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“I like having you here in the mornings,” Aziraphale commented. He was stretched out on his side, propped up on one elbow, stroking Crowley’s face affectionately in the grimy light of London that filtered through the blinds. The room was filled with the familiar scent of lavender and lemon balm.
Crowley felt unable to move. The warmth was soporific, irresistible. “I’ve got to get going,” he groaned. “I’m due at the Koch Brothers convention in Geneva today. I’m the keynote speaker.”
“We have a few minutes.” Aziraphale bent to kiss him, his lips warm, perfect, irresistible. But after a little while, Crowley pulled away and stared out the window at the leaden January day. “I…. don't really want to go to this thing,” he confessed.
“Why not?”
“Come with me, Angel” he said. He pulled Aziraphale over, until he was lying on top of him.
“Come with you?”
“Sure,” said Crowley. “Why not? You can be my date.”
“Your date?”
“My plus one, if you like. No one needs to know anything if you feel shy.”
“I thought it was a bunch of conservatives.”
“It is. But even among ultra evil right wing power brokers its not cool to be homophobic. Your side won that battle. You should go enjoy the fruits of your labor. It's a very nice hotel,” he added, knowing Aziraphale’s weakness for good hotels.
“Is it?”
“Yes. Five star. Overlooking Lake Geneva. It's fantastic actually,” said Crowley, stroking Aziraphale’s thigh.
“I see.'' Crowley could tell the angel was intrigued.
“The chef there is supposed to be marvelous,” Crowley added in his best tempter’s voice.
“Is he?”
“He was written up in Epicurean Magazine just last month.”
“Why do you want me there?”
“Erm…” Crowley squirmed under the angel’s penetrating gaze. The truth was, the Koch Brothers made him nervous. They were evil on a greater scale than he was comfortable with.
“These people are …. Bad,” he said at last.
“Bad?” said Aziraphale, cocking an eyebrow. “Isn’t that your wheelhouse?”
“Really, really bad. Deeply evil. It scares me actually. I could use a little bit of goodness. For the balance. Things are shifting Aziraphale, and these people are part of it. If we’re going to resist, well, we have to stick together.”
“You really think it's getting that serious?”
“I do.”
“Well, I can’t .”
“Why not?”
“I’ve got a world cycling symposium.”
“World cycling symposium?”
“Fighting global warming through promoting cycling. You know.”
Crowley shook his head. “Come with me. You can go to your world cycling thingy next year. I promise you global warming isn't going away any time soon.”
Aziraphale sighed. “That’s probably true.” Crowley tried to nibble his ear, but Aziraphale brushed him away. “I always assumed you were responsible,” said the angel with a disapproving glare.
“For what? Global warming?”
Aziraphale nodded.
“No, no,” Crowley replied. “I can’t take credit for that. Well, actually, I do take credit for it. All the time. It's earned me some real accolades at the home office, I tell you. But just between you, me and the wall, the humans managed to come with that all on their own.”
Aziraphale smiled. The clouds parted and the room filled with bright wintery sunshine.
“Come with me,” Crowley urged. “I’m sure you can do some good there. The whole thing….. It's veering off balance Aziraphale. These people…..I’ve never really seen evil like this. They…frighten me.”
“Oh,” said Aziraphale. “Okay.” He got up and headed for the shower.
********
Crowley sat in the bar at the Hotel Geneva, nursing a scotch. He lazily studied the handsome bartender who stood wiping glasses at the far end. He was ripe for tempting, but Crowley didn't have the energy. Outside the floor to ceiling windows, moonlight glistened on the frozen lake. Soft pop played in the background. It had been a long day of talks about fighting legislation to reduce climate change and rolling back Obamacare. Crowley had given his speech, then had done a little networking, a little low level tempting, but mostly, he had let the humans follow their evil little hearts without any interference at all.
Imagine by John Lennon came over the radio. Crowley listened to the song. It suddenly made so much sense to him. He stared into his drink, the words reverberating in his head: Imagine there’s no heaven, It's easy if you try, No hell below us, Above us only sky……”
An anthem to secular humanism if ever there was one.
The song ended. Crowley stayed at the bar, drinking, the words bouncing around in his brain. Then he heard Aziraphale’s voice beside him.
“I’ll have a gin and tonic, thanks.” The angel lowered himself onto the bar stool beside Crowley, and gave a long sigh. “It's been a day.”
“Doing good tired you out?”
“It isn’t always easy.”
Crowley shuddered. “I couldn’t do it.”
