#feeds my dark humor XDD

[sheep-turtles-and-pizza]

You can always count on your fam to cheer you up uwu

[dialux]

they say we’re out of control and some say we’re sinners

First Good Omens fic in... fifteen years? I’m a bit late to the party XDD

Title comes from "Fire on fire," by Sam Smith. Poem from the beginning can be found here. Warnings for mentions of discorporation, suicidal tendencies, depression, murder, etc. Funnily enough, I think this might be one of very few fics I've written without familial angst! 

...

Chapter One: outstretched dirty hands just like a child

a comfort- we are not the beginning, or the end; and what we are building has always been built

...

“I AM HAVING A MOMENT HERE,” snarls Crowley, and Aziraphale sees the wildness in his golden snake-eyes, and his heart- his incorporeal, terrified, all-too-human heart- twangs.

Oh, he thinks.

...

He is fairly young for an angel. Eden is his first proper assignment; he’d formed a few things before that, most notably a frog in South America with clear skin and visible kidneys [1]. His Head Office had been impressed enough with that to give him a post on earth.

When he first meets Crawly, he feels... something.

He’s the first non-human person he sees after Gabriel gives him the sword, and Crawly’s funny, in a biting manner that makes Aziraphale want to say a little too much. He’s smart, too, and questioning, and though Aziraphale leaves the conversation uncomfortable and bitter along his tongue, he feels conversely more comfortable in his own skin. Aziraphale doesn’t need to be anything other than what he is, because he’s an angel and Crawly’s a demon and those lines are inextricable, no matter what else changes in the universe.

He spreads his wing over Crawly’s head, and names it kindness.

(There is a reason, Aziraphale thinks later- almost too late- that honesty is not one of the seven heavenly virtues.)

...

Honesty has never been one of his strengths.

Perhaps that’s where Aziraphale and Crawly fit: the lies he tells his Head Office, the lies Crawly tells his, and all the lies both of them tell themselves.

...

So many times after that, Aziraphale meets him. Once he’s finished with the debacle of Noah and his Ark, he actually stopped measuring time in human-years and start measuring it in time-since-meeting-Crawly. It’s easier, in it’s own way, because it’s with him that Aziraphale’s world brightens, hones, sharp-edged and shining like sunlight off a sword of Damascus steel [2]. He’d drift along for the years between and live, really live, for those moments when Crawly drifts up to him with his sweet, venomous humor and sliding, slitted eyes.

Aziraphale doesn’t seek him out.

That’s important to state: Aziraphale doesn’t seek him out.

It’s not in his job description. But what is in his job description is the need to fend off evil, and so he follows the whispers of darkness and malice and a hundred other tiny, measured steps towards the Other Side until he finds Crawly. He stops him, sometimes, and finds himself stopped at others, and slowly he learns to let the sour taste of defeat drift away under the taste of wine drunk with another immortal being by his side.

...

Time passes. Six thousand years is a long time.

Aziraphale fights him. He does, he does, but Crawly is wily and funny and more often than not he finds himself throwing words at him instead of steel, and even more dangerously, giving him a hand up when the battle is done and finished.

...

Alexandria burns, and he- oh, how Aziraphale blazes as well.

He may have learned to appreciate the taste of defeat, but this? There is nothing in this loss but loss, empty dust and smoke and the vacuum of space. His wings unfurl, diamond white, and his wrath lifts him to the skies, and though he has no sword the flash of War’s red hair flickers around the corners of his vision. He flies, hunting after the scent of evil and loam [3] that is Crawly. He flies, so furious that he cannot breathe for his rage.

He’s an angel, after all. He need not breathe.

And- there. There. Damp earth and smoke and hellfire. He throws himself forwards and land, and flame sings out around him. Crawly doesn’t move from his position on the ground- he’s a dark shadow, head tilted up to meet Azirphale’s gaze, unflinching.

“Demon,” he hisses.

“Aziraphale,” he says evenly, and oh, that’s bloody unfair. The way he looks, eyes like black coals, face sharpened to a knife’s edge. “War.”

War slides out from behind his back, red hair fanning out. “Crawly,” she murmurs, tongue sliding around the syllables like a caress. “It has been a long time.”

“Enjoying Rome?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe.”

“Enough,” says Aziraphale, so low it makes the earth shudder. He forces himself to calm enough that he can speak without destroying the world. “You burned the library.”

“I did not.”

“You lie,” he snarls.

Crawly lifts an eyebrow. “Did I pour pitch over the stone and strike the tinder? No, Aziraphale, I did not.”

“You made Caesar do it!”

“The fire was supposed to stay in the upper half of the city,” he says evenly. “It spread when there were riots.”

