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Aziraphale was not a demon, somehow. He had not Fallen. But he was definitely not an angel. Angels couldn’t be this sick.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his shaking hand and cringed as he flushed, sitting back on his heels. His eyes stung with unshed tears from the violent voiding of his stomach contents, and he was dizzy with the shame and degradation of it all.
Finally, slowly, he got back to his feet and ventured into his bookshop, the usually-comforting scents only nauseating him further. The remnants of his morning tea sat idly on his desk and he nearly had to turn straight back to the bathroom, but managed to hold off.
What would make an ethereal being ill? Aziraphale had no concept of human illness, and besides, he didn’t think that he was human. From his research, he still showed no sign of it besides this illness. But angels did not get sick, so that must mean he was not an angel either. That made a lot of sense, too, but it was more frustrating than anything, because it meant he had to find out what, precisely, he was, if he was ever going to get to the bottom of his sudden discomfort.
And all without Crowley finding out, which was becoming a bit harder, he realized when the lanky demon stormed into his store.
“You tell me what this whole saving the world nonsense was all for, Angel,” he demanded, thrusting one hand out dramatically, “if all I’m going to get for the trouble is some kids leaning on my Bentley like it was a bloody rest stop—” He stopped when he got to Aziraphale, who was leaning ever so casually against his chair. “Like that. Like you’re doing now. You never lean. What’s the matter with you?”
“Why, I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Aziraphale said, straightening. “And anyway, it’s far too early in the morning for you to have been out and back already.”
Crowley rolled his eyes and moved away. “Oh, you know, Americans and their coffee.”
So Anathema then. Aziraphale really hoped they weren’t discussing him. Oh, but perhaps that was vain of him, thinking Crowley could find nothing to discuss outside of Aziraphale. He took a breath and gathered his tea, trying not to look at it, and ventured in the back towards the kitchenette. “Would you like something to wash down those awful liquid beans?”
Crowley followed dutifully. “Well, if you insist,” he said, sitting down at the kitchen table and sweetly refusing to acknowledge Aziraphale miracle-ing the teapot water hot again. “You know, I was thinking of going back to mine and perhaps bringing some of my plants here.” He looked around, all forced casualness. “Some green could do this place good, yeah?”
Aziraphale couldn’t help the smile that broke across his face and saw Crowley blush at it and turn away. “My dear, of course. This is your home.” And they hadn’t talked about it, really, but it was now. Not that Crowley wouldn’t have welcomed the angel in his loft, but he knew that Aziraphale would rather walk off the roof than spend another night in that tomb. Crowley did seem at home here, in the bookshop, in Aziraphale’s bed, in the small kitchenette. He had settled into Aziraphale’s life like he had always belonged, like he could make his home anywhere—the pits of Hell, the vacant halls of Heaven, or that sweet spot in between, as long as Aziraphale was there.
Aziraphale was more particular, of course, but that didn’t mean he didn’t get a certain thrill seeing the demon coiled up on his couch napping like the well-loved pet he was.
Crowley choked some of the tea down, swallowing more heavily than was strictly necessary to compose himself. “Well. I’ll do that then. Today.” Then, he nodded towards the angel, who was feeling a little shaky again at the smell of the tea leaves. “Going to sit down?”
“Ah.” Aziraphale fiddled with his sleeve. “N-no. I have—I have a bit of work to catch up on, I’m afraid. You’ll get on all right without me, won’t you?” Without waiting for an answer, Aziraphale turned on his heel and ventured back into his apartment to sit a spell and try to collect himself.
“Work?” Crowley called after him. “What work?”
*
Crowley’s plants were adorning several windows and bookshelves when Aziraphale emerged again a few hours later, but Crowley was absent. Perhaps to make another trip to his loft. That was fine, because Aziraphale did need to do some work—research, to be precise. But as the day fell away and disappeared, Crowley still hadn’t returned, and Aziraphale was no closer to understanding his plight. In fact, he felt much further away, and realized with horror he was exhausted. His head felt as if it had been pierced through, and all he could do was lay down on the bed and stare up at the ceiling and wonder if this were some angelic punishment. Or if the angels even cared much about punishing him anymore, since he was no longer part of them.
