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“In both domains – the cheese and the sex – we are drawn to the limits of our comfort zone. Both zones of experience therefore invite us to exceed our limits, to test, to uncover, to abandon our reserve, to relativize our notions and principles – of limit, of desirable, of good & bad…” – James Stillwagon
“A cheese that stinks – of manure, of sex – offers a relatively safe way for us to flirt with forbidden desires.” – Michael Pollan
“[It’s] a living substance produced by an animal organism, [that] constantly reminds us of the body, or sensual pleasure, of sexual pleasure, of sexual fulfillment, and of all that is forbidden in it.” – Pierre Boisard
All excerpts from Cooked (Pollan, 2012)
There's no delicate way to inquire about such things, so Aziraphale just has to go for it. They have no more big secrets from each other, after all. They’ve technically survived the end of the world; they live together, now, in a tiny, yellowing cottage; and they both love each other very much. (Or, well, Crowley hasn’t technically said as much, not yet. But, honestly, that’s only a detail.) This is minor, compared to those other things. Right? He’s had most of a bottle of wine and now, armed with liquid courage, he just has to ask. It should be as simple as that.
It doesn't feel simple, though, and instead of asking, he finds himself looking at the book. It's only just visible from here, lying innocently on the kitchen counter, looking nondescript. It is nondescript, for Heaven's sake. It’s a nonfiction book about the art of cooking. That's hardly explicit material.
And yet, only that morning, he’d finished the chapters on fermentation in a state of poleaxed, aggrieved astonishment, because it – because, well, it had said that –
He exhales, and reaches for his wineglass. He’s just going to have to ask.
“Am I right in thinking, my dear,” he says casually, after a final, fortifying sip, “that you've never tried sex?”
Across the table from him, Crowley blinks, actually blinks, which is revelatory; the angel hardly ever surprises him into that any more. He sets his fork down. He dabs his mouth with a napkin. Then, he says, equally calmly, “What.”
“Well, I realized that I don't think I've ever asked. About, you know. Whether you --”
“ Allow me to define my what, ” Crowley says levelly, interrupting. “I didn’t mean what as in, ‘what did you say,’ I meant what as in – what.”
Aziraphale perseveres. “It’s just that I was reading a book, earlier, and –”
“Lady Chatterley's Lover, was it?" says Crowley, and only then can Aziraphale detect the faint note of hysteria.
“I was reading a book about cooking,” he continues, rather more doggedly now. “And it, um.” Perhaps all that wine was a mistake, after all; he can feel an alcoholic flush creeping slowly into his cheeks. “It compared cheese to sex.”
“Did it. How novel.”
“Yes. Yes, I agree, it was a bit, um.” He flounders. “Surprising.”
Surprising was perhaps a bit of an understatement. He had been obsessed with the notion all afternoon. For example, they’re eating a pesto gnocchi tonight, brilliant green and lovely, an old favorite – but the parmesan shredded into it had never been quite so arresting, before. Offended by the canisters of cellulose in the shops, he always cuts a wedge from a wheel he keeps in the pantry, but today he’d found the smell of it seductively sharp, almost obscenely so.
Furtively, he’d put a piece of it into his mouth. He doesn’t think he’d ever paid quite that much attention to its quality, distracted as he usually is by Crowley's herbs. Even the cheese’s texture was newly fascinating: hard, almost mineral, starred with tiny granules of calcium lactate. A byproduct of fermentation, according to the book.
It was very good. It still is very good, even now, as part of the pesto. Powerfully, thrillingly good.
As a verdict, that’s almost offensive, really. It wasn’t even an expensive cheese. Maybe slightly better than average, sure, but nothing exotic. Just something he bought at a shop in town. And it’s that good.
“Okay,” Crowley sighs, leaning back in his chair. “Tell me about the book.”
Aziraphale tries to explain. He can see right away that it’s a bit useless; the demon doesn’t seem to get it at all. At one point he sits forward again and rubs his face, in the throes of some unidentifiable emotion. “Of all the ways this conversation might have gone,” he mutters. “I might have guessed.”
That’s equally surprising, really. Crowley had, against all reason, anticipated a conversation like this. Aziraphale's not entirely sure what that means. Still, he tucks it away to consider later, as he doesn’t want it to distract him from the horrible, central point of contention.
