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They say the end of the world approaches with strange portents, ships from space and evening showers of mackerel. Sometimes it arrives by motorcycle, sometimes by nuclear missile, and sometimes it bleeds through the heart of a mercifully ordinary boy. If you are very lucky, the world’s end only makes a social call and departs again. This time around, Armageddon retreats with an event just as miraculous as the ones that presaged its advance, and a perfect warm summer drapes over Britain in its wake.
Angels, as a group, are not partial to unexpected hot weather. Humidity is rough on the wing feathers, and there is something about a warm night in a cool place that seems inevitably detrimental to moral fortitude. Some angels believe heat tends to warp ordinary scruples until they go all smudgy, like forgotten candy bars. It’s one reason Heaven’s London office is so heavily air-conditioned.
But for one particular angel, the summer is a lovely reason to open and close a secondhand bookshop at ever-unlikelier hours, and a splendid justification for the purchase of lavish, syrupy ice cream sundaes. On bright Saturdays the angel can be found vanquishing a knickerbocker glory with the aid of a long, thin spoon and a demon who is secretly fond of glacé cherries. Recently rather estranged from Heaven, Aziraphale is willing to let some of his scruples go not only smudgy, but positively molten.
Some angels fall, some saunter downwards, and some simply resign from Paradise.
For his part, Crowley finds that corrupting London’s infrastructure is more fun as an amateur than a professional, but that doing nothing is even more fun than doing evil. Warm, content, and overfed with ice cream, he delights in uncoiling his cold-blooded body in the torpid sunlight of endless afternoons, falling asleep to reruns of dreadful television, and going on long, pointless drives in a thoroughly improbable car.
It was lifetimes ago that Crowley fell in love with Aziraphale, the angel with a heart as soft as candy floss and hair like gentle peaks of lemon meringue (and just a bit of bastard in him to set off all that sweetness, like a shot of espresso that accompanies a sumptuous dessert). After 6,000 years of restraint (and more than a little salivation), the serpent of Eden would very much like to have a bite. In his dreams it tastes like Heaven.
Aziraphale fell in love with Crowley too, but he can’t remember when it began. It flooded him slowly, like beads of water from an infinite dropper, and by the time he thought to look for it, he discovered he had already drowned. It's only after the world doesn’t end that he finally stops trying to surface.
***
Courtship between the heavenly and hellish begins haphazardly and very gently. It starts with lunch at the museum cafe, with wouldn’t-you-know-it-the-philodendron-you-admired-was- on-sale, with the gift of an exquisitely terrified rose. And it also continues, as it always has, with wine-soaked arguments about how to measure eternity, with duck-feeding in St. James’ Park, with jokes that only work when you tell them in the old Aramaic.
It would be easier to figure out what to do if there was some grand plan they could trust or fractured prophecy guiding everything, a foretold meeting of the divine and diabolical that they could slip comfortably and fatefully into. The world’s only accurate books of prophecy have been destroyed, however, and grand plans have a way of going awry. In any case, Aziraphale and Crowley both have a sense that their allegorical days are behind them.
Their story is not a fable about an angel and a devil falling in love, not quite. They are too ordinary now; the costumes don’t fit anymore and the lines feel too staged. There are no ballads about prissy, reluctant booksellers and reformed snakes who look after begonias and antique cars. Star-crossed lovers of legend and lyric do not file taxes or watch nature programs or cheat on their parking tickets. It’s not the kind of thing that looks poetic in the auguries.
So without the clarity of divination or the guidance of myth, Crowley and Aziraphale learn how to navigate a world no longer bordered by uncrossable lines. They have lookouts and rendezvous points and strategic zones all over London, set down over the centuries, but the map has changed. There’s no enemy territory anymore, no need for a pretense of business before pleasure,
The distance from Mayfair to Soho has never seemed so small.
Aziraphale’s bookshelves are cluttered—they always have been—and they begin to accrue new things unrelated to misprinted bibles and literary arcana. There’s a ticket to see a symphony in the park sitting under a heat lamp purchased from the local pet shop (Aisle 3, Reptiles and Exotics). Propped next to it is a postcard from a Tadfield family with a little dog (this goes unanswered for a long time, because really, what do you say?). There’s an extra set of keys to a preternaturally clean and stylish flat, just in case, even though it is decorum, not doorknobs, that keeps celestial beings from entering each other’s homes. Most unexpected of all is a paper box holding a handful of sugared almonds left heroically uneaten. The others were delicious, and the demon who drops by the bookshop ought to try them.
