Good Omens Fic: But Thou Readst Black Where I Read White pt III

[rainjoyswriting]

But Thou Readst Black Where I Read White part III of III, a Good Omens fic, Crowley/Aziraphale bless them <3

Disclaimer: I disclaim! I own nothing and it would just be *mean* to sue. I also disclaim my own inept structuring that has made every chapter of this twice as long as the previous chapter \o/

Rating: NC-17 for that strong bloody violence that I really do want to stress is in this part.

Warnings and spoilers: Set post-series, watch that first. Right, as I said on part one, I only wrote this stupid thing to get this horrific image I had out of my head so again, this fic contains what they refer to on TV as strong bloody violence. It doesn't happen onscreen, as it were, but most of this chapter is dealing with the aftermath of it and swear to god if you don't want to deal with it that's entirely cool, I fully intend to write some (very *short*) fluff after this myself <3

Summary: 'You don't want to get Gabriel upset with you.'

Read part I here, and Part II here.



Note: This is dedicated to my solitary remaining reader, keep the faith! *Northern soul raised fist* If I don't scare you off too after this part ;)










Penemuel takes to the bookshop in a way none of the other demons and angels have. Keeping her continual leaking of ink under control under Aziraphale's pained eye she reads with a voraciousness, there's no other word for it; Aziraphale reads the way he eats, slow, savouring, but Penemuel reads with open gluttony, always wanting more. Which works out well, considering their growing problem with overcrowding. By the time the next demon turns up, she takes a small flat in Soho and walks to the shop every day, offers an extra pair of hands. Increasingly they need more hands.

Crowley doesn't know how the fuck this all happened, it just crept up on them, they just dealt with the situation in front of them until the situation grew beyond the edges of their vision, the way plants dare to get rootbound hidden in their pots, the way Aziraphale's puzzle finally completes itself, turns from all those gaps into a single solid image. They start having to keep paperwork - well, Aziraphale does, Crowley doesn't really view that as his area. New arrivals go into the basement, and while there are never more than five or six down there at the same time, new arrivals come regularly, drip-feeding their way down, or up. Angels and demons who have been here a while and have had some chance to acclimatise (mostly they need to get out of the mindset of meaning by 'us' and 'them' Hell and Heaven, or vice versa, and start applying those terms to whatever the fuck their current situation really is) are then sent to Ramiel and Zophiel in Brighton, or Sidriel and Vehuel who settle up in Glasgow, or to Andrealphus who formed an odd sort of friendship with Leliel when she arrived, at least the two of them are fairly clean and tidy and they took a place together in York. Pins pop up all over the map Aziraphale's put up behind his desk. They agreed to be careful about balance, about making it clear that even though an awful lot of bickering goes on in that basement they don't have 'sides' anymore, and angels and demons need to stop thinking that being an angel or a demon means anything substantive on Earth. They only ever send demons up to Sidriel and Vehuel; they don't want angels clumping together, looking down on the demons, and they don't want demons congregating to sneer at the angels either. Wing colour is irrelevant: They gave that up when they left Heaven or Hell, on Earth it's what you do that counts.

Crowley's quite proud of it all. Doesn't say that, acts like it's all just a tonne of faff, but when another new refugee has been found an appropriate home, trained up and sent off, he feels - good. This bright inner glow he makes very sure to not externally show. When they get word that a new grouping of angels and demons have decided to set up a home together and Aziraphale gets to put another pin into his map, Crowley feels really good, and can at least hide that behind how happy Aziraphale looks, pretend he's only amused by that. Slowly, they do have something like an army of angels and demons who haven't been trained to fight but have been trained to find something on Earth they love so fiercely, they're never going to let humanity be wiped out if it means they lose it, even if altruism fails under fear their need will burn right through. Slowly, Crowley and Aziraphale's refusal becomes larger than just them, they're not so very small in the face of Heaven and Hell anymore. In a sea of dots, their two dots begin to blur out, and the sea rises. Crowley begins to think they might be safe, safer at least, for now.

They get news of Heaven and Hell from each new refugee, so they can keep an eye on them, sort of. Hell is turning increasingly inwards, vicious and screeching but what does that really matter? It's always been like that. They still don't say Crowley's name down there, still don't dare to talk about the defectors, there's lots of names they never mention down there anymore. It's still a bit of coup when Forcalor, Great Duke of Hell, turns up, evidently as wary of Crowley as Crowley is of him and that's another grand name they can never say in Hell again.

Heaven, they're told, is splintering.

Two distinct factions form, after the Metatron passes on Aziraphale's carefully-worded message. Michael and Uriel are often found murmuring in back staircases, angels say. Sandalphon's always in Gabriel's office, where Gabriel's voice keeps rising, his arms stabbing their gestures. There was some sort of blow-up when the news of the golem struck, Michael and Uriel hadn't been told about it, went apeshit in whatever Heavenly way angels go apeshit, massive row, Gabriel warned about fucking with Crowley and Aziraphale and not liking that one bit, the whole thing shaking half of Heaven. Angels really don't like the atmosphere up there, pressure in the air enough to pop the ears.

"I thought pride was a sin amongst you lot," Crowley says in bed one night, where Aziraphale is sitting gloomily with paperwork covered in coloured post-it notes, trying to shuffle angels and demons around to free up a bit of room. "Gabriel needs to let it go."

Aziraphale takes a slow breath in, sighs, lowers his pen. "I think he's taken it all very hard," he says, eyes - sad, mostly, behind the glasses he doesn't need but which Crowley never points out are pointless because he thinks Aziraphale looks kind of sexy in them, there really is something about him when he gets all headteachery. "I feel a little sorry for him. I don't think he's been disappointed since - the Fall, really, I don't think he knows how to - manage it."

"Hey," Crowley says, stroking the side of Aziraphale's hand with the backs of his knuckles until Aziraphale looks at him, and Crowley smiles for him, gently. "Don't feel sorry for him," he says as reassuringly as he can, lullaby-soft. "He's an evil arrogant goat-fucker who wanted to burn you alive. Don't waste sympathy on him."

Aziraphale gives Crowley the look he reserves for Crowley getting either the tone or the content right but significantly not both at once. "I really don't think he has ever fucked a goat, Crowley."

Crowley gets that - weird shot of adrenaline right to his toes he gets when Aziraphale casually swears, Crowley seems to forget between incidents that Aziraphale can swear. "It's - metaphorical. Metaphorical goat-fucking."

"What exactly is it a metaphor for th- no, on second thoughts, no, I'd rather just not be having this conversation." Aziraphale takes his glasses off and rubs his eyes. "Go to sleep, you wily old serpent."

"I love a pet name," murmurs Crowley, the demon who gets called a 'dear' approximately two hundred times a day, lifting Aziraphale's arm so he can comfortably fit himself along his side, ear resting to his ribcage, Aziraphale's arm settling again over his shoulder. "G'night, Aziraphale."

With a sigh, "Goodnight, dearest."

Yeah. Crowley listens to the ocean-slowness, ocean-vastness of Aziraphale's breath against his ear; yeah, he loves a pet name . . .

*

They don't have many of the human markers for passing time, though they've been learning them more in recent years. They never forget Adam's birthday, they always spend Christmas in Tadfield. Which makes it cleanly two years since the last time they saw Gabriel when Haniel, newly arrived and looking a bit shell-shocked, sits in one of the bookshop armchairs staring at his own hands as if they're the only thing in this place that he really believes in.

"Gabriel has a . . . thank you," dazedly to Aziraphale, who hands Haniel a cup of tea with a smile. ". . . . where was . . . Gabriel has a paperweight, a white feather encased in crystal." Haniel swallows. "He shouts at it a lot. Shouted at it a lot."

Crowley, sprawled on the sofa with his head propped off a hand, elbow on the sofa's arm, says, "Past tense?" as Aziraphale sits neatly beside him, the old exit interview protocol.

Haniel looks up at them, still just holding the cup of tea as if he doesn't know what to do with it. "He threw it at the wall," he says. "Screamed so loud . . . Michael went in to talk to him, it all . . . descended . . . all the shouting, and broken crystal all over the floor, it's not - it's not Heaven anymore. How are we supposed to pretend that we're working for the greater good when Gabriel's - half mad because he can't find a feather he threw away -"

Crowley slinks his gaze to Aziraphale, since they both know it's one of his feathers that Gabriel has been taking his frustrations out on for the last two years. Aziraphale looks if anything guilty, and a little embarrassed, though those two expressions are hardly unusual on his face. "When you say 'half mad'," he says, slowly, "are we to take it . . . do you honestly think that Gabriel is ill, or just - really very, very angry?"

Haniel stares at him and Crowley sees the exhaustion on the angel's face, feels a twinge for thinking about being stuck in Heaven while Heaven is being pulled in two and drowning in all of its own bad feeling, it must wear an angel out. Funny for a demon to think an angel's got it bad, he thinks, then looks across at Aziraphale's worried face and thinks, No, it isn't funny at all.

Haniel swallows again, says, "I think that an angel bearing that much rage can hardly be said to be well."

Aziraphale is silent at that, and Haniel looks down at his teacup again, still not looking like he knows what to do with it. "You haven't been down here before?" Crowley guesses. "You drink it. Doesn't matter if you like it or not, it's just what you do, it's cultural." Then, offhand as if he's only adding it because Aziraphale is right next to him, "Careful, it'll be hot."

Aziraphale finds a smile from somewhere, he always does, and says, "You'll be safe here. It's better than there. You get to choose what you do here, you can make it better than there."

Haniel nods, slowly, and looks down at the tea again, and says, "Thank you."

He takes a sip. He ruminates on it. He says, "Dried leaves of trees steeped in heated water mixed with the lactation of cows. Why?"

"It's cultural, just smile and drink." Crowley says.

"It's tea, it's lovely." Aziraphale says. "I can find you a book on it."

"I will learn," Haniel says. "I must learn. This is pleasurable. Yes. This is 'lovely'."

Crowley rocks himself off the sofa, pats Haniel's shoulder as he passes. "I'm going to fetch you something called 'whisky' because you could probably do with something harder."

"Harder?" Haniel says, confused.

Aziraphale says, "He means - Crowley, it's eleven in the morning - oh, bother, I'll just close the shop."

Crowley walks back with his arms full of glasses from Aziraphale's office, bottle dangling from one hand. "Let's get everyone up," he says. "Learn a few things about why here is better than there . . ."

There is rather, rather a lot to drink that day, Haniel seems to need it to loosen up, and certainly takes to whisky better than tea after the first few agonised sips. Crowley and Aziraphale stagger off for Crowley's flat in the early evening leaving the denizens of the bookshop basement with a couple more bottles to see the night through, and Crowley doesn't want to sober up to drive so they take the bus, two buses, Crowley's rambling a bit, always feels more talkative when he's had a couple. Aziraphale seems drowsier with it, a little distant, as if he's thinking about something.

"Don't think," Crowley says to him on the second bus, putting his hand clumsily over Aziraphale's on the seat. "Never does either of us any good, thinking."

Aziraphale looks at him, and smiles, and looks a lot more sober than Crowley feels.

It's once they're back in the flat, Crowley puts a record on and rummages out a bottle of wine and Aziraphale sits on the sofa with a fist in front of his mouth and his eyes boring through the coffee table, blinking when Crowley puts a glass on it and pours. "Oh," he says. "Thank you."

And he smiles, that ancient sweet smile like morning and Crowley's breath comes in like the first he ever took.

Crowley swallows, says, "Cheers," to cover some of the fluster of it, knocking his glass into Aziraphale's. "What's up with you? You seem practically sober, 'ppalling state to be in."

Aziraphale sucks a long breath in as if for strength and says, "There's something I think I ought to tell you, dear, I'm a bit . . . concerned. I don't think we're in any immediate danger but I am a bit, a bit . . . apprehensive."

". . . you're definitely too sober if you can get that word out." Crowley sits up straighter beside him, holding his own glass ready, he's not sobering up unless he absolutely has to if this is going to be shitty news. "What is it, angel?"

Aziraphale nods, slowly, eyes gazing through the coffee table as if still thinking something through. "A long time ago now, between . . . you remember the last time Gabriel came to the shop, and a few weeks later he sent that golem."

In the back of his mind he hears the echo of Aziraphale's head breaking, and his throat pulses. "Yeah, that was like . . . couple of years ago now."

As if he doesn't remember it every week. As if he doesn't hear that noise again every single day.

". . . yes. Only that . . . that wasn't actually the last time Gabriel came to the shop." Aziraphale's gaze finally flits to Crowley, eyes guilty, shoulders a little hunched. "He came back, between that last time and the golem, when you were away, I can't even remember where you were, you'd taken Ramiel and Zophiel somewhere and . . ."

Crowley suddenly feels very, very sober, and cold.

Aziraphale shrugs a shoulder. "I suppose that was the point, he was waiting until I was on my own. It reminded me of it today, when Haniel -"

"What did he do?"

". . . nothing. Gabriel? Nothing, Crowley, he really didn't. I think he just meant to scare me."

Eyes fixed on Aziraphale, leaning in, muscles like tripwires, "Did he?"

Aziraphale stares at him as if utterly thrown by the question, moves his mouth a little, and finally the answer settles into his eyes. "A bit," he confesses. "Crowley, he's an Archangel and . . . of course he scared me."

"You didn't tell me," it falls out, a clumsy tumble of words, that he didn't . . .

"No, I know, Crowley, love, I only - he did scare me, and I thought about how you - Crowley you know how you get sometimes, you're a bit - impulsive and overprotective and I love that about you, you really are the nicest -"

"So you didn't tell me?"

"I thought you might get some wild idea into your head to go after him, I thought he would kill you! I -" Aziraphale flicks a determined hand. "I absolutely will not have it. You getting hurt by him for me. I will not. Because he hasn't been back, he's let us be now and there is no need to get all, all - however you intend to get about it. Good Lord Crowley of course I didn't tell you, look at you, it was two years ago and he didn't even touch me and you're ready to barge up there right now, aren't you?"

"No," Crowley says sulkily, and the hand not holding his wine glass is a claw on the sofa.

Aziraphale looks at him for quite a long time, trying to read Crowley's face (his jaw is working tight, he wants to bite Gabriel and pour the poison in -) and Aziraphale says, "Crowley, I'm sorry. I know you want to protect me, please believe me, I want to protect you as well. We both do a lot of stupid things for that reason, don't we?"

Crowley bites his jaw hard, and drains half his glass in one go. Aziraphale closes his eyes, sighs through his nose as if genuinely tired, not something he often shows.

"I'm concerned," he says. "About Gabriel's - deterioration. That's why I told you. I just . . . have a bad feeling."

"Because he's losing his mind and screaming abuse at your feather?"

"I don't think he is losing his mind. I just think he's - escalating, in his head, he's not - he's not moving on. He's still feeling exactly the same anger he was when I first left. That's the thing, when he came back, it was all - what disturbed me was how - personal, it was. I mean, our fight is with Heaven and Hell, there's no reason it has to be nasty, it's - well, it's political, in its way."

"In his way," Crowley says, slowly, "Gabriel's more human than we are."

Aziraphale thinks that through, then nods, slow and uneasy. "Crowley - I don't know what any of it means, but until we get some better news from Heaven, do you think we should - stick together, a bit? I'm . . ."

"Go on," Crowley says, lifting his glass to his mouth, "say 'concerned' again."

"Well I am, I don't know what to - I can't make him less angry, I worry about, I worry about -"

Crowley finishes his glass, leans to thump it on the table and pick up the bottle for a refill. "If he came back I'd pull his wings out for you."

"I worry about you, you idiot! If he got it into his head -" Aziraphale has to stop and close his eyes, Crowley was too wrapped up in his own drunken feelings to notice it happen, when did Aziraphale get so tense, his hands are fists - Aziraphale hisses in a rush, "If he destroys me then I'm just dead, if he destroys the bookshop then I still have you, if I lost you -"

Crowley's hand is on his because he never wants to hear Aziraphale's voice sound like it did on that last word again. Aziraphale doesn't open his eyes, and his jaw flexes tight. And then his shoulders fall, Crowley feels the tension of Aziraphale's invisible wings slumping, and Aziraphale blinks, and looks bleakly back at him.

"If he gets it into his head to hurt me then you, Crowley, are my weak point. Nothing would hurt me, nothing would hurt me, like losing you. So -" He touches Crowley's cheek, tentatively, while Crowley stares back and can't speak. "So stay close, for a little while, because I'm a soft old fool and I don't want to lose you, will you?" His voice and chin aren't entirely steady. "For me, my dear?"

Crowley folds his arms around him, Aziraphale is immediately receptive to the hug, pressing him in close. "Alright, angel," Crowley says, stroking both hands down his back. "Alright, alright, I'll be right here. We'll have a few days on our toes, just to be sure. And I'm not leaving you. You'll never get rid of me." He runs a hand up Aziraphale's spine, flexes his invisible wings around him, hisses to the side of his neck, "You're mine."

"Oh," says Aziraphale, who has never been able to work out whether he feels more flustered or delighted when Crowley gets a bit demonic at him, and clearly doesn't understand that the appropriate reaction is of course both.

They don't sleep that night; they drink, and talk, kiss a little, Crowley loves how little really changed between them when everything changed. They can be honest, and they can be affectionate, but all of that was there before, in its own warped ways, under the surface, coded in their interactions. Crowley knows that he knew that Aziraphale loved him before Aziraphale knew it, after all; Aziraphale never saw the look in his own eyes when he was looking at Crowley. And Crowley . . .

Aziraphale is his everything and his only and if anyone tries to hurt him, take him, Crowley will (the sound of his head clopping dull off a shelf as his body just fell) burn them.

They stay close to each other after that, noticeably so, Crowley prowls the bookshop a couple of paces back from Aziraphale (close enough that Aziraphale can say, "Just hold that a moment, dear," handing him the feather duster so he can reach up for a teeteringly-high volume on the edge of a shelf and Crowley can't really do anything, just stands there thinking every demon in Hell fears to say my name and yet, finding it impossible to feel menacing while holding a feather duster), and Penemuel who's known them longer than the other current residents of the shop gives them the side-eye from desk and Crowley narrows his eyes back, but she quite quickly wore off her fear of him. Crowley thinks that Penemuel's the most intelligent of the demons who have made their way to the bookshop, and she's long since worked out that whatever Crowley did back then, he's harmless to them now. Crowley worries that she's more intelligent than them, and actually knows more about what might have happened back then than she lets on . . .

But the fear begins to ease. A day passes, another day, it's the weekend, Crowley loves a sleep with a good lie-in. He still stays where Aziraphale can always see him by only turning his head. It means that he can see Aziraphale at all times too.

Days pass, days pass . . . the bookshop bell chimes.

It's obvious it's no ordinary customer in the jarring of it, too hard and too fast, rarely are people in a stampeding hurry to get into a bookshop. Crowley is leaning against the desk with his arms folded, Penemuel has her arm full of books for shelving, Aziraphale is trying to put the stacks of books that just keep accumulating on the coffee table into some sort of order, the sole customer in the shop is flicking idly through a book near the window. And into the peace of the scene strides the Archangel Gabriel, eyes bright with something too feral to be joy, stabbing something small at Aziraphale as Aziraphale's face immediately sags into a numbness close to guilt just at the sight of him -

"- found it I found it I knew it! I told you! I told you, look, you're done now, look -"

The thing in Gabriel's hand is a feather, frail white near its base but smudged the colour of charcoal in the length to its tip, as if dug into the cold remnants of a fire. Crowley stares, and then feels the sick warmth start in his throat, under his jaw, that's . . .

Aziraphale's face whites, his mouth opens, he's silent for a long dumb second. Then he staggers back, Crowley sees the strength so gone from his knees he thinks he's going to faint but Aziraphale catches himself on the arm of the sofa, holds himself there on a shaking arm staring at that feather and then -

There is no thought involved, it's instinct, his shoulders snap, the wings are out, the bookshop hardly seems big enough for them, too wide and too white for the space, too - white -

Aziraphale combs his fingers through them with frantic, searching eyes and Crowley sees the slow realisation coming dumb to his gaze, all the energy that went into his sick panic faltering, falling, drooping his back's rigidity, and he says - voice too weak, so confused, ". . . it isn't mine."

He looks up, blinks, meets Gabriel's stare, says as if he still just doesn't understand, "It isn't mine, whose -"

The two angels' eyes freeze on each other.

