Happy Holidays, Allthisnonsense!
Title: Rarified Air
Recipient: allthisnonsense
Author: vulgarweed
Rating: NC-17
Pairing/Characters: Aziraphale/Crowley, DEATH, two hapless historical humans.
Summary: Earth is getting older, war is getting more terrible, and an angel has to go to extreme heights to get any peace and quiet at all. But as close as you can get to Heaven, you’re still never far from Hell. (ATN, there’s some hurt/comfort, some history, some humour, and some hissing.)
Warnings: Slash cliché ahead. Also, New Zealanders: a national hero of yours appears in this through no fault of his own (no, not that one, although there is indeed a Lord of the Rings reference as well).
1953 AD
Well then. That’s…disturbing, Aziraphale thought. He’d been doing his best to avoid newspapers, and his best was very good indeed. But still, the trickle of murmurs of the ongoing discoveries in the Qumran caves wasn’t something he’d ever be allowed to shut out entirely. Not even as far away from media outlets as he’d removed himself.
The things coming to light themselves, well, nothing he didn’t already know of course; it was the simple fact of documents so long silent being exposed to the air of discussions. Humans were always so big on that. If he reached out and thought about it, which he wasn’t going to do, the simple tectonics of faith being shaken all over the world was going to give him motion sickness.
He tried to bury his consciousness instead in the 15th-century Moorish manuscript he’d “borrowed” and brought along on his remote retreat. He finally noticed that his tea had gone not only cold but filmy, and he sighed and steamed it up again with a touch, wrapping his woolly afghan a little more tightly around his lap. It could get a bit nippy up here, couldn’t it? He supposed the flash of manifesting his comfy chair and ottoman and little side table with its cakes and doilies was a little much, but abstentiousness in his meditation retreat could only go so far.
It was so exhausting back home. A new Queen was all well and good, but it was hard to enjoy the excitement with the Americans acting like such prats. Give them an H-Bomb, and they’ll take an empire. Well, let them see how much fun it really is, then. Aziraphale felt he deserved some relaxation somewhere quiet and cozy.
Up above his roof of rock, the jet stream blew a steady plume of snow from the cold, barren peaks of sharp stone out into airless oblivion. The howl of the wind formed a faint background music he’d long since attuned to, mingling as it was with Elgar in his head. He’d been here for weeks, but time didn’t mean much, and he’d barely moved. The marble fireplace in his remarkable recreation of the interior of an English cottage in what was, technically, a tiny cave in the mountainside roared and crackled happily even though there was no wood for a hundred miles.
The peace was too good to last. If Aziraphale had got up from his overstuffed chair with its cabbage-rose pattern and peered out the “door” into the brittle night, he’d have seen the stars-so bright and nearby at this level of the atmosphere-shimmer as though something draped them, as though the very blue-black sky they danced in were a rippling fabric of firmament. The interruption in the sky was a pair of massive wings briefly enclosing the stars. But Aziraphale had little interest in his surroundings besides knowing that they were wonderfully hostile to salesmen and traveling preachers and well-meaning bearers of unwanted news, so he didn’t venture to look
Therefore he was very much taken by surprise by a knock on his rock a little while later.
He drew his blanket around his shoulders and tried to look stern as he opened the door that shouldn’t have been there.
TRICK OR TREAT.
“A-Azrael?” Aziraphale stammered dumbly, staring up into twinkling sockets. “Oh…you must be here a lot, I suppose.”
NOT REALLY. NOTHING LIVES HERE, SO NOT MUCH DIES HERE EITHER. UNTIL RECENTLY. I’VE BEEN SEEING MORE OF THE PLACE.
‘Er, well…lovely, isn’t it? Fine views.”
IF YOU LIKE THAT SORT OF THING.
“Would you like some tea?”
NOT IF IT HAS YAK BUTTER IN.
Aziraphale shuddered. “Goodness no!”
THIS ISN’T A SOCIAL CALL, YOU KNOW.
“I suppose not,” Aziraphale said, a little relieved. “Is there something I can…?”
THERE’S A SITUATION A LITTLE DOWN THE SLOPE....IT IS REALLY, REALLY NOT MY DEPARTMENT, DESPITE WHAT HE THINKS.
“And you think it’s mine?” Aziraphale said peevishly. “Miracles on command for some overcompensating nimrod?”
IT’S NOT…ORDINARY. YOU SHOULD REALLY COME SEE.
Aziraphale started shivering pre-emptively, and gave a long-suffering sigh as he turned his fuzzy slippers into something resembling good boots and his blanket into a coat that would have been fashionable for about twenty seconds in the previous century, in one specific remote Russian province.
Azrael had a way of gliding, even as he rattled slightly, but Aziraphale had to pick his way over ice and snow and rock like a mortal. Wings could act like sails in this weather-oh, he’d fly all right, just not in the direction he’d intended. Azrael was also a good deal more aerodynamic.
Aziraphale thought at first it was just another outcropping of black rock half-buried in snow, but he got close and gasped; the man lying face down in the snow wasn’t even remotely dressed for it. Rather a nice suit, in fact; sharply polished shoes caught the unforgiving gleam of starlight. A fedora floated in the snow near the head with its dark hair blowing loose, full of ice crystals.
“Not dead?” he asked Azrael.
TECHNICALLY NO, AND NOT FOR LACK OF TRYING. HE CAN’T, AFTER ALL.
Aziraphale’s eyes went wide and he knelt in the snow and grasped the man’s shoulder, turning him over. There was a miserable-sounding and familiar moan.
“Crowley!” he cried.
