Amadis as they were leaving. He had meant to do that.
Crowley steered him away from the chair and up the stairs, into his bedroom. He moved to assist Aziraphale with his jacket, but Aziraphale stopped him. He crawled into his bed with every stitch of his clothing securely on his body. It was amazing he had not noticed how tired he was. His eyes were drifting shut when he heard Crowley cross the room to exit.
“How is it that you’re always here when I need you?” Aziraphale murmured into his pillows.
He was half-dreaming already when he heard Crowley’s reply: “I can hear you calling for me.” He could not tell if it was in his dreams or reality.
_________________________
Crowley was still there the next morning when Aziraphale awoke. Aziraphale could hear him clattering around downstairs as he lay in bed staring at the ceiling. There was some fogginess obscuring the previous days’ event in his mind. He could remember the broad strokes of Harrell’s baiting and trapping him, his amusement at Aziraphale’s conviction that his virginity was not appealing in that way, and then Crowley showing up like Amadis arriving to repel the invaders from Oriana’s homeland.
There was something important that he could not remember. He could feel its shape in the hole its absence left in his memory. He had remembered something, or discovered something. But he could not remember now what it was.
The building shuddered as a sound like an explosion boomed. Aziraphale leapt out of bed and dashed down the stairs. Crowley intercepted him in the hall.
“Nothing to worry about, angel! Why don’t you sit here and- just stay there for a minute. And don’t move.” He steered Aziraphale to a chair and deposited him into it.
“What was that explosion?” Aziraphale asked Crowley’s retreating back.
“Yeah- no, no explosion! Just stay there!”
Aziraphale sat bemusedly for a minute, then realized that he didn’t have to do as he was told in his own house and followed Crowley down the hallway, finding him in the kitchen. Everything seemed to be intact and in its proper place, but a large and dark burn mark streaking the northern wall indicated that something had certainly transpired here.
“Are you burning my home down?” Aziraphale said, inspecting the burnt wall.
“Never,” Crowley said. “I’m cooking.”
“Cooking?”
“Breakfast.”
“Breakfast?”
“Oh dear,” Crowley said gravely. “The damage to your mind from your drug benders appears to be very severe indeed.”
“Hush,” Aziraphale said, surveying the dishes. “You made this?”
“All on my own, and with a lot of hard work.”
“This looks familiar.”
“Yes, angel, it’s food. You do remember food, don’t you?”
“This looks like the breakfast we had in Carthage in 429. It looks exactly like it.”
Crowley blew out an exasperated breath. “Only you would remember a single meal you ate over a thousand years ago. Okay, yes, I was perhaps inspired by that breakfast but I made this all with my own two hard-working hands. An honest morning’s labor in the kitchens.”
“You made this plum?”
Crowley crossed his arms. He glowered. Aziraphale carried the food to his table and they both sat down.
Aziraphale thought as he chewed. Not about the food and its wonderful taste and texture, as he normally did. At least, not only about that. He was still preoccupied with that important thing missing from his memory of the previous day. A discovery, a spark of knowledge. Something. Oh well, he decided as he popped the last bite into his mouth, if it was really so important then he wouldn’t be able to forget it for long. He could almost mollify himself with that thought, the same way that he could almost convince himself that that had been the final kidnapping, and he must be safe now.
Crowley’s eyes swept from Aziraphale’s face to his empty plate and back again. There was a quirk of a question in his brows.
“Delicious,” Aziraphale judged their breakfast. Crowley’s mouth twitched and Aziraphale thought that maybe if he could have slowed the passage of time, he would have been able to see that his demon had smiled. So Aziraphale said again, “Delicious.”
“As good as it was that time in Carthage in 429?”
“Better.” He waited until Crowley had begun to look smug to add, “But only because of the improved atmosphere.”
Dramatically faux-wounded, Crowley lifted a trembling hand to his heart and Aziraphale smiled. Crowley dropped his hand and relaxed in his seat. “I thought you liked Carthage.”
“I liked it very much.”
“Just not its atmosphere?”
Aziraphale rolled his eyes. “I meant the atmosphere you created at that inn where we were eating.”
Crowley grinned wickedly, his yellow eyes simmering. Aziraphale was not supposed to like seeing a wickedly happy look on a demon’s face, so he did not. But he did etch it into his memory. “I had forgotten about that,” Crowley said.
“I never could. That poor boy!”
“Poor boy? He was pursuing his greatest passion. You should celebrate him. And I think his singing voice was actually very lovely.”
“Perhaps not the best choice of song, however. And in front of his future mother-in-law!”
“Now let’s be fair- I don’t think she ever did become his mother-in-law.”
“Because of you!”
Crowley donned his faux-wounded expression again. “Because of me? And how am I to blame?”
They had had this conversation dozens of times across the ages. Yes, there was always something new to say or talk about, but there was always something old to revisit too like a pilgrimage. Something as comfortable and reliable as Aziraphale’s favorite armchair. Aziraphale wanted to say his part and to hear Crowley say his a thousand more times – a million more– a number that was too large to exist.
“You were the one who compelled him to perform that bawdy song before the entire inn.”
“I’ve never compelled a soul to do a single thing in all of my existence.”
Aziraphale looked at him wryly. “You insinuated to him that you had sufficient influence to secure him a place entertaining Hannibal, if you found his singing adequately diverting. And I do believe that those were your exact words, so don’t quibble.”
“He could have said no,” Crowley grinned. “If it had been me, I would have said no, thanks, and that would have been it.”
“That’s not fair,” Aziraphale said, smiling in return. “Demons are never tempted! You are the ones doing the tempting.”
Crowley laughed heartily at that. “You could not be more wrong, angel,” he said, eyes shining with mirth as he looked at Aziraphale. “You really couldn’t be more wrong.”
From somewhere – or nowhere – Crowley produced another plum and he tossed it to Aziraphale. Aziraphale caught it, feeling its skin supple beneath his fingers. It was akin to touching flesh. Aziraphale had not had much occasion to touch flesh over the course of his existence, but it was not a feeling that his fingers would forget. Soft, yielding. His eyes met Crowley’s at just that moment, with the softness of plum skin beneath his fingers, and he considered— He yanked himself away from the thought. He closed the door on it. He locked the door- threw away the key- fetched the key- dissolved the key out of existence, never to be used.
Aziraphale fiddled with the plum, then set it down. He leaned back into his chair. “Crowley, how is it that they always find me just when I think they cannot?” He knew that Crowley would understand that he meant his captors.
Crowley said, “Bad luck. That and the fact that you simply radiate purity.” He said the last in a silly voice and Aziraphale rolled his eyes. But he also remembered Gabriel saying the same. “And that is a terrible combination.”
“Do you think I can do something about my bad luck?” Aziraphale joked feebly. He did not want to argue about virginity just now.
Crowley, seeming to feel the same, gamely took up the joke. “You know, I do believe there was something about that in that book I left you by Myrick that we should be able to develop into a stratagem.”
Aziraphale bolted upright. Stratagem. That is a stratagem that he and I do not share. He could remember Harrell saying that. This must be what he had discovered and what he hadn’t been able to remember: that his virtue was, in fact, not safe from all of his captors. It was not quite the right shape memory, it did not quite fit into the hole in his recollection, but it must be the missing memory.
“What is it?”
“More bad luck,” Aziraphale groaned, and related the newfound information to Crowley. Crowley let out a long breath between his clenched teeth, but Aziraphale did not see that he was at all surprised by this revelation. He asked no questions and made no effort to defend his earlier speculation that Aziraphale’s captors would be better served by his virginity remaining unchanged.
“Did you know this already?” Aziraphale asked. He did not know how much Crowley may have seen firsthand of Harrell explaining it to him.
“I assumed there would be certain parties that would feel this way. The depths of humanity are very low. You have no idea.”
Aziraphale frowned. He did have some idea; he had been the one kidnapped repeatedly, after all.
“Right.” Crowley began pacing. “I know that it’s not ideal and it’s not your most preferred, uh, preference, but there’s really no other option any longer, is there?” Aziraphale opened his mouth, but – the question being rhetorical – Crowley gave him no opening to reply. “As I said before, you will have plenty of options, but I’d advise that you don’t take too much time in choosing. We don’t want to risk another abduction in the meantime.”
“Crowley-”
“No, speed is of the essence here. We don’t want to give them a chance to find you again first.”
“Crowley.”
“Did you have anything planned for tonight?”
“Crowley!” Aziraphale snapped. “I am not considering that as an option! You know my feelings on this.”
“Well, I know your feelings from before, but this changes things. I’d say it adds some serious urgency to solving this problem, don’t you agree?”
“I don’t think it changes anything.”
“Don’t think it changes anything?” Crowley screeched.
Aziraphale took a breath. He would be gentle, but firm. He set his expression accordingly. His hands naturally joined together in a prayerful pose. He was Gabriel to the life. “Crowley,” he said kindly. Patiently. “I know why you keep insisting on this. I understand.”
Crowley paled. “Well of course you do,” he said, his voice wavering slightly. “We both want to get these cults off your back.”
“I know the other reason.”
Crowley took a small step back. “There is no other reason.”
“I know it’s not your fault. But, well, you are a demon. And it is your job.” Aziraphale focused on maintaining his soothing tone. A tone that would communicate forgiveness. “You’re endeavoring to tempt me into performing the sexual act.”
Crowley, for a moment, looked as if he might choose to sit down, but remained on his feet. The air around him shimmered like a mirage. “I am what?” He articulated each syllable clearly.
Aziraphale wished that he did not need to repeat himself. “I’m not angry with you, Crowley. I understand that as a demon you must try to tempt me into things that will degrade my angelic personage, and with my current situation you have an ideal opportunity. You can parade as many potential partners as you like before me but I have to be clear with you that I know what you are doing and I will not be tempted by any of them.”
Crowley displayed several complicated emotions in the mad dash of expressions that flashed across his face, but produced no words.
“I imagine that it will put you in rather good standing with Hell if you were successful in getting an angel of the Lord to- well. In bringing an angel to your level.”
