Safed was hot. Not as hot as other places—it is the highest point in Galilee, which might be part of the reason so many Jewish families moved there after surviving the expulsion from Spain. Easier to defend yourself if you are on the top of a mountain. Even seventy or so years after the expulsion, everyone's nerves were still shot, even if they were in Eretz Israel. But what Aziraphale liked about Safed—why he was here, again, for reasons that could not be adequately justified should he be asked—was that the general response to the trauma of the Spanish exile had been to invest new energy in faith, in thought, and in community. The majority Muslim town, which had been a prize in the days of both Josephus and the Crusaders, had been expanded by the panicked influx of Sephardim from Catholic Spain, and now was home to about a thousand families total, who more or less got along, most of the time. The streets were narrow, deep and winding, and buildings went up on top of other buildings. In these last fifty years or so, schools had formed, the textile industry was booming, sidewalk cafes had sprung up where friends gathered, and learned men (and behind doors, learned women) were making new leaps of cognitive effort in order to try to understand and repair the evils of the world.
But it was summer, and even with the elevation, it was hot. There were no real rivers nearby, and most of the water came from rainwater cisterns. Aziraphale found it necessary sometimes to work small miracles in order to regulate his body temperature. What was lucky was that Jewish ritual bathing was a mitzvah, and the Kabbalists who were now abounding in Safed used it even more than anyone else thought you were required to—every Shabbat, for some of them, and for all kinds of other reasons that to Aziraphale's understanding were not strictly speaking called for in the Torah or any other texts. Some of them went daily. Aziraphale liked baths to begin with, and he went to the mikveh almost every day.
Part of the immersion in water was about seeking to clean impurities from the body. It was traditionally required to bathe after contact with a corpse, after having any kind of biblically-named skin condition, after ejaculation, after menstruation, after childbirth, before marriage, before certain holidays, et cetera. Aziraphale was supposedly celestial even in human form and supposedly did not have these impurities—and, he rather thought, as an angel above human folly he was not bound by the same mitzvot as the Jewish people of Safed believed themselves to be—but he liked the idea. You actually cleaned all the physical impurities off your body before immersion, in a little tub or with a cloth off to the side, so that the actual bath was purely for spiritual reasons. It felt good to be immersed in cool water and to float under it. It felt, Aziraphale thought, similar in a way to the way that being a celestial body prior to the existence of human forms had felt good. Only you could still hear your heart.
Crowley made fun of him for it.
Crowley did not have to be here either, for any reason under the sun that Aziraphale could tell, and Aziraphale sensed he had come specifically to see him, which made Aziraphale feel nervous. By this point he understood that Crowley did not intend to cause him personally any trouble and would generally avoid causing significant trouble nearby, because they had some kind of connection that neither of them were naming. But that was the problem. Aziraphale had been feeling for over two centuries that he was far closer to Crowley than could ever be adequately justified for intelligence purposes, just as demonic work in the world started to really kick into high gear. Slavery, mercantilism, and genocide were spreading like the Plague had a few centuries before, and the Light should have struck down every agent of Dark visible, but instead Aziraphale and Crowley had keys to one another's respective houses.
And Aziraphale had started it.
He had found himself keeping secrets from Gabriel on more than one occasion. He had found himself drinking on sunlit afternoons and cold nights with the demon after suggesting they meet for no reason. He kept track of himself, trying to see if his Works in the world were dwindling because of his contact with Hell, and worked scrupulously to ensure they were not. But he couldn't actually stay away from Crowley. He couldn't refuse him a lunch date, or a drink, or a meaningless walk through muddy streets. When the demon asked him to tempt people on his behalf, which he had now, often, because he was a demon, Aziraphale never did-though very often people did the thing Crowley had been meant to tempt them into of their own accord, anyway, so this wasn't really a victory for Heaven. He laughed at Crowley's jokes, even very cruel ones sometimes. The magnetic pull he felt toward Crowley was certainly, by any measure, bad as far as Upstairs was concerned. He found himself hoping, one night, looking at Crowley sprawled out in a moor they had been totally purposelessly rambling together at midnight, that the One would figure out a way to make the Fallen rise. Aziraphale had brought this up to Gabriel, thinking that perhaps some department was working on it. Gabriel had laughed about it, for too long. So five years ago Aziraphale had crossed part of an ocean and a lot of Europe and another sea to get to Safed. Here the humans were puzzling about fixing the world, and Aziraphale felt like puzzling with them.
Crowley had been in England for five years, until one day he just turned up, outside the bakery where Aziraphale had been buying breakfast. He had been here three days and each afternoon they had gone out for coffee together, then had dinner, then looked at the stars, then awkwardly parted. Aziraphale knew that to come have come all this way there was something Crowley wanted from him, and he was unsure if it was to his own benefit to discover what.