He says, plaintively, “It can’t be right. Can it? Sex can’t be like cheese.”
“Well, as you correctly guessed,” says Crowley, now pinching the bridge of his nose, as if in private agonies, “I have no point of comparison.”
“But – aren't you curious?”
The yellow eyes open. Crowley says sharply, “Are you?”
Not long ago, Aziraphale probably would have said no. Somewhere around the time of the Olympic games – the first ones, of course – he had observed both an orgy and a discus throw within a few months and mentally dismissed them both. On the surface, they were both in the realm of human activities he was decidedly not interested in, exertion being, on the whole, rather less delightful than say, a pavlova.
But to compare sex to cheese…
He loves cheese.
It’s horribly confusing.
“It’s probably just an implausible literary device,” he says, finally. “Sensationalist.”
Crowley eyes him dubiously, but to the angel’s relief, he lets it go, and changes the subject to a recent scandal involving something called booktok instead. Of course, Aziraphale doesn’t know what that is, but it’s a relief just to have survived the moment, so he doesn’t interrupt.
He does notice that neither of them eat any more of the gnocchi, though, which seems like a bit of a shame.
*
A few weeks later, attending the first farmer's market of the season, they stumble upon a cheese cart, its wheels and wedges and little casks artfully arranged and absolutely reeking. Aziraphale feels Crowley glance sideways at him, even with his old sunglasses firmly in place. Still thinking about it, then. Dreadful, really. He shouldn’t have brought it up at all.
The cheesemonger catches them both off guard, when, popping up from behind the counter, he practically leers at them both.
“Craving anything in particular, gentlemen? Something for a tender occasion?”
“Just browsing!” says Aziraphale, backing away at once.
“Nothing specific, eh?” Undeterred, the man whips out a basket of smaller portions. “Better try a few different things, then. Else you’ll never know what you like!”
Neither of them move for a second, and then Crowley makes a noise that might have been either a laugh or a cough, and takes it. Reluctantly, the angel rejoins him, and together they examine the collection of “orphans,” or rather, little mismatched bits left over from larger orders, according to their captor’s ongoing prattling.
Each one smells better than the last, Aziraphale discovers. So good, in fact, that his mouth is watering. He wants to hold them against his nose, breathe in the redolence. That seems excessive, though. He certainly doesn’t want... anyone... to get the wrong idea.
“I think we need a little help getting started,” says Crowley, falsely cheerful, to the cheesemonger. “What would you recommend?”
“The seven-year cheddar,” the man decides, after a moment of consideration.
“Oh yes?”
“Yep. Fifteen year sells better, mostly for the novelty, I reckon, but for my money cheese gets a bit wodgy after about ten years. The texture starts to change, you lose the subtlety, y’know. So, yeah. The seven-year. Pretty spectacular. Should be a couple in there.”
The demon locates one – and then smells it, wantonly and extravagantly, to Aziraphale’s silent despair. “And is it as good as sex, do you think?” he inquires.
There’s a beat of silence. Aziraphale glares at him; Crowley, the fox, grins back with all of his teeth. The cheesemonger's expression has schooled into neutrality, the face of a man who doesn't want to lose his customers but who fully intends to send them up in the pub once they’re gone.
“Depends on the sex, I s’pose,” he says carefully.
Aziraphale sighs and snaps his fingers. "We were a perfectly lovely couple," he tells the suddenly vacant eyes. "Very well behaved."
“Just the seven-year cheddar for you, then?” the man mumbles, staring right through them.
“Yes, please,” says Aziraphale, putting a tenner in the can and taking the little parcel from him; and, dropping his voice as they stroll away, he says, "Crowley, honestly."
Unrepentant, Crowley preens. “That man was very much not a virgin, angel. He could have told you anything you wanted to know.”
"That doesn't matter! You can't just ask someone that!”
“You asked me.”
“That's different!”
Sunglasses tilt towards him. “Why?” Crowley prompts him, gently.
Aziraphale doesn't feel like trying to untangle a why that has confounded him for more than six thousand years of his life, and he doesn’t believe for an instant that the question isn’t a trap of some kind, anyway. So, instead of answering, he unwraps the cheese.