The bartender returned and handed Aziraphale his drink. “Ta,” Aziraphale said, with a flustered nod. He was always easily flustered around handsome men, a trait that Crowley found endearing when it didn’t fill him with jealous rage.
“You'd think…..You’d think…. Well it’s obvious they have to do something. Curb their greed! But they can’t, can they?”
“No,” said Crowley. “It's not in their nature.”
“And they never will.”
“No,” said Crowley. “They won’t.”
They both sat there, staring at their drinks.
“I want to play you a song,” said Crowley. He waved his hand. Once again, the strains of Imagine swelled over the speaker system. They listened to the song. Under the bar, Aziraphale found Crowley’s hand and squeezed it.
“It’s a lovely vision,” said Aziraphale when it ended. “But…” he hesitated.
“What?” said Crowley.
“Some people find that song a bit….elitist,” Aziraphale said.
“Elitist?” said Crowley, startled. “How…?”
“Maybe someday you’ll join us….” Aziraphale quoted. “Think about it.”
Crowley sat and thought. What had seemed so simple, a beautiful dream, an escape from his current problems, now seemed filled with pitfalls. And yes, he did see it, the smug, self satisfied condescension in those words.
“The world is…..”
“Ineffable.” Aziraphale finished his thought for him. He smiled and stroked the side of his head, and Crowley suddenly wanted to kiss him. A lot.
“Religion is a bit of a hardwired human need, I’m afraid,” said Aziraphale. “Look across all ages, all societies, and you’ll find religion at the core of every one. Millions of people rely on it, and are comforted by it. Take that away from them, and they would have very little indeed.”
Crowley sighed and finished his drink.
“We’ve a lovely room upstairs,” said Aziraphale. He brushed his lips, soft as a whisper, over the demon’s temple. “I imagine the view of the lake in the moonlight will be quite sublime.”
“Shame to let it go to waste,” said Crowley.
“Exactly what I was thinking,” said Aziraphale
And still holding hands, they left the bar, and made their way to their room, with a fabulous view over the moonlit lake.
*******
Crowley paced in the moonlight, restless, while Aziraphale slept. Not that the angel needed to sleep. But sometimes he chose to. They both did. When the world started to feel like too much, there was no substitute for the human respite of sleep.
Crowley paced between the window and the bed. He paused each time, to stare out at the breathtaking view of Lake Geneva. The moon was low in the west, a white globe hung in the blue black sky. Its reflection shimmered on the ice. The snow on the hilltops sparkled in the moonlight. All was perfectly still.
The evil he had witnessed that day unnerved Crowley. He was used to evil, of course, terrible evil. It was his bread and butter, so to speak. He remembered certain heinous moments - in the woods of Poland with the Einsatzgruppen, for example, or with the Spanish Inquisition, or in the halls of a certain nondescript building in Nevada, where the very first nuclear bomb was assembled, that caused his gut to twist in a particularly unpleasant way. But the wickedness he had witnessed today was so cold and calculated, so single minded in its disregard for all life on earth, including most of the human race, so smug and self satisfied. He much preferred the Trump White House to this. Trump ran America like a petty gangster. That was the kind of evil he could deal with. The Koch Brothers were another matter entirely.
At last he went back to bed. He stretched out beside the angel and studied his face. He was beautiful in sleep, surrounded by a heavenly glow. Crowley watched as his eyes moved behind his closed lids. He sighed and stretched. A little smile played over the bow of his lips. He giggled in his sleep. He was dreaming. “Stop it,” he said. “You shouldn’t.” Then a moment later, “Don’t say that! Really Will!” That flirtatious little giggle again. “Oh my word, I never dreamed of doing such a thing!” Aziraphale declared in his sleep.
Crowley knew who he was dreaming about. Clearly, Will was William Shakespeare, that long ago love that had stirred Crowley to envy all those distant centuries ago. That had to be it. There couldn’t be two Wills, could there?
But of course, there could. Time was long and the angel got around. But Crowley preferred not to think about that. He wanted Aziraphale all to himself. He wanted all that love, that endless bottomless well of it. Was that so very wrong? Selfish? He supposed it was, but the heart wants what the heart wants.
He shifted so his hips rested against the sleeping angel and planted a kiss on his warm bow of a mouth
“Angel,” he breathed. “Wake up.”
Aziraphale’s eyelids fluttered open. He stared at Crowley, unseeing, for a moment, still lost in his dream world. Then his eyes focused. “It’s you!” he said happily, his whole face breaking into a smile.
“Yeah,” said Crowley. “It is me.”
Aziraphale passed a hand over his forehead. “I…. I must have been dreaming.”