It was Friday night, and Aziraphale's hair was still wet. The sun was angling golden through the different windows and rooftop gardens of Safed. Crowley was wearing inconspicuous but still remarkably well-tailored robes. He was wearing a beard these days, a small one, and it suited him in a way that Aziraphale would unfortunately never find the courage to communicate to him. He had a thin ring on one finger shaped like a snake, and, ironically, an anti-evil-eye talisman on a necklace. He didn't quite fit in in Aziraphale's new hypermystical circles, with a cynical irony around him so thick you could cut it with a knife, but Aziraphale noticed that the women and young men in town who he allowed to notice him were drawn to him like a pearl in a shot glass.
"Can you explain to me why exactly you're doing this ritual bathing and why it is you have to do it all the way in Galilee?" Crowley asked. They were on their third cup of coffee, sitting on low chairs outside a woman named Maryam's enterprising small cafe. Since it was a Muslim city, very few people drank alcohol in public. Wine was available for Shabbat, but you did that indoors. "There's all kinds of hijinks I'm getting up to in England. They're starting a massive evil empire. It's sort of beyond me, but I'm getting the credit. You could stop me and take your baths over there."
"Evil empire? My understanding is they've sent one rather dim privateer over on a little boat. Hardly glamorous. If you wanted credit for evil empire things, wouldn't you be in Spain or Portugal? Or Brazil? Encouraging all the pillaging and destruction and slavery?"
"Eh, a good deal of that's demons I never want to see again. Rahab, those guys. Not my scene." Crowley looked shiftily into the blue of the late afternoon sky. A dove took flight. The doves had come over with the crusaders and maybe a little before and were everywhere underfoot. "Maybe in a while, if they make me."
"Why are you here?" Aziraphale asked abruptly. He wasn't angry at Crowley, exactly, but he was angry at something, thinking of all the reasons the world at large terrified, devastated, paralyzed him. Aziraphale thought of how futile his works were. Safed was meant to be a sanctuary from it.
"It's a nice little town. Important. Hilltop. That's military advantage. That's what I wrote on my report this week. I'm doing a scout. Been a while since my people had anyone here. Got a stamp."
"There's nothing here for you. You can't have any of this. This is a place that deserves to be beautiful."
"I agree. I think it's lovely."
"But what are you doing?"
"This and that. Getting people addicted to caffeine. Helping people decide to commit adultery."
"I doubt that will win you many points Below. I hear Hastur is over in India right now getting Mughal lords to off each other left and right."
"Well, angel, maybe I just don't want to talk about it."
"Planning a war? Poisoning a well? Spreading foul intent and corruption?" Aziraphale was hoping to draw out of Crowley just why he had come here. Maybe he wanted Aziraphale to look the other way while he did something evil, but then why come all this way when Aziraphale was clearly being deeply inattentive already? Maybe he wanted to try and get Aziraphale to Fall, for some obscure plot against Heaven, but then why bother, when the legions of the damned were so numerous? Maybe it was the End Times, and he was about to tell Aziraphale that this whole mountain and everything else lovely in the world would end in a week.
Crowley set down his cup on the table, hard.
"Sometimes I just like to see you," Crowley said. He said it quickly, and looked down at the table, where there was a mosaic depicting abstract floral shapes. "Sometimes that's all. Sometimes I want to see you."
They sat for a moment in silence.
"I don't quite know what to say," Aziraphale said. He felt himself getting embarrassingly choked up. He had been suspicious of Crowley. He still was. Crowley was a demon. But he also knew Crowley was in earnest right now. He had known him long enough to be able to tell. It made Aziraphale's human stomach lurch up and his heart beat. "I mean, you aren't looking for any favors or anything?"
"No. Shut up."
"I mean, Crowley, I'm touched. I don't think I've realized how much I…"
"Shut up. Why are you here?"
"Crowley."
"Surely God fucking knows whether these kids are right or wrong about the realms or sephirot or the ten whatsits. Surely you know. Why do you listen to them? Why do you dunk in the fucking mikveh all the time? Why do you eat the bread and drink the wine every week? The prayers, the leather strap, the funny shit they wear. They didn't wear that in the second Temple's time. They're just making this shit up. You can't guide them, you aren't giving them anything. Their Temple's been gone a thousand plus years. What are you doing here? Why not be in England again?" With me, Aziraphale heard.
"Learning."
"Okay, what?"
"Well, for one, the mikveh. I like that they like it so much. They like to be clean and they like the feeling of water and have figured out a doable way of making that central to their lives and using that feeling to connect to God, which they know is good. I think it's nice to experience the physical sensations humans associate with divinity and purity alongside them," Aziraphale said. He was partly being holier-than-thou and partly being very, very honest, which he found himself doing a lot around Crowley. "I think it teaches me something about how they might be drawn toward it, and what makes them feel safe, or loved."
"I hear that some of the Catholics have been starving themselves and whipping themselves to be holy. Have you tried those?"
"It wouldn't really be my place," Aziraphale said firmly, sipping his coffee. "I don't have to overcome my mortal body for anything. It's something that's been issued to me that I don't really need to fight. But I can use it to explore things."
"That's convenient. You ought to really have told that to Catherine of Siena about three hundred fifty years ago. Before all the pus eating and nibbling twigs and starving and whatnot. Ought to tell it now to some of those ascetics. Ought to be over talking to the Puritans about that, in fact, hadn't you?"
