Just Another Autumn

He’d gone six millennia circling around the angel, barely ever touching, and that had been fine.

Well, mostly fine. Probably not at all fine, but at any rate, it wasn’t that the desire hadn’t been there, but…well, he hadn’t really let himself feel it. But then Aziraphale had taken his hand on the bus from Tadfield to London, all exhaustion and relief and new-growing terror over what their respective sides might do next, and even though he knew it had just been the desire to hold on to a friend when everything else had slid away and come undone, something had awoken and refused to go back to sleep. The something ranged from a persistently mewing kitten to a starved, roaring lion—he’d tried for a snake metaphor, because that seemed more fitting for him, but frankly, snakes were a good bit easier to manage than whatever this was. Whatever this was needed near-constant supervision.