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Being lucky enough to see the burning sun rising over the field.
Immense. Calm and humbling.
Aziraphale counted his blessings every day since he moved here. The landscape all around, the busy sounds of the wakening birds until far in the morning. His own rhythm, his muscles aching from real work. Everything falling into place.
He quit a busy life in the city to plant his roots where all the quiet goes.
And heaven knew he needed it.
Empty time, to reconnect with his own thoughts and long forgotten body. To remember he was something else than a pleasing, dancing puppet for Gabriel to use. Remember that when pushed the right way, he could accomplish something tangible too.
****
Leaving had been rough. There had been words he’d rather forget and an anger he’d never experienced before.
He tried to stay, to save it all, but it was too late, he felt all constricted in his clothes and his little, so little life. He wanted to escape, spread his wings. He wanted to be able to see the world going beyond a concrete wall and find purpose in something other than getting by. So he left.
Absolutely everything.
The move itself had been part luck and part courage really, as his aunt left him the farm at the exact moment he felt just a tiny bit bolder - finally able to tell Gabriel where to shove it.
He packed his bags full of comforting clothes, all the ones Gabriel was ashamed of. His silk pyjamas, a memory of when he could buy himself nice things. And the only thing he still liked to feel on his skin.
He made a quick stop by the kitchen, grabbed his favourite tea from the cupboard and went on his way.
****
“Farm” was a big word for the chaotic little cottage he ended up with. His childhood memories didn't quite transfer to what he saw in front of him. The door creaked as he entered and the air was about 80 percent dust. There was a scent to it also, nested into the ageing furniture’s wood. But it didn't matter, for that scent was the smell of liberty.
Discovering the bedroom, he felt at peace. Looking through the window, he saw the horizon made of waving trees. Like a gentle fence keeping his old life away.
Protected.
****
In his first weeks here, he cleaned everything from floor to ceiling and back again. Making each little corner his own. During those weeks he didn't talk to any other human being. The noises at night made him mad at first. All the crickets and the frogs and the wind and the ramblings of so much nature.
One inebriated evening he swore he could hear the worms rummaging the earth.
That earth. Acres of it.
Because if the cottage itself was a tiny wooden disaster, the land was the most magnificent thing he's ever seen.
It started at the edge of the house, after the lovely patio, with soil brown and fine like coffee grounds. After a few meters, the land was spreading in curves, a few soft hills over hundred of meters covered with grass here and there.
When the light was hitting just right, the earth was turning copper, its shine bleeding into the sky like it didn’t have limits anymore.
From afar, one could see the colours of flowers before being able to see their shapes. The end of the field was dark with majestic trees, even during the day.
Magnificent.
****
Aziraphale spent days staring at the land before mustering the courage to step a foot on it.
It was sacred in a way. He couldn’t explain it, but he knew it in his bones. He had to respect it, whatever that meant.
There was also the pressure of getting started with it, learning to grow something on it, using it to its full potential. He had read a lot about it already. But being faced with the size of that land, he felt he would never be able to properly tame it.
He stood for days on end, both feet planted on the patio, shifting more weight over his toes as if wanting to tumble forward into the earth. Making plans, feeling the warm air swirling around his shoulders.
And it felt right, to simply contemplate.
****
Eventually, he made his first step onto it. The soft give under his feet made him feel like he was exactly where he was supposed to be. He felt small but more present than ever.
That day the wind got incredibly warm and he felt carried in all the right directions.
****
The months and then a year went by and he tamed the field. Parts of it at least. Everytime he planted something new, it was as if the land itself was whispering to him what kind of seeds would be perfect. How much water. How much ploughing. Just a bit more.
When one day Aziraphale came home with a tractor and took it for a spin, a sudden crack opened in front of it, making Aziraphale tumble down with a thud.
Somehow the landing hadn’t been painful at all. When he patted his clothes free from soil, his fingers felt a pleasant, faint electrical buzz at the dusty contact.
He walked back to the house and the ground was harder, making his walk easier.
The tractor went back to the shop the next day. He ended up getting a few goats to help him instead.
****
The more he worked the land the more he felt alone while in the house. As if only outside had the comfort of a home.