Only after the plummy weight of it is in his bare hands does he realize his serious error. He hasn’t eaten cheese in front of Crowley since that evening when they’d first talked about the book. To do so now, in the middle of this conversation, would be mortifying – although, then again, it would be equally absurd to just rewrap it – perhaps he should pretend to stumble and drop it –
His companion reaches over, breaks off a piece, and eats it. “S’ nice,” he says, sibilant, around the bite.
That breaks the spell. Relieved, Aziraphale mirrors him.
It is nice. The cheesemonger was right; it’s spectacular. Better than the parmesan, even.
They look at each other. They are experiencing the same taste, the angel thinks. It makes the flavor better, somehow, to consider it while Crowley is considering it too: the salt peaking and ebbing, the richness of the fat, the peculiar nutty finish. The same pleasure, shared.
“Again, you’ve still got nothing to go off, though,” Crowley says blandly. “Comparison-wise.”
“No,” says Aziraphale, not sure what to make of that odd tone of voice, and he wraps up the rest of the cheese. “Well, we’ll just have to make the best of it.”
“Mmm.”
*
Aziraphale is, at some level, conscious that he’s starting to get a little weird about cheese.
On the surface of it, it’s no different than any other of his culinary fixations. Shellfish, in Rome. Pastries, during the Enlightenment. Chocolates, in Edwardian England. He’s had cravings before, each of them mocked and indulged in equal measure by Crowley, who was, obviously, present for them all.
So. Now it’s cheese. That’s all this is. He was bound to be fixated on cheese eventually. That’s only logical. Process of elimination, and all that. Even Crowley would have to agree.
If they ever discuss it, that is.
That’s the key difference here, though. He doesn’t want to discuss it. He goes, in fact, to great lengths in order to not discuss it with Crowley. After he buys Manchego and eats it with pear, he miracles away both the rind and the pips, furtive as a sinner. When Stilton and Taleggio prove viciously rank, he burns candles to hide the stink. Meanwhile, sealed stashes begin to fill their kitchen cupboards, the mislabeled containers hiding Metsovone, raw-milk Camembert, and a nauseatingly expensive Gruyère, shipped all the way from Switzerland.
This last, in fact, nearly brings it all out in the open when Crowley finds the foreign receipt. Perplexed, he eventually discards it as a good joke, but that night, Aziraphale, suffering from rare indigestion thanks to both the dissembling and an enormous amount of dairy, retreats from their shared room with all the gloom of shame.
He’s being ridiculous. They don’t keep secrets from each other (again, except for Crowley’s ongoing inability to say that he loves Aziraphale. But that one doesn’t count, because he does, really). Even if Aziraphale doesn’t understand why he’s compelled by strange new snacking habits, he doesn’t have to hide such things. Not any more. Right?
It’s only cheese.
It’s very, very good cheese, though. Sublime cheese, even.
Well - perhaps Crowley deserves to know that he’s taken an interest in, er, very good cheese. They've always marveled at human ingenuity together; this doesn't have to be different. He really is just being silly.
He manages to convince himself of this sometime before dawn, and that morning, with all the conviction of virtue, he makes the overture in a way that he hopes is plausibly casual.
“I hear there’s a festival next month in Stafford. Shall we go?”
“What kind of festival?” The demon doesn’t even look up; he’s frowning down at a row of tomato seedlings and their respective trellises, and doing something finicky to them with wires. Aziraphale doesn’t fully understand it, but then, he doesn’t need to. Not when his faith in Crowley’s gardening is absolute.
“A dairy festival,” he hedges, and the sideways look, full of appraisal, makes him blush.
“A cheese festival, you mean.”
“Yes.”
“Didn’t know you were still thinking about that –” and the angel notes, with relief, the implication that he’s hidden his private stashes successfully thus far, “ – but sure. If you’re interested, I’m interested.”
Something about that response sounds odd, almost rehearsed, which is strange. Aziraphale purses his lips. “I just thought it might be illuminating. You know. Like a sort of research.”
“No attitude. Behave,” Crowley snaps at a tendril, affixing it to its wire. “Shouldn’t you be doing a different kind of shopping, then?” he adds, absently. “For your research?”
“What do you mean?”
The demon waves a hand, a vague motion that conveys nothing. “I mean, you could get a vibrator or something.”