His fingers curl inwards, turn into claws. “All those lives,” says Aziraphale, a scream caught in his chest. “How dare you?”

“Are you deaf or stupid?” asks Crawly, starting to sound annoyed. “What did I literally just say? I’m not responsible for it!”

“Do you know how many books were in that library?”

Something flashes across Crawly’s face, some hard, flinty look. “And now we come to it,” he says, voice gone dark. He steps towards Aziraphale- just one step.

(Later, decades later, Aziraphale reflects on the courage it must have taken him to do that; he’s an angel in full form, golden-winged and dripping molten light onto the sand, and Crowley’s still in his human skin. Discorporation- apart from all the paperwork- is truly painful. But right then all Aziraphale knows is anger and grief and all the grief feeding the anger into something too large to be contained by his skin.)

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“You don’t care about the people, angel,” he says coldly. “You care about the books that burned. You tell me which one’s worse- setting the fire that burned the Library, or not caring about the people who died along the way for it?”

Electricity flips through Aziraphale’s veins, fueled by the outrage. “So you admit it,” he says.

“No,” says Crawly deliberately slowly. “I just want you to know how fucking stupid you’re being.”

War cackles aloud.

The fragments of Aziraphale’s patience snap.

He lunges forwards, glittering and golden, and Crawly’s wings snap out, blacker and larger than his. Sand whirls up around Aziraphale, buffets him backward. It stops him for just long enough that Crawly can tense his knees, and then Aziraphale’s twisting and fighting and rolling in both sand and air, desperate for some upper hand. He is terrified. He is furious. He is-

Crawly’s hands catch on his wings and yank.

Everything goes still.

It isn’t pain. Just the threat of it. The promise.

Aziraphale gasps, but even that stutters in his chest because too much movement and the feathers will be gone, and while he can survive discorporation he isn’t sure at all about the wings. So he just tips his head back and looks at Crawly, whose red hair shines out, bright and cutting. His face is narrow and cold and Aziraphale can see the sun behind him, throwing all of him into shadow, silhouetting him like an angel’s halo.

“Finish it,” whispers War. “Finish it, demon.”

Aziraphale thinks- he will. He looks at Crawly, and he’s certain that he will. He must, surely he must. His eyes don’t move, and he looks terrifying, golden and shadowed, beautiful and horrifying. Aziraphale chokes. He thinks- wildly- of begging, but there are no words inside of him. Only silence, vast and unending, and anger being banked into an ocean too cold to maintain its flames.

He looks up, into Crawly’s eyes. He can feel the strain in his wings. He does not dare to move. His face is all he can see: the narrow slide of his jaw, the curl of one lock of hair. The golden, gleaming slant of his eyes. And then something ripples across his face- not kindness, not softness, and yet an emotion wholly encompassing both.

The moment passes.

Crawly lets go, fingers lifting one by one, and backs away swiftly. He massages one hand with the other, as if wondering at the ache, even as Aziraphale stumbles to his feet. He sees the way Crawly cuts his gaze towards War.

“Wrath’s not really my speed,” he drawls, voice calmer than it has any right to be. “Pride, gluttony- sloth! Sloth’s done some real wonders for humanity, and by wonders I mean horrors. I’m sure you understand.”

Mercy, thinks Aziraphale, wondering. From a demon’s hands.

War’s eyes are narrowed. She looks furious- but then, when doesn’t she? Though Aziraphale supposes that he ought to find her twitching fingers slightly worrisome.

Crawly keeps nattering on. “I’ll sleep one of these centuries. You know, that might be the best vacation ever. Quietly hide out in a cave... let the darkness take me for a good hundred years... not have to deal with meddling angels or annoying horsepeople...”

“I’m not a horseperson,” snarls War, who’s technically just that. “And you could have started Armageddon here, you know that? Right here. Right now.”

“What, without the Antichrist?” Crawly asks incredulously. “D’you know how many forms I’d have to fill for even thinking about it?” His voice slips into a slightly higher register. “Yes, Your Disgrace, I don’t think we need your son to cause the end of the world- no, all it takes is, you know, ripping out an angel’s wings. We can start the end of the world right away, if you’d be okay with not playing a leading role!” He inhales, and seems to lengthen with that breath a good foot. Maybe two. “Got to say, War, you need to work on your tempting. Not too persuasive there.”

“Crawly,” Aziraphale scrapes out, and see his whole body not-flinch, instead doing a peculiar wiggle that leaves his shoulders almost above his ears. Aziraphale walks forwards, feet dragging against the sand, and forces himself not to notice the way he goes so still Aziraphale could likely push him over with a finger. Slowly, wincing through the ache, he lifts a hand and places it on his shoulder. “Let her go.”

He spins to look, jumpy and angry, like a piece of metal that’s sparking on one end with heat. “I’m not the one keeping her here,” he says sharply.