"Possibly some humans need it. Catherine seemed awfully sure. She said she talked directly to—" Aziraphale trailed off, because he realized he wasn't sure exactly what name to use.
"To who? And did she?"
Aziraphale said nothing. It was partly because Crowley was baiting him and partly because he suspected that Crowley, and Crowley's whole side, did not understand, despite repeated discussions of ineffability, the degree to which angels—at least angels such as Aziraphale— did not know.
Two children ran by clutching armfuls of oranges to their chests.
"So what did you learn today before your dunking?" Crowley leaned into a different tack after a minute, and Aziraphale saw a certain shift in his eyes, as if he was worried about Aziraphale's defenses going up. Aziraphale saw it, smiled, and let his anger go. He wanted to talk about the learning, anyway. He wanted to talk about it specifically to Crowley.
"I was over at Luria's again. Listening to the discussion of the Beginning that they're having. Going on for days now, all poring over the Zohar at all hours. The way his eyes blaze. Thank heaven it's Friday so they'll sit on it for a day or so and spend time with their family. My head's spinning, honestly."
"And what are they saying?" Crowley downed the last of his bitter coffee.
"Well, it's very interesting. They've gone quite over the top with the Leon text."
"Which is a forgery."
"Which is compiled from a divine source by a human pen, as many religious texts are," Aziraphale countered.
"Do any of them point out that it's clearly post-Talmudic? You've got all kinds of names and stuff in there that are anachronistic and the Aramaic's like a demented Ladino linguist got at it."
"Anyway, they're taking it to interesting places. I'm surprised you don't go listen."
"Talking about Adam? I'd jump in and correct them."
"Some of it is about the Fall."
That shut Crowley up. He stirred honey into his coffee.
"They're grappling with it in quite a new way," Aziraphale said, as gently as possible. "Because they're really very smart, all of them. They're always approaching things from the idea that everything is one thing, everything originates from God, so the paradoxes all have to be reconciled, the apparent dualism really just needs to not be dualism, needs to be a counterbalancing kind of matrix of multiple states."
"Could have told you that." Crowley did not make eye contact, and Aziraphale wasn't sure if he was mocking him.
"But they've almost literally got the physicalities of it. They talk in metaphors, but the big bang, the stars, the nothing into something-ness. The contraction of the One from itself to create space for creation. The pain of that contraction. The blast containing everything and all potential futures. The relativity of time, the subjectivity of chronology. They grasp it. It's beautiful."
It was at this moment that Maryam came by to remind them that Shabbat was in two hours and that they had better get ready. Aziraphale thanked her, stood, emptied his coffee cup, and put it on the tray to one side she had for dirty dishes. Maryam smiled at him, in a way that meant she didn't know but she did think he was a very nice young man. She lifted the chairs off the street and pulled them inside and prepared to shut down for the day.
The sun was getting low. Aziraphale tried to see some way to stay with Crowley, to draw him out a little, but did not like the idea of inviting him to Shabbat, and did not like the idea of offering to forgo Shabbat for him. Shabbat was for wholeness, faithfulness, love, and whatever wrenching pull Aziraphale felt for Crowley, he didn't think the demon had a great deal of any of those to go around with.
"Well, time to go," Aziraphale said, regretfully. "Depending on how long you're staying, I'll see you again. It's almost Shabbat now, this part of the city shuts down for prayers."
Crowley put his hands on his hips. "I don't like that. Can't go out late."
"You can. Just outside the Jewish neighborhood."
They walked a little way together, down the street.
"I don't like it. Night ends too early. Wouldn't you like to be somewhere else where you aren't hemmed in by walls and having people looking down their noses at you if you pop out for a smoke?"
"I don't smoke."
"You'd like it. An interesting sensation for your human body to explore. Call it prayer if you like. Call it all prayer. Come get trashed with me."
"Crowley, don't make me cross." Aziraphale adjusted his collar. "I liked seeing you. I'm glad you can admit you like seeing me. I'll see you again. But it's Shabbat, and I'm doing this right now. I'm practicing doing what they do so I understand it."
"I'm just suggesting things. Can't help if they're evil or whatnot. Spit in the street, shit somewhere holy. Sneeze on a widow."
"You aren't tempting me, you're just being vulgar."
"Vulgar? I can be vulgar. I'm a demon. You're the angel who's so interested in your human body. So go have sex, angel. Suck a cock. Get your ass eaten. Those are interesting sensations."
"Dear friend, I'll say goodbye here. I'll see you around. Shabbat Shalom." Aziraphale felt that putting up with more of this would be degrading. He felt the obvious pang at having to dismiss Crowley, but the obvious pang was also something he was very conflicted about, and tried very hard not to have. He turned and began to walk away.
"What? Goodbye?" Crowley asked.
"I'm going to be present here on Shabbat with the mystics. Are you saying you would like to come? Do you want to go with me to buy bread?"
"Yes."
"You'll need to stop cursing. Which I don't think you can. So I'll see you in a while."
"Fuck off," Crowley said, with more vitriol than Aziraphale expected.