“My level,” he repeated quietly. For all of the theatrics of a moment ago, this speech was controlled and cold.
“You know what I mean. The level of demons- of Hell.”
“Oh, that’s my grand scheme is it? Well done you for sussing it out so cleverly! Of course I couldn’t have suggested it out of an urge towards your own preservation. Not because, oh I don’t know, I want you to be able to live your life without wondering when the next deranged fanatic is going to leap out of the shadows and club you over the head and drag you off to his lair. No, no, you are simply a block of marble to me and I wield the tools to sculpt you into a demon, just like me. You uncovered my villainy very adroitly. Well done.”
This was not going at all the way Aziraphale had imagined and hoped that it would. “Well, I don’t think you meant it villainously. I know you don’t have a choice.”
Crowley bared his teeth. “My existence is entirely made up of my own choices, Aziraphale. Unlike you, I do things because I choose to do them, not because I think I have a special rubric against which I can grade everything as right or wrong.”
That stung Aziraphale in a way he was not expecting, and he snapped, “So, you’re tempting me by choice? You’re doing it on purpose?”
Crowley puffed up angrily and Aziraphale braced himself, but then Crowley suddenly deflated. He looked down at the glasses in his hand. He looked around the room like he was trying to get his bearings. He looked everywhere except for at Aziraphale.
“Crowley,” Aziraphale said, trying to find that kindly tone again, “it’s alright. I forgive you.”
Crowley slipped his glasses on and looked at Aziraphale. He gave a wicked grin. It was not like the one he had worn earlier, when they had been remembering Carthage together. “If you say so. I mean, whatever you say must be true, Angel. You wouldn’t be wrong, would you?” He gave Aziraphale a jaunty salute. “Must be off. Lots of evil to do. You understand.”
“Wait, Crowley!”
“Yes?”
“You aren’t angry with me, are you?”
“Angry?” Crowley’s grin stretched. “What would be the point of that? You can’t help it; you’re an angel, after all.” He waved at Aziraphale and Aziraphale heard the front door close behind him as he left.
Aziraphale stared at the spot where Crowley used to be. It was a Crowley-shaped hole now, just like that something-shaped empty spot in his memories of the day before.
The plum was sitting on the table. Aziraphale picked it up, then set it back down. He didn’t have the appetite for it.
_________________________
Aziraphale had for some years been a member of an association of art appreciators in London. Not patrons for the most part, just appreciators. It was an association that was only semi-official, but its members took themselves and their organization very seriously. On more than one occasion, a member had been expelled from the group for missing a meeting – they met only twice per annum – and the application process for readmission was grueling to the extreme. And today, Aziraphale was running late. Following his conversation with Crowley, he had turned their words over and over and over in his mind for much longer than he had realized, and he had not noticed the time until he was already late.
He hurried enough that he was tripping over his feet on the winding streets. The part of his mind that was forever dogged by his potential kidnappers thought of how ironic it would be if he was snatched up en route to this meeting. It made him hurry all the faster, and he managed to slip into his seat just in time. He dodged a few disapproving looks and settled in.
He was determined to enjoy this meeting. He hoped to hear more from Master Andrews about the sculpture he had been in the process of acquiring during their previous meeting. He would enjoy almost any news from this meeting. Anything that could distract him from the earlier events of the day. He feared that he may have made a mistake or a misstep of some kind during his conversation with Crowley. He feared that he had done wrong somehow. He could not pinpoint what he might have done; as he reviewed his comments in his mind, he thought he was objectively only saying what was right. But the manner of Crowley’s departure sat very ill with him and he did not wish to feel this way.
Aziraphale scanned the room and the familiar faces of the men in it. Most had been members since the organization’s inception some nine or ten years ago. It would be a stretch to call any of these men friends of his, but he did see several of them socially. He nodded to one of those acquaintances now, then jumped in his seat when he saw who was sitting beside him: it was Gabriel.
Gabriel gave Aziraphale an exaggerated, conspiratorial wink and pointedly turned his attention to the man who was speaking. Heart pounding in his chest, Aziraphale attempted to do the same, but any chance of enjoying this meeting had vanished. Aziraphale caught only one sentence in five that was uttered by the other association members. He did not ask any of his questions about Andrews’ sculptor. His investment in this organization began to feel silly to him. Gabriel, the archangel of Heaven, was spending his valuable time in a meeting of amateur lovers of artistic endeavors. It made him uncomfortable, fretful to think of what duties Gabriel must be neglecting to be here instead. Gabriel listened to the proceedings with a kind of vacancy that only amplified Aziraphale’s anxieties.
When the meeting concluded, Aziraphale all but bolted from his seat and rushed to Gabriel’s side. He ignored several other members who were attempting to claim his attention and generally bid the assembly adieu, guiding Gabriel out of the meeting hall.
“That was interesting,” Gabriel said as they exited. It was something that Crowley might have said in just the same tone about one of Aziraphale’s social engagements that he did not at all understand the appeal of. Though Aziraphale would of course never draw this comparison aloud to either of them, it did briefly amuse him and that relaxed him somewhat.
“I would not have expected to see you at one of our meetings,” Aziraphale said.
“I meant to meet you at the bookshop, but when I arrived you were running off. I thought maybe you were being chased by-” Gabriel looked around furtively, then leaned in and lowered his voice “-Satanic cultists. I thought I should follow you.”
“Oh! Not tonight, though I did encounter one just yesterday,” Aziraphale said, privately grateful that Gabriel had not happened upon him either in his drugged state, nor being rescued by Crowley.
Gabriel looked disappointed, but he rallied himself easily enough. “I was telling Michael about these cultists earlier, and they were very interested in hearing more detail. I think it is time for you to come to Heaven and share your… experiences with the other archangels.”
Aziraphale’s heart stuttered. “Come to Heaven?”
“This may well be a salvo from Hell in our great conflict. We need to understand it better and you, Aziraphale, are the key to that. We – the archangels, I mean – need you to sit in counsel with us about this.”
“Well,” Aziraphale said, overwhelmed, “I will, of course, do anything and everything I can to help.”
Gabriel nodded. “You are the only one who knows these cults firsthand. You will be crucial to deciding how to respond to them. As soon as possible, we need you in Heaven. You will work closely with the archangels on this issue. And who knows, once we’ve eliminated this threat, perhaps the counsel will see you as essential moving forward in our war with Hell as well.”
To be essential to the counsel of the archangels! Standing shoulder-to-shoulder among them in the righteous struggle of Good against Evil! This picture that Gabriel painted was tempting to be sure— Aziraphale’s thoughts skidded to a halt. It was not a temptation, distinctly it was not. In fact, it was the utter opposite. He could not be tempted into doing Good.
Gabriel laid a hand on his shoulder. “Heaven is counting on you, Aziraphale.”
Aziraphale shivered. He felt the weight of all of Creation upon him, resting on his shoulder under Gabriel’s hand.
_________________________
For the first time, Aziraphale sensed the trap before he sprang it. He hesitated on the trigger-plate.
“Sir?” the man queried again.
Aziraphale had been passing through a neighborhood the day before on a habitual walk, when a beggar had arrested his progress by clasping his hands around Aziraphale’s wrists and cried, “Thank you, kind sir, thank you! The service you rendered me was great indeed!”
Aziraphale had beamed at him, though he could not entirely place the man in his memory. “It was nothing, I am sure.”
“Nothing! Nothing indeed! That poultice you gave me cured my leg- fain would I call that something!”
Aziraphale had remembered: he had given the man a miracle to heal his leg and disguised it as a poultice. He had spoken with the man for several more minutes, gratified by the success of his good work.
The following day – today – Aziraphale had been intercepted again, this time by a man whom he was certain he did not know.
“Are you a physician, good sir?” the man had asked. “I only ask because I overheard yesterday that you were able to help that poor man’s leg. I would not trouble you except that my sister is gravely ill and no physician has yet been able to give her relief. I would be grateful to you if you could come and see her. Would you, sir?”
And Aziraphale had sensed the mechanism triggering under his feet. If he followed this man to his ailing sister’s bedside, what he would find would be the iron spikes of the trap crushing his foot. And he hesitated. Would telling Gabriel that he had skillfully eluded capture before it had happened be enough to continue to raise him in Heaven’s esteem? Would it give aid to the counsel of the archangels? Would he be a Heavenly enough angel? It seemed unlikely.
“Of course,” Aziraphale said reluctantly. “Please, lead me to her.”
The jaws of the trap snapped around him and he awoke some time later in a dark room, crowded with robed men. It was nighttime. His head ached where they had hit him and he was naked. How familiar, how familiarly horrible. He counted this capture as a reason for gratitude, but he could not make himself feel grateful. It was almost a relief when he was given a cup and instructed to drink. He knew that whatever was in the cup would remove him a step from the reality of this room.
“Drink, drink, drink, drink,” they intoned.
Aziraphale lifted the cup to his lips and tipped it up. The liquid within crawled bit by sluggish bit down the walls of the cup to his waiting tongue. It was almost too thick to be a liquid. The taste was a honeyed sweetness that was belied by a sharp metallic aftertaste. Must every sweet thing hide a sharp thing? Aziraphale wondered almost idly. The sweetness of being an angel of the Lord. The sharpness of being an angel of Heaven. His mind drifted away to Eden, the first and second.
Oh, he felt light! He had just noticed how very light he was! His mind drifted easily, but his whole body was only a slight breeze away from flying through the air without his wings. Giddily, he let his wings unfold so he could feel the rush of air over them when that flight occurred. This reminded him of something, but he did not give it any mind; he had existed for long enough that everything reminded him of something else.
There was a great flash of light – like when there was light in the Beginning; everything was like something else – and Aziraphale saw Crowley there – like always. Aziraphale smiled. Crowley was smiling too, but his smile was not right. Crowley was also wreathed in flame, with a crown of it dancing in the locks of his hair. His glasses were off and his eyes were on display. He looked like a demon.