DISCORPORATIONS ARE NOT MY FORTE REALLY, said Azrael. BUT HE WAS BEGGING ME TO TAKE IT ALL THE WAY IF THAT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN. REALLY DOESN’T WANT TO GO BACK TO HELL, HE SAID. I HONESTLY DON’T SEE THE BIG DEAL, AT LEAST HE GETS TO LEAVE EVENTUALLY.
“Oh, for…” Aziraphale said, rolling his eyes. The pang of horror and concern he’d felt was none of Azrael’s business. “I’ll take care of it,” he said. “We won’t bother you again.”
I SHOULD HOPE NOT.
“Thanks for letting me know,” Aziraphale said.
I HAVE TO GO NOW. THERE ARE EXPEDITION PARTIES AROUND THESE DAYS. ALWAYS ON CALL.
“Well, have fun,” Aziraphale said lamely. When Azrael had taken his chill with him, the mountain actually got colder.
Aziraphale turned Crowley’s chin in his hand and winced at the colour of the demon’s face and the ice that clung to his eyelashes and blue lips. A stiff hand clutched at him clumsily, and Aziraphale didn’t like the colour of it either.
At 27,000 feet above sea level, no man can carry another. But an angel can manage. There was a long crackling struggle as Aziraphale freed Crowley’s body from the ice that had started to seal around it. No coat for heaven’s sake.
The walk back was more of a stumble-cold, dark, and wind-battered, and Aziraphale truly began to feel the thinness of the air knifing his lungs. The cartilage of his nose was brittle. Crowley felt stiff and heavy-his weight probably mostly ice.
From the effort of carrying him that small distance, Aziraphale was exhausted enough that his comfortable shelter started to lose some of its civilised qualities. The bed he hastily imagined there turned low and crude and the good English wool blankets he conjured turned quickly to smelly, hairy yak skins. He’d fix it later. He had a crisis on his hands, and said crisis made a horrible whimpering sound as Aziraphale perfunctorily wished Crowley’s clothes-mostly ice by now-over by the fire and wrapped the frozen demon in essence of yak.
Hot water was next. The fireplace was still happy, though what it was burning was no longer wood but another yak byproduct. One of the Buddhist prayer flags that had appeared out of nowhere nearly took a spark. Aziraphale attempted to make a hot toddy, and though the whiskey involved was the rice kind, Aziraphale congratulated himself for at least keeping it from turning into that fermented yak’s milk drink.
He sat down on the bed and lifted Crowley’s head, the low clay cup pressed to his lips, but the demon was shivering so violently only the first few sips took, and he swallowed miserably, his yellow eyes flying wide in fear.
“C-can’t breathe!” he gasped, thrashing.
“Crowley, it’s all right!”
Crowley shoved at Aziraphale so hard hot lemon whiskey spilled up into his face (and chose that moment to turn into fermented yak milk) and Aziraphale hauled off and slapped him, hard.
Crowley yelped in offense.
“You’re hysterical,” Aziraphale said, shaking him.
“I can’t breathe!”
“You don’t have to!”
“I’m going to be d-d-dis-corpse-“
“No you’re not!”
“I can’t go back there! Don’t make me! It’s like Cocytus, it’s cold, it’s-“
“You’re in the Himalayas, you silly git, of course it’s bloody cold out!”
“H-him--where? Earth?”
“Yes, Earth. Near India. Great big mountains. You’ve heard of them.”
“Yeah…yeah,” Crowley babbled. “Crazy stuff. Some of Belial’s boys…daredevils, y’know. Tried flyin’ up here back in the day. Went splat. Think one of ‘em’s still stuck to Annapurna.”
“You do know where you are!”
“Yeah…now.” A worrisome madness still flickered in the fixed yellow eyes. “C-can’t go…below again…I wassss in America…doin’ good, I thought, I mean bad….I mean, that Sssssenator McCarthy, and Hoover in a dresss ssspyin’ on homosssexuals…and then they said go to K-korea, and…”
“And…”
“And….c-can’t do any more war right now….just c-can’t take it…thought it’d b-be quiet…h-here…”
“You did not.”
“W-was l-looking for….all right, you left a hint all…I thought I could smell…and then that wind…”
“You flew?”
“Only p-part way…thought I c-could h-handle it…”
“You can, Crowley!”
“S-started getting s-s-o sleepy…couldn’t f-feel my hands…” He reached out for the cup to try to drink again, and dropped it. His hands were all but useless. Aziraphale watched in horror; his hands were deathly white, but for the very fingertips which seemed to be turning black.
“Crowley, you idiot,” Aziraphale shouted.
“C-couldn’t think right…no osssss…..ok….air stuff.”
“Did you forget?” Aziraphale demanded. “Did you start thinking this body is really what you are?”
Altitude sickness. Aziraphale had never imagined it could happen to one of their kind - after all, it was all just a question of blood vessels in the brain, which of course they could control. Unless they forgot they could. Judgment weakens, and in the battle of mind and matter, sometimes matter reaches the summit first.
Looking at that stricken face it was clear something crucial still wasn’t getting through. Aziraphale leaned forward, hand at the back of Crowley’s wet, cold head, pulling him forward. He pressed his mouth against the demon’s forcefully, nudging his chill lips open, and Breathed, drawing from the aether that animated him as well as his earthly lungs. Crowley’s eyes sank closed, and he drank of it, deep, clutching clumsily at Aziraphale’s neck with scrabbling fingers.
He tasted of snow and blood.
