Happy Holidays, niaocat!

[goe_mod]

• title: (the composer has stepped into fire.)
  
• recipient name: niaocat
• rating: hovering somewhere between teen and mature.
• word count: 16,218
• pairings: aziraphale/crowley
• warnings: violence, blood, mild body horror, one scene focusing on vomiting, references to the second world war/child death during the aforementioned war, and language.
  

summary: “It was a nice night, crickets singing beyond the car park. No one was outside but for him, and there was something strangely, absurdly lonely about it. Like he was the last living creature in the entire world. In a way, it had always been a story about this: Crowley, alone. Time was not linear, and so in the end, this was the way things would begin and end and stay. And there, surrounded by the welcoming dark and the unbearable weight of the night sky, he let himself think it:

Something is coming.”

(or: they go on a road trip and things do not go as planned.)

1. additional note one: i am so sorry @/niaocat, you probably wanted something nice with a small dose of angst, and instead you got this borderline-horror story :’). that being said! i feed off of the tears of the innocent. bear that in mind.
2. additional note two: this is a fusion of both book and show canon, if that makes sense. the archangels are characters in this, but the character designs are what i imagined them to be as i read the novel. if you want a visual of this, i strongly recommend you look at this absolutely gorgeous art by @/niqx on tumblr that pretty much summarizes my designs: https://niqx.tumblr.com/post/179465876482/good-omens-took-over-my-life-yall.
3. additional note three: my title comes from anne sexton’s wonderful poem, “the kiss”, which I highly recommend you read.
4. additional note four: because I’m just that Extra™, i made a fucking playlist for this bad boy. here’s the link, hit it up, it’s what the kids like to call ‘fire’: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1n4nwvAFgaXwHBk67c7qUw?si=ATmXCqsTQMWjnaFHoLO4SQ. and now, without further ado: the content you signed up for. enjoy!

“For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror—which we still are just able to endure—and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying. And so I hold myself back and swallow the call-note of my dark sobbing.”
— Rainer Maria Rilke, “Duino Elegies”.


A memory of 1941:

“Lift home?” Crowley had offered, and now here they were, the bookshop solid and golden around them.

Jesus bloody Christ, I’m in love with Crowley.

The Crowley in question was sitting in front of him, shoulders tense, wine untouched.

Little demonic miracle of my own, he said.

It was too quiet. Crowley’s eyes were inscrutable behind his glasses.

The radio came on with a soft humming of static. Aziraphale wasn’t sure which one of them had been responsible for turning it on, but he didn’t much mind, either.

“—and wasn’t that just lovely? Next up, ladies and gentlemen, we have a tune that’ll be sure to lift your spirits during these trying times: Dinah Shore’s I Hear a Rhapsody...”

“And when I hear you call, so softly to me / I don’t hear a call at all, I hear a Rhapsody.”

Aziraphale stood up and walked over to Crowley.

“Come on,” he said, holding out a hand in invitation.

“Angel?” Crowley asked. His voice was soft, questioning. I love you, I love you, I can’t but I do. The universe worked in incredible ways.

“Let’s dance,” he said.

Crowley took his hand.

This was a dangerous battle to fight.

“I can’t dance, angel,” Crowley said with a small smile. It seemed a bit sad.

“It isn’t that hard,” Aziraphale answered. “Here, hold my hand.” He pretended not to notice when Crowley’s breath caught, cloth snagged on a rusted nail. His palm was surprisingly warm against Aziraphale’s skin. It felt as though he was breaking some rule—of course he was, he was breaking a hundred of them—like this, so close to Crowley. Crowley was something untouchable, an enemy disguised as a friend, but that was a lie, wasn’t it? A lie he’d been telling himself for far too long. A lie he couldn’t risk to unveil.

“My heart longs for you / So won’t you stay?”

So he settled for this.

For this: his hand on the small of Crowley’s back, firm and corporeal beneath his fingers, for his fingers intertwined with Crowley’s, swaying slightly on the backroom’s carpet.

For this: Crowley so close that he could see his eyes through the shades of his glasses, pupils blown wide, so close that he could feel his breath on his cheek, so close that he could almost hear the unsure thrum of Crowley’s golden heart in his chest.

For this: Crowley stepping on Aziraphale’s foot and letting out a laugh, pulling Aziraphale in, for his head on Crowley’s shoulder as they moved.

For six-thousand years, I have wanted something I can never have. I’m in love with you, Crowley, and I know you feel the same, and so I think it’s safe to say that we’re both fucked.

——

Aziraphale tipped the bus driver more than was strictly normal, but there were two factors in play here: the first being that Aziraphale was an angel, if a bit of a bastard as well, and the second being that the poor man had driven them quite a long ways away from his regular route and had a distinctly baffled expression on his face that was, while amusing, also completely appropriate to the situation.

Maybe Crowley tipped the man just as much, but that was neither here nor there.

The road outside Crowley’s flat was unusually still, especially for the time of night. The occasional car drove past, headlights settling on the two of them for the briefest of moments before sliding away and onto something else. Few pedestrians were walking down the sidewalk, heads ducked, hands in pockets, silent, silent. Maybe they knew, he thought; maybe they knew today could have been it, maybe they knew that they had evaded the end so narrowly.

“You know,” Crowley said, and Aziraphale looked a bit startled by the sound of his voice. By the sound of anything breaking through the dull silence of the street, really. “I don’t think you’ve ever been in my flat.”

Aziraphale thought on it for a moment, features pensive. “No, I don’t think I have. It’s always the—” He faltered, something unidentifiable stirring behind his cerulean eyes, something twisting painfully in Crowley’s chest. “It’s always the bookshop.” he quietly finished.

The streetlamp above them gave an ominous buzz, golden light momentarily flickering before coming back to full capacity. The brightness spilled over Aziraphale like water, pooling in the hollows of him, slipping over the jagged edges, seeping into the torn-open cavity of his chest. Crowley didn’t know what to say to that—didn’t know what anyone could possibly say to make things better.

So he didn’t say anything. He reached out a hand and took Aziraphale’s in his own.

And it shouldn’t have been as earth-shatteringly huge as it was, as massive, yet it was, it was; and there was a picture of the two of them painted somewhere in the air between them, in their stumbling, shared breaths, in an angel and a demon. Six thousand years, and all for this. For this? For Aziraphale’s hand in his hand and his clothes that still carried the faint smell of a garden long-ago and a bookstore that had burned down to ash and splinters of charred wood, like crisp pages and tea with not enough sugar in it. For lingering looks and that constant, unbearable yearning—and was this how it all made headway?

Aziraphale didn’t move for a second, frozen in the street like a deer caught in the Bentley’s headlights, and then he exhaled. It sounded a bit like thank you. He turned their hands and intertwined his fingers with Crowley’s, smiling slightly at the sight.

“Come on, angel,” Crowley said. “I’ll show you in.”

They took the darkened stairs in place of the elevator, Aziraphale leaning on him slightly, hands still joined together between them. Crowley let go to open the door to the flat but took it back the moment it had swung shut behind them, and then it was just the two of them in the roaring quiet.

“I’m tired,” Aziraphale announced, and, inexplicably, slid to the ground right in front of the front door, legs extended before him and his head tilted back to rest against the wood. His eyes fluttered closed, and Crowley thought he looked beautiful like that, with the usually barely perceptible golden freckles scattered across his cheeks now starkly visible against his dark skin. It also felt a bit like he was intruding on some private moment he had no right to be seeing.

There has been something wanting in my nature until now; I can dimly comprehend it.

Crowley snapped his fingers and the kitchen lamp turned on. He sat down next to Aziraphale, still holding his hand. He was dimly aware of the fact that his grip was a bit too tight, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. He needed this reassurance. He needed this confirmation that Aziraphale was here.

He kicked off his shoes, one of them landing upturned and the other on its side. Aziraphale neatly slipped off his Oxford’s, nudging them side-by-side with the point of his foot. He was pressed up against Crowley, connected at the arms and the hands and the thighs and the knees. Aziraphale’s head dropped forward to rest on Crowley’s shoulder, and he didn’t hesitate to lean his head to the side so that his cheek was pressed against the angel’s hair.

The flat was warm—it always was, as though no time had passed between now and a serpent trying to find the warmest rock to wait on in Eden. However, Aziraphale was warmer, exuding heat like a burning furnace, like a forest fire.

“You know what we need?” Aziraphale asked after a few moments of that, of sitting together, of being together, of being.

Crowley hummed to show that he was listening.

“Marshmallows.”

The statement was so absurd, so absurdly Aziraphale, that he couldn’t help but laugh, something warm and affectionate blooming in the space where his heart ought to be.

“You know I’m right. You wouldn’t happen to have any marshmallows in this flat of yours, would you? I don’t think we should use too many miracles, no need to risk drawing any more attention than we already have, but I really don’t fancy going to the store at this hour. Also, they’re probably all closed anyway.”

Crowley dithered for a moment, but the desire to please Aziraphale eventually won out. “Promise me you won’t tell anyone what I’m about to show you. Or laugh.”

“Cross my heart and hope to fly.”

“It’s die, angel, Jesus.” He stood up reluctantly, picking invisible dust off his jeans. “They’re in the kitchen.”

Aziraphale followed him in, curiously peering around and trying to make it seem as if he wasn’t. The tiled floor was cold against his socked feet. Standing before the pantry, Crowley turned to face him and said, “Remember what you said.”

“Angel’s honour.”

“Right.” He opened the door. Aziraphale said nothing for about one whole second, and then he started to laugh.

Crowley couldn’t help but feel betrayed. “You promised! What happened to angel’s honour?”

Crowley’s secret was this: in his flat, there was a pantry filled entirely with sweets of every sort. Cheap gingerbread men covered in green and red sugar, every kind of Cadbury chocolate bar imaginable, Maltesers and Milky Ways, jars of gummy bears, custard cream biscuits from Tesco that he’d gotten on a whim—essentially every sort of trashy sweet available en masse to the public. And right at the top, packets and packets of marshmallows.

“I knew it!” Aziraphale was nearly speechless with laughter; his eyes were beginning to water, and he was holding on to Crowley’s forearm as a sort of brace. “I knew you weren’t as against food as you always said you were, and here we are—no wonder you never stop moving if this is the amount of sugar in your body at any given time!”

It was hard to stay mad at Aziraphale for very long when he was laughing like that—real laughter, the big, booming kind that came bubbling up from his stomach. It seemed ill-fitting to the uptight bookseller image he sold to the world, but just right to the version of him that Crowley knew and adored so well.