Aziraphale's shaky hand lifts to cover his mouth; Gabriel is breathing slow and too hard, eyes dumb on Aziraphale, then he looks at that feather in his hand and Crowley actually looks at it too now, tries to remember - no, it's too short to be the one Aziraphale gave him, more downy, it's - it's not Aziraphale's. His wings are spotless. So that feather -

Gabriel's eyes have stilled, somewhere distant from here. He doesn't say anything. He bangs the shop door behind himself, the bell gives its startled jangle, he's gone. And then Aziraphale's just leaning against the sofa with his wings flexing nervously at his back, breathing shaky with shock behind his hand, Penemuel is still frozen with her arms full of books, and Crowley comes forward hand raising to snap his fingers with a glance at the customer, the man's mouth open dumb -

Heaven, it's only one man, Crowley's seen him here before as his eyes meet Crowley's, his face slack. Crowley lowers his hand, shrugs, says, "No-one would believe you. And it's nothing half of Soho didn't suspect anyway." And he ignores him, walks to Aziraphale and touches his shoulder, rubs his arm, says, "Alright, angel, the wings can go away now, it's alright."

"Crowley," Aziraphale croaks, lowering his hand. "It means -"

"I know. Wings away, angel, anyone could walk through that door."

Aziraphale blinks and blinks at him, too lost in shock to understand for a long few seconds before he shakes his head a little, regathers himself, rolls his shoulders and the wings are gone. "I feel a bit sick," he says. "Need to - sit down. Cup of tea. Feel a bit . . shaken."

"You're alright," Crowley says, soft, rubbing his arm.

Aziraphale's smile flickers on. "Yes, of course I - oh, Lord, that must have seemed horribly crass, how upset I was about - as if matters that much, what colour they are, I -"

"It's alright," Crowley says, because if She ever dulls one feather on Aziraphale's back then Crowley's going to find a way to have it out with the Almighty Herself, Aziraphale's one of the only angels he's ever known who does deserve the white of his wings. "Cup of tea, right? I can do it."

"Oh no, Crowley, you always . . . forgive me but your tea is foul. I'll do it. This is all . . ." Aziraphale touches his forehead, face strained, he still looks too lost on shock. "This is all a bit much to take in."

"Yeah," Crowley says, and looks at Penemuel who looks suspiciously back, she definitely has at least some idea of what just went down. "What do you think it means?"

". . . poor Gabriel," Aziraphale murmurs, and that's when Crowley nearly wrenches his own neck snapping his head back to look at him.

"Poor - poor Gabriel? Nobody did that to his wings but him!"

"But it will mean so much to him, I don't know how he'll . . . how he'll . . . I don't know how he'll cope."

"He won't even notice the difference." Crowley mutters. "Hell's just a change of venue for him."

"Cup of tea," Aziraphale says vaguely, not listening and not really present at all, heading off for the office and the kettle. "Oh dear. Oh dear."

"Poor Gabriel," Crowley mutters, following him, still feeling the presence of Gabriel like weird electricity in the air.

They spend the rest of the afternoon in the bookshop, no new angels or demons defect that day. Crowley suggests dinner out but Aziraphale's heart clearly isn't in it, he's been distracted and uneasy ever since Gabriel came back. Adam texts Crowley for advice on what to do about a kid at school who's bullying Wensleydale, and Crowley texts back that he should do whatever he can get away with. Then after a guilty pause he texts again that he should remember the bully's only a kid and he shouldn't do anything permanent. One step closer to white wings . . .

Because Gabriel's have moved, Gabriel's have changed, so they can change. Or is it that they can only change one way, that Her mind is so fixated on perfection that no flaw can ever be overcome? Or is it - he doesn't know what the fuck it means, what the fuck it . . . no wonder Aziraphale's so quiet, Crowley's mind's running at ninety miles an hour too, what it all means, do they know in Heaven? But Gabriel didn't know himself that the darkening feather he clearly picked up off his office floor had fallen from his own back. And what that means . . .

Aziraphale can't settle in the flat, picking over the bookshelves, too alert on his feet. He gets like this sometimes, can't manage his own worry, gets himself stuck on an internal hamster wheel of faster and faster thought. Crowley finds himself saying, "Do you want to start the new jigsaw?" and does think that that is a sentence that should never have passed his lips, but -

They don't get any warning, it's not that sort of attack; an Archangel could kill them by swatting them.

*

Crowley comes to on the floor, groggy and slow, something too heavy across his back. He focuses on the broken plant pot, the spilt soil in front of his face, it's the bookshelves over his back, that's right, the shelves struck him down, books everywhere, and then Sandalphon snapped his fingers and the plant pot seemed to come out of nowhere, his head . . .

His breath sucks in, Azira-

He can't feel him.

Crowley lifts his head, eyes wide, throat pulsing with trying to - there isn't even the strength to vocalise the no no no no because for six thousand years Crowley has been able to sense the presence of Aziraphale in the world, angels and demons feel each other like static electricity and Aziraphale has been the spark that never flickers, the firefly always lit, Crowley's glow in the dark, his only pole star. And now he's gone. He can't feel him, he's gone. The world is dark, and Crowley is alone.

Gabriel blew the door in with Sandalphon at his back, snapped a motion in the air with his arm and Aziraphale went over like he'd been hit in the face, then the bookshelves, the plant pot, and now -

The moan happens, there's no intention in it, Crowley lays there face-down under the bookshelves and a moan is happening in his chest, shaking, getting higher, the denial being suffocated under the pain, because - he's gone. He's gone. Did they kill him here? Did they kill him, here, in Crowley's flat, Crowley's place, or did they take him somewhere so he was alone, Crowley doesn't know how long he was unconscious, they never gave him a trial the last time, they don't care about justice, they just wanted to kill him and -

Crowley pulls his arms over his face and the moan is getting tighter, nastier, growing spikes, his back arches under the weight pinning it down, he snaps his own splintered bones back together and hisses and he's going to kill them, he is going to kill them, it's going to be the last thing he ever does - but first there's the pain, the pain, the loss like blades flayed him from the inside, the pain -

His angel his angel his angel . . .

It doesn't matter that he's going to get himself killed. All that matters is that he gets them killed first.

. . . after. After the pain, after the pain just subsides enough so he can breathe, after . . .

His forearms, across his face, are wet. Crying happens. There's no intention behind it.

*

Two notes of consciousness: Pain, and some incessant, irritating beeping noise.

But the pain takes precedent, he's really not very used to pain and this bores into the being of him, he's never felt anything like - and then he remembers. And the worst, worst thing - the immediate impulse is to beat them.

His next moment of real awareness is hanging almost out of the bed, head upside-down and a nice young man in hospital scrubs has caught his vomit, most of it, in a cardboard bowl. Aziraphale spits - oh Lord it's horrible - and says to him, shakily, "I'm mmost terribly sorry, I've never ddone that before."

"Not a problem, let's get you back in the bed, you're in the hospital, you're safe now -"

He's not. He's already dying.

He has to remember, in every agonised second of awareness of the pain, to try not to flap his wings, because he doesn't have wings to flap and moving those muscles will hurt beyond coherence. He feels queasy again just at knowing it, closes his eyes as the nice young man tries to move him gently back to his side, not touching his back, his back where the pain screams like hunger and Aziraphale's knuckles squeeze white in the mattress.

A young doctor - how are they all so young? - appears, says, "You were found by the roadside, we think you've been attacked, could you tell me your name?"

The young nurse murmurs to her, "The wounds have opened again, need to -"

Aziraphale knows, his back is wet, nothing is going to close those wounds, that's the point of them. His voice comes difficult, mumbling and slurring. "Could you - call someone for me - please?"

"Of course sir, you didn't have any ID on you, if you can tell us your name -"

"He's called C-Crowley, his number is . . ."

They want to fuss about and he can't really stop them though he tries, there's no point, what was done to him can't be managed or healed. They clearly don't understand the wounds, that they won't close, what they even are; not like stab wounds (nausea makes Aziraphale very aware of the saliva in his mouth, he's never even noticed his saliva before), something inhuman about them because they are inhuman, because Gabriel cut off his wings and after that he gouged out the balls of the joints so there was nothing left, they'll never stop bleeding, they'll bleed until he's dead. And he is going to die. Bizarre thought; he doesn't have long left. Thousands of years and here and now he doesn't have long left. He's more surprised than afraid.

"Could you pplease -" His voice comes so thin and wobbly. "Have you ccalled Crowley . . . ?"

"Don't worry about anything, we've got it all under control, do you think you'll be able to give a description to the police of whoever did this to you?"

Aziraphale sucks in each sick breath, clutches the mattress, strains the muscles to agony in his back fighting the instinctive urge to beat wings that just aren't there. He really doesn't think that the police will be much help against the Fallen Archangel Gabriel. The only person he needs now is -

Oh no oh no -

Is Crowley still alive?

*

Cheek to the floor, too weighted with grief to move, Crowley is remembering every shitty thing he ever did to Aziraphale and they knew each other for six thousand years, there's a lot of shitty things. He remembers every time he snapped, every time he sneered. He remembers being short-tempered and mocking, remembers treating other things like they were more important, remembers every time he was cruel intentionally or not, remembers spitting at him that he didn't need him and taking fucking decades to signal that he didn't mean it, he remembers demanding things from Aziraphale that Aziraphale was so uncomfortable with giving and Aziraphale gave them to him anyway, he remembers -

He remembers manipulating and in the end just bullying Aziraphale into trying to kill the Antichrist for him because Crowley's never liked using his own two hands, fuck, he was no better to him than Heaven was. And he doesn't care that Aziraphale got snotty and took centuries to remember that he'd changed his name and preferred to keep his hands clean himself, primly insisting that Crowley did the dirty work, because it's not the same. It's just not. Crowley doesn't care what anyone else thinks, he knows the truth because he's the one laying here on the floor with black wings, alone, and Aziraphale is gone.

He needs to get up. He needs to find Gabriel and kill him. He'll kill Sandalphon too, nastily, he's never liked him, but it's Gabriel who has to be killed first. He won't bother with nasty for him, he just needs him dead before he has any chance to save himself. It matters more than anything, anything on any realm, that Gabriel dies and Crowley does it. But first he just lays there, knowing that this is why his wings are black, this is why She knew to leave them like that, because he was never good enough for Aziraphale and he made sure he dragged Aziraphale down to his own level, put the dirt on Aziraphale's hands himself and in the end got him killed for it. He would never have left Heaven if it wasn't for Crowley. He'd still be up there, safe, and the Earth would have burned but the Earth is worth losing if - his throat cracks, his eyes burn - if he was just alive, even if Crowley couldn't have him, if he was just alive -

In the office, the telephone starts ringing. Crowley ignores it, just lays there, thinking now of the bookshop, the bookshop, no Aziraphale to ever potter about it again, what happens to it? Crowley can't bear the thought of it mouldering unloved but he knows he's going to get himself killed in getting his revenge and that telephone is really fucking annoying, who-

His breath stops.

The answering machine has just clicked on, "Hello, I'm trying to reach Mr - um, Crowley, I'm calling from Stoke Mandeville Hospital -" when Crowley, covered in dirt and hair spiked mad and eyes yellow as pain picks up the phone and doesn't even answer, just snaps himself through the line.

*

"Please don't please it doesn't even make any difference -"

"We're trying to help Mr - Full - if you can just -"

"Listen, will you - have you called Crowley?" He's trying to push himself up on a forearm but his arms are bafflingly, pathetically weak, hardly move him, and the doctor is insistent about doing things to the wounds, trying to get the soaked bandages off, Aziraphale would really rather she didn't, all it does is hurt and it won't change anything. "Have you called him, did he pick up?"

"Mr - we're going to give you some more painkillers, try to manage the -"

"This is all very unnecessary," he mumbles unhappily, bending his neck forward and clenching his teeth not to flap, not to flap when it feels like all he wants to do, cast out his missing wings and beat them so hard they start existing again. "I'm s-sure you're trying to be kind -"

Someone screams, somewhere out there in the hospital, and the doctor and nurse look up startled but Aziraphale allows himself to sag back to his side on the mattress, relief shaking his breath out. "Oh good, oh thank . . . that'll be him now."

The nurse says, "What -"

He can hear the noise and shock out there, and a hoarse voice yelling, "-angel! Angel! God - damn it I can't find you, angel-!"

"That's him, that's Crowley, will you get him ah please please stop touching that -"

There's the crashing noise of doors all along a corridor being kicked open, Aziraphale clutches his hands in the mattress and squeezes his eyes tight, clutching the pain in, trying to ready himself and not look too desperate with it when Crowley sees, for the first time, what was done to him. The nurse's hand is almost on the door handle when the door bangs inwards, and Crowley -

All he does, immediately, is make a noise. It's a small, pitiful, in-croaked noise, and Aziraphale opens his eyes and feels impossibly, ridiculously ashamed, his whole being feels smaller and dirty. He knows he's been made into an ugly, mutilated thing. Now, under Crowley's blank-staring eyes, he really feels it.

"Crowley -" He has to stop to swallow. "- dear -"

Crowley's not wearing his sunglasses, there's dirt on his forehead and smudged in his shirt and blood in his hair, does he know there's blood in his hair? With his face drawn and sallowed with some tight horrible emotion he walks forwards, says low and almost emotionless, "I'm getting you out of here."

"Okay, hold on-" the doctor says, and stops stock still at the click of Crowley's fingers, the nurse dropping back loose on his feet as well. Crowley hesitates next to the bed, Aziraphale knows what he looks like, they've put him in one of those awful thin hospital gown things and it's wet to his back with blood even through the bandages they've bound him in.

"I'm sorry," he says, he doesn't know what else to say, all the enormous bother and stress of it and then he's just going to die anyway.

"You're going to be alright." Crowley says, mechanically, reaching under Aziraphale's body - he lifts a shaky arm, holds Crowley around the neck as Crowley finds some hold on him, some grip on his blood-wet back that doesn't touch the wounds, not even stumps, of his torn-out wings. It still hurts like - he's made a lot of noises thus far that he didn't even know that he could make, in the pain of it. Crowley presses his mouth to his brow and chokes there, "I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry angel -" and turns for the door, carrying him awkward but certain out of the room.

There's panic in front of them until there isn't, everyone turning glassy-eyed and turning away from the sight of Crowley carrying Aziraphale, dripping blood on the floor behind themselves, over the squeaky rubber floors of the hospital, to a lift, to the exit. The Bentley is waiting outside in the early evening dim, Crowley must have just snapped it here; drifting, feeling looser and less rigid in his arms, Aziraphale thinks drowsily that Crowley's never done that, he's never known Crowley do that. The Bentley is for driving, Crowley never just makes it appear anywhere. But oh, of course; there's no other method of transport Aziraphale could survive, in this state. His body's only holding together out of . . . muscle memory, essentially. Once he weakens enough it'll drift apart, and he'll be gone.

It's only when Crowley opens the door that he realises - "Crowley, I'll get blood all over -"

"Doesn't matter. Careful - careful -"

"But it'll, I can't bleed all over-"

"I don't care about the fucking blood, angel!"

Trying to manoeuvre Aziraphale into the passenger seat without the open wounds of his back touching the seat back is not easy, and once it does and he barks the sheer shock of the pain out and then when he dizzily comes around again, he never wants to hear Crowley apologising like that again. Clumsily, between them, they get him slumped over the dashboard, clinging weakly to it, head lolling forward, exhausted from the effort. He can't have long left. Where are they going? He just wants to go somewhere quiet, with Crowley, somewhere safe and peaceful to just get the dying out of the way -

Crowley slams the driver's door, wrenches the car awake, slams the accelerator. It's far too fast for a hospital car park. It's always been too fast, even if there was sometimes a thrill to it. Aziraphale closes his eyes, feels sick, feels too distant and lost in the pain to think to ask where they're going, spending all of his strength not letting his body fall back in the seat. And on the road Crowley goes even faster, and he realises -

"Crowley," he says thickly, in sheer panic, "I'm going to be sick. You need to pull over, I'm going to-"

Crowley doesn't take his eyes from the road, reaches blind underneath Aziraphale's head with one hand and scrabbles at the dashboard, finds the glove compartment, snaps it open. He digs the contents out, cassettes and sunglasses rattle off Aziraphale's feet, and Crowley says, "There."

"- Crowley I can't -" The shock makes him feel even queasier, his guts knot and roil, he's already bleeding all over Crowley's immaculate Bentley and he can't vomit in it -

Crowley's eyes are still on the road, his face drawn, the skin stretched back in sheer stress, but that one hand finds Aziraphale's head, pats, strokes at it. "It's alright," he says. "It's alright angel. It's going to be alright."

Aziraphale's guts clench into rock, and his body heaves. The movement hurts the wounds worse and that makes the retching worse, everything goes black for a moment but he doesn't faint again, just endures. When he's done, head hanging, exhausted, he pushes the glove compartment closed just to not have to deal with it and presses the back of his hand to his mouth. "I'm sorry," he mumbles.

Crowley's eyes are quick, focused on the road, fixated. "Nothing to be sorry about, nothing to be sorry about, you're going to be fine angel, going to be fine -"

Crowley I'm dying, Aziraphale thinks, sinking his head to the dashboard against his own forearm, feeling through the hard wood every bump and jolt of the road beneath them. You must know I'm dying. He took my wings.

Aziraphale couldn't do anything, when he found himself in Heaven, in some white enclosed room where he could see Sandalphon standing just to his side, holding - well, it turned out to be a toolkit, of sorts. He couldn't see Gabriel behind him because he couldn't turn his head. He couldn't blink, or vibrate a vocal cord. He couldn't move. Because Aziraphale is only a principality and Gabriel must have known that his Archangel status was up, and the last thing he was going to do in Heaven with the power he had -

Aziraphale couldn't move but the tears came from the strain of his staring eyes and the pain of it but mostly the horror of it, not being able to move while he felt the heavy weight of a sawn-off wing drop, the sudden sick lightness made the screaming pain worse and it wasn't even over. But - he wasn't the only one - suffering, struggling. He could see, blurred through the tears, Sandalphon's hands shaking over the tools he was holding. Smiting humans might mean little to an angel like Sandalphon but watching another angel's wings bloodily torn out - clearly Sandalphon hadn't truly understood what he'd agreed to, or hadn't thought about the reality of what he was agreeing to, or just hadn't realised what it would feel like to have to watch it. He did watch it, though. He passed Gabriel the tools as he grunted for them, breath short with effort. His hands flinched nervous from the blood under Gabriel's fingernails.

And when it was done, when the last bones were snapped out, the last clinging tendons sawn through - when Gabriel walked around in front of him, scarlet from the elbows down, his shirt running with blood -

He snapped his fingers, and Aziraphale's eyelids fell, his knees folded, and he knew nothing then until he woke on his side in that hospital bed.

Now the Bentley tears the miles up and he comes to, doesn't know how long he's been out but Crowley's hand is in his hair and he's grinding out in a repetitive, desperate way, "- not long not long angel nearly there nearly there just hold on, just hold on -"

The lights of passing cars are blinked blurs across the windshield in the growing dark, and Aziraphale thinks, Crowley will you please just - I just want you to hold me so I can quietly die, I know it's selfish, I know it's awful to do this to you but it hurts oh please Lord it hurts and I just want you to hold me so I can let it stop -

He closes his eyes to his own bent forearm, slips out again.

He's roused by the car door banging, head rocking clumsily against his arm, blinking stupidly. It's dark outside, and the seat he's on is uncomfortably wet, the hospital gown clinging in a sticky, sloppy way to him. When Crowley opens the passenger door a light comes on overhead and Aziraphale looks at the pool of blood he's sitting in with no real comprehension of it, beyond that now, his consciousness vague, even the pain feels more distant.

He says, "Crowley," and it comes out mangled, his tongue isn't shaping the syllables right.

"We're here," Crowley says. "You're going to be alright."

He gets an arm under Aziraphale's legs, the other low around his back, below the wounds that drain, now, more than throb. He helps Aziraphale get his arms around his neck, no strength in the hold but Crowley is a demon, could carry Aziraphale on the tip of a finger if he wanted to, though some of the blood has dried and he doesn't part from the seat with immediate ease. Aziraphale's body feels strange, less than solid as Crowley lifts it out of the car. Ethereal. He knows what's happening. He's so tired he's not even upset about it. So this is all it takes to be brave; feeling so, so far gone, death is only a chance to rest.

They're outside a house, Aziraphale - recognises the house, dopily, as Crowley kicks the front door in and screams, "Adam!"