“Oh,” says Aziraphale.

“Yes, oh,” says Crawly, mockingly high.

Aziraphale brought her here. He is keeping her here, with the bloodlust that sings beneath his skin and deep into his muscle. War circles both of them still- the promise of it lessened but still present. He closes his eyes and breathes.

Smoke and char. Dust. Crawly, as always, like flame and the scorched earth that follows. The blood and screams of War. He opens his eyes and there is little peace in Aziraphale’s heart, but the fury has abated. He hasn’t forgiven anyone of anything; he is too tired, too marveling, to do that. Then he opens his eyes and War is gone, as if she had never been there.

“Good riddance,” says Crawly, lips twisting in distaste. “Never did like her much. Finish it, demon. As if that’s all I am.”

“Indeed,” says Aziraphale faintly. “You’re... far more interesting than that.”

“I’d bloody well hope so.” He hesitates. His fingers twitch, but remain at his sides. “You need some help? You don’t look- too good.”

Aziraphale sways, but maintains his balance, which he decides is good enough. Has to be good enough. “Scrapes and bruises,” he says, waving a hand. “I’ll be fine.”

Crawly leaves, then, and Aziraphale forces himself to keep walking. One step in front of another. Miracles keeping him awake, though he doesn’t use one to ensure he doesn’t topple over. The sun sears his eyes. But all he sees through the brightness is Crawly: golden, dark, compassion in his gaze and that one moment when all words had failed Aziraphale and he’d lain there, helpless. That one moment when Aziraphale ought to have been more terrified than ever before in all his existence, and all he’d felt was a queer, silently overwhelming sensation instead. That one moment he’d trusted Crawly, despite the glitter of War in his hair.

...

Dangerous. Because Aziraphale is young, and he is good, and Crawly is not. He is a demon. Aziraphale is an angel. There are inextricable lines there, and Aziraphale will not let what he is be changed by anyone, for anything. He is Aziraphale the Angel, who once bore a flaming sword and guarded the Garden of Eden. Brightness sings in him in the place of his blood.

And yet-

...

(Aziraphale meets Crawly once after that, and Crawly doesn’t look at him, just tosses a bag in his vague direction and flees. Aziraphale opens it that night and see an array of things: oil, tweezers, a curved tool that is likely to help with itchy feathers. Warmth blooms in his chest. He doesn’t thank Crawly, the next time they meet, and Crawly doesn’t mention it, but never after is War invoked between the two of them.)

...

There was a druid in Gaul with eyes the color of amber, like embers on the verge of flames. Aziraphale’d lived with him for a short time and he’d loved him, in his way [4], at least until he woke up to sunlight slanting over the man’s face, throwing it into sharp-edged shadows.

Cro, Aziraphale sighs, a mush-mouthed syllable, before his brain catches up to his mouth and terror and shame swirl up his guts like hot lava.

It’s not the longest he’s ever avoided Crawly, those years after meeting that druid, but they are the ones in which Aziraphale’s done his utmost to keep him at bay; any rumor of evil or petty crime or cruelty and he runs in the opposite direction. It means Aziraphale’s effectively terrible at his job. It also means that he travels the world for a good eighty years- he sees, in that time: Pataliputra, Xi’an, Asahi, Deen Maar, Napata. He meets more people; eats different foods; does exciting things. The travel itself is exhausting but-

Good.

It’s drowning, yes, but in a good way. And Aziraphale is, if nothing else, the earth’s oldest definer of good.

It’s not the longest he’s avoided Crawly, perhaps, but it is the most successful he’s ever been in avoiding even thinking about him. It’s not until he’s forced back by a flustered angel, constantly muttering on the flight from Australia to some dusty alley in Jerusalem about how there’s an urgent matter and policy from on high and oh, good Lord, you’ve missed far too much-

He’s miracled into the city and given three hours to not only find different clothes, learn a new language, and understand what that decision is that the angel hadn’t been able to shut up about, all the while refusing to describe it in anything less than the vaguest of terms- but also to get his dusty, mind-numbed body to that hill. Which isn’t all that close to the city. By the time he gets there, he’s lost all patience and has had tired resignation poured into his veins instead.

Then Aziraphale turns and his eyes meets his, and something snaps deep in Aziraphale’s chest like a little twig. Sun and sand and golden eyes, brighter than any metal in his sword or fire running across it [5]. You rather like him, thinks Aziraphale, despite the sharpness of his face and the tartness of his tongue and the decades he’s spent not thinking about this exact- issue [6].

No, he thinks, and he’s just tired enough to feel the resignation, though he certainly don’t have the energy to be truthful on the actual issue. This is. A little more... complex.