Aziraphale drew away finally and took one of Crowley’s half-dead hands, warming each finger within his mouth slowly, tongue restoring cell by cell and nail by nail, and Crowley moaned, half in terrible pain as blood returned and half in a devious, insinuating sort of knife-sharp pleasure. Finger by finger. All ten got their turn. With sensation coming back so intensely, Crowley couldn’t stop touching Aziraphale - his hair, his cheeks, his neck.
But Aziraphale had moved on with buckets of hot water, to address the matter of Crowley’s feet, which were in worse shape. The mere act of rubbing and washing them was bad enough, symbolically speaking if nothing else, but they were nothing to the sounds Crowley made, and his inadvertent shaking and twitching when Aziraphale found there was nothing for those toes but the same treatment-a slow and attentive sucking, calling on the tiny Powers of ethereal-or possibly, occult-cells and nerves, forcing life to return. One by one.
As Aziraphale ran his tongue along the line of Crowley’s instep unnecessarily, he found things…satisfying. His hands circled Crowley’s ankles and he could feel warmth returning. In fact, it was intoxicating, the way…
“You know,” Crowley rasped. “There’s one more…exssstremity…could do with some warming.”
“Are you trying to take advantage of my good will?” Aziraphale snapped.
“Always,” Crowley said, still shivering a little. “Demons are opportunistic.”
“If you’re feeling well enough to proposition me, then…” Aziraphale moved good English wool and rough Nepali yak aside to regard Crowley fully - trembling and pale and naked, yes, and with that part of him he’d alluded to seeming to be in much more robust health than the rest of him. “…then you might be feeling well enough for me to take you up on it.”
“Isss thisss…the extreme I have to go to?” Crowley said, trembling harder now, and not all of it was cold.
“I almost lost you, you silly creature,” Aziraphale just muttered cryptically, and then he moved in between Crowley’s legs and lowered his head and did something powerful and arcane and ancient (though also so common and fleshly) with his breath and his tongue and lips, and Crowley’s hardwon rationality vanished.
Aziraphale was flexing power shamelessly, for healing requires assertion. Heat and taste of slick flesh in his mouth, moving convulsively in and out against his counterstrokes. A drape of fur fell over Aziraphale’s shoulder as Crowley reached his hand to Aziraphale’s head, trying not to push too hard but failing. Aziraphale just nodded more and let him have it, loving the way the demon’s body was blooming to warm life inside his mouth and beneath his hands. What breath he wasn’t using he tried to radiate outwards as he sucked and teased and drew that thick shaft deep into his throat, and Crowley gasped and groaned and was probably making himself lightheaded again. And for someone who’d been half-dead, he came quickly and forcefully.
“Did you just take advantage of me?” Crowley whispered as Aziraphale took a deep drink of-whiskey again, thank Someone-and handed him the cup.
“Perhaps,” Aziraphale said. He took Crowley’s chin in his hands and gently held up one eyelid. “How do you feel now?”
“Ssstill cold. Sssleepy.”
“Still cold?”
Aziraphale sighed and climbed gingerly onto the bed, trying to avoid the worst of the yak as he nudged Crowley’s shoulder, strongly suggesting he ought to lie down again. With a little shiver of his shoulders he tucked himself in behind Crowley and, a little hesitantly, shrugged his own dressing gown and pyjamas off onto a peg above them. Skin to skin spreads the warmth better, after all. Pressing close he drew fur tight around them. Crowley was still trembling, though he no longer looked so pale. “The worst…the worst…” he finally murmured.
“Is…”
“The view. The clouds beneath us, boiling up. Storms. And nothing above me. It reminded me of…”
“Oh…I see.”
“It could open up, over me. Reach down and snuff me out with a thought. And the clouds below…I could fall. Again.”
“Oh Crowley.”
“I felt…naked in my head. In the dark. Nothing between me and…”
“You’re hallucinating still.”
“I hope so. I really, really hope so,” He leaned back hard against Aziraphale’s belly, reaching for warmth, pulling the angel’s arm tight around him, and Aziraphale could still feel a core of chill and tension underneath the sleepy pliability, something gone numb and blackish that wasn’t yet waking.
“You need to…” was all Crowley said.
“Take advantage?” Aziraphale whispered, nuzzling the back of Crowley’s neck and biting gently. Crowley moaned and moved his hips, feeling Aziraphale’s hardness nudging against his arse, fitting there with such grace-with one small, small movement Aziraphale could be sliding inside, joined to him, infusing him. Crowley lifted one thigh and ground against him more urgently, guiding his hand. Aroused again, for sure--feverishly. Mewling softly at the feel of Aziraphale’s nails on his inner thigh, light fingertips at the base of his cock, his balls, behind and between, pressing and questioning.
“Maybe I’m the one…taking advantage,” Crowley whispered.
“If you’d like to think that, dear,” Aziraphale murmured, reaching for that cup again. If his guess was right…
It was. Yak butter.
“Oh that’s good, oh, that’s good,” Aziraphale whispered into Crowley’s ear as he slid a finger into him, feeling him yield and open and welcome him. That kernel of coldness he sought to search and destroy was elusive; the demon was all heat and quivering here.
With a groan, Crowley rolled onto his belly, drawing Aziraphale atop him. “Still too high up,” he whispered. “Cover me. Hold me down.”
Aziraphale made an assenting sound, kissing Crowley’s shoulders hungrily, wrapping them again in the musty animal smell of yak blankets and finally arranging himself just right, just there, holding Crowley’s hip in place and filling him slowly. Crowley spread his legs and raised his arse and groaned as he felt every inch’s slide and stretch.
