Chapter Text
The first time Crowley finds Aziraphale ill is sometime in the late 1500’s. He happens upon the angel in a back alley, tucked against a building, his face pressed into a piece of cloth and desperately trying to ride out a sneezing fit.
Crowley props himself up against the wall and watches. “Thought you’d try that out or…”
Aziraphale's head snaps up, eyes round and mortified. He mumbles something indistinct and ducks away from Crowley, wiping furiously at his nose for a moment before collecting himself.
“It’s not on purpose,” he explains, haughty tone absolutely destroyed by the thick congestion in his voice that dulls all of his consonants. “The humans are calling it ‘a cold’. Probably something your lot came up with.”
Crowley arches his eyebrows in a perfectly executed ‘who me?’ look that has Aziraphale sagging apologetically against the wall. “Oh, yes, well… it’s positively awful,” he says pitifully in Crowley’s direction.
“Seems so,” Crowley hums and pulls himself closer, taking in Aziraphale’s sharply pinkened nose and flushed cheeks.
Sensing that Crowley might be open for commiseration Aziraphale turns fully towards him eager to gossip about this appalling bit of the human condition. “Everything aches," he begins, more than a bit of a whine in his voice. "I can’t stop sneezing, which is a novel sensation, but I don’t feel like it should happen quite so often, I’ve lost my appetite, my head’s all fuzzy, and, and, oh, I don’t know how they do it, it’s…”
The miserable rambling sparks something inside Crowley that maybe wants to bundle the angel up, take him away from the drafty alley, tuck him in somewhere safe and warm. Maybe there would be soup involved. “Awful, yeah.” He tilts his head. “And you can’t...?” he drags his fingers delicately through the air in a knowing, magical, fashion.
“No,” Aziraphale rolls his eyes. “That’s the worst part.” He pauses, sniffling. He gets a bleary look and then shakes it off. “Ugh, no, the worst part is that I can’t breathe through my nose.” He pins Crowley with a horrified look. “What if I can never breathe through my nose again?”
“Well, I don’t think--”
“You don’t know,” Aziraphale groans. “Human’s die from this. Heaven knows what will happen to an angel. I could be stuck like this for, for… millennia.”
He sounds so positively aggrieved that Crowley can’t help himself. He reaches out with one long finger and slowly drags it down the bridge of Aziraphale’s nose, pausing just a moment at the tip.
Aziraphale gasps at the warm tingle sliding over him and then his breath hitches and he barely gets the cloth he’s holding to his face in time. He sneezes, desperately and wetly, almost unable to take a breath. “Wh--,” he sniffs. “Why--” He buries his face as another couple of sneezes nearly double him over. He peers at Crowley over the edge of the cloth, betrayal glossing his eyes. “Why would you…” He mops up the worst of the mess and sucks in a breath. Through his nose. “Oh.”
A small smile tugs on Crowley’s lips.
Another, deeper, breath. “Oh,” Aziraphale’s eyes light up and he beams at Crowley so brightly that the demon nearly needs to look away. “Oh, thank you.”
Crowley swats the thanks away like it’s an annoying fly. “Just,” he shrugs as he pushes off the building to get on his way before he tries anything else. “Feel better, huh, angel?”
Aziraphale is still looking at Crowley like he hung the moon in the sky just for him, but he nods and holds back another thank you. He takes another long, grateful breath through his nose.
The smarter part of Crowley’s brain kicks in three blocks later when he remembers, with a harsh sneeze, why demons don’t do miracle healing. ”No good deed,” he grumbles to himself as he feels the tightness in his sinuses growing and makes a mental note to remember this the next time he gets the urge to heal an angel.