He must have slept, which felt even worse, because Crowley was at his side when he woke up, curled up with his head on his arm, one of his own arms tossed carelessly around Aziraphale’s middle.
Aziraphale extricated himself from the situation and found the bathroom. There wasn’t much to vomit this time, but his head felt better against the coolness of the tile and he found himself drifting again.
He woke with a start and pushed himself up more quickly than he should have, feeling as dizzy as he did, praying Crowley was still asleep. The bed was empty, though, and behind him, the voice—
“You’re bad at hiding things. You know I can feel your aura, right?”
Aziraphale closed his eyes and spun around, then thought better of it and sat heavily on the bed. Crowley waited with a frown.
“It’s still wonky,” he said, sketching in the air with his hand what Aziraphale assumed the demon thought a wonky aura should look like. “And now you’re sick.” Crowley’s mouth was a firm line.
“You can’t—” Aziraphale sighed and put a hand to his throbbing head. “You can’t blame yourself.”
“Do you think I give a fuck whose fault it is?” Crowley demanded, coming forward. “I just want you to be better.”
Crowley, of course, gave a fuck whose fault it was, as much as he’d like to pretend otherwise. But when he came to kneel by the angel’s knees on the floor and took his hands, and Aziraphale leaned down to touch his forehead to his, nothing mattered besides that breath of life in the air they shared, that sudden feeling of exploration he could sense in the threads between their intertwined fingers.
“We’ll fix this,” Crowley said, and Aziraphale realized, for a brief moment, that he was right.
*
Crowley hated himself more than usual when he left Aziraphale again the next morning, far too pale in his sleep, to meet up with the witch once more. Because he might not have been talking about Aziraphale yesterday, but he certainly was now.
“I wouldn’t trust you,” he informed her, “not after what happened last time, except you’re the only witch I know. Which is odd,” he reflected, "for a demon. You'd think I'd attract them."
She stirred the cream in her coffee and gazed at him steadily, clearly unimpressed. Her shiny new wedding band glittered gold in the light of the window they sat next to. “We’ve been over this. I’m not a witch. I’m an—”
Crowley waved his fingers to cut her off. “All right, whatever you call yourself.”
“And I don’t need you to trust me,” she said. “You’re the one asking me.”
“Don’t remind me.” Crowley snapped his fingers to sweeten her coffee right before she took a sip, and took a small amount of pleasure in watching her grimace and put down the cup.
“His aura is still breaking up,” she said. “And the more it deteriorates, the sicker he’ll get. When I tried to rouse it from what I thought was its dormant state, he reached too far inwards and tried to grasp—something. Some kind of—”
“Knowledge,” Crowley answered.
Her eyebrows scrunched. “Yes. Perhaps. But he couldn’t hold onto it.”
“Not without me, for some reason,” Crowley supplied, and this time it was with no small amount of bitterness. Did it go back to the apple business in Eden? If so, why couldn’t he have helped Aziraphale hang onto whatever it was he needed to know to heal his aura? And if Crowley was some kind of guardian of Earthy knowledge, surely he’d know it—wouldn’t he? But who knew how this world worked? Well, God did, he supposed, but little good that ever did since She wasn’t sharing her notes with anyone.
But first—
“Why is his aura deteriorating?”
Anathema shrugged. “When he came back from—well, Down There, I suppose, his aura was suddenly everywhere, like it was in the garden of my cottage. It was so bright and golden and powerful. Aziraphale’s aura has always struck me as rather light and fresh, but this was intense in a way it had never been. And then it started to fade, nearly as soon as he got back. Maybe it was too much for him. Had something changed?”