Aziraphale slid his hands under Crowley’s chest, scratched at his nipples, and finally just pressed that lean body up against him as hard as he could while he rode in and out, listening with his muscles to every struggle of movement, every pitch and writhe.
“You’re so hot,” Crowley cried.
The demon was capable of sweating now, that was a good sign. The way he was wheezing wasn’t, though, and Aziraphale burrowed a hand free and pressed his cheek, and Crowley turned his neck at an impossible angle. Aziraphale kissed him and breathed into him again-well, truly, more like panting into him-and then felt a responding surge of heat and health rising from Crowley’s skin like St. Elmo’s Fire, engulfing them both, and then he had one more thing to give: a rigid spasm of sheer life force, a throb and a pulse almost painful in its pleasure. Crowley bucked up wildly under him, accepting it and giving back his own, all over Aziraphale’s hand.
“There you go dear. There you go,” Aziraphale crooned a little, feeling Crowley drop off almost instantly into a sleep that felt both superhuman and normal. Poor thing needed rest, that’s for sure, and not the kind that freezing to discorporation can lull you to. It was almost uncomfortably warm under the yak and still half on top of the demon, but Aziraphale felt no urge to move. He laid his cheek on the smooth shoulderblade and listened to the wind.
***
When dawn came stealing snowy and bright and blue into the little bit of home, Aziraphale got up carefully. He called his pyjamas and dressing gown and thick furry slippers back to himself, and set about making tea, listening to Crowley’s soft snoring just under the wind and humming quietly to himself.
He almost jumped out of his skin when he saw two faces, wrapped and goggled, peering at him through his door.
“Oh…hello,” he said and waved. “Sshh,” he said, but he didn’t refuse to open the door.
“I say,” said one of the two men. Looking close beneath the wraps, Aziraphale could see that he was pale and the other was dark. “Do you have any…Grey Pou-er, I mean, proper tea in there?”
Kiwi, Aziraphale noted. At least not an Australian. The other man muttered something, probably “stupid white man” in Sherpa, but smiled agreeably.
“Of course I do,” said the angel cheerily, and poured it.
“That’s awfully kind of you,” said the New Zealander. “Please hold the yak butter if you don’t mind.”
“That’s the best part,” said the Sherpa.
“I’m developing a taste for it myself,” said Crowley, leaning up on one elbow and letting the fur reveal enough of himself for their visitors’ imaginations to work. Aziraphale blushed but poured with unflappable skill.
“So you’ll be the next to die on the mountain then?” Crowley blurted. “Nearly did it myself.”
“It’s entirely possible,” said the white man-Edmund, he introduced himself. “But with luck, and grace, and the skills of Tenzing here - to be honest, I have high hopes.”
“Literally,” said Aziraphale. “You know, I’m told the thing to watch out for is what the air can do to your mind. One hallucinates the strangest things. A cozy little room in a rock cave, for instance, with tea.”
“That is a strange one,” Edmund agreed.
“Best not to dawdle, just in case,” Aziraphale said. “There’s not much of a margin for error. And only so much oxygen.”
Tenzing nodded grimly. He slugged back his yak butter tea like a pro, which he was. “C’mon then.”
“Thank you very much for your hospitality. Even if you’re a mirage, it’s greatly appreciated.”
“You’re very articulate for someone in the throes of altitude madness,” said Crowley.
When the two men had left to continue their Quixotic folly, Aziraphale turned to Crowley. “You’re mean.”
“I’m accurate,” said Crowley.
“Why do they insist on doing that?” Aziraphale said, nodding vaguely in the direction of upward. “Just because no one ever has? Wouldn’t they think there’s a good reason for that?”
Crowley sighed, looked down at his fingertips-healthy and pinkish, nimble-and smiled, laughing a little bit in the direction of the ground. “It’s like the Tree, Aziraphale. That’s how people are. You don’t put fruit in front of them and tell them not to eat it and actually expect they won’t. You don’t put the bloody biggest mountain in the world in front of ‘em and tell them they can’t climb it either!”
Aziraphale actually contemplated tasting the yak butter tea. Crowley really didn’t seem to mind it at all. Warmed by it, and finally his old serpentine sated self again, Crowley leaned back against the yak fur and said, “You know, I bet that jet stream up there is pretty amazing to fly on. Rather like the mother of all thermals. You get your big soaring primaries all straightened out and just go.”
“That’s insanely dangerous.”
“Yeah, but what a view. What a high. It must be fantastic if you can time it just right.”
“I am not going to…”
“I bet it’s not as dangerous as walking up the mountain, now is it?”
“Crowley...”
“Aw, come on. Give it just a try, will you?”
“It’s really cold up there.”
“But we can come back here and you can warm me up again. Or I can do you, if you like.”
Crowley had the most infectious leer on the planet. Form follows function, after all.
But Aziraphale really had more reasons to agree than not to. Crowley’s bribe was enticing. And his lack of fear a great relief. And just because he’d Fallen didn’t mean he could never dance on clouds again. And besides, Aziraphale wanted to see the looks on those two men’s faces as they stood upon a narrow ridge, alone of all humanity.
From the air, Crowley managed to spot the most darling little tavern in Kathmandu.
***
The tourists came later, with more money than sense, for a new fashionable way for the mid-life-crisis crowd to kill themselves dramatically was always in demand, and once in the paper back in London, Aziraphale saw that craggy man’s face again, aged and knighted now, railing in exasperation at the litter of oxygen bottles and wind-scoured, Gore-tex-draped bones. The temptation to blame Crowley was almost overwhelming, but deep in his heart, Aziraphale knew better.
~end~
Happy Holidays, allthisnonsense, from your Secret Writer!
