The Known/Unknown Quantity

Chapter 18: Back To The Past, Or What It Could Have Been

Chapter 18: Back To The Past, Or What It Could Have Been

As the summer edged closer to fall, life slowly fell into routine once more. Although it was slightly different than before.

The angel returned to his bookshop duties, but went to see Madame Tracy for tea. Crowley took long drives into the countryside, stopping to look at the grandeur of life reset, sometimes participating in it.

Other times he drove until he ran out of gas, into the hills and the coastlines, watching the grand vista's open before him. Nothing to stop him anymore. Nothing to push back against.

He wasn't aimless, exactly. Just, dunno, thinking...

Every so often his eyes might catch the sight of a little red-haired boy or girl, of a ginger youth, of an old man teetering along with a wisp of auburn still left in his fading hairline...

                Then he'd get right back in the car, "fill" the tank, and crash through his thoughts at a speed to break the sound barrier.

                And racing back, he would force the shattered confoundments away with warm memories of that week after the reset of time, when everything was still so new and wonderful, even in its pain...

Six thousand years of stories untold, now expressed with their bodies alone, now sieved through and dealt with at their speed in their own time. Pushing limits and misunderstandings aside, speaking a language only they knew. It was told with the stretch of flesh, the tightness of sinew and tendon, through thumb on spasming muscles and vibrating vocal cords, through the tight compression of fingers over those most secreted, and aching, of places.

                It changed tone, mood, purpose. Sometimes lively, sometimes slow, sometimes lurid and outstanding, but always them, always theirs.  Words might be expressed, but lips and tongues could be pressed into other more informative service.

He recalled a moment when the words came back...

They were exhausted, and sweating, laughing after Aziraphale's first 69 experience. He was still coming down off the elation, his skin tingling to distraction. Talking about old times helped to ease him back. Changing the subject in a quiet moment did too.

"Do you know what you're doing, when you get in those trances?" the demon asked offhandedly. Aziraphale blinked with the switch in subject. But he considered.

"It's this body...or a little part of my mind, I think? I seem to be able to guide it. But the rest of me seems to go somewhere else."

"Where do you go?"

The angel puffed out his cheeks. "Oh, I don't know, dear boy." He thought. "It changes, my perception of it changes. Things not real are out of focus at times, other times they come slamming into view with such precise clarity." He went quiet again, then whispered," The Garden."

                Crowley rolled over on his side and held his head in his hand. "Which one? Do you mean THE Garden?"

                "I think I do. Yes, I do mean it."

                "You're not really there."

                Aziraphale shook his head. "No, I don't want to really go back, if...they can't."

                "No worries there. They've been trying to build their own from spec for years." Crowley slipped his legs underneath himself and stretched his arms out.  "Oi, that felt good."

                "Oh!" the angel's face screwed up and he reached for the demon. "Look here, if we're going to talk about this, get on top of me." He drew the obliging demon over until they were chest to chest, their groins pressed together. "I just want to feel the weight of you," the angel sighed. Crowley chuckled and wrapped his arms around the angel's head.

                "Better?"

                "You squirm so much, Crowley. No, don't stop," he chided as the demon pressed deeper with his movements. As Aziraphale spoke, his friend slowly coiled his arms and legs back and forth over the angel's muscles, massaging them with his entire body, grinding between his thighs. It had an affect for sure.

                "I'd like to take you there, with me?"

                "Think you can?"

                "I...I think so....emmmm," Crowley was biting softly on his earlobes now, and moving elsewhere over his neck and shoulders. "Are you trying to persuade me? Or encourage the silly thing?"

                "Understanding its nature means protecting you from it, if it comes to that. You pull yourself into it so much." Crowley drew his head under the covers, further and further down. His mouth found what it wanted. The angel arched.

                "Oh, Oh, please bare down a bit with your teeth. Aaugh!"

                Crowley came up for breath and poked his nose out from the covers. His yellow eyes glowed in the dark cavern of the sheets. "You're becoming a little masochist, you know, with all your sensitivity." The demon slithered back under and moved his attentions to the angel's scrotum.

                "Vile fiend," Aziraphale purred sweetly.

                Crowley pulled his tongue back in for a moment. The angel heard him say from beneath the covers. "I'm changing my name back, you know."

                Suddenly he felt the angel's firm grip on his shoulders. He was hauled up. The angel was glaring at him.

                "No, you're not. Not ever!"

                "Well," Crowley beamed. "Yes sir!" Then he stretched over the angel, causing him to moan. "Didn't mean it."

                "Please don't go back," the angel pled. "You don't identify as that snake, do you?"

                "I am that snake. Why, just the other day you called him back for a brief time."

                "That was acting, That's different.  I know it's a part of you, but so is—"

                The angel spoke a name the demon hadn't heard in years. It stilled him. And if it weren't spoken with such tenderness and adulation, he would have gotten angry. And yet, he wasn't.

                "How do you know my old name?"

                "Your reputation precedes you, remember? I've seen your work in the stars. It's why I look up at the night sky so often. Stories of your masterpieces were tossed about so much I eventually matched the description of your appearance to the being that came to me on the Gate."

                "My former glory was quite muted by then."

                "You've come into a new glory, artist."

                "Hmm, craftsman, really."

                "Genius. The greatest masters have been trying to capture your handiwork in music ever sense. Why do you think I'm enraptured with certain scores?"

                Crowley laid his head on the angel's broad chest, his eyes watering. "You humble me. You fucking humble me. No one can do that."

                The angel's fingers graced his hair, combed thru the thick red locks. "You want to come with me, back to the Garden of my memory? We don't know what might happen."

                "Take me, please," Crowley whispered. "Take me anywhere you want to go."