There's a yell and thump from the next room as Crowley marches into the hallway, Aziraphale slurring, "G'd evening Mzr and Msss Young."

They stare like they're staring at Hell itself. "What the hell are-"

"Adam!"

Thudding overhead and Adam Young, the sixteen-year-old Antichrist, appears at the top of the stairs, a comic falling from his hand as he sees them and stares, Dog whining and barking in fear at his heels, and Crowley screams at him, "Fix him! Fix him now!"

"H'lo Adam, dear boy," Aziraphale mumbles, and everything goes dark.

*

Crowley walks wordlessly back to the car with Aziraphale slumped in his arms against him, peaceful now. He's never picked the angel up like this before but his weight has a familiarity to him, an of courseness, a rightness in his arms. He knows Aziraphale's carried him before - he has woken some mornings half-undressed under the covers of the bed, Aziraphale reading beside him, when Crowley is more than certain that he fell asleep full of whisky on the sofa or the floor, so he knows Aziraphale picked him up and put him to bed and went back to his book beside him like it was nothing. Technically Aziraphale is the responsible one, or at least Crowley likes to think of them that way. Aziraphale's never needed Crowley to carry him before, head dropped heavy to his chest, legs hanging limp.

He's easier to carry without having to avoid those gaping holes gouged into him where his wings should be. His breathing is softer, his skin feels more - solid, Crowley was aware of how - how cloud-like Aziraphale had felt in his arms, carrying him to Adam's door. The atoms of his body forgetting themselves, drifting apart. Now he's his safely solid angel again, put back even in his normal clothes by Adam which Crowley does understand because he couldn't be left in that nightmarish hospital gown, purple but for the bib of its blue at the front where the blood hadn't soaked in yet. He just looks like Aziraphale; a very drained and tired Aziraphale, still safely unconscious in Crowley's arms, but Crowley probably doesn't look much better himself right now.

The important thing is that even now Crowley can feel, invisible on this plane, the weight of Aziraphale's hanging wings, lolling loose to the earth from Crowley's grip, Crowley wants to kneel down and bury his face in them and weep. But there's more to take care of first, and first of everything he has to get Aziraphale home.

The passenger door opens for him automatically with his hands full, and the seat inside isn't squishing, slopping with blood, and Crowley knows that if he opened the glove compartment it would have nothing in it but cassettes and sunglasses. It's easier to rest Aziraphale in the seat without the wounds to mind. He reclines it a little, puts the seatbelt on for him. And he closes his eyes so tight they burn and fists his hands until his nails gouge into the skin, and he whispers to his forehead, a low, hissed promise, "I have you," and furiously kisses him there.

He doesn't know what happens next, but he has a general idea.

The front door closes behind Adam, cutting off the golden light of the living house within, and in the dark Adam walks over with a backpack and Dog at his heels for the back seat. "They think it's a brilliant idea if I have a weekend in London with my godfathers," he says. "They think it'll be educational."

"It will be," Crowley promises grimly. "You probably shouldn't - do that very much, and all that. Making them forget things."

"No but they had to forget that," Adam says, putting his seatbelt on, Dog climbing into his lap to look out of the window.

"Yep, yeah, but . . . gets a bit too easy to keep making people forget things, in the end." The headlights fill the road with gold, and Crowley glances at Aziraphale still slumped in sleep, and eases the accelerator down. "You forget to not do the things you're going to have to make them forget."

After a pause, Adam says, "That sounds like something he would say."

"Yeah, well, have to speak for both of us right now, don't I." Crowley mutters wretchedly, and drives.

He got to keep Aziraphale by a matter of seconds. He got to keep Aziraphale by a fraction of an inch. Aziraphale's life was saved by a matter of millimetres and Crowley knows that Aziraphale can't have thrown up before today, a dodgy oyster being an easy thing to vacate from the intestines with a minor miracle, but now Crowley feels like he could join him in it to think that if he'd been a little slower, hardly any slower at all -

Adam says, "What happened to his wings?"

Crowley stares at the road, not at Aziraphale. His voice comes lower than he'd expected it. "A bad angel cut them off."

"Why?"

"Because his wings turned black and Aziraphale's didn't, and he - couldn't take it." Poor Gabriel, Aziraphale had said, it came out so automatically, like it was the natural response to the situation. And Crowley remembers saying -

If he came back I'd pull his wings out for you.

His eyes flutter closed on the nausea, he forces them open again, he can't even think about - he didn't just cut them off, there was nothing left of them, he dug them out at the roots -

He can feel Aziraphale again, next to him, even unconscious. Crowley's glow in the dark, his only pole star. He drives, and breathes through his nose, and he isn't going to throw up because he's a demon God fucking damn it, he controls what his stomach does . . .

"That's not fair," Adam says quietly. "I know that sounds like something a kid would say and everything. But that's just - it's not fair. It's not. He didn't turn his wings black for him, did he?"

Crowley shakes his head and stares at the road. No, Gabriel did all that on his own, all Aziraphale had to do after leaving Heaven was exist to get in Gabriel's firing line once it had all kicked into gear.

"It's like wrecking someone else's trainers 'cause they're better than yours," Adam says. "What's so bad about having black wings anyway?"

"Well," Crowley says, next to the angel he swore he'd burn the world down to protect and he let Gabriel gouge the wings out of earlier tonight, "look at me."

"But I like you. You do good mix tapes. Better than his," in a murmur, and Crowley finds the smile strains at his eyes and dies too soon. "What does it mean, if they're black?"

". . . means . . ." He's too tired even to think about this. "Means God doesn't want you anymore."

"What, forever?"

"Yup."

"How's She know She's never going to change Her mind?"

"Well. Who knows. She does what She likes and She doesn't have to tell us what the rules are until after we've broken them. That's being God for you."

"That's rubbish," Adam mutters. "I don't see what's so bad about it if She doesn't make it fair to begin with."

"Tell me about it," Crowley mutters, and drives.

Back in London, Dog asleep on Adam's lap, Adam asleep with his head lolled back in the seat, Crowley has to wake them but Aziraphale's still limp, breathing slow. The flat, of course, is as immaculate as if an Archangel didn't blow it open earlier this evening. Adam already knows where the spare sheets are to make a bed of the living room sofa, Crowley offering the old growl out of the corner of his mouth to remind Dog that these plants aren't for pissing up, carrying Aziraphale through to the bedroom. He lays him on the bed and Aziraphale doesn't move, doesn't make a sound. Crowley stands back, feeling a bit helpless, then takes Aziraphale's shoes off mostly to give himself something to do. He shoves them against the wall, then stares at them, then pats them together, so they're neatly side by side.

Looking at them he wants to cry until his eyes burn out. Instead he sucks his breath in on a harsh hiss, and looks across at Adam in the bedroom doorway, watching him quizzically with Dog in his arms. Crowley clears his throat, says, "When will he wake up?"

Adam says, "When do you want him to wake up?"

Crowley looks at him, and says in a low growl, "When he's ready."

Adam shrugs easily. "He's not yet. He's still too upset."

It always - jolts Crowley, reminders that Adam doesn't quite see the world the way the rest of them do, that he sees more. And he wants to know how upset Aziraphale is, exactly how he's upset, he wants to help but he can't do any of that. What he can do is wait until he's ready to wake up himself, and then, lucky them, they get to face the afterwards of what Gabriel did together.

No. He looks down at Aziraphale's loose hand on the bed. No, they are lucky. As long as they still have each other, the luck is enough to choke him.

"That bad angel," Adam says, rubbing under Dog's sleepy chin. "What're you going to do about him?"

"I'm going to kill him," Crowley says, because it's important that children understand that justice in this world is something that is made, not something that just happens.

Adam nods, and Dog gives a fanged doggy yawn, eyes closed and head back to allow Adam more of his throat for scratching. "Seems to me," Adam says slowly, as if thinking it through, "that he should get to kill him, really. If we're talking 'fair'."

Crowley looks at him, and then looks back at Aziraphale, laying where he was put on the bed, invisible wings relaxed back in sleep. He thinks about all the blood, all the blood, Aziraphale fading in and out in the car, vague and confused and waning, Aziraphale retching into the glove compartment and hurting himself with it, Aziraphale apologising as if his being butchered and dying was such an inconvenience to Crowley. And he thinks about Gabriel and his fucking smirk and his fucking certainty and his fucking self-satisfaction, yes, Crowley knows exactly what Adam means. Aziraphale doesn't need them to make him safe. Aziraphale can make his own decisions about how to guarantee his own safety.

"Yeah," he says, tired, tired. "Yeah, that sounds fair to me too."

*

A slow rising, in the dim; consciousness like an iceberg. There are only a few vague seconds of easing in before memory opens like an evil flower and Aziraphale wrenches up, breath sucking in, wings -

- he can hear Crowley but can't hear him over the panic -

- out and beating beating beating with the mad terror of trying to make them exist just by using them hard enough, body hunched small and wings pounding with more force than a swan breaks an arm with, it's only when he hears the contents of the bedside table clattering off the floor, paperwork cascading, that he realises - he realises -

"- alright angel you're alright angel you're alright angel -"

"Crowley," he says, wings fluttering, falling, and it comes out as a whimper, he doesn't understand how he's sitting on his bed but he doesn't care, holds his helpless arms out for him and if Crowley got whacked with his wings a bit he doesn't care, almost trips over himself getting back to the bedside and crawling on, wrapping his arms around Aziraphale while Aziraphale hunches his wings in and understands nothing, absolutely nothing, and clings to him like he's the only rock breaking the surface of a world of water. Aziraphale grips at him trying not to cry while Crowley folds him in close, a hand in his hair, Aziraphale feels Crowley's wings flexing and closing around his back as Crowley says low and broken, "You're alright, angel, you're alright, I've got you now, I've got you."

He holds there, breathing tight against Crowley's sharp breastbone, contained within the span of Crowley's wings, until he's got the worst of it under control, until the urge to cry has faded back from agony, until his shoulders can begin to unpick themselves and the fact of his wings seems solid, no longer something to fight for. Then he swallows, and lifts his head, and looks at Crowley, touches his cheek and is brave. "Am I dead? Are you dead?"

"Wh- no! No-one's dead. You're fine, angel, you're alright, I got you to Adam, he . . ."

"Oh," Aziraphale says, his memory of the last few hours is quite confused. "Yes." He looks at the window, where dawn is crawling slow across the rooftops of London. "I wondered if this is what happens to us after we die, that's all." he says. "Heaven for angels, sort of thing."

"You think this is what Heaven looks like?"

Sitting on Crowley's bed Aziraphale looks back at him, and manages a tight, tired smile. He says, "Yes."

Then he looks around at his wings, pulls one gently forwards to check on it, running a thumb along the outside of the outermost primary, not knowing . . . not knowing what he's supposed to feel. He wonders if they're still really his wings - the problem of Theseus' wings - but of course they are. Adam doesn't perform petty miracles the way they do, Adam bends reality itself, which makes these definitively his wings now.

Crowley says, "Angel . . ."

"I'm very tired," Aziraphale says, because he doesn't want to talk about any of it. He drops the wing, settles them back, but doesn't quite yet feel able to put them away. Crowley's are out as well, shapes like warmer shadows at his back as the dawn light slowly slithers into the room. "Didn't know I could feel this tired, honestly. Worse than stopping an apocalypse."

"Angel -"

"Got all crumpled sleeping in these clothes, must look a fright -"

"Angel -"

Oh, he really doesn't want to start actually dealing with anything that's happened yet. "What is it, Crowley, dear?"

Crowley's eyes are cool yellow in the half-light of dawn, his face very controlled. "What do you want to do about Gabriel?"

(running scarlet to his elbows, all his pale clothes ruined)

He looks away, closes his eyes for a second. "I suppose Heaven will deal with him," he says, fiddling with his cuffs. "Sandalphon saw what he did, and . . . and I suppose they're going to 'know' what changed his wings, now, when they realise."

Crowley says, "He's not in Heaven."

Aziraphale feels a slow, sick blanching at that, doesn't know what he feels about it, swallows while his face prickles ill. He tries to keep his voice steady. "Is he already in Hell?"

"He's in the bathroom," Crowley says. "Tied to a kitchen chair."

Aziraphale stares at him.

He walks fast, luckily he's already in socked feet as he passes Adam asleep on the living room sofa, Crowley at his back hiss-whispering, "Angel - angel -"

Aziraphale pushes open the bathroom door and stands there staring at Gabriel, gagged and glaring, hands flexing against the knots that if Adam put there, even he can't break.

(the grunts of effort against the back of his ear as he leaned against Aziraphale's shoulder for purchase to lever out the)

Aziraphale draws in a breath that doesn't seem to touch his lungs, turns and walks into the kitchen and walks around it twice while Crowley says low from the doorway, "We thought you should get to decide what happens to him."

It's not rage, it's worse than that, far more of it is fear than fury. "You cannot ask me to do this," he says in as low a snarl as he can manage, blinking too hard, he thinks the tears at least are of sheer rage, he's never been so angry with Crowley, his throat feels like it's trying to close itself. "You cannot ask me - you can't, it's not fair, I am not that good -"

"We can kill him if you don't want to."

"No you can't! You absolutely cannot, because -" He is not going to cry, good God he is ridiculous he is not going to cry. "- because I want to, God help me I want to, I want that flaming sword back so I can stab his stupid head clean off but-" His voice has dropped too guttural, he squeezes his eyes closed and then glares back at Crowley because he is so furious with him for putting him in this position. "But I can't, and it's not fair of you to do this do me Crowley -"

"'course you can kill him, or we can do it for you, what's he going to do?"

(blood running hot down his back to the floor of Heaven for the first time since)

"It's not about him, it's about - it has to mean something, don't you - if I got my wings torn out by some - it has to mean something, I have to be, I can't - I can't. I can't. I can't do this." He waves his hands, his head feels strange, bloodless, faint. "I can't do this. Get rid of him. I don't care where, just get rid of him. Don't kill him. Just - get rid of him."

He walks past him, back for the bedroom. From the sofa, Dog watches him, and Adam sleeps on.

In the bedroom Aziraphale leans against the wall and stares at the window, seeing nothing, heart a quick sick beat inside him. He realises in the discomfort of his lean that - his wings are still out, he forgot about them entirely. He stares at them, the long clean white lines of them luminous in the dim room, and it hurts to swallow because he knows how badly he wants Gabriel dead and if he still has them, it has to mean something. He can't be Gabriel. If he's as bad as him then he doesn't deserve any better than him, and it hurts like Hell because he doesn't think he is any better than him, the hatred chokes him. Some fucking angel, he has never been . . .

His gaze falls to the bed. He is so, so tired.

Finally, he lets his wings fade from this plane. He undresses, mostly, pyjamas just seem a bother, all he wants is to put his head down, drops his clothes onto the paperwork he's already knocked underfoot. He pulls the covers up, eyes closed. He's never felt tired like this in his life. The pillow is pure relief.

He hears the door open, knows it's Crowley, doesn't move. He thinks he's already asleep by the time Crowley sits on the edge of the bed, climbs in beside him, rousing him a little but only to nuzzle into Crowley's arms sliding around him, his kiss on his forehead.

"Sorry," Crowley mumbles, but Aziraphale's already asleep again.

*

He doesn't intend to wake up. Sleeping is better.

Occasionally he rises a little from sleep when Crowley moves around the room, the door opens and closes, when his body dips the mattress again. The most it does is give Aziraphale a moment to shift, to find a different place on his long hard body to lay against, and sigh back to sleep. He's no intention to wake. Waking is - he'd rather sleep.

The dreams are variable. Twice he wakes sucking cold breath in because he can feel Gabriel's breath on the back of his neck and he knows his sleeves are already bloody, or because he can see the pliers, dumb cold metal and just their existence wrenches his head up as if drowning. But Crowley is there, soothing and patient and safe, Crowley curls his wings around him, Crowley - he knows the danger is done but it still feels like Crowley protects him. He allows himself the fiction of it, it's easier than all of the nasty twisted truth. He closes his eyes and goes back to sleep.

For how long? He has no idea and doesn't care, this must be how Crowley accidentally misses a decade. Mostly he is warm and comfortable and the waking world is cold and harsh as hail, so he sleeps. Sometimes, half in and out and drifting, Crowley stroking his hair, or his arm, or his cheek, he feels something close enough to happiness.

The telephone rings in another room, Crowley rises from the bed. Aziraphale just goes back to sleep.

"Angel."

It takes a little work, he's quite solidly down.

"Angel . . ."

Acknowledging him means waking, he really doesn't want to . . .

"Angel, hey, Aziraphale . . ."

He opens his eyes, doesn't like that one bit and closes them again, makes a noise, why is he being woken.

"Hey," Crowley says softly, running the backs of his fingers over Aziraphale's cheek. "Newt and Anathema are on their way over. You going to get dressed? Say hi?"

Oh, what a bore.

He still feels dopey and half asleep sitting on the edge of the bed, blinking woozily at the way Crowley moves around the room, how fast he seems, how graceful, Aziraphale feels like a beached whale, movement so heavy and clumsy. Crowley hands him his clothes and it takes a moment for Aziraphale even to reach for them, to smile wearily for him. His voice sounds a little worn from lack of use; "Thank you, dear."

Crowley just looks at him, unreadable yellow eyes for a long moment, then leaves the room. Aziraphale looks at the clothes in his lap, thinks about all the getting up and pulling them on, thinks, What a bother. and the bed seems so inviting behind him, the mattress exerts gravity, he doesn't want to leave it. But Anathema and Newton are coming, and it would be rude not to greet them, and somehow that rouses him where nothing else could. He's far too tired to care about right or wrong at this point but it would kill him to be rude.

(actually it would kill him to have his wings hacked off and)

Dressing takes time, his body feels so heavy. When he plods to the doorway and finds Crowley just on his way back to the bedroom to check on him, sunglasses on, Crowley gives a strange strained smile to him, a strangely pressured hug, strokes the back of his neck. Aziraphale settles his cheek to the side of Crowley's neck, lets Crowley hold his tired body up, sighs there against his skin where it's safe.

Crowley says, "Alright?"

He honestly doesn't know what to say to that, too stupid with weariness to make much sense of it. Eventually, too tired for anything but the truth, he says, "I don't even know what that word would mean right now."

". . . no. Alright." Crowley strokes his back, squeezes him in closer for a second. "That's alright too."

He's sitting on the living room sofa feeling dazed and distant when Crowley gets up to answer the buzzer. He stands up when Anathema and Newton come in, good manners lifting a body that weighs as much as the world, and the smile is more or less genuine as Anathema says, "How long has it been," hugging Crowley before he can do something more cool and distant for a greeting, walking over to hug Aziraphale. She looks him in the eye as she approaches and he knows that she knows, and he's too tired to want to hide anything, feels pathetically grateful for the honesty of the sympathy in her eyes. They hug quite hard, and then he smiles at her a not very convincing promise that he's alright, and says, "Newton," accepting another more nervous hug, the dear boy.

"Do sit down," Aziraphale says, it's like he's listening to his own voice, one step to the side of himself. "Have you come all the way from Tadfield?"

"Thought we'd catch a show while we're here," Anathema says, sitting on the sofa next to where he's standing. "Hey, Newt, how about you go fetch us some coffee, take Crowley to help carry."

"I can make coffee here," Crowley says. "I have a machine."

"I can carry four anyway, they give you those cardboard trays -"

"Hey," Anathema says more firmly, "Newt, how about you and Crowley go fetch us some coffee. I'll have a macchiato."

". . . oh. Okay."

Crowley glances at Aziraphale, then says, "Fine. Back soon." He kisses Aziraphale on the side of his head - he's too slow to really react to it - then slinks off for the door that effortlessly elegant way of his, saying, "Come on Newt, I know a place . . ."

When the door closes, they're alone, and Aziraphale can't really avoid looking at Anathema's eyes, the way she's looking at him. He sighs and sits next to her, smoothing his trousers, and she touches his hand - Americans do things like that, though he's lived amongst the English for long enough that he's alarmedly aware of it - and she says, a little thickly, "Adam told us what happened. I'm so sorry."

He smiles. "It's alright, my dear, none of it was your fault."

"No, but," she swallows, "I should have seen something more - I should have known, I wish I'd - I wish I could have warned you. Sorry. There doesn't seem much point to having stupid visions if I can't even help people."