Men were scrambling over one another trying to flee the room, but Crowley sent out waves of flame to pin them in place. Fear moved swifter and burned hotter than the fire. This reminded Aziraphale of something.
“Well, well, well,” Crowley said, “what do we have here? A cult? And you have an angel.” His voice echoed around the chamber, amplified unnaturally.
“Hello,” Aziraphale breathed. He was the angel to whom Crowley was referring. But Crowley did not say hello back; he did not look at him. Aziraphale folded his wings. Crowley dropped something onto Aziraphale’s lower half, and it took him much too long to recognize it as his own clothing. Not what he had been wearing today, but clothing from his wardrobe at home.
Crowley was still speaking to the humans. “Now what would you lot want with an angel?”
“Crowley,” Aziraphale said, trying to get his attention. He wanted to explain about the lightness that he was experiencing.
“Begone, demon,” one of the men said, voice wavering. “This is none of your concern.”
“Begone? That’s a bit rude, isn’t it? You seem to really think that this angel has something to offer you. The least you could do is to find out if I can offer you something better. That’s just good business sense.”
Crowley’s flames swallowed up whatever natural light was in the room, casting it instead entirely in their own glow. There was something weighty about the flames, substantial like you could hold them. The physics of the world slipped sideways and fell away, and the room was becoming Hellish as Crowley continued to speak.
“Is power of Heaven? Is money? Will an angel be able to give you those things, if they are not holy? Do you think your lusts can be satiated by the work of an agent of the Lord?” Aziraphale could see Crowley’s words expanding, filling the room. Soon there wouldn’t be space for the humans or for Aziraphale. The word lusts in Crowley’s voice hung heavy in the air. Aziraphale could touch it if he floated a little higher. The heat of the Hellfire seemed like it was inside of him now.
“Begone,” the man said again, but some of his companions quieted him, their hungry gazes on Crowley.
Crowley’s smile broadened, and Aziraphale hardly recognized him. “Shall I begone? Are you sure you don’t want to know what I am offering? Ah, I think you already know what it is. I think that you can feel it deep within you because there is only one thing that you truly want, that you have wanted your whole life, even before you could name it.” His voice was velvet and it was flame. The men leaned in closer, heedless of the fire. What the drug had done to Aziraphale, Crowley’s speech was doing to these men. “Hasn’t it been driving you all this time? Now it is within your grasp. I can give it to you. You know that I can deliver it to you right now, if you have the courage to ask me for it.”
Crowley’s voice was no longer unnaturally loud. It came quietly, as if spoken directly into Aziraphale’s ear. He shivered at it. It did not seem that this was an effect of the drug. The men in the room all seemed to be experiencing this same thing. Their eyes were glassy, their lips slightly parted and mouths agape. Mesmerized- they were mesmerized by Crowley. Thickly and slowly, this thought formed in Aziraphale’s mind: so this is what Crowley sounds like when he is authoring a temptation. He could almost taste it; his mouth watered.
It occurred dimly to Aziraphale that he should be providing a countermeasure to Crowley’s temptation, that he should be speaking against it to the humans and in favor of finding an eternal reward through good deeds, but this realization was very dim. He could attribute this to the drug, and he surely would later, but he knew the truth. He was too curious to hear more of what Crowley would say or offer. No, curious was not the word. He craved it. He wanted to feel Crowley’s words stir that deep secret something within him which Crowley had described so perfectly that he must have seen it for himself. Aziraphale needed to hear Crowley tell him more about it.
“How?” came from one of the men. The tension in the room went slack like a snapped thread. It was over for the humans, even if they did not know it. Perhaps they could not sense it, perhaps only Aziraphale and Crowley could feel that instead of tension, there was now a lazy sort of anticipation in the air, crackling along with the fire.
“That is the easy part,” Crowley said. His smile was in place. He moved his hand and every human was suddenly holding a piece of paper and a quill pen. “Sign your name, and it will be done.”
There was only a moment of hesitation. As soon as the first man began to write his name, his compatriots followed suit. Crowley snapped his fingers. The written lines of their names on the page became flames that burned the papers. The men dropped them in alarm, but the fires had already reached them and they were subsumed into Hell. With the last man gone, the flames burned out. Even the wreath of fire in Crowley’s hair was gone. It was like the curtain had fallen and Crowley and Aziraphale were now backstage and out of sight of the audience. Like Crowley had been performing demon-ness and now he was finished. Because, Aziraphale knew in his drugged fog, that is exactly what it was, wasn’t it?
However, even without the heat of the fire, the sluggish, lustful mood remained. Maybe it was the drug.
“Now, don’t look at me like that angel,” Crowley said blithely, himself not looking at Aziraphale at all but instead wiping up a stripe of dust from the table with a finger and examining it. “You know that I am a demon. You say so at every opportunity.”
“More,” Aziraphale said.
“Alright, more than every opportunity.”
“Tell me more.”
Now Crowley looked at him, startled.
Aziraphale thought that being so light would mean that he would float, that it would carry him up, up, up, up, up forever, only perhaps stopping when he reached Heaven. But lightness didn’t mean that he was traveling anywhere at all. He was on this stone table and he could feel the tingle of blood in his toes, in his legs, in his belly, in his fingertips. And he said urgently to Crowley, “This thing I want, this thing that you can give me- what is it?”
“Christ,” Crowley swore incongruously, unsteadily. “I should know better by now than to let you speak once you’ve been drugged.”
“I-”
Aziraphale was cut off when Crowley placed his hand over Aziraphale’s mouth and, just like he had done at Harrell’s, removed the drug from him. As before, Aziraphale was left struggling to catch his breath in the aftermath. With a suddenly clear head, he reflected on what he had just said, and burned with shame. He buried his face in his hands. The worst of it was that he felt only marginally different. He could still feel the blood tingling within his body, could still sense the word lusts in the air, still heard Crowley’s offer echoing in his ears.
No, the worst of it was that he still wanted to know in detail exactly what Crowley had been tempting him with.
“I wonder where it goes when I do that,” Crowley said.
“What do you mean?”
“The drug. It’s not like I’m trying to send it anywhere in particular. So I wonder where it is that it goes.”
Aziraphale tried to answer Crowley in kind and allow their conversation to lift him off this table and back into himself. But he was not able to find a reply. He pined for the kind of drugs that stole his memories from him, so that he would not now have to know so incontrovertibly how easily he might have succumbed to a true tempting. Suddenly, he feared what those stolen memories might be, what he might have done that he now could not remember.
“What did you mean when you said that you should know better than to let me speak? What have I said?”
“Nothing,” Crowley said after a long moment. He saw the expression on Aziraphale’s face. “Truly, nothing to shame yourself. Just a lot of nonsense.” He shifted his weight back and forth. “You haven’t done anything unbecoming of an angel. I promise you.”
He waited long enough to be sure that Aziraphale believed him – he did; he was willing and relieved to believe him – then he bowed slightly but formally to Aziraphale and left the room.
Aziraphale spent nearly another hour on the table, sitting with his legs dangling off, mind whirling with all that had happened. When he finally left, it took him the remainder of the night to find his way back into a familiar part of the city and to his bookshop. Aziraphale did not enjoy making the journey alone.
_________________________
The river reeked, its stench sneaking into his nose even through the handkerchief that he was using to ward off the smell. By inclination, Aziraphale never visited the docks. They combined many of his least favored elements: stench, loud noises, strange crowds, and unknown dangers. Since the Flood, he’d had a horror of being on the water, and even being near boats could cause anxiety. However, today the allure of a particular merchant’s cache superseded these censures.
He waited impatiently at the foot of the gangplank for Cirino to unload the chest that he promised contained the newest publications from the Accademia della Crusca. The last time Cirino had been in London, he had sold Aziraphale some writings from Pietro Bembo which Aziraphale had found very provoking. Bembo had derided Dante’s stylistically uneven and insufficiently decorous writing, and had advocated forcefully for a return to the literary styles of Petrarch and Boccaccio. The writings of Petrarch and Boccaccio were indeed beautiful and worthy to be emulated. But Aziraphale wondered if there was not room in Italian literature for Dante’s style as well, if there was space enough for new things. He had since impatiently awaited the Accademia’s response to Bembo’s opinion.
Over the general loud din, there came an even greater noise that made everybody jump before they gathered themselves to continue about their business. Aziraphale whipped around at the sound, and so his heart was already racing when he saw him: Harrell. He might have turned and fled if it had taken him longer than a heartbeat to realize his mistake, that it was simply a man who looked like Harrell and not Harrell himself.
The man may have looked a great deal like Harrell, but he moved differently. Aziraphale watched him as he crossed the gangplank and boarded his ship, noting the roughness of his gait that Harrell’s lacked. Harrell had moved with polished confidence, the same that he had spoken with as he wove his net around Aziraphale. Aziraphale’s eyes tracked this non-Harrell until he was out of sight.
He knew that he would not actually see Harrell again, he told himself. He had never seen any of them a second time. Crowley always came and did whatever he did with them. He was well beyond Harrell’s reach now. Crowley would have seen to that.
Oh, Crowley.
Really though, what was there to be done about that? Aziraphale was not even confident that he could articulate what was amiss between them other than the boilerplate: angel on one bank and demon on the other, all of time and existence and morality and theology swirling and churning between them like the polluted water of the Thames. As it should be, for ever and ever amen. So nothing was amiss. It was simply oil and sand not wanting to mix. Or wait- was that oil and water?
He rubbed his eyes. He knew that his body could not actually be affected long-term by the repeated drugging, but he worried irrationally that his memory was failing. Crowley had it in his mind that angels had exceptionally unreliable memories. He mostly said so when he and Aziraphale were quibbling over the details of such-and-such as it had happened centuries before to so-and-so. Aziraphale had yet to decide whether Crowley was sincere or not. If he was, he would be able to crow for decades about this infuriating gap in Aziraphale’s memory from his visit to Harrell’s home.