“Who were you dreaming of?” asked Crowley with a catch in his voice.
“Nothing,” said Aziraphale. “No one.” He pulled Crowley to him, and kissed him hard, and they were lost in each other.
********
After sex, they lay together, warm and satisfied, while the moon dipped below the horizon. Crowley caressed Aziraphale’s curls .”I was thinking,” he said sleepily.
“About what?”
“Good. Evil. The start of it all. I was thinking about Eve.”
“That poor, unlucky woman. Banished.”
“You gave her your sword.” This had been the moment that Crowley had first noticed the angel - his willingness to bend the rules to help someone in trouble, his recognition of moral ambiguity.
“She was cold. And already expecting, I believe.” Aziraphale nuzzled Crowley’s neck. “What were you thinking about Eve?”
“I never meant to do her any harm,” said Crowley. “I just asked her if she wanted more….. And she said yes. And what’s the harm in that?”
“The Buddha says all suffering comes from desire,” Aziraphale responded. Outside the eastern sky was lightening toward dawn.
“Something is happening, do you feel it Angel?”
“No… what are you talking about?”
“A shift, a release of energy - I definitely felt something.”
“I think that’s called an orgasm.”
“No… no… I’m serious, this was different.”
“I… I don’t….. wait.” The angel sat up in bed, sniffing the air. He held up a finger, like a sailor feeling for a wind.
“You’re right!” he said. “Blimey! Something has changed.”
********
On the way home the car was quiet, both of them lost in thought. Crowley drove the Bentley fast, the speedometer stuck at a steady 150 kilometers per hour. Aziraphale sat in the passenger seat, staring out the window. At last he spoke up.
“I fibbed,” he said.
“Did you now, Angel?” said Crowley.
“I mean, I didn’t utter an actual untruth. But may have committed a sin of omission.”
“How so?” asked Crowley, a smile playing around his lips.
“It was about my dream,” confessed Aziraphale. His eyes were downcast and the car filled with the peculiar odor of guilt - sweat with a hint of stale urine and garbage - like a city subway on a hot summer day.
“It’s all right, Angel,” said Crowley. “No one is perfect.”
“I am,” said Aziraphale. “Or I’m supposed to be. I’m a heavenly being.”
This was exactly why Crowley loved him so much. “Would it help to come clean?” he asked.
“I…. I was dreaming about Will. Shakespeare, I mean.”
“I know,” said Crowley.
“You know?” asked Aziraphale.”How could you know?”
Crowley shrugged. “You were talking in your sleep.”
“I did love that boy,” Aziraphale sighed.
“I know you did.”
“I stuck with him,” said Aziraphale. “Right up until he died.”
Crowley raised an eyebrow. “Really, Angel. Why did you do that?”
“I loved him. I wanted to be with him.”
“Did you…. Shag him?” asked Crowley with a shudder. “Even when he was old and grey?”
“I did,” said Aziraphale. “It didn’t matter. Of course, our focus changed as he got older. Less sex more talk, but it was always good, all of it. I never tired of him, not in all those years. It broke my heart to watch his youth and beauty fade away. It happens so quickly with these humans. Like water on the sand.”
“Yes,” said Crowley softly. “I know.” He too, had fallen in love with humans and watched the bloom of youth fade from them in the blink of an eye.
He noticed flashing blue lights in the rear view mirror. “Shit,” Crowley swore under his breath.
Aziraphale winced at the obscenity. “What do we do now?” he squealed. Aziraphale always got nervous about run-ins with the law.
“It's already managed,” Crowley replied. The police car turned off a side road and the blue lights faded from view. Crowley hadn’t even bothered to take his foot off the gas.
“What did you do?” asked Aziraphale.
“I sent him a text,“ replied Crowley.
“Good thinking,” said Aziraphale. He took out his snowy white handkerchief and wiped his brow.
“I could have had him run over a dog or get a flat tire or something,” said Crowley. “But - poor bloke. He’s got a wife and three kiddies and a mistress - and two demerits already. He’s barely hanging on. This is better.”
“Who’d you send the text from? The mistress?”
“Oh no, he’s already bored with her. This is from someone new - someone at the precinct he’s had his eye on for a while. Lovely young girl.”
“Bastard,” muttered Aziraphale.
“Yeah,” agreed Crowley. Aziraphale snaked his hand over and gave his inner thigh a squeeze. “Angel,” breathed Crowley in a tight voice. “I’m driving.”
“We can pull over, “replied Aziraphale. “There’s a lovely little grove of trees just beyond this hill.”
And what could Crowley do but obey?