“Shut up,” he said, knocking his arm against his amiably. “Now help me carry these over, or you’re not getting any.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” Aziraphale said, but he shut up and took two packets. And then let them fall to the floor before sitting down there himself.

“I have chairs, you know,” Crowley said, looking down.

He shrugged nonchalantly and snapped his fingers. A sword manifested itself in his hand. Crowley stared, wide-eyed.

“Angel,” he said, “where the bloody fuck did you get that from? Didn’t you give it back to the mailman?”

Aziraphale scoffed. “You couldn’t have possibly thought that I only had one. It isn’t as good as the original, but I suppose if you’ve done it once, you’ve done it a thousand times. Come on.” He patted the linoleum next to him.

Crowley considered asking more questions but then decided that he didn’t want to know. He sat down next to Aziraphale, leaning back against the fridge and dropping the marshmallows he’d been holding on top of Aziraphale’s small pile.

“Right,” Aziraphale said, crossing his ankles and rubbing his palms together like a giddy child. He snapped his fingers again, and the sword burst into flame. Crowley recoiled slightly as the heat washed over him, but once he got used to the temperature change, he found it to be quite pleasant.

“You, angel,” he said, smiling affectionately, “are full of surprises.”

“It’s a specialty of mine.” He tore open a packet and stuffed three into his mouth all at once. “Have any sticks?”

“Oh, yeah. Here.” He miracled them over, figuring that neither Heaven nor Hell had enough time on their hands to worry about two renegade ethereal beings manifesting sticks to roast marshmallows on.

“Fanks.”

The flames painted Aziraphale in fiery tones of red and brightest orange, but Crowley was surprised to find that he didn’t care. It wasn’t at all like the bookshop and its blind terror, like the feeling of stepping through the threshold and being surrounded by naught but blazing ruin.

Crowley loved him.

Aziraphale, he who proposed marshmallows to fend off the dread, Aziraphale with his books and his tender smiles, Aziraphale with his manicured hands and his impeccably tied bow-ties. Aziraphale with his lily-white wings. Aziraphale with his golden freckles. Aziraphale the angel who had said, “Friends? We’re not friends. We are an angel and a demon, we have nothing whatsoever in common—I don’t even like you!"

And yeah, maybe it had been said through panic and fear and six thousand years of required obedience at the end of the world, but that didn’t make the sting of the barbed words in his heart hurt any less.

Right now, Aziraphale didn’t look like that same being. Right now, he looked like something you could touch, like something corporeal. Like something real, like he wanted to be there, and now that everyone knew, there was no need to be constantly looking over their shoulders. Now, there was no need to be afraid, because the worst had already happened, and—

“They’re going to kill you, angel.” He hated how his voice shook.

Aziraphale froze in the act of lowering another marshmallow into the blazing flame of his sword.

“And they’re going to kill you, too, I suppose,” he answered. The fire was reflecting itself in his eyes, twin mirrors, twin pools, burning, burning.

“What are we going to do?”

What he didn’t say was this: I can’t lose you, not again, not after I’ve only just found you. I can’t lose you forever. I won’t lose you forever.

“I,” he said; his shoulders sagged. “Don’t know. I can’t— I can’t lose you, Crowley.”

Crowley remembered the feeling of Aziraphale’s hand in his own, that feeling of possibility, that maybe we can finally find that something-more.

“You won’t,” he said, and then again more firmly when Aziraphale looked at him. “You won’t lose me, and I sure as somewhere won’t lose you.”

Aziraphale gave him a small smile. “I’d like to hope so, too, my dear.” He slid the marshmallow off the stick and popped it into his mouth, chewing thoughtfully. “Agnes Nutter’s prophecy might help. ‘When all is faced and all is done, ye must choose your faces wisely.’”

“Whatever that means. They’ll probably hit us with the holy-water-and-hellfire combo, Game Over, Insert Coin. It’d be so much easier if I could just be you and you could just be me.”

Aziraphale started so suddenly that Crowley dropped his stick and set his marshmallow on fire. “Hey!” he complained, pulling it out, but there was no saving it.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said smiling so wide that it looked like it could hurt, “you’ve got it!”

“What?” he asked, sliding another onto the stick. Aziraphale had completely lost him with the abrupt turn in his train of thought.

“Choose your faces wisely! Crowley, she means we need to switch bodies!”

Crowley nearly impaled his finger on the sharp point of the metal. “No way,” he said immediately. “No way we’re doing that, it’s too dangerous.”

“What other choice do we have?” he asked, turning to look at him with earnest eyes. “They’ll kill us both otherwise.”

“We don’t know if we’ll kill ourselves if we try doing that! Don’t you remember? Angel, demon, we’ll probably explode? Your words, not mine.”

“Yes, but isn’t this worth the risk?” Aziraphale asked, pulling Agnes Nutter’s battered prophecy out of his coat pocket. “Either we both get killed definitively by them, or we take a risk. If it doesn’t work, we’re both going to die either way.” He moved closer to Crowley, putting a hand on his knee so that he had no choice but to look at him, at the fierce determination smouldering in his sky-blue eyes. “And if I’m being honest, dearest, I think I’d much rather die on my own terms than theirs.”

Crowley shivered despite the heat. He’s right, a small voice in his head said, but he didn’t want to believe it.

“I don’t want them to control me anymore. And maybe I always knew, for centuries and centuries, maybe even forever, but I never wanted to admit it to myself. This is it, Crowley. I’m not going to...what I mean to say is, I—” He briefly closed his eyes. Crowley couldn’t move. Aziraphale’s hand was solid on his knee, the proximity of him intoxicating, the impossibility he was asking for terrifying. And yet—

I think I’d much rather die on my own terms than theirs.

He opened them. “What I mean to say is, I don’t think you’re going too fast anymore. And if this is it, then I want you to know that.”

An unintentionally wounded sound slipped past Crowley’s teeth, and wasn’t that just the thing? How he still managed to be hurt by these little confessions, how he still managed to be surprised—but this was in no way par for the course. Were they still going through the same rounds, or had they started another loop entirely? Was it still the same savage minuet they’d been dancing for so long? What was the etiquette here?

“Angel,” he whispered. “You can’t be serious.”

“I won’t let them tell me what to do anymore,” he answered. “I’m going to do what I want to do, the rest of them be damned. And if this is the last night we have, if it all goes pear-shaped, then I couldn’t be happier I’m doing what I want here with you.”

“And what is it that you want to do?” Crowley leaned forward so that their foreheads were touching, his hand on top of Aziraphale’s hand. The air I’m breathing right now has touched you. We are both made of the same sort of molecules. You are a miracle of working parts, a wonder of starstuff, so who am I to be graced by your light? “What is it that you want, Aziraphale?”

“What I want,” Aziraphale said with thinly-veiled desperation, raising his free hand to cup his cheek; his thumb brushed over Crowley’s lip, and he couldn’t help but lean into the touch. He turned the other the same way he had earlier so that their fingers slot together like pieces of the same puzzle finally reunited. (I wonder how my fingers fit into the slots of your spine. How would we coalesce?) “Is to kiss you.”

Aziraphale’s freckles flashed gold in the firelight, testimony to the truth of his words. In that moment—and all others, really—he was the most beautiful thing Crowley had ever seen.

“Then do it.”

Crowley thought that the first press of Aziraphale’s lips to his own was the catalyst that defined his entire existence.

The second thing he thought was that Aziraphale tasted like marshmallows.

The third was this: six thousand years.

And all for this?

For this?

For Aziraphale leaning into him, for the warmth of him, for the hand on his hand, on his face, in his hair, everywhere, for the phosphenes exploding violently in his mind’s eye. For the feeling of release, for the feeling of finally, finally, for the silence and the noise, for the gunshot and the recoil, for the rebirth, for the avalanche.

Aziraphale’s love—for surely that was what it was, the sugar-sweet, the ozone taste seeping into his mouth as he chased after Aziraphale’s lips only for them to come back to him (you came back, back, back) and finally he could feel it in its full force with nothing stopping it, no angel pulling it back, reining it in—was like a fire lighting him up, setting him ablaze. He was a roaring wood-fire, a star going supernova. And Aziraphale, he was

(everything)

the crash of the waves against the jagged rock, stone halls hewn from incorporeal hands, bitter wind and freezing cold—but I’ll still come to you—and always that warmth inside him, that hand finally in his own.

If this was what kissing was really supposed to be like, then Crowley had been doing kissing wrong for five and a half thousand years. Because this, oh, this—it was a kiss to die for.

He pulled back. Aziraphale looked a bit star-struck, face flushed and lips red. He was half in Crowley’s lap, somehow, and how or even when exactly this had happened evaded both of them, but neither of them especially minded. Crowley felt like his mind had screeched to a halt, the same scratched record playing on a loop over and over.

It was raining outside, when before, there hadn’t been a single cloud to be seen. There was a steady roll of thunder, a forked scratch of lightning against the sky. It was Aziraphale, he realized; Aziraphale, impossible and deadly and lovely, so lovely.

“Do it again,” he said. Aziraphale smiled a bit, like it was a challenge, and obliged.

Later that night, the sheets cool against his bare skin and Aziraphale radiant and something to be worshiped above him, he almost choked out the words that had been clogged in his throat for so very long.

“Angel,” he gasped, and Aziraphale looked up, pupils blown wide, the picture of debauchery. “I lov—”

“No,” he said, forcefully, and Crowley felt for a second as though his rib cage had caved in, bone piercing his blackened heart. Too fast too fast too fast you’ve scared him off again—

Aziraphale saw this, shook his head. “Don’t say it yet. Tell me when we’re out. Tell me after.”

Crowley understood.

He nodded.

And early that morning, just as the sun reached its fingers in through the exorbitantly-priced curtains, just as he buried his face into the crook where the angel’s neck met his shoulder, Aziraphale pressed a gentle kiss the crown of his head and said:

“I’ll say it right back when you do.”

——

The second Crowley’s body was his own again, Aziraphale pulled him into a bone-crushing hug.

Saint James’ was just the same as ever. There were ducks in the pond, two members of the MI6 waiting for someone from the KGB, a mother scolding her son for teasing his sister. As though nothing had changed, when, in fact, everything had.

“They didn’t give you a trial,” he said. Jesus, what he wouldn’t do for the chance to tear Gabriel apart, piece by agonizing piece. Aziraphale pulled away.

“I knew they wouldn’t give me one, and I was expecting the same for you, too. You got one, though, even if it wasn’t exactly what I’d call fair.” He gave Crowley a once-over. “They didn’t hurt you, did they?”

