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The first time he sees the cherub is unremarkable, or ought to be. They pass each other in the hall, exchanging the polite hellos of strangers, and continue on their separate ways.
And yet he finds himself stopping and looking back over his shoulder, watching featherwhite curls disappear into the distance.
He feels like one of his stars is imploding inside his chest.
When he cannot shake the feeling, he quietly puts in a request to speak to God Herself.
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"Mother," he asks, on the seventh day after the first sighting of Aziraphale. He now feels like a black hole is growing inside him.
"Mother, why do I feel this way?" He does not elaborate. There is no need, when She already knows everything.
"Do you trust me, Jahaliel?" She asks the angel that will someday be known as 'the demon Crowley' (though he does not yet know this).
He nods, but still he is full of questions.
"Then trust that whatever you feel for Aziraphale is no accident. That all your questions will be answered at the right time."
"Yes, Mother," he says, but still he leaves dissatisfied.
It does not escape Her attention.
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The next time he sees Aziraphale, the cherub is standing across from him in a circle of singers. Aziraphale’s voice is lovely, deeper than he would have imagined, and somehow easy to pick out amongst the rest. It strikes a chord in him he never knew was there.
He watches Aziraphale from the corners of his eyes, and through lowered lashes, until the singing is done. But, when he takes a step across the slowly fracturing circle, the cherub has already gone.
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They bump into each other, quite literally, rounding the same corner. They collide with a noise he will never admit to making, and an undignified squeak from Aziraphale.
“I’m so sor-” they both begin to apologize, talking over one another, and stopping at the same time, too. They exchange awkward smiles.
“I am Jahaliel,” he offers, in exchange for a name he already knows. He just wants to hear it from the cherub himself, to feel like he had earned it somehow.
“Aziraphale,” the cherub gives him, shyly. One hand clutches at the front of his robe, and the other extends towards him and stops halfway, hesitant.
He catches the hand in his and brings it close to his lips, breathing over the back of Aziraphale’s fingers.
Aziraphale lights up like a star himself at the touch, flushed and stammering.
He wants to know what Aziraphale is made of, to taste it on his tongue. He touches his lips to the knuckles of Aziraphale's hand; and is rewarded by a gasp that sounds somehow pleased, and a flood of tastes and scents.
The promise of rain hanging heavy in the air, the sharp zing of static, the electric tang of ozone. And beneath all that the dusty sweetness of old things well loved, and vessels filled with ambrosias warm and intoxicating. Of a loyalty, and a Love, he can barely fathom.
He reels, trying to hold himself together, like a galaxy expanding. Is this what Aziraphale is feeling too? He wants to ask, but so many times he's been warned about questions .
"It was very nice to meet you," he says once he has sense enough again to speak. He squeezes Aziraphale's hand, and offers a reassuring smile to counter Aziraphale's dazed, faintly bewildered look. "I would like to see you again," he goes on, pressing the absolute truth of it into Aziraphale's awareness.
"Yes," Aziraphale agrees softly. "I would like that too."
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They see each other often, for a while. Always seeming to know where to find one another if they so desire.
Aziraphale drives him to distraction at just about every singing, and after, if there is no one around to see, they walk together hand in hand. He wonders if Aziraphale also struggles to see, or hear, the others the way he does.
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Tasked with creating new stars, he walks the endless sky, and feels endlessly lonely. Here he places a red dwarf, there a blue giant, a pulsar, a neutron star. There are no names for the kinds of stars yet, and there will not be for hundreds or thousands of years yet. He gives them names of his own, and will tell no one but Aziraphale.
She Herself will know them all as well, of course, but he does not tell her. It seems unimportant, and rather silly, that anyone should care if the stars have names. But it matters to him, and so he names them.
At the height of missing Aziraphale, he creates the first binary star. Two stars, one a shockingly bright white and one a flaming red, rotating around a shared center. From a distance (relative to the size of the entire universe) they will appear as one star that flickers between red and white. From a very great distance (again, relative to the size of the universe) they will appear to be a single star that twinkles.
He has always felt such joy in creating, and in his creations, but none so much as his first paired stars. He is eager to tell Aziraphale what he has done, and when loneliness and longing consume him he has only to look upon the dancing of his binary star to lighten his heart again.
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He returns from his work, submits his reports, and immediately goes looking for Aziraphale.
They find each other in a fortuitously? blessedly? empty hallway. Aziraphale sweeps him up in his arms, radiating so much joy it aches.
He cups Aziraphale’s smiling face in both his palms, and leans down for a kiss. This is new; this touching of lips, this exchanging of breath. No one has ever kissed before now, not like this.
They both shiver, so strongly Aziraphale lets him slide back through his arms-- still held close, but his feet are on solid ground again.
“Oh,” Aziraphale says softly, wonderingly, “Could we-?”
Before Aziraphale has even finished asking, he’s nodding, fast and sure, letting Aziraphale press his back into the wall.
They kiss again, lips on lips and tongues in mouths. Hands wandering across bodies that feel suddenly strange, yearning for something the beings trapped inside them don’t yet understand.
He gets his hands under Aziraphale’s robes, where they wrap around, and clutch at, the softness of his waist. Oh, yes, he thinks, this is the thing I’ve been searching for. Skin touching skin. The life of this body of Aziraphale’s caught between his hands.
He feels unmoored, a galaxy exploding into existence, and if Aziraphale’s harsh breaths and limitlessly dark eyes are any indication, he feels the same; wild and untethered.
He wants to sink into Aziraphale’s skin, then deeper, into his very essence. And then never leave. He bites a mark into his neck instead, eliciting a gasp of his name. “ Jahaliel. ”
Never has it sounded so sweet. He sinks his teeth into that soft skin again, feeling himself leaking, overflowing , from his own skin. “ Aziraphale,” he breathes when Aziraphale tugs sharply at his hair, a warning he knows Aziraphale understands.
Aziraphale tugs, and he bites down, again. And suddenly they are as formless and boundless as when they had been new-made.
There are so many things to like about bodies, and yet, they cannot do this . They cannot sink into each other, blending so seamlessly as to become one and yet still remaining two.
Even the endless creativity of humans (who are, even now, not yet a twinkle in God’s eye) will never be able to recreate the perfection of joining like this . It will also never discourage them from trying.
There’s no need to tell Aziraphale about their twin stars now. Aziraphale can see them through his eyes, feel everything he felt in the making of them. All his love and affection and longing. Aziraphale is giddy with it, ecstatic, and so must he be, too.
They start to pull away, disentangling the tendrils of themselves from one another with gentle nudges and tugs. The growing distance feels less like a loss and more like a promise.
When at last they are tucked, more or less, back into their own bodies; they are breathless and unsteady, bright-eyed and smiling foolishly. They crash together into another embrace that threatens to spill over into something more, but they manage to hold themselves together.
“I love you,” they whisper into each other’s mouths, thinking at this particular moment that nothing exists in the universe that could part them if they did not wish it.