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Angel wings are all unique.
Mostly, this is because God is a very creative individual, and likes to go a little overboard sometimes. You get angels with red wings and blue wings, yellow with black tips, green and white stripes, and even fiery orange and deep purple sunset ombres. If he’s remembering right, Gabriel had lavender wings with delicate lace-like patterns in indigo trailing at the bottom edge, to match his eyes.
Crawly’s never seen pure white wings, before. Honestly, it doesn’t really seem like God’s style. The Almighty usually goes in for bright colors and detailed patterns - honestly, just look at the Garden behind them. It’s full of all kinds of brilliant hues and delicate curling vines and stripes and spots and intricate little fiddly bits.
Having seen what God normally gets up to when designing wings, Aziraphale’s seem rather… well, plain.
Messy, too. Doesn’t look like the angel’s preened in ages, with tufts poking out all askew and a lackluster dullness to the feathers. Crawly’s almost embarrassed for the poor angel.
He will say this much for them - they make an excellent umbrella.
When the rain eventually stops, Aziraphale flicks the droplets of water off of his wings in a quick motion, and then sort of sighs, settling them back. Crawly can’t help glancing over at their disarray.
“Are you not going to preen them?” he says. At first, he tries not to sound too judgmental, then he remembers that he’s a demon and says, “They’re an absolute nightmare, mate.”
The angel winces, and Crawly almost regrets his words.
“Er, are they?” Aziraphale says, sort of glancing over his shoulder at them. “I hadn’t exactly noticed.”
There’s a sheepish air to the angel that tells Crawly that that’s a lie, and he almost snorts at him. “You look like someone dragged you backwards through a thornbush,” Crawly informs him. “Seriously, when’s the last time you sat down and had a good preen?”
Aziraphale lifts his chin and closes his eyes, suddenly all holier than thou. “Angels are not given to vanity,” he says loftily. “I’m sure I’ve no idea, and it’s of no consequence.”
“Well, come on, even angels must take some care of their appearance, yeah?” Crawly says. “I mean, can’t go ‘round looking like something the cat dragged in when you’re supposed to be a holy emissary of the Almighty, yeah?”
Aziraphale frowns, looking troubled. “I suppose not,” he says.
“There you go then,” says Crawly. “Preen your feathers more often. You’ll feel better anyway.”
The angel sighs. “Oh, I would, you know,” he says. “It’s just so difficult to get the space in the very middle all by yourself, and there hasn’t been anyone else around, and it’s so beastly to leave a job half-done.”
“Don’t I know it,” says Crawly, who invested in a long bent stick for precisely that reason.
Aziraphale sighs again, and looks down. Then after a slight pause, he glances at Crawly. It’s an almost calculating sort of glance, and Crawly almost wants to back away, because he’s certain whatever the angel’s thinking, he isn’t going to like the result.
Then Aziraphale turns his back to Crawly, looking over his shoulder. “Would you mind terribly?” he says. “Only there’s no one else around, and you can see them so much better than I can.”
Crawly freezes, the angel’s feathers mere inches from his hands. Aziraphale clearly has no idea what he’s asking - what he’s offering. In Heaven, angels preened each other’s wings all the time. It was pretty much the only way wings ever got preened in the first place. From Aziraphale’s point of view, this is practically normal.
In Hell, no one preens each other’s wings anymore. Crawly hasn’t touched another person’s feathers since before he Fell.
“You don’t want me preening your wings, angel,” Crawly says, shaking his head and taking a step backwards.
Aziraphale pouts, honest-to-Satan pouts at Crawly, his lower lip sticking out and his eyebrows pinching together. “But there’s no one else who will.” It comes out very nearly as a whine.
Crawly absolutely should not do this. He’s a demon, and Aziraphale is an angel, and Aziraphale really should know better than to trust a demon with his wings. There’s a reason why, in Hell, no one exposes their wings to each other anymore.
But Aziraphale apparently wants this - apparently trusts him, after a few hours of knowing each other, after Crawly got the humans he was charged to protect kicked out of paradise. It’s ridiculous, that kind of trust. And yet Crawly can’t refuse him.
He takes a deep breath, banishes memories of the Fall from his mind, and reaches out to sink his fingers into Aziraphale’s wings. If his hands are trembling when he does so, there’s no one who can see.
Aziraphale’s feathers are a bit brittle - poorly looked after feathers have a kind of stiffness to them that’s easy to pinpoint. Crawly presses against the nub in the small of the angel’s back and covers the tips of his fingers with preen oil, then slowly and methodically begins to coat each feather in the oil, fluffing and realigning them as he goes.
The angel sighs in contentment, and Crawly can’t help but smile at the sound. He knows how good it feels to have freshly-preened wings.
