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There are some people who, upon first meeting Aziraphale, might assume that he’s not the most observant pers- huma- being of now mostly self-determined, but originally ethereal, supernatural nature.
The natives of Soho had long gotten used to him ploughing his own oblivious channel through their numbers on the pavement whenever he is engrossed in a book. They part like the red sea for him, regularly wincing as yet again he only just avoids walking into a lamp post. He’s also ended up in the wrong shop many a time while distracted by a thought, almost ambling happily right into a rail full of PVC arse-less chaps and nurses’ outfits, and then turning about without ever acknowledging where he is and heading out again, humming and twiddling his fingers together as he drifts away like a Summer cloud.
A display of fancy cakes can summon him across Wardour Street, just ahead of a deadly garbage truck. And the cockney bin man might think about leaning out to swear blue and bloody at him, until he recognises the white-haired book shop owner and just chalks it up to Mr Fell being Mr Fell. Who can stay angry with the sweet absent-minded fellow who somehow still remembers a Christmas bonus for the rubbish men every year, when no one else ever bloody bothers anymore? Who could be cross with the strange Mr Fell, who also has a magic touch with the found teddies strapped to the front of their truck, somehow cleaning them up so nicely so that they look as good as new and can be donated to the kids at the hospital? Who could be cross with him?
But what many humans don’t realise is quite how much Aziraphale can notice when he’s interested in something. The book he is lost in while walking is devoured for every single allusion, leitmotif, and moment of foreshadowing. And he knows the exact page and location of any moment in any book he’s ever read, going back to before there even were books as we know them now. The esoteric thoughts he’s distracted by, and that lead him into Ms Anastasia Whip’s shop of very particular desires, are often the unpicking of a knotty problem about the nature of the multi-domains of the cosmos and their metaphorical relation to the layers of angel cake. He might not notice the garbage truck, but he notices the new mirrored galaxy glaze that Monsieur Frederick is using on his mini blueberry mousse cakes and he thinks very firmly about who might admire the gleaming stars and deep dark blues swirling on them.
Who? Who indeed. Only the pers- huma- being of now mostly self-determined, but originally occult, supernatural nature who is currently sleeping on Aziraphale’s couch at the back of the bookshop as the angel checks on his books and furiously dusts them with a large white feather. Sadly though, on the coffee table in front of him is Crowley’s ignored mirrored galaxy glaze mini blueberry mousse cake. After slinking into the shop, he barely acknowledged the gift at all – the angel is not upset about Crowley’s dismissive glance at them, he tells himself, but the dusting might suggest otherwise to any observers – before going straight to sleep.
The not eating is not unusual. Even the cursory look at the gift and the immediate flopping onto the couch and the disappearance into sleep are also not entirely out of character for the demon.
But… that this is the fifth time this week that Crowley has turned up only to doze for hours on the couch is unusual. Eight months after the Almost-pocalypse – the Arma-didn’t, the Arma-shouldn’t, the not-quite-end-of-days – and the frequency of his visits to the book shop have definitely increased, and Aziraphale has… quite liked that. Quite a lot perhaps. But to turn up just to sleep…
Again, there are certain things that Aziraphale always notices. Things that he always pays attention to. And Crowley is at the top of that short list of attentions. So he pauses in his dusting and turns his sky coloured eyes to quickly take in a thousand and one small details about Crowley as he sleeps.
And then alarm bells begin to ring somewhere…
“Oh dear.” Mutters Aziraphale, and he begins to make a mental list of what they will need in the coming days.
The clearest sign of what is coming are Crowley’s nails. Well… scales, really. No one else ever gets close enough to notice that the black sheen on his fingernails are actually overlapping, tiny, black scales. Black scales, that are now a dullish red and longer than ever. When they are a burnished red, to match his belly scales, it will be time. The other signs appear more human but they all come from the same thing. A deep crease of unease between his eyebrows as he’s tangled up in sleep. A dry patch of skin just down from his ‘tattoo’ as though its already starting bother him. Fidgeting legs that might be dismissed as restless leg syndrome but are really the result of them sometimes forgetting that they are currently meant to be two and not one limb. And then there’s the sleeping and the absence of a polite response to his small gift. All in all, Aziraphale is suddenly certain that it’s happening again.