“They didn’t. You?”

Aziraphale grinned. It was the same smile that came before he said something that further proved the truth in the statement ‘just enough of a bastard to be worth liking’. “It went swimmingly. Get it?”

Crowley snorted and shoved his shoulder lightly. “Shut up, you.”

“I asked them for a rubber duck. And made the Archangel Michael miracle me a bath towel.”

It startled another laugh out of Crowley; he loved him more than he could understand.

“They’ll probably leave us alone for a bit.” He reached out to take Aziraphale’s hand in his own, to squeeze twice. We’re okay, we’re okay. “Can I tempt you to some lunch?”

Aziraphale squeezed back. We are, we are. “Temptation accomplished,” he said.

There was the Ritz, the good food and the knowledge that Aziraphale was engaged in a furious game of footsie with him beneath the table, failing at properly papering over his smiles with a napkin. Crowley’s heart was a river, and oh, how it ran.

And later: curled up in bed with him in the bookshop that had returned from the dead as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, head on Aziraphale’s chest. Aziraphale’s hand was running through Crowley’s hair, and there was the steady rise and fall of him as he took in the breaths he didn’t need.

That was when he said it.

“I love you.”

Aziraphale’s gentle fingers stopped for a fraction of a second before resuming.

“I love you, too.”

——

A memory of Germany:

“Aziraphale—! Stop, no!”

Too late, too late. He was there one second, and he wasn’t the next, miracled into the room at the end of the corridor. No time to open doors, not when people were dying. Crowley was still hurtling down the hall, trying to get there before Aziraphale discorporated and all those people died—

And then the world exploded.

He was thrown back by the force of the blast. A human would have been knocked unconscious almost immediately, but he struggled to his feet, coughing. Sirens were blaring somewhere outside of the debris. He kicked aside the rubble, miracled himself to where the room had been, fear stoppering his lungs.

“Aziraphale!” he shouted. Fuck off, he told the smoke, and it did—

And there he was. His wings were outstretched, sheltering a dozen or so kids. They were all deathly quiet, shaking like mad.

“Hey,” he said softly to the children, holding his arms out. One of the boys reached out and took it. Crowley pulled him into a hug—he only reached up to his waist—before saying, “Aziraphale, what the fuck?”

“They would have died, Crowley!” Aziraphale said, his voice shrill with panic. “It had been too long!”

Crowley didn’t say anything. Aziraphale was right.

“He! Was ist lo—”

The officer choked on the rest of the sentence. He was dead before he hit the ground.

Aziraphale was shaking, too. The kids were still clinging to his legs and to each other, faces pale and covered in smudged soot, broken up by tear tracks. A few of them were staring at his lily-white wings, as if unsure if what they were seeing was real.

“Angel,” Crowley said in a low voice, smoothing back the dark hair of the one holding on to him, “are any of them—?”

“Yes,” Aziraphale said. The word was more of a sob than proper reply. “Crowley—”

“Hey,” Crowley said. “Shh. We need to take these little guys out first.”

Aziraphale nodded.

And after, all of the children delivered to orphanages or fearfully waiting parents, the six small bodies buried beneath the earth, Aziraphale went back. He didn’t let Crowley come with him. A concentration camp was marked destroyed that day. Every Nazi officer in it was reported missing. Not a single body was ever found.

Aziraphale wouldn’t meet his eyes.

Crowley had always known Aziraphale was dangerous, but never in an up-close sort of way. It had almost become something to be forgotten. But during the years of that war, he saw. There was something vicious and merciless lurking beneath that soft exterior, something vengeful and righteous. Aziraphale, Principality of the Eastern Gate, fierce protector of all that needed protecting. He’d been given that sword for a reason. But there was another weapon inside of him, there when he lost control—and it was far more terrifying than any blade.

Aziraphale; then Aziraphale diminished; then Aziraphale all-encompassing.

Beauty and terror were different sides of the same coin.

——

There was someone in the room with him.

He knew there was, but he didn’t turn around to look, just continued to water his plants. There was only one pot in the entire room, anemone flowers standing tall and proud. Anemone for disease, for the forsaken. He watched the water pool in the soil and tried not to pay too much attention to the sound.

Hey, the someone said, standing right behind him. He could feel their breath, icy cold on his skin. Look at me.

Crowley did not look. The water was beginning to spill out onto the tabletop and then onto the floor, the anemones starting to wilt at an impossible rate. The limp petals were shriveling up before his very eyes, curling in on themselves and going from white to grey to brown.

I have something to show you, the voice said. Crowley put a finger in the mud, and then another, and then his whole hand. He watched as it sank in with a detached sort of interest, up to his wrist, his forearm, his elbow.

Something grabbed his hand.

He pulled it out, disgusted, watching as his arm dripped red instead of thick, earthy brown. The flowers were husks of themselves, festering corpses, rotten things. A beetle crawled up the stalk of one of them, exoskeleton glossy black so that it almost resembled an oil spill. The feeble plant shouldn’t have been able to sustain the beetle’s weight, but it did, and he didn’t understand, but he didn’t try to, either.

It was unbearable now, the wait.

Crowley turned around.

Finally, Gabriel said, smile wide and professional, all straight white teeth. His features were blurred and hazy so that if Crowley didn’t already know who he was, what he looked like, he wouldn’t have been able to make out anything distinct at all.

Why are you here? Crowley asked. He tried to wipe the blood off his arm but it had dried impossibly fast, clinging to his skin and refusing to come away. It didn’t even flake as he scratched at it, even though something coppery was peeling off and lodging beneath his fingernails.

Gabriel shrugged. Because I wanted to be here. Flashes of violet eyes, dark hair. Then: I never knew you loved him. It feels obvious now, but never before. It doesn’t make sense to me.

Okay, Crowley said. Now get the fuck out of my home.

How do you know it’s yours?

He almost said something like Because I live here, you bloody twat, but froze. There was something wrong with the windows. No stretching view of the city, no busy streets, no overcast sky. Just trees, branches pressed up against the glass, dark and claustrophobic. Something was crawling up his hand, but there was nothing there when he looked. There were six beetles now. One of them had drowned in the water, legs twitching pathetically. The final throes of the dead.

Gabriel laughed.

Next time, maybe.

Crowley woke up.

——

Crowley could hear Aziraphale in the small kitchen down the hall, humming along to something on the radio. He didn’t move, just lay there in bed for a few minutes more, staring up at the ceiling without blinking. There was static in his head. There was something on his arm, something with small legs and an exoskeleton like an oil spill. There was something on his arm. There was something—

There was nothing on his arm.

Nothing on the other one, either, no dried blood, nothing. His hands were clean, olive-toned skin etched with faint sleep-lines. No dirt under his nails, no mud, no coppery red.

But Gabriel’s voice was still ringing in his ears.

He was disintegrating, atom by atom, exponentially. He was nothing if not insubstantial.

“—pay the bill, you taste the wine,” Aziraphale was singing softly. He had a nice voice, when he chose to use it. There was a sound like china being set down. “Driving back in style to my saloon will do quite nicely / Just take me back to yours, that will be fine / Come on and get it...”

Crowley released the air trapped in his lungs. Went to the bathroom and scrubbed his hands until they were raw and red, until a small mountain of soap bubbles had piled up in the sink. Went into the kitchen and kissed Aziraphale good morning, sang along to Queen songs with him until his throat hurt from yelling out the lyrics and from laughing.

Everything was just fine.

——

“Since when can you speak Spanish?” Crowley demanded, as the woman left the shop with a heartfelt ‘muchas gracias’.

Aziraphale settled on the couch next to him, smiling a bit guiltily and starting on another drink.

“Oh, for a good long while. I can speak a bit of this and that—Russian, Urdu, Vietnamese, Arabic. Some more. Picked up Polari, too, actually. Was awfully put out when it declined in popularity, mind you, it was an awfully romantic dialect...why are you staring?”

Crowley realized that he was, in fact, staring.

“When, exactly?” he managed to say. Hidden depths, indeed. He felt that he would at least somewhat know if Aziraphale was able to go around understanding so many different branches of human communication.

“I just, I don’t know, picked it up, when the need arose. Urdu, for example; there was this lovely restaurant run by the son of this man come over from Pakistan, and it really is such a lovely language—all crests and plummets—” As if to illustrate this point further, he made a sweeping gesture with his hand, like the swooping dive and rise of a gull in some gentle wind. “So I thought, why not? It was quite worth it, I believe, to see his face light up like it did when I placed my order entirely in the language of his family, his country.”

“Prove it,” Crowley said, reclining in the seat and watching him with an amused smirk dancing on his lips. Even after six millennia, Aziraphale was still surprising him.

“What do you expect me to say?”

“Anything at all, angel.”

“Ah, okay,” the aforementioned angel said, grinning with a wicked flash of teeth. “Anything at all?”

“Shut up. Shut up, you horrible old flirt. You know what I meant.”

He looked thoughtful for a moment, before speaking: “Tum say meray jitnaa muhabat koy kar hi ni sakta, mera sitara, mera pyar.”

The words did curve, like a scenery of rolling hills despite the relative shortness of the sentence. There was an almost comforting tilt to them, like being swathed in a thick blanket and having a steaming mug of tea handed to you by someone you loved dearly.

“Whoa,” he said, for lack of better words. Aziraphale had a beatific smile on his face, a bit flushed from the wine, and maybe something else, too. “Now tell me what that was supposed to mean?”

“Oh, nothing much. But really, Crowley dear, you must tell me: six-thousand years and you only stick to the lines of English and its predecessors?”

“Nah,” he said; it was his turn to impress Aziraphale now. “Also got pretty fluent in French, if I do say so myself.”

“French?” He looked positively baffled. “Why in the world would you want to learn French?”

Again, another game of things he would never say: because of that ridiculous fix you got yourself into during the Revolution. If you’re going to go hunting for crêpes again, I’d much rather you took me with you. Just for safety reasons, you know? The last time almost got you decapitated.

“It’s very double-edged, I guess. One second, it’s all smooth vowels and the next you’re choking.” It was a fact. “And so changing, too. I mean, you have the classic French over across the Channel, and then those absolute madmen in Quebec—never sits still, that language. Why wouldn’t you want to learn it?”

“Well—” Aziraphale flushed again. His freckles were visible again. Like a scattering of stars over a chocolate galaxy; like a celestial treasure hunt. Crowley wanted to kiss every one of them, lips as feather-soft and achingly gentle as his hands when he’d first created those very suns. “I tried, you know, so hard, but I never could get it. I eventually just gave up.”