Recipient: allthisnonsense
Author: vulgarweed
Rating: NC-17
Pairing/Characters: Aziraphale/Crowley, DEATH, two hapless historical humans.
Summary: Earth is getting older, war is getting more terrible, and an angel has to go to extreme heights to get any peace and quiet at all. But as close as you can get to Heaven, you’re still never far from Hell. (ATN, there’s some hurt/comfort, some history, some humour, and some hissing.)
Warnings: Slash cliché ahead. Also, New Zealanders: a national hero of yours appears in this through no fault of his own (no, not that one, although there is indeed a Lord of the Rings reference as well).
1953 AD
Well then. That’s…disturbing, Aziraphale thought. He’d been doing his best to avoid newspapers, and his best was very good indeed. But still, the trickle of murmurs of the ongoing discoveries in the Qumran caves wasn’t something he’d ever be allowed to shut out entirely. Not even as far away from media outlets as he’d removed himself.
The things coming to light themselves, well, nothing he didn’t already know of course; it was the simple fact of documents so long silent being exposed to the air of discussions. Humans were always so big on that. If he reached out and thought about it, which he wasn’t going to do, the simple tectonics of faith being shaken all over the world was going to give him motion sickness.
He tried to bury his consciousness instead in the 15th-century Moorish manuscript he’d “borrowed” and brought along on his remote retreat. He finally noticed that his tea had gone not only cold but filmy, and he sighed and steamed it up again with a touch, wrapping his woolly afghan a little more tightly around his lap. It could get a bit nippy up here, couldn’t it? He supposed the flash of manifesting his comfy chair and ottoman and little side table with its cakes and doilies was a little much, but abstentiousness in his meditation retreat could only go so far.
It was so exhausting back home. A new Queen was all well and good, but it was hard to enjoy the excitement with the Americans acting like such prats. Give them an H-Bomb, and they’ll take an empire. Well, let them see how much fun it really is, then. Aziraphale felt he deserved some relaxation somewhere quiet and cozy.
Up above his roof of rock, the jet stream blew a steady plume of snow from the cold, barren peaks of sharp stone out into airless oblivion. The howl of the wind formed a faint background music he’d long since attuned to, mingling as it was with Elgar in his head. He’d been here for weeks, but time didn’t mean much, and he’d barely moved. The marble fireplace in his remarkable recreation of the interior of an English cottage in what was, technically, a tiny cave in the mountainside roared and crackled happily even though there was no wood for a hundred miles.
The peace was too good to last. If Aziraphale had got up from his overstuffed chair with its cabbage-rose pattern and peered out the “door” into the brittle night, he’d have seen the stars-so bright and nearby at this level of the atmosphere-shimmer as though something draped them, as though the very blue-black sky they danced in were a rippling fabric of firmament. The interruption in the sky was a pair of massive wings briefly enclosing the stars. But Aziraphale had little interest in his surroundings besides knowing that they were wonderfully hostile to salesmen and traveling preachers and well-meaning bearers of unwanted news, so he didn’t venture to look
Therefore he was very much taken by surprise by a knock on his rock a little while later.
He drew his blanket around his shoulders and tried to look stern as he opened the door that shouldn’t have been there.
TRICK OR TREAT.
“A-Azrael?” Aziraphale stammered dumbly, staring up into twinkling sockets. “Oh…you must be here a lot, I suppose.”
NOT REALLY. NOTHING LIVES HERE, SO NOT MUCH DIES HERE EITHER. UNTIL RECENTLY. I’VE BEEN SEEING MORE OF THE PLACE.
‘Er, well…lovely, isn’t it? Fine views.”
IF YOU LIKE THAT SORT OF THING.
“Would you like some tea?”
NOT IF IT HAS YAK BUTTER IN.
Aziraphale shuddered. “Goodness no!”
THIS ISN’T A SOCIAL CALL, YOU KNOW.
“I suppose not,” Aziraphale said, a little relieved. “Is there something I can…?”
THERE’S A SITUATION A LITTLE DOWN THE SLOPE....IT IS REALLY, REALLY NOT MY DEPARTMENT, DESPITE WHAT HE THINKS.
“And you think it’s mine?” Aziraphale said peevishly. “Miracles on command for some overcompensating nimrod?”
IT’S NOT…ORDINARY. YOU SHOULD REALLY COME SEE.
Aziraphale started shivering pre-emptively, and gave a long-suffering sigh as he turned his fuzzy slippers into something resembling good boots and his blanket into a coat that would have been fashionable for about twenty seconds in the previous century, in one specific remote Russian province.
Azrael had a way of gliding, even as he rattled slightly, but Aziraphale had to pick his way over ice and snow and rock like a mortal. Wings could act like sails in this weather-oh, he’d fly all right, just not in the direction he’d intended. Azrael was also a good deal more aerodynamic.
Aziraphale thought at first it was just another outcropping of black rock half-buried in snow, but he got close and gasped; the man lying face down in the snow wasn’t even remotely dressed for it. Rather a nice suit, in fact; sharply polished shoes caught the unforgiving gleam of starlight. A fedora floated in the snow near the head with its dark hair blowing loose, full of ice crystals.
“Not dead?” he asked Azrael.
TECHNICALLY NO, AND NOT FOR LACK OF TRYING. HE CAN’T, AFTER ALL.
Aziraphale’s eyes went wide and he knelt in the snow and grasped the man’s shoulder, turning him over. There was a miserable-sounding and familiar moan.
“Crowley!” he cried.