A thorough preening takes a while, back and front, carefully smoothing each individual feather. Crawly takes the time to admire the pure white sheen of the angel’s wings, the way they glint in the light when thoroughly coated with the oil. He works in silence, only speaking now and then to ask Aziraphale to turn his wings one way or another, and Aziraphale for his part only offers the occasional hum of satisfaction or word of encouragement.
When he finally finishes, he steps back, and Aziraphale stretches his wings out, flapping them once to shake out any remaining problems. Then he turns and smiles at Crawly.
“Thank you,” he says. “Would you like me to do yours?” And he reaches a hand out for Crawly’s own black feathers.
And Crawly --
Crawly…
He is on the battlefield, sweat-soaked and grime-spattered, his robes ripped half-off and his knuckles bruised. He’s not supposed to be here - he doesn’t even have a proper weapon, just his fists and feet and teeth. He’s a seraph, not a warrior, he’s made for singing and thinking, not for fighting. He never wanted a war in Heaven.
He pauses to spit blood and grit out of his mouth but the other angel advancing on him is a warrior, was built for this far more than he, sword out and at the ready. There is a cold kind of justice in their eyes as they approach, and he backs away, thinking of maybe regrouping towards Lucifer --
He doesn’t see the second angel who comes up from behind him until it’s almost too late, and he tries to spin around, catch them a blow off-guard with a mean right hook. But the first angel, the one in front of him, takes advantage of his momentary distraction to grab his wings.
One of the angels kicks his legs out from under him and he falls to his knees. An armored boot smashes his face into the ground as powerful limbs pin his arms to his back. He flares his wings wildly, struggles, squirms, trying to break free, but there are two of them and they are far too strong for him.
Cruel hands grab his feathers and begin to rip them out.
He screams, agony coursing through his being as they tear away feathers - pinions first, then secondary flight feathers, snatching in fistfuls. Blood begins to pour from the wounds left behind by the handfuls, spattering the ground and he thrashes, trying to buck them off, trying to do anything to get them away from his wings. He screams until his throat is raw and hoarse, pleading with the angels, but they do not stop, mercilessly continuing to pluck, black feathers raining down around him, and he can do nothing but watch them fall.
A hush suddenly comes over the battlefield, and even he, still writhing in pain under the cruel fingers, pauses at the sensation of the Almighty stepping forward. God makes His way across the battlefield with a kind of silent fury that fills every being in Heaven with capital-F Fear.
“Lucifer,” God says, the words ringing with the weight of righteous truth. “Thou and thy rebels have defied Me. Thou hast doubted My plan and made to overthrow Me. Thy pride shall be tolerated no longer, Lucifer.”
A mighty hand is raised. “I cast thee out, Lucifer, and thy rebels with thee. I erase thy true name, and thou shalt be called a Devil. And I erase the names of thy rebels, and they shall be called as demons. Thou shalt never set foot in Heaven again, but thou and thy rebels shall crawl like worms and suffer eternally. Thy pride has been thy downfall.”
And as the words land, he feels the ground beneath him open up. He tries to scream, to cry out, but the words freeze in his throat and suddenly he is falling.
His wings, battered and torn, limp and bleeding, are useless as he Falls. When his voice finally works again he screams, feeling the very Presence of God ripped away from him as keenly as his feathers being torn out. The knowledge of his name goes with it, so that even in his memory he does not know who he is. Desperately he flails, he reaches, stretching towards Heaven’s divine light -- but it is far, far too late for that now, far too late for regret and he plummets in agony towards an unknown fate.
The Fall seems to take an eternity, an eternity of fear and pain, terror and agony. His limited senses are awash with fire, his mind filled with horror, as he Falls, Falls endlessly, without even the hope of flying, his useless wings fluttering in his wake. All the more terrifying is the awful sense that he is utterly, utterly alone.
Then he splashes down into something that burns him - he who had been a spirit of fire, burning as boiling sulfur sears his skin, blistering him. He feels his body contort and change, quite without his input, shifting into some shape he does not recognize, some slithering thing that burns and burns and burns…
When he finally swims to the shore of the blasted landscape that is Hell, he transforms back into a familiar form, but knows he will never be other than a snake, dragging himself forward on his belly, his ravaged and burning wings trailing behind him. Finally on the jagged rocks of Hell, he curls onto a blistered side and weeps.
“Crawly?”
Crawly throws himself backward, drawing his wings up and out, away from the angel fingers reaching out to grasp and take hold.
“Don’t you dare,” he hisses, shuddering. “Don’t you dare even think about touching them. Get away from me. Get away!” The last is a cry of anguish.
Aziraphale looks astonished, his hand dropping, but Crawly can’t stand to spend another second with him. His wings snap out and he jumps into the air, needing to fly, needing to remember that he can fly. He is not falling, not ever again.
Crawly soars into the distance, until the angel is a mere white speck on the grey stone wall, and he doesn’t look back.