“Finally! The beguiling demon gets the Principality to admit to imperfection!”

Aziraphale laughed, leaning into him. He was warm against Crowley’s body, and he returned the favour greedily.

“Say something for me,” he said, breath hot against Crowley’s skin. “Something in French.”

“Okay.” He thought about it for a moment. “Mon amour éternel, j’irais là où tu iras sans question; t’es chaque brillante étoile dans la ciel, et j’aimerais rien que de mémoriser chacun de tes constellations.” He pressed a kiss to the crown of Aziraphale’s head.

He made a humming noise of contentment. “What’s that mean?”

“Oh, nothing much.”

“Rude.”

“You’re one to talk, angel. Pass me the wine.”

——

Yellow light, red light.

“Angel, do you ever talk to her?”

“God?”

“Yeah.”

Silence in which the only noise was the rain tapping on the roof of the Bentley. Crowley’s hands were painted red where they were wrapped around the steering wheel.

“Sometimes.”

“Does she ever answer?”

Another pause. Aziraphale looked out the window.

“Never.”

Green light.

——

Angel, angel, come back, everything is burning and I don’t know where you are—

——

“Darling,” Aziraphale began, concern lacing through his words, “is something the matter?”

Crowley looked out from where he’d buried his face in the pillow. Yes. Just angels who are pricks. A God who does not answer. A bookshop that burned to the ground somewhere in the heart of Soho.

“No,” he said. “Everything’s fine.”

Aziraphale looked like he wanted to push the matter.

He didn’t, in the end.

——

“Let’s go on a road trip,” Crowley said, spinning the keys around his index finger.

Aziraphale looked up from To the Lighthouse. Crowley’s mouth was quirked in a hopeful smile, hand on his hip, dark hair unruly. He was silhouetted in the door-frame, golden light spilling in from around him.

“Where to?” he asked, putting the book down.

“Wherever we want. I was thinking around the South Downs, maybe pop into Wales. Anywhere we want, angel.”

I’ll give you a lift. Anywhere you want to go.

He wasn’t going too fast. He had never, ever gone too fast.

“Okay,” Aziraphale said, and he smiled.

——

There was something strangely beautiful about Crowley when he was driving, Aziraphale had always thought. Crowley was a creature of perpetual motion, of permanent movement. (I am made of the same star stuff as you. Tell me, how do my lips meet with yours? Are the flowers in your lungs same as the ones that wrap around my ribs? The molecules of me are from the same source as yours; perhaps we were once merged, and now here we are again.) A creature of sharp angles and sharp teeth and a sharp tongue. The windows were cranked open, and if they’d been human, they wouldn’t have been able to breathe.

They were not human.

Queen was playing on the Bentley’s speakers.

Can anybody, Freddie Mercury crooned, find me somebody to love?

I’ve already found him, Aziraphale thought.

The wind was raking its fingers through Crowley’s hair, his eyes ablaze, and Aziraphale loved him more than he could comprehend. God may have made them all with the intention of loving, of knowing its limits and its boundaries, but there were none to be found here. His love for Crowley, Crowley’s love for him, it was an infinite thing, defying the laws of space and time. He couldn’t even begin to understand it, but he tried anyway, pulling pieces of it away from the vastness; shining scales and silvery fur, stardust glittering on his palms.

“You don’t see space like this in London,” Crowley said with an easy, boyish smile that exposed his teeth. The canines were slightly sharper than what was considered normal on a normal human body, a vague recollection of serpentine fangs. He looked wonderful and substantial, and Aziraphale couldn’t bring himself to stop staring.

“No,” he said. “You don’t.”

And it was true; the fields were wide and open, hills rolling and green in the daylight, but the sun was fast setting now. The air was clean and warm, and Aziraphale loved London, but this place was so ridiculously different from its oppressive press that he couldn’t help but feel lighter. How, he wondered, are these two things present within such a short space of one another? On the same planet as each other? They feel like different worlds.

“You know,” Aziraphale said, “people used to think fairies lived here. Some still do.”

“Oh, really?” Crowley asked, turning his head to look out the window for a quick second.

“They made up all sorts of stories and folk songs. Some of them were downright wicked—changelings, honestly. I may or may not have helped those stories along.”

Crowley laughed, head tipped back. I love you, I love you, I love you, along with the unnecessary beating of his heart. “What, you tricked some poor bastards into thinking little tiny women lived beneath the hills?”

“No! No, nothing as bold as that, just lights flickering at the corner of the eye, singing at the late hours of the night. Most of them didn’t think the fair folk meant them any harm. The children used to leave out flower crowns for them. I showed them how, and they took to the idea like moths to a flame. ...You should have been there, it was all good fun.”

Crowley hummed, taking one hand off the steering wheel to hold Aziraphale’s. He’d slowed down, and the wind whistling in through the windows was less wild and more gentle. “Why’d you leave?” he asked.

Aziraphale frowned. “The Seven Years’ War, I think. Gabriel wanted me to help.”

Crowley hummed again, and then pulled over to the side of the road.

“Come on, angel,” he said, opening his door and swinging his legs out.

“What is it?” he asked, mind immediately going to archangels coming down from the sky, to demons clawing their way out of the dirt, to divine and hellish retribution. He felt sick.

“We’re looking for fairies.”

The sick feeling left him, leaving behind nothing but bemusement in its wake. Aziraphale didn’t bother asking any more questions, just got out of the car and walked over to where Crowley was standing on the edge where the road met the grass.

“Fairies,” he repeated, looking at Crowley’s face. Night had truly fallen, the sky an inky purple-blue-black, and Crowley’s golden eyes were bright in the half-dark.

“Come on,” he said again, turning to look at Aziraphale before walking backwards into the tall grass. Aziraphale laughed and followed. The grass reached up to his knees in some places, his waist in others.

“Where exactly are we going to find these fairies, dearest?”

“Just—around. Hey, here’s one!” Crowley had stopped to bend over a patch of grass. There were little lights blazing amongst the plants, now that he looked closely, but he didn’t have time to figure out what they are.

As Aziraphale watched, perplexed, Crowley reached out and grabbed something in his hands. He sat down right there, in the middle of the grass, grinning impishly up at Aziraphale.

“Caught one,” he said.

“Caught a fairy? Oh—!”

Not a fairy, but a glow worm, burning bright in Crowley’s open palm.

“Hello, you,” Aziraphale said, sitting down next to him in the grass. “They really are everywhere, now that I look.”

One was crawling up his foot.

“I think this one looks like a Mabel,” he continued, pointing at Crowley’s bug. He scooped up the one sitting on his shoe. “But this one looks like an Evelyn.”

“An Evelyn? Come on, angel, there’s no way that’s an Evelyn. It’s a Martha.”

“How dare you! It looks like an Evelyn, and a wonderful one at that.” He let Evelyn crawl up his arm. “Don’t listen to him, old girl, he’s just jealous Mabel isn’t as amazing as you.”

“You can insult my dignity,” Crowley said, “you can insult my car and my vinyl collection, you can insult my hair, but you can’t insult my glow worm. Say you’re sorry.”

“No.”

Crowley stuck his forked tongue out at him.

“Very mature.”

Crowley did it again, and Aziraphale laughed and leaned in to kiss him.

——

Wake up, someone said, so Crowley did. Gabriel was standing there again, leaning over him. Wake up, get up, I need to show you something.

Crowley got up. Gabriel smiled a brittle and cold smile, pleased.

Follow me.

The world was hazy, vague, the lines between this and that blurred. When he moved his hand, it left behind a thousand echoes. Gabriel didn’t look back to see if he was still following.

Come on, he whispered, it’s important.

Crowley figured that it had to be, but there was also something clinging to his feet, the scratch of long-dead fingernails scraping at his ankles, cold and clammy hands. The floor was faintly sticky, and every time he moved it makes an unpleasant sound, wet and nauseating.

We’re nearly there.

He tried to open his mouth to ask where are we going what is it what do you need me to see? but his lips had been stitched shut, he was sure. He could feel the thread, and they didn’t come apart no matter how hard he tried. So he shrugged and hurried after Gabriel, the white grey black black black hallway stretching ever-on.

Stop.

Crowley stopped.

Just over there, Gabriel said, pointing into nothing, into the pitch-dark, into the blinding, searing light. Look.

Crowley looked.

Nothing, he said, and he was surprised when he was actually able to say it.

Gabriel smiled that same, unnerving smile that showed off too many teeth crammed into his mouth, and raised a finger to his lips, the other hand cupped around his ear—signalling to him to be silent and listen.

So he did, and he heard.

The first of it was a sort of shuffling, dragging noise, like someone was walking towards them. Something cold touched his hand, and he shook it away. Whatever it was makes a wet squelch as it hit the ground.

And then there came something—else. Something humming. Crowley could feel it in his bones, in the very marrow of him, vibrating. He felt detached from his body, and painfully anchored. He felt watched.

Gabriel asked, Can you feel it?

Crowley nodded, because he could. Something was becoming visible in the black, vaguely humanoid. He squinted, tried to make it out. Whatever it was had wings, he could see, but they were dragging behind it like they were injured.

And then—

Aziraphale stumbled but did not fall, leg twisted at a sickening angle, and Crowley tried to back away but something was holding him in place, some invisible force making him watch, and it did not let up.

Look, Gabriel commanded. I want you to look.

I don’t want to, he said.

Aziraphale didn’t—or maybe he couldn’t—say anything at all. He just continued to cry, bloody tears running down his cheeks, bloodstained teeth, blood-soaked shirt. His eyes were mirrors, fathoms-deep lakes.

What happened to you, angel? Crowley wanted to ask, but the words were too many and his tongue was too heavy in his mouth.

Aziraphale’s wings gave a feeble twitch, ends stained and dripping gold, gold, gold.

See? Gabriel asked.

Crowley felt sick.

That’s what he will be, Gabriel said.

Crowley, Aziraphale said, and his voice was horrible, grating, the awful screech of metal on metal, like millions of people screaming, like it was reaching into him, like his bones were brittle and crumbling. He reminded himself that he didn’t need to breathe. Something was crawling up his spine, agonizingly slow.

Please

And that’s not all because

please Crowley please

he’ll fucking kill you

it hurts so bad Crowley

and then we’ll see

please I don’t want it to hurt anymore please

if he lives or dies—

Crowley it hurts please oh please oh please make it stop—

Wake up

Crowley woke up. Crowley woke up. Crowley woke up. Crowley wo

——

There was a strangled sort of scream building up in his throat.

