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They had come to a Decision. Aziraphale and Crowley were wed in front of God, with Satan witnessing. The ceremonial words weren't exactly right, but God hadn't spoken English in awhile and it sealed them together regardless. They sensed the change immediately: a doubling of Aziraphale's power, a thick blanket of calm over Crowley, something weird between their grasping hands, a glowing connection between them that could not be broken.
Not that any force of the universe could ever have fully separated them. Not even Her. And even if She had tried, well… they weren't particularly good at doing what they were told.
Quite a few things happened after that, all at once. One side effect of Aziraphale's 25,000 Lazarii miracle preserving the bookshop (and Crowley, and the entire world and universe, just with a bit of a wait) also happened to give him quite a few signed first editions. Each and every book in the shop regained its ink, and at least two gained happy epilogues they weren't expecting.
Thirteen billion years turned out not to be much of an issue for the two beings stuck in a bookshop. The question “how shall one pass the years?” did not once cross their minds. The answer, as it turned out, was “mostly snogging.”
Well, that was a slight exaggeration. But it was the first thing they did, and they didn't stop. Crowley wasn't sure he could stop kissing Aziraphale, not that it ever occurred to him to try—for the first few billion years, at least. His lips had been created to slide against Aziraphale's for all eternity. They may have merged into one being for all Crowley knew or cared. He had more important things on his mind: mainly, continuing to kiss Aziraphale senseless.
Their shackles were off and clearly Aziraphale was ready to make up for lost time. He grabbed onto Crowley fiercely, possessively, as though he had waited through all the history of the world. His angelic patience had run dry and he surged forward into their kiss, wet and powerful and unstoppable.
Around the time the first infant stars began coalescing under their gravity into perpetual burning explosions, they separated their mouths just long enough to realize they had bodies. Well. Not exactly the human bodies they had before. Something had definitely changed within them, something odd. These bodies seemed to have much greater sensitivity and a higher capacity for pleasure, like they were vessels for enjoyment alone. Perhaps Aziraphale had somehow done this. In this universe, it seemed that their intent of love transferred directly to reality, refined down to only the positive. Their love, newly uncaged, was fueled by the burning explosions of Crowley’s and Aziraphale's need to coalesce. Every touch felt like a soothing balm or a carbonated caress of excitement, every moment of affection went straight down their mostly-bodies all the way to their mostly-toes. They kissed each other in every known configuration and invented several previously unknown ones. Their bodies absorbed and reflected all positive emotions and they had those in abundance, finally. Finally.
They basked. Their souls let out one enormous, deep sigh of relief and gratitude, a silent, whooshing breath of air that lasted millennia. They could still think, but they weren’t doing much of that, at least Crowley wasn't. All he could do was kiss back like he had wanted to for thousands of years, and hold on tight. It wasn't a hardship.
Time passed differently, or they simply didn't notice it passing. Their hands were full, their eyes were fixed on each other or closed in intense bliss, their mouths were entirely occupied. Crowley’s tongue grew long and forked, and his limbs coiled around Aziraphale’s delectably soft curves.
If pressed, they both could remember everything that had happened, Heaven and Hell, secret meetings soaked in fear, humanity under the influence of sin and God. Crowley distantly remembered feeling cross with Aziraphale for leaving, and exhausted by the sheer number of bloody inconvenient situations they ended up in. But that knowledge held no power over him anymore. It seemed so far away. What was close was more precious: his beloved’s eager tongue in his mouth, strong arms around him, and all of his physical and demonic senses overwhelmed with Aziraphale. They were pressing into each other now. Rather vigorously, in fact.
Their shapes had carried over from their previous universe, mostly corporeal but one could not say it was Effortless. Effort took many forms, and many desirable things required their use. The concept of “clothing” did not seem relevant to them anymore in this new place: it wasn't too hot or cold, and fabric would have gotten in the way. The two ground together in bliss, Crowley obsessed with Aziraphale's mumbling, murmuring sounds of pleasure.
At least, they were a sort of sound; they were waves, vibrations. And Aziraphale's moans certainly took up a low and beckoning register. It was only that these waves traveled not through matter, per se. They ran through the very structure of things. Just as Crowley could feel the sweet sound of joy humming in the wooden walls of the bookshop, he could feel that same delectable frequency patterned in the rhythm between events, in the space between being and non-being. He found Aziraphale’s warm, pure desire hiding in the sweet, syrupy shadows between perceptible moments in time, when he focused long enough to perceive time. Holes in reality that should contain nothing but nonetheless a voice of joy called out from them. Something which long before might have been called a miracle, a special act requiring an expenditure of finite labor and energy, hoarded by beings called Angels and Demons who thought themselves exalted. But the impossible was now utterly commonplace, the definition of mundane.