Memory stirs, and he rubs his eyes, his shoulders slump. "Oh. You did warn me, I just . . . in the bookshop, when you told us the visions had started, you said to me . . . I didn't know if you heard yourself saying it. You told me to 'watch my back'." He feels a bit sick again, swallows. "And I thought you meant . . . well, I clearly didn't understand what you meant, or . . . clearly," he mumbles, and fiddles with the fabric of his trousers at his knees, and he just feels embarrassed, more than anything. As if it's worse than Gabriel breaking him that everyone knows that he did.

He feels it as if Gabriel is the one saying it: How stupid.

". . . I didn't . . . no, I didn't know I . . . God, that was so stupid, if I'd known I could - I'm sorry it was so - I'm sorry."

He pats her hand because she seems so genuinely upset about it and he honestly doesn't want that. "It's alright. It's really not something you should blame yourself for. Please, you don't need to be upset on my account."

"Well I am," she says, sniffing hard, angry as much as upset. "It's because we stopped the apocalypse from happening, isn't it? That - stupid angel, I could - I could punch him in the -"

The smile feels a little truer, certainly fonder. She looks at him as if really trying to see something in his face, says tentatively, "How are you doing?"

". . . I really don't know." He's been asleep, so he has very little sense of how he is. "Tired, mostly."

". . . how's Crowley doing?"

That - stops him. His mouth closes, and he looks at her for a long blank second, and then says, "I - have no idea." It prickles in his stomach, the way Crowley feels things, and Aziraphale's been utterly unaware of it for - how long? "What day is it?" he says uncertainly, looking to the window. Rainclouds are gathering, it's day, but he doesn't know when it is. "I've been - sleeping, mostly, lost track of . . ."

"It's . . ." She looks at him and he sees that she understands what the question really means. She says, "It happened six days ago."

"Oh," he says. "That's not too bad, actually, I thought it would be much . . ." He's never slept for six days before. He can see how Crowley gets into it, once you get a really good sleep going it's so nice to just continue it. "Six days," he murmurs, looking at his hands. "I don't know. I don't know how he's been. I've been asleep."

It feels shockingly selfish. Poor Crowley, left on his own to all intents and purposes, dealing alone with whatever he's feeling, while Aziraphale just ignored it and him and everything. Oh dear. He really isn't a very good angel.

Anathema murmurs, "Ane angel and ae demon . . ."

His mouth twitches the smile. "Yes. We seem rather to be going out of our way to avoid that."

"I didn't know it meant - that. I really didn't."

"Yes. We didn't either." No-one could have guessed that they would have to talk about the brutal bloody mess of Aziraphale's amputated wings but Anathema is right, they have to. He's going to have to be brave, and sit down with Crowley, oh Crowley, left on his own and feeling . . . his poor Crowley. Yes, he needs to talk to him, the poor dear creature. He must have been heartbroken, and alone for it.

He smiles for her, quieter and more natural. "Thank you, my dear. You've actually been more help than you know."

Crowley and Newt return with the coffee just as the rain starts falling. Crowley goes immediately into the kitchen to pour Aziraphale's vanilla latte into a proper porcelain cup because he really can't bear those cardboard things, perfect, patient, loving Crowley, Aziraphale touches his arm as he hands him the cup, holds his eye, the smile almost hurts him; "Thank you, dear."

He presses his arm. Crowley looks him in the eye, and nods only slightly, and sits beside him, close enough for their hips to touch, their arms. Aziraphale feels, more than the sick lightness of his lost wings, the sheer weight of his love for Crowley, his better gravity, and he's so nervous every breath trembles in his throat but he knows it'll be alright between them. Somehow, through all the centuries and loneliness and chaos and awfulness, it always comes alright between them.

*

Crowley sees Newt and Anathema downstairs, sort of has to, Anathema has the cuff of his jacket sleeve dragged tight in one hand. "Look after him," she says, demands, looking him in the eye this weird fervent way, and he knows she had a talk with Aziraphale while he was out with Newt. He doesn't know what was said but he's grateful for it in a way that hurts the throat, he already feels the difference in Aziraphale, the quickening of his presence, as if he's beginning to wake up.

"Yeah," he says, and tries to feel only the good of it, not the guilt, that looking after Aziraphale shouldn't involve the angel getting his wings ripped out on Crowley's watch.

"Look after yourself." she says just as firmly, and hugs him in the doorway, before dashing out with her arms over her head for the car, the rain beating down so fast there's an ankle-high mist on the street. Newt nods to him awkwardly and Crowley nods back, the English are easier, less touchy-feely. Then Newt hurries out after her and Crowley heads back upstairs, where his angel is waiting for him.

The fear, opening his own front door, is that Aziraphale has already gone back to bed, that Aziraphale is once more an inaccessible cocoon, that Crowley can't do anything. But the angel is standing in the window, hands folded neat behind his back, watching the rain fall. He looks back at Crowley and smiles, and there's a lot in that smile, it's not that Aziraphale tries to convey emotion all that much, it's just there, all of it, right there on his face every time he looks at Crowley. Crowley walks over, casually as he can, as if all of this is normal, and stands next to him. The rain is silent against the double-glazing. Just dots of complex light on the glass.

He says, gloomily, because he knows they can't avoid it, "'Ae difficulte conversation about wings'."

"Mm. It's probably for the best. Afterwards - Crowley, my love -" He touches Crowley's arm and Crowley pulls his gaze from the rain to look at Aziraphale, who smiles back a sweet weary hopefulness. "- may we get really quite uproariously drunk?"

"That's the best idea I've ever heard," Crowley says, and Aziraphale smiles for him, his gaze softening on Crowley's eyes. He still looks tired, which isn't normal on an angel, but he looks so much more awake than he was, the slackness has gone from his face, the dreamy dullness from his gaze. And his hand finds Crowley's, a little shyly, years and still he finds shyness to offer Crowley as if to confirm how much he means it as he says to Crowley's hand, their fingers loosely caught together, "I wanted to say thank you, first of all. I haven't yet, I've been - well, asleep. But thank you. You saved my life, and you looked after me, and - thank you, Crowley, dear."

Crowley's jaw clenches, flexes. "Didn't do much looking after, didn't do - anything. I haven't done anything."

"You got me to Adam. And you were there while I was - sleeping it off."

They both know he had no physical need to sleep it off, it was misery that put him in that bed and Crowley's never going to blame him for it. "I couldn't do anything, I was just - there -"

"That was really all I needed, though." Aziraphale squeezes his hand, looks up at him. "Crowley, it's all I need. Please just accept that I'm grateful because I really thought I was going to die and - I didn't, and all the rest - we'll sort that out as we get to it but I'm just glad I still get to be here, with you. I really am grateful for that, Crowley."

It's hard to keep his voice even, looking at him, he carried him running with blood and coming apart in his arms; his voice comes low, and far too rough; "I am too."

Aziraphale's thumb strokes the back of his hand, and he smiles. Crowley strains a smile back, takes his sunglasses off and pockets them, clears his throat. "Alright," he says. "You're welcome. And thank you for not dying, while we're at it."

"Oh, well, that was mostly up to you but you're very welcome. Now - what did you do with Gabriel?"

There's a flicker of unease in Aziraphale's eyes, and Crowley shrugs jaggedly. "He's in Brighton with Zophiel and Ramiel," he says. "Well, you said not to kill him, and if anyone needs training up on how to live on Earth, I mean, it's not like he can go to Hell, they'd tear him limb from limb -"

That - raises an image he wishes it hadn't, but Aziraphale just draws a breath in and nods, slowly. "Yes. That was - a good idea. Yes. Thank you."

"I don't get," Crowley says, his jaw's hurting him again, it wants to be mostly fang, "why you didn't want us to kill him. He's dangerous. It wouldn't just be revenge, it - he's a fucking psychopath."

"The thing is, he isn't," Aziraphale says, eyes falling to the window, the unpredictable paths of the raindrops. "He's just bad, he's just angry and hateful and - violent, and that's different. Psychopaths can't change, but we - angels, demons - we can change, we have to, Crowley, I've changed, you changed me. So he can stop being bad. But I can't . . . I can't be the one who - I'm not that good, you know I'm not, I was a - rubbish angel, frankly. I can't help him, I don't ever want to - look at him again. But someone should." His shoulders slump, and he looks back to Crowley from the rain. "You must understand why I couldn't kill him. It . . . he wanted to kill me because . . . I think there were lots of reasons, but a lot of it was because he thought that I was worse than he was and getting away with pretending that I wasn't and I deserved it. And if I killed him it would make me just as bad as him and I - I would make him right. He'd sort of - backed me into a corner, like an utter bastard, I had to be better than him whether I wanted to or not, just to make - to make what he did to me - oh, I can't find the words." He squeezes the bridge of his nose, eyes tight closed. "To make it mean what it meant. To - honour, the wrongness of what he did. To at least not drag myself down to his level. I don't suppose it makes much sense, but it matters to me."

". . . I don't know why you think you're not good enough to do something you literally did, angel."

"I don't know if it was for any of the right reasons though." Aziraphale sighs, smiles faintly for Crowley. "But, my dear - I know you're thinking exactly the same thing. You really could have killed him, I know you wanted to, I just walked off and - you really could have. But I asked you not to and you didn't, and . . . I think you understand." He watches his thumb stroking the back of Crowley's hand. "Maybe we're both better and worse than we think we are."

Crowley thinks about it, still holding Aziraphale's hand, he's not letting go until the angel does. He says, "Do you think your wings would turn black too if you did it?"

". . . I hadn't really thought about that," Aziraphale says ruefully, tilting his head with his eyebrows tightening. "The thing is, and I don't understand it, nothing does seem to turn them black. I've done some things, Crowley, you know I have. Lots of angels were cast from Heaven but I was the first who walked out. And that should have . . . I've never understood why that wasn't enough." Nervously, "I don't see how it's any different from Lucifer himself, it . . ."

"Weelll . . . thing is, Lucifer got thrown out of Heaven because he had a bit of an ego problem which I never thought you shared until you compared yourself to Satan himself." Crowley casts Aziraphale a raised eyebrow and Aziraphale gives him a lowered eyebrow back. Crowley shakes his hand a little. "When you left Heaven you did it - you did it to give humanity the second flaming sword you ever gave them. You wanted them to live. You were being kind." He remembers the first day he met him like he could still touch it, still feel the wall under his feet, the wind against his skin, still smell the first rain. Aziraphale looks back at him, face softened open now, accepting Crowley's words as he did the very first time they spoke. Crowley shrugs. "She knows what you did but maybe She cares about why you did it more."

Aziraphale just looks at him, for a long, long time, then he says, "If She cares about that . . ."

Crowley looks away. Aziraphale holds his hand, says, "Crowley, you haven't done anything that deserved -"

"I've done some things." Crowley says, low and dark and true.

"We've both done some things, you did what you had to, you couldn't have survived Hell without - this is what I don't understand, I've never understood, bugger ineffable, why? She -" He stops. Crowley feels the freeze right down to the way Aziraphale is holding his fingers. Aziraphale says, voice oddly low and flat, "It's like She wanted us on opposite sides."

"For very good reason." Crowley mutters.

"Perhaps not for the reasons we think," Aziraphale says. "We know why Gabriel Fell, he clearly wanted to do that long before he did it. Have you ever done anything like that? Are you capable of that?"

"I killed Ligur."

"You had to. And you did it as neatly as you could, you hardly took pleasure in it."

Grimly, "I've done some things."

"Really? How many angels' wings did you tear out at the root?"

Crowley jerks his head to stare at him at that and Aziraphale is looking back hard, not afraid, almost shaking on his certainty. "If that's what bad looks like then you're not it." he says, a stamped foot in the form of a voice. "He could have just killed me, he wanted to do that. Crowley his arms were - he was bloody to the elbows by the time he was done." His voice has thickened and he swallows but he never moves his eyes from Crowley's. "You have never done that and you have never been that and - what does it mean to you? That his wings changed? Because I don't, I can't - get it all right in my head, I know he's a bad angel but you're a good demon, he's on a different level to you, you and him aren't the same so why, how, what does it mean that you both have - it makes no sense. It just doesn't make sense."

Crowley's throat is shaking inside him, too aware of the words that want to come up, the words he's never wanted to say in front of him, admitting to the weakness of wanting - but Aziraphale's got nothing to hide behind after what Gabriel did to him, what they both saw him reduced to, how is it fair if Crowley won't meet him there, if Crowley demands defences Aziraphale can't? Neither of them wanted to have ae difficulte conversation about wings but now they're here so - fuck it, basically. Just, fuck it.

"I know," he says, and it comes out sounding not remotely normal, and he clears his throat hard. "I know," he croaks. "I've been - checking. To see if they - changed. Because I'm not, I'm not . . . I'm not that." It comes out almost as a whisper, he didn't believe it until he said it and now . . . "I'm not that," he says again, almost awed to know that it's true, that Aziraphale sees it too. "I'm not."

He thinks himself capable of a cruelty that in honesty, he knows he isn't. And to admit it is such a shock, he stares at Aziraphale who only smiles as if proud and Crowley swallows down the knot of black blood in his throat, all the bitterness and nastiness and viciousness he thought he could do and be, he thought he'd make people suffer for taking Aziraphale from him but - not like that. Before Gabriel did it he couldn't have conceived of doing something that cruel. He couldn't do what Gabriel did to Aziraphale to his worst enemy.

He knows that to be true. He had his worst enemy tied up in the bathroom, he had every opportunity and every motive, but . . .

"But they're still black," he says, shrugging one rolling shoulder. "So She doesn't care. So it doesn't matter if I'm good or not in the end, She doesn't want me either way."

Aziraphale looks at him, quiet, reading his face, holding his hand. Then he presses his fingers, says, "May I see your wings?"

"- what? Here?" Crowley feels suddenly - startled, alarmed, defensive. "Now?"

"May I?"

He looks so open, Aziraphale has made 'unthreatening' into an art form. Crowley's gaze flits nervous around the room as if some piece of furniture might help him, says, "Why?"

"Just to see them. Please? You can say no."

Crowley mouths noises, can't make words, doesn't know how to refuse after what Aziraphale has just been through. So he drops his hand and looks at the wall and with a flick of his shoulder blades his wings bristle out, backwards, broad enough for the outermost feathers to brush the cool glass of the window.

Aziraphale smiles a 'thank you', lifts a cautious hand, says, "May I?"

Crowley shrugs, doesn't look at him. Aziraphale touches the outermost primary as gently as if stroking silence out of a harp, and with a delicate stroke of his thumb and fingers spreads the wing up, the feathers fanning out, and Crowley looks out of the window, not at him.

Aziraphale tuts, softly, "The state of these, Crowley, you really ought to let me groom them someday." The backs of his fingers run over the feathers, Crowley feels all squirmy inside, doesn't know how to admit even to himself that it feels nice. "I've never understood . . . I mean, I get the overall 'black' thing but they're not really, when you look at them. There's this lovely green sheen where the light edges them, almost teal, almost blue along here, and look, it's - purple, along the outer vane . . ." Crowley can hear the smile in his voice. Aziraphale's fingertips pick out precisely, "Indigo - violet. Crowley, you have a rainbow on your back."

Crowley is trying to scowl out of the window. He is aware that it probably looks more like a pout.

"They're lovely," Aziraphale says, one last run of his fingers along Crowley's feathers as if he really is playing a harp, and then his hand falls. "It's such a warm, soft colour. Heaven is all so harsh." He touches Crowley's jaw, says, "Crowley, you do believe me, I think they're beautiful."

Crowley sniffs, and with a shrug the wings are gone. "She doesn't."

"Why do you care so much what She thinks? We don't know what She's thinking, that's the whole problem with - with -"

"Don't you dare say 'ineffable'."

"Well, it is." Aziraphale says. He folds his arms and looks at Crowley, trying to read his eyes while Crowley is avoiding looking back at him. He says, "Do you think - am I right in thinking that - do you think that I would love you more if your wings were white?"

Crowley says nothing but he knows that shows on his face, he feels it like paint hitting the skin, the way he whites and then darkens, blood filling his face buzzing with shame. Aziraphale hangs back on his heels, squeezes his hands into nervous fists, says and it shakes, ". . . what am I doing wrong that you think I could love you more?"

And that, that bounces Crowley's heart off the floor like rubber, all pretence gone, he says, "No - angel - no, that's not - it's nothing you've done -"

"Then - why, I don't understand - Crowley why does it matter what colour our wings are, I don't understand -" And then something falls in his eyes, and he say, "Oh, oh, I do understand . . ."

". . . when Gabriel barged in waving that feather at you," Crowley says, because he knows, they both know, and Aziraphale nods, begins lifting a hand to cover his mouth and drops it, says, "Crowley, but . . . it was wrong of me. It was only -"

"Conditioning."

". . . yes. The fear they . . . in Heaven, afterwards." They both know which 'afterwards' he means. "We were all afraid. We knew . . . we knew what disobedience meant. In Hell it must have been shame, for us it was always, it was always fear. It's no reason to be good, is it, fear." He looks down. "It doesn't matter that I know it's a silly thing to be afraid of now, after all I've done. The fear's still there." He shrugs. "Well, 'silly' is my speciality, isn't it."

"Kindness." Crowley says roughly. "Love. That's your specialty."

Aziraphale looks into his eyes, startled, and then something twists behind his gaze. "You saved my life," he says, as if he's a bit cross with Crowley for forgetting it. "And you were there with me for days on end when I couldn't even open my eyes. If kindness and love make an angel, Crowley -"

Silence. They look at each other. Crowley's throat is full of - God, all kinds of crap it feels like, rusty nails and a rubber bung and chewed-up broken glass, but he feels - just seeing Aziraphale alive and alight after it felt -

It felt like it didn't matter that Adam gave him his wings back, because it felt like Gabriel had bled the life out of him after all.

Aziraphale touches his hand, Crowley sees the nervous flutter of his throat, and Aziraphale looks him in the eye as he says, "What was Falling like?"

In six thousand years he's never asked that question. No-one's ever asked Crowley that question. And Crowley can answer it in excruciating first-person agonised detail, every second of the shock and horror and torture of it, the depth of the cruelty of it, soul-deep -

And he turns his hand under Aziraphale's so he can take his hand in his, and it's hard to keep his voice steady as he says too low, "You know, now."

Aziraphale's eyebrows lift, his face too open, the shock before it - catches, tightens, Crowley sees it in his eyes before Aziraphale puts his arms around him, tucking Crowley's head against his neck with a hand, holding him tight and whispering so meant, "Oh Crowley, my poor Crowley -"

It takes him a moment to think to put his hands on his back, to blink, to say, "Why are you comforting me?"

Aziraphale got his wings torn out of him less than a week ago and Crowley got flung out of Heaven thousands of years ago, the need for the hug is a bit lopsided here -

"Because no-one's ever comforted you for it," Aziraphale says, squeezing him. "My poor Crowley. Oh Lord, Crowley, I'm just so sorry -"

It twists in his throat where all the bad things are lodged, apparently there's a fishing hook in there too, dragging it all up. "Come on, angel," he says gruffly, rubbing Aziraphale's back. "Fuck sake, this whole stupid conversation was meant to make you feel better, this isn't helping you -"

"It is, a bit," Aziraphale says, cheek to cheek and squeezing him, Crowley can feel the smile on his face, before it fades. "It's just, I'm not - I - Crowley, I'm not -"

His cheek is twitching against Crowley's. Crowley catches the back of his head in a hand, peels the hug apart enough to see his face, and Aziraphale swallows hard, blinking hard, fighting to get the words out. "I keep remembering it," he says, too deep and uneven and Crowley pulls him back in, kisses the crown of his head, he knows, he knows, he's doing better now but the fucking millennia of flashbacks he knows are behind him and ahead of Aziraphale -

"I know, angel," he whispers, rocking them a little, side to side, holding him so tight and all he wants with all his soul is to soothe. "I know. But you'll be alright. I'll be here. I'll always be here."

"Yes," Aziraphale breathes hard into his shoulder, like it's the only thing he wants.

"I'll always be here, you'll always have me, going absofuckinglutely nowhere, have to pry me off you -"

Aziraphale clings to him and says, "Is this the part where we get really drunk yet."

"Yes, Jesus, please."

*

They are on their somethingth bottle of wine. Aziraphale is laying more or less face-down on the sofa, Crowley sitting on the floor, legs sprawled, back to the sofa so Aziraphale can unthinkingly comb at his hair with one hand, glass dangling from the other. "I just, I really couldn't love you more," he says, he really hopes Crowley believes him. "Not if they were - pink or stripy or -"

Crowley swallows his mouthful and raises his glass as if toasting himself. "A light shade of tartan!"