DISCORPORATIONS ARE NOT MY FORTE REALLY, said Azrael. BUT HE WAS BEGGING ME TO TAKE IT ALL THE WAY IF THAT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN. REALLY DOESN’T WANT TO GO BACK TO HELL, HE SAID. I HONESTLY DON’T SEE THE BIG DEAL, AT LEAST HE GETS TO LEAVE EVENTUALLY.
“Oh, for…” Aziraphale said, rolling his eyes. The pang of horror and concern he’d felt was none of Azrael’s business. “I’ll take care of it,” he said. “We won’t bother you again.”
I SHOULD HOPE NOT.
“Thanks for letting me know,” Aziraphale said.
I HAVE TO GO NOW. THERE ARE EXPEDITION PARTIES AROUND THESE DAYS. ALWAYS ON CALL.
“Well, have fun,” Aziraphale said lamely. When Azrael had taken his chill with him, the mountain actually got colder.
Aziraphale turned Crowley’s chin in his hand and winced at the colour of the demon’s face and the ice that clung to his eyelashes and blue lips. A stiff hand clutched at him clumsily, and Aziraphale didn’t like the colour of it either.
At 27,000 feet above sea level, no man can carry another. But an angel can manage. There was a long crackling struggle as Aziraphale freed Crowley’s body from the ice that had started to seal around it. No coat for heaven’s sake.
The walk back was more of a stumble-cold, dark, and wind-battered, and Aziraphale truly began to feel the thinness of the air knifing his lungs. The cartilage of his nose was brittle. Crowley felt stiff and heavy-his weight probably mostly ice.
From the effort of carrying him that small distance, Aziraphale was exhausted enough that his comfortable shelter started to lose some of its civilised qualities. The bed he hastily imagined there turned low and crude and the good English wool blankets he conjured turned quickly to smelly, hairy yak skins. He’d fix it later. He had a crisis on his hands, and said crisis made a horrible whimpering sound as Aziraphale perfunctorily wished Crowley’s clothes-mostly ice by now-over by the fire and wrapped the frozen demon in essence of yak.
Hot water was next. The fireplace was still happy, though what it was burning was no longer wood but another yak byproduct. One of the Buddhist prayer flags that had appeared out of nowhere nearly took a spark. Aziraphale attempted to make a hot toddy, and though the whiskey involved was the rice kind, Aziraphale congratulated himself for at least keeping it from turning into that fermented yak’s milk drink.
He sat down on the bed and lifted Crowley’s head, the low clay cup pressed to his lips, but the demon was shivering so violently only the first few sips took, and he swallowed miserably, his yellow eyes flying wide in fear.
“C-can’t breathe!” he gasped, thrashing.
“Crowley, it’s all right!”
Crowley shoved at Aziraphale so hard hot lemon whiskey spilled up into his face (and chose that moment to turn into fermented yak milk) and Aziraphale hauled off and slapped him, hard.
Crowley yelped in offense.
“You’re hysterical,” Aziraphale said, shaking him.
“I can’t breathe!”
“You don’t have to!”
“I’m going to be d-d-dis-corpse-“
“No you’re not!”
“I can’t go back there! Don’t make me! It’s like Cocytus, it’s cold, it’s-“
“You’re in the Himalayas, you silly git, of course it’s bloody cold out!”
“H-him--where? Earth?”
“Yes, Earth. Near India. Great big mountains. You’ve heard of them.”
“Yeah…yeah,” Crowley babbled. “Crazy stuff. Some of Belial’s boys…daredevils, y’know. Tried flyin’ up here back in the day. Went splat. Think one of ‘em’s still stuck to Annapurna.”
“You do know where you are!”
“Yeah…now.” A worrisome madness still flickered in the fixed yellow eyes. “C-can’t go…below again…I wassss in America…doin’ good, I thought, I mean bad….I mean, that Sssssenator McCarthy, and Hoover in a dresss ssspyin’ on homosssexuals…and then they said go to K-korea, and…”
“And…”
“And….c-can’t do any more war right now….just c-can’t take it…thought it’d b-be quiet…h-here…”
“You did not.”
“W-was l-looking for….all right, you left a hint all…I thought I could smell…and then that wind…”
“You flew?”
“Only p-part way…thought I c-could h-handle it…”
“You can, Crowley!”
“S-started getting s-s-o sleepy…couldn’t f-feel my hands…” He reached out for the cup to try to drink again, and dropped it. His hands were all but useless. Aziraphale watched in horror; his hands were deathly white, but for the very fingertips which seemed to be turning black.
“Crowley, you idiot,” Aziraphale shouted.
“C-couldn’t think right…no osssss…..ok….air stuff.”
“Did you forget?” Aziraphale demanded. “Did you start thinking this body is really what you are?”
Altitude sickness. Aziraphale had never imagined it could happen to one of their kind - after all, it was all just a question of blood vessels in the brain, which of course they could control. Unless they forgot they could. Judgment weakens, and in the battle of mind and matter, sometimes matter reaches the summit first.
Looking at that stricken face it was clear something crucial still wasn’t getting through. Aziraphale leaned forward, hand at the back of Crowley’s wet, cold head, pulling him forward. He pressed his mouth against the demon’s forcefully, nudging his chill lips open, and Breathed, drawing from the aether that animated him as well as his earthly lungs. Crowley’s eyes sank closed, and he drank of it, deep, clutching clumsily at Aziraphale’s neck with scrabbling fingers.
He tasted of snow and blood.