At that, Aziraphale flushes a shade darker still. They’ve never said anything like that to each other before. He doesn’t have any idea how to respond. Vivid scenes flash into his mind, highlighting the delicacy of experimenting with such a purchase, especially now that the two of them share a space. The logistics seem – complex. Impossible, even. “But – you – I mean, we –”
Crowley’s focus is suddenly no longer on the tomato plants. Studying the angel's face, he says, very intently, “Yes?”
“We live together!”
“So?”
“So it would be – awkward!”
Even talking about it is awkward. Crowley lets the silence stretch out. That yellow gaze feels like it generates heat, somehow, sunlight on skin, although that's impossible, Aziraphale thinks feverishly.
Then the demon goes back to his plants.
“You ever need me to take a weekend away,” he says, “just let me know.”
*
He doesn't buy a vibrator. But he does decide to try to make cheese.
He times it as exactly as he can. May's first weekend always heralds a flower show in the village, which means that Crowley will be out haranguing people over their dahlias and daylilies until sundown - thank goodness, Aziraphale thinks privately, since, based on some early research, this particular endeavor is much more complicated than his usual work in the kitchen. It's not that he's not keeping it a secret, of course. They don't keep secrets from each other now. (For the most part.) It's just that he just doesn’t want a witness, if he fails.
Best to just try it once on his own.
Probably. Yes.
Fresh milk heats on the stove as Aziraphale parses the recipe. The instructions are a bit shocking, even for a novice cook, when it comes to acidification. He could cheat with something like vinegar, of course, but he finds he wants the authentic bacterial experience, and so: a neighboring farmer unexpectedly finds ten pounds in the pocket of his dungarees, just as rennet vanishes from the stomach of one of his lambs. Enzymes get to work at once, launching the rest of the arduous process, which involves dicing the curds, boiling them, washing them, straining them from their whey, and salting them.
And then, all at once, and to his own astonishment, Aziraphale discovers that he has, in fact, created a small white mound, soft and pliable and slick.
He’s actually done it. He’s made cheese.
It’s novel. In a way, it’s creation writ small. There, fresh on a plate, sits an entire new ecosystem, microbial, bacterial, teetering on the edge of decay - but in this perfect moment, blooming with life. Even more fascinating is the fact that, unlike most of the things he cooks, he himself has become rank in the process of creating it. His hands have pruned; no, more than that, they’re fully sour, stinking of animal. He stinks of animal. It's not even revolting. Those passages in that book are right; frankly, it's a little titillating.
He looks at it for a while, smelling the pads of his fingers, and then, without really understanding why, he pushes a finger into his mouth. It tastes like cheese, with perhaps a little more depth. More salt, more texture. The taste of skin.
Pensively, he scoops a taste of his work with two fingers, and does it again.
It’s good, he thinks, woozily. It’s actually good; and, in the hot flare of triumph, he finds that he wants to push his wet fingers through the pretty, pristine mass of it, ruin the wheel he’s shaped, smear the whole thing across the virginal surface of the plate –
“Well?”
To say Aziraphale flinches is an understatement. His whole body recoils, as if from the threat of snakebite. He had been sure, so sure, that he was alone, and the shock of two yellow eyes, watching him from the depths of an armchair in the other room, nips him with horror. He has no idea when Crowley returned, or - or how long he's been watching - frantically, he wipes his fingers on a napkin -
“Oh! Hello!” His voice sounds alien, even to himself; he can practically hear the exclamation points slide into place. Even when he tries, he can’t seem to speak normally. “I thought you were still out! I was finishing my, my, um –”
“Can I taste it?” Crowley inquires mildly.
Aziraphale feels his face burning, but he can't quite make himself say no. Fishing in the cutlery drawer, he finds a dessert spoon and dips it into the cheese, avoiding the incriminating place where he scooped some out with his fingers. The demon holds out a hand for it, regally, which is also mortifying; Aziraphale has to carry it all the way over to him, a burnt offering to a reclining emperor -
- and their eyes meet as Crowley accepts the spoon.
It is, in a word, horrible. Crowley is thinking about sex and cheese. No, worse, he’s thinking about Aziraphale thinking about sex and cheese. He’s thinking about Aziraphale thinking about sex and cheese and he’s probably also thinking about Aziraphale thinking about him thinking about it, and now Aziraphale is thinking about that –
– and the moment, as crystalline as a shard of calcium lactate, is laden with the reverb of mutual awareness, awful, excruciating, not to be borne –
Crowley extracts the spoon from his mouth. It's wet.