Sometimes he felt the most deranged urge to undress and lie bare on the field as the sun rose. To roll himself in soil like a primal being, extending his arms, hugging the earth with all of him.
He did nothing of the sort. He never even once dared to approach the earth with bare feet.
****.
Until one morning, a morning like all others, sitting outside for breakfast and laying his eyes on perfect dewy earth. It was all glistening in the first rays of warmth.
And today Aziraphale was perhaps a bit more tired than usual, perhaps he wanted more than his heavenly little farm life - the unilateral conversations one could have with a goat didn’t get him very far in terms of belonging.
After refraining for so long from getting close to it, he let the beauty of the land tempt him. Abandoning his tea on the patio table, before even changing into his labour clothes, he closed the gap between him and the field with a few uncertain, bare steps.
And there he let himself fall, ploughing his knees, silk-clad, into the earth.
His legs buried deeper into the soil than it should have been possible. It accepted him.
He dreamt about it last night. A big serpent made of earth and taking him into his coils. Crowley, it was called in his dream, a designation for an entity he couldn’t grasp with his mind, but oh could he try with his hands, strong from those years of work.
And as he thought of it, he planted those hands fiercely in the soil, and as it slid between his fingers, delicately pressing onto his palms, he felt a thrill he could only remember as lust. The hair on his back vibrated as he watched a tiny cluster of grass do the same. His cock rubbing in the faintest twitch against his inner thigh.
Frightened, he retreated, stood again. And as his feet were caressed by the softest of movement under him, he let out a whimper between pleasure and pain.
A shower.
He needed a shower.
****
The next few days, he spent hours wondering what happened out there. Had the solitude of remote life finally gotten to him? Was he vaguely sauntering down into madman territory?
Or was it just, simply, real?
He felt a pull to the earth more than he remembered ever being attracted to Gabriel. It was a slightly different kind of want. But nonetheless terribly carnal. He wanted control and to be reduced to dust at the same time, he wanted to scream and be silenced.
He wanted to taste it, feel the slide of clay like ice cream on his lips. Get on all fours and let his face imprint its mark on the ground.
He was going through the motions of his daily activities, but every few hours the filter of a daydream was playing in front of his eyes. A creamy hand caressing his ribs, making him bloom in a shiver, breathless.
As he was cooking, he found himself all flushed, trying to chase away images of coppery hills getting sculpted anew by the wind. Of fresh petals barely stirring the ground. Of a small river making its serpentine way between two mounds. A human form being shaped against him in the mud pressing against his length. His mouth watering. He wanted to lick.
****
In the evening, a few frogs started their mating chants, unaware of the torments of Aziraphale, standing at his window. Looking right through the dark he saw nothing, only the seductive smell of fresh rain on earth was making itself known.
When suddenly, he felt his tea cup shaking in his hands, warm water spilling on his fingers. The carpet under him started to shake as well and even if he never experienced one before, he knew, earthquake.
He ran outside in a frenzy and away from the house. Disoriented, his chest heaving and eyes searching for safety. He was on the patio, his feet a stampede at the edge of the field.
Here, looking out to the land, a few meters only lit by the dim lights of the house and a few rays of moon, he saw it.
A perfect slit in the earth, as long and large as his own body, just before him. His heart still beating impossibly hard, he approached, hypnotised.
His feet sank slowly into the wet soil. It was as soft as clay, slippery and velvety between his toes, spreading them delicately open. His whole skin came alive.
A few steps more, and he descended slowly onto his knees, as afraid as he was excited to feel the wanting again. The fear of the earthquake already replaced by a sense of certainty.
He bent forward and walked his hands in front of him, palming his way forward like a hunting panther. Unhurriedly lying down into the open slit, a perfect sheath made for him. Here, he rolled on his back, his breathing calmed down as the ground seemed to heave in rhythm with his chest.
Over his half open shirt, pebbles were running down his torso, grazing at his nipples, adding some weight holding him down here and there, just like that. The perfect pressure of it, making him shiver from desire in the humid nocturnal air.
As soon as he thought about the cold, the ground started to warm against his skin. He arched his back against it, his thighs flexing and carving, his body sinking more and more into the gaping soil. Every curve of earth bundling up his human form.