Such circumstances did not bother Crowley one bit; he might as well have forgotten things were ever otherwise. He didn’t forget about the darkness that came before. He simply loved it as he did all the innumerable quirks that made up the conditions accelerating the Biggest Bang which was their love. The Bang that started long before they were originally created and met each other on the Eden Wall. But it might as well have happened yesterday, because their fun was just beginning. In fact, their first date, their first real kiss, their honeymoon, was not only just beginning, but it had always been just beginning, and it would always continue to be spilling into its best part. And with so much more life, right on the edge of the cosmic horizon, for them to anticipate with eager grasps and excited eyes.
They didn't need air, but panted into each other's mouths, nuzzled their faces together and drank deeply of their love. In the Time before this new, seemingly eternal Time, Crowley had always been confident in the astronomical, but the biological evaded him. He mocked Her obsession with the living denizens of Earth and other living worlds, at least in small part due to his own insecurity. But those feelings were now in the Memory before Memory, encased deeply within the golden spiral of their new reality. Which had, in a way, always been the only reality. In this universe, the cosmic and the biological were inseparable elements of their love, along with every other category of scientific knowledge. Crowley’s former insecurity was now a comedic paradox: what could be more fragile, delicate, and insecure than their silken-winged love for each other, and yet how could it be more certain and secure as it always gave more and more while taking nothing? The mere thought of being jealous, as a concept, now delighted Crowley with its insignificance. Their love was quite literally the foundation of everything.
They played with each other’s bodies, which flickered between chemical, celestial, and some unknowable third thing. Their chemical pumps, teeming cellular matrices, unfolding and folding proteins, pulsating tissues blasted with hormones and engorging with blood, were translatable. By a language that consisted not of words, but of subtle touches, the softest brushes, the deepest sighs and thrusts. They could be made synonymous with solar engines, raging gas storms, molten cores, and the rough yet playful dance of irradiated and battered planets forming new atmospheres. They made love endlessly, in every way.
They shared in Aziraphale's immense power, magnifying and intensifying every burst of joy. They drank down Crowley's interminable thirst until he could only smile into Aziraphale's lips. What Crowley lacked in his former Hellish power, he easily made up for in enthusiasm, pent-up lust, and pure adoration. He was feeling very smooth and very cool, sweeping Aziraphale off his feet like this. Or at least he told himself that, as Aziraphale’s mouth and fingers triggered every one of his pleasure centers both physical and beyond his comprehension. Satisfaction pulsed through their forms, over and over.
Rather conveniently, and fucking finally, there was no one in existence watching.
Aziraphale, when he deigned to look retrospectively, no longer felt indebted to his supposed Creator. His love for Crowley, with Crowley, extended in all directions of time and had ensured their creation perhaps even long before God had existed at all. God was just one of the many bricks in the road of their love story, which was always bound to happen. The Author was only a plot device in the end, and no longer part of the story.
Eons passed. They took a break to watch the stars light up the real universe.
In this new world, to know something was to love it, and thus everything was knowable. The reverberations of Aziraphale and Crowley’s touches had spread infinitely, saturating every existence of being with their unique ontological scent. Like Particle and Wave, Yin and Yang, Bouba and Kiki, Abbott and Costello: they were the Two Who Are One. So as each looked out together on the expanse of their love, in every solar system, black hole, or half-formed cell, they could not help but be curious to explore all of it with the innocence and passion of their NURE (New Universe Relationship Energy).
At some point they imagined resting in a steaming cedar hot tub, and they were, right in the center of Aziraphale's bookshop. Of course the humidity would never dare to approach Aziraphale's belongings, and so Aziraphale read aloud to Crowley any book of his choice. (After declaring that he didn't read, he chose The Anarchist's Cookbook, Twilight, and The Notebook.) Crowley pretended not to adore the experience, and Aziraphale saw through it every time. The delight rolled off him in massive metaphysical waves as he feigned mild interest or pretended to sleep.
They made love in the steaming water, in a more human way. Well, somewhat human. Their wings splashed water everywhere as Crowley laughed and pounced on Aziraphale. Yet somehow no speckles of water appeared on the floor or anywhere else. Crowley got lost kissing Aziraphale’s neck over and over, grinning at the obscene noises he made and provoking more. He kissed every inch of Aziraphale’s sensitive skin, ducking beneath the water for maximum access. Every so often he emerged, wiping back his hair and kissing Aziraphale’s lips sweetly, only to sink back under a moment later like he regretted surfacing at all.
The point was, there was a lot of Aziraphale to enjoy. They had forgotten what not-embracing felt like.
When Crowley submerged, Aziraphale would absentmindedly smooth his hands over his lover’s angular shoulders, as if he were subconsciously trying to mold sculptor’s clay. Every deep, rolling caress loosened Crowley’s shoulders more and more, which allowed him to move his mouth in increasingly complex paths around Aziraphale’s lower body. Eventually, he was sucking Aziraphale’s hungry thighs, cock, and balls not only from all external angles, but somehow from all internal angles too. Aziraphale was lovingly embraced, pressed, and squeezed into something new by Crowley’s wandering vines of licks: vines dotted by the red, wet fruits of sucking kisses.