"Decent," he allows. “Not your best work, but decent.”
"Well, that's that then!" says Aziraphale. He sounds a little hysterical, now, and detests himself for it. “Oh well! It’s only my first try!”
Crowley says, very quietly, "I do hear it gets better with practice."
Aziraphale, perhaps to his discredit, flees.
Neither of them bring it up, afterwards. Neither of them mention the festival in Stafford again, either. And if Crowley notices that Aziraphale cleans out the kitchen afterwards, and that their bins are full of bits of expensive cheese, he doesn’t say a word about it.
*
Aziraphale has successfully resisted either consuming or purchasing cheese for an entire month, when, on the second anniversary of their saving the world (or being present for its saving, anyway, even if they weren’t what one might call instrumental) they go to the Ritz.
It’s their favorite old haunt, and they do it up properly, too, with a bottle of the most expensive champagne cooling in a bucket. Crowley orders veal, market price, correctly intuiting that the angel beside him lusts for it but feels morally conflicted about ordering it. Aziraphale, pink with pleasure beside him, eventually decides on duck confit, a dish he still hasn’t mastered after several attempts. They order radicchio salads and pickled charcuterie and a souffle. The bill will probably clear four digits, but they don’t care. Why should they?
It’s all perfectly lovely, right up until the moment when, as they hand over their menus, their waitress presents an appetizer with the self-satisfied air of one performing a magic trick.
On the house. For the happy couple. Merci pour votre parrainage.
It's beautiful, whatever it is, Aziraphale thinks, in the moment before recognition. Ribbons of puff pastry twine into an elegant French knot, and some chef has draped fresh violets over the top, tethered by what looks like a fat spurt of glistening honey. The entire thing smells hot, rank, glorious, familiar –
Oh.
It’s a tiny baked brie.
Next to him, Crowley is perfectly still.
The seconds tick by, until, finally, the continued presence of the waitress, hovering over their table expectantly, leaves Aziraphale with no choice but to finally reach for a knife.
At a touch, the liquid fat pulses out. Viscous, gleaming, it spills over the china as he slivers off a piece of the cheese and brings it, very cautiously, to his lips. Rich flavors flood through him at once, the pleasure of it thrilling all way the down to his toes, but he makes himself swallow rather than savor and set the knife down. He doesn’t dare look anywhere but at the plate.
“Est-ce que c'est bon?” says the waitress, intrigued by his expression.
“Yes,” says Aziraphale, in a small voice. “Merci.”
“Wonderful.” The young woman beams at them. “Can I get you anything else?”
“Actually,” Crowley says curtly, “one last thing. We’ll need that entire order takeaway. Yes. Ta.”
Aziraphale tries to keep his face from showing the rush of shock and betrayal. The demon has never cut short a dinner before, not even when Nero was in the middle of sacking Rome around their ears. Somehow the brie has destroyed something unspoken between them. He’s such a fool. He never should have read that book, or brought it up, or bought all those samples –
– but as their waitress departs, Crowley cuts his fumbling apology off with a snarl.
“I can’t do it. I'm done. You win. All right? You win.”
This doesn’t make any sense at all. Aziraphale stops, confused.
“What do you mean, I win?”
“You are,” says Crowley, a muscle visibly jumping in his cheek, “whether consciously or not, playing a game of chicken with me via cheese – cheese, angel, for the love of – look. This is me telling you you've won. I give up. I give in. So let's go home.”
“I have no idea what you –"
“Yes, you do!” The demon, gesticulating, isn’t bothering to keep his voice down any more. “I know you do! You know how I know? You read a book that compared cheese to sex and then you imported a Gruyère from Switzerland!”
“It’s only cheese,” says Aziraphale, appalled.
“It’s not about the cheese! It never was!” Crowley yells. “One of us was going to wind up admitting that eventually and it’s me! Congratulations!”
“What are you –”
“I'm – propositioning – you.” Instantly, Crowley is red all over with the mortification of actually saying it, but he takes a deep breath and plunges on, even as Aziraphale’s mouth falls open. “Right now. This is me, doing that. We’re going home. Genital configuration, dealer's choice, whatever you want. We'll take it for a spin and you can decide if sex is like cheese, or better, or worse, or whatever. All right? Yes?”
