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It is raining outside their bookshop on the day it all starts, the dripping of the trees along the street audible through the open window that neither of them cares to stand up and close. They are sitting by the fire, drinking hot cocoa because they’re out of milk for tea and Aziraphale keeps insisting that it’s wrong to miracle it out of thin air. “It’s just not right, the milk comes from somewhere,” is what he’d said. Crowley hadn’t agreed, but the cold weather was making him drowsy, so in the interest of keeping the peace, he’d made hot cocoa. Made from milk miracled out of thin air when Zira wasn’t looking. Regardless, they are both warm now, and in spite of the fact that it’s close to noon, neither of them are really inclined to move. It’s a comfortable companionate silence, the side effect of six thousand years of knowing each other, and twelve hundred years of being in love with each other. Crowley is happy, he is warm, and neither he nor Aziraphale have to go anywhere for the foreseeable future. Or at least until the work week starts.
And then someone has to go and activate a summoning spell.
- - -
He lands with an undignified thump inside a Keme’a shel Shlomo, and had just enough time to stand up and straighten himself out before one of the demons lights up the blessed oil. Because they were demons. He was sure of it. If he concentrated really hard he could see the black smoke and tattered scraps of a soul that clung to the inside of their stolen bodies like oil. He even recognized one of them.
He snarled, blinking as he realized the summoning spell hadn’t taken his shades with him.
“Hastur, what a pleasant surprise," he spat, the venom in his voice making one of the lesser demons on the end flinch. "I thought you’re supposed to be suffering until Home Office freezes over.”
And it’s really extremely telling when Hastur doesn’t rise to the bait.
They aren’t here to talk to him. They’re here to kill him. Possibly torture and/or maim him first. He’s not sleepy anymore, and old tension is coiling deep in his gut in spite of the pathetic show of force in front of him. He hasn’t gone through torture in centuries.
But then he sneers at them, grinning at their ignorance as he remembers. There hasn’t been a weapon that could kill him on this plane since angels and demons stopped the open combat and went into Cold War mode. Crowley peers at Hastur for a single bitter second. He’s held Hastur’s bones in his hands, has talked himself out of burning them simply because the torturers don’t like it when people steal their finished products and/or punching bags. Crowley had been an angel once. He doesn’t burn like ruined humans do.
But he feels the blood drain from his face when Hastur pulls a Chereb, an Old Blade, from inside the duffel next to him.
“Where did you get that.”
Hastur just grins and closes in on him, and it isn’t Crowley’s fault if he breaks out in scales at the simple proximity of the weapon. He backs up to the farthest edge of the circle, hissing to Aziraphale under his breath, hoping, but not really believing that his angel can hear him. The odds of him surviving this have dropped officially to zero.
“Aziraphale, if you can hear thissss, I’ve been meaning to tell you thissss for ccceenturiessss, but I really am ssssorry about that time in Alexandria, and if I don’t sssssee you again, I jussst want you to know that it really wasssssn’t me who told Caesar to ssssset the shipssss on fire, I jusssst told you that because we were ssstill sssort of enemiessss back then and I’m ssstil kind of worried you’ll hate me for it. You were jussst ssssso broken up about the Library. I’ve been meaning to tell you for yearssss. It really wasssn’t my fault that it burnt down. Don’t come get me. I love you.”
And apparently Hastur can hear him, because his grin widens.
“That’s right, call your boyfriend. I’ll get to tear the wings from his back.”
And Crowley can’t help but rise to the bait. “He’s my sarding husband, you piece of shit excuse for a mortal!" No one threatens Aziraphale. No one has in almost three thousand years. More than that, to threaten an angel’s wings? Even the people Upstairs know better than to mess with, even threaten to mess with them. Not even the fucking Fall was designed to damage them.
Crowley's wings have snapped out before he can think, and he catches himself charging Hastur a second before he passes the holy oil. He manages to catch the motion before the flames can touch him, but he swears that Hastur’s face creaks from the width of his smile. But Crowley’s nearly apoplectic with rage, and the color is leaching out of his vision, which means he’s really, really close to going fully serpentine. And that’s the last thing he wants, right now. Chereb be damned, he's going to tear the rotten scraps of soul from that fucking vessel piece by piece.
But then he feels a familiar presence just at the edge of his mind, and he does go completely serpentine out of complete and sudden blinding fear. Aziraphale’s coming, and Hastur’s got a Chereb. “Stay away you idiot, you sarding idiot, stay away neshama for the love of--” He knows, though, it’s not going to stop Azi. He hasn’t had to fight without a sword in four millennia, and Hastur’s going to kill him and Crowley’s going to have to watch him sink that shimmering blade into his back and rip the light out of Crowley’s existence. And he isn’t going to be able to do a blessed thing about it because of the sarding binding amulet. Something fragile inside him snaps, and without a second thought, he pulls up the washed out dry creek bed that he calls a reserve of Grace and shatters the concrete in front of him, ripping the tops from the industrial sprinklers above his head. as the water begins to pour down onto the circle of holy oil, he carefully packs himself into a human form.