He looked over at Aziraphale, who had fallen asleep curled up in an armchair at the foot of the bed, something almost feline about the unnatural bend to his back. The hotel was quiet, apart from a door slamming somewhere outside.

Quietly, so as not to disturb, Crowley got out of bed and slipped outside, stopping only to grab his jacket.

It was a nice night, crickets singing beyond the car park, the occasional car driving by on the road. No one was outside but for him, and there was something strangely, absurdly lonely about it. Like he was the last living creature in the entire world. In a way, it had always been a story about this: Crowley, alone. Time was not linear, and so in the end, this was the way things would begin and end and stay.

The light pollution gave way out in places like this, far from the reaching fingers of London and Manchester and everywhere else. The stars were clearly visible in the night sky. I helped to make those, he thought, a bit sadly. He sat down on the curb, legs stretched out in front of him, the gravel warm and the sidewalk cool against his hands, pebbles digging into his skin. The universe was unraveling, and here he was, here he was, here he was.

And there, surrounded by the welcoming dark and the unbearable weight of the night sky, Crowley let himself think it:

Something is coming.

——

“Aren’t they just lovely?” Aziraphale asked, eyes twinkling as he surveyed the rows of trees laden with red fruit. “See, this is what I mean: you give them all the love in the world and they end up growing just fine!”

“They’d grow better,” Crowley said, trying not to shudder at all the bloody symbolism choking the air, “if they were scared out of their minds. Apple trees are pretentious bastards. You’re just stroking their egos.”

Their impromptu road trip was going smashingly so far: they went to gardens, and theaters, and little farmer’s markets in the most charming and out-of-the-way towns they could find. They ate the lunches Aziraphale packed sitting on grassy hills and next to clear rivers, made up games to pass the time as they drove and drove aimlessly (How many potholes d’you think I can hit in a minute? Surely not that many. Challenge accepted. It wasn’t a challenge!) and also, apparently, visited apple orchards.

“See, look,” Crowley said, reaching overhead and plucking a fruit from a branch overhead. “It’s not proper red.”

“My dear. Any redder and it would be unnatural.” He reached up to pull free an apple, too, and Crowley stopped tossing his own from hand to hand.

Aziraphale seemed to realize something had happened, eyes a bit wider than they usually were. He could have sworn he saw the shadow of massive wings, spanning horizon to horizon, could see eyes innumerable shifting to stare at him with liquid-gold gazes and the faintest glimmer of a halo.

Go ahead, then, he wanted to say, eyes straying unwittingly to the angel’s lips (He looks like an angel, so why then does he talk like me?) and then to the glistening apple in his hand. Bite it. He ran his tongue over his teeth, feeling the unnaturally sharp points, too aware of every little thing. The smooth and silken lining of his coat pockets against the backs of his hand, the breeze carding through his hair. As if the world had been brought up a notch on the cosmic scale, as if all the colours had gotten just a bit more vibrant, all the sounds a bit more melodic. Suspended in what they could create on their own. To be a sculptor was to mould and breathe life into that which you shaped with your hands and your salted tears, and the sweet blood coursing through your veins. There was a reason why the best of them appeared so real. There was a reason why the remnants of Michelangelo and Bernini were forever immortal.

Stretch your wings, and the sky would receive you with open arms.

Falling in reverse, well. It could only be called flying.

Name a paradox, any paradox; they ought to cancel out, but they didn’t and they didn’t and they never, ever had. An angel loved a demon and a demon loved an angel, and they had both believed themselves solitary in this silent, worshiping adoration for the longest of histories. A lovely pumpernickel, and freshly cut tulips in a vase on the kitchen table. A new beginning, like being brought back from the dead, like being given a second chance, like un-burning a bookshop.

Take a step forward.

Time was not linear; everything had happened already. Everything would happen again. Take a breath, and you would, inevitably, take another and another until you wouldn’t anymore. Bite into an apple, and it might just be the first since Eden, it might just be the redoing of a sin or the doing of a miracle.

It was said that every now and then, the universe realized something important was going on and stretched itself accordingly, contorting and kneading itself over until there was room enough to slip in a few moments more. Most people never received a single one of these stolen seconds, these paradoxical impossibilities; how could there be more time when it had never existed in the first place? That was the question, was it not? Yet the stars were still created (shaped, lovingly, with an olive-toned and automaton-like pair of hands, hands which now painted their nails black and intertwined comfortably with the softer pair of another) and the sea still parted, here and there. A pathway cutting into the ocean, cleaving the world in two and providing an escape, or a respite, or a damnation. Oh, how there was damnation.

The fire still scorched, the burning pain impossible to bear. (I can feel it, I can still feel it, why can I still feel it? I have never wished the same horror upon you despite being required to, and all I ask is for your grace to heal me. Fill in my cracks, please, with your golden light. Show me that which I cannot see.)

Time stopped. For the barest slip of a second, a meager scrap of itself, but stop it did.

Aziraphale bit into the apple.

——

Something was very, very wrong with him. The world was doubling over on itself, shifting and bending into a dizzying array of light and sound. It made Aziraphale’s head hurt, even though that shouldn’t have been possible.

“You alright, angel?” Crowley asked. He was standing in front of a shelf in a small local supermarket, dithering between two different kinds of pasta.

“Yes,” Aziraphale said, but no sound came out of his mouth.

“Angel?” Crowley asked, turning his head to look at him.

“I’m okay,” Aziraphale said. He was able to, this time. Crowley gave him a small smile and picked the conversation back up.

“So I was thinking we could get this kind because it’s twisted into all kinds of funny shapes. I mean, look! Who knew they had pasta shaped like Spider-Man? I mean, I did, because pasta in funny shapes was my idea, but Spider-Man!”

The floor was tilting.

Something is wrong.

“Okay,” he said.

“Angel,” Crowley said again, this time setting the pasta down and putting both hands on Aziraphale’s shoulders. “Are you okay?”

Aziraphale swallowed. The fluorescent lights were flickering. The humming of the refrigerators was an apocalyptic noise. He felt disconnected from his body, like he was momentarily someone else entirely identical to himself. His hand moved without him telling it to, drifting to a side and then back to where it had been.

Are you okay are you okay are you okay

“Angel,” Crowley said again. A light overhead gave an ominous buzz before cutting out altogether, casting them into shadow. (Metaphor incoming.) None of this was real. He tried to open his mouth to say something, but his voice was stuck somewhere in his chest, and all that came out was a rush of static that sounded like something caught between channels on a radio.

“Right,” Crowley said decisively. “Right, we’re leaving.”

One second he was surrounded by shelves of boxed pasta and sauce and instant rice, and the next he was sitting on the sidewalk outside of the supermarket’s sliding doors, night air cold against his skin. He wondered if Crowley had miracled them out, or if he was just going crazy.

Crowley himself was standing in front of him, face pale and drawn with worry.

“What happened?” he asked, and his voice sounded small and worn thin.

“What happened?” Crowley asked. His glasses were off, and his eyes were wild. “Angel, don’t you remember?”

“I don’t know,” Aziraphale said, and he didn’t. All he could recall was the sickening vertigo in his gut as the world tilted on its axis.

Crowley blew out a breath, running a hand through his hair. He’d been growing it out a bit, and it almost brushed his shoulders when he didn’t have it knotted. It suited him; Aziraphale was struck by the overwhelming urge to curl it around his finger.

“Aziraphale,” Crowley began. “You haven’t seen Gabriel recently, have you?”

Aziraphale blinked; of all the questions, this wasn’t the one he’d been expecting. “No,” he said. “Not since the airbase.”

“Okay,” he said. “Okay, okay. Do you think you can stand up now?”

Aziraphale gave it a shot. His legs felt unsure of themselves, like it was his first day in his corporation all over again, but he was able to.

“Okay,” Crowley said again.

“Okay,” Aziraphale said back.

Crowley hugged him. Aziraphale hugged him back.

Something is wrong

The sliding doors opened behind them, and Crowley pulled away, inspecting Aziraphale at arm’s length. Something softened in his eyes.

“You know,” he said, “I think we should just eat out today.”

“Okay,” Aziraphale said.

Something is wrong

——

Crowley did not sleep that night. He was watching Aziraphale instead, keeping a silent vigil.

He didn’t know what was happening.

So he watched.

——

They were standing on a beach, the wind cold and merciless as it buffeted into them, but Crowley didn’t care.

Aziraphale suddenly let go of his hand, kicking off his shoes and rolling up the cuffs of his pants. He let his coat drop onto the sand. Crowley watched, perplexed.

“Come on,” Aziraphale said, grinning, and walked backwards into the surf. He made a surprised noise—the water was no doubt freezing—but he laughed, too. Crowley loved him impossibly.

“You’re crazy,” he said, but did the same. His guess was right: the ocean was freezing cold, even for him. Aziraphale made matters worse by hurling water at him. It was ice-cold as it hit him, soaking his shirt. Aziraphale laughed.

“So that’s the way it’s going to be, huh?” Crowley asked. “Then it is on.” He raised some water, shaping it into a ball, and let it fly. It hit Aziraphale right in the face, and he gasped, water dripping off his hair and his nose.

“You—rude person!” he said, and summoned a small wave. He pushed his arms out and the water rushed at him, but Crowley stepped to the side and it missed him.

“You’ve gotta try harder than that, angel,” he teased, and that was when something grabbed him around the ankles. He shouted in surprise, but no, it was Aziraphale again, shaping the water into long-fingered hands which were climbing up his legs.

“Fuck you!” he shouted gleefully, summoning a wave of his own, and sent it slamming into Aziraphale. It completely drenched him, and the watery hands spilled away. Aziraphale’s face was priceless—he was soaking wet, mouth hanging open in shock, and Crowley couldn’t help how hard he was laughing anymore.

“Fuck you!” he said, and pushed Crowley into the water. Crowley’s laugh was cut short as he fell into the water. He knew he must look ridiculous as he emerged from the sea, like a discount version of Colin Firth’s Mister Darcy coming out of the pond in Pride and Prejudice, but Aziraphale was slamming into him before he had a chance to retort, and they were kissing before he could form any coherent thought after that.

Aziraphale kissed like—well, like the devil, and Crowley was so weak. Time got a little fuzzy at the edges, but it was unimportant when Aziraphale was so close to him.

He wished, foolishly, that they could stay like this forever.

——

That night, Aziraphale was throwing up.