He had thought that it was the discovery that Harrell did not need to preserve his virtue, but that did not fit. There was still something nagging at him, still that something-shaped hole in his day. Aziraphale worried at that hole like a loose tooth; like a missing tooth. When he misplaced a book that he was reading, he would trace his steps backwards. If he lost his train of thought, he would go back to his last clear memory and walk himself forward until he reached the missing part. But the unaccountability of the drug made it too difficult to go either forward or backward toward the memory. He could, for example, remember his fascination with the buttons of Harrell’s jacket, but that did not lead him to the next thought forward. It was a nonsense thought that had no logical progression because it had no logic at all. Without the aid of the drug, Aziraphale could not navigate nonsense.
Without the drug.
Without the drug, he would likely never fill that gap, but with it…. And he knew where he could find it.
He looked about him immediately, though for what exactly he was not sure. If there were any nefarious cultists who were loaded down with mind-altering elixirs in his vicinity, they did not make themselves immediately obvious to him. His mind turned, slowly at first, then quicker and quicker.
He cast one more glance down the gangplank, but when he could not see Cirino, he began to walk. His head swiveled to and fro. He paced about the docks, searching. When nothing caught his attention at the docks, he made for the streets and slowly toward home. He kept his eyes open.
He could not exactly say what he was looking for, but he thought that it was there for him to find nonetheless. Before he and Crowley had begun to encounter and counteract one another with such frequency, Aziraphale had made it his sworn duty to find out evildoers, had he not? Surely he could find someone who-
He turned a corner and stopped as abruptly as if he had walked into a wall. There was a pair of men across the way who were watching him casually. There was something about the way they oh-so-indifferently slid their eyes away from him, conversing all the while as though they had no purpose but colloquy. Aziraphale set his shoulders.
He marched across the street and directly up to them. The expressions on their faces shifted from feigned disinterest to confusion to concern as he made the short journey. They were glancing at one another by the time he arrived, silently begging one another to take the lead in this unexpected circumstance.
“Good morning,” Aziraphale said. “Are you by any chance looking for an angel?”
They looked at him in stunned silence. Aziraphale pushed down the laugh that was burbling up in his chest. “Well, if you do happen to be looking for an angel,” he said, spreading his arms invitingly, “you have one here.”
There was a beat. The men continued to look so flabbergasted that Aziraphale wondered if he had misjudged them after all. He dropped his arms, “Oh, perhaps you are not. Good day.”
He was several buildings away down the street when they caught up to him, one on either side. “You’re really an angel?” one of them said, out of breath from catching him.
“Yes,” Aziraphale said, not breaking his stride. “Shall I come with you then?”
They were flanking him and each took one of his arms, though not with any strength. Aziraphale tested them; he pulled his arms out of their grasp quite easily and they, as if chastened, did not try to regain their hold.
“This way, Angel,” one said instead.
Aziraphale let them direct him toward their destination, impatient all the while. He would walk too fast and get ahead of his captors, taking a wrong turn and needing to be redirected to the correct path. At last they arrived at an ordinary-looking shop. Aziraphale burst through the front door, catching five or six men and one woman in solemn conference. He wanted to laugh at the way they startled at the sight of him, like a flock of birds that had settled too close to a footpath and scattered at the first pedestrian to walk by. So he did laugh, kindly.
“Hello, were you all hoping to speak with an angel?” And as he asked, he allowed his wings to unfold. Not just to unfold, but to spread to their full span. It was somewhat difficult in the small shop, but the humans stood in awe nonetheless. Aziraphale felt like Gabriel. Is power of Heaven? Crowley had asked. Yes, was the answer. He began to understand what rapacious men could want from an angel, and it was not purity.
“Well?” Aziraphale asked in the stunned silence. “Is there a room we should go to?”
They showed him to the basement. A few of the men pulled on their cultish robes but not all, and they made an odd group as they descended with Aziraphale at the vanguard with his brilliantly white wings aloft. There was a stone table in the basement. It was just as he had learned to be familiar with. He waited for the usual- the fear, the sick feeling. It was there, but distant and small. He felt too much in control. Control, this was a dormant muscle in him and it asked to be flexed. It felt permitted. Aziraphale would permit it.
On a small altar against the far wall of the room, there was a ceremonial chalice. Aziraphale recognized it.
“How would you like to begin?” He already knew, of course, but asking meant that they had to stumble and hesitate their way through telling him to take off all his clothes and hop up on the table. Not telling him– asking him. If you would and wouldst please you if got thrown around a bit. Aziraphale could plant his feet and say, no I shan’t. But he did not because this was a transaction, and he had always paid a fair price insofar as he understood the cost.
Aziraphale considered miracle-ing away his clothes, but to be honest he was not entirely sure where he would be sending them off to and he would very much like to get them back. He began to undo the fastenings on his jacket, then looked up and noticed the rapt attention of the assembly. Aziraphale began to hum a tune and theatrically undo one at a time, and the cultists bashfully turned away from his sarcastic, showy striptease. He grinned to himself and felt a bit like Crowley. They kept their backs to him until he lay down on the table.
“Oh,” one said when he turned around. “But the rest of your clothes….” Aziraphale had removed and folded all his layers save for his undershirt, which was quite long enough to keep him in modesty. Aziraphale raised his eyebrows at the man who had spoken, and the man looked down.
“Bring the cup,” Aziraphale instructed.
As one of the men and the woman began to move to obey, a third cultist said, “Stop!”
“Stop?”
“You, sir, are not an angel.”
The group went still and quiet. Aziraphale sat up and spread his wings. His white undershirt gave the impression of angelic garb. He looked very convincing, he knew. And he was actually an angel, which could only help the matter.
“That is a trick or an illusion.” The man speaking was one who had donned his robe. Aziraphale did not know which of them looked more foolish- the man in his robe or Aziraphale in his underthings. The look of disgust on the man’s face, when paired with his ridiculous robe, tipped the scales to him.
Aziraphale frowned. “Fine, well, I don’t normally do this but-” and he snapped his fingers, summoning the chalice into his hand with a miracle. An awed sound rippled through the congregation, but the man in his robes was unmoved. He snatched away the chalice.
“Another trick- a demon’s trick! Brothers,” he said, turning to the group and ignoring the long-suffering expression on the female cultist’s face, “we know that the forces of darkness are conspiring to pollute our sacred purity rituals!” Aziraphale made an unsuccessful swipe for the chalice. “We know that they fear what holy goodness we will bring to the earth when we succeed! They send their armies and their minions to counter us. This-” pointing to Aziraphale “-is one such minion.”
“Now wait a moment-” began Aziraphale, but the man in the robe spoke over him, haranguing about deceit and deception and false angels.
“Are not the worst and most vile demons the ones who began as angels and fell?” he thundered at the end of his harangue.
Aziraphale frowned. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“What?”
“Fallen angels- what does that have to do with anything?”
“You are a creature pretending to be an angel. That is a perversion.”
“I am an angel. And that does not answer my question.”
The man in the robe spluttered. “I will not cross words with a creature of evil. If you were truly an angel, you would agree with me.”
“But why mention fallen angels? And what do you know of them anyway?” Aziraphale rose from the table.
“Are you not one?”
“Never. Not that you would be able to tell the difference between a fallen angel and a real angel,” Aziraphale sniffed. “You don’t have the faintest idea of either state of being.”
“Begone!” the robed man cried. “You have befouled our ceremonies for long enough with your deceit!”
“Fine,” Aziraphale snapped. “Fine!” He dressed himself in a huff saying, “You are all the most supremely unhelpful humans I have ever crossed paths with!” He stormed out without a backwards glance.
As he walked home he muttered to himself under his breath. “So, I cannot have the drug. So what? I will go to the other source. I will go to Crowley himself.”
Once home, he dug through stacks of correspondence until he found a letter from Crowley- the one he had sent when he had first moved to London, the one in which he had listed the address of his residence. Yes, Aziraphale would find the other source. He would remember. He would fill the gap.
_________________________
Aziraphale had never been to Crowley’s lodgings before. He didn’t know exactly what he should expect, and imagined several possibilities on his way. He was still surprised by what he found when he arrived at the quiet and respectable new-style timbered building in which Crowley made his home. His surprise was primarily to do with the fact that Crowley had a rented room, not a purchased one. The impermanence of Crowley’s life here in London struck Aziraphale forcefully as he stood at the threshold of Crowley’s respectable lodging home.
It took no convincing at all to get the stooped and cheerful woman who ran the lodging with her husband to agree to let Aziraphale into Crowley’s room. One application from Aziraphale with the suggestion of a familial connection to Crowley and the woman produced the key for Aziraphale’s convenience. He was indignant on Crowley’s behalf for the ease of this breach of his privacy and safety, and wanted to sternly lecture the woman on her lapse, but, unfortunately, drawing attention to it was contrary to his purpose here. He made a note to tell Crowley about it. Another part of him was quite deflated that he did not have the chance to fully express the persona he had crafted to gain entry; he had an elaborate history and motivation prepared but the landlady was indifferent.
Crowley’s room was upstairs, one of three rooms on that level. Though very adequately appointed with heavy wood furniture, it was dismayingly un-homey to Aziraphale’s eye. The only personal touches were the papers on the desk, a bottle of wine on the windowsill, and a handful of cuttings carefully tied together and hanging from the knob of the wardrobe. Aziraphale’s knowledge of the natural world was not precisely scientific, and he did not know exactly what plant these were from. He felt sure he had seen before the plant from which these clippings came, but he could not remember when or where. He rubbed a heart-shaped leaf between his fingers, disturbing some of the pink buds hanging from the stalk.
The desk was obsessively tidy. Aziraphale, knowing that he should not, but being unable to resist, thumbed through this neat stack of papers and that one. One stack for bills, with Crowley’s scratchy hand annotating them with the dates when they had been paid. Another stack of blank reports for Crowley to file with Hell. A third stack was of completed forms of some kind that had been submitted to Hell, with “Return to Sender” or “Rejected” or “Denied” written across them in red ink. One said “Don’t Be Stupid Crowley.” Aziraphale tried to read what Crowley had written on that one, but it was smudged illegibly.
