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It is a little known fact that, when a demon and an angel make love, the effects are potentially earth-shattering. This is a little known fact precisely because, before the night in question, it had never happened before.
Deep in Hell, there were demons who would brag about such conquests, but none of their peers ever actually believed it. The demons themselves knew the others never believed it, so it always just became a case of who could concoct the more salacious story for the entertainment of the others.
The night in question, then, would have served — if any celestial scientists had been allowed in to observe — as a fascinating biological experiment. The results of that hypothetical experiment would be as follows…
As soon as Aziraphale and Crowley returned to the bookshop, their hands were all over one another, which is very understandable given that they were preparing to make up for more than six thousand years of pent-up sexual tension. After that amount of foreplay, they couldn’t really be blamed for being in a bit of a rush.
There are plenty of evocative human verbs for the things they did with and to one another in the space of that night. They started with kissing (that favourite human preoccupation), then touching, laughing, talking (mostly whispering), embracing and, as they moved upstairs, undressing. Then, once there, there was a whole manner of stroking, holding, shifting, bending, clutching, caressing. There was also a little bit of scratching. These resulted in the types of moans, gasps, murmurings, chuckles and shushes that were to be expected.
And always kissing, from the start to the end.
These wonderful verbs, however, were where any similarities to the human lovemaking process ended.
What no one would see — unless God Herself chose to look in on them as she very well might have done — was the way their wings blossomed from their bodies, coating them in feathers and light. As the pleasure increased, Aziraphale’s wings began to glow, silvery-gold and shimmering.
All of those angelic parts of Crowley were long dead and had ceased to function many millennia ago. His wings did not glow, and his halo was now basically nothing more than a ring of very beautiful, very useless dull platinum. But that night, he stretched out his black feathers to the sky for the first time in a very long time, and his back arched from the feeling of the freedom. It was so good.
And Aziraphale did think that he could see him glowing. Just a little bit. Perhaps it was just a trick of the light or an optical illusion, but there was a glow around Crowley, he could swear it, a wonderful fluorescent haze that surrounded them both.
But if that sounds peaceful, it was decidedly not.
Not actually needing to sleep or eat or even breathe technically, they made love for eleven consecutive hours, until the sun had risen again in the morning. In that time, every single bulb in the house had burst, every mirror had shattered, every tap had somehow turned on to full-blast, the electrics had tripped, the floorboards had warped and splintered, and furniture had been flung about the house seemingly at random.
They hadn’t intended any of this, of course. In the heat of the moment (the very lengthy, eleven hour-long moment), their miracles went haywire, their combined angelic-demonic power surged intensely, and the physical, human environment paid the price.
A miracle had been put in place to protect the bookshop from prying eyes, but if humans had been able to perceive it, they would’ve heard a low humming that seemed to be coming from the building itself, would’ve seen pulsating beams of intense light illuminating the windows at various intervals, as if someone was using a welding tool or making a bomb or setting a fire inside the flat. And during each one of the many, many ‘crescendos’ the two of them shared that night, the entire building seemed to throw out a halo of its own.
And they were such crescendos! Neither of them could really become ‘spent’ (this was a matter of choice rather than a matter of biology), so the euphoria could continue on and on without a break. They felt like all the greatest, most exhilarating movements of Handel and Rachmaninov, like the climaxes of Zadok the Priest and the 1812 Overture (the bit with the cannons) all mixed together but — somehow — even better.
Humans sometimes spoke of particularly great sex as having ‘made the Earth move’. In Crowley and Aziraphale’s case, this was quite accurate. As far off as North Africa and the Caucasus, every celestial being in range felt something shift inexplicably beneath their feet, a vibration in the mantle imperceptible to humans. Those angels and demons with good noses smelled something different in the air, too. Something had happened. Not something necessarily sinful, but something…significant.
And it smelled like…strawberries?
For Aziraphale, the ecstasy he experienced that night put his dalliances with the handsome boys of Portland Place all those moons ago to shame. No offence to those gentlemen themselves; they had given their absolute best at the time, and had (all four dozen of them) been complete hoots, but no one could have ever compared to Crowley, not really.
For Crowley, who — to the surprise of everyone who had ever met him, including Aziraphale himself — had never done ‘it’ before, it was like having his third eye opened. He would’ve been quite happy to never do anything else ever again until the sun burned out — or at least for a decade or two. They had, by design, infinite stamina, but he imagined that infinite sex might result in quite a lot of chafing. Nothing a miracle couldn’t fix, of course. He resolved to pitch the idea to Aziraphale.
