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Wings were a great source of pride for angels. Oftentimes, whenever an angel was not thwarting the wiles of a demon, they could be seen sitting down somewhere, preening their feathers. And while neatly groomed wings didn’t have any impact on whether an angel could move to a higher position, it definitely didn’t hurt to show off newly done up feathers in front of the archangels.
Wings for demons, however, were a completely different situation. If they hadn’t burned up during the Fall, most had decided to cut them off. Or if by some chance someone had kept their wings, they had chosen to perform a demonic miracle to change them from soft downy feathers to the wings of a bat or fly or any other creature humans thought to be grotesque.
All except for one.
Crowley hadn’t meant to Fall. He had just picked the wrong day to hang out with Lucifer. Just asked one too many questions. So when he woke up in the boiling sulfur pits of Hell and seen that one of his pairs of wings had survived, albeit charred completely black, the newly formed snake-demon vowed to keep his in the best condition that he could. Granted, he believed that without the cloud-soft white feathers, his wings could never be as grand as they were when he was hanging stars in the sky, but Crowley would do his best. Without letting the other demons know that he had kept his feathery wings. He remembered watching the other demons forcibly rip off the wings of a demon who had wanted to keep theirs right after the Fall.
Preening in Hell had turned out to be a bit of a problem. There wasn’t any kind of privacy, despite the fact that none of the demons trusted each other and that proper bedrooms would have made it much easier to hide things, so Crowley often found himself hunched behind an outcropping of rock and praying, not that he would ever admit it, that no one found him as he desperately tried to smooth out his feathers.
So naturally, when it was announced that Lucifer was looking for someone to go upstairs and cause trouble, Crowley leapt at the chance. If one were to ever look at the paperwork, they would see that the month leading up to the first tempting was the single best month of Crowley’s demonic career as he tried to get into Lucifer’s good graces.
When the time finally came, Crowley made quick work of the tempting before checking to see if anyone was watching and shifting back into his mostly-human form. And for the first time since the Fall, Crowley spread his wings properly. He carried a conversation with the Angel of the Eastern Gate as he let his feathers breathe. Crowley knew that his wings didn’t look their best, but if he played his cards right, he would have plenty of time to put them back in order.
What he didn’t take into account, however, was that no matter how he turned, there was one spot at the base of his wings that he just could not reach. Back in Heaven, preening was done in pairs between close friends. Angels would sort through as many of their feathers as they could before turning to let their chosen partner fix the remaining ones. Crowley had always blamed the neglect of his last few feathers on the fact that he had to work so quickly in Hell, but now that he was out, there was no denying it.
He was going to need help.
So when Crowley found himself standing outside of Aziraphale’s bookshop one week after the Apocalypse-that-wasn’t, Crowley wasn’t sure if he was surprised or not. He took one unnecessary deep breath before pushing past the ‘closed’ sign on the door and into the shop.
“Angel?” he called. Crowley half-hoped that Aziraphale wasn’t in, perfectly willing to leave this for another day, but his hopes were crushed when he heard his angel’s soft call from the back of the shop. Crowley wandered through the shelves, replaying every memory over the last six thousand years that he and Aziraphale had shared. This isn’t like Hell, he thought. I can trust Angel. He won’t rip them off.
“Hello, dear,” Aziraphale said. “I was just packing up for the day. Do you fancy dinner? I heard of a darling little pub that just opened…” Aziraphale trailed off when he noticed that Crowley hadn’t come in with any of his usual banter. “Crowley, are you feeling alright?”
“Yeah, it’s just…” Crowley swallowed. There was no turning back now. “When I Fell, I wanted to keep my wings, but that didn’t go over so well with my side, so I had to keep them a secret, and I tried to preen them, but I could never to it properly since there was always the threat of them being clawed off of my body, and it’s been better since I’ve been up here, but there’s just this one spot that I never can quite reach, and-” Crowley stopped suddenly, face burning, as he realized that he had started babbling and said way more than he had meant to. He had to think of some way to backtrack. A joke, that would do the trick. “I’ve seen your wings, Angel, and you clearly need practice on how to groom them properly.” An insult. Too far. Crowley groaned inwardly, already preparing to leave the bookshop and crawl into a hole for the next hundred years.