Crawly’s eyes remind Aziraphale of the sun, of honey, of buttery flowers blossoming in Eden. Of Gabriel’s light, the parts that aren’t too bright to be called colorful, but he knows that if he ever say that part aloud Crawly will probably self-combust from the rage. His face is like a hatchet, chin sharp and cheeks hollowed, but it’s a good look on him. His gait is still snake-like (it becomes worse when men’s fashion starts on jeans- they suit him, the two-faced bastard, and he knows it), and when he sits he sprawls like he’s forgotten quite how his joints are supposed to bend.

None of it should be even vaguely appealing.

All of it is.

And Aziraphale is... lonely. He has loved humans, he has loved multiple humans; he has lain with them and watched them bear children and loved those as well, he has buried them and mourned them and once, memorably, watched them be born. But there is no one else in all the universe that has watched humanity as Aziraphale has, and there is no one else that has existed through the dark times and the bright quite like Aziraphale and Crawly. Crowley. Whatever. His name changes little of what he is- sly, and wily, and brilliant like a too-bright sunrise.

He inhales, heat and blood heavy in the air, to speak. To offer- something. Lunch, maybe, or wine, or just quiet company under the cloudy sky. But when Aziraphale turns, he’s gone. There is nothing there, just the smell of smoke and damp earth that’s swiftly carried away by the wind.

When next Aziraphale meets Crowley- a restaurant in Rome- Aziraphale goes up to him.

It is not quite as frightening as he’d feared it to be, though he’s just as stupidly awkward about it all.

...

Not that too much changes after that. Aziraphale fights him, sometimes, and follow him, others, and if he lets himself smile a little too wide in the hours that Aziraphale’s next to him, who would blame him? Demons don’t smile, everyone knows that. They just bare their teeth. Aziraphale’s trying to frighten him off in a language he’ll understand. He’s smart about it all.

Who would question that?

...

New Year’s, about sixty years following their meeting in Wessex. Aziraphale’s outside and laying on a straw roof, so cold he’d probably be dead if he were human. But he’s miracled a clear sky for himself instead of the planned storm and the stars are liquid-bright and shining above him. There’s good wine in Aziraphale’s flask, probably frozen solid. He has a good life, of a sort, right then- he’s a monk, and though he isn’t made for the ascetic life, there’s something refreshing in the novelty of denial anyhow.

“Aziraphale,” says a voice that he knows far too well.

He turns and looks. There’s no human-figure around, but a glowing scarlet aura looped around a bundle of straw that shines like wildfire. Aziraphale looks closer and sees a shadowy little snake, striped black and gold.

“Crowley,” he says, puzzled. “What are you doing here?”

“No greeting?” he asks, drawing tighter on himself. “Really?”

Aziraphale frowns. There’s something very strange in the way that Crowley’s coiled in on himself. “Are you alright?”

“Yes,” hisses Crowley. “I just don’t know why I’m- here.”

“Well,” says Aziraphale. “You don’t look fine.”

“I am fine,” says Crowley, and he rises up, snake-neck trembling, to glare at Aziraphale with eyes that are too familiar. There’s also a dripping gash down his entire body, black matter slowly staining and spreading over his scales.

Aziraphale cries out and reaches for it before stilling and looking at him, hands fluttering in the air like distressed birds. “You don’t look fine,” he says. “Crowley, you look like you’re going to be discorporated!”

“Yes, yes, it’s worse than it looks. I’m healing.”

“You don’t look it!”

“Which is why it’s worse than it looks,” he says impatiently. “Anyways. I didn’t come here to worry you.”

“I thought you said you didn’t know why you were here.”

“I- lied.”

“Crowley-”

“We meet up every century,” says Crowley. “And I brought the wine last time. It’s your turn. Did you think I’d forget?” Then, without letting Aziraphale so much as breathe, “Please tell me that isn’t homemade. These monks are the kind to let mushrooms grow on milk and bottle the fumes for money. I’m not drinking that.”

“No, no, it’s from Rome.” From the Great Fire, which had taken quite a few miracles to achieve. Aziraphale’s been saving it for something good. Which he finds is perfect for this: a cold winter night, Crowley beside him, and love like wings curling around his shoulders. “You’ll like it.”

Crowley lets his snakes’ tongue flick into the wine. “Mmm,” he says. Something loosens in his body, at least enough for him to rest, warm and rough, against Aziraphale’s side. “Really good stuff, that. Better than anything they have down there.”

His tail flickers, turning into an arrow that echoes a pitchfork.

“Is that where you’ve been?” asks Aziraphale, curious though he knows he shouldn’t be. “Down... there?”