Aziraphale looked at him, dumbfounded.
"I'm going with you, obviously. Don't tell me not to. I'll follow your stupid rules. Or I'll forget, and you'll have to deal with it. But I'm coming."
"I-all right," Aziraphale stuttered. He couldn't refuse him anything. "Only I don't understand exactly why. You were just saying you'd hate it."
"Angel," Crowley said. He stood there in the sun, his brow clear for once. He looked at Aziraphale with a stare that was openly pleading. "I trekked all the way across the fucking world to this stupid little mountain for you. Can you not treat me like I'm scum on your shoe or a snake in the grass for two minutes?"
"You aren't scum," Aziraphale started, and then stopped, unsure if that was technically true according to party line. He decided that it didn't matter. "You aren't scum."
"Can I have one dinner with you where we act like things are fine?"
"You can have...lots of dinners," Aziraphale said. "Yes." He leaned gingerly against the steps up to the tailor Abram's house and wiped his brow with the edge of his sleeve. "Crowley, I'm afraid I don't understand quite what this outburst is about."
"I came here to see you."
Aziraphale watched Crowley's hands, which were curling into the hems of his clothes and fidgeting and wringing the cotton fabric like it was made of things he was trying to kill. He said nothing.
"I'm admitting it, damn it, so give me something, please. I want to talk and have fun. I want to enjoy your company."
"We could both go to Moishe's. He and his wife are very kind and have a dozen at their table every week."
"Fuck that. Please, angel, come with me somewhere. Just me. Just for tonight. Not far. I'm not trying to make you Fall. I won't ask - I'll try not to do anything infernal. I promise. I won't make you miss your human religious bullshit either. You can have the bread and the candles and wine and bullshit. I'll watch you do the mystic thing, whatever, just please have dinner with me. There's no one to talk to in London. I've been grinding my teeth every time Naamah or whoever pops by to talk about the old days. Nobody is funny. Nobody is smart. Nobody can carry a fucking conversation or understands what the fuck's going on around here, even as they claim to be running it all, and they don't understand how good the Earth can feel. I miss you."
"Crowley," Aziraphale said, meaning to say something about how evil was in the end always ultimately a lonely enterprise, but then realizing that he was feeling something, whether a holy or evil inclination, that stopped his tongue.
They went to a river, because the other cities which were relatively nearby were a day's travel with normal means, and neither of them felt like an actual miracle. The river was deep and cold and rushing at that time, though as the centuries wore on it would nearly disappear. There were pine trees surrounding the banks. It was a good distance by foot. Crowley made it more convenient through the assistance of two Muslim merchants who were heading that way and agreed to take them on the two spare donkeys they had with them. It took most of the last hour before sunset to reach the water. The sun was pink and orange and misty and hot as it descended over the curve of the earth.
"Because you like water so much," Crowley said. His tone had been somewhat muted since his outburst, and Aziraphale could feel his anxiety that he would be prompted to expand somehow on more of his feelings.
Azirapale lit the oil lamps and said the prayers, and then he poured the wine. There was one bottle, but he knew that Crowley would make it pour however much he felt like drinking. He made Crowley wait while he said the blessing.
"You didn't bless mine too, did you? It isn't going to scald me?"
"The wine came from God. The blessing is just acknowledging that. It isn't like holy water or anything."
"Well, seems a little cruel to say in front of me."
"You came from God too, Crowley."
"But we're not exactly on speaking terms, are we?"
Aziraphale, who had been sitting on the grassy bank, reclined. "Luria would say that you could be, if you wanted to. Their whole sort of sphere of light hidden by the husk of chaos thing."
"Not following. They're all absolutely potty, you know that, right?"
"Well, they said the same thing about Joan of Arc, didn't they?"
"And she was."
"Everyone who sees us and knows what we are is mad by human standards. Awareness can do that to people."
Aziraphale blessed the bread and then sat down and started unwrapping the components of their dinner.
"Angel, don't sit on the ground, you'll get muddy, and you all clean."
"Have you properly heard the tikkun olam thing they have?" Aziraphale ignored Crowley magicking himself a blanket and pointedly leaving space for him. He was finding that he rather enjoyed the pleading look in the demon's eyes.
"The "following the rules and be just to each other and daddy in the sky will be good to you and give you the messiah" thing?"
"No, just the opposite. That's second century stuff. That's what I'm saying, they're turning it all around. It isn't just Luria, they've been messing with this for a while. Have you heard the thing where they think of heaven and the seraphim as vessels for divine light pouring forth from Creation, the first line in creation, the first containers outside God for Godself and God's light?"
"Very nice to hear too, if you're an angel. Shouldn't like what they have to say about the snake."
Aziraphale went to sit next to Crowley and poured himself another glass of wine and raised his eyebrows archly. He sipped it, waiting for Crowley to take the bait and ask.
"Don't get all earnest on me, angel. I don't like the look you have."