Well. It could only sort of be classified as throwing up because, while he was retching over the edge of the toilet seat, nothing was coming out. Aziraphale had never thrown up before, unless they counted that time in 1973 with the cultist and the dress. (Which they were not.)

Crowley was rubbing circles between his shoulder blades, trying to quell his own panic.

“It’s okay,” he said, smoothing Aziraphale’s hair back from his forehead. “It’s okay, love, I’ve got you, you’ll be alright.”

One more jerk and it was over, presumably. Aziraphale was shaking like a leaf in a strong wind. The lights were flickering again.

“Angel?” Crowley asked cautiously. Aziraphale’s hands were clamped over his mouth. His eyes were wide and fearful. The shower started up with a groaning of pipes, steaming-hot water pattering against the tile. There was something in Aziraphale’s hands when he pulled them away. He made a sound, a strangled sort of sob. Crowley stared.

It was a heart.

It was a heart, small and black as tar, still pulsating grotesquely, feebly spurting out something dark and slick. He could hear it as it did, a fleshy, wet sound.

Aziraphale let the heart drop to the floor. It landed with a sickening squelching noise, and that was where it stayed, lying in a growing puddle of that same oil spill blood, stark against the white tile.

The mirror above the sink splintered into a spiderweb of fractures.

Aziraphale’s eyes were glowing a piercing, brilliant white, glow emanating from his body. If he concentrated very hard, he could almost see a halo, wings that spanned the entire horizon.

Crowley stood up and, taking care to move around the thing on the floor, walked over to Aziraphale.

“Hey,” he said, taking care to keep his voice low and non-threatening. “I’m here, love. Come on.” He reached down and took Aziraphale’s hand (it was cold as ice) and pulled him to his feet.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said. His teeth were chattering together, even though the temperature was normal in the motel bathroom. “C— Crowley, what, what was—” He didn’t finished the sentence. His eyes were still lit like lighthouse beams.

“We’re going to go outside, okay?” Crowley asked.

Aziraphale nodded.

It was a warm night, crickets chirping. Crowley managed to bring Aziraphale to the small field next to the motel (Moonlite All-Nite Motel! Service 24/7! Reasonable Rates! (Subject to change!) No Ghosts Here!) before he fell, landing heavily on his knees amidst the tall grass.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said, still shaking, “something’s very wrong with me.”

Crowley sat down next to him. “We’ll figure it out,” he whispered.

Aziraphale wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Something’s wrong.”

“Come here,” Crowley said. Aziraphale leaned into him. He was crying. “We’ll figure it out,” he said, pressing a kiss to the top of Aziraphale’s head. “You’ll be alright.”

He wished it sounded less like a wish and more like a promise.

Something was coming.

——

Crowley had popped inside a mini-mart to grab some candy, and Aziraphale was waiting for him in front of the Bentley. He wondered if he’d remember to get marshmallows, and then remembered that it was Crowley, and of course he would. Sunset was fast approaching, the sun low in the sky, the sky turning into a series of pale pinks and blues.

“Hey,” someone said. “You figure out what the fuck’s been happening to you yet?”

Time was not linear. Take a step backwards: there was a demon begging you to run off to Alpha Centauri with him. Take a step to the side: “You go too fast for me, Crowley.” Take a step forwards: an archangel with her blade to your neck, the end of your world as you know it.

Aziraphale froze. He could hear Gabriel opening and closing the Bentley’s door again and again, like he had nothing better to do.

“Because something sure is, pal,” he continued. He came over to stand next to Aziraphale, leaning against the hood of the car.

“Why are you here?” Aziraphale asked, but it wasn’t a question, not really. He wondered if he could get to Crowley inside the mini-mart at the other end of the lot before Gabriel could, if he could take down the archangel in a fight. (Of course he could, he was the bloody Principality of the Eastern Gate of Eden, but who knew what Gabriel had come planning to do?)

“Oh, you know,” Gabriel said, examining his nails. He was wearing a white button-down over dress pants. He looked bored. He looked dangerous. He looked like something covered in shards of glass. “Just thought I’d check in.”

“And why,” he asked, with thinly-veiled fury, “is that?”

“Well,” Gabriel said. “I figured I could see how the happy couple is faring. A demon, really, Aziraphale?”

His hands itched to hold the familiar hilt of his sword. “It’s none of your fucking business,” he snapped. The world sounded underwater, the panic sirens ringing in his head the loudest noise of all. A lorry hurtled past on the far-off road, probably going well above the speed limit.

Gabriel raised an eyebrow. “Tell me, Az— Can I call you Az?”

“Under no circumstances.”

“Sure, anyway,” he said, grinning gleefully. “Riddle me this, Az: Who the fuck do you think you are?”

“Not yours anymore, that’s for sure.”

“Right, right. So you think that gives you an excuse to, what, fuck around with a demon? Never thought you’d sink that low, if I’m being honest. You two’ve been a bit of business up in Heaven for a while, but I just figured it was rumors, maybe you were planning on killing the poor sucker, who knows? But now look at you two!” There was something manic in his violet eyes. Aziraphale’s hand was creeping behind his back, trying to find space to safely summon his sword.

“So I’ve come up with two brilliant solutions. Solution number one: I kill the demon and drag you up to Heaven to get you to see some sense. Or, my personal favourite, solution number two— Actually, no, why am I telling you? Ruins the surprise. Uriel? Michael!”

These last two words were shouted out. Uriel appeared in a second, but he didn’t see Michael until—

Someone pulling his arms behind his back, an invisible force keeping him looking forward, a low voice in his ear: “Stay quiet and this’ll be a lot smoother than it could be, got it?”

How could he have been this stupid?

He tried to shake Michael off, but all that did was prompt the archangel to press a dagger to his throat. “This thing’s cursed, got it?” she snarled. “Now shut the fuck up, or I’ll discorporate you right here, and it’ll be centuries until you’re going to be able to even remember your name.”

Aziraphale froze. Partly because of the dagger, and partly because he had only just realized who Uriel was holding on his knees in front of them, bloodied and beaten and half passed-out.

It was Crowley.

——

There’s an old man, tap-tapping on the glass, asking to be let in. You cannot let him in. Can you hear the graveyard song, thin and ancient and so very, very powerful? Can you feel it in your bones? The day the angels fall from the sky, the day all the demons come to die, this is the day you join your hands with his hands and tell the priest, “I do, we do, make us one, make us whole.” The priest is dead. The boy holding your hand is dead, too, and you’re alone in this world. But carry on, sweet one; kiss his dead mouth and slip a ring on his skeleton finger. Do not let the old man in. Good; now take that dagger, and plunge it into your eyes, your ears, your tongue—see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, and now you are no longer the morning star.

——

“Alright you guys!” Gabriel said, clapping his hands together delightedly. “Let’s get this show on the road!”

“Let him go,” Aziraphale said, trying to keep the panic ringing in his head from bleeding into his voice. Crowley was watching him, watching him. His nose was bleeding, blood shockingly crimson against his skin.

Gabriel ignored him. “So here’s how this’ll go. I’m going to kill this thing right here and right now, and then we’re going to take you back upstairs with us, Az, and everything is going to be— What’s that thing you say? Tickety-boo!”

“You can’t,” Aziraphale said, straining against Michael’s arms. Crowley’s sunglasses had been knocked off, and he was looking up at Aziraphale with tired, frightened eyes. “You can’t do this.”

“Says who, sunshine?” Gabriel asked.

“I don’t— The Almighty wouldn’t want—”

“Do not,” Gabriel snarled, casting off his friendly demeanor like an uncomfortable coat, “tell me what the Almighty does and does not want. I’m the archangel fucking Gabriel, and I’m going to kill this abomination—” He gave Crowley a swift kick to the stomach; Crowley bent over in pain. “And then I’m going to bring you back upstairs, and we’re going to fix all this.” He waved his hand in Aziraphale’s general direction.

Uriel looked as though they’d rather be anywhere that wasn’t here. They were shaking their head at Aziraphale, as though encouraging him not to fight. Like hell he wouldn’t. He could summon his sword. He didn’t think Michael knew he had this one. He would cut her down, and then what? Would he attack Gabriel? Was that what he’d do?

“‘Zirabale,” Crowley said, voice thick through his split lip, “dob’t do abything stupid.”

Like he had read his mind.

“Listen to him!” Gabriel cawed. “This is probably the one thing he’s ever said to you that wasn’t a lie. Michael, toss me the other knife.” She did so, presumably, because the next second, Gabriel was holding one. It was golden, and radiated holy power, which meant—

“No,” Aziraphale said, and struggled harder against Michael’s hold. She pressed her dagger harder against his throat, and he felt the skin break, was struck by a wave of light-headedness, but that didn’t stop him.

“This is going to kill him,” Gabriel said, with a small, vicious smile. “Permanently. It’s going to be slow. It’s going to be painful. And you’re going to watch every second of it. Bring him up.”

Uriel hauled Crowley to his feet. He stumbled slightly, eyes never leaving Aziraphale’s. “‘S okay, angel,” he said. What if I take the knife from her and throw it at Gabriel? No, he’d still manage to stick it in Crowley. If I held Michael hostage? He’d still do it.

“Shut the fuck up,” Gabriel said amiably. “Do demons have hearts? I never knew the answer to that.”

Crowley gave the archangel a look that could have set the world ablaze. “Go to hell,” he snarled, and spat in his face. Gabriel wiped the blood off his cheek with the back of his hand, gave Crowley a tight smile,

and drove the dagger into his heart.

There was no apocalyptic noise. No earthquake, no scream, just a gasp, wrenching and painful, before Crowley crumbled to the ground. A complete absence of sound. Just one single moment in which there was nothing, nothing, and wasn’t that something all on its own?

And then Aziraphale went off like a bomb.

——

A pain like something eating away at the very soul of him—

the ground was rushing up to meet him—

black blood all over his hands, dripping down his arms in rivers—

he was being cleaved in two, he was being emptied, his very mind was aflame—

And then there was a sound, like an explosion, like the end of the world. A blinding flash of light visible even through his squeezed-shut eyelids. The very earth was shaking, moving, breathing beneath him. And in the heart of him, the words of a single song, clear even over the rushing tumble of pain—

Aziraphale Aziraphale Aziraphale Aziraph

——

Michael screamed as he buried the sword into her chest. It went in almost up to the hilt, blade coming right out of her back. She was staring at Aziraphale through wide eyes, blue eyes, fading eyes, lit up by his light—

The ground was moving. Fissures and cracks forming in the concrete, and he was the epicenter, power singing in his blood, humming in his bones.