"Yes! Though they would look rather splendid like that." They clink glasses, clumsily enough that it may indeed be a miracle that they don't break them. "But I like you just as you are." He strokes at Crowley's hair, warm with wine and smiling behind his head. "My perfect perfect Crowley."

"And I'd love you if yours turned black," Crowley promises, dropping his head back to one shoulder to awkwardly look up at Aziraphale, who blinks drowsy with wine down at him. "But She'll never change yours. She knows who you really are." His smile is slow, sleepy, snake-like. "My angel, aren't you?"

Aziraphale rests his head on his own bent arm, feeling rather full of wine for co-ordinating neck muscles, and says, "D'you know, my dear, I really don't think She ever will change them, not either of them. Ours. I mean," he stops, holds a 'just a minute' finger up for Crowley so he'll wait for Aziraphale to take a fortifying drink, and return his head to his arm, "I mean, Ramiel would never have come to us if we were both angels, would she? And Zophiel would never have come to us if I'd Fallen and we were both demons. They came because we were both and that makes us safe."

"Alright," Crowley says, in the tone of someone willing to go along with a point for the sake of drunken conversation.

"So, so. All those other angels and demons who came, and they all - sorted themselves out, all those little groups spreading out and no-one gives a fig for what colour someone's wings are - I mean, down here, Earth, on Earth Crowley, it doesn't matter, does it? That's the, that's the point. Of what we're doing. Making a place where it doesn't matter. And maybe that was Her point all along. To make us, make us learn to do better than just black or white. So maybe She has to, had to put us on opposite sides. So we could fall in love." He look at Crowley's drowsy but intent eyes, the pleased, intrigued way he's watching him, and Aziraphale smiles at him besotted because he's his Crowley and he gets to keep him forever and it's just marvellous, it really is. "And we could prove that opposite sides don't matter a damn. Crowley can I just say that that is a very pretty expression you are wearing and I would very, really like to kiss you right now."

"Yes, good," Crowley says, catching Aziraphale's cheek, twisting on the floor so he can press his mouth up to his, mmf, lovely. He breaks back, looks at Aziraphale's eyes, runs his thumb over his cheek. "That's nice," he says, "I like that, hope that's true. S'probably better than whatever Her plan actually is, She should just use yours."

"About you being pretty and the kissing?"

"No, angel, the - being more than just a pair of wings thing." And then his face blanks with a deep internal horror and Aziraphale feels the flinch of it too, the way that a pair of wings really can matter, but he knows Crowley didn't mean it like that. So he kisses him on the nose and lays his head back on his own arm again sleepily, mumbles there, "We can't fuss about what colour someone's wings are here. We need to make it not matter b'cause it's not about being on their side or their side, s'about being on our side. And our side is both."

"Yes." Crowley says, stroking his hair. "Yes, yes it is. Good angel."

"Mm," Aziraphale says, smiling into his arm, because that feels nice, the stroking and the words. "How much have we drunk?"

"Oh, lots."

"Still not enough," Aziraphale mumbles into his arm, holding his glass out for a refill, because he still remembers . . .

Crowley has to hold Aziraphale's weaving hand steady with one of his to pour. "Alright," he says, and burps delicately, and Aziraphale gives an exaggerated sigh into his arm. "'scuse me and all that. Tonight we are going to drink a tremendous lot, and then tomorrow -"

"Not tomorrow," Aziraphale says, rubbing his forehead against his forearm, trying to burrow deeper into someplace where tomorrow is never going to happen.

"Tomorrow we have to do the adult coping thing where we're not just very very drunk."

"Oh, must we."

"Don't - don't do the eyes. Won't work. We've got to. We've got to, angel." Crowley strokes Aziraphale's cheek with one crooked knuckle. "Got to," he murmurs, and Aziraphale blinks at him sadly, and nods.

"Yes," he says, immediately feeling a lot more sober. "S'pose we do."

"Thought - we talked about taking a, going on holiday. While back."

"Mm? Yes, we did." He smiles a bit remembering that, somehow feeling fond about the squabbling, impossible to get them to agree on a destination they both actually want to spend any time in. "But then there were Ramiel and Zophiel and Andrealphus and Penemuel -"

"D'you remember all of them? In order?"

"'cking paperwork, Crowley," Aziraphale says. "What do you think all that fucking paperwork is for?"

Crowley swallows his mouthful and says, "God you're sexy when you swear."

Aziraphale looks drowsily at him and says, "Increasingly I think I have no blessed clue what that word means."

"Holiday," Crowley says. "You wanted the South Downs, didn't you?"

"Mm, or the Lakes, but you wanted - New York or - God, Las Vegas." Rubbing his forehead into the sofa to try to erase the thought from his mind. "The Downs would be nice though. Could visit Ramiel and . . ."

Gabriel is there. Aziraphale feels very aware of the individual bones in his spine, and the flexed joints of his wings.

"We don't have to go there," Crowley says in a hurry. "The Lakes, be lovely, rains a lot, must be good."

"No, I always fancied the Downs, I'm not -" Afraid of him. Letting him stop me. Broken. "But, but Crowley m'dear, we can't agree where to go anyway so it hardly -"

"No, look, this is me agreeing, wherever you want. Where do you want to go? The Downs? Brilliant, love . . . chalk, me. Love a bit of chalk. Be great. The Downs. Let's go. Find a nice Airbnb, bet the pubs are good -"

Aziraphale watches him with his cheek pressed to his own arm on the sofa, and nudges at Crowley's cheek with his knuckles. "D'you really mean it?"

"Yeah. You're probably right about Las Vegas, definitely one of ours."

"Theirs," he murmurs, automatically. Then he just looks at Crowley for some time, his sharp handsome face, his keen yellow eyes hopefully watching his. And he knows he's only really being indulged because of what Gabriel did to ("Chisel." huffed with the effort of it at the back of his head, and Sandalphon's hand shaking as he reached for) him but -

But at heart it's just Crowley trying to tell him that he loves him, and Aziraphale's whole heart tries to clench in and split open at the same time, he clumsily aims his glass at the coffee table and Crowley jolts to take it off him to help at the same time that Aziraphale catches his jaw up because he wants to kiss the darling man silly but perhaps wine has undone his co-ordination a little, as what he mostly does is swing off the sofa and with a bump into Crowley's lap, arms around his neck, Crowley holding both glasses of wine fixed by the base on the coffee table and staring at them in apparent disbelief that nothing spilled.

"Oh," Aziraphale says. "I fell."

They are both very drunk; it seems so very funny. Aziraphale still hasn't stopped laughing when Crowley's hands lace behind the back of his head to lift him up into a kiss, and another, Aziraphale finding his cheek with a palm, eyes closed, heart trembling its flutter of please please please please please -

This forever, exactly this forever, up in the stars after the Earth has finally burned away, alone out in space when there is nothing else left - one day there will be nothing left, not even stars, emptiness and silence and still out there in the unending dark Crowley will kiss him and that will be the only light in all of creation and it will be enough.

Crowley's nose presses his cheek, he sighs there, and Aziraphale's thumb strokes his jaw, he keeps his eyes closed. He swallows, says, "The Downs would be lovely." He strokes his jaw, and allows himself to be held. "Thank you, Crowley."

They'll go back to bed soon. It won't be the same, though, he doesn't want to close his eyes and shut the world out just to shut out the memory of it. He can live with the memory of it if he has to, in Crowley's lap and putting his legs to sleep, arms around him, breathing slow. That's the thing; Aziraphale doesn't want to forsake the world, if it means forsaking Crowley too.

*

Crowley wants to get them out of London as quickly as possible without making the rush too obvious, without making it seem like Aziraphale is in need of being bundled from the scene with, with - unseemly, that's the word he's looking for. A very Aziraphalean word. Unseemly haste. He doesn't want to give the impression that Aziraphale can't cope and is broken and needs hustling away from the eyes of others. The order of the day is reaching for normality, even if it strains.

And it does strain. Crowley's already had to call Penemuel to ask her to mind the bookshop, telling her only that Gabriel came after them again and it all got a bit nasty and he's no danger to anyone now, but Aziraphale could probably do with a break. Gabriel really is no danger to anyone now, Adam literally clipped his wings, Crowley stared to see the ugly slice through the blackened pinions, he knows it works more on the metaphysical level of stunting power that Gabriel can't be trusted to wield but he felt weird in the stomach, not exactly as bitterly satisfied as he'd thought he would, to see the visible evidence of it. Probably it reminded him too much - oh Heaven, everything reminds him too much, it's not only Aziraphale who needs the break, he just . . . he wants no-one to know what was done to Aziraphale, he knows how it hurts him and he wants to shield him from all of the world, but he wants everyone to know to be gentle with him, he wants all three realms to hold their breath when they touch him, to understand all the fault lines cast in the paper-fine china of his heart, the way it could break.

So they don't hightail it the very first morning Aziraphale actually gets out of the bed of his own accord, he says he'll need a bathing suit anyway but Savile Row turns out to be a fucking horrendous idea, the angel can't bear to have anyone at his back, they don't even need to be close, if he can hear someone walking behind him on the pavement he's tense and sparky, startling easily, hands nervous on each other and unconsciously hurrying his pace. And this is London. There's nowhere to go where there isn't someone else walking up the same street as you.

The only person he can bear to have at his back is Crowley, who says nothing but escorts him back to the Bentley at the rear, and they don't talk about it - Crowley thinks they won't talk about it - but when they get back to the flat Aziraphale locks himself into the bathroom and cries so hard Crowley can hear him, it's the fucking worst sound in all of creation, he wants to start banging his own head against the wall just so he can't hear him and he can feel something stronger than exactly how bad it feels that Aziraphale shut himself away to do it -

It's the first time he's cried from it. Aziraphale is easily brought to the edge of tears but can usually tamp himself down again (Crowley and Aziraphale both think of the other as the 'emotional one' in the relationship), and of course - this, he's got a right to cry after this but that what brought him to it wasn't the fact of it or the memory of it but just that Gabriel has taken from him something as fundamental to Aziraphale's Aziraphaleness as a casual walk in London and what's fucking worst is that the thing Crowley's most frantic about is that in the middle of it Aziraphale doesn't want Crowley there to help him with it and how is he managing to make the most traumatic thing that's ever happened to Aziraphale all about him -

But Aziraphale doesn't cut him off, not want him there, he just seems to need to get the worst done in private before he opens the door again, still wet-eyed and sniffing, arms automatically out for Crowley who moves immediately from standing dumbly in the hallway feeling so bad he mostly feels numb to wrapping him up so close and tight it's like he's got him encoiled. "- sorry -" Aziraphale gets out, very wobbly, and Crowley squeezes him in rubbing his back with his entire forearms, whispering, "Don't be sorry don't be sorry it's okay it's okay -"

"I honestly didn't know I would do that. It's only -" His voice jumps and bounces, seems to have no solid ground to stand on. "It's not that it hurt it's that I was - I couldn't move, I couldn't move, I couldn't move -"

"I know, I know angel -" He doesn't know what to say, what the fuck do you say?

- what the fuck did he want said to him, when he was pitiful and burnt and shocked dumb and wretched for the first time in Hell? He knows what Aziraphale means, it's not the pain, the memory of pain fades surprisingly quickly, it's that it was done, the intention behind the doing of it, the helplessness of being at the mercy of an infinitely more powerful force when it showed no mercy at all. He tries to imagine, back in the pit of it, in the sulphur and screaming of Hell's first formation, what did he need?

. . . the image comes; gentle hands finding him, the feel of being loved in the midst of it, just a little softness in a world that seemed to contain none at all, the promise of some future other than the present in front of him. And he holds his angel, and if anyone had told him then that this would be his future it would only have sounded like more cruelty, the lie of it; it wasn't conceivable, then, that something as good as Aziraphale could exist for him. What he didn't even know he needed after the Fall was for Aziraphale to be Aziraphale for him. Now they both know better, and maybe what Aziraphale needs is for Crowley to just be Crowley for him.

He presses him in tight, tight, eyes closed to his hair, hisses at his ear, "You're safe now. I've got you now. It gets better now. It gets easier. It will get easier. Just breathe. Just breathe for me, angel . . ."

So they need to get out of London pretty fucking sharpish, anyway.

Crowley finds them a cottage, miraculous how all the rest of the summer's bookings wither away into cancellations for them. And he manages his own not-okayness, his own sense of helplessness, that Crowley was useless, irrelevant, that when the worst came for Aziraphale Crowley was right next to him and pointless. He's trying to deal with it, trying not to let it show, he's not supposed to be the one suffering but when he sees Aziraphale hurting he doesn't know how to not hurt like fucking crazy too.

When Haniel comes over to be taught how to water the plants (he's the best at following orders of their current crop of defectors, and so literal in his approach to life that Crowley knows exactly where he is with him when it comes to specifying exactly how many drops of feed go in exactly how much water) Aziraphale hides in the bathroom again like he doesn't want to be seen, like a leper, like his ugly lopped-off wings still show. "Just more orchids in there, just use the same stuff." Crowley says offhandedly, and gets rid of him as quickly as he can.

When he knocks and opens the door Aziraphale's sitting on the edge of the bath looking small and guilty, and when Crowley walks over at the automatic urge to put his arms around him and kiss him on the top of his head, Aziraphale mumbles to Crowley's chest, "I think a holiday really would be nice."

Somewhere where no-one knows him, and he has some time to regather himself, to feel stronger again, to feel like more than the ugly open wounds where the living tendon and bone was torn out of him. He puts an arm around Crowley's waist, leans his ear to his chest, closes his eyes. Crowley rubs his shoulders and thinks that if he ever changes his mind about his own capacity for cruelty, he knows exactly where Gabriel is, he knows every bit of him he's going to rip out of him, he'll make him die in pieces -

(He feels sick thinking about it. He knows he won't. He knows Aziraphale will forgive him for still thinking about it, sometimes, though.)

They load up the Bentley with suitcases and books, Aziraphale's sunhat perched jauntily on the box of records on the back seat. They drive out of London in sunshine and showers, both at once sometimes, Aziraphale craning to look out of all the car's windows.

"There'll be a rainbow, somewhere," he says.

After all that, Crowley thinks, there fucking better be.

*

The Downs are beautiful; rolling green hills, the undulating lines of chalk paths like the spine of an uncoiled snake. The cottage is charming, sixteenth-century, all beams in the ceilings and wood polished by centuries of hands, Aziraphale knows that Crowley chose it because he thought Aziraphale would like it and he does. It's almost a pity it's summertime, the fireplace looks so inviting. But the garden is all foxgloves and honeysuckle, rich with bees, a downhill walk from the back gate to the sea. The wind blusters in off the waves, everything smells salted clean, and finally he starts feeling a little cleaner himself as well. He feels the breeze even in the invisible feathers of his wings.

It's a ten minute walk to the village which doesn't have much more than a pub and a post office, but they have the car if they feel the need for more than that. Little things are exciting, being in a different bed, how long has it been since Aziraphale used any bed but Crowley's? The sheets are white, the mattress softer than Crowley's, their bodies so naturally roll to each other that Aziraphale gives up on trying to read when gravity just pulls him in to Crowley's side. He wakes that first morning to the sound of gulls, and Crowley mumbling in his sleep to his ribs.

Aziraphale doesn't know what the protocol for surviving a near-death experience is, doesn't think he has a book covering it, but, he says that evening over wine on the cottage's patio, the sea ahead a spangled purpling cloth laid out to the horizon between the cliff's loose curves, "It wasn't the near-dying part that was . . . that just, if I'm honest, I just wanted that part over with so it stopped hurting so much." He looks down at his glass, taking a slow breath through his nose. "I remember the helplessness, not being able to . . . but more than anything, more than anything it's the why that I can't - it's not that it happened but he wanted to do it. To me. That keeps . . . it goes round and round in my head, I can't - reach an end to it."

Crowley, legs laid long out from his chair and sunglasses set aside, the setting sun turning his eyes almost amber, says, "He's evil."

"I don't think it's that simple."

"I didn't say evil was simple," the demon says, taking a contemplative sip of wine. "Do you need to think about him so much? Is that - healthy?"

"Really, what would I know about healthy, I'm an angel, my health isn't something I worry about. I would just like to understand it, I don't like not knowing. I don't know if that would make me feel any better, before you ask, I just - want to know anyway. What he was thinking, what he thinks now." His mouth folds, it almost could be a smile. "I think we're both in agreement that knowledge of good and evil just for the sake of the knowledge is still worth having."

Crowley stares at him for a long time and Aziraphale just takes a drink. Once Crowley's stares made him blush and bumble but he's quite used to them now, Crowley is never one for blinking very much. Eventually Crowley says, "He had nothing left to lose. His wings had already turned black because he wanted to so he might as well just do it. Not much else to understand."

". . . perhaps." He lifts the bottle, offers Crowley a top-up. "I wonder about Sandalphon. He wasn't especially happy with it."

Hissed and spat at the same time, "He still helped."

He puts the bottle down, sighs. "Yes, he did. So I wonder what happened to him. It's nice here, isn't it." He looks out at the sea, smiles a little. "I'm glad you suggested it. You're very thoughtful, Crowley, much more than you pretend."

"Well, I, shut up," Crowley mutters over his glass, taking an embarrassed gulp.

His appetite returns. Sea air, perhaps, in London food just didn't enter his mind but out here - everything smells so delicious, seaside food, cockles doused in vinegar, dressed crab, hot doughnuts, chips, he loves the little wooden forks. He feels silly in the most delightful way eating candyfloss, impossible to eat it and not feel like a child and he's never even been a child. He can't find a stick of rock with 'Crowley' written through it but that takes only the most minor of miracles and it puts that smile on Crowley, the smile of trying very hard not to smile, it sets Aziraphale off laughing, the darling creature -

A picnic basket between them on the stones of the beach, on a tartan blanket, Crowley says as if he's struggling with it, "I -"

Aziraphale watches him, listening to the sea like some great creature breathing in front of them, the water hushing across the stones. Crowley is glaring at the can in his hand - who knew they did little tins of Pimms? Humans are so clever sometimes - and then he sniffs in hard, lifts his head straight, says, "I keep thinking about being right next to you and not being able to do a thing. They just - took you. And I was useless. Worse than useless, just - pointless."

He had known that Crowley was working through some difficult internal storm clouds, Crowley being a lot more obvious in his emotions than he thinks he is, but Aziraphale honestly hadn't thought of this. "Crowley," he says, startled, and touches his hand on the blanket. "You saved my life. You're not pointless. That wasn't pointless."

"No, angel, no, of course that wasn't . . . but Adam did that. All I did was let them take you and drive." He crumples his face, glaring at the sea, and Aziraphale feels the angry flex of Crowley's invisible wings behind them. "You didn't need me. Uber could have saved your life if that was all it took."

"That wasn't all it took." He presses his hand, gently, but Crowley doesn't look at him. "You were so gentle, you were so . . . I was so relieved you were there, I was so grateful . . . ah, but . . ." Glancing away himself, swallowing awkwardly. "I felt so - ashamed. That I was so - ugly and - maimed and vomiting in front of you, I couldn't believe how calm and sweet you were -"

"Don't, angel, don't, I wasn't calm, I was -" Crowley has grabbed his hand now, looking at Aziraphale and sucking his breath in sharp through his teeth. "I was fucking not okay. And you weren't ugly. You have never been ugly. Nothing could stop you from being beautiful."

"Oh," he says, it is so strange the things that slit tears immediately into the eyes, instantaneous as a blink. "I was sick into your glove compartment, Crowley -"

Crowley lifts his hand, strokes the hair at the back of Aziraphale's head with a lopsided grin, eyebrows high. "So just think about how pretty She made you, if even that didn't dent it."

"You perfect creature." Aziraphale wipes his eyes on the back of his hand, puts his drink down, reaches across for Crowley's jaw. "How have you ever been pointless? What do you think I would be without you?"

He kisses him and hopes he understands - hopes he understands -

Not just dead without Crowley, not just brutally butchered of his wings and left to die, that's not all he means; the loneliness and wretchedness and desolation, the sense of his own ugliness, the long-buried tripwire that Heaven left in his heart to make him think that if it had been done then he must deserve it -

But none of that is true, because of Crowley. He couldn't have survived without Crowley, not just Gabriel, all of it, too frightened and too weak on his own, he needs him. Free will means more than just possibility, what decision could Aziraphale alone ever have reasonably been expected to demonstrate against Heaven itself, what is the point of free will that can't be exercised? But with Crowley he has choices, he stands a chance, he has strength enough to see things through, he is not just - he is not just -

He is not just what Gabriel wanted to reduce him to. He can be himself, the whole of himself, even the softness and the weakness. He trusts Crowley enough to offer him himself, honestly, and he doesn't know how he could survive if he couldn't have that.