Crowley thought back and recognized that it had. That Aziraphale had never really gotten better after their talk in the bathroom that night. That Aziraphale had merely managed to convince himself he had gotten better, and thereby convince Crowley, but that wasn’t going to hold long. After all, the angel’s imagination had nothing on his own.
And all the while Aziraphale played this game, his aura faded, breaking apart bit by bit until it was now a mere shadow of a human’s and his own corporation was rejecting his soul. Or perhaps didn’t recognize that it was a soul at all.
Crowley felt that knowledge sink into his stomach, and he thought he too might be sick.
Anathema looked down at her coffee and frowned. “I can try to dig up more for you if you’d like, but I’ve given you all I know. You seem to understand the situation more than I do now. If Aziraphale needs to know something, you’ll have to find out what it is and make sure he gets it and keeps it. You owe me another cup, by the way.”
*
Crowley stopped by a store on his way back and browsed the human medications shelf, baffled for a long moment, before he gave up and bought some biscuits and fizzy water, which had to work just as well as whatever the heaven aspirin was.
He entered the bookshop with the small sack and found a strange woman looking lost among the shelves.
“Do you know if anyone works here?” she asked.
Crowley leaned in. “Yeah, but I heard the owner’s a right bastard who only exploits children for labor at half-cost, so you can’t really blame them for their lack of experience.”
The woman gasped and hurried out the door, phone pulled out and likely already typing in Yelp. Crowley had done his part for the day.
But he was worried, as well he should be, because Aziraphale was neither in the bedroom nor the bathroom, where he expected he might be. He wasn’t in his study, not even the kitchenette.
“Angel!” received no response, so he didn’t expect to nearly trip over a bundled form at the edge of the hallway next to a set of pull-down stairs leading to an attic Crowley didn't think had been there before.
“Aziraphale?” Crowley asked incredulously, crouching to release one shivering arm from the mess of blankets which the angel immediately pulled tightly to his chest.
Aziraphale merely moaned in response, so it was unlikely the fizzy water was going to do any good at this stage. Crowley swept the bundle up to walk back to the bedroom, but there was more fight in the angel than he expected and they both nearly bowled over backwards when Aziraphale’s arm knocked Crowley square in the nose. Luckily, Crowley caught himself on a knee and avoided dropping his undeserving burden.
“Son of a bitch!” he cried, feeling his nose and the bit of blood there.
“I have to go up!” Aziraphale huffed desperately. “Must go—”
“An apology would actually be the way to go here.” Crowley looked at the blood on his fingers with deep unhappiness.
But Aziraphale shook his head violently and then somehow managed to double over with a cry.
“Well, what do you want to go to up for? Heaven? Surely not.” Crowley tried to pull enough of the blankets away from Aziraphale’s form to help him find his way back upright. “Horrible place, that, if you ask me. And what makes you think you’ll get there through an upstairs loft?”
But it was plain to see Aziraphale had no idea where he was, where he wanted to go, or how to get there. He struggled valiantly when Crowley picked him up again, hands firmly held in place this time, and brought him back to bed. A cool washcloth and a dose of mediocre scotch was all it took for the exhaustion to overwhelm him again.
Crowley pulled a chair beside the bed and lounged and thought about phoning Anathema. Aziraphale had worsened significantly, but he didn’t know that the witch would be able to help if this were now a case beyond the healing properties of fizzy water.
He must—must—remember something about the light there in her garden, though. About what Aziraphale reached for, in the same brave way Eve took the apple. He’d been present at both, after all, tempted them both forth to try to hold knowledge their vessels couldn’t contain. And now they had both suffered for his sake.
“What are you trying to tell me?” he murmured, staring at the feverish forehead of a sleeping angel. And then, more fervently, he sat up. “Why give them to me and then ruin them? What does that mean?”
Eve’s soul had been doomed, and now Aziraphale’s was too, and here Crowley sat feeling for all the world that his soul was still just as in tact as ever.