"Listen, Crowley. Their thing is that the vessels broke because God was not prepared, or was prepared but was unable to bear, the pain of self-rending like that. Their thing is that that was the fall, the holy vessels shattering. Not the bad or wicked being thrown out. Because how would it make sense for a perfect, unbroken God to generate things that were bad or wicked? Their thing is that the Fall was an internal crisis within God, not outside God. God broke Godself in contracting in order to make room for creation, and the breaking caused parts of the divine essence to scatter into broken pieces, which lost understanding of having ever been part of God, whose spark of divine light was hidden in the material world."
"You're awfully serious about all this for someone who spends his days listening to pimply boys argue about a text that isn't even real Aramaic."
"Forget for a second what you remember of the revolt, or the story my side tells. Luria and the rest say the pain of God contracting and concealing Godself shattered the heavens, the vessels, whatever, and sent billions and billions of particulate, wavy matter bits out into the void, the lower spheres, which maybe was supposed to happen but which means that every piece of thing flung out of Heaven then is a broken shard of God traumatized by the separation and-and trying to elevate, and return to God, which is light and unity and oneness with the universe."
"Well, angel, sorry, but that's just batshit."
"But do you follow? If you take it further and assume the existence of demons, even demons are just shards covering lights of the divine."
"Or we're the stuff that gets peeled off the lights and thrown in the trash."
"No. Any being has the light of the divine."
The sun slipped over the edge of the hill and the sky lit up as if it was made of red crystal.
"Listen to you, and you've had only about half a glass of wine."
"Isn't it beautiful?"
"Rather Buddhist, really," Crowley said. "Have you tried going anywhere in the Himalayas yet?"
"It's beautiful," Aziraphale said. "I think I really sort of believe it. The most beautiful part is that their version of tikkun olam puts it fully on humans to restore themselves to divinity. Humans are supposed to create a perfect society alone and repair God from the inside through sustainable engagement with each other and the world, and through-well, mitzvot and meditation and things."
"What if they fail? Who saves them?"
"Nobody. The world gets worse."
"But the parting of the sea and all that."
"They don't count on it happening again. They barely believe in intervention from Outside, though they talk about angels and demons sometimes. But for them it's almost extraneous. They put paradise and everything in this world, and put it on themselves to figure out how to bring it about."
"How sweet." Crowley, holding his third glass of wine, stood, turned, contemplated the sunset, and then sat down again quite close to Aziraphale's knees. "I mean that. It's sweet of them."
His hand was about an inch from Aziraphale's stomach.
"Do you know why I came here?" Aziraphale asked.
"I don't know, to deliver the Messiah?"
"I needed to know what the Kabbalists were saying, because I don't think angels always understand what's happening on Earth."
"That's blasphemous. True, of course, but careful."
"People Upstairs don't get the nuance of loving things that aren't perfect, of being invested in things that may well turn out wrong. I'm one of the only ones down here, and nobody listens to me. But humans understand it."
"Are you confessing your doubts to me?" Crowley asked. "Please save it."
"But you understand what I mean."
"I do," Crowley said. "But angel, remember who you're talking to. I told you I'm not going to try to make you Fall."
"You aren't?" His tone was light.
"No, I like you."
"Oh," Aziraphale said. Everything settled into place, finally, for good, in his heart. "Hadn't you better not say that?"
"You were saying about Heaven being shitheads, angel."
"Oh. Yes. I think they see the beauty in Creation, but I don't know that they understand how beautiful it is to be constrained by matter, to have to interact with it. I don't think angels realize that humans are often more aware of what divinity is than we are, because they have something to contrast it to all the time, and they have to pull it out of a world that is painful."
Crowley extended the tip of one of his fingers so it brushed Aziraphale's stomach for an instant. It may have been unconscious.
Aziraphale allowed himself to reach down and trace the back of Crowley's hand with his index and middle fingers.
Crowley started, and Aziraphale could see all the competing little defensive impulses ricocheting around in his brain, could see all the anger and hurt he had that had been building up for millennia and which in this moment was directed at him, Aziraphale, for no particular reason other than that he was there, proximate.
Aziraphale knew suddenly that Crowley wanted-
"They also understand the ecstasy of heaven," Aziraphale said. He paused and took a breath and a sip of wine, looking at the shape of Crowley's jaw and the little hairs growing down and curling in front of his ears, merging into his sparse little dark beard. "These Kabbalists, anyway. The metaphysical collision of different aspects of the divine presence, participating in creation. The masculine and feminine aspects of God. They say that God becomes whole for a second on Shabbat, when the spiritual world resembles what it will after the work of repair is completed. They talk about the beginning of Shabbat being ecstasy. They liken it to sex."
The river burbled and a fish splashed.
Crowley leaned slowly back against Aziraphale's legs and threw an arm over his body to rest on the ground. He looked up at the angel and reached up slowly with his other hand, as if the arc of the sun through the wine might catch him on fire if he moved too fast. He ran his hand along Aziraphale's jawline.
"That's getting risky, isn't it?" he asked. His voice was softer than Aziraphale had ever heard it. "Sex." His fingers were not like anything else. Aziraphale could feel them quivering against his skin.