He kisses him, strokes Crowley's hair behind his ear, kisses him again. "You were so gentle," he whispers to him. "You sweet creature. That was why I wasn't afraid of dying, Crowley. You were there. And I'm not dying I am not dying whatever Gabriel wants but - you were perfect, please believe me, you did everything right that you could do. You were perfect, and I was so, so glad to have you there. Thank you. You saved my life." He lifts Crowley's hand as Crowley stares and he kisses it, the sharp knuckles under the skin, Crowley is all length, right to the fingertips. "You have always looked after me, Crowley."

When an angel says 'always', they know what the word means. And even with the sunglasses on there's a look in Crowley's eye, and his voice comes dipped too low. "I thought you were dead," he says. "Third time I thought you were dead."

"- the third time?"

"Bookshop fire." he says, as if counting tombstones. "Golem. Gabriel. I woke up on the floor of my flat and I couldn't feel you and I thought you were dead, angel."

"But I wasn't, my love," Aziraphale says, stroking his knuckles with a thumb. "I mean, if anything the moral of this whole story seems to be that I'm surprisingly hard to kill."

Crowley laughs in sheer shock, a sharp bark on the beach, and amusing Crowley always makes Aziraphale particularly happy even if it's unintentional, he gives a happy squirm and beams back, as Crowley reaches up and presses his cheek. "Almost seems like I'm not the only one who wants you alive."

They try to learn to dance, there are tutorials Crowley shows him on something called You Tube, the two of them are dreadful. They eventually accept that Aziraphale is going to have to lead, it's the only way to keep Crowley under any kind of control, and finding music they can both agree on involves basically going back to the nineteenth century and then gradually working their way forwards until Aziraphale can't pretend that it's anything but noise. "The sixties," Crowley says gloomily, "you can't get past the sixties? Bit of seventies funk? Lovely bit of glam rock?"

"Just put something nice on in three four time, Crowley, something nice -"

They remain bad dancers. But at three in the morning when all of the world seems asleep it is a rather lovely thing to run a hand down Crowley's back, cheek to cheek, hardly even moving, a single lamp lit and the record playing only emphasising the silence so pure it's like he can hear the quiet of Crowley's soul. It's fun, anyway, he'd forgotten how much fun it can be, and when he does let Crowley just - well good Lord it's the things he does with his hips - he laughs until he cries some nights, as Crowley spins him and jerks him back into the taut curve of his body, grinning wicked.

On the beach one morning, shaded by his sunhat, he sketches an interesting shell in his commonplace book and looks up only now and then to check on Crowley who is ranting up and down the shore by the water's edge, smiting the jellyfish after one stung him while wading. He's thinking of suggesting that they go for ice cream after Crowley is quite done with his smiting - he plans to use exactly those words, in a neutral tone, so that if Crowley wants to read into it a judgement that all of this smiting isn't perhaps entirely necessary then that is Crowley's prerogative - when he feels a ripple run up his spine, lowers his pen, looks around.

Behind him the Archangel Michael is picking her way across the stones of the beach, arms out for balance, waving an actual white handkerchief from one hand. Surprise very quickly gives way to just feeling very tired - oh, Crowley is not going to like this - and he puts his notebook aside, pushes himself up, dusts himself off a bit.

"I come in peace, look," Michael says, waving the handkerchief. "Bit - uneven, isn't it? Hard to walk on. They really should do something about this."

Aziraphale just looks at her, finds an empty smile but can't find any trust. He hears Crowley's ranting cut clean off at his shoulder and rolls his eyes skywards, Give me strength, calls once he thinks Crowley's close enough to hear, "Crowley, it's quite alright -"

"Fucking kill you if you touch him I will fucking end -"

"I think Michael's just come to talk," Aziraphale says, catching Crowley's arm as he strides past and clinging on, bumping Crowley back into his own side, Lord the man is all skeleton, his hipbone must leave a bruise. "Hm? We'll all just have a little talk, that's all. I'm sure it will be lovely."

Michael waves the handkerchief directly at Crowley, and she looks suspicious but not afraid of him. Crowley glares back like toxic waste. She smiles one of her brittle, serviceable smiles for Aziraphale, says, "Sandalphon enlightened us about some unfortunate activities of the Fallen angel Gabriel."

Her eyes flick to Aziraphale's shoulders where his wings are invisible and yet as certainly there, to the angels and demon present, as the sea at his back. And there isn't really the time, in the moment, to fear that his voice will shake, that his throat will harden, his eyes fill; he just says, as evenly as if merely wary, "Where is Sandalphon now?"

"Sandalphon has been moved sideways," Michael says, still smiling, and Crowley is making one of his noises, almost a growl, Aziraphale squeezes his arm. He knows what 'moved sideways' is Heaven-speak for. Whatever wretched little position they've found for Sandalphon to fill, the two of them will certainly never see him again. "And now that Gabriel is - elsewhere, we wanted to propose a little truce."

"A truce," Aziraphale says, eyes a little narrowed on the white handkerchief she hopefully waves again.

"Yes. Between Heaven and - you. Two." in the tone of one who doesn't quite know how to label whatever they two are. "And the other defectors, as long as they stay out of Heaven's way."

"A truce," Aziraphale says slowly, because . . .

"Oh," Crowley says. "You're scared."

Aziraphale glances at him, but he knows what Crowley means. Sandalphon knows what was done to Aziraphale and yet here Aziraphale is, apparently whole and unharmed, and as for Gabriel . . .

Michael's smile hardly twitches. "It seems best for all concerned," she says. "An agreement of mutual - non-interference. Don't you think?"

"And you would leave the others alone," Aziraphale says. "The angels who have left, and any more who do."

"Well, it's hardly like we can drag them back," Michael says. "Look at you."

"Yes, look at me," he murmurs, and Crowley says, "Why exactly would we trust you to keep your end of the truce?"

Michael blinks, widens the smile. "I'm an angel, of course you can trust me."

"No I can't," Crowley says. "You think we're not paying attention? We've all seen what Heaven can do, and anyway, Gabriel would have sworn he was an angel while he was shedding black feathers all over Heaven, why should we believe you?"

"Look, it's a big thing for us to trust you two as well," Michael points out, eyebrows nipping in irritated now. "After all the -" She waves a hand at them. "- hijinks you've got up to -"

"Hijinks," Crowley says, with a terrible smile.

"Alright, Michael, if you would just give us a moment," Aziraphale says, smiling for her, dragging Crowley around by the arm and marching them noisily across the pebbled beach to a few feet away.

"I don't trust her," Crowley hisses.

"Be fair, my dear, you don't trust anyone."

"I trust you."

"I don't count. Look, if we agree, they'll leave us alone."

"She could be lying."

"I don't think she is. I think you're right, I think they're scared, I mean - Crowley, we broke Gabriel. I think they would finally rather pretend that we don't exist than ever have to deal with us again. And it means we're - free. We're free. All we have to do is agree not to do anything we're not doing anyway."

"And you think they'll keep their end up?"

"I don't see that we need to trust them. We don't trust them now, nothing will change. But if it just means that we really might all leave each other alone to get on with things, it sounds a fair enough bargain to me."

Crowley eyes him warily through the sunglasses. "They could just be trying to get us to lower our guards."

Aziraphale sighs, really sighs, from the depths of his soul, knowing this. "Crowley, my love," he says, and touches his jaw, "you're never going to let your guard down anyway, are you?"

Crowley just stares at him for a long second, then says, "No. Alright. So we agree, and - maybe they keep their end up, and we aren't doing anything any different anyway."

Aziraphale shrugs. "Call me an optimist, I believe her. It wasn't even us who scared Heaven in the end, I think it was Gabriel, I think they're all too frightened to start a war with us in case they turn into that."

"Alright," Crowley says, jaw flexing underneath Aziraphale's fingertips as he ruminates, darkly. "You're an optimist. But fine, just on the off-chance, we can play along. Right, angel, let's go say our I do's . . ."

They walk back arm in arm to Michael, who smiles at them the smile of an angel who is not going to acknowledge her discomfort in any way at all. "Alright," Crowley says. "You've got your truce. You leave us alone, we leave you alone, and everyone can go about their business without me killing anybody. Job done."

"Good," Michael says, broadening the smile. "Would you mind letting us know, in the meantime, the location of the former Archangel Gabriel?"

Aziraphale looks at Crowley, startled; Heaven doesn't know. Adam must have shielded him from them, whether he knew he was doing it or not. "Why?" Crowley says coolly. "You fancy casting your judgement on him? Because the last angel who thought his judgement counted for more than God Herself's, he didn't end up too well."

There's too much careful blankness behind Michael's smile. "We need to monitor him of course," she says. "For everybody's safety."

She isn't looking at Aziraphale and Aziraphale still feels her meaning him like a physical touch to the chest. It's never really sunk in, before, that all of Heaven must know what was done to him, that all of Heaven will be talking about it. For a moment his eyes sink almost closed in the sheer awful horror of it, to be something whispered about like that. And then he swallows, and puts his free hand on Crowley's arm, still linked through his, and resettles himself neat on his feet, bristling his wings behind himself. "You promised you wouldn't interfere with any angel who left Heaven," he says. "I think we can all agree that Gabriel has quite definitively left Heaven, and that means he's under our jurisdiction now."

Michael looks at him and Aziraphale is aware of the argument this could be, and raises, subtly fans out his wings behind himself, smiling right back. And Michael puts that smile on again, and says, "I think we're done here then. Very productive meeting. Well done, everyone."

Crowley puts on one of those mocking smiles that scrunches up his entire face, and Aziraphale flicks his invisible wings back neat. "Excellent," he says. "Mind how you go. Bit rocky."

"Yes, they really should do something about this," she says, looking down, turning and walking away as if wading through the stones. After only a few steps, she's gone.

"Arsehole," Crowley mutters, and Aziraphale puts his cheek on his hard shoulder, and sighs.

That afternoon he finally persuades Crowley to let him take a look at his wings, he has a nice set of silver-backed brushes he uses on the rare occasion his own need any smoothing out. Crowley lays on his stomach on the bed, crossed arms propping his chin up and muttering at the pointlessness of it all, and Aziraphale puts the cricket on the radio, the gentle pock of bat and ball, the murmur of the commentary, brief bursts of activity like sunlight; gulls call outside the window. He works gently, patiently, he doesn't want to pull, fingers and brush smoothing the glossy feathers out until they glitter like black beads under the sunlight coming through the window, there the suggestion of green edging a pinion, and there, so fine and subtly, an astonishing ultramarine.

When he finally lifts his head to say proudly, Done. he mercifully looks at Crowley's face first and pauses mouth open, before he silently closes it. Crowley is asleep with his cheek on his own forearm, breathing slow and steady. Pock and polite applause on the radio, but the gulls are quiet for the moment, and Aziraphale knows that they'll miraculously remain so, for a little while at least. He eases himself down beside Crowley, carefully, carefully, so he can watch his face, astonished still by him, he is so very dashing, Aziraphale has always felt very fussy and drab and dull next to Crowley. But Crowley likes him. He has no doubt in him of that, he does feel love, when love is not stifling itself for fear's sake. And when Crowley puts his arms around him sometimes Aziraphale feels a bit giddy on it, love like champagne shot straight to the brain.

It's been such a lovely holiday, he wants to tell him. It's been so nice, just the two of them, he likes it here, they really should come back some day. Or they could go somewhere else - the Lakes, oh God he really should give Crowley New York, just - anywhere, anywhere would be nice with him. Anywhere. He feels a great deal better for it, he understands the kindness Crowley meant by it, the more than kindness, that Crowley wasn't thinking about himself at all, all he wanted was to make Aziraphale feel better. And he does feel better, he wants to kiss gratitude into each of Crowley's fingertips, he feels so much better, some time and space and just being wrapped up in Crowley, it's been so perfect, it's really reminded him why living is so very nice. Living with him is, anyway.

He looks at the shape of Crowley's eyelashes on his cheek, the way the sun has brought out the freckles on his skin. And he thinks - he knows - he's ready to go home, now. It's been weeks since he was in the bookshop. And he's walked the towns here holding Crowley's arm, gradually less and less tense of the humans around, of the suddenness with which they might emerge at his shoulder. He holds his arm now with easy companionship, no longer gripping tense. It's not that Crowley made him brave again so much that Crowley gave him the space to make himself brave again, a space in which Aziraphale knew that if anyone did spring at his back Crowley would have bitten them in the face with a giant snake-head, and so he could practise courage until it felt true again. Maybe he won't forget for some time, and he'll still be aware of his back, he still - dreams, sometimes. But he will manage. He'll do better than manage, he's quite happy now. He's maybe never been so happy as he is now.

Crowley's wide dark wings rise and fall gently with his sleeping breath. Aziraphale hums softly, soothingly, strokes the edge of a pinion with the back of a finger, and he thinks that Crowley seems easier in himself as well, less acutely emotional about it all, the rage and pain and - it hurts Aziraphale to think of it - and blaming himself a bit less. But he wants to check with him about that, before they return. He doesn't see much point in feeling better himself if Crowley doesn't get to feel better too. He wants to return the kindness Crowley has shown him, the courage it took to give it. And he wants him to feel happy, as happy as he does himself, with all of his heart.

He props his own cheek off his forearms, watching Crowley's face relaxed in sleep, softened, all the lines smoothed out. Aziraphale is an angel - still he is, despite it all - and he was made to love, which he's tried to do for all of his life, constantly confused by which direction God seemed to want the love aimed in before he just gave up and poured it all to him, and finally it felt like it was running in its own riverbed, in exactly the direction it ought to. But Crowley was made exactly the same. Aziraphale really has learned, these last few years of collecting other refugees from Heaven and Hell, what does the colour of a wing matter next to what you actually do? Crowley was made to love and nothing, nothing about the Fall changed that. He knows - oh it's beginning to choke him, he feels a bit tearful - that Crowley has loved him with unfaltering constancy and sincerity for centuries, that he will for centuries more, forever, that even when he didn't like it he loved him, that even when he didn't like him he loved him, that even when Aziraphale was so frantic with trying to be good for Heaven that he was willing to leave himself miserable for it Crowley loved him still. He's been so patient with him, and so giving, and so good, and Aziraphale isn't going to let him think any different for a moment.

Aziraphale whispers across the bed to Crowley's sleeping face, "I love you like hellfire." He looks so peaceful. Like an angel. "And you'd think that would worry me more, wouldn't you . . . ?"

*

Somehow they go skinny dipping. It's not planned, it is fucking not planned, but they're on the beach and a bit tiddly - well, Aziraphale would call it that, Crowley would call it stonking drunk - and it's dark, nearly midnight, Aziraphale's giggly and nuzzly and lovely when he gets like this, trying to wriggle into Crowley's petting hands like a large white kitten, and he says, "Used to like, like sea bathing, back, when was it, last century, no, wait, one before that. Used to be nice. Shame I never did bring a bathing costume."

"Don't need one," Crowley says, and then - Crowley hesitates. Aziraphale blinks up at him. But the thing is, it's pitch black, and they're in about as much the middle of nowhere as England can offer, Aziraphale's a lot less hung up on nudity than people might think, they've both had a drink or two and - well, just, fuck it, basically.

It is so fucking cold. Aziraphale blasphemes loud and then can't stop laughing out of sheer shock, Crowley - others may call the sound he makes a shriek, he wouldn't like to comment on it. Aziraphale clings to him and laughs right from the belly, Crowley loves the sound of it, wants to drink it out of him; his kiss tastes of saltwater, and honestly the inside of Aziraphale's mouth is the warmest place in the world right now.

They hurry back to the cottage giggling like loons, mostly-dressed, light the fire they've had no reason to bother with all summer, share a blanket around the shoulders and Aziraphale digs out the last bottle of good port for passing back and forth. Crowley begins to defrost, feels his skin pinging with the slow injection of heat from the fire, and Aziraphale's warm side pressed up against his. The angel's a bit dishevelled from saltwater, even his shirt collar open for once in his life, bright-eyed with fun and Crowley doesn't intend to admit how it flips his heart when Aziraphale is being silly, forgetting the weight of Heaven and Hell and everything he's lived through and delighting in some stupid crap magic trick or the excitement of an opera cake or how fucking thrilled he was when Crowley won him a shit teddy bear in one of those grab machines without even using a miracle as if it didn't matter that it took two hundred attempts, as if it was better that it took two hundred attempts. He delights in Aziraphale's delight. Which must make him lucky that Aziraphale finds so much in the world to delight in.

"She really must want our wings to stay the colour they are," Aziraphale says, passing him the bottle back. "I mean, if Gabriel's wings turned because he wanted to kill another angel, you'd think yours would have turned back for saving me the way you did. So She must . . . She must mean something else from it." The bottle sloshes as Crowley drinks, eyes narrowed at the fire, and Aziraphale looks at him with his cheek pressed to his own bent knee, watching him closely with those fucking illegal eyelashes of his blinking that way they do, wringing Crowley's heart, how can you want so hard something you already have? "Are you angry with me?" Aziraphale says. "That I like yours just the way they are, would you rather I didn't?"

Crowley swallows, passes the bottle back. "Nah," he says. "Past caring. Maybe all it means is She'll never let one fuck-up pass, anyway. You can go from white to black but you can never go back, not once you prove you're broken."

Aziraphale just holds the bottle, and looks at him. "You're not broken," he says.

Crowley says, offhand as if none of this matters, "Are you drinking from that or not?"

Aziraphale passes it back, eyes all confused and hurt on him, fucking deer should take lessons from him, does are rank amateurs when it comes to huge sweet-blinking heart-rending eyes. "I'm broken," he offers. "And She didn't change mine."

Crowley almost spits port into the fire, and his voice comes rough from where it choked his throat. "You're - you're not -"

"Of course I am, Crowley, you know some of the things I've done, I literally did your tempting for you when it was my turn. And I lied to Heaven, and left them, and -" His eyes close, he steels himself, they open again and his voice is rougher. "And I really did want to kill Gabriel. I really, really wanted to."

"But you didn't. He actually did it, that's why he . . ."

Oh, he realises, as Aziraphale breathes in through his nose. "His wings changed before he did that. Just wanting it is enough. And - God help me, Crowley, I wanted to. If any flaw is enough to make an angel Fall then I shouldn't have been in Heaven for five minutes, we know that."

"I've done some stuff since then."

"I assume I would have too, were I stuck in Hell." Aziraphale accepts the bottle back, broods on the fire for a moment, takes a mouthful and passes it back. "It only makes sense to me if She really did want this. This, you and I and all of it, I - call me prideful but She's never changed my wings so maybe I'm not, maybe it's true, this is all She intended, for us to see through it all."

"So, what, well done us that we did? We didn't exactly plan any of this, it all just happened to us."

"Funny how that just happened, hm?" Aziraphale says, twinkling, and Crowley rolls his eyes, swallows port.

"What difference does it make?" he says. "So She wanted this, why does that change anything?"

"Because if She wanted us to be on opposite sides so that we could bridge them - thank you, dear -" Accepting the port back. "Then that means that you didn't Fall because of anything you actually did. She just - needed you a demon and me an angel. And that means you've never been bad. Not from the beginning, not for a breath. And I know that. Crowley, darling, I know that." He lifts the bottle, eyes crinkling a sad smile. "I do wish you did as well, dear."

He can hear his own heart beating, and the shifting of the fire in the grate. Aziraphale swallows delicately, passes the bottle back. Crowley lets the neck dangle from his fingers, thinking, thinking. He wants to say that if it's true then it hardly seems fucking fair and then he stops himself, because -

Say he whinges to Aziraphale that it wasn't fair that he got shot into Hell and went through all that and Aziraphale got to keep Heaven just so they could one day abandon Heaven and Hell for each other. Say he says it's not fair and then they look at what that actually means: The millennia of what Heaven put Aziraphale through, bullied, isolated, forced into complicity with acts that horrified him, despised for his kindness, misunderstood for his love, and eventually mutilated and left to die rather than be accepted as just as good as they are. Oh, Crowley's suffered, and once he would have snapped back, have sneered that an angel couldn't possibly understand that. But they've both learned a lot about suffering in their lifetimes, mostly that nobody has a monopoly on it, there's always enough to go around, and that that's a reason in itself to just stop the tongue a second and be gentle instead.