“Oh please, please can it not be like it was in 1382?” Aziraphale begs Her under his breath. “Please, let it be easier for him this time. And please let no synods be in session if he sets the ground to shaking again! Amen.”
Aziraphale’s quiet prayer wakes the demon. “Ugh. What are you up to angel?”
He’s surprised when Aziraphale draws closer and kneels by his side, fretting.
“Angel?” Crowley frowns down at him, absent-mindedly scratching at that dry skin with a blood red nail as he does, “Are you okay?”
Aziraphale’s not been this close to him, even after it was all sorted and they’d dined at the Ritz. Crowley almost doesn’t know where to look as the angel’s blue eyes stare directly at him, full of concern, and what he doesn’t dare hope might be more than just concern.
“My dear… your nails.”
Crowley stops his scratching and looks at his nails, fanning his fingers out as though he’s just painted them – although he never needs to. “Oh, for fu-”
He pauses, takes a breath he doesn’t need, and then curses in the old deep language of creation, his tongue flickering over sharper teeth. Aziraphale’s hair is blown back by the occult forces unleashed, and he blinks owlishly, even though he is generally unaffected.
A few hundred yards away though, a man finds his soul suddenly trapped in the mirror of his Travelodge room. He is freed moments later by a bright shining light that drifts out of the window as he shivers naked and foetal on the bathroom floor. The lion statues in Trafalgar square are replaced by horned terror dogs (1) with glowing red eyes in their stone faces until a wind blows past, dancing white feathers about them, and they return to normal. The children riding on their backs are pale-faced and stricken with terror during the transformation, before suddenly cheering. The Thames turns blood red for a moment, but no one really notices and if they did they might think it was an improvement on the usual grey-green-muck colour. Various other small demonic acts pass unnoticed, although the general occult aura of London is never quite the same again.
“Are you done, my dear?” Aziraphale asks gently.
Crowley is deflated. Even his hair’s usual peak is limp against his forehead. “I can’t believe it’s bloody happening again. Already.”
“It will be okay,” Aziraphale tries a gentle pat on Crowley’s shoulder, which the demon quite likes if he could be honest about it. “We’ve gotten through it before-”
“Ugh,” Crowley scrunches up his nose. “Do you remember 1382? I was asleep until it bloody well started, and you know how much I hated the 14th effing Century! I didn’t want to be awake!!”
“Canterbury survived, and so did you. And you’ve been through it a few more times since then so we know more about what to expect.”
“We?” Crowley asks gently, his heart doing very odd things in his chest.
“Of course,” Aziraphale smiles brightly. “And at least this time we have had some notice. Not like that time in the Netherlands. This time I haven't stumbled upon you in your hour of need, right in the middle of a storm as three towns are about to be flooded!”
“1570,” Crowley said grimly.
“This time we can prepare for it.” The mental list becomes a notepad covered in Aziraphale’s beautiful penmanship and Aziraphale consults it before passing it to Crowley. “What do you think, anything I’ve missed that might be useful?”
Crowley was glad, yet again, that the sunglasses that hid his ‘unusual’ eyes also made it harder for Aziraphale to read his expression. He quickly damped down the growing red in his cheeks and tried to look studious as he considered the list.
“Yes. Yes. No. Maybe. Is that the stuff you can get in Whole Foods? Ugh no. Okay, yes it looks like you’ve thought of most things. But we should go to my place,” He looks about at Aziraphale’s precious books and imagines what could happen to them if it’s like Canterbury again.
“No. No… when it happens you’ll be vulnerable. And it would be the perfect time for your chaps to make a move on you.”