Aziraphale drew away finally and took one of Crowley’s half-dead hands, warming each finger within his mouth slowly, tongue restoring cell by cell and nail by nail, and Crowley moaned, half in terrible pain as blood returned and half in a devious, insinuating sort of knife-sharp pleasure. Finger by finger. All ten got their turn. With sensation coming back so intensely, Crowley couldn’t stop touching Aziraphale - his hair, his cheeks, his neck.
But Aziraphale had moved on with buckets of hot water, to address the matter of Crowley’s feet, which were in worse shape. The mere act of rubbing and washing them was bad enough, symbolically speaking if nothing else, but they were nothing to the sounds Crowley made, and his inadvertent shaking and twitching when Aziraphale found there was nothing for those toes but the same treatment-a slow and attentive sucking, calling on the tiny Powers of ethereal-or possibly, occult-cells and nerves, forcing life to return. One by one.
As Aziraphale ran his tongue along the line of Crowley’s instep unnecessarily, he found things…satisfying. His hands circled Crowley’s ankles and he could feel warmth returning. In fact, it was intoxicating, the way…
“You know,” Crowley rasped. “There’s one more…exssstremity…could do with some warming.”
“Are you trying to take advantage of my good will?” Aziraphale snapped.
“Always,” Crowley said, still shivering a little. “Demons are opportunistic.”
“If you’re feeling well enough to proposition me, then…” Aziraphale moved good English wool and rough Nepali yak aside to regard Crowley fully - trembling and pale and naked, yes, and with that part of him he’d alluded to seeming to be in much more robust health than the rest of him. “…then you might be feeling well enough for me to take you up on it.”
“Isss thisss…the extreme I have to go to?” Crowley said, trembling harder now, and not all of it was cold.
“I almost lost you, you silly creature,” Aziraphale just muttered cryptically, and then he moved in between Crowley’s legs and lowered his head and did something powerful and arcane and ancient (though also so common and fleshly) with his breath and his tongue and lips, and Crowley’s hardwon rationality vanished.
Aziraphale was flexing power shamelessly, for healing requires assertion. Heat and taste of slick flesh in his mouth, moving convulsively in and out against his counterstrokes. A drape of fur fell over Aziraphale’s shoulder as Crowley reached his hand to Aziraphale’s head, trying not to push too hard but failing. Aziraphale just nodded more and let him have it, loving the way the demon’s body was blooming to warm life inside his mouth and beneath his hands. What breath he wasn’t using he tried to radiate outwards as he sucked and teased and drew that thick shaft deep into his throat, and Crowley gasped and groaned and was probably making himself lightheaded again. And for someone who’d been half-dead, he came quickly and forcefully.
“Did you just take advantage of me?” Crowley whispered as Aziraphale took a deep drink of-whiskey again, thank Someone-and handed him the cup.
“Perhaps,” Aziraphale said. He took Crowley’s chin in his hands and gently held up one eyelid. “How do you feel now?”
“Ssstill cold. Sssleepy.”
“Still cold?”
Aziraphale sighed and climbed gingerly onto the bed, trying to avoid the worst of the yak as he nudged Crowley’s shoulder, strongly suggesting he ought to lie down again. With a little shiver of his shoulders he tucked himself in behind Crowley and, a little hesitantly, shrugged his own dressing gown and pyjamas off onto a peg above them. Skin to skin spreads the warmth better, after all. Pressing close he drew fur tight around them. Crowley was still trembling, though he no longer looked so pale. “The worst…the worst…” he finally murmured.
“Is…”
“The view. The clouds beneath us, boiling up. Storms. And nothing above me. It reminded me of…”
“Oh…I see.”
“It could open up, over me. Reach down and snuff me out with a thought. And the clouds below…I could fall. Again.”
“Oh Crowley.”
“I felt…naked in my head. In the dark. Nothing between me and…”
“You’re hallucinating still.”
“I hope so. I really, really hope so,” He leaned back hard against Aziraphale’s belly, reaching for warmth, pulling the angel’s arm tight around him, and Aziraphale could still feel a core of chill and tension underneath the sleepy pliability, something gone numb and blackish that wasn’t yet waking.
“You need to…” was all Crowley said.
“Take advantage?” Aziraphale whispered, nuzzling the back of Crowley’s neck and biting gently. Crowley moaned and moved his hips, feeling Aziraphale’s hardness nudging against his arse, fitting there with such grace-with one small, small movement Aziraphale could be sliding inside, joined to him, infusing him. Crowley lifted one thigh and ground against him more urgently, guiding his hand. Aroused again, for sure--feverishly. Mewling softly at the feel of Aziraphale’s nails on his inner thigh, light fingertips at the base of his cock, his balls, behind and between, pressing and questioning.
“Maybe I’m the one…taking advantage,” Crowley whispered.
“If you’d like to think that, dear,” Aziraphale murmured, reaching for that cup again. If his guess was right…
It was. Yak butter.
“Oh that’s good, oh, that’s good,” Aziraphale whispered into Crowley’s ear as he slid a finger into him, feeling him yield and open and welcome him. That kernel of coldness he sought to search and destroy was elusive; the demon was all heat and quivering here.
With a groan, Crowley rolled onto his belly, drawing Aziraphale atop him. “Still too high up,” he whispered. “Cover me. Hold me down.”
Aziraphale made an assenting sound, kissing Crowley’s shoulders hungrily, wrapping them again in the musty animal smell of yak blankets and finally arranging himself just right, just there, holding Crowley’s hip in place and filling him slowly. Crowley spread his legs and raised his arse and groaned as he felt every inch’s slide and stretch.