Aziraphale imagined himself explaining this to Gabriel, after he did what he knew he was about to do. If they were watching. "God created a world with a lot of sex. It's ordinary, miraculous, ecstatic. Normal. Bodily, like sickness and food and drink and milk for babies. And they're not wrong about how it feels, to create. It is similarly orgasmic."
"It's orgasmic. I remember. I remember being there. It felt like nothing else since." He was trying to be flippant, still, but he was asking in every movement for Aziraphale to say more, do more, to give him a chance to move. "Sex on earth is nothing compared to the Work-" Crowley stopped, frowned. His hand was still on Aziraphale.
"Bodies having sex on earth is a small echo of the work we did back then, making the universe. It feels good for us to remember it." Aziraphale felt Crowley's fingers beneath his jaw and thought of the stars of Alpha Centauri.
"We. Us. Like I'm one of the host."
"We. You were. I remember." Aziraphale took hold of Crowley's right hand.
Crowley's left hand slipped from Aziraphale's jaw to his shirt. Aziraphale did not move as Crowley, one handed, unbuttoned the first three buttons and slid his hand under onto Aziraphale's chest. Crowley's tongue flickered out to wet his lips, and he was looking directly into Aziraphale's eyes. Aziraphale looked back, sending wave upon wave of thoughts at Crowley: the space between stars, the ecstasy of being part of something bigger, of being loved. Of having that love, of unearthing it in new places. He was telepathically bombarding Crowley with the things he wished he felt: that he knew what his place in the universe was, that he belonged to a grand project, that he was part of a living, enormous Godhead. That he could be full of light every time he asked, every time he wanted.
"Full of shit," Crowley murmured.
Then, very slowly, Crowley removed his hand from Aziraphale's, and slid his body around so he was facing Aziraphale, reclining. His breaths were shallow. He chugged the last of his wine, set down the cup, and put his other hand inside Aziraphale's shirt. Aziraphale felt his hands, smooth and slender and hot like the flame inside a star, brush against the downy hair on his pectorals. Aziraphale suddenly felt more powerful than he had since he created the enormous storms of Jupiter. He was able to do anything he wanted with Crowley. He was able to understand for the first time that Crowley wanted something from him that was exactly what he wanted to give.
Something long-stretching snapped. Aziraphale looked down into Crowley's yellow eyes and brought his hand to Crowley's throat, gently. He sat up slowly and pushed his lips down over the demon's wine-flavored mouth.
It lasted a long time.
Healing, healing, healing, healing, healing. Say it eighteen times and it'll be true.
They rolled over so that the angel was on top, holding him down. Their mouths were wet and hot and slightly bitter because of the wine. Aziraphale allowed his hands to take hold of the clasps on the demon's shirt and tear them open, because he could feel that that's what Crowley wanted. Crowley had more hair than he had had the last time Aziraphale saw him naked, which had been before the invention of clothing. He touched the demon's nipples, played with them, pulled. He stroked the arc of Crowley's slight pectorals with his thumbs, following it into the warm underarm, then back.
"M-m." Crowley moaned and arched into him and clutched at the wrist Aziraphale was pressing into his collarbone. He breathed hard through his nose as his tongue probed Aziraphale's mouth. The smell of pine mingled with sweat and wine and the woodfire heat of celestial spit. Aziraphale could feel him writhing, trying to get his legs around Aziraphale's so he could work his pelvis against Aziraphale's thigh.
"You want to be part of it, to know creation, to know harmony. I want that. And I want you."
"Want me," Crowley echoed, sort of pleading, questioning, asking.
"You want to be part of God and I want to be part of you again," Aziraphale said, confusing Kabbalistic concepts in a way that Luria probably would not have approved of or quite comprehended. He pushed his free hand down over Crowley's stomach, (moan) into Crowley's pubic hair, (moan) over his cock, into the folds of heat and flesh that didn't technically need to be there but which were. Pushed his fingers down, into the heat that probably meant hellfire but which also was still from the stars.
"M-m. MMM."
Into Crowley. Friction at first, then wet, sliding, saline, infernal heat.
"Mmpdfjh Dvkjh sjknj glkjl sllkj."
"What's that?" Aziraphale seized Crowley's hair and let their mouths part for long enough that he could catch his breath. "What did you say, demon?"
"Ohhh angel, the divinity is so good, save me from myself," Crowley puffed sarcastically into Aziraphale's chest. "Fuck it out of me with your holy fist, make me good again." He giggled. But Aziraphale could feel his body pushing, needing, grasping, wanting, hoping that the contact would never stop, that Aziraphale would take the rest of his clothes off, that Aziraphale would say more to him, want him, make him ask, not make him ask.
"Beg for it, demon."
Crowley looked up at him and looked frightened for a second, then saw Aziraphale's facial expression and relaxed. He managed to hold eye contact for long enough to speak. "Fill me with your white hot light, angel. Forgive my sins. FUCK. Mmph. Auh. Fill me with your holy cum. MMMfuck."
"I will," Aziraphale said, bending his mouth into Crowley's neck.
"Ohh, my heavenly dick is so hard for Shechinah and for Luria's theology." Crowley was breathlessly laughing.