“We haven’t seen any of them since Tadfield, angel,” Crowley says, grimacing as he fights the urge to scratch his face.
“Even so, I can ward the bookshop against any interference better than your flat, which, let’s be honest, you’ve imbued with so many demonic miracles I’m not sure its barely even properly in London any more.”
“Just like your shop, angel. Don’t think I haven't noticed the extra-dimensional space under the stairs that don’t go anywhere.” His arm is beginning to itch, and his nails grow a little longer as the need to scratch grows even more.
“I needed somewhere to store umbrellas. And the stairs do go somewhere. They now go up to a very calm room with a bath in the middle filled with the stuff from Whole Foods, which by the way is very soothing for itchy skin.”
Crowley wants to snap at the angel. No, what he wants to do is to rage at the angel. He wants to bare his teeth at the angel and be completely venomous towards him. Instead, he scrapes his nails along his forearm and gouges off a thin layer of translucent skin.
“Ugh.”
“I’ll run the bath.” Aziraphale smiles and stands to head upstairs. Crowley grabs his hand before he can go.
“Thank you,” Crowley says, pushing all his regard into the two words. “You don’t have to help me with this again.”
Aziraphale squeezes his hand back, “Of course I do. You’re my friend, my dear.”
Its something and it has to be enough.
Later, Crowley is standing topless in front of an illicitly manifested full-length mirror when Aziraphale potters back in wearing a plain apron and carrying a spray of lavender doused in what Crowley’s sense of smell tells him is myrrh.
“Crowley! I did not put that mirror there!”
“I wanted to see.” He hasn’t changed much yet, but every single patch of flaking skin disturbs and fascinates him. “You know, I think I hate this part the most. The later part, the over the top occult part isn’t that bad really, as long as I can avoid making earthquakes and storms. But this part… this is when I look most like them.”
“‘Them?’” Aziraphale is confused.
Crowley peels another patch of skin from his lean belly. White flaky patches cover most of him now. “This is when I look the most like the rest of them down below. Throw in some brown stained teeth and the stink of damnation and I could pass for any of them. Dagon. Hastur. Ligur. Beez themselves.”
“No!”Aziraphale says firmly. “You shouldn’t talk like that… you’ve never been like them, and not just because you smell nice!”
The old Crowley returns for a moment as he turns a little and throws a flirtatious glance at the angel, a glance that is made even more dangerous because the demon is standing there in just his black jeans. “So, I smell nice, do I?”
“Oh you,” Aziraphale says as casually as he can and gets seriously into throwing the myrrh infused lavender into the deep stone pool set into the floor, focussing on the fronds instead of Crowley. The demon has to admit that Aziraphale has done a good job with the setting. Calming cool stone walls and a bath full of water warm enough to boil all but the most cold-blooded. Dark candles are casting just a little light. He starts to undo his jeans.
“Ah, I can leave you to-”
“Don’t be daft, angel.” He strips and sinks into the pool, smirking as Aziraphale looks studiously at the pots of lotions, coarse sands, and herbs he’s collected on the side of the pool. “Besidesss, how are you going to help me if you leave? The lassst time we did this you were exactly the sssame.” He hears the serpent in his words and grimaces.
“Not exactly the same,” Aziraphale mutters, kneeling by the pool and primly straightening the apron. “When was it?” He asks more loudly.
“The early eighteen hundredsss I think.” Crowley sinks down until the water laps at his bottom lip. He almost flinches as Aziraphale reaches over to remove his sunglasses.
“Ah yes, and you tried to hide it from me that time.”
Crowley removes them himself and passes them to the angel, noticing quite how red his nails are now. “But you found me near that damned lake.”
“Not one of your best ideas. You need a calm warm place to do this.”
“And sssomeone to help.”
“Yes, indeed.” Aziraphale looks away, moving the pots about as though considering them. “We should try-”
A strangled cry makes him look back at Crowley. He’s holding on, but the change is becoming stronger now. Because Crowley is not just any old snake, he’s a metaphysical serpent. An occult being. Aziraphale reaches under the water and grabs his hand with both of his as pain ripples through his human-like body.