They've both suffered. None of it was fair. Fair isn't Her thing; they never know the rules until they've already broken them, but what if - what if the unfairness really was a whole level back from where Crowley's placed it his entire life, what if he really actually did never break the rules in the first place . . . ?

He takes a drink. Aziraphale flexes his socked feet, one crossed on top of the other, and smiles at Crowley a tired smile from his own knees, says, "She seems to have spent quite a long time testing the both of us. I assume we passed, judging by how quite how happy I seem allowed to be now. Crowley -" His eyes search his, and he touches Crowley's fingers on the bottle's neck. "You know that - nothing would make me happier than knowing that you're happy too. I know you aren't always. I'm not saying you have to be, only - you can be. You can be. Because you're not a bad person. No-one has ever been kinder to me, no-one else would have - forgotten everything else to make me safe and look after me the way you did after what Gabriel did. Black wings can't mean you're a bad person or you could never have done everything you've done. We get to be different, the two of us, but different isn't better or worse and . . . Crowley, I think you're marvellous, you must know that. I've always felt - boring and fussy and - small next to you, but -"

"Angel -"

"- but you like me anyway. We can be different to each other. It's not better or worse. I think you're just perfect, Crowley, I really do. You are the most wonderful creature. She made you perfect. Nothing has ever changed that. She made you just perfect, and I am so lucky to get to share that." His eyes crinkle a true, tired smile and every time, every time, it's like that first morning, when all the world was sweet.

Crowley breathes slowly, around the new arrow bullseyed through his heart by one pretty smile from an angel, and thinks. Because if it's true - and the fact that the two of them (no point pretending otherwise) incompetent as they are have managed to survive the wrath of Hell and Heaven and everything else, that does kind of suggest they had help, that perhaps She's performed a few minor miracles of Her own - if it's true, if it's true . . . if She really does have an eye on them and know what they're doing, Crowley knows why Aziraphale's wings are white. Because Aziraphale thinks of himself as a bit of a failure of an angel for all the same reasons that Crowley thinks he's the only good angel She ever made; too soft, too timid, too attached to mortal things, too gentle in his heart for any of the righteousness of Heaven. And yet his wings stay as milk-white as the dove's, which means that however Aziraphale may despair of himself, She knows the heart of him, She knows all of it, and She has never doubted in his goodness, not a smudge. And that must be such a relief for him, something to be so thankful for. And Crowley . . .

Maybe what Crowley really needed was to know that he doesn't have to be different, better, white-winged and affirmed good for Aziraphale to love him the way he does. He doesn't need to be worthy by any other standard, Aziraphale just loves him: exactly as he is, everything he's done and been and every fuck up and failure and weakness, Aziraphale knows the lot of it, and Aziraphale loves him just the same, exactly as he is, and he'll go on loving him just as he is for all of eternity. Maybe the lesson Crowley needed is the hardest one he's ever had to learn, that Aziraphale wasn't the only one who needed deprogramming from the headfuck that Heaven is, that for all those years when he rolled his eyes at Aziraphale parroting Heaven's playbook, Crowley was still living by exactly the same prejudice.

None of it matters. He doesn't have to change. He doesn't need anyone else's affirmation. He has everything he could ever want, what the Heaven could any of the rest of it mean to him? Maybe none of this is true, it's all fucking ineffable, none of them will ever know the answers but - but he thinks, looking at his drowsy dishevelled angel in the low bronze glow of the firelight, this is at least the question he wants to live with. If they can't know the answer then they might as well choose the question they like best, and this one, this one, this is a question Crowley can live towards and actually get to feel . . .

"Come here," he says, it comes out low and gravelled, too much under it to stay buried. He puts the port aside, catches Aziraphale's cheek and the angel turns obedient for a kiss but stills, subtly, as Crowley ignores his mouth, he hardly ever sees his naked throat and he kisses him there, over the heat of his pulse. And Aziraphale never frights to Crowley's touch but his breath does shudder immediately in, and he says, "- oh."

Crowley licks his lips, nose still pressed to the underside of his jaw, murmurs there, "Too much?"

"Ah . . . no, I . . . exactly the right amount, I think." Aziraphale swallows, which feels lovely brushing Crowley's lips, and his fingers brush up into his hair. He hums, soft and low, as Crowley kisses his neck once more and then closes his arms around him, tugging him sideways to the floor, stretching himself out on the rug in front of the fireplace with Aziraphale settling an arm around his stomach, his cheek to Crowley's chest. He's an angel, and weighs exactly as much as he needs to, which means his weight is perfect, a grounding pressure Crowley knows he could never find anywhere else.

A bit drunk, warm now and mind whirling contentment from the conversation, Aziraphale brushing patterns against the side of his belly with his fingertips, he's just so happy, it's not . . . all of the complication, the anticipation of something worse, the greed of attaching to the moment because he knows it'll only be ripped away - none of that troubles him. He doesn't know if he's ever felt so truly exactly where he is as right now. No brooding on the past, no dread of the future. Just Aziraphale, and the way the fire snaps, and the stillness of all the night-time world around them.

"Crowley," Aziraphale says, the backs of his knuckles rippling along the side of Crowley's ribcage. Crowley tilts his head to see at least the top of Aziraphale's head, he's looking at the fire, watching the roll of the pale orange flames.

Crowley says, "Mm?", too content to want to break the moment.

Aziraphale stares at the fire, eyes a little distant, dreamy. "I want to go talk to Gabriel."

Crowley lets his head back, stares at the oak-beamed ceiling. ". . . yeah," he says, he can't even really feel . . . just, yes, of course he does. Of course he does. "Yeah. I knew you were going to say something like that."

"Are we going to have a fight about this?"

He scrunches up his forehead, mouth tipped a shrug. "Don't really see what difference it would make."

"No. It probably wouldn't."

"I'm coming with you."

"I know, my love. I didn't expect any different."

His voice comes more raw, it sounds completely fucked, like he swallowed a nail bomb. "He's never hurting you again."

"No, my darling." Aziraphale lifts one of Crowley's hands, kisses his knuckles. "Nor you, Crowley. I know how it all hurt you. I wouldn't let him do it again."

The fire crackles. Crowley doubts they're making it to the bed tonight, he doesn't feel like moving between the port and a nice warm angel for a blanket.

He says to the ceiling, "You are the most stubborn fuck She ever made."

"Yes," Aziraphale says, unembarrassed, a little proud. "And isn't it lucky that I am?"

Crowley folds his arms around him, now that Aziraphale's determined to go face the angel who made him utterly helpless and then butchered him, mutilated him and dropped him out of Heaven to die, who Crowley drove through the night slumped over his dashboard bleeding his car seat sodden through, who should have died, who should have died but Crowley told him to hold on and Aziraphale didn't even seem to question it, just did. Held on to him, with what pitiful strength remained. Held on to him, and lived.

"Wouldn't have it any other way," Crowley says, and closes his eyes, and breathes slow, blanketed by the weight of Aziraphale's wings.

*

They've never actually visited Ramiel and Zophiel before, though they've been sent postcards - they can tell who wrote the card from hardly a glance at the handwriting, either an enormous enthusiastic scrawl or perfect fine cursive - but Aziraphale did know that they'd taken an old bed and breakfast so they had multiple rooms for angels and demons moving on from the bookshop. And on the door a very particular angel is behind Aziraphale knocks, twice, neatly, and because he doesn't expect any answer, he lets himself in.

It's a bare room; an old fireplace, unadorned, a bed - no indication if it's ever slept in - an armchair, a television, a mirror on the wall. There's a little nook with a kettle and teabags which is rather charming, Aziraphale thinks, a very friendly touch. The window looks out not over the sea but back across the town, a roil of rooftops under a blue sky, a gull is barking on the roof but none of that really has much time to matter to him when sitting on the edge of the bed and looking at him is the former, Fallen Archangel Gabriel, his brow set like granite.

(moving around his shoulder to glare into his dumb wet eyes his arms run scarlet no. No. No.)

Aziraphale closes the door behind himself, folds his hands behind himself, swallows, manages a smile, though not a very steady one. He says, "Hello, Gabriel."

Gabriel has a five o' clock shadow, dark stubble on his jaw, which is of course unnecessary - angels don't need to shave - and so, alongside his rumpled shirt pulled open at the neck, it's merely an indication of his inner state, and Aziraphale's stomach flips on the thought that it's exactly the sort of overdramatic thing that Crowley would do. Crowley is downstairs with Ramiel and Zophiel, and the other two current 'guests'. There's no need for him to be up here with Aziraphale, though Aziraphale knows that Crowley doesn't like not being here. But Aziraphale doesn't need any protection from Gabriel now, could knock him down with a gesture. The difference between them being, of course, that he won't.

Gabriel just sits there, then gives an aggressive sort of shrug at him, why are you here? He says, "Have you come to gloat?"

Aziraphale just looks at him, he's really not much of an angel, what he mostly feels in response to that question is disdain. "No. I really fail to see how that would help either of us."

"Then why are you here?" His eyes are - burning, like - hellfire, oh, upsetting to look at, but better than looking at - Gabriel raises his invisible wings behind himself and Aziraphale doesn't need to see them on this plane, he can feel the ugly slice through the pinions, it makes him feel light-headed, too close to (the nauseating lightness as the weight of bone and feather finally comes loose no no not here, no.) memory. To a very bad memory. "Did you come to see these for yourself? You wanted to be sure you were safe?"

"I came to talk," he says, and there is the chair but he doesn't feel like sitting, awkwardly as this is like being interviewed by a superior while he's on his feet. Sitting feels - oh bother. It feels too vulnerable. Like he wouldn't be able to defend himself if he had to. Well, he can't expect to be perfectly brave, being only himself, and so he stands for what little comfort it is, easing his weight back and forth on his feet a little, trying to get comfortable. "If we'd done it in any reasonable way much earlier on we could all have been saved a lot of . . . of bother. Stop looking at me like I'm an idiot, Gabriel, it's hardly going to work now, is it?"

"Isn't it?" Gabriel says, and Aziraphale narrows his eyes at the fireplace, determined not to let the annoyance show, not to feel the squeezing in his stomach that he does still feel it so piercingly. "Do you want me to say I'm sorry?" Gabriel says. "Because I'm not. I'd do it again. You never deserved those wings, and if She won't do it -"

"Well that is the point, isn't it, She didn't do it and you were arrogant enough to second-guess the judgement of the Almighty Herself. Did you want to turn your wings black? Because I hardly see how you could have thought anything else would happen after you chose to defile Heaven itself by - by killing me there."

Gabriel shrugs. "They were already turning black, why wouldn't I see it through? And it wasn't just killing you, traitor, I could have done that much more quickly and cleanly, unless you've forgotten."

Coldly, because he doesn't get a choice about it, "Having one's wings hacksawed off is hardly something one forgets."

"Not just a hacksaw," Gabriel says. "There was the chisel for levering the bones out, and when it got really bloody and messy I needed the pliers just to get a grip-"

Aziraphale walks to the wall, turns and walks to the other wall, there's hardly the space for pacing as he folds his arms jagged and walks almost twitching with just trying to - "I hardly know what you're smirking at considering what you got for it in the end," he snaps at Gabriel on the bed. "I sincerely hope it was worth it for you, given everything you've lost, and - and you can really stop it with this 'traitor' business, honestly, you're no different to me now, you're one of us. Well, you are different to me in some fairly significant ways, I will give you that." His pacing is slowing, he's walking more thoughtfully, less frantically now. "I left Heaven to try to save the Earth, you are no longer welcome back after maiming another angel up there. For Christ's - sake Gabriel, you completely defiled those holy artefacts, they're no good to anyone after what they were used for, you got - you got blood all over the floor of Heaven. Heaven, Gabriel. How on Earth you could think that I'm worse than you, that you had any right to do that to me? Everything I've done, everything, I've never done that."

"Only because you're a coward."

"No." Aziraphale says, hard, stabbing a finger at the floor. "Because it is abhorrent to me. Because you know I had my chance, Gabriel, and it -" He waves a hand, he still remembers the look in Gabriel's eye when he was tied to that chair in Crowley's bathroom, darker even than his glare right now. "I wouldn't. And I would rather not blacken my own wings over you anyway. You're not worth it."

He doesn't exactly mean that, but then, he does. He doesn't think that an angel's wings turning black means that they're bad, he thinks it means they need to search their soul about what the change means. Gabriel's wings turned black because She knew what it meant to him, and it was a warning and punishment all in one, and one Gabriel chose to resent and ignore. It would mean much the same to Aziraphale if he had taken some tool from Adam and turned on Gabriel with it that night. A warning that he had gone too far, that he needed to be better. Not because that is what black wings mean, but because that is what black wings would mean to him.

"Now you think you dare to be brave?" Gabriel says. "Now you think I can't fight back, now you think you're brave?" His smile is horrible. "Your hands are shaking."

They are; he knows it. He doesn't actually feel very afraid but clearly his body remembers what proximity to Gabriel means, what it meant the last time they were this close for any length of time. He shudders himself out, says curtly, "Yes, well, I don't have to be brave, just brave enough to face down you. Gabriel -" He closes his eyes, hears the gull, thinks of the sea, finds in his breath the peace of weeks of nothing but Crowley and countryside and the shoreline, and his heart unclenches. He opens his eyes, and tries the smile again, tight but he does in a strained way mean it. "None of this nonsense is why I came to talk to you. Can we please put all the silliness aside and try to have an actual conversation. You may not think it but you owe me some answers, after all of that."

Gabriel says, quietly, "I lost my place in Heaven because of you."

Lord he is tired of having to assert that his being mutilated and left for dead was wrong. "You lost your place in Heaven because of you, Gabriel. Every way an angel could have been expected to respond to what I did, you were worse than a demon, trust me, I've known quite a few in my time, many of them are lovely. Look -" He has to stop, he's getting all het up again inside, Gabriel really is making this difficult. He swallows, listens to the gulls, breathes. "I'm not being baited on this. I'm going to be honest with you and you really might find things better if you are honest in return. So." He takes a breath, and holds Gabriel's eyes. "I can't forgive you, not yet. But you're stuck with us now, Heaven will kill you if they get their hands on you and you wouldn't last much longer in Hell so we're going to have to learn how to live on the same realm together. Luckily the Earth is rather large so we should be able to rattle along without bumping into each other too much."

"You don't forgive me," Gabriel says, and Aziraphale stares at him, blinks.

"I'm - not that good an angel, you know I'm not. I think about - I think about doing to you what you did to me and -" His eyes flutter, he said he would be honest, and his hands clench tight. "I think about it and oh there are moods where I would really like to, but - even in my head I can't follow it through." His hands relax, he feels back to himself again, with the sick headache of anger's hangover still lingering. "I can't. I can't conceive of being that, I really can't, it's not in me. And it makes it impossible to . . . I could forgive it if you were just angry, just lashed out, but that was - Gabriel that was - you planned it, didn't you? You thought about it and took your chance and - it was - brutal, and cruel in a way I can't . . ." He throws his hands up helplessly, he's feeling light-headed again, he remembers the sounds of it. "Give me five hundred years, maybe I'll be past it. But you can't expect me to forgive you now, you're not even sorry."

Gabriel is shaking. It's not fear, or anything like it, and Aziraphale stays back by the door, wary of it now he recognises it; it's rage. Gabriel tilts his head to a dangerous diagonal, says, "You don't forgive me? I am - I was the Archangel fucking Gabriel and I lost everything because of some wet principality who lied to Heaven and chose a demon over us -"

"You tore my wings out!" Aziraphale isn't very good at being angry, he knows it comes out mostly as a squawk. "You can't blame me for the thing you Fell for! You made choices, we both made choices, mine never involved all of that blood!"

"I would never have needed to do that if you had just done what you were told!"

That comes out in a scream and it might make more sense were Aziraphale afraid but he's suddenly so angry he can't even feel it, and if he's shaking it's not with fear now, he is so, so angry at still having to make that thick-headed pompous little scrub of an ang- demon recognise the basic fact that what he did was wrong. "You are not God. She gave me a conscience, that is where I owe my obedience. Can't you even see that it was your arrogance that put you here, you didn't need me, and I didn't, I still don't understand - I don't understand -"

This, this, it torments him when he thinks about it, trying to make sense of - his voice is coming fuller, he's struggling with the pain in his throat, "If you just wanted to punish me, Gabriel, why me? If all you cared about was hurting me as much as you could - if I wanted to hurt me as much as possible then I would hurt him." The word thickens in his throat, the anger shivers on the pain of it. "You know I love him, I left Heaven for him, I love him more than anything, you might have killed me by cutting my wings off but you would have destroyed me if you'd hurt him -"

The anger has faltered in Gabriel's eyes as well, a staring flicker of - it's too deep for confusion. Aziraphale swallows, has to clear his own throat a little, says, "Don't you -" He doesn't understand the look on Gabriel's face, the way his face has stilled. "Gabriel, don't you - do you know what love is?"

"Of course I know what love is, I'm an angel," he snaps, but it's toothless somehow, and Aziraphale blinks at him, realises so slowly . . . in all the millennia, all those years and years in Heaven, he's never . . . he's never seen Gabriel perform any of the acts that show love, he can't remember him ever . . . he was always such a - such a manager, chummy, that's the word, but never affectionate, even if Sandalphon would have wet himself if Gabriel ever had been, he's never . . . good Lord, six thousand years and to never feel . . .

He feels smaller, somehow, as if he's been able to leave some part of himself behind, as if he doesn't need all the anger anymore. He feels something - it twists in him, the stupidity of it, the way Crowley would look at him for it, he feels pity. Six thousand years and to never have anything to love; even when it made him miserable and guilty and lonely, Aziraphale would never, never have rather not felt it. What is he as an angel for if not feeling love?

". . . Earth may be better for you than you know," he offers, tentatively. "It may give you a chance to learn. Ramiel and Zophiel -"

"You think I want to be like them, you think I want to be like you?"

"I think it's the only thing that might save you." Aziraphale still feels a bit light-headed, walks to the armchair and sits with a huff. "It hadn't even occurred to me . . . because it looked rather - pettier, in my head." He looks down at his hands in his lap, squeezes them a little. "As if you went for my wings out of jealousy instead of . . . it was such a stupid, small reason to put me through all of that, and that - hurt - badly, thinking you'd done all of that to me for such stupid, silly little reasons. That you did all that to me just out of spite. It belittled it, somehow, how horrible it all was, if you'd only done it out of envy." He closes his eyes, the smile hurts him. "But you didn't think you were just being petty. That was actually the worst thing you could conceive of happening to me, you really were trying to hurt me as much as you could. Well. In many ways I'm glad. It kept Crowley safe."

The worst thing that Aziraphale can conceive of happening to himself is much worse than what he's already been through because the worst thing he can conceive of happening to himself doesn't happen to him, it happens to Crowley and if he had been hurt by Gabriel because of him - Aziraphale could never have held his head together the way Crowley did, known what to do, got him safely through it, Aziraphale would have gone to pieces and let him die out of sheer stupidity, all of it would have been his own fault and Crowley, his poor Crowley -

He never can stay angry for long, it really does just exhaust him, and he sighs, looks at Gabriel and manages a faint smile. "I'm sorry," he says. "It must be dreadful not having something to love. I hope you do get a chance soon, Gabriel."

"You think I want reducing to your level, you think I want to consort with demons like you -"

Patiently, "You are a demon, Gabriel."

"I am not fornicating just to make you feel better about it."

Patiently, "Fornication isn't compulsory, Gabriel. There are so many things to love." He's not a very good angel, and he knows it's wicked but can't help it, smile pressing naughty. "Have you tried sushi yet?"

Gabriel looks at him but Aziraphale feels strangely free of it, as if Gabriel's looks no longer matter the crushing way they did. Because he'd thought - he really had thought - the pettiness it seemed to display, as if Gabriel were taking the loss of his white wings out on Aziraphale's - but he didn't mean that by it, it was somehow less and more personal, differently personal. Not Gabriel taking his loss out on Aziraphale, Aziraphale a mere object to be vented upon, he really did want to punish Aziraphale, in what he thought was the worst way he could. Which admittedly is dreadful in its own way but he feels oddly validated by it. Like he was worth being attacked, like what he went through wasn't a mere by-product of Gabriel's rage. He matters enough to be personally maimed and left to die, well, in its way it's . . .