"Crowley," Aziraphale said, and stuck his fingers from his free hand into Crowley's mouth. He felt sharp teeth for an instant, and then just soft, wet heat as Crowley immediately began eagerly sucking, swallowing, making himself almost gag from how deep he took them. He moaned louder. Aziraphale thrust his fingers deeper inside Crowley's mouth and, below, into his hot, wet hole. He felt the muscles inside stretch to accommodate, still tight around him but letting him move exactly how he wanted. Deeper. Push up. Crowley's head arced back and he let out a strangled cry.
"Angel," he said, though it was more muffled than that.
Aziraphale pulled his fingers out of his mouth so he could talk. "Beloved."
"It's like the Song of Songs. Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth for your love is more delightful than wine."
"I want you."
"Pleasing is the fragrance of his perfumes. Your name is like perfume poured out."
"I want you. You're so so beautiful. You're so, so perfect." Fingers back in mouth. "Perfect perfect perfect."
Crowley laughed and choked and gagged on Aziraphale's fingers. He pulled his head to the side. "You are incorrect."
"I say I am correct." Aziraphale pushed his fingers deeper into Crowley's hole and pulled them out again very slowly. Crowley groaned and thrust against Aziraphale. "I know I'm right, and you're beautiful, and perfect."
"How handsome you are, my beloved! Oh, how charming! And our bed is verdant." This was more Song of Songs.
"I want to be part of you and have you." He ground the palm of his hand into Crowley's cock.
"MMMshitshitshit. Spit on me, Aziraphale."
"Say you love Hashem, Crowley. Call out the glory of the Name. Then I'll spit anywhere you like."
"Spit in my mouth. Ssssspit fuck fuck."
"Praise God first. Say Baruch atah Shechinah…."
"Fuck you. Mmsdllfuckfuck. Fuck you. Fuck."
"Do you want me to stop?" Aziraphale stopped. "I'll stop."
"No. Please, angel."
Aziraphale moved down Crowley's body, one hand still inside him, pulling his clothes off in heaves of well-engineered fabric until the demon lay exposed, his small cock red and hard in the dusk against his dark pubic hair and the curve of his legs, his labia, his small ass. Aziraphale spat on his cock, teased it with his thumb. He pressed his tongue to Crowley. His cunt tasted like salt.
Aziraphale's tongue had been used to enumerate the thousand true names of Hashem in the heavens. He was very good at moving it. Crowley clutched at his own hair, spread his legs, heaved between Aziraphale and the grassy embankment, keening.
"I love you. Please, angel. I don't give a fuck about the Name but I love you."
"Shh. I know," Aziraphale said.
"I love the stupid shit you say. You're so fucking naive. You're so fucking earnest."
"Shh." He applied his mouth to the demon's cock. He did this for several minutes. The sounds Crowley made could best be described as keening, in a tenor similar to the cry of a wildcat.
Eventually he came up for air. Crowley's body was shaking.
"MMmph fuck. That's the best fucking head. Aziraphale, I think…"
I love you too, Aziraphale thought at him.
"I was going to say, I think angels give the best fucking head."
"For God's sake, shut up."
"For Satan's sake, I deserve to say it." Crowley drew in a shuddering breath as his whole body shook again, his elbows raking up the turf. "I've seduced an angel. Think of what they'll say Below. They'll give me a parade. Au-aughh." Crowley tried for a devilish smile but then whimpered loudly and pushed his face into his own arm as Aziraphale pressed two fingers back inside him. "You've really done it now, angel. You let a demon cum in your mouth."
"Made a demon cum in my mouth," Aziraphale corrected.
"Welcome to Hell, angel."
The thought of this phrase uttered in earnest would have scared Aziraphale shitless a few weeks ago. The thought of this phrase uttered in earnest would scare him shitless again in the future. Nothing was permanent. But that Friday night, Aziraphale was present enough to understand that it was a joke, that there was no actual Hell, besides alienation, and no actual reality or future where Crowley had any desire to hurt him, or wanted anything but to belong completely to Aziraphale. He could taste the salt of Crowley's cunt all around his mouth, in his mustache and beard. Aziraphale knew in that moment that if what he was doing really would damn him, he would go into the Pit without complaint, even if the love he had could not last in Hell, even if the pain of being separated further from Heaven would tear him physically and spiritually apart for the rest of eternity. It was just worth it.
"This isn't Hell."
"Fuck me harder, please, please, please. Fuck me with your dick," Crowley moaned. He was laying now with his legs spread open and his hands thrown back. His cunt was dripping visibly onto the blanket, the fluid catching light and reflecting in the dusk.
Aziraphale had not thought about fucking him before Crowley asked for it, because he had been paying too much attention to the way he could make Crowley's body react to his hands and mouth. But once it was said, Aziraphale found he had a hard, ecstatic erection rising under his clothes. Of course, that was exactly what demonic seduction would look like, if that were happening. But he loved Crowley, could admit it, and the moon was shining and the locusts were singing and the sight of Heaven was not anywhere near and rather than falling into a Pit, it felt more like he was entering the vast and precious marital bed of Shabbat, holding the one person in the world he knew was dear to him, whose body could be known to him like this, who could know him and not hurt him. Probably. He was conducting repair of the universe.