“Satan’s under the impression we don’t have enough drama in our lives,” says Crowley flatly. Aziraphale takes a drink of the wine, miracles it warm. Feels it slide down your throat. The faint aftertaste of hellfire sings out, vivid, and he doesn’t mind it one bit. “He wants to shake up everything. Move demons around. We’re all getting too comfortable, apparently, and nobody’s job’s safe.”

Aziraphale stretches out, limbs soft and easy. “We get promotions up there,” he says.

“Too orderly for us,” says Crowley. “Or, how do you lot put it? Too fucking diligent, I suppose.”

“I always assumed you’d have to kill anyone above you to get a promotion down there,” says Aziraphale.

Crowley laughs, stunned into sound. “You’re not- entirely- wrong.” He doesn’t gasp it, not exactly, but there’s a hitch to his breathing that makes the hairs on the back of Aziraphale’s neck stand up.

“Don’t turn discorporeal on me now,” says Aziraphale, and his voice is harsher than he’s ever heard it before. “And- why you?”

Crowley’s head slips to the side, annoyed. “Morons think I want to return to Hell. Become an- archdemon, or whatever.”

Aziraphale’d felt a knot in his chest at Jesus’ crucifixion, Crowley dark and tall next to him, and he feels it again now- needles sliding under his skin, far colder than the snow. Aziraphale is an angel and Crowley is a demon, and those lines are inextricable. For all that Aziraphale will feel grief, he won’t stop Crowley from leaving. Not if it’s his choice. Aziraphale is an angel, and he cannot forget that, and yet-

“And do you? Want to return?”

Crowley inhales loudly, exhales loudly. He blinks one large golden eye. He says, voice labored, “The wine down there’s absolute shit. Better up here. And- I rather like the quiet. The space. The. You know. Lack of shit.”

“Well, then,” says Aziraphale. Some part of him feels wobbly, like a newborn colt, but the rest of him feels weirdly calm. “Perhaps I can be of assistance?”

“What... do you mean?”

“Unholy weapon did that to you, yes?”

“A sword forged in hellfire,” agrees Crowley. His tongue flicks out and takes a drop of wine, before he arches up to rest on Aziraphale’s thigh.

Aziraphale reaches out, slowly enough for him to pull away if he wants. Runs his fingers over the golden ribbon of Crowley’s scales. Touches the blackened edge that’s cut open, leaking matter that would be blood in a human. It will take a miracle that he’s certain anyone up above would disapprove of, but Crowley is Crowley, and Aziraphale is an angel with magic dripping from his fingers, and that is all that matters right now.

“I can heal you,” says Aziraphale softly.

Crowley looks up, moving too sluggishly. Worry sparks in Aziraphale’s throat, but he tamps it down. Stares at him instead. Waits.

“Very well then,” he says, after a long pause, voice unsteady. Aziraphale hesitates still- unsure of where to touch- and Crowley’s tail twitches viciously. “Get on with it, angel.”

“Patience,” murmurs Aziraphale, and trails his fingers over the scales.

Gold sparks over it and for the briefest of heartbeats both of them are awash in light as bright as the sun at high noon. Then it fades, and all that remains is a long streak of reddish white on scales that had once been black as pitch.

“That does feel better,” says Crowley, flexing. “I wonder...”

He shifts into human form and something creaks ominously. Aziraphale opens his mouth to warn him; Crowley swipes the flask out of his hand.

“Crowley,” says Aziraphale slowly, rolling the syllables around his mouth like he’s brazing it in honey. “Do you... know who did this to you?”

He jerks, reflexively, and gets “Balth-” out of his mouth before there’s another crack. There’s only just enough time for Aziraphale to get his wings out and launch himself into the air before the roof caves in. And then he looks down, hovering, and Crowley’s a disheveled, straw-laden mess, clutching the wine-flask upside down and looking absolutely distraught.

Aziraphale isn’t actually certain what’s going to come out of his mouth, then- it’s all a mess inside of him, anger and fear and worry like thick molasses down his throat [7]. But what erupts is laughter, so loud he almost instinctively look over his shoulder, and now his stomach’s aching from it, and his lungs are breathless, and it has been far, far too long since he last laughed so deep as this.

“Bugger it,” snarls Crowley. He looks up at Aziraphale, eyes flashing so gold and rich that Aziraphale feels it expand inside of him like a blooming flower. “Bugger you, too, you- you angel-”

“I am an angel, Crowley,” says Aziraphale, and slides down to catch his hand and pull him up, still gasping a little. “That’s what I am. How else did you think I healed you?”

Crowley pulls away sharply, but doesn’t do anything other than brush himself off more vigorously than necessary. Aziraphale grins at him, and in the dim light of the stars he thinks he can see a curve to his lips as well. Quietly, Aziraphale miracles himself the spilled wine back into the flask and pours it into a small cup. Crowley startles when Aziraphale hands it to him.