Aziraphale slid his hands under Crowley’s chest, scratched at his nipples, and finally just pressed that lean body up against him as hard as he could while he rode in and out, listening with his muscles to every struggle of movement, every pitch and writhe.
“You’re so hot,” Crowley cried.
The demon was capable of sweating now, that was a good sign. The way he was wheezing wasn’t, though, and Aziraphale burrowed a hand free and pressed his cheek, and Crowley turned his neck at an impossible angle. Aziraphale kissed him and breathed into him again-well, truly, more like panting into him-and then felt a responding surge of heat and health rising from Crowley’s skin like St. Elmo’s Fire, engulfing them both, and then he had one more thing to give: a rigid spasm of sheer life force, a throb and a pulse almost painful in its pleasure. Crowley bucked up wildly under him, accepting it and giving back his own, all over Aziraphale’s hand.
“There you go dear. There you go,” Aziraphale crooned a little, feeling Crowley drop off almost instantly into a sleep that felt both superhuman and normal. Poor thing needed rest, that’s for sure, and not the kind that freezing to discorporation can lull you to. It was almost uncomfortably warm under the yak and still half on top of the demon, but Aziraphale felt no urge to move. He laid his cheek on the smooth shoulderblade and listened to the wind.
***
When dawn came stealing snowy and bright and blue into the little bit of home, Aziraphale got up carefully. He called his pyjamas and dressing gown and thick furry slippers back to himself, and set about making tea, listening to Crowley’s soft snoring just under the wind and humming quietly to himself.
He almost jumped out of his skin when he saw two faces, wrapped and goggled, peering at him through his door.
“Oh…hello,” he said and waved. “Sshh,” he said, but he didn’t refuse to open the door.
“I say,” said one of the two men. Looking close beneath the wraps, Aziraphale could see that he was pale and the other was dark. “Do you have any…Grey Pou-er, I mean, proper tea in there?”
Kiwi, Aziraphale noted. At least not an Australian. The other man muttered something, probably “stupid white man” in Sherpa, but smiled agreeably.
“Of course I do,” said the angel cheerily, and poured it.
“That’s awfully kind of you,” said the New Zealander. “Please hold the yak butter if you don’t mind.”
“That’s the best part,” said the Sherpa.
“I’m developing a taste for it myself,” said Crowley, leaning up on one elbow and letting the fur reveal enough of himself for their visitors’ imaginations to work. Aziraphale blushed but poured with unflappable skill.
“So you’ll be the next to die on the mountain then?” Crowley blurted. “Nearly did it myself.”
“It’s entirely possible,” said the white man-Edmund, he introduced himself. “But with luck, and grace, and the skills of Tenzing here - to be honest, I have high hopes.”
“Literally,” said Aziraphale. “You know, I’m told the thing to watch out for is what the air can do to your mind. One hallucinates the strangest things. A cozy little room in a rock cave, for instance, with tea.”
“That is a strange one,” Edmund agreed.
“Best not to dawdle, just in case,” Aziraphale said. “There’s not much of a margin for error. And only so much oxygen.”
Tenzing nodded grimly. He slugged back his yak butter tea like a pro, which he was. “C’mon then.”
“Thank you very much for your hospitality. Even if you’re a mirage, it’s greatly appreciated.”
“You’re very articulate for someone in the throes of altitude madness,” said Crowley.
When the two men had left to continue their Quixotic folly, Aziraphale turned to Crowley. “You’re mean.”
“I’m accurate,” said Crowley.
“Why do they insist on doing that?” Aziraphale said, nodding vaguely in the direction of upward. “Just because no one ever has? Wouldn’t they think there’s a good reason for that?”
Crowley sighed, looked down at his fingertips-healthy and pinkish, nimble-and smiled, laughing a little bit in the direction of the ground. “It’s like the Tree, Aziraphale. That’s how people are. You don’t put fruit in front of them and tell them not to eat it and actually expect they won’t. You don’t put the bloody biggest mountain in the world in front of ‘em and tell them they can’t climb it either!”
Aziraphale actually contemplated tasting the yak butter tea. Crowley really didn’t seem to mind it at all. Warmed by it, and finally his old serpentine sated self again, Crowley leaned back against the yak fur and said, “You know, I bet that jet stream up there is pretty amazing to fly on. Rather like the mother of all thermals. You get your big soaring primaries all straightened out and just go.”
“That’s insanely dangerous.”
“Yeah, but what a view. What a high. It must be fantastic if you can time it just right.”
“I am not going to…”
“I bet it’s not as dangerous as walking up the mountain, now is it?”
“Crowley...”
“Aw, come on. Give it just a try, will you?”
“It’s really cold up there.”
“But we can come back here and you can warm me up again. Or I can do you, if you like.”
Crowley had the most infectious leer on the planet. Form follows function, after all.
But Aziraphale really had more reasons to agree than not to. Crowley’s bribe was enticing. And his lack of fear a great relief. And just because he’d Fallen didn’t mean he could never dance on clouds again. And besides, Aziraphale wanted to see the looks on those two men’s faces as they stood upon a narrow ridge, alone of all humanity.
From the air, Crowley managed to spot the most darling little tavern in Kathmandu.
***
The tourists came later, with more money than sense, for a new fashionable way for the mid-life-crisis crowd to kill themselves dramatically was always in demand, and once in the paper back in London, Aziraphale saw that craggy man’s face again, aged and knighted now, railing in exasperation at the litter of oxygen bottles and wind-scoured, Gore-tex-draped bones. The temptation to blame Crowley was almost overwhelming, but deep in his heart, Aziraphale knew better.
~end~
Happy Holidays, allthisnonsense, from your Secret Writer!