He withdrew his hand from inside Crowley, and Crowley arched his back again and reached out with one hand and held tight to his thigh. Aziraphale timidly rubbed at his cock, feeling the warmth of it, the surprising new weight of it, pressing it to Crowley and feeling the slickness, the slight thrilling friction, the twitch of the demon's body against Aziraphale's. Aziraphale pressed the head of his cock slightly into Crowley's cunt and then pulled back, did it again.
Crowley sat up, his long hair falling over his face. His mouth was red from being kissed. His pupils were shining big and black and dark in the middle of his yellow eyes. "Let me spit on it first. Let me suck you. Fuck, you're so big."
"I'm what you want."
"Yes, you are." Crowley opened his mouth. Snakes can unhinge their jaw. Crowley's throat was tight, hot, wet, deep. He kept his teeth in check well too.
Look into my eyes, Aziraphale sent to Crowley, who was now prostrate between Aziraphale's legs as the angel kneeled. Look at me.
Crowley looked up and held Aziraphale's gaze. Drool was already collecting around the base of Aziraphale's cock and dripping down between the angel's balls. It ran in a rivulet down Crowley's chin.
I love you, Aziraphale thought. I love you. And you love me. And that's a miracle.
Crowley held Aziraphale's entire length in his throat, swallowing around it, his hands digging into Aziraphale's legs. He drew back and kissed the head, ran his tongue around and down it. Back in, his eyes watering. He did not break eye contact.
Aziraphale pulled Crowley's head back and spat hard in his mouth. Is that what you want?
"Angel. Yes. Angel."
"Get on your knees, Crowley. Face the river."
He held Crowley's shoulders, pushed his face down into the blanket, let his hands slide up the smooth sides of his lover's body. He pushed the head of his cock into Crowley slowly, feeling the demon's breath catch. Crowley whined a low whine.
The impact of the first few strokes was something like comets, something like a drop of hot steel falling through cold water, a landslide on a five-mile-high glacier, a piece of driftwood pulled from the edge of water into riptide. Aziraphale's arms wrapped around Crowley's body as he fucked him. Crowley leaned into him. He was so wet. Saltwater emanating from a snake, like in a primordial myth.
"You look good like this."
The rocking back and forth was like waves about to destroy the land to be remade anew. Their knees in the sand made deep canyons, their heat burned glass into the earth.
"You make me feel so good. This is the be-Please, angel, angel. You make me feel so good."
You were made for this. Aziraphale felt a little self important saying this, but he liked it.
"I was made for this. You were always meant to fuck me. I was made for this. I was made for this for this for thissss. I've thought about you every day for the last three and a half thousand years. You insufferable stupid self important little faggot. FUCK. FUCK. Oh, fuuHck me."
You've never felt as good as when I fuck you.
"Fine. Fine. Fuck I've never felt."
Never felt so good except when merged with Her light in the time before creation.
"Never felt so good."
I love you so much. You want to love, to let yourself love. I can tell. I know. It's all right. You were made to love. You want to love.
"I want you to cum in me. I'm ggggonna cum on your cock."
"Not yet. Beg."
"Fufuck you."
"I love you. Beg."
"Please."
"More. Beg me as if you want it." Aziraphale let his voice go high and fruity.
"Please, angel, fill me with cum please let me cum please fuck fuck fuck fuck. Please oh fuck I'm such a piece of shit please show me I'm shit nothing but a cumdumpFUCk cum in me I'm scum I'm shit and you're so good i'm FUCK such a bad boy make me sorry make me good make me your wife angel angel show me what a shit I am please cum in me fill me with your light and your cum FUCK fuck fuck fuck."
"Do you really want my cum?" Aziraphale knew would replay that refrain in his head as a pick-me-up for the next three hundred fifty odd years at least.
"Fuck fuck fuck please please."
"Now say you're not scum and that you're not shit. Because you aren't."
Crowley was shaking more than he had ever thought it possible to. Or trembling maybe was the better word. "Nonot scum fine I'm not scum I'm a fucking shard of fuck fuck fuck light. Cum in me. I need you."
Aziraphale let himself relax his concentration slightly and pushed as deep as he could into Crowley, pushing him flat onto the ground. He could feel the tight clench and release and heat of Crowley's cum just before he felt an unprecedented explosive tremble reach up from his pelvic floor into the roof of his mouth. He shot deep inside the demon.
There was a minor earthquake that shook Safed and two neighboring towns.
Upstairs, and down Below, brief notes were made about the possibility of a minor natural disaster caused by some kind of supernatural event. But the operatives on earth that the details were assigned to failed to check up on it.
The next week was one Aziraphale and Crowley spent entirely alone together in the pine forests outside Galilee. Aziraphale's landlady assumed he had been wailaid by bandits and was overjoyed when he returned. He was very kind to her, after all, and he was a nice young man.
He went to the mikveh and immersed after returning.
It took Crowley almost three months to leave Safed.