“Oh my God,” says Aziraphale, transfixed. He's blushing too, he must be. “You – But – Crowley, you –" and then he stops, suddenly conscious that the room is quieter and that the people at neighboring tables are watching them, agog.
“You’ve had a delightful and restorative meal and nothing at all was out of the ordinary,” he says to them all desperately, and a snap of his fingers sends them back to their bisques. “Crowley!”
The demon just glares at him; the moment of outrage shatters. He is being incredibly brave, Aziraphale realizes. He’s nerved himself up to this threshold; he’s made himself spit out the words, dubious timing notwithstanding; and now he is very obviously suffering, taut with the anguish of vulnerability, waiting for some kind of ax to fall or for the answer to be No.
Even knowing that they live together, now, an hour away from here, safe in their tiny fortress. Even knowing that Aziraphale loves him madly, and always will.
He swallows.
“All right,” he says. “Yes.”
It feels cataclysmic, but Crowley doesn’t move.
“Yes, of course. But –”
The demon pounces on this, suspicious. “But?”
“But home is hours away," says Aziraphale, his heart beating wildly. He doesn't seem to be getting enough air into his lungs, but if Crowley can force himself through the embarrassment of it all, he can too. "Do you think they have an available room here?"
Crowley’s throat works for a minute. Then he slides a few freshly-miracled hundred pound notes under his wineglass and tugs Aziraphale to his feet.
*
“Crowley,” says Aziraphale, slowly, “can I ask you something?”
“If you really, absolutely have to,” says the demon tersely.
They are sitting, spaced awkwardly apart, at the edge of a king-sized bed. Neither of them know quite where to put their bodies, yet, or what to say. Everything else over the last fifteen minutes has been easy, miraculously so: a newly available reservation for a deluxe queen suite, a second bottle of champagne waiting for them on the marble coffee table, a plate of perfect strawberries nestled in beds of cream.
But then the door had closed behind them, and then neither of them had quite known what to do.
Crowley is holding his hand, though, which is quite nice. Even though the touch is chaste, it’s astonishingly physically intimate, all by itself; he's rubbing his thumb back and forth over Aziraphale's knuckles, and it’s, well, it’s nice. It’s probably at least as nice as cheese, Aziraphale thinks deliriously. He feels a bit woozy, even though he’s hardly touched the champagne. The throbbing of new chemicals, courtesy of a few anticipatory changes to his corporation, are making him feel intoxicated, all by themselves.
The demon is still wearing his sunglasses. That feels wrong. With his free hand, he tugs them off. Crowley doesn’t flinch, but he also won’t quite meet Aziraphale’s eyes, either, which makes him a little anxious. And then he remembers his question.
“That first conversation,” he persists. “After I read that book –”
Crowley’s mouth twitches, but he still doesn’t look up. “Do you know, I think I might remember the one you mean.”
“Fine. Yes.” Aziraphale clears his throat. “You said something about – the way the conversation might have gone.”
“I thought there was a chance the topic might come up, at some point.” Crowley shrugs, looking down at their joined hands. “Not terribly likely, obviously. But there was a chance.”
“ 'Obviously'-"
“Didn't think you were interested, did I?” says Crowley. "You started eating about a thousand years in," and here his ears get a little rosy; Aziraphale knows he's remembering that night of greasy excess. “But even when you were a member of that gentleman’s club, sex just never came up. Not for you.”
“It never did for you either, apparently,” the angel points out, stung. After all, fair's fair.
Crowley doesn't say anything, but he lifts his gaze and meets Aziraphale's eyes pointedly – and suddenly the pieces fall into place.
Crowley is not just indulging his curiosity. He wants this, too. He has wanted it, probably, since before the existence of cookbooks. Maybe even since before the existence of cheese.
“Oh,” the angel breathes. "Oh."
After that, it's easy, so easy, to begin; they reach for each other at the same time.
Sometime later, after their clothes are gone, Aziraphale realizes he should catalogue, for later empirical review. He tries, really he does, although it’s remarkably difficult to focus on any one thing. Crowley's mouth: scorching, slick. Those fingers: the touch too light, as if disbelieving, and then abruptly strong and purposeful. His own body: thrilling the same way it had for the brie, shamelessly, all the way down to his curling toes.