“I suppose you’re right, my dear. I have grown rusty since I’ve been on Earth, and it certainly will help if I can see what I’m doing before trying to fix my own wings.” A wave of Aziraphale’s hand and books were swapped for pillows on a nearby table. “If you wouldn’t mind too terribly, it would be a great help to me.”
Crowley didn’t know what he had done to ever deserve his angel. He slinked over to the table and shed his shirt, laying facedown on the table. “S’pose if it’ll really help you,” he mumbled. A moment later and Crowley’s wings unfurled, the tips of his primaries brushing the bookshelves on either side of the room.
Aziraphale had seen Crowley’s wings twice before. The first time was at the Beginning, and at the time, Aziraphale hadn’t thought it odd for a demon to have feathered wings. They had originally been angels, after all, and all the angels were created with wings. The second time had been when Crowley froze time during Armageddon, and that was hardly the time to check and see if all the feathers were laid down properly.
Looking at Crowley’s wings now, Aziraphale had no words. Before, he had thought them to be plain black. But he was wrong. When the light hit Crowley’s feathers just right, they shone with all the light of the universe. Beautiful blues, purples, and reds leapt out of their inky canvas. “Well, get on with it, Angel.”
“Oh, right. Very well.” Aziraphale took a few stepped forward, rolling up his sleeves slightly. He saw the area that Crowley had been talking about and carefully laid his fingers down onto the feathers. They were softer than Aziraphale could have ever imagined. He allowed himself a moment to just revel in the fact that he was touching Crowley’s wings, something that no one had done since the Fall if Crowley’s blabbering was anything to go on, before setting to work.
Aziraphale gently pulled the loose feathers that had been piling up since before the Beginning, straightening those that needed it, and digging his fingers down to the root to pull at the oil glands to coat the feathers. The area that Crowley had asked him to fix was rather small, and Aziraphale ended up finishing much faster than he found he wanted to. Crowley was already trusting Aziraphale more than he trusted anyone else, and Aziraphale knew this, but… Aziraphale decided that he would continue with the preening and stop as soon as Crowley showed any kind of discomfort.
Crowley, on the other hand, had found himself thoroughly enjoying the feeling of his angel’s fingers buried deep in his feathers. He had already taken off his sunglasses, unable to get comfortable with the pillow he was holding shoving them into his face, and his eyes were half-closed in pleasure. He was not, however, expecting Aziraphale to move to the top of his wing once he had finished. He stiffened momentarily, feeling Aziraphale’s hands stop, before grumbling a little and softly pushing his wing back into the angel’s hands as a signal for him to keep going. Aziraphale gave a small smile of delight before pushing forward with the task of preening Crowley’s wings.
“Crowley dear,” Aziraphale said as he finished back where Crowley’s wings sprouted from his back. Crowley hummed in response, a completely boneless and brainless sack of pleasure on the table. “Feel free to ignore me, but I can’t help but notice that you have two rather large scars underneath your wings, I know that you usually heal your wounds immediately and I want to make sure that you’re okay. Again, feel free to ignore me and we can forget I ever brought it up.”
“Ah, that’s just where my second pair of wings burned off during the Fall. Can’t heal those.”
“Second pair- But only archangels have two pairs of wings!”
“Angel, as much as I hate to admit it, I was actually enjoying myself just now, and I don’t very much feel like reliving my angelic past. There’s no way to change it, so no point in dwelling on it.”
“Of course, so sorry to have brought it up.” Aziraphale had already made the connection, after all, only so many archangels had Fallen, but he dropped the subject and wiped the oil on his hand onto a rag nearby. “Now then, in your professional opinion, how have I done?”
Crowley shook out his wings a couple times, feeling better then ever. “Absolutely terrible, Angel,” he scoffed. “At this rate, it might be better if I just showed you how.” Aziraphale heard the thanks, as well as the question in Crowley’s statement.
“If you think it’s best, dear.”