At the top right corner of the desk, snug against the wall sat a small wooden box with a key in the lock. Aziraphale turned the key to open it only to discover that it had already been unlocked and he had locked it. Crowley would certainly have been laughing by now if he were here to see it.
The box’s lid glided open on well-oiled hinges almost on its own, almost without Aziraphale opening it himself. Inside were more papers- letters. There were not enough to fill the box and the remaining space felt hopeful, as though Crowley had gotten a box large enough for letters he imagined he would receive rather than those he had collected already.
Crowley was quite sentimental. This dawned on Aziraphale first in a warm glow and then secondarily as a sharp pang at this vulnerability. A tender spot on Crowley’s flesh bared to him. Even if Crowley was not Good and could never be Good, he was tenderly, vulnerably sentimental.
Aziraphale thumbed through the letters, recognizing his own handwriting on the majority of them. There were several with various other scripts, and he pulled one out and unfolded it. It read:
Messer A.C.-
Thou art surprised to receive a letter from me, of that I can be certain. I was furious with thee when thou departed. Indeed I was angry with thee for many years after thou left. Thou mayst had some inkling of that- I believe some hunters found thee after I placed that bounty on thy head. I have since removed the bounty, my friend. I do not think thou were ever concerned by it, but be assured that it is no more. Gone as well is my anger at thee. I think I understand now, Crowley.
My losses, of which thou must have heard, have been the gains of other men. Of all the men on this earth, I perhaps know best the fickleness of good fortune. I will not complain now of Lady Luck, though she can surely do me no worse than has done me already. Wilt say I told thee so? Nay, ’tis undeserved and thou well knows’t I will not hear it from thee.
In truth, I cannot say thou was right and I wrong. If I was wrong – and I must needs be wrong to have lost so much – I cannot say with certainty in my heart ’twas thou who were right. But I can say that I will never know if thou were’t. I chose to follow a path that meant that I would never find out. And that weighs more heavily upon my soul than if I were wrong. Can I be sorrowful for cowardice? Can a man apologize to another man for weakness? Thou wilt not write me back to tell me, I know it. I shall imagine thy answers instead.
Know that I have always done my duty after thy departure. I have done it in a silent heart rather than with a talkative mouth wherefore no man would listen. Comfort be thine. Though our Lady turns her head from me, I pray she will see this letter delivered to thy hand. I pray as well daily to God for thy continued health and well-being.
P.d’A.
Aziraphale slowly refolded the letter. He wondered who P. d’A. was, and who he was to Crowley. He stuffed the letter roughly back into the box. One corner of it snagged and bent slightly out of shape, which Aziraphale did not mind at all.
He reasoned at last that Crowley must have only kept this letter for its author’s conceding that he had been wrong, just as Crowley had told him that he was. For the I told thee so. He did so love to be right, didn’t he? Though he had decided this was the reason, Aziraphale did wonder at the last lines, those mentioning their author’s prayers on Crowley’s behalf. The words were slightly smudged, as though the recipient had rubbed his thumb along them savoringly. But what would a demon care for prayers? Nothing.
He wanted to read every letter and he nearly did just that, but he did not want to discover any more of Crowley’s sentimentality uninvited. Perhaps one day Crowley would show him these letters. As he made to close the box, Aziraphale noticed a previously undiscovered letter wedged into the lid’s corner and conspicuously separate from the rest. The traffic of smudged fingerprints and the softness of its creases told of many readings and re-readings. Aziraphale could not resist. He had to know. He opened it. It was one of his own:
My dear Crowley,
As you can tell by how much time has elapsed since I received your letter, I have given much careful consideration to your arguments, such as they deserve. I see merit in what you say about the Sophy— I do not see that any intervention of ours will affect it overmuch and I myself would much rather remain in London.
Which brings me more to my point in this letter. My dear, it is time that you come to London on a more permanent basis. Establish your residence here. I am certain that in London you will find all the qualities you admired in Nineveh, and more charms besides. If you continue to tread all across the world as you have been doing, it will only serve to show you London’s superiority among all the places of the earth.
You do not need to cross the world; the world will cross to London. There are a thousand new faces here every day, and they bring with them all that is new and interesting in the world. As all the world before was in Eden, all the world now is in London. At the moment, it lacks only you to complete it. You would find endless entertainment here, I assure you. And surely Hell could have no objections. The king of England has recently reformed his entire religion; that must be something you could use to your benefit.
Hurry to London. You may expect more letters on this subject from me if you do not. I await you impatiently.
Aziraphale
Aziraphale remembered writing this letter. He did not remember penning these exact words (indeed, the precise details of the letter’s contents were as unfamiliar to him as the other letters in the box), but he remembered that, for some forgotten reason, he had been in a soaring mood, feeling intoxication with being alive and feeling in love with everything in creation. If congenial goodwill had been made of feathers, every bird or angel that had ever existed would have been able to make up their wings with that which Aziraphale had felt in that moment. And at the peak of this mood he had written thus to Crowley with an invitation that he had considered very little before penning it, but had known was right as he wrote it. It was a mood, after all, that was made to be shared and Aziraphale had no one else in existence he would think to share it with other than Crowley.
He regretted this not at all; he had meant it sincerely, had written several other letters reinforcing it, and his pleasure at receiving Crowley’s response some time later with his new London address was deeply felt. But he blushed now to see his words still preserved so. It was the feeling of waking after a night of drinking and remembering with embarrassment all that one had done, though it seemed both amusing and wise at the time. He tried to shake it off; after all it had worked, had it not? It had served its purpose and gotten Crowley to London. But he was not at ease. There was an impulse to pocket the letter and protect himself from Crowley’s re-readings of a jubilant mood that was of the past. His own tender spot for Crowley to press upon like a bruise. But he knew that he could not take the letter, nor the sentiments it contained. Both belonged to Crowley to do with as he pleased. The letter folded easily along its well-worn lines and fit snugly back into its hiding spot.
Despite his resolute errand, Aziraphale wanted to leave. Being here, he was trespassing in ways that he did to know it was possible for Crowley to be trespassed upon. Beyond that, he felt exposed himself after reading his decades-old words in that letter. He wanted to retreat and regroup.
His hand lingered on the closed lid of Crowley’s letter box. The empty space within the box was indescribably affecting. Aziraphale was softened by it. His heart broke for Crowley for how small his sentiment box was and how much room it had left to be filled; for the beautiful tragic strength of needing to have hope, of having it and the fragility of having it. His heart glowed and soared at the barefaced display of feeling and the closeness that he could now be certain that Crowley felt reciprocally. He was swollen with pride that his letters represented the majority; he was pinched with jealousy at the other letters. He was embarrassed, pleased, angry, flattered, curious, flustered. He was an angel and Crowley was a demon.
He took his hand off of the lid. It was time for him to leave.
But as he crossed, the door to the room opened – with no sound of a key first, he would realize later – and its resident entered.
“Crowley!”
Crowley’s eyebrows flew heavenward, but he did not seem displeased to discover Aziraphale trespassing in his home. “I don’t think you get to be surprised to see me here. I do live here after all. I should be the one who is surprised to find you.”
“Are you surprised?” He did not seem it.
“Mrs. Sullivan told me she had let my third cousin into my rooms and I didn’t suppose it would be anybody but you. Hello, by the way.”
Crowley brushed past Aziraphale and settled in the chair at his desk. He was smiling slightly to himself. He seemed more relaxed than he had been with Aziraphale since their argument – bordering on happy – and Aziraphale thought that in coming here, he had done a good thing. Possibly for the first time in a long time.
“Hello,” Aziraphale replied. His heart was still racing from the tumult of discovering Crowley’s letters.
“I’d offer you a seat but….” Crowley gestured to the room’s lack of chairs besides the one he was currently occupying. A room with only one chair and a box of sentimental treasures. Aziraphale’s heart squeezed in his chest.
“I’ve been thinking about what you said,” Aziraphale said in a sudden rush. Although he had not been thinking about it particularly, it did not really feel like a lie either. “And you’re right.” I told thee so. “I want to perform the act in order to stop all of this cult business.”
Crowley looked at him for a long moment. He swung his legs up to rest on his desk. “No, you don’t.”
“I do,” Aziraphale insisted.
“You don’t.” Crowley looked at him expectantly, as if waiting for something to click into place for Aziraphale.
“I thought you wanted-”
“I said that you don’t.”
Aziraphale looked down and clenched his jaw against frustrated tears. Crowley was a demon. Crowley was a demon and he, Aziraphale, was an angel. They were supposed to want two different things. Gabriel was the Supreme Archangel of Heaven, and he had told Aziraphale that he was doing right and doing good- doing what he should be doing. Crowley’s disapproval should implicitly tell him the same thing. But Aziraphale wanted clarity, he wanted unity; he wanted everyone to agree on what they wanted from him so he could do it and please them all.
“You’re right,” he said again. I told thee so.
“I often am,” Crowley said as he smiled. He was in a good mood indeed. Aziraphale felt himself catch it like a cold, and the corner of his own mouth lifted. If Crowley wanted to share this mood with him, he would welcome it. He would let Crowley lead him.
Crowley had just returned from abroad, he said. He waved Aziraphale to sit on the bed, turned the chair so they could face one another. He swept Aziraphale up in a tale of an overturned apple cart on a small but surprisingly heavily trafficked road. The donkeys and horses thought they had died and gone to heaven, and the man who tried to pull them away from their treats was sure to have his hand badly bitten for his trouble. So the gears of men had to grind to a halt to allow the animals to graze at their own pace. The unhappy apple farmer tried to demand payment from all of those whose beasts of burden were devouring his season’s work, and the animals’ owners had told him that he was welcome to extract his payment directly from the animals themselves if he so pleased. From his pocket, Crowley produced one of the apples in question, and tossed it lightly to Aziraphale. It was sweet and crunchy.
Crowley still liked to be abroad some of the time. Aziraphale was quite rooted in London, in his bookshop, but Crowley always returned from here or there with renewed liveliness. His good mood at the present could be attributed to his time away. Seeing him contained here in this little box of his rooms, Aziraphale didn’t wonder at it. However, Crowley always did come back, and he stayed in London for longer and longer between his trips.