“What-”

“To the seventh century,” says Aziraphale, holding the flask aloft. “May we make our people proud.”

Something hoods over Crowley’s eyes, dark and cold, but he does lift the cup. “To us,” he says, and his voice rings with a savage echo. “And another five thousand years here, and nowhere else.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Aziraphale says, and nudges him, and watches with faint satisfaction as the rage in Crowley’s face is replaced with his customary sardonic glare.

Long past when the sun ought to rise, it remains dark. Aziraphale suspects a miracle from Crowley’s side; but he doesn’t say anything about it. Just passes the flask to Crowley and accepts it back from him, barely speaking, and welcomes another century to the earth.

...

Demons cannot love. Is it not the very antithesis of their being, to love when all of what they are made is hate and greed and darkness? And Aziraphale- Aziraphale is a being of love, created by it and for it, and so all of what he feels with Crowley must be simply that: the love of an angel for those who have walked beside him for six thousand years. Companionship. Kindness. Compassion. He doesn’t expect anything back, because how can he? Crowley is a demon, and Aziraphale is an angel; that is inextricable. And so the love lives on, silent and undimmed, a flame in his heart.

...

Aziraphale’s got enough on his hands keeping the peace in the ruins of Belgrade when a black-visaged man stalks up to him and catches his collar.

Before Aziraphale can so much as react, the man’s shifted his grip to a stronger one and dragged him further back into the shadows of the alley. He sputters, drags himself up, and the taut pressure across his shoulders eases just enough that he’s not worried about a strained muscle.

“Hey,” says Crowley, a mutter just low enough for him to hear.

Aziraphale recoils, smashing his head against the stone of the building and hissing at the new pain. “Crowley,” he hisses, rage building up through his throat. “Is that- I should’ve- what are you doing here?”

“Calm down,” he replies, voice going even lower and tenser. “And shut up.”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale warns. “Is this you?”

"Is what me?”

“The- Zemun.”

Aziraphale’d joined the People’s Crusade [8] for no reason other than that he thought it his job to keep the already-inflamed tempers of the peasants from being inflamed further. It hadn’t worked as he hoped: when he wandered off to heal a girl with weeping sores on her hands, he’d returned to see half the Crusaders pillaging Zemun and following it up with an even worse pillaging of Belgrade just across the river, all the natives having abandoned the city after hearing of how vicious the Crusaders could be.

Crowley sends Aziraphale a look over the tops of his glasses that’s clearly visible even in the dark alley. “No,” he says, and he sounds just as deliberately, infuriatingly patronizing as he had in the Egyptian desert. “I’ve been. You know. A little busy.”

“Doing what?”

“Oh. This and that. A bit of tempting, bit of wiling, bit of running from some very stupid... agents.”

“Running?” Aziraphale asks dumbly.

His teeth flash, and then Crowley snakes around Aziraphale’s shoulders, fingers loosening on his lapels but shoulders crowding Aziraphale further against the wall. “Found 'em out a few days ago. Didn’t expect to be seeing you here, though. Fancy that.”

“My side?” asks Aziraphale slowly, fearing the worst.

“Mmm. Someone’s side, at least. Have holy water, and aren’t afraid to use it.”

“I’m assuming that’s bad.”

“Saw it happen to a demon once.” Crowley shudders. “Discorporation isn’t it. It’s. Death. Final. For demons.”

“So it’s angels doing it.”

He lifts an eyebrow. “Or some very stupid demons.”

And yet, for all his bravado- Aziraphale can see the way his skin’s greyed out under the aura he’s projecting. His face had always been sharp, but never this hollow. Never this emaciated. Their bodies don’t need sleep or food like humans, but they are not tireless- using miracles can drain them. And even that shouldn’t have put this particular look on Crowley’s face, all hunted and wild.

“How’d you find out?”

Aziraphale’s suspicions are confirmed when Crowley inhales, wet and gasping, like it hurts. “I was... taking a day off. Relaxing. Next thing I know there’s two idiots in the room, taking shots at me with a bunch of daggers.” His fingers twitch. “They got my wings.”

“Crowley,” breathes Aziraphale.

“It’ll be fine. I just need. A minute.”

“I’ve got a room,” he says impulsively. “An inn, not too far from here. If you need a little more than a minute, that is.”

“That hasn’t been burned down?”

“I am an angel. Miracles are my thing.”

“Believe me,” he mutters. “I can’t forget.”

“Can you walk?”

His face spasms. “Can I walk? How’d you think I got here, crawling? Slithering, maybe, on my belly-” He looks at Aziraphale’s expression, all stricken and steadily turning furious, and something like an apology crosses his face. “Yes, I can do it.”

