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It’s the early days and there’s a war, because that’s what people did in the early days (and the middle days, and the late days, but that’s another topic). It’s the early days, and Aziraphale isn’t soft yet, he’s an angel of God, a weapon in his own right, never mind the sword he swings with both grace and power. (In his own way, he’s always been soft, he’s been soft since day one, since the beginning, since before the beginning, but that’s another topic).
Aziraphale doesn’t like to fight, but as mentioned, it’s the early days, and that’s a lot of what angels did back then.
“In the name of the Almighty,” Aziraphale says, both in his celestial tongue and in a language the human before him can understand, “I order you to stop this ceaseless warfare.”
The human stops for a moment, blood dripping, most of them covered besides their wide eyes. They only stop for a second, trying to comprehend the not-quite-human, not-quite-not-human before them. And then, with a shout, they plunge their sword forward.
Aziraphale knocks it away with his own. And maybe it’s the glimpse he gets of their eyes when they come in closer, young and wide and scared and, oh Almighty, so young. Maybe it’s just because he’s tired. But he swings his sword, and the metals make contact, and he must have swung it wrong because something just snaps. Or it feels like it does. Something deep in his shoulder, muscle or tissue or tendon. It startles him, because he’s felt pain before, but nothing quite so visceral and unexpected. It hurts. Aziraphale doesn’t know what to make of that.
Later, propped on the edge of his latest bed, he places a hand over the injured shoulder and thinks heal. It’s warm. Both his shoulder and the magic that flows into it, growing hotter and hotter because, well, his wielded element is fire, after all. He winces and looks away and huffs a breath. But soon enough, something under his skin starts to shift. He can feel it growing and mending, healing itself in the way that angels do. And he thinks, well, that’s that.
But it’s not.
The next day his shoulder aches. He uses his other arm, only a touch clumsy. He fights, but he’s distracted. He’s felt this sort of feeling before. It’s almost like a stomach ache, which he’d started getting ever since that last day in Eden, ever since he gave away that flaming sword and thought for the first time, I think I messed this up. His hand keeps finding his shoulder, rubbing absentmindedly, squeezing it and digging his fingers into the joint. It’s something he can almost forget about, until he notices again. He keeps noticing. It’s there, hovering and uncomfortably warm, sort of a tingle and sort of sharp when he moves. It’s not often he notices his heartbeat. It’s mostly when he makes an effort to have one, or when he’s startled, or, like now, hot on the battlefield. There’s the rhythm within his chest, a familiar and foreign one two, one two. And then there’s another in his shoulder, a patterned throb, marching along and saying don’t forget—don’t you forget.
Later, he’ll sit again and focus his energies, pull his magic into the spot and say heal, damn you, heal. But there’s a problem. The problem is that there’s nothing wrong, not that he can find, it’s just that his shoulder aches and that, no matter what he tries, it never really stops.
After a while, it becomes one of the familiar things of his body, like anything else. He has two hands, with five fingers each, and he has blond hair, and his nose comes to sort of a rounded point, and his shoulder hurts. It just does. The years go by, and the ache stays, and it becomes part of his corporeal form like anything else. He favors his other side, he rubs it when he’s thinking, he doesn’t raise it all that much if he can help it. It’s just him. It’s just a part of his body, the hurt.
It’s the early days, but not quite so early, and he really should be paying more attention when he runs from the fire. It’s just that he’s crying, is all, and it’s hard to run and cry at the same time.
The library burns behind him and, really, it’s just unfair. So much knowledge, so much history, and art, and pure humanity. Soon it’ll be gone, and for what? Some would argue that hatred is a very divine quality, but it’s not a feeling Aziraphale has ever held onto before. He tries to push it away, now, but it clings against his ribs, presses on his lungs, and raises tears to his eyes.
He’s running, and maybe it’s a little clumsy. He hasn’t run in a long time, and there are scrolls clutched in his arms, and, as was mentioned, he’s crying. And also there’s the heat, pressing against his back even from here, and Aziraphale doesn’t know how he didn’t despise the element of fire from day one. All it ever does is burn.
He trips. He doesn’t mean to, obviously, and he gets up quickly enough. He notices the pain in his ankle right away, but it’s something he can brush aside for later, because there’s someplace he rather ought to be, and that place is ‘not here’. He keeps running, and as he runs the pain grows louder and more demanding. But he runs on it all the same.
When he finds a safe place and settles down, he thinks maybe he should’ve paid it more attention after all. The joint is swollen and bruised. He winces just to look at it, feels nausea in his gut at the little white shards of bone that he can see pressed against his skin. It’s broken, and badly. He heals it, and the purple fades, the swelling recedes until it’s only a little puffy, and his bones fit back into place with a decisive snap! He should maybe pray, too, but he’s too worked up. He’s worried his words might morph into a yell, into a how could you let this happen? and so he doesn’t. He lies back and props the ankle on some pillows, and he stares at the ceiling for a good, long while.
He can walk the next day, which is more than any human would be able to do. The swelling is gone. But there’s this little spark, a hot lick of flame around his bone whenever he puts pressure on it. It’s healed. It isn’t broken. But the thing is, the thing is, is that it never really goes away. He can ignore it, for the most part, and on the bad days he only walks a little crooked. But it hurts. It just hurts.
Time passes, in the way that time does, and there’s a rockslide. It wasn’t the devil’s handiwork, not even a lower