But it’s still not enough. The water flows off a shimmering wall around the flames, and after a second or two, one of the lesser demons has turned off the water. Hastur laughs at him for his efforts. “Do you really think I’d leave the fire unwarded? You aren't going to put that fire out, Crowley. Not while I’m alive.”
“That won’t be a problem, I assure you.”
But it’s Aziraphale, not Crowley who says that. Crowley’s neshama standing behind them in all his breathless, furious, idiotic glory.
And Crowley can’t help but shout at him for the sheer idiocy of what he’s doing.
“You idiot! Yesh lo Chereb!”
And Aziraphale flashes him a small smile, a small scheming smile that makes Crowley’s heart jump a little in his chest because, bless them both, Crowley taught him that smile. And then Aziraphale pulls a longsword out from where it’s been tucked against the inside his coat. And now Crowley is laughing, a bright, incredulous sound because he knows that sword. And Hastur is beyond dead. The lesser demons know it too because they see that first sword and they run. And for the first time in history, Crowley finds himself laughing, defiant, in the face of danger.
“Aziraphale, matok sheli! You gave the Home Offices a fake!”
And Aziraphale probably would have smiled at him, but his focus isn’t on Crowley anymore. He’s focused on Hastur, his face a dead-eyed mask of fury that Crowley hasn’t ever yet seen in person. He’s heard stories from the few times Azi’s avenged wrongs against Crowley in the past, namely the last time he was tortured those few centuries ago, but he’s never been present before. This is Aziraphale’s rage; this is possessive.
But Hastur isn’t a prince among demons for nothing, and before Crowley’s smile has time to slide into a clenched jaw, the demon is attacking with a ferocity born solely out of his sheer bloody-minded will to survive. And determined as Aziraphale is, defense has never been his strongest suit. Crowley can see his jaw set, feel the concentration pouring off of him like waves of warm light off the Bush as he parries the rush of clumsy, rapid strikes, his sword’s blade clanging like bells with every parry.
Hastur is good. He might even have trained. He might even have planned this for months. Home Office knows he’s fast. But he only has to slip up once, and he overbalances and is put on the defensive. And then Aziraphale is on the move, driving Hastur back towards the binding circle with a ferocity and speed that has even Crowley terrified and in awe, the First Chereb lighting up with blinding white flame. He’s as good as he was six thousand years ago on that plain next to the Tigris, and Crowley had never loved his husband more.
But Hastur, like demons do, still has a plan, and when he turns on a dime and sprints towards Crowley, parting the holy fire with a wave of his hand, Crowley has time for two thoughts.
Oh shit, I’m going to die.
Not today. Not ever in front of Aziraphale.
And so he raises his hand, and for the first time in nearly six thousand years, he smites a demon to dust.
And as Aziraphale stares at him while the holy flames gutter out, Crowley gives him a nauseous little wave. Then his panic overtakes him and he drops to the ground, serpentine. For a brief minute or two, he is feral, fangs bared, his body curled up into itself as much as he can with his wings still arched. From what he can register, it’s killing Aziraphale to not be able to reach him.
It takes an absurd amount of time for the flames to gutter out completely, enough time for Crawly to remember he’s Crowley and reassemble himself into a human form. They take a breather until it’s safe to cross the flames. Crowley can see that Aziraphale’s trembling.
For a brief second, he just wants to go home, but then in a rush, he remembers the stupid fucking shit Aziraphale just pulled and could have died from, and suddenly he’s really not tired anymore. He charges up to his husband, bats the flaming sword out of his face from where Z’s still half-holding it at the ready, and proceeds to shout directly into his face.
“You idiot! Haytah lo a fucking Chereb and you charged him like it was a nothing! You bloody idiot!! He could have run you through, didn’t you stop to think at all?”
His voice tries to warble out as his throat closes up and his eyes, embarrassingly, fill with tears, but he manages to add one last warning, harsh and deadly, while he’s still able to speak. “Don’t you ever, ever do that to me again, you suicidal bloody piece of sarding shit, you’ve got me too invested to go and die on me now, we have survived a sarding apocalypse, and if you ever die protecting me over something stupid like this I’m going to sarding kill you!”
But Aziraphale’s still looking at him like the terrified idiot he is, and he needs the angel to understand how he feels, needs him to realize just how absolutely terrified Crowley was that he was going to have to watch the light gutter out of his life in front of him, how completely helpless he could have been, and how angry and terrified and afraid he was, and so he pulls his husband down to him sharply by the lapels of his camel hair coat, grabs him tight, and kisses him.