*
Moonlight shone through a cracked window and Aziraphale could hear the rustling of a wind gathering right before a rain. He was awake; he was here, but he didn’t want to open his eyes just yet. He wanted to feel the small breeze, let the smell of a brewing storm wash over him. Then it did, and the clatter of soft rain steadily gained speed and size. He missed this, somehow. Something in his brain wanted to bring up horrid memories of the Flood, of thousands drowned, wanted to hurt him with this. But it couldn’t, because he was alive to witness the flowering of well-watered ferns and the joyous dances of humans seeing water for the first time after a hungry drought.
Rain was just rain. It might cause hurt; it might heal wounds; it might be nothing at all.
“Angel.” A small breath from the other side of the room. Aziraphale turned and opened his eyes, found the shadowy, hard outline of his watchful demon. “What are you—” He paused. “Should I get you anything?”
His throat was dry and his thoughts bleary, so he only reached for him, and Crowley obediently came to the bed and curled around him possessively, one hand stroking sweaty bangs.
Minutes passed, and Aziraphale didn’t know if he was still awake or asleep again, but Crowley’s words jarred him back.
“Your aura.” His voice was rough, nearly hoarse. “I can hardly feel you anymore.”
Aziraphale relaxed his head into Crowley’s arms, felt the sinewy muscles strain underneath his skull, and the rain outside the window was so gentle. “’m just right here, dear.”
“Are you, though? What do you need? Don’t you know?”
He smiled. Always so desperate, his Crowley. “You. Just you. Always been—” He felt himself slipping away with the gentle tide of the downpour— “you.”
*
Long moments passed with a silent angel laying in his arms before Crowley realized everything was too still, like time had stopped, but it hadn’t. He would know, after all. All evening, Aziraphale had been panting in his sleep, eyebrows furrowed; sometimes his hands reached up and over the bed, and Crowley would have to get up and place them back down into the sheets again.
Now, with his cheek pressed against a mess of soft curls and a body beneath that felt like it wasn’t there, Crowley realized something was very, very wrong.
He lifted his head and shook the angel’s shoulders gently. “Hey,” he said. Then he gave up the gentle game, grabbed Aziraphale’s shoulder, and shook it violently—“Aziraphale!”—feeling very much like he was falling again, that fear of what was to come somewhere in the distance but getting closer far too fast.
I’m alone, he thought.
Then. “I’m fucking alone.”
*
Aziraphale lay tangled in the love of the other angels, a harmonious singing of souls that could become nearly singular in their intent, and yet he felt as if he were freezing here. The walls—and really, there should not be walls—were translucent and yet he was imprisoned, he could not leave, he could not wander, he was not free of the burden of their distant, empty love.
This must not be Heaven. This could not be Her. He could not find Her. He was suffocating beneath the horrible, ethereal hands, all pulling him in the direction of something light and lonely, a place without Her. And he couldn’t fight them. He wasn’t strong enough. Heaven. I have to—I have to find Heaven. I have to find Her. Up, up the chain, up the stairs, up, up, until I find it, keep going, keep pulling away from their misguided love that feels like teeth in my skin.
I can’t. I can’t. I have to find Her. She’s here somewhere. She said She would be. She said I could find Her in my heart, if I kept the faith, and oh, haven’t I kept the faith, Crowley? Haven’t I tried, at least, all these years, to love everything She created with an unmatched ferocity, and if I fought the Plan, it was only to hold true to that love. What is love, anyway, but the weapon of a warrior?
Something breaking through— “Aziraphale? I can’t feel you anymore. Why can’t I feel you anymore?”
I can’t feel me either, Crowley. I can’t feel anything.
Realization. “Oh god, oh god. Don’t leave me, Angel.”
I don’t want to. I wouldn’t. I gave up everything because I couldn’t.
Panic. “Az—Aziraphale. Please don’t do this. Please.”
I’m so cold. I can’t stop shivering, and everything in this corporation, oh God, this soul, is just so tired.