His wings tore out of his back, violently, almost throwing him back.

Gabriel was laughing. “Uriel,” he said, as though this was all a joke, some amusing thing the universe had cobbled together just for him. “Deal with him.”

Uriel swallowed but did as they were told, drawing their own sword. It was shorter than Aziraphale’s, a tidy, wicked little thing. And so the dance went. Metal on metal, fire on fire, desperation on compulsion.

“I don’t want to hurt you, Aziraphale,” Uriel said quietly. “You’re an angel, too.”

“What you’re doing right now doesn’t seem very angelic.”

The world was an explosion of colour and noise. The world was deathly silent. He was an intent, a purpose, an ideal given body. That was all, really. The sword was alive in his hands.

“I have to do this. You don’t.”

“Fuck off and die.”

——

He could see:

Uriel throwing themselves at Aziraphale, but something was lagging in their movements, like they weren’t really trying. Thrust, parry, thrust, parry, a vicious dance.

Blink.

Blinding, searing pain—his heart was eating its way out of his chest, his lungs were shriveling up, his blood was freezing in his veins—

Blink.

Uriel leaned in to say something, and Aziraphale spat something back. He was terrifying and beautiful, cut on his cheek leaking golden ichor, eyes lit up like stars, wings spread behind him like he was some sort of avenging warrior.

Blink.

There was a scream building up in his throat.

This was the end.

This was the end.

He could feel it.

——

Parry, thrust, lunge, block, parry, parry, thrust, disarm—

“Aziraphale, no!” Uriel shouted.

He hesitated, sword hovering in front of their throat. That split second’s hesitation before he brought it down was all the time in the world. An eternity, contained.

Uriel fell.

And then something slammed into him.

Gabriel was pinning his arms down with his knees, knife raised above him. He grinned down at Aziraphale, feral, savage. In this way, they were now one and the same.

“Do you know,” Gabriel gritted out, tracing a line from Aziraphale’s eye to his jaw—not pressing down hard enough to break the skin, but the threat was still there. (Less of a threat, really, and more of a promise. This was just the intermission.) “How long I’ve wanted to do this? Years and decades and centuries.”

The knife sank into his cheek, and Aziraphale cried out, momentarily blinded by pain.

“You were always better,” he continued, pulling the blade downwards, cutting a line into his face. “You always believed. I just executed the orders. I realize, now, that I was right. But still; why is it you that gets to stay?”
Pain and brilliance, cold and heat, light and dark. A buzzing in his heart.

“Get—off—me—”

“You were always fucking defective, blowing up every time you got upset, just like now—we don’t need you rogue, we need you competent, and the way to achieve that is to kill the demon and force the sense back into you.”
There was something building up in his chest, something heavy and impossible. The knife sank deeper into his cheek, and the world went dark for a second.

“So. Here we go.” Gabriel took a breath. Aziraphale’s limbs were leaden, disconnected from him. He couldn’t move.

“Get off,” he pleaded. “I need to save him.”

Gabriel was dragging the knife along his jaw. The blood was hot and wet on his face, slipping down his neck.

“Emna i a ooa,” Gabriel said. Aziraphale’s breath caught in his throat. “Emna i a ozodien.”

“No,” Aziraphale said. “No, no, stop, please—”

“Emna i a uls.”

Someone was screaming. It might have been him, or Gabriel, or no one at all.

“Q adohi niis.”

This was the end of the world.

And then: nothing, clear and resonant.

——

Crowley was losing himself.

Bits and pieces, breaking away into the dissolve.

Soon, there would be nothing left.

And then, not even that.

——

It took a minute for Aziraphale to re-learn how to move his fingers, his hands, his arms. It took him another minute to stand up—his head felt light and filled with static, like it had been stuffed with cotton—and still another to take a tentative step forwards. There was blood running in rivers down his face, soaking the collar of his shirt golden. He was sure he looked like some sort of martyr, like a sacrifice. As soon as he’d figured all that out, he stumbled over to Crowley.

And Crowley wasn’t moving; serpentine eyes unseeing as they stared up at the sprawling sky. His fingertips were stained ink-black.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale sobbed out. His voice sounded foreign and worn, even to his own ears. “Crowley, wake up.”
The ground shuddered beneath them. He turned Crowley’s face, skin cold as ice (no, please, no, take me but not him—) shaking his shoulders.

“Crowley!”

No answer.

There was no answer.

“Crowley, dearest, please wake up, please...” Aziraphale knew it was hysteria. That didn’t stop him. He was crying.

And then—

Something moving beneath his hands, the sweet bounce of a pulse.

Please please please please please

He put both hands on Crowley’s chest, fingers splayed.

He closed his eyes.

(Six thousand years told in seconds: the flash of pointed teeth through open smiles, a sharp and forked tongue, little demonic miracles, drinks and dinners, wings dark and beautiful as the night sky, a single dance shared between them, and always, always this endless, ancient love.)

“Heal him,” he commanded.

The ground heaved; the sky rumbled; the world listened. Sparks racing through his fingers, up his arms, diffusing in his body. He was a supernova frozen in time, an explosion that had been ongoing for six millennia, and here, finally, was how it all made headway.

Crowley gasped beneath him.

“Wake up,” he ordered.

——

“Ouch,” Crowley said. There was something pressed down on his chest. Everything hurt.

It took a moment for the world to come into focus, and when it did, he was almost certain he had just woken up into another nightmare. Aziraphale was leaning over him, half his face covered with golden blood still gushing from a nasty gash running down from his cheekbone to the corner of his jaw. He was crying.

“‘Ziraphale?” he asked. “What’s wrong—?”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale sobbed, and pulled him up into a crushing hug.

“Whoa,” he said. He would have patted the angel’s back, but his arms were incapable of movement. Aziraphale’s wings were out. Why were his wings out?

And then he remembered.

“Holy shit, holy, holy shit,” he swore, pushing Aziraphale back so he could study him more closely. “What happened to you, where’s Gabriel, what happened? I don’t— I don’t remember, angel, you’re hurt, holy fuck—”

“It’s okay,” Aziraphale said, laughed, sobbed. He wiped his tears away with the back of his hand, but only succeeded in making a further mess of the blood on his face.

“And who the fuck hurt you that bad? What did Gabriel do to you? And why does the lot look like there’s jussst been an earthquake? And where the fuck isss Gabriel ssso I can find him and rip hisss armsss out of hisss pathetic exsscussse of a corporation—”

“Gabriel’s gone,” Aziraphale said. The sky was an amalgamation of pinks and reds and indigos. Irony at its finest. “And I’m alright. And the lot was my fault. I went off.”

“Aziraphale,” Crowley said. “Don’t fucking lie to me. What did he do?”

“I’ll tell you after. How are you feeling, right now.”

“Azira—”

“Tell me.” There was something commanding in that voice, something that could move mountains and bring the very sky crashing down if he so willed it. This was not Aziraphale. This was Aziraphale, more.

“Everything hurts,” he answered truthfully. “But not— not as much.” Not as much as something tearing out his spine, vertebra by vertebra, something burning his fingers with hellfire, something tearing him apart. “What did you do to fix me after what he did, Aziraphale? Why am I not dead?”

“Let there be light; he willed it,” Aziraphale whispered, “and at once there was light. Something’s wrong, dearest. But it brought you back to me.”

Crowley didn’t know what to say to that, so he didn’t. He brought their lips crashing together, two stars hurtling together towards certain doom. It was a kiss that tasted like blood and ozone. It was a kiss that screamed, we are alive, we are alive, against all odds we are alive.

And when it was over: “Let me take care of you, angel.”

They left the lot like that, fragmented and bruised. A new sort of pilgrimage.

——

“I think this road trip may have been a mistake,” Crowley said, pressing bandages to Aziraphale’s wound. It refused to be miracled better, warning signs already blaring in his head at that simple fact. He was going to tear Gabriel apart. He was going to rip every feather out of his wings and hang him with a rope he’d fashion out of them. He was going to—

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said, voice soft. He looked exhausted, eyes dull with pain and spent energy. He brought me back from permanent death, and I kissed him. He has that sort of power tucked into his heart, and he talks with me about ducks and holds my hand. “It wasn’t a mistake. They would have found us anyway, no matter where we’d been.”

“I guess you’re right. But still—”

“Hush up, darling.”

Crowley hushed up. There was a long stretch of silence, the sort of quiet that followed at the heels of tragedy; impenetrable and suffocating. The gash wouldn’t stop bleeding, leaking golden ichor like sunlit tears. They were sitting in another shitty motel room that Crowley had done his best to fix up. It was, at least, marginally bigger than the average motel room. He may or may not have bought out two and then miracled away the dividing wall. Aziraphale was sitting on the bed, Crowley on his knees in front of him, still trying to quell the bleeding.

“What did he cut you with?” he asked.

“Knife. Different from the one he—” A pause; Aziraphale’s eyes fluttered closed for a moment. “Different from the one he used on you, I think.” Another pause. This one was more like the angel was debating between telling him something at all, and not as though he couldn’t bring himself to say it at all.

“Spit it out, angel,” Crowley coaxed, throwing down the bandages. (They fell into the bin, at the top of the pile already amassed there already.)

“He said something as he did it. In Enochian.”

Crowley swore. “What did he say?”

“I don’t think you want to know.”

“Bullshit, Aziraphale. He might’ve cursed you, for all we know.”

“I think he may have, which is why I don’t want you to know—”

“What. Did. He say?”

Aziraphale pressed his lips together into a tight line. “Emna i— sorry. Emna i a ooa, emna i a ozodien. Emna i a uls. Q adohi niis.” He sighed, ragged and so very tired. The words were like fingernails scraping against a chalkboard to Crowley’s ears, but he could still understand Enochian fairly well.

“Here is an eye,” he translated, “and here is a hand. Here is an end. Thy kingdom come. Shit, angel, that’s a curse if I’ve ever heard one. Any idea what it’s meant to do?”

“I don’t know, Crowley.” He tipped his head forwards so that his forehead rested against Crowley’s. “I’m so tired.”

“I know, angel,” he murmured, running a hand through Aziraphale’s hair. It wasn’t fair. They’d shown both Heaven and Hell who they stood with, and that was supposed to have been the end. But here was Aziraphale, cursed and wounded and spent, and here was Crowley, dragged back from Death’s door by the marvelous being before him.