He looks around the room, the bare walls, not a single book, Aziraphale feels the lack of books in this space as if the walls are wide open. "There are so many things to love," he says. "Art and music and books and people, they're all so lovely. It feels good, thinking that something is so wonderful. And it's what we were made for, in the beginning. I didn't know you didn't feel it too."

"What the Hell would you know about what I feel."

"Then tell me what you feel," patiently, because he feels how much he has now, how entirely over-generously stuffed with love his life is, and he has enough to be generous even with Gabriel. He doesn't need to be angry or defensive. He has everything, and Gabriel - in this sad empty room, alone - Gabriel has nothing. So he folds his hands and looks at him and the rage in Gabriel's eyes is thinner, like he's running out of strength but he still won't let go of it, like he doesn't dare to in case of what might follow it.

"If you want to continue pretending to be good then I can't stop you," with a raise of his disfigured wings, the feel of them jumping in Aziraphale's stomach. "But I am not being forgiven by you, as if you have any right to it. All of this is your fault. None of this would have happened if not for you."

"You used to like running," Aziraphale offers. "That must be nice, along the sea front."

"Go fuck your demon and leave me alone."

"We don't fuck, Gabriel. And I don't forgive you yet. But maybe one day we'll understand each other a bit better, and that might be enough. Look . . . read a book. Find a picture you like, look at the sea, have an ice cream. Find something. Because you can hate me for eternity but it's not going to change the fact that you still have to live through eternity so you might as well find some way to enjoy it."

Low, the snarl scratching in his throat, "I will never forgive you."

"Yes, well." He pats his hands off his knees, stands up. "I thought I'd never, never allow myself to love Crowley the way I wanted, so clearly our plans are subject to certain ineffable forces. Gabriel - please, find something, anything. Zophiel loves designer clothing, Ramiel loves - well, almost everything it seems, she's a very sweet girl. Look at the others and try to find something. I can guarantee you that I intend to be happy, so you really might as well try for the same even if it is only out of spite. I'd better go, Crowley will be having kittens down there, he'll think you've eaten me."

Rumbled like low thunder, "This is all your fault."

He feels terribly, terribly tired and he does wish he could get through to him but he knows that he can't, and he's not obliged, all things considered, to try until he exhausts himself with it. Give it a year or so and try again, he thinks. Eventually, eventually Gabriel might listen, right now he's too bitter to hear anything but his own thoughts mirrored back to him, all Gabriel knows right now is blame and rage, no other concepts can break in.

"The thing is," Aziraphale says, "if I'm the guilty one, why were you the one with blood on your hands? Oh - Michael popped by," he has his hand on the door handle, looks back at this thought. "She told me - Sandalphon's been moved sideways."

Gabriel glares back at him and shrugs a 'what the fuck do I care' shrug. Aziraphale didn't expect to feel hurt at that, he'd honestly thought that Gabriel liked Sandalphon, that he would care. Maybe he just doesn't want to show it, not to him. He smiles, a little wanly but he manages it, and says, "Goodbye, Gabriel. Do find something, if you can."

Gabriel just glares. Aziraphale refrains from rolling his eyes until he has his back to him, opening the door, so this is him not being childish, is it . . . ?

He closes the door behind himself, lifts his head at the footsteps; Crowley, who must have been lingering at the foot of the hallway, striding along almost a skip in his hurry to get to him and the smile just is on Aziraphale's face to see him, the dear old worrying fusspot. Aziraphale hugs him around the waist because he thinks Crowley needs it, squeezing him with his cheek to his shoulder, saying, "I'm fine, Crowley, honestly. You haven't been standing there the whole time, weren't you all getting Scrabble out when I came up?"

"Yeah, well, I remembered you banned me from ever playing Scrabble again after the Incident, so I thought I'd . . ."

"Oh, I'd forgotten that. Yes. Best for all concerned, really." Crowley's arms press firm around him, hard with bone, his body is so beautiful, it gluts in Aziraphale's throat suddenly, that She handed the world not only the most perfect soul but the loveliest, loveliest body to put it in. He sniffs, says, "Oh I am being silly," and lifts his head, pats off the underneath of his eyes with the heel of his hand. "I'm not really upset, please don't . . . I'm only, I'm so grateful, Crowley. To get to be so happy with you." He sniffs again, he's got it more under control now, looks at how tight Crowley's forehead is above the sunglasses and kisses his cheek, presses his hand. "Don't, please. It's not him. Well, it, it's only that he made me realise how lucky I really am."

"Lucky," Crowley says, as if Aziraphale, well, just told him that the creature who tore his wings out and nearly killed him has made him feel 'lucky'. He smiles, tired but it's true, and squeezes Crowley's hand, tugs him for the staircase.

"Let's go down, another cup of tea and then we can make our goodbyes and go home, Crowley."

". . . yeah," Crowley says, his face beginning to soften. "Home."

It's been so long, weeks, he's never been this long from the bookshop since he opened it, never been this long from London in centuries. And since the first time he actually set foot in Crowley's flat he's never been so long away from it. He thinks of Crowley's wide bed in that dark bedroom filled with orchids like glowing stars in the night, all the colours of all the galaxies, Crowley surprised him with them once for no reason, they were just there like - like a miracle. The most magical gift because of what he meant by it. And all his books, he's been itching to reread some poetry, he likes reading it to Crowley in the moments when Crowley might take it seriously, when he might acknowledge what Aziraphale means by it. And his bookshop, and the old known pubs and restaurants and their walks in the park, he wants to get back to all of it, greedy for an angel but he just loves it all so much . . .

At the bottom of the narrow staircase, in the hallway where there's room to be side by side he takes Crowley's arm, squeezes it. "It really was a splendid holiday," he says. "We must do it again. You should get to pick next time, it's your turn, dear."

Crowley's neck is long and stiff, and he says, "Weelll, the Downs were nice. Thought we could buy a place there, so we don't have to rent. Somewhere permanent."

". . . that would be lovely, Crowley, but I thought you were more of a city person, you . . ."

"Angel, come on, if either of us is wedded to a city it's not me."

"Well, I suppose we can do both. We have plenty of time for both. And you do know, darling, if I'm wedded to anything then it's you."

He pats his hand, smiles, and tugs him by the arm - Crowley seems oddly stiff and blank - to the breakfast room where a game of Scrabble is heavily underway, everyone looking up happy to see them, Aziraphale smiles back.

"I been doing a hand for you," Ramiel says, pointing at a rack of letters. "You just put the S on 'farts'."

"Oh how splendid," Aziraphale says, and now remembers why he refuses to play Scrabble with demons.

When they've stayed long enough for manners' sake, and made their goodbyes, and they're alone in the Bentley with the road and something Godawful on the stereo system but Aziraphale is ignoring it, Crowley says without looking up, "Did it help?"

He sighs, long and slow, he needs the time just to think. And he says, "Do you know, honestly . . . I think it did. I think I really did need to talk to him. I know you didn't want me to. Thank for you being here anyway, Crowley."

"Don't ask me to forgive him," Crowley says to the road. "Don't ever ask me that, because I never will. I'd hand him over to Hell to be dissolved in holy water in a heartbeat."

"Well, yes, I suppose I'd feel the same if he'd done it to you." He watches Crowley's face, overly attentive on the road in a way he never usually is, though he does look very handsome when he's concentrating. "I don't forgive him either," he says. "I don't want you going around thinking that I'm a much better angel than I am. I don't forgive him. He won't even acknowledge that it was wrong."

"Good. Right. Well. Yes. Good."

". . . I do pity him, though."

Crowley's relaxation is immediately snapped taut again. "You - what? Why?"

"Because he's desperately, desperately unhappy, underneath it all," Aziraphale says. "Please look at the road, Crowley, dear -"

"Don't feel sorry for him! He was a prick even before he was a -"

After the silence, Aziraphale says, "You can name it. You always stop before you say it like you think I can't bear to hear it, I do know what happened, Crowley, I was there."

"He was a prick," Crowley says, slow and deliberate, "even before he was a butchering, murdering psychopath. He doesn't deserve sympathy."

"I think the point of sympathy is that it's most useful for all parties when it's given without deliberating on whether it's deserved, though," Aziraphale says. "And I don't think he's actually murdered anyone, has he?"

"He tried to kill you twice, three times, fuck I keep forgetting that golem, Jesus that golem was once the worst thing I could fucking imagine and now - now -"

". . . now I've had my wings pulled out."

Crowley just drives. Aziraphale closes his eyes, and remembers the golem.

"You almost died," Aziraphale says, voice coming a little dry. "On the inside you were so - there was hardly a bone left whole. I think only rage was keeping you going."

"Yes," Crowley says. "So he's a prick and a psychopath and as good as a murderer, don't feel sorry for him."

"I don't think he's a psychopath. I just don't think he's ever . . . he never thought that love was part of his role, he thought he had to be harder than that to be what he ought to be. And now he doesn't have a role and he's never learned how to love and he's stuck down here where it's the most important thing in the world and he just doesn't understand it. He can't make sense of us not having sex, I think that's what he thinks love is, a word humans made up to dress up what he thinks of as sin, he can't understand that we - the way we feel. That you are my everything." He fiddles a bit with the handle of the glove compartment, remembering how stark, how desolate it had felt in that space with Gabriel. "His room was so bare, Crowley. Not a picture, not a book. He has nothing. He has literally nothing and Crowley, my darling, I have everything, I have - honestly, everything."

Crowley looks at his eyes and Aziraphale's throat feels like it's shaking, he swallows and says, "Dearest I love you but look at the road for Christ's sake, Crowley I have everything I could ever conceive of wanting and of course I can pity him. He's miserable, and I'm so happy I hardly know what to do with myself. I'm not saying you have to have any sort of kind feeling towards him, I'm really not, I know if he'd hurt you . . . if he'd hurt you I would never have let him leave that bathroom where Adam tied him up." He looks at the dashboard, and knows that to be true, but the state of his soul would hardly matter to him if Gabriel had done to Crowley what he'd done to him. "But I do pity him. He's lost everything and he never really had that much to begin with, I had more to love than him even - even before, when we had to sneak around and we could never even - admit. So I feel sorry for him. You don't have to. That's all."

Crowley drives, and glares at the road. Aziraphale looks down at the glove compartment, remembers being made utterly wretched, he really understands humans a lot better now, to feel so entirely helplessly at the mercy of your own failing body. Then Crowley clears his throat and says, "You're really happy?"

Aziraphale looks at him surprised, and the smile comes immediately. "Of course I am," he says. "Haven't we just had the loveliest holiday? And I'm - I have you now. And I'm alive. I get to keep you. It's all - of course I'm happy. I know what he did to me. It's just - it's not the only thing that's ever happened to me, and most of the things that have happened to me - especially since I've had you, dear - most of them have been so nice. Every little thing you do for me makes me happy, and you do so very many things for me, Crowley. Are you - aren't you happy?"

". . . yeah," with a glance across at him over the sunglasses, then back at the road. "When I remember I'm allowed to be. Yeah." He watches the road, they're on a motorway so he's driving hardly over the speed limit, they're only pushing a hundred, a pace Aziraphale is gradually getting used to. He murmurs to the road, eyes so fixed, "I've never wanted anything in six thousand years but you."

Aziraphale stares at him, it feels like his heart just flipped out the window and was lost in the shock of the wind blasting past, and he whispers, "You have me for forever."

Crowley drives. "Then I'm happy." he says. "That's all it means to me."

There's quiet, for a moment, as Aziraphale breathes, trying to get a handle on his heart just so he can contain all the feeling in it somehow. Then he sucks a breath in and says, "You are a fibber, you never stop talking about the special editions of albums you'd swap a kidney for -"

"Don't even need them," Crowley mutters, presumably referring to his kidneys and not vinyl, which he worships at the altar of like a true heretic.

"And there's those - stickers on your back window you turned up with one day -"

"That was ages ago."

"You have a 'rare plant guy' because apparently the common ones aren't enough for you -"

"Yes, yes, well, it's a different level of wanting, isn't it? I'd swap it all for you." He glares at the road, his jaw flexes. "That night - I'd have given everything, for you."

Aziraphale knows the night he's referring to. "You didn't have to," he says quietly. "So we do have a lot to feel happy about."

Crowley just drives. Aziraphale looks out of the window for a bit, thinking of Gabriel, and he's just deciding that he must stop thinking of him, it's hardly going to help, when he realises something so suddenly that he startles himself and says out loud, "Oh -" Then, "Crowley will you look at the road -"

"What, what is it?"

"I just thought - Gabriel and I -" He's trying not to smile, he's not certain if this is funny or terrible. "Ane angel and ae demon just had ae difficulte conversation about wings."

Crowley stares at the road and then barks the laughter out, like he can't stop himself, and Aziraphale allows himself a happy wriggle in the seat, it is so funny, the way prophecy refuses to be what you think it will be - Crowley says, "Does that mean we didn't need to?"

"Maybe we didn't, I'm still glad we did," the smile is glowing in the muscles of his face. "I'm always glad when we talk, dear."

Crowley grins, eyes all lovely in their lines, and shakes his head. "We'll be in London soon."

"At this speed I'm not surprised."

"Tempt you to dinner?"

"I might be temptable. Did you have anywhere in mind?"

"The Ritz. We're celebrating." Crowley glances at him, still grinning, golden bright. "It's a homecoming."

Aziraphale flits his gaze modestly down to his hands from the way Crowley is looking at him. "How lovely, I believe our table might be free tonight as well. And Crowley -"

He can still feel his eyes on him, stuck like honey. "Mm?"

"Look at the road."

"Alright, alright . . ."

He does know that he's not entirely alright yet, but he doesn't mind it. Crowley isn't quite yet either, Gabriel certainly isn't. But when you have eternity it's alright to not be alright now; there will be more days, always more, there will certainly be good days, days of being fine and thoughtless of anything bad in this world at all. Which makes it easier to set the bad aside now, and simply enjoy that they're going home and Crowley is there beside him, driving like a maniac but Aziraphale has in his heart already committed himself for better or worse, for everything he is including - well, this. They don't have to be perfect to be perfect for each other. She knew what She was doing when She made them; She cut their souls to tessellate. They reflect each other so utterly that they feel the other's pain sting themselves, She made them to complement, they are different, it's not about good or bad. They can be exactly what they are and be exactly right for each other.

They are enough, exactly as they are. They're already worthy, already right. Aziraphale doesn't have to fret himself ill to deserve his white wings, Crowley doesn't have to strain under the weight of his black ones. It means - the yin yang symbol, he thinks. It's about the necessary distribution of bastardry to make an overall whole . . .

He wishes he could lay his cheek on Crowley's shoulder while he's driving but he hardly wants to distract him more. And he can wait, he likes anticipation, there's a fun in it. He has a lovely dinner and a lovely night in Crowley's bed, in Crowley's arms to look forward to. How could he not be happy?

The music plays dreadfully on. He looks out of the window, murmurs, "It really might as well be bebop, my dear."

Crowley growls to the road, "I am getting you into the seventies if it's the last damned thing I do."

He smiles to himself out of the window, fluffing his wings back. An eternity of this; oh, isn't it sheer bliss to be alive?

Comments

[fadagaski]

You broke me. I am dead. Because I've seen the premise of the defecting demons and angels in a couple of fics already, and I have been obsessed with your Glee fic and I even read some of the Musketeers stuff even though it's not my fandom so I feel like I know your common themes and motifs, and despite that I *still* didn't see it coming. You have a way of gutting me with the aftershocks of trauma.

And then I posted this comment in the wrong place. You scrambled my brain.

[rainjoyswriting]

I am terribly sorry, my brain is a bit of an all-or-nothing creature and everything has to get escalated ^^; Plus I will admit to a slightly evil tendency towards creating false senses of security . . . ;)

I do very very honoured that you've even tried my stuff from fandoms you're not into though honey, thank you very much for reading it - and this, of course, grim as it gets, but then I always do promise as happy an ending as can reasonably be delivered. Thank you, and I'm glad that it, ah, did what it intended even if 'enjoy' isn't exactly the word. Thank you! =)

[halberdier]

Oh, my. Oh, this is wondrous and so difficult and so kind and oh, I cannot tell you how much I love this story.

[rainjoyswriting]

Yeah, shit got grim, sorry ^^; But I'm glad you enjoyed it anyway honey, thank you very much for reading it - thank you =)

[flowersintheattic]

Wow I just really love this. I love your interpretation of Crowley and Aziraphale so, so much. This fic hurts and it's lovely and it's everything I wanted in a post-apoca-wasn't fic. Thank you for writing it. I've followed you from glee days and I continue to be blown away by your work. Truly an amazing job.

[rainjoyswriting]

I'm really glad you enjoyed it honey, despite how, uh, suddenly hardcore the last part got. Thank you for reading it, and all the other fic too! Thank you =)

[lmx_v3point3]

Wow you are making me have all the feels tonight.
This line especially: ". . . what am I doing wrong that you think I could love you more?"

Your stories are always so elegant and stark and emotional and just wrap up together in ways that make you rethink love and trauma and making peace with life. Just so much love for your writing. <³

[rainjoyswriting]

I'm really glad you enjoyed it <3 Even before the stakes are angels and demons and the apocalypse life is a bit much to deal with so, any way you can find to cope with it, it's a good way <3 Thank you for reading it, honey - I'm glad you liked it =)

I went and reset my dw password bc apparently I already have an account lol

[theromanticnerd]

So, so, so many things.

I am sorry it took me so long to watch Good Omens. I saw that you wrote "to my sole remaining reader", and I felt so bad reading that, you deserve all the readers :( Back when you started writing for Musketeers, I actually started watching it :D but, to confess, it was a first time I didn't like something that you liked. So I was so happy when I saw you found a new fandom! I just took a couple months (and a 2 week illness) to get myself enough free time to watch it. Oop.

Next. :P After reading your first 2 fics, I remember I was craving for interaction between their "sides" and the husbands. I was hoping to see some angst in some demons or angels hunting them of sorts. And you warned for violence, you warned for angst, but nothing could prepare me for the wings. I already had to reread the golem part twice before I felt I was able to drink in everything that happened to them, but then. The wings. It was just... So horrifying. It was a terrible, horrible, gut-wrenching read, and I am so glad the boys have it behind them. Oh gosh, I just don't even have the words.

And the curious thing about Gabriel is that in a sense, he was much more human than any other angel or demon in this big-ass fic (and it IS big, holy shit, Rainjoy, don't get me wrong, the longer it is the more I love it, but I wonder how much work this was for you and you poor arms...). His inabiity to start gasping the concept that his convictions might be flawed and his complete denial in the face of it ... It is so, so familiar from our world, maybe more now than ever. He was truly frightening, because he was so much like a lot of people we actually *know*. :(

I kind of felt a little sorry for Crowley at the end of this. I *know* that the most traumatic thing happened to Aziraphale, but I could empathize a lot with Crowley seeing him hurt, Crowley feeling broken and useless and paniced... He convinced himself that he was bad, and that the only thing that matters, the only thing that EVER is Aziraphale. And then to watch him go through losing him twice in the span of this fic... Like Aziraphale said, what would have destroyed him would have been done to Crowley. Crowley actually went through that. TWICE. And I don't know, I feel like he still doesn't believe that he deserves better than this feeling of failure, and fear of losing Aziraphale.

I just... I kind of really wanted to hug him by the end of this.

Loved what you did with "what do colours mean". It's not about what someone else judges as right as wrong, it's how you choose to interpret this change in you that defines you. That is beautiful.

I honestly cried a couple of times while reading this. I cried after the golem, I cried during the hospital (and after Crowley woke and Aziraphale was not there), and while they were racing in the car to Adam's. Oh my god. And then when Anathema came over after the wings, I suddenly remembered "Watch your back" and I yelled out and I had to go for a walk, I felt like throwing up and then I felt like crying for a while. It sounded so, so profoundly unfair, for fuck's sake.

By the way, I can tell how much fun you are having with their Britishness :D :D but yeah, gonna move on to the next fic.

Re-reading these again ^^;; <3

[foreverbuildingcastles]

Just popping in to say how much I still love all your stories! This one is always such a good read. In case I haven't said it before too - I really truly appreciate your interpretation of Crowley/Aziraphale as asexual. As a demisexual person myself, I didn't know how much I needed this version of our sweet boys <3
Are you excited for the upcoming season 2 of Good Omens? I'm selfishly hoping it might inspire more plot bunnies for the fandom.

As always, thank you for sharing your amazing stories with us :)
-LJ gypsy_foot_luvr
-Dreamwidtth foreverbuildingcastles