They stumble out of the alley, Crowley’s arm heavy around Aziraphale’s shoulders. For all his assurances, Aziraphale’s the one bearing the majority of his weight; and for all Aziraphale’s promises to himself not to care, he leans into that steady warmth. By the time they reach the inn, though, Crowley’s warmth has faded. He scarcely seems conscious. Aziraphale manages to get him up the stairs and tipped onto the bed, but he’s gone white as a sheet and cold; too cold.

He’s a snake, thinks Aziraphale, tapping his fingers against the inside of his wrist nervously. Before he turned human, he was a- snake.

So maybe Aziraphale doesn’t need to worry overmuch. Maybe Crowley isn’t as close to discorporation as he suspects he is. But the very fact that he’s lost enough control to maintain even his body temperature- that makes fear flutter around Aziraphale’s chest like a shivering plant.

Mind made up, he lean forwards and presses his fingers to his chest. Right above where his heart would beat in a human. Aziraphale doesn’t ask this time- not that he could, not that Crowley can hear- but he thinks that even if he’d been awake and forced Aziraphale away, he’d not let him. Aziraphale would return. He would place his hand above Crowley’s heart, and he’d make him better, because he is an angel, he is an angel, he is-

Well.

It scarcely matters what else Aziraphale is right now. He has magic in his fingers, and that is all that matters. He pours that down into Crowley’s chest, washing away the trembles and the paleness of his cheeks. He stops once Crowley’s muscles relax out of their rigidity, though he doesn’t lift his hand either- there’s something in the steady beat of Crowley’s heart that makes him soften, and a vicious fear underlying that that makes Aziraphale want to just... sit there. Listen. And breathe.

He tilts his head and listens with ears that don’t belong in the mortal plane. There’s the faint smell of smoke, and some screams; a few prayers that he soothes over. Nothing that Aziraphale can fix right away. No pressing duties.

Slowly, Aziraphale sinks into a chair next to the bed, hand not moving. He curves over his arm, forehead warm against his forearm, and the thud-thud-thud of Crowley’s heart drums against his fingers, unending and even and unfaltering.

...

The next morning, Crowley makes a sharp, bitten-off sound and arches, curving off the bed at an angle that no human would manage. Aziraphale flinches upright, hand aching from the strange angle he’d left it in overnight. Crowley relaxes a moment later- before Aziraphale can so much as react- but he’s shaking, and his glasses have fallen off to reveal his eyes as wholly slitted and wild with some old, ancient fear.

“This shouldn’t be happening,” Aziraphale says, barely keeping his stammering out of his voice. “Crowley, I healed you. You should be fine by now!”

“Not a physical problem, angel,” hisses Crowley, the long muscles in his legs alternately flexing and relaxing as if readying for another wave of pain.

Aziraphale considers that. “Your wings, then?”

“Know any other part of me that’s metaphysical?”

“Crowley!”

“Yes, alright, it’s my wings. I told you they’re all ripped up. Fucking Balthazar and his vendettas.”

Aziraphale stills, heat licking at his ribs like proper flame. He knows that name. He feels the old anger, but bites his tongue instead of speaking. There is a time and place for righteous anger, and this- this is not it.

“They can’t be bleeding still.”

“I- no,” says Crowley, and there’s something miserable in the angles of his face. “They stopped doing that almost immediately. But I needed them [8]. So I just...” He waves a hand, some gruesome parody of flippancy. “You know. Miracled it better.”

“Crowley,” says Aziraphale, anger washed away by the abrupt fear. “That could’ve ruined them permanently!”

“Let’s hope that didn’t happen.”

“Well- what did you think about? With your miracle?”

“That I’d like my wings normal again,” says Crowley. “I don’t know. I was slightly delirious by then. Maybe- that I’d like my feathers back? ‘m not sure.”

“Open them.”

“What?” Crowley wrenches himself to the side, whole body coiling up. “Are you insane?”

“Open them,” Aziraphale repeats flatly. “If you asked for your feathers back and they didn’t return like they should’ve, you’ll need someone to help you with that. To put them back where... they belong. I wouldn’t- you shouldn’t try to fix it on your own.”

One golden eye rolls to study Aziraphale, with far too keen a look. “An angel’s mercy,” he drawls, biting, and Aziraphale fights to keep from letting the memory of the Egyptian desert overwhelm him. The trust he’d had, running beneath rage and hurt like a river remained unfrozen even when iced over the surface. The golden cast of Crowley’s eyes and the shine of his hair. The way he’d tensed his fingers, right after he’d clutched onto Aziraphale’s feathers, like he couldn’t quite believe what he’d done.