Anger. “You can’t give up! You can’t let them fucking win after all—”
But I’m so lost now.
A choked whisper. “After everything we did, everything we made. Everything we became.”
It’s so white up here… so empty.
Broken. “Aziraphale.”
Oh. Crowley. Are you here? I’m so—
*
Crowley’s fingers ghosted over Aziraphale’s face and he felt like he was saying something, but he wasn’t sure what it was because his voice kept getting choked in his throat. None of it felt real. Nothing had felt real since Aziraphale flew down to the Hellfires and started this whole cock-up to try to prove something to Crowley—maybe that they could be on the same side now. Maybe that he loved him, but that wasn’t something Crowley doubted—you couldn’t, with that angelic face—it was just too painful to handle sometimes.
Now, though. Now—there wasn’t any love there, or even pain. Even the lines of exhaustion were fading fast into some bland neutrality, and his face was never neutral. His face was never anything but filled to the brim with every piece of life he could hold.
Crowley let shaking fingers fell over the angel’s eyelids, but it was all so unfamiliar and strange, and there was so much in his head, so much can’t be, you can’t, this isn’t real, you aren’t this, why do you feel so foreign to me, why are you gone, let me feel you.
Let me keep this.
He buried his face in Aziraphale’s neck and took a shuddering breath there.
“You’re alive,” Crowley said, suddenly. “You’re alive. You’re alive. I know you’re alive.” The demon gritted his teeth with the mantra, tightened fingers in the cloth at the angel’s shoulder. “You’re here with me. I promised we’d fix this. So you’re alive.”
A sob escaped through his teeth and he pressed his face more tightly against Aziraphale’s neck to try to stop it because you wouldn’t cry over an angel being alive. Even if you were a demon. You just wouldn’t. Not this one.
Let me keep this. Again. Steadying himself, Crowley’s other hand came up to grip the front of Aziraphale’s shirt and he used all his strength to shut off everything that wanted to happen and instead simply imagine, eyes tightly closed and the scent of his angel flooding his senses, that a golden aura encompassed both of them. Crowley was held tightly in its radiance and it did not burn; it felt like the soft sun of a warm autumn day. The brush of Aziraphale’s feathers wrapped around him like a gentle blanket, and he could drift here in this eternity, he could definitely stay in his angel’s wings forever, half-awake and half-asleep, on the precipice of something magical. And Aziraphale’s voice like church bells, telling him he loved him, he loved him more than all Her other creations, and his fingers were soft on his cheek, and now he was telling him, “Wake up, love, we’re here now, you’re here now.”
Crowley jerked back. The rain was clattering now, loud and sharp; it was dark and warm, and Aziraphale was staring at him with a gentle smile, fingers on his cheek, alive, and “There we are, dear,” and oh God, this was real.
It took approximately two seconds for Crowley to accept it, which was surprising considering he couldn’t have accepted anything else. Without bothering for shame, all emotional impulse that he was, he climbed over Aziraphale’s legs and leaned over to kiss his mouth far too hard. “Angel,” he said, his voice clearly shattered. “Angel.” Another kiss on his cheek. “My angel.” His jaw now. “Aziraphale.” His lips again, but this time he couldn’t stop that fear finally crashing into him, and he found himself sobbing quite catastrophically into Aziraphale’s mouth.
“There, my dear, there,” Aziraphale said, pulling Crowley away and nestling him against his chest. “Please don’t cry, Crowley. Please.”
But Crowley was too far gone to heed any plea, and he could only manage a halted, “How?” while wondering if Aziraphale was going to be too terribly put out by the dampness in his linen.
After a long pause in which Crowley attempted and failed to calm himself a few times, Aziraphale said in a bit of a mystified whisper, “You’re more powerful than you realize, I think.”
“Fuck, Angel, don’t. Don’t patronize me. Just tell me,” although Crowley realized he was belatedly playing with fire, trying to figure out how the miracle worked.
“I am telling you.”