“Where were you?”
“Florence. Well- just outside of Florence, then Florence.”
Aziraphale spared a thought for how much faster he might have received news of the Accademia della Crusca if he had asked Crowley instead of the merchant Cirino. “What was in Florence?”
Crowley looked at him sidelong. “Many things, I’d imagine.”
Ah, so it was Hell. “I’m sorry for asking. I should have assumed you were there for- for business.”
Crowley straightened some papers on his desk, ran his hand along the lid of his box of letters and down the front of it. “Maybe I wasn’t there for Hell.” Aziraphale, afraid of saying the wrong thing, said nothing. “Maybe I went because I wanted to see Florence.”
“What did you see in Florence?” Aziraphale asked softly.
“Novelty and invention,” Crowley smiled. “There’s a man in Florence who built a moving bridge.”
“Why would you want a bridge that moves?”
Crowley laughed. “For moving armies.”
Aziraphale tried to imagine it. Warfare was turning somersaults of forward progress faster than Aziraphale could keep up with. He remembered Gabriel looking at the book with its pasteboard cover and lamenting for scrolls. Humans marched forward and onward in everything, with good things like books and frightening things like war. Some of his thoughts must be showing on his face, because Crowley laughed again.
“Don’t look like that, even you are not that afraid of change,” Crowley said, breezing along happily to describe his friend’s next invention without leaving time enough to give that statement any innuendo or weight. But it left Aziraphale struggling to regain his breath and he couldn’t speak for several minutes afterward.
“And the last one he had was something he called a parachute,” Crowley was saying. He had his hands out and ready to illustrate the shape of what he was describing. “It’s basically just a giant sheet that he straps to himself here and here, and it’s supposed to catch the air as he falls so that he can slow his fall and just sort of drift down safely.”
“Goodness,” Aziraphale said. “He’s not planning on testing it himself, is he?”
“Oh, who knows. He wants to fly. He might not be able to resist.”
“It won’t be flying.”
“No,” conceded Crowley. “But it may be the closest he will be able to come.”
Aziraphale said, “I read recently about spectacle makers in the Netherlands who have the idea to create a special lens that will be powerful enough to magnify the stars. They haven’t built it yet, but they would call it a telescope.”
Crowley’s eyes were shining as bright as any celestial body. “They want to see the stars?” Aziraphale could only see him as that angel from the Beginning of Creation who had eagerly explained the birth of stars. As soon as the humans built a telescope, Aziraphale would buy him one. He would have to move somewhere large enough to accommodate it. He would have to buy a new residence, not rent it. “Humans really are remarkable, aren’t they?”
“Remarkably remarkable.” Aziraphale agreed.
“Did I tell you about this man I met called Copernicus?” And Crowley was flying off on his next tale.
As Crowley spoke, Aziraphale saw Crowley’s happiness mount and swell and turn bright and shining. Watching it, he remembered seeing the mountains growing tall and looming on the earth, the stars bursting into light in the darkness of the vast sky. The universe being filled, one wonder at a time.
He thought of Gabriel. Happiness was growing there too. Happiness of a different kind- that of pride and affirmation. Of a job well done when it was the most important job in existence: doing Good.
And a quiet but clear voice from deep within Aziraphale said, I prefer Crowley’s happiness. He forgot why he had come.
_________________________
Heaven’s temporal understanding was not exactly robust, but Gabriel had instructed Aziraphale to come to Heaven as soon as possible, and it would be bordering on insubordination to delay his visit any longer. Aziraphale had awoken on this morn knowing that it must be the day. He dressed himself slowly, inclined for some reason to dress in his least favored clothes. It was ridiculous; Heaven would not be stripping him down and cutting his clothing to shreds. Still, he dressed himself in his worst and felt the better for it.
He had not dressed fearfully for some months now, not since he had been thrown out of his latest capture for being a false angel. This was not like before, when he willfully pushed the threat of capture from his mind and opened himself to distractions only, and when he knew that if the worst did happen then Crowley would help fix it. The fear and the threat were simply gone. He felt this change like a new room temperature. He had been so utterly unconvincing as an angel during his last capture that no one seemed much interested in him anymore. And the world felt a little different for it. He wondered if this is what it would have felt like if he had ended things by performing the sexual act instead. He would not need to find out now.
Primarily, he felt only relief. He was in no particular rush to tell either Crowley or Heaven about it, however. There were two anxieties that emerged in the vacuum of the exterminated threat; the first was that Heaven would no longer esteem him without this distinction. This anxiety was frontmost in his mind with his impending visit to Heaven.
The second anxiety concerned Crowley. He could put it from his mind for the present.
Ascending to Heaven took longer than he remembered. He fidgeted the whole time, straightening his collar, fiddling with his cuffs. When the chime sounded and the doors opened and Aziraphale was once again in Heaven, he was momentarily overwhelmed by the light. While he blinked his eyes accustomed to it, he paused at the threshold. The light of Heaven, harshly bright and sterile, was very unlike the softer golden glow of his miracle when those men had separated it from his body into an orb. Had Heaven’s light always been this tone? If it had, then what was wrong with the light of Aziraphale’s miracle?
“Aziraphale?” There was a rank and file angel waiting for him to escort him to the meeting. They looked at Aziraphale uncertainly as his eyes adjusted to Heaven’s light.
“I’ve been on Earth for quite some time,” Aziraphale said by way of explanation. The angel looked satisfied by this, and gestured for Aziraphale to follow.
Aziraphale was led through the vast and seamless spaces that constituted Heaven. Though there were no walls or doors, it was still a maze to him. The angel navigated them without difficulty to the chamber room where Gabriel and the other archangels were waiting for him, Michael, Uriel, and Saraqael standing around the large globe of Earth. Seeing them all together, Aziraphale’s mouth went dry and he wished he was wearing his better clothes. Or perhaps his robes. Michael, Uriel, and Saraqael were all adorned in their angelic garb. Gabriel, however, still wore the attire that he had created for himself from the portrait at that country estate. Standing together with Aziraphale, they looked as though they were a team. That made Aziraphale stand a little straighter.
He had not been together with the higher angels since the trials of Job, and he tried always to think as little as possible about those. He was accustomed to reporting his doings to Heaven, but that was generally to one angel at a time and usually it was done on Earth. This was not at all the same. It was better, he reminded himself.
“H-hello,” he stammered. “Thank you all for making time for me today. I have-”
“Let’s begin, shall we?” Gabriel cut in, ignoring Aziraphale’s speech. Perhaps he should not have spoken without waiting for Gabriel to speak first. He had never felt entirely sure of etiquette here. “Aziraphale has uncovered a plot on earth that he thought was significant. He brought it to me immediately and I judged it to be important enough to share with all of you. So please, Aziraphale.”
Aziraphale looked at him cautiously, not sure if this was his cue. Gabriel gestured for him to speak. Aziraphale took a breath, relishing the juiciness of his words before he spoke them: “I have uncovered an extensive network of cults in England whose purpose is to find and capture angels.” As he had hoped, the archangels looked shocked and perturbed at this news. He took a breath and remembered how wonderful it had been to shock and intrigue Gabriel with this story.
“They first discovered me nearly two years ago–” this was only a small lie; the discovery in the second Eden had been well over a decade ago at this point, but he told himself that he was referring to his first capture “—and ever since I have been constantly hunted.”
He described his standard kidnapping: the recognition of his angelic status through a good act (he assumed), the loss of consciousness (alluded to, but not described in embarrassing detail), the regaining of consciousness in a dark room on a stone altar (for the most part, anyway), and the ritual (mainly the symbols and the chanting about purity- he lingered here because it seemed to produce the greatest response among the supreme angels). He omitted the nudity (embarrassed at his embarrassment), the details of the drugs (indescribable), and the resolution of the events (Crowley’s presence should not be invoked).
It was all the truth, but it was not all of the truth, and that made it feel like a whole cloth fabrication. He found himself scrutinizing each face for signs of doubt. There were no such signs; not a flicker of doubt crossed an archangel’s face as he spoke. Aziraphale saw only fascination, as he had seen when he had first told Gabriel about this. But there was an unspoken story hidden beneath the story that he was telling. If this tale was a tree, he was describing the leaves and branches, and concealing the shade they cast on the ground. What would happen to their fascination then if he told it all, he wondered.
When Aziraphale was done half-speaking, Gabriel said, “You can see why I asked Aziraphale to come here today.”
“Yes,” agreed Uriel, as Michael nodded. “This is serious indeed.”
“It’s just as we feared,” Saraqael said.
“Just as you feared?” asked Aziraphale.
“We have sensed for some time now,” Gabriel said, “that the humans will be likely to side with Hell in the ultimate conflict between good and evil. This is the first step.”
Aziraphale spluttered.
“You were right to bring this matter to us, Aziraphale,” Gabriel continued. “We would welcome your input in our discussion about handling this situation. You bring a unique perspective on this human issue.”
Aziraphale had long since admitted to himself that he did not like Gabriel. In fact he did not like him at all. This admission used to bring with it a flush of guilt strong enough to knock him over, but it had been dulled by centuries of rediscovery every time that Gabriel made a callous remark about humanity, or put Aziraphale firmly in his place, or even looked just a little too smug. It came to him now as a commonplace thought, no more weighty than I don’t like the rain.
But that was not today’s discovery. This was the discovery: that he did not respect the Supreme Archangel of Heaven.
Aziraphale ducked his head, worried that his insubordination was obvious in his look. He kept his eyes respectfully downcast and his mind whirled with his disrespect. To not like the Supreme Archangel was bad enough, but not to respect him- that was courting a Fall, was it not? He waited, tensed, for God to cast him down from the Heavens, but nothing happened. He did not feel a change at all. Not even the room temperature shift that his divestment from cult attention brought.
“Thank you,” Aziraphale replied. They could interpret that how they wished. Gabriel nodded at him, unsurprised and only moderately affected by his gratitude. Aziraphale felt another burst of distaste for him. He pressed his lips together.