——

There was something clawing at the insides of his heart, demanding to be set free, and all Aziraphale knew was that this thing could not be let out. Here, finally, was Gabriel’s curse. Given what Gabriel had said in the lot, earlier, it seemed that the curse had been there before; he’d only kicked it into motion. Aziraphale wondered if that was why he kept on almost going off, even when nothing was wrong.

He knew he looked like a bloody mess, literally. It was a miracle they’d even been let in. It was a miracle the young man at the desk hadn’t immediately called the police on them. It was a miracle, probably.

Crowley was watching him, something troubled in his expression.

I could have lost him, I could have lost him, this could have been it, this could have been the end, I could have lost him—
Oh, Hell.

——

Aziraphale had stopped breathing for a split-second, features stricken.

“Angel?” he asked, cautious. “Why’ve you stopped?”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said. His breath had returned, but it was coming in quick, panicked spurts. “You have to leave. Immediately.”

“What? No! Have you gone off your rocker?” A cricket chirped loudly outside the window. The overhead light momentarily flickered.

(Why did the angel and the demon cross the road? I don’t know. Because that was the only place left to go.)

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said. There was something...off about his voice. Like it wasn’t just him that had spoken, but someone else, someone more. Like a hundred Aziraphales had been compressed into this singular second. “Something is going to happen and I will not be able to control it, and I need you to leave—”

——

Aziraphale knew what Gabriel’s curse was now.

Stupid of him, to not have seen it earlier.

Crowley needed to go.

——

“What’s going to happen?” Crowley asked. He’d never seen Aziraphale like this before, never so genuinely terrified.
The trees outside were whispering to him, somehow, but he could make out no words. Some language long ago forgotten by all but the rustling leaves. Some magic was meant to stay hidden.

“Crowley—”

And then something happened.

He didn’t know how to describe it, not even to himself, but the only way to put it was that this was no longer any version of Aziraphale he knew. He felt the change in the air; this was something ancient, something immeasurably old and cruel.

“Aziraphale?” he asked quietly. “I’m right here, we can fix this—”

“Crowley— Crowley— You need to leave, please leave— Serpent, traitor, liar, ye of heartless desire—”

Crowley took a step back, palms upturned imploringly. “Aziraphale, angel, I know you’re still there. Come back to me.” He would not let his voice shake, not right now. It was Aziraphale’s voice, but it also wasn’t; papered over with something scratched and static-like.

“The undoing approaches, Crawly. You cannot escape it forever.”

Aziraphale’s sword was in his hand. Crowley took another step back.

“Angel.”

Aziraphale smiled at him. It was not a nice smile.

“Thy kingdom come,” he said, and pointed his sword at Crowley’s neck.

——

Shall I tell you what I see in the mirrors? I see your face, and every single version of you is decayed. You are an abandoned wasp’s nest. Within your heart is contained the end of all things. How else to describe it? You are a catalyst, you scheming dreamer, you amaranthine foe. Tell me not your secrets, for they are already scrawled upon my arms in dark ink. Do not tell me that I ought not be afraid. I am afraid, I am afraid. But everything has a meaning. And so do you, you beautiful and eldritch thing.

——

Crowley wasn’t sure he would do anything until Aziraphale took the first swing of the sword. Part of him, he supposed, had been in denial. Part of him still was. The sword was on fire. The world was on fire. He was choking on the smoke in his throat, in his lungs.

“Aziraphale!” he shouted, and his voice rang in the air of the room. “Snap out of it!”

“Your Aziraphale is here no longer, foul thing,” Not-Aziraphale laughed, and it sounded so much like him that it hurt. “He was too much of a coward to do what needs to be done.” He swung at Crowley with the sword again; Crowley stepped out of the way. He was grinning maniacally. That smile paired with the feral look in his eyes and the blood on his face rendered him completely different.

“Stop making this so unnecessarily difficult,” Not-Aziraphale said. “You know that you deserve this, too.”

His mind was racing, ideas coming and going so fast he almost didn’t have time to consider them. Aziraphale was far stronger than him. Aziraphale was armed. And Aziraphale was not himself. Those things all added up together to form a frightening picture, but Crowley couldn’t hurt this thing that wore Aziraphale’s face. He wondered if he could disarm him, if it came down to it.

He knew that if Aziraphale didn’t come back to himself soon, Crowley would die by his hand.

Aziraphale swung.

It hit him in the shoulder.

Holy fire was burning him away—

“You wicked snake,” said Not-Aziraphale. “You know you deserve this.”

He was still backing away.

“Angel,” he said, trying to keep the panic out of his voice, “you’re stronger than this. I know you are.”

“There is no this, Crawly.”

Crowley cried out as the sword struck his leg. Aziraphale’s eyes were violet. He would not defend himself. Not against this.

“Aziraphale,” he said, pleaded, clutching his dead arm. “I know you’re still there, somewhere.”

The next caught him in the stomach.

His back hit the wall.

His hands found the wound, mind blank with pain, black blood staining his fingers. Not his corporation’s blood, but his.

Crowley couldn’t think.

Not-Aziraphale was laughing.

He couldn’t breathe.

“Aziraphale,” he said, holding out a hand. “Aziraphale, please.”

Not-Aziraphale tipped the sword forward.

The point of the blade bit into the exposed skin of his throat.

“Angel,” he pleaded, “it’s me. It’s Crowley.”

Something flickered in Aziraphale’s gaze. Purple to blue, back to purple, back to blue. “Crowley?”

Something hopeful took root in his chest.

“It’s still me,” he said.

Aziraphale took a step back.

“Crowley?” he asked, and his voice no longer sounded like something caught between radio waves. “Crowley what— Crawly.”

His eyes wouldn’t stay open. Everything hurt.

“Angel,” he breathed.

“Aziraphale gasped.

Aziraphale dropped the sword.

“Crowley!” he shouted.

And the world went dark.

——

This was for your own good, Aziraphale! Gabriel snapped.

Heaven was white and clinical around them. Aziraphale’s hands were stained with blood. He had never hated anyone, he knew, more than he hated the being standing before him right now.

Shut the fuck up.

Aziraphale—

Aziraphale cut him off.

If you ever, he said, slowly, clearly, come near either Crowley or myself ever again, I will personally carve your wings from your body and hand them to you. I outrank you, Gabriel. You like to forget that, but that won’t make it any less true.

Heaven dissolved like a pill on the tongue before Gabriel could answer.

——

The first thing Crowley noticed when he woke up was that he had woken up at all, which meant he wasn’t dead.

The second was that nothing hurt.

The third was that Aziraphale was pacing by the side of the bed.

“Aziraphale?” he asked, wary.

Aziraphale froze and turned to face him. His face transitioned through several emotions in just a few seconds: relief, joy, apprehension, fear.

He couldn’t help the tenseness caught in his shoulders.

——

Aziraphale couldn’t stop staring.

Here was Crowley, brought back from the brink of death for the second time that day, and both times had been his fault.

“Crowley,” he said, and his voice came out scratched and raw.

What he expected from Crowley was an end. What he expected was hatred. What he got was this: “Is he gone?”

Crowley did not have to specify who he was talking about. Aziraphale nodded wordlessly.

Crowley got out of bed.

The silence stretched.

They were standing right in front of each other. Crowley’s expression was unreadable.

“I’m sorry,” Aziraphale said. He realized, belatedly, that he was crying. “Crowley, I’m so, so sorry.”

“Hey,” Crowley said softly, “it’s alright. It wasn’t you.”

Aziraphale put a hand over his mouth. He was shaking. Crowley cupped his cheek with an automaton-hand, swiping the tears away with his thumb, and he couldn’t take it anymore.

“I could have— I wanted to kill you, Crowley,” he sobbed. “You could have died.”

“It wasn’t you, angel,” Crowley said. And he was touching him everywhere, touching his hands and his face and her hair with frantic fingertips, saying You have nothing to be sorry for, angel, squeezing his arms as though he could wring the sorrow out of him. We’re still here, we’re both alive.

Let me take care of you.

——

Aziraphale’s head was resting on Crowley’s chest, and Crowley was running his fingers through his hair, humming the words to a song he couldn’t recognize.

“I don’t want to go back to London,” he whispered into the darkness.

“I don’t either,” Crowley answered almost immediately.

“Really? But what about your flat?”

“There’s nothing in there I can’t move, angel. Besides, you’re the one who brought it up,” he said, poking Aziraphale’s side.

“I suppose I was. We could find somewhere. A cottage in the Downs.”

Crowley thought about it for a moment.

“You know what? That sounds great.”

“Someplace quiet, I’m thinking. With a big garden for you, but only if you swear not to terrorize your plants. You won’t, will you?”

“Ask no questions and I will tell no lies.”

Aziraphale laughed.

And for the first time in forever, he felt free.

——

There was a cottage in the village of Upper Kirwich. The library was big, and the garden was beautiful. There was a magpie buried in the front yard.

An angel and a demon lived there.

——

How to define happiness? Crowley didn’t know. Happiness, he’d always thought, was something he could never quite reach; something he could never quite deserve. And yet here, in this home he’d made with someone he loved, he couldn’t help but think—

Well.

He could only grasp the faintest edges of this thing he had, but here it was.

It was: Aziraphale lamenting about how he scared his plants too much, cooing words of endearment into their leaves when he thought Crowley wasn’t looking. Crowley was looking.

It was this: Aziraphale trying to make bread and failing miserably, holding a blackened lump that could have dented stone, looking so put out that Crowley couldn’t help but offer to help him with the next loaf. Aziraphale’s smile, he thought, was one he never wanted to stop earning.

It was this: Winter rolling around, bringing out the serpentine side of him, curling up on the couch with Aziraphale, fire blazing in the hearth. Aziraphale regaling him with stories that wouldn’t have made any sense to someone that wasn’t him.
It was this: Aziraphale kissing him as though it was the first time, desperate and wanting, or like it was the thousandth time, still just as meaningful.

It was this: Aziraphale coming back from a walk along the seaside, some small curiosity that had caught his eye in his hands. The world bared its secrets willingly to Aziraphale. Aziraphale with the lily-white wings and the golden freckles, who gifted his findings to Crowley like a lover, besotted. Crowley always put them on the mantle. They’d look at them, sometimes, recounting stories that were sometimes entirely made up.

It was this: Aziraphale and him, in this home they had made together, free of Heaven and Hell. And Aziraphale still bordered on going off sometimes, and Crowley still had nightmares sometimes. Everything was beautiful and terrible, but mostly beautiful, and Crowley was happy.

It was this: Whispered in the air between them, called out from the front door before leaving, handed over in the mornings, falling out in bliss—

“I love you so much.”

“And I love you so much, too.”