Thus began an exponential cycle. Aziraphale invited Crowley back down deeper, again and again, like a rolling undertow. Pushing him physically with his gentle hands, and pulling him in every other way with his anticipatory trembles, subtle sighs, and seizing muscles. Crowley saw a place for himself here, a Crowley-shaped hole in Aziraphale’s supernatural sex-mind. He had a home, a belonging far greater than any other pastime or vice of his former life. A labyrinth to get lost in, and whether or not there was a minotaur, he would bring no rope along with him. He would follow sucking off Aziraphale wherever it led, although he knew it must lead only to ecstasy. Whether for thirty minutes or thirty million years, Crowley licked and knew he was right where destiny had placed him. He was a born artist, and Aziraphale’s nether country became his canvas. He painted it with a trailing lower lip, lightly strumming Aziraphale’s balls and taint like an instrument. Symphony and watercolor were one. Sound and vision united. He closed his eyes, and saw Aziraphale’s deepest want at the bottom of time in the clench of Aziraphale’s hands moving him. Every motion of his body orchestrated the dredging up of something deep and powerful from inside Aziraphale.
For longer than a human could imagine, the power was funneled up through Aziraphale’s nerves: a pressurized and condensed gas rising with its electrons racing. Even underwater Crowley could smell what was coming, long before it arrived. He struggled not to break his stop-and-go rhythm, his mysterious pattern of licking and sucking always just earlier or later than Aziraphale expected it. He knew now, he knew this was what drove Aziraphale crazy: the timing. There was always an air of the unpredictable with Crowley that excited him so.
Concentrating, his own cock hard as steel in anticipation, Crowley maneuvered his caresses further towards the sweet center of Aziraphale’s want: escalating firmly up his shaft and orbiting upon the head of his cock like a swivel. Galaxies quaked and upset in their formation, and all logic, even cause and effect itself paused (this always happened now whenever Aziraphale came). After all, was Aziraphale’s orgasm the cause or the effect of this session of bliss? It was both, neither, and beyond. Crowley’s mind sank further than water could reach, into a deeper place. So singleminded as to almost be mindless, he found himself reduced to a nigh-infinitely complex machine, without a designer, whose sole purpose was to make this blessed angel come.
Tense, shuddering quakes built into a frenzy until suddenly Aziraphale came, erupting below the water, violently launching forth thick spurts of joy. He moaned into Crowley’s rapturous, sputtering face, laughing as Crowley bombarded him with reverent kisses. Human physicists say the background radiation from this event can be detected by cathode-ray televisions (not that they knew what caused it). Crowley immediately set out to do it again.
Aziraphale and Crowley must have lounged and cuddled and made love for years in that tub without any pruning of their fingers, nor decreased temperature of the water. Crowley transformed into a snake for a great while, better able to wrap round angelic thighs and waist, hissing nonsense into Aziraphale's ear just to hear him scoff. He blasphemed to his heart’s content. For endless conversations, they waxed philosophical, conjuring up massive glasses of wine that would put a bachelorette party to shame.
Not a moment passed where they were not touching some part of their corporations, so it would take many millennia for Crowley to realize he, on his own, could access part of Aziraphale’s power via their skin-to-skin connection. Until then, he was just chuffed that wine appeared in his glass at convenient intervals.
They argued, relentlessly, and reminisced of their past life gone by. Crowley hung on his every word, watching his mouth fervently as though it were mealtime. Aziraphale’s delighted and scandalized sounds dragged him forward like a fishing line. The way Aziraphale primly insulted the decisions of medieval authorities, or criticized the quality of a dish he was served in 1801, made Crowley want him carnally. Nothing was stopping them from indulging again, nor from ceasing their heated arguments during. There was something to be said for arguing in a face-to-face position, but Aziraphale would not let himself be silenced by something as inconsequential as “doggy style”. Getting smashingly drunk and vigorously buggered was Crowley’s idea of winning these arguments, so he started more.
Thirteen billion years was a long time, but they didn’t mind. In rare moments when they weren’t intimately intertwined, Crowley passed the time thinking about Aziraphale and watching Aziraphale eat decadent slices of cake, miracled up by the dozen. Ninety-five percent of his naps (glorious, warm, cozy naps), took place with his body touching Aziraphale's. For the other five percent, Aziraphale was never farther away than a few feet, safe from all harms greater than uninspired prose or a difficult bottle cork. Constantly Crowley thought, but never said, this was his own definition of paradise.
Eventually the Earth formed and the population grew. The humans were the old ones, back for a second go along the same paths. There were neither occult nor ethereal puppeteers toying with their lives, and it showed. Aziraphale and Crowley visited often, just to watch the world reflected in each other’s eyes. They went on hundreds of picnics that never lost their charm.
It was a beautiful new universe, and it was theirs.