Drops of warm rain started to fall on his face, washing away the few tears of surrender gathering on his cheeks, and mixing them to the earth. The sound of the water also soothing his sorrows.
His survival instincts should have told him this was dangerous, slippery enough that he could risk burying himself alive if he wasn't careful. That it was probably already too late.
But his whole being was yelling through his heart and aching throat to get deeper in the mud, to slither under it. Through every giant move of soil against him, every push around his hips, he had no doubt anymore. Whatever it was, it wanted, and it wasn’t innocent. Laying out Aziraphale on his back without mercy, making him adrift in intense pleasure. And Aziraphale was happily, entirely lost to it. He exhaled in a groan he never heard himself make before.
Animal.
His silky night clothes, now all glued to his skin with warm rain, started to slide off his body. He couldn't tell if he was doing it or if the field itself was moving his limbs around. Holding his arms up as rolls of soil massaged him up to his neck. A shiver went down his spine and directly to his already hard cock. Drops of precome joining tears and rain.
He gasped as a thick coil of dark clay rolled around his hips, holding him down while his now naked legs were obscenely parted. His trousers buried down in an instant.
The slide of clay between his legs made him bite into his own arm, his whimper muffled in his flesh.
There, he felt the wet earth coming alive, sneaking up his boxers and curling around his cock, slowly pressing it down against his belly. He was powerless in the best of ways. Offered to that force of nature he dared call his.
The earth became warmer, it trembled with all its might. The pressure along Aziraphale’s cock moved from root to tip, and then twirling back to the base at a punishing rhythm until the fabric broke. More vibrant soil gathered itself on him, sliding on every inch of his skin. Heavy. Hot and liquid.
He had never been touched like that, never so completely.
A coil of clay moved like a python around his throat, he gasped and soon surrendered to it, dipping his fingers tight everywhere he could find purchase. Held down on his back, his legs parted and bent, his feet now immobilised, planted like solid roots. His head jerked back, his cock jutting through the mud, swollen and desperate.
He started to snap his hips up into the waves of wet soil, and the flow of it slid all down his crease, a delicious caress at the surface of his rim. He bit his lower lip in a long desperate moan. The want so powerful he felt about to explode.
And as if the whole earth danced with his pleasure, he found himself being turned around, now mounting a body made of clay. The shape of thighs and pert buttocks presenting in front of him, the silhouette of back muscles twisting in pleasure. His dripping cock head just pressing at a tightly carved entrance. A sculpted hand grabbing his hip, coaxing him to press his cock inside, to make space.
To fuck without sense.
He buried his cock into the offered hole in one push. It was so tight and burning wet. He pumped himself slow and hard. Rolling his hips on all fours. Vulnerable in the night but exulting in all his power. The rain now pouring warm all over his back, pushing him down to go deeper.
His cries of pleasure melted into the sound of rain pouring. The clay-made body in front of him started to clench around his cock. He could hear it come undone in a low growl, erupting like lava in the darkness. His nails clawed at the earth, feeling the earthquake shivering all around him.
His knees sank further in the mud, his hands grabbing slick shoulders, molding them under his fingers. He pushed his thighs apart, digging his way further between the sculpted legs.
His cock felt thicker with each pump, his heavy balls slapping against the wet clay. He felt his pleasure grab through his spine, and with a few last punishing thrusts, he came crying, long and hard, pulsing hot white ropes in that tight heat.
His howl doubled by another, deeper one. The earth under him melting, becoming the softest of mattresses to lie down.
He heard a lightning bolt from afar.
The rain stopped.
****
A little bird comes pecking at his knuckles. Opening his eyes, naked to the world and face half buried in a patch of grass. He doesn’t know if he ever slept so well. His whole body cast into soft earth.
Complete, endless safety.
Slowly he frees himself, and sits, the velvet soil, now dry, was cascading down his skin. Contemplating the morning sun rising like he did hundreds of times.
But this one is different.
Today, it’s on his own skin that the sun rises, his own valleys and highlands.
And for the first time he understands,
what it means to be the land.
To nurture and carry. To feel love for humans walking the earth.
Slowly he brings his forehead to the ground, digs the tip of his fingers softly into it, brushes it with his lips as he whispers : “thank you”.