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Aziraphale was, of course, a hedonist to the core and much deeper, but it would be foolish to assume that his hedonism was purely materialistic in nature. Of course, when he first set foot on solid ground, he was drawn to touch, smell and taste everything he could reach (a property that made him similar to absolutely any human child aged from six months to three or four years - but same as this game seems incredibly serious to a child, putting hundreds of terabytes of information about the structure of the universe into their still tiny brain; for Aziraphale, this also had an almost ontological character). He was learning about people.
People were built more complicated than angels, and, in truth, it was scary to imagine what they could develop into if the Creator gave them the same millennia that took Aziraphale to slowly and steadily grow into the creature he was now. Some things, however, remained the same from century to century, and the angel - a great conservative in his habits, either out of sentimentality, or because of the general love for stability - returned to them again and again.
The sun warmed and nourished the plowed earth. Year after year. The rain watered it. Year after year. Harsh, calloused hands, male or female, depending on the time and place, would reap, stab, grind, milk, cut, beat, burn, pour, knead, salt and sweeten. Parents taught the children, and the children remembered their parents every breakfast that they could no longer share. People cooked on fires and in ovens, in large companies and alone. During the meal they would sing songs, pray and tell jokes. Sometimes Aziraphale would join them. There was love stored in the food. With each passing century, it grew.
He ate and almost trembled with beauty.
Crowley, he thought, understood him in this - after all, he was also of angel flock, and the fact that he once pulled a golden crown from his head and received a good kick down from heaven did not change this. At least he was happy to share with him the coarse bread and the young wine, dried meat, sour, sweet and bitter berries, pieces of dough fried in oil and doused with honey and sprinkled with seeds, cheeses of all varieties, hot milk with spices and many, many, many other wonderful things that people had learned to do. Aziraphale quickly realized that food tastes much better when shared with someone pleasant, although the mechanism of this, like everything that he did not want to put much thought into, was lightheartedly dismissed as ineffable (more practical minds might prefer the “if it works, don’t touch” wording).
Over time, he realized that Crowley paid attention mainly to the fact that he had more honey or sauce and less bones on his plate, and the rest did not bother him much.
Aziraphale was receiving mixed messages in general. On the one hand, Crowley blinked owlishly at any attempts to talk about what meanings food had acquired for Aziraphale, on the other hand, he brought fruits, or cakes, or drinks to each of their meetings.
“You really don’t understand at all, do you?” Aziraphale once asked him anyway.
"Yer juft very fenfitive," Crowley shrugged, chewing on his bite. “Even for an angel. It's a compliment, by the way.”
“And you?”
Crowley leaned back and tapped his knuckles on the brick wall, like – get the comparison?
“Listen,” he said. “I don't know what you're thinking, but you don't have to understand such things. You can simply, well. Eat. It’s delicious.”
To confirm his words, he bit into a honey bun and pressed his eyes shut in delight. Aziraphale wrinkled his nose. It was difficult for him to separate one from the other, and now he was thinking very intensely about what it might be like to perceive the world in an exclusively material way. Would it seem insipid and devoid of joy? Or would it be enough for him to just presume that love existed?
“It's kind of like kissing,” Crowley continued. “You think people feel something on an ethereal level?”
“Eh… I guess?” the angel suggested uncertainly.
“No, no and no!” He triumphantly waved his half-eaten bun in the air. “I know about such things, believe me. Well. They do it because it feels nice. No ethereal… things.”
Aziraphale pondered it a bit.
“And they like to know that the other likes it as well?”
“Well, why did you bring me these buns? For what?”
“I thought you'd enjoy them.”
“There it is!” Crowley got so exhilarated that he almost lost his balance, although they were sitting on a wide bench against the wall of the house. “That's the whole point! Beautiful, innit?”
Aziraphale fished a bun from the basket for himself, closed his eyes, and slowly chewed on a piece.
“Still, I don’t understand,” he said. “I enjoy them too. How do you know I didn't take them for myself?”
"Oh," Crowley replied sarcastically. “You're an angel. Angels are not capable of selfishness.”
The conversation turned out to be completely brain-wracking, and Aziraphale almost got angry – why does he feel love, but it seems that it’s Crowley who understands it anyway? And could it be that he really was selfish, because, after all, he was looking for Crowley because he himself delighted in his company? When he was around, when he was like this, the honey seemed sweeter, the dough fresher, and the world in general a much better place than it usually appeared to be.