“Better you stay on earth than any other demon,” says Aziraphale quietly. “And. I’m not cruel, Crowley, I don’t want to see you in pain!” He breathes in quickly, sharply, before continuing. “So. Open them. I’ll- fix it. Then we’ll go find those... agents. Convince them to leave you alone. Then things’ll just- go back to normal [9].”

Crowley scoffs in the back of his throat, but he rolls himself over onto his front without any further complaints. His wings burst into being, black and shining, nearly taking Aziraphale out before he ducks away. When he regains his balance and looks- really looks- he can’t quite help the shocked gasp.

“That bad, huh?”

“Worse,” Aziraphale says faintly.

Then, gritting his teeth, he drags the chair back and settles in it as comfortably as he can. They’re going to be here for a while.

...

By the end of it, Crowley’s fallen asleep. He looks even more liquid than he usually does: all puddled spine and boneless limbs. Aziraphale takes a moment to admire the way his face looks in sleep- there’s the thinnest strip of yellow running under his lashes, and a patch of skin across his nose that sags where it doesn’t while he’s awake, and the faintest shadow of a beard under his jaw [10]. Aziraphale doesn’t enjoy sleep, not really, but he thinks he might if it were as relaxing as Crowley seems to find it.

Rolling his wrists, Aziraphale slumps back into the chair. He closes his eyes and-

-a scream. A flickering candle. A feeling, cool and rapidly fading, that he hasn’t felt in too long-

A call to arms.

“Oh,” he sighs.

The strange sorrow in Aziraphale’s chest is both unwanted and unneeded. He doesn’t want to leave Crowley like this, defenseless and barely healed over. But Aziraphale is an angel, and he is on earth to do his duty. He’ll do what must be done.

Inextricable lines, thinks Aziraphale tiredly, and rises. Ineffable plans.

He lingers in the doorway for a long moment. Wonders if there’s something more to do- a note, perhaps, or some food, or maybe even an address. For when this is all over. Then a flicker of a thought crosses his mind, wicked and amusing and wonderfully vengeful, and Aziraphale walks back to Crowley and grips his wrist loosely.

“You promised me another five thousand years, dear boy,” says Aziraphale, so quietly he can’t even hear himself as he lets go and backs away, unlocks the door and slips out of his own room. “Don’t you dare break that.”

...

[1] In the late twentieth century, the fashion craze for transparent electronics left Aziraphale warmly vindicated. It also left him in possession of an award from Head Office, for “being ahead of the curve by a record six thousand years.”

[2] Aziraphale has the recipe for Damascan steel somewhere in his bookstore. He’s kept very quiet about that, because when he told Crowley he knew how to make Greek fire, Crowley hadn’t shut up about it for a good three months and it had been... very irritating.

[3] A very peculiar smell. Not of Hell, and certainly not of Heaven. It reminds Aziraphale of the way the land smells after a rainstorm kills a fire; not pleasant but not unpleasant, and wholly unique to Florida’s Everglades.

[4] Which is to say that he was about as emotionally repressed as Aziraphale on a good day, and Aziraphale held his hand as he died.

[5] And just as sharp, which is just bloody unfair.

[6] Aziraphale calls it an issue because calling it anything else would be untrue. Except for disaster, which while not untrue would make it something too dramatic, and Aziraphale hasn’t really liked the dramatic world all that much since he was first introduced to it in Dwaraka. Or truth, because that- while also not untrue- implies he has the energy to tease out lies amidst the truth, and he absolutely does not. Or even problem, because that implies something that needs to be solved, and this does not. Ever.

[7] The full name of the demon never comes out of Crowley’s mouth, but it doesn’t matter; Aziraphale knows the word Balthazar when he hears it. For the briefest of moments he’s certain that if he’d had his old sword right then, it would’ve flamed white, or perhaps even blue. Maybe hotter. So hot the stars themselves would melt before it.

[8] The story behind Crowley needing the wings went something like this: Crowley was in a room cordoned off from the roof of the cathedral of the Hagia Sophia by demonic sigils, preening his wings. It’s one of about two dozen places he has scattered around the world for his own privacy. It’s also the reason he’s certain the agents following him are demonic- only a demon could walk through the door without being discorporated (in the case of angels) or incinerated (in the case of humans). He’d quite literally jumped out of the window a few minutes later- once he realized he didn’t have the firepower to get rid of them- and only remembered his ragged wings when he didn’t have any solid ground under his feet. His mental processes right then had been something approaching “FEATHERS! NOW! NOW! FUCKING HELL I NEED FEATHERS-”  which goes some way towards explaining how terribly the re-feathering of his wings had gone- primaries in the place of tertiary feathers, flight feathers instead of pins. Pain, really, and mistakes all around.

[9] Not... exactly, though Aziraphale does live in a world of perpetual hope.