As the sun began to peek between the pillars of the high-rises, they found themselves laying upon what was essentially a pile of wood chippings and dust, made soggy by the inch of water that covered the floor. Everything, including and foremost the bed, had been broken beyond repair by the sheer celestial energy of the encounter. Aziraphale later worked out that the energy they had produced together could have powered the whole of Milton Keynes for three days.
But nothing was ever broken beyond repair, of course.
Still naked, black wings still upon his back, Crowley sat up and took a long, adoring moment to look down at the form of Aziraphale. He was also naked — flat on his back, his wings splayed out leisurely either side of him — and he had somehow fallen asleep amidst the chaos. Crowley grinned.
Wordlessly, he raised a palm and the contents of the flat obeyed him. The mirrors flung themselves back together in their frames, the taps turned off and the water sloshed itself away. All the cabinets shuffled meekly back to their rightful places and, finally, the bed put itself back together, lifting them up so they could rest comfortably.
It was as if nothing had ever happened, as if nothing at all had changed. But everything had changed. Crowley felt entrusted with something huge and important, but he also simultaneously felt lighter than he had ever been. He had discovered hidden parts of his body that he’d never even known about, that could do things he’d never contemplated. He had experienced those things he had resigned himself to living without forever; pleasure, liberation, fulfilment, peace.
And he’d discovered it all alongside Aziraphale, the person he’d been dreaming of for millennia. It was a ten-tonne weight lifted from his soul.
Aziraphale, as a matter of fact, had been the very reason he’d started dreaming in the first place. In the early days, his sleep was always silent and black. Once Aziraphale came into his life, however, dreams suddenly began, and it was as if another universe had been created in his brain just for him. A light had switched on.
Crowley pulled the covers back over them both, and cuddled shamelessly into Aziraphale’s shoulder, wrapping a leg around the angel’s. In half-sleep, Aziraphale blinked, turned onto his side, and then pulled him in even closer, Crowley’s head resting on his chest. With his hands on Aziraphale’s back, Crowley was in a good position to stroke the white feathers there, which made Aziraphale palpably shiver and then reach out to stay his hand.
“Not again, my love, surely? Can we have a break for tea, at least?” He had nestled his face into Crowley’s hair, and his voice was thick and slow and lovely.
“Hm. Deal. If you make the tea.”
They didn’t actually end up having any tea; instead, they slept in until lunch, which was unusual for two beings who basically never slept at all, except on the most special occasions. They stirred again as the sun eventually hit them through the gap in the curtains.
In truth, as he lay there with his eyes closed and a smile on his face, Aziraphale was already dreaming of taking Crowley back to all of their favourite places: São Paulo, Mombasa, Kagoshima, Casablanca, Geneva, Jakarta, Tbilisi. Making love on all seven continents? It sounded delightful. It might be chilly doing it in Antarctica, but he was sure they’d make it work.
After the Fall, Crowley couldn’t talk to God anymore. Sometimes he missed Her, despite himself. Sometimes he envied Aziraphale, for still having that connection, that the line was still open for him.
“Angel…what do you think She makes of all this?” Crowley whispered, his voice soft against Aziraphale’s neck, almost afraid to be asking the question, as if just wondering at it might make Her send a lightning bolt down to smite him right there and then.
He could hear Aziraphale thinking, literally. He emitted a specific smell too, when he was in deepest thought (biscuit and caramel).
“You know?” Aziraphale finally replied, with such gentleness Crowley thought that he could’ve cried at the sound of it (which would have been embarrassing). “I think…that I don’t care.”
“You don’t?” Crowley raised his head to look at him incredulously.
“Not a jot.” Aziraphale smiled, the crow’s-feet lines around his eyes deepening pleasantly. “Why would I? We’re free.”
And any remaining weight that had somehow not been relieved from Crowley’s soul the previous night now vanished. He reached upwards, unashamedly, and brushed Aziraphale’s face with his fingers.
What a face. He would kill God happily, wage war on Heaven single-handedly, over that face.
“Yeah. Suppose we are.”
Aziraphale kissed him, indulgent and satisfied with the full awareness that no one would ever be able prevent him from kissing Crowley, not anymore.
“Now…” He said, when they parted, stretching his arms over his head with a mighty yawn. “I really do need that cup of tea.”