“Maybe they simply trust,” he said at last, and wiped the honey off his fingers carefully.
“M?”
“Well, believe. That they are not kissing an egoist. That they are making an effort for them, and vice versa. Because they can’t know for sure.”
“Yeah. That's exactly how it is. I think,” Crowley said, no longer very confident. “Listen, it's complicated.”
“Awfully complicated,” Aziraphale admitted. “No, but really. Why do you think I like sharing meals with you?”
Crowley smiled from ear to ear, a nasty, sparkling grin.
"I'm just irresistible like that," he said with such powerful sarcasm that even Aziraphale got that.
"You are," he confirmed seriously. And Crowley beamed, and looked at him with completely stunned eyes over the emerald glasses, as if it was really news to him.
"You're just being polite," Crowley said.
“Not with you.”
“Okay, fair. Nobody’s polite with our kind. We are usually told something like - begone, away with you, foul fiend, and all that.
“Not what I meant.”
Crowley took a long breath.
“Yeah. Yeah, I understand. Sorry.”
He smiled, although he became sharply quiet, his head pulled into his shoulders. Aziraphale put a hand on his wrist to soothe him, and once again he couldn't help thinking – was he doing this just to make Crowley breathe more evenly, or was he getting something out of it? The small, almost imperceptible, trembling, that made him feel light and dizzy, the warmth of the skin under his fingers? And would he mind if Crowley had touched him in the same way just because he himself liked touching his wrist – and for no other reason? Aziraphale found that he would not.
Maybe love tolerated selfishness, after all.
“Would you like to try?” Aziraphale asked.
“To try what?” Crowley asked reluctantly.
“Kissing. To see what the fuss is all about.”
He was rewarded with fleeting yellow eyes and nervously trembling hands. Crowley tried to turn away to hide his smile, but quickly realized that it would be useless – so he just looked at him with an unbearably dumbstruck expression on his face, as if he had just been told a joke that he did not understand, but still laughed - maybe from surprise - and now he was trying to understand whether it was at his expense.
“Yeah, it’s all nonsense though,” he objected weakly. “Boring as hell. Or so I was told.”
“We’ll find out for ourselves,” Aziraphale replied serenely.
"Don't joke like that," he said plaintively.
“I'm not.”
Crowley smoothed out his clothes on his knees. Looked down at his feet. Looked at the sky. Looked at Aziraphale. He smiled reassuringly at him.
"Simply trust, then," Crowley said. “What's so simple here?”
Aziraphale shrugged. The further the conversation went, the more his heart sank and his throat dried up in no ontological sense at all.
“Want to go inside?” he asked. “I have curtains.”
He was agitated. He wanted to jump. Crowley nodded slightly. He held the door open to let him in, and followed into the dusty, cool house. They sat down on the bed, which was last covered with a woolen blanket six months ago. Aziraphale swallowed. Why is there so much fuss about it, really? This is, all in all, just another simple earthly pleasure.
“Are you sure?” he said anyway.
“Yes!” Crowley said with sudden force. “Yes, oh gosh, here I am, not going anywhere, stop torturing me!”
And then Aziraphale took his face with both hands and leaned towards him, slowly and carefully so as not to smash their noses, and still the frame of Crowley’s glasses painfully hit the bridge of his nose, but he paid it no mind, because a wonderfully sharp nose rested on his cheek, and someone else's lips gently springed under his, and he was not quite himself anymore because of this, as if he had learned something breathtakingly personal and not meant for him.
It's such a simple thing, kissing. You lick your own lips a hundred times a day, you know them to bits, sometimes quite literally, and the other one’s are about the same, but still different. And he’s answering you, what a miracle, and studies you in return, gently, carefully. And you allow him that, because you believe that he is exactly like you now, vulnerable and confused and happy. And then you sit, a little different from what you were, and the world around you has not changed, but it seems to have become better. A little bit.
His angelic senses suddenly failed him - nothing changed at all in Crowley when he pulled away from him, disheveled and red, and anyone who looked at them for more than a second would immediately understand that this is all because you cannot feel the change in love as vast and ancient as Crowley's. Therefore, Aziraphale, just like an ordinary person, had to watch him laugh, overcome with joy, and simply – trust.