This Strange Sweetness

Wassailing

Wassail the trees, that they may bear

You many a plum and many a pear:

For more or less fruits they will bring,

As you do give them Wassailing.

"Should have known I'd find you here." An arm looped over Aziraphale's shoulder, love falling over him like warm lamplight from behind a suddenly opened door. "Any excuse for public drunkenness and debauchery, you old sot."

"I'm here to provide my blessing. On orders." It wasn't technically a lie. After all, Gabriel had pointed out rather sternly that Aziraphale had been spending far too much time passing as human and not enough time actually doing angelic things. Blessing trees to bear fruit counted as angelic if he squinted. A good harvest would mean good cider and Perry, better income in the area, and happy, less worried people sinned less out of wrath and hunger. The entire area would be a touch more virtuous

Over the last few centuries, sharing jobs with Crowley, Aziraphale had picked up quite a few tips about bulk temptation and applied them in the opposite direction, as it were. More efficient, and much less inconvenience to the humans than all that mucking around with visions.

Besides, Aziraphale really liked mulled and spiced perry.

He didn't mention that there were groups out wassailing in every village in England and Scotland that grew tree fruit, in an explosion of relief that the Black Boy, in claiming his throne, had brought back Christmas festivities with him. Yet Crowley had known to find him in an unremarkable village in the South Downs, where salt tanged the air.

Demon and angel made their way through the trees with the procession. Everyone had consumed quite a lot of cider by now, and the procession was increasingly hilarious, the light snow churned to mud by stomping feet. The two of them went unnoticed in the general merriness and singing. They were not the only men with arms clutched around each other's shoulders out of boisterousness or manly affection. Nothing to draw attention to them walking close together.

Aziraphale relaxed and leaned into Crowley's embrace a little rather than pushing away.

He could hear Crowley's startled reaction, a hiss of hitched breath. And feel it, too, the thin body held slightly more stiffly beside him, the fingers digging more tightly into his shoulder as if afraid he would pull away after all. Aziraphale wanted to tell him it was all right, there was nothing about two beings who were apparently tipsy and apparently men in an orchard on Twelfth Night that would draw the attention of Heaven or Hell. Perhaps Aziraphale was actually a little tipsy, because he put an arm around Crowley's waist, as if to support a drunk friend.

He cast a sidelong look at the serpent. Crowley was dressed in a warm fur-lined cloak that blurred the lines of his slim figure. Long, fashionable curls spilled out of the hood. He looked androgynous and lovely, a dark spirit-like thing in all this colour and noise.

"Want some help blessing these orchards?" Crowley's voice was elaborately casual. "I still owe you for those demonic appearances when that idiot in Germany kept summoning me by, you know. That name."

Botis, Aziraphale thought. Sometimes he desperately tried to remember if there had been a Botis in his existence from before. How could he be sure, though? They had all looked so different, back then. There would be no mobile eyebrows, no defined tendons and Adam's apple flexing and moving under the skin of the pillar of his neck, the way the corners of the long mouth tucked down or up, the flashing dimples, the expressive arms, the lisp and hiss of his voice. As if Crowley made up for hiding his eyes by turning his entire body into a means of expression. None of the things that added up in Aziraphale's head to Crowley had existed back then. A different name, a different being. So why did I already love him on the Wall? Why did he so simply and naturally love me?