Agents of Hell are not supposed to have mantelpieces full of sentimental knickknacks. Crowley does not collect trinkets, exactly, but his flat changes too. Its smooth interior becomes imperfect, pocked from a disease of habitation. Aziraphale comes around to visit every now and then (he doesn’t dare to use the keys) and leaves behind creases in the chair cushions and crumbs on the kitchen floor and ill-advised compliments in earshot of the houseplants. (Like any heavenly creature, however, he always takes it upon himself to wash the dishes.)
Every now and then a biscuit crumb sticks to Crowley’s jacket and Aziraphale brushes it away with a palm that he hopes isn’t shaking too much. Occasionally Crowley straightens Aziraphale’s stupid, beloved bow tie with fingers he’s painfully aware are shaking too much. On the little balcony above the bookshop, late on a hot night, they reach at once for the same cigarette lighter. Their fingers intertwine in a moment as brief and as infinite as the uncountable ages before the War in Heaven. True to history, Crowley lets his hand fall.
***
Two weeks later the angel and the demon are doing battle against another of Aziraphale’s opulent sundaes and arguing about the Fall of Rome. The couple next to them wonders idly if they’re preparing for a trivia game (the argument seems too personal, somehow) or a graduate school exam (no, they’re definitely not stressed enough). Crowley gesticulates with an ice cream wafer and Aziraphale tries to jog his memory with another spoonful of raspberry coulis. At a crest in the conversation, their hands meet around the stem of the tall glass filled with cream and fruit. Crowley is as still as a snake in a refrigerated room. Aziraphale curls his plump fingers around Crowley’s hand and gives him a smile. It’s the same one he uses for marginalia in illuminated manuscripts and the retreating backs of would-be customers and fresh profiteroles and all the other things that constitute his personal Heaven.
Summer deepens, becomes too intense and full of insects to be beautiful anymore. London’s air is humid and smoggy. Of course they could ignore the flies and smog, or opt out of breathing like Aziraphale did during most of the Second Industrial Revolution. Still, it's as good an excuse as any to leave the city. Over hot cocoa and cold coffee, Aziraphale and Crowley nose about the fascinating, frightening idea of taking a holiday together. Aziraphale mumbles something emphatic and vague about the seaside around his mouthful of marshmallows, and Crowley takes the hint and bravely wonders aloud about the South Downs. After the cocoa is finished, and before he thinks better of it, Aziraphale buys a guidebook. He and Crowley fill it with tea-spattered bookmarks; Aziraphale will not hear of dog-earing even a book as blatantly commercial as Best Value South Downs .
Next week they drive to the sea at inadvisable velocities.
The cottage is simple and clean and not really to either of their tastes, but it has a half-decent view of the ocean. There’s not a lot of light pollution nearby and there’s one adequate cafe within a mile. Inside the cottage there are two bedrooms, both of which receive an occupant. Crowley’s room is neat and he closes the windows at night so that it stays warm. Aziraphale tries to keep his room neat but fails, and the windows are open because for Heaven’s sake, he didn’t come to the edge of the sea to keep the windows shut.
July passes in hazy impressions: sweet speckled fruits, white cliffs that match the indolent clouds, books saved from the spray of the ocean, sleep for the first time in centuries, ice lollies, snakeskin loafers (at least, presumably they’re loafers), the sea under starlight, dark hair hot to the touch, a daringly loosened bow tie, cold drinks that refresh and intoxicate and taste as sweet as imminent kisses. There’s a stylish kind of laziness to life in the South Downs, for all the ever-present sand on the floorboards; it has the type of elegance that can’t be bothered to do up all its buttons.
***
One night when the moon is dark and the sea has yet to storm they climb to the top of a chalk cliff as the stars trickle into the sky from oblivion. The constellations have a weird kind of familiarity, like a vivid dream that lost its detail upon waking, and it’s too unsettling to be romantic. But Aziraphale and Crowley didn’t climb up to go stargazing.