“Don’t fight it, Crowley! Shift, it might be easier!”
Crowley smiles through sharp gritted teeth, his eyes almost entirely yellow now. “And stop you from perving on my human form?”
Aziraphale ignores his nonsense and swings his legs about so that they are in the water too, before delicately hopping down into the water fully. Crowley withdraws from him, backing up against the side of the pool as though frightened. The candles about them flare upwards suddenly.
“Fear not,” Aziraphale whispers, pushing out just a little of his angelic nature into the familiar words. His kind have announced themselves in that way to humans for centuries, and most the time it works. With a demon though there might be the chance of hurting him with his Presence. But then neither he nor Crowley are simply a demon and an angel now. Not since Tadfield. Not since they first met in the garden.
Crowley’s frantic breathing slows, and Aziraphale nods as the candles calm again. “All is well. I promise.” The angel murmurs, watching his friend.
Crowley groans again but he stops as Aziraphale pours fine sand – from the coast of Galilee not from Whole Foods – and gently rubs it against the demon’s chest.
“That’s… that’s nice.”
“It’s infused with sulphur.”
“Oh, demon stuff.” Crowley looks disappointed.
“A bit of demon stuff. A bit of angel stuff.” Aziraphale is intent on his task. “So… us stuff.”
Crowley smiles his first real smile in a bit and then realises how close Aziraphale is to him, how much he’s touching him as he tends to his skin. “Angel! Your clothesss!”
“Tch.” The angel scoffs, “I don’t care about them.”
“You’ve had that waistcoat for centuries. And you’ll never get the myrrh out of it without a miracle.” He remembers the angel’s plaintive comment at the old Satanic nunnery after they were both hit by paintballs. “I’ll fix it afterwards, I prom-”
He’s wracked by another spasm of pain. “For Sata- Go- for whoever’s sake. I’m not a real snake, I shouldn’t be flayed alive every few hundred years like this! I was a flipping angel once! You don’t see efffing Gabriel squirming around every time his metaphysical body clock demandsss it!”
“Although, I for one would pay to see it,” says Aziraphale darkly.
“Angel!”
“Well, I would.” Aziraphale juts out his chin with determination.
“Remind me not to pissss you off, angel.” Crowley smirks before another shudder runs through him. He groans and his wings emerge, splashing out into the water and sprinkling Aziraphale with lavender buds.
“Oh, my dear.” Aziraphale breathes sorrowfully. “Your poor, beautiful, wings.”
They are more ragged than he’s ever seen them. There are even gaps where feathers are missing.
“You’ve never revealed them during the process before. I didn’t know… I didn’t know-”
“Looks worse than it is,” grins Crowley weakly, half his face now mottled with his changing skin. “They fix up once its done. It all goes back to normal, once it’sss done.”
Aziraphale scoops up more sand and sets to work again. “We have to get you through this as quickly as we can.”
“Am I that hideoussss then?” Crowley half laughs, mostly at himself.
“Not to me. I just can’t bear to see you in pain.” He returns to scrubbing and soothing Crowley’s skin with the sand and lotions, watched by the demon with a curious look upon his flaking face.
“Angel?”
“Hmmm?”
“Earlier you sssaid you were not exactly like you were was the last time this happened. What did you mean?”
Aziraphale reddens and is almost lost for words for a moment. “I meant… I think I meant… well, it was a long time ago. We’ve both changed since the eighteen hundreds. Things have happened since then. Tadfield. The not-quite-apocalypse. The church.”
“The church? But that was in the 1940s. What do you mean, angel?”
Aziraphale clears his throat, pausing in his attentions. Attentions that if Crowley was honest, if he could be honest with his angel, were very distracting in ways he wasn’t sure he had really noticed before. Oh yes, he could throw the angel a flirtatious smile and flaunt his toplessness. But when it came to that… that was something he’d never much bothered with. Not worth the effort.