The demon lifted his head up to gaze at Aziraphale finally, who still seemed alive, and a bit puzzled, but mostly very, very peaceful.
“My aura was breaking down because I didn’t believe in anything anymore,” Aziraphale said, “but then I realized I did. I always have. I believe in you. I believe in us.”
In everything we do. In everything we are. In everything we make.
“You’re always there, aren’t you? Wherever I go? Funny, how—I wanted to do that for you, but you’ve always done. For me. With so much less fanfare.” He laughed softly to himself, folded his fingers more firmly around Crowley’s arm. “I believe in who I am when I’m with you.”
*
We are broken bits, the remnants of creation that fell and rose and fell again until we settled quite happily and found a new strength in being exactly what we are. We can wound and bleed and heal and love. We can be this, just this, just a broken fragment of someone’s imagination suddenly lifted and new.
“You remember, Angel, the feather you gave me before you plunged headfirst into Hell in the way only an ethereal being who has been around the stupidest of humanity could think was a good idea?”
Aziraphale raised an eyebrow and picked up a glass of champagne that had just been refilled before a smattering of colorful macaroons. “Yes, dear.”
“I assume you haven’t manifested your wings lately, but take a look.” Crowley moved something gold and glittering across the tablecloth, which Aziraphale took in his hand carefully. He gazed passively for a moment, then looked up again.
“This is my feather?”
“Yes, it’s your feather. I’ve—well, I’ve held onto it, since the day you gave it to me. Only I didn’t exactly hold onto it. I tried not to touch it too much. I didn’t want to—I didn’t want any of me to get on you.”
“Oh, Crowley.” Aziraphale’s eyes lifted to his abruptly, shimmering with far too much sympathy for the demon to withstand at just this moment, so he hurried on.
“But I did, finally. It remained white, even after your dive, and I wondered what that meant, and I just—I thought I’d see—and then this happened.”
Aziraphale looked down at the feather again. It sparkled in the flickering candlelight of their table, the telltale gold glittering peacefully, a relaxed sheen, settling into its brightness. “What does this mean?” he said finally, then looked all around him when he realized the music stopped, the patrons had gone quiet, and the restaurant was still.
“Show me,” Crowley said.
Aziraphale spread his wings, soft and golden like snow falling through sunlight. He looked around himself with widened eyes, and Crowley leaned back in his chair and closed his to bask in it, smiling. “Well, that’s new.”
“Do you—do you think this a step up? Or down? I—I’m not sure, Crowley.”
The brief shine of a golden band around a woman’s finger flickered across Crowley’s mind. “Neither. It’s a step sideways. Beyond.”
“A new dimension.”
“Earth added some complications to the hierarchy, I suppose.” When Crowley opened his eyes again, Aziraphale was watching him with something careful, so painfully cautious.
“And you, dear?”
Crowley let his wings unfurl and reveled in Aziraphale’s delighted gasp. He didn’t have to look to know that the angel had gotten to his feet and his hands were tracing the outline of his own darkly silvered feathers, reflective and cool.
“We’ve stepped sideways,” Aziraphale repeated with wonder.
Time restarted with little fanfare besides the ring of soft laughter, the tinkling of the piano. Aziraphale sat back down, eyes wide, belatedly taking in the reality around him again. The macaroons in front of him seemed brighter—pinks and greens and yellows all neat and delicious. The fine music was a brush against his ear. And Crowley was here.
Crowley was here.
“Angel, your smile is more brilliant than a nebula,” the demon said, in his simple and abrupt way of making the most obscenely romantic declarations. “It’s disgusting,” he added for good measure.
“I love you, too.” Aziraphale blushed and looked away. “I suppose we’re both rather new, then. New creations, as it were. Really quite frightening… but also brilliant. In a way.” His smile settled, moved to something internal, as if readying for the long haul.
And Crowley thought of Eve. Of God’s ineffable mysteries. Of second chances, and all the possibilities they held.