In the old paintings, the grand ones where the angels wear drapery and solemnity in equal measure, flying looks effortless. Sometimes there are even helpful clouds or cherubs blowing streaks of silver updraft to lift the ethereal figures on the canvas. Life does not always imitate art, however, and it’s possible to get out of practice with one’s wings. Nowadays flying requires a good bit of discretion, and observers of an angel in flight are more likely to report a hang gliding accident than to render a flattering portrait with robes of lapis lazuli.
From afar it looks like two gigantic birds taking to the air. Crowley unfurls his wings first, a bit unsteady from a lack of balance or an overabundance of nerves. Aziraphale follows, giving a little flick of his primary feathers to test the wind. They swore a solemn pact over a blueberry muffin at the adequate cafe, and no matter how much flying either of them might have forgotten, neither is allowed to laugh. Together they run forward to the edge of the cliff and jump. For a fleeting moment there are two falling angels.
Then they’re lifted up and up, by the grace of God and the luck of the devil and the laws of fluid dynamics. In the darkness they are free to swoop over the surface of the sea. Aziraphale does a loop-de-loop, clutching his pocket watch so it doesn’t fall into the water. For better or worse, Crowley flies like he drives. They swivel in the air and skim the waves as midnight gives way to smaller hours.
Crowley extends a hand to the only angel who has ever danced. Aziraphale accepts, takes them for a spin. He’s not very graceful and Crowley’s not very calm but there’s no one watching and they’re long past caring, drunk on the dark sky. As they waltz above an indifferent ocean, it’s a relief to discover that they can’t trip over one another’s feet if they’re both flying.
Aziraphale and Crowley stop breathing when a clumsy midair turn brings them terrifyingly and irresistibly close.
The kiss could have happened thousands of years ago. It might have happened in Eden, when the stars were still new and there wasn’t anyone to see. A second temptation in the Garden, the seduction of an angel encircled in the coils and desires of a serpent. Then again, it might have been the angel who tempted the serpent, an angel who really ought to know better, but who wanted to know more . The kiss could have started with the swipe of a thumb against lips stained with pomegranate juice, chaste until it wasn’t, oh look you’ve got a spot just there, just there, yes, there.
It might have been a desperate bid for comfort after the Flood, a dalliance in the Roman baths, a token of favor in the court of Camelot. It could have been an angel’s corruption or a demon’s return to grace. Perhaps a devotional kiss, as pure as prayer, or perhaps something far less sacred, all licking and lust. It might have been like any or none of these. Instead, six thousand years slip by and they have only kissed in the heady air of imagination and the pliant, surreal landscapes of dreams.
Finally, flying between the starlight and the sea, Aziraphale kisses Crowley. It’s warm and very wet and nothing like the hazy guilt of dreaming. Crowley kisses back with a muffled noise that Aziraphale tucks away like treasure to hoard for another millennium. As their mouths open and their hands scramble to hold and press and stroke, the angel discovers how magnificently sweet it is to sin, and the demon finds out it’s possible to burn with something far too holy to be hellfire. Neither realizes they’ve forgotten to keep flying until their feet touch the water.
It’s only a short way back to the cottage, and first they walk, then run, then fly when they get impatient. With the curtains drawn the interior is dark. Demons are used to working in dim conditions, and angels can let-there-be-light when they need to, but they don’t use any miracles to illuminate things as they unbutton each other’s clothes and flatten the sofa cushions under the weight of centuries of longing.
It goes much like any of their other meandering conversations: leisurely and intimate, prone to circling back around to the interesting bits, and closer to the heart at the end than the beginning. The interruptions are a little different than usual: Crowley yelps when Aziraphale’s hand does something especially un-angelic, and Aziraphale can barely breathe when he realizes even his most imaginative daydreams haven’t anticipated the weird things Crowley can do with his tongue. Not long ago, their conversations ended in whispers or drunken ramblings or calculating, uncertain farewells, but now in the dead of night and the heat of each other the exchange comes to a close with an ecstasy more earthly than divine.
The world spins on, and Armageddon keeps a respectful distance. On the South Downs it begins to rain. The sea stirs under storm clouds as torrents of water assault the windows and obscure the stars. Lightning flashes like a stern rebuke from Heaven or a jealous spasm from Hell, but it’s warm and dry inside the cottage as all night long an angel and a demon kiss blasphemy and blessing into each other’s mouths.