And then Crowley shifts his weight, and the mental tally shatters.
Aziraphale wants to laugh. It's not like any kind of food at all. Not this: this something, this brilliant thing so full of light, busily binding them together at an atomic level, further reducing the space between his flesh and Crowley's to nothingness. The reality of it is grubby, yes, absurd, revolting; but also sacrosanct, their unnecessary bodies grasping at and yielding to each other in equal measure, Crowley's voice quiet and increasingly destroyed in his ear. It's not like anything else in the whole beloved world.
How wonderful it is. How precious, to get to have this, with someone you love.
As if reading his thoughts, Crowley groans and his head drops down; his temple, pressed against Aziraphale’s, is soaking wet.
“Angel,” he says desperately, “you - I – you know that I –”
“Yes,” says Aziraphale, blinking hard. At least, he thinks, he was right about this one thing. He doesn’t need Crowley to say it. He never has. He’s always known. “I know you do.”
“If you say anything about cheese,” Crowley says, sounding wrecked.
“Not a word,” the angel promises, and, blindly, he finds that blazing-hot mouth in the dark.
*
The honeyed haze of the following morning, in which they check out of the Ritz and wander back to the Bentley, manages to linger, somehow, throughout the drive home, even though it all already seems unreal: some other versions of them, dreamt up in some other place. Happily, there are postcards: namely, a few sore places in and on the angel’s body that still smart pleasurably, and, better still, a brilliant purple mark that is plainly visible above Crowley’s collar, just under his jaw.
Aziraphale sneaks glances at it, now and then, as if it’s at risk of vanishing. Each time is more astonishing than the last.
Finally, the demon catches his eye and touches his throat, self-conscious. He clears his throat.
“So," he says. "Enough research for you?”
“Certainly enough to tell me that I was right,” says Aziraphale, looking out the window again.
“About what?”
“The comparison to cheese.”
“Oh, yes?”
“It was,” says the angel primly, “a wholly implausible literary device.”
Crowley cackles, and Aziraphale tries not to grin back at him, and all around them the future begins to coalesce, with a sudden lovely clarity. This is how they will be, now. Just themselves, just as they have been.
With, perhaps, a little bit extra.
The new reality of it all does take some getting used to. On their arrival home, after unlocking the door to their cottage, they stand on the threshold uncertainly, looking at each other. They’re no bridegrooms, but it’s still different, the weight of six thousand years plus one night. It’s thick in the air, rich as the scent of something ripe and savory.
“I’ll check on the garden,” Crowley ventures, and then hesitates, swaying. For a dizzy moment, it seems as though they’re about to kiss, right there in the open. Then it passes, and he goes.
Aziraphale touches his fingertips to his own lips, considering that idea, before he follows.
The day stretches towards evening. Sometime after six, a hapless driver arrives with a delivery all the way from London. They tip him obscenely and carry the parcels inside; flaunting the traditional lyrics, night finds angels dining on duck confit and veal and radicchio salad in their own cozy breakfast nook in the South Downs instead of the Ritz. Everything is miraculously fresh; everything is delicious; everything is shared. They even eat the souffle with a shared spoon.
They share a bottle of wine, too, of course, although, for perhaps the first time in their storied history, they are careful not to get drunk.
At last, when it’s fully dark, Aziraphale pushes back his chair. Leaving Crowley to the washing-up, he selects a novel and retires to their vast master bath. The water foams up for him, smelling of lavender, perfect and hot. It will stay hot, for him. He doesn’t need to rush. He has world enough and time.
The book is good. It’s an Agatha Christie tonight, one he only half remembers. He’s close to the end of the first act by the time a shadow appears, skulking, in the doorway.
“Can I get you anything?” Crowley says, too casually, hands in his pockets. “A cheese plate, maybe?”
Aziraphale’s heart soars. He doesn’t look up from his book, though; at least, not until he’s located his bookmark, carefully marked his place, and placed it well away from the damp of the bath.
“Crowley,” he says, very mildly, “if you’re trying to say that you love me madly and you’d like me to do unspeakable things to you in the comfort of our own home, kindly come in and shut the door.”
Crowley scoffs indignantly, but he does come in and shut the door, without hesitation.
Aziraphale laughs, and makes room for him.