Aziraphale was worth the effort.
“I just meant that after you saved my books I feel I… that is, we are… and there’s the apocalypse and the switch of course. And you come around more often now than you did way back in the eighteen hundreds. Or over the centuries before. It's not exactly the same as it was, is it?”
The angel seems to be having an awful lot of trouble getting the words out. And Crowley wishes he could help him, but he’s as tongue-tied as his angel is.
And its not bloody well helped by another wave of pain that washes over him and forces him to shift fully into his serpent form.
His coils sink into the water of the pool as he thrusts his head towards the closest thing he can curl about. Aziraphale.
Crowley’s weight is nothing to the ethereal being but the surprise and the water that comes with it shock him a little, and he stands there for a moment, mouth opening and closing like a goldfish, as Crowley settles his coils on his shoulders.
“I did say that you should shift, Crowley!” the angel says, finally regaining his composure and moping his face with an already soaked handkerchief, “But some notice would have been good!”
He hisses his apology, knowing the angel will understand. A gentle hand runs over his scales and helps to push down the outer skin there, making him shudder with pleasure instead of pain.
“This is usually the second phase, isn’t it? So, we can expect the full shebang soon? Don’t worry, I’ve not only strengthened the wards about the book shop and set an illusion so no sounds can escape, I’ve also experimented with a special protective barrier of my own devising that should prevent any occult natural disasters spreading outwards from the centre of London. At least, I hope so.”
Crowley gently tightens about the angel, trying for something like a hug. It’s not something he’s really done with Aziraphale in person, so he hopes he understands.
“You know Crowley, as hard as this is for you, your scales really do look nice where the skin is already shedding.” Aziraphale murmurs, splashing water and rubbing more sand over him. “You gleam, my dear. As though every single scale is a jewel.”
Crowley hisses in pleasure again. Good lor- good whatever, the angel is going to do him in with his words of praise. He can barely take it!
They stay like that for a long while. The tireless angel standing in the pool with the snake wrapped about him, tending to his skin and whispering calming words every time the pain surges again. And inch by inch the skin sloughs away. Until all that’s left to change is him.
They don’t talk about this much, but technically Aziraphale is the stronger of the two of them. When it comes down to it, the demon has to surrender to the painful glory of the many-eyed form of Aziraphale, his golden halo a searing radiation glow scorching Crowley’s yellow eyes and his wings a hurricane about him. So, when Crowley does shift again and this time into his true form it is Aziraphale’s bronze hands that hold him and keep him as he sheds another layer of his self. It's not the angel’s protective barrier that prevents Soho from crumbling, its Aziraphale holding back Crowley’s pain with his very essence. It’s a moment they’ve shared only a few times before and then buried in the deepest darkest parts of their memories. But this time it's not the strength of Aziraphale that saves Crowley. It’s his love.
Crowley feels it as he manages to pull the small parts of himself back together and back to the dark room at the top of the book shop that wasn’t even there yesterday. He feels it as warmth and comfort even greater than the water around him as he returns first to the snake-shape and then to the man-shape. He feels it as Aziraphale returns quietly to gently sponging Crowley’s skin, now pink and fresh as though he’s been under a hot shower for too long.
Crowley breathes heavily as his senses return, “Why do you think I shed like this?” He asks quietly.
“To get rid of the old I suppose. Old skin. Old you.”
“And how’s the new me looking?” Crowley asks, not able to help himself as he opens his arms wide, still naked and waist deep in the pool like a lewd water feature, his perfectly groomed wings open wide to either side of him.
Aziraphale focuses on him. There are some people who, upon first meeting Aziraphale, might assume that he’s not the most observant pers- huma- being of now mostly self-determined, but originally ethereal, supernatural nature. But when he focuses on something… someone… he sees everything. A hundred eyes open in the ether around Aziraphale, and they see Crowley.
“Beautiful, my love.”