He splits his lip as their teeth clack together, but he doesn’t care, he can’t care, he couldn’t care. He kisses him like their world is ending, pours his anger and desperate, desperate love and fear into the kiss, kissing him until he can hardly stand it anymore, until his white-knuckled hands have almost torn a hole in the front of the angel’s century-old coat, until he has to acknowledge that his breathing is harsh and ragged with the sobs that are wracking him down to his wingtips, until he has to break the kiss because Aziraphale’s warm hands on the sides of his face are trembling and he can't stand to be this far from his husband for one second longer, so he curls closer and buries his face into Azi’s neck, regardless of the horrible tears and slime and spittle that the crying is making him produce. He just curls closer and Azi’s shaking gets worse as he pulls Crowley in closer, one hand splayed between his wings, the other holding his head, rocking side to side as he starts to shake apart, the sobs cracking through him like glacial ice into the sea.
It takes a long while for their shakes to die down. When they do, Crowley’s sniffling but no longer on the verge of overwhelming sobs and Azi’s sobs have subsided into torturous, ragged breathing. They’re both a mess now, and Crowley is starting to feel the grime of the warehouse floor on his skin and is becoming gradually aware of the sulfurous smell of dead demon that’s gradually seeped into the air of the abandoned warehouse.
He wipes his eyes on the side of Azi’s neck and then twists subtly free, leaning back to look his husband in the eye, meeting his torn-open, ragged, vulnerable expression with one of his own. Z’s never worn a hunted expression before in his life, and it sits unnervingly on his face. He stares down at Crowley with a frank, shattered expression, and Crowley can’t help but reach up to press a hand to his cheek. Azi’s face is so warm, and it’s tacky with wiped-away tears. He hesitates, about to pull away so that they can put themselves together and go home, but Zira sucks in a sharp, guttural breath and both hands speed up to hold Crowley’s hand to his face.
His voice is as soft as Crowley's ever heard it. “You could have died.”
Crowley has never heard that tone from Zira, and it hurts his heart to even consider it. He pulls Azi’s forehead down to his own.
“Yes neshama sheli, but I didn’t.”
Z makes a choked sound that’s almost a laugh and almost a sob, and snaps his wings out through his ancient, favorite coat just so he can softly cradle the upper arcs of their wings together, their first primaries brushing and mingling. Crowley tries not to start crying again, but when Z presses their foreheads together and it sinks in that they’re safe, they’re safe for now, but they’re safe, a few more horrible tears slip down his face. They’re warm, but they dry tacky and leave him chilled. Azi curls his soft, soft wings around them and with a snap, they’re home.
- - -
It’s a little bit later, and they’re both holding cups of miracled tea when they really speak again.
Aziraphale’s voice is still hoarse, but the tea is helping the slightest bit. “Do you know why they wanted you dead?”
Crowley takes a sip of tea. “I know why, matok, but I don’t know how. That Chereb was old, maybe even taken off an angel.” They’d returned to the warehouse as soon as they’d remembered about it, but it was gone. It was worrying, to say the least, and as ever, the answering system in Zira’s Home Office wasn’t being helpful at all. Apparently “someone tried to kill us with what's probably an Original Chereb” isn’t ranking high up on the Upstairs’ priorities anymore. They’d just told Zira to stick to the Approved Terminology and hung up. Crowley had wanted to murder somebody. Apparently, the Approved Terminology is to angel blade, lowercase. He’d ripped through another good suit jacket letting his wings out to air some of his frustration.
“Is there any way to,” Azi clears his throat, “to avoid being pulled out again if someone uses a summons on you again?”
It isn’t impossible, and there are a few things in the protection books he has in storage in the flat that might have something. “I think so. Might end up needing to make a tether in the shop after all.”
“That’s fine.”
Crowley glances sidelong at him. Z’d always protested tether points, said they were occult and/or pagan, et cetera et cetera, and that he just didn’t like how they made the air feel. Azi was just staring blankly at the rug. He hadn’t even realized the change. The fear really, really was getting to them. “Ok, I’ll set it up in the next few days. I might need something for the Kemshel.”
Azi blinks and looked at Crowley, annoyed. “The what?”
Briefly, Crowley remembers Approved Terminology. “Oh. Uh, the Keme’a shel Shlomo. The binding amulet? The holy fire and paint on the floor.”
“Oh. That’s a Devil’s Trap in the Home Offices these days.”
Crowley slowly grins at him. “Oh, have you had cause to report very many of them recently?”
Azi gives him a deadpan look, a little bit of the old charade flaring to life between them again. “You’re the reason I’m stuck with translating that book and you know it.”
Crowley laughs delightedly. “It’s not my fault you can’t lie worth a damn.”
Azi pulls him forward, and they shared a kiss that tastes like chocolate and peppermint. “I love you.”
Crowley grins. “I know. I love you too.”