“Should we attempt to counter Hell’s influence with them?” Uriel asked.
“We- forgive me, we do already try to teach humans to do Good, do we not?” Aziraphale couldn’t help but interpose. No one looked at him.
“We have probably lost too much ground already,” Gabriel sighed.
The archangels continued their discussion in his manner as Aziraphale drifted away. He postured pensively, then paced pensively, letting it carry him further and further away from the conversation. He placed the globe of the Earth in between himself and them. He had been embarrassed when Gabriel had come to his art appreciation society meeting, thinking it beneath the Supreme Archangel to spend his time in such a frivolous way. Here, in the heart of Heaven, during a meeting with the other archangels, Aziraphale felt the same embarrassment. His anxiety about Heaven’s esteem felt foolish now. He should say his prior anxiety about it; he couldn’t find that desire for their esteem within him anymore.
He took a deep breath, looking at the rolling waters of the ocean directly before him on the globe. Crowley had told him recently that a Portuguese explorer had just named this ocean something, but he could not remember what. He could see little ships making wake on its waters and he reached out to spin the globe until a landmass was in front of his eyes instead. England.
He had seen England from above before, but it had been a long time since he had seen its real shape and not the shape that humans drew it on their maps. He smiled a little at that. They would get better at their maps one day, he was sure. He found London quickly, and dove into deeper detail until he could begin to see the streets and parks and landmarks of it. He swept across the image to find his own neighborhood and his bookshop. He tried to focus the image on the bookshop, but the view jogged abruptly to the side, taking his focus to another neighborhood entirely. Aziraphale frowned and was about to course-correct when he saw the bit of Earth that he was focused on: his second Eden.
His breath caught. Oh, it was as beautiful as he remembered. Even from the vantage of Heaven, he could feel the tranquility radiating from it. He had truly thought that he would never find it again, and his hand shook slightly as he traced a path to his bookshop, memorizing the route. He could visit it again. It was too good to believe. He could visit it again and he would visit it again. He traced the path back and forth, not trusting himself with something this important. Crowley’s joke about the fallible memory of angels made him especially cautious.
“Aziraphale?”
He blinked rapidly and looked up. The archangels were all looking at him. “Hmm?”
Gabriel frowned. “Have you been listening to anything we’ve been saying?”
“Oh! Yes, of course! I was simply- simply- I was looking down into London and thinking of how best to-“
“Find these cultists,” Gabriel finished for him. “Very good. So you agree with our plan?”
Aziraphale, having not heard a single word of the plan, gave his best convincing smile. “I think it is a very good plan.”
“Good. We’ll be in touch.”
“Right. Well, goodbye then.” His heart was beating hard enough that he could feel his pulse in his fingertips.
The angel had returned to show Aziraphale back to Heaven’s gate.
“Aziraphale,” Gabriel called after him. When Aziraphale turned, it was only him and Gabriel in the hallway. “We’ll expect timely updates from you.”
“Right. Of course, not a problem.” He hesitated, then ventured: “Once a century, perhaps?”
Gabriel nodded. “Yes, good.”
A century of silence to Heaven, then. And in that time, Gabriel would forget. Aziraphale followed the angel out, smiling to himself, humming to himself. A century before he would be required for anything. Aziraphale retraced the path from his bookshop to the second Eden in his mind as they walked.
_________________________
He did not, as he very much wanted to, make immediately for the second Eden the moment that his feet touched the earth again. He had spent his descent turning over his second anxiety in his mind. Since the first had come to nothing, it was in actuality his only anxiety remaining on this topic.
He wanted excessively to tell Crowley that he had found his own way out of the cultish labyrinth. He wanted to tell it as a brag and to tell it as a comedy and to tell it as an epic. He could imagine Crowley’s reaction with such clarity that it felt like premonition. He would be shocked, most likely into speechlessness, which Aziraphale would treasure for its rarity. He almost never had the power to render Crowley speechless. Crowley would at first not believe it, giving Aziraphale the repeated pleasure of talking about it again as he worked to convince him. He would look at Aziraphale with new eyes. Skepticism would become interest; he would become impressed. He would say, well, angel, you handled that rather neatly, didn’t you? And Aziraphale would preen. Crowley would take off his glasses, lean forward, and ask a hundred questions for Aziraphale to bask in.
Neither of them would mention Aziraphale’s virginal state. They would both be discrete, and Crowley would be considerate. Crowley wouldn’t speak to him again of lusts or the sexual act. Thousands of years they had known one another, and it had never come up even once until a cult had become interested in it. Now the question would fade back into mute, stilled disinterest. Perhaps in another thousand years it would faintly occur to Crowley to wonder if Aziraphale was still a virgin, and he would shake his head at the query and forget again.
Aziraphale could not think about this, but he also could think only of it. He was snagged on this one thought: Crowley would stop caring about Aziraphale’s sexual stature. It was the cults that had awakened him to the possibility that Aziraphale could have desires, and now that they were no longer a threat, Crowley would let that knowledge drift from his focus once again. And that thought made Aziraphale squirm. He could not let the thought sit still in him. It was his remaining anxiety. If he told Crowley that he had escaped the cults, Crowley would stop tempting him to solve his own problem.
He told himself: say it, say why this matters so much to you. There was no answer. Rather, the answer was not spoken but felt. It was felt. He felt it, he felt it, he felt it. It was in his gut. It was in his hands and his lips. He felt it in his pulse. It wasn’t made up of words, it was made of the rush of blood in his veins and the adrenaline that pumped alongside it. He couldn’t exhale it out, no matter the slow and calming breaths that he made himself take.
If the cults were still a factor, Crowley would continue to press Aziraphale to correct his virginal status. He would try to convince him, and when that didn’t work, he would try to tempt him. For Aziraphale, it would be like a wooing. He would let himself be persuaded inch by willing inch until he succumbed. He would be seduced. The barefaced truth he admitted to himself was this: he wanted his demon to try to tempt him and to succeed.
But that would not happen now.
Aziraphale could see no way out of telling Crowley the truth about the cults. Crowley was not Heaven; Aziraphale could not spend one hundred years pretending to Crowley that the cults were still interested in him. He would have to either tell him the truth or avoid seeing him entirely, and he could certainly not do the latter when there was the second Eden to show him. The desire to see Crowley immediately to take him to the second Eden warred with his equally powerful desire to obfuscate his new safety.
From Heaven, Aziraphale returned to his bookshop. He sat at his desk and wrote this letter:
My dear Crowley,
I believe that my cultist problem is at an end. If you don’t mind, I’d rather tell you the whole in person. If you don’t wish for the anticipation, come by immediately and I will tell you all that happened.
I’ve just come back from Heaven. I do not expect to return there any time soon, so I should be at home when you are ready to hear about the cultists. If you could, please come sooner rather than later. I know you do not trust my memory with the details, and the longer you wait the more I may forget.
He wondered if this letter would find its way into Crowley’s box. He thought not. It was a chivvying letter only a few shades lighter than a scolding for nothing. He thought for a moment, then closed the letter:
Believe me to be
Yours,
Aziraphale
Perhaps that would merit Crowley’s box. His heart was pounding as he sealed the letter.
_________________________
The morning after Aziraphale sent the letter to Crowley’s lodgings, Crowley stepped through the door of the bookshop. He was wearing his usual black costume, and for some reason it looked particularly somber today. Perhaps it was due to the grave expression on his face. When he removed his cap, it was with all the solemnity of someone paying respect at a funeral.
“Ah, Crowley!” Aziraphale said. “You’re here.”
Crowley said, “Your letter did indicate that speed was preferred.” He looked as grim as a thunderstorm.
“Yes, yes. Thank you for coming. First, I have something of yours.” Aziraphale held out a black jacket, the one that Crowley had wrapped him in following his very first abduction by the cults. It had sat for nearly two years now in Aziraphale’s wardrobe. Crowley took it, looking at first puzzled, then grim again.
“I thought it was well past time to return it,” Aziraphale said.
“It’s several years out of fashion,” Crowley said. “I don’t imagine I will be wearing it again.”
“Oh. Of course,” Aziraphale said.
There was a small pause and then Aziraphale began, “I was hoping to-” just as Crowley said, “Your letter said that you have ended your cult problem.”
“Well, I can’t be certain but I do think that I have.”
Crowley took a deep breath. “You also said that you would tell me about it.”
Aziraphale frowned at Crowley, who was steeling himself as if he was about to be tortured. “Only if you wish to know. I thought you would be pleased about this.”
A pained expression danced briefly across Crowley’s face, leaving a crease in his brow. “I am,” he said softly. “I’m pleased that you are safe from their attention. But I know how much you did not want to do this and I am sorry for you that you had to.”
Aziraphale could see his puzzled expression in his reflection in the lenses of Crowley’s glasses. What on earth was Crowley talking about?
“If I may ask- and maybe you shouldn’t tell me, but I have to ask, who-”
“Crowley,” Aziraphale broke in. “I’ll tell you the whole story. But please, let’s sit down.” He steered them to their usual armchairs. Crowley didn’t lounge as he normally did, instead sitting so properly upright that his spine may have been a pike.
Aziraphale took a breath, preparing to savor Crowley’s utter captivation, and said, “The last time you came to my aid, I had known that I was going to be captured before it happened. I could tell that the man I was speaking to was a cultist. I still- it didn’t help me that time, but it did the next time.”
“The next time!” Crowley exclaimed. “They found you again? But- but- I wasn’t there, I didn’t find you. How did you-”
“I’m telling you how. That next time – the last time – I found them and not the other way around. I saw two men who I knew to be of their ilk and I went to them. I said that I was an angel and that I would go with them if they wanted. I went to their lair- I walked there, they didn’t knock me unconscious or drug me, you see. And then once I was there, they threw me out again right away. They said that I behaved so un-angelically that I could not possibly be an angel. And now it’s been months with no sight of any of them.”
And he had said it. He waited. Crowley only sat there, stiff and silent. “Well?” Aziraphale demanded. “Crowley, are you even listening to me?”
“I’m listening. You’re about to tell me who you- how you- the story of getting the cult off your back.”
“Actually,” Aziraphale said, “I’ve just told you.”
“No you haven’t. You said something about being captured.”
“So you weren’t listening!”
Crowley stood and twisted his cap in his hands. “Aziraphale, will you please just tell me? Who was it and are you- was it nice?”
“Who was what?”
Crowley made a noise from the top of his throat that was a mix between a scoff and a bittern’s cry. He cleared his throat and tried again: “The person you went to for help ending the cults’ interest in you.”
And Aziraphale understood. His virginity. “There wasn’t-” He laughed. “Crowley, I didn’t. I haven’t. Listen to me.” And he said it all again, how he himself, through no sexual action, convinced the cult that he could not be an angel. Crowley’s eyes were sharp and focused now. His expression seemed to change after every sentence that Aziraphale spoke, but his focus never wavered.
This time, when Aziraphale finished he said softly, “You found your own way.” He shook his head and dropped his twisted cap onto the armchair. He turned away for a moment, reaching for his glasses and taking them off his face.
“I think so,” Aziraphale said.
Crowley looked at him, and Aziraphale remembered exactly when he had seen this expression on Crowley’s face before. His own eyes blurred with tears momentarily. Oh- it was the look he’d had in the Beginning, when he was showing Aziraphale the stars. It was the same enamored awe.
The memory Aziraphale had been missing grew back into its hole in his recollection like new skin over an old wound. You’re exactly the same as you were, he remembered himself saying, cupping Crowley’s face in his hands. The same as when he was an angel. He remembered the way that Crowley wouldn’t let him say it at the time. He remembered, from months later, Crowley’s long pause before he had told him that the drug only made him talk nonsense.
“You haven’t heard from them at all since?”
Aziraphale blinked. He had been engrossed in his newfound memory and had forgotten where he was and what they were talking about. “No, not a peep.”
“You’ve really done it.”
“Yes.”
“How did you think of it?”
“It was not by design. I was trying to- well, it doesn’t matter. It worked. For me, anyway. Not the cultists, they were quite upset. They didn’t know what to do with me.”
“No?” Crowley was grinning.
“I practically kidnapped myself.”
Crowley laughed gleefully. “Did you?”
“I mean, I walked straight up to the two men on the road and said, ‘hello, angel here! Fancy trying to divest me of my angelic properties?’ And when they were leading me to their lair, they had to keep asking me to walk slower because I was getting too far ahead of them.” Aziraphale was laughing too, now. “I did a little song and dance when they told me to get out of my clothes.”
Crowley was nearly crying from laughter. “Stop, stop, stop, stop!”
“You should have heard their leader.” Aziraphale put on his best cult leader voice: “ We know that the minions of darkness are conspiring against our holy rituals! This before you is one such minion!”
Crowley laughed so hard he sent himself into a coughing fit. As he caught his breath he said, “How perfectly un-angelic of you, angel. No wonder they don’t think you are an angel anymore.”
Almost before he was done speaking, Crowley froze in horror at his own words. Aziraphale froze too, waiting for the hurt to flood through him, not wanting to move and pull at the open wound. But the hurt did not come. He hadn’t lost his breath, even.
He said, “I don’t really care what they think of me. I know I’m an angel.” Crowley looked at him as he had looked before, and took a small breath like he was going to say something, but Aziraphale spoke first: “I’ve been wanting to show you something. Can you come with me?”
Crowley’s eyes flicked to the staircase, then back to Aziraphale. “Come where?”
The route to the second Eden was different on earth than it was from the vantage of Heaven. Even so, Aziraphale navigated the way effortlessly. Crowley, seeming to understand that he would have to be patient, asked no questions as they walked. He was half a step behind Aziraphale the whole way.
As they approached the second Eden, Aziraphale began to sense it. Tension that Aziraphale did not realize was in his shoulders began to seep out. His heart slowed in its beating to a calm cadence. He noticed Crowley sensing it too. Crowley cocked his head, as if he had heard something faintly and was trying to hear it again.
They stepped from a city street to a little path that wound through a thicket of trees that became a wood. Then they stepped onto an even smaller path and, single file, entered the second Eden.
It was as Aziraphale remembered. Peace, calmness, quiet, restfulness, concord, and tranquility all made their home here. And it was beautiful- it was damn beautiful. It was as though its greenery was a different shade of green from all the rest of the woods. It was as though the leaves held onto their dewdrops knowing that the sun would sparkle off of them like gemstones.
The best view was Crowley. Aziraphale turned in time to see his wide-eyed, opened-mouthed, astonished amazement. He revolved in place to take it all in, gaping. “How?” Crowley found his voice. “How is this possible?”
“I don’t know. I found it by sheer happenstance, in 1533. I got lost and stumbled in here. I’ve been trying to find my way back ever since. This is where that human spotted me, by the way. Remember that ‘angel in the woods’ thing? That was here.”
Crowley quirked a half-smile, most of his attention still on the second Eden. “That’s how those cults found out about you, no?”
“Seems likely.”
Crowley was still revolving slowly in place, trying to take it all in. “I- I feel like we shouldn’t be here,” he said, probably joking.
“Who cares?” Aziraphale answered, making Crowley laugh. “We know how to get here now,” Aziraphale continued boldly. “It will be difficult to keep us out.”
“Yeah,” Crowley agreed. “Yeah. Want to sit?”
There was a large tree in the middle of the Eden – not an apple tree, though Aziraphale did not know what it actually was – and they sat with their back pressed to its trunk.
“Is it the real one?”
“I don’t think so. Doesn’t really look like it, does it?”
“I don’t think I remember it well enough,” Crowley said. “Maybe this is what it looked like.”
Aziraphale knew that Crowley remembered it perfectly, but he also knew what Crowley meant. “Maybe.”
“I- I don’t know if you remember this,” Crowley said quietly, “but you wrote me a letter a few decades ago where you compared London to Eden. I would never have thought you were being this literal.”
Aziraphale did not say, yes I discovered that letter when I was snooping through your things. He said, “I’m surprised you can remember my letter so well, all these years later.” He said it leadingly. He was entrapping.
“That’s the superior memory of the demon,” Crowley said. He paused, then said, “And I saved that letter. I’ve re-read it.”
The soaring-swooping-sinking-sky high feeling brought on by Crowley’s letter box washed anew over Aziraphale. He ducked his head and tried to control his voice. “You saved it?”
“Yep,” Crowley said. “If you come by again, I’ll show you.” He said it casually, as though it were nothing, only his tightly clenched hands in his lap betraying that it was not. For Aziraphale, it blew the gates of Heaven open. He heard the choir of angels chorusing with their song from the Beginning, he heard the applause of a thousand thousand lovers watching from their eternal bliss.
He said, “I’d like that.” The universe vibrated to their resonance and frequency, everything in perfect balance.
Crowley said, “There was something else you said in your letter I wanted to ask you about.”
“In the letter you saved?”
“The letter you sent yesterday.”
“Ask.”
“You said you didn’t expect to return to Heaven anytime soon.” Crowley spoke kindly. There was not another word for it, it was kind. Really, it was so gentle that Aziraphale nearly could not abide it. Tears brought his eyes to high tide and Crowley reached for his elbow. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
“No, no!” Aziraphale rushed to say. “I’m not sorry.”
Crowley quirked his head. Aziraphale smiled at that serpent-like movement here in another Eden.
“I told Heaven I would report back in one hundred years. It-” He hesitated. He was about to say it was my idea, but that did not encompass the circumstances. “When I was up there, it wasn’t what I thought it was."
Crowley drew in a sharp breath. “It wasn’t what you wanted.”
“No,” Aziraphale said slowly. He thought of the other letter from Crowley’s box that he read. “Would you like to say I told you so?”
Crowley did not smile. His expression was still kind, still surprised. “It was a lesson I wanted you to learn,” he confessed. His voice was a whisper. “And since it was a lesson I learned cruelly, I did not know that it could be learned another way- not soon enough anyway. I wish I had tried harder to teach you kindly.”
It was on the tip of Aziraphale’s tongue to say I forgive you, but he swallowed it deep enough that he would never say it. He said, “I understand.” They looked at one another in perfect understanding. Aziraphale said, “There was something I’ve wanted to ask you too.”
“Ask.”
“Was I dreaming when you said that you could find me because you could hear me calling for you?” He blushed asking it.
“You weren’t dreaming. I started the engine of the universe, Aziraphale, I can tell how it works and where my- where you are. I can tell when something is wrong. I hear it like it’s music.” This charmed Aziraphale. It was so much lovelier than he could have imagined Crowley’s method for finding him was.
Crowley shook his head several times, as if trying to dispel the memories of when he was an angel with a guiding hand in designing the universe. Crowley had once told him that knowing the angel that he used to be did not mean that Aziraphale knew him. And perhaps that was true, in its way. Aziraphale could not tell Crowley that Falling did not change him. But it also didn’t change him. Not entirely, not beyond recognition. Not beyond Aziraphale’s knowing. Not beyond Aziraphale’s reach. He put truth to this by reaching out to take Crowley’s hand in his own. It felt just like his own, as much a part of him as his own. He ran his thumb over the skin of Crowley’s hand and knuckles. He lifted it to his mouth to brush a kiss across each knuckle, his wrist, his fingertips. He tugged gently and Crowley acquiesced, falling against him. This maneuver brought their faces close together. The spark of electric recognition surged. Crowley covered Aziraphale’s mouth, not with his hand, but with a kiss.
Above them, a thousand leaves each greener and more alive than the next. They danced in the breeze, whispering among themselves in hushed joy. Birds nested in the branches of the trees, grasses pillowed the earth. Flowers beyond the finest embroideries, imitated by every artist but matched by none, spread out in glory. All around them was nature perfected. And they were seated at the heart of all of it, a demon and an angel, also perfected.
Was there ever another Eden? Aziraphale could not remember. And if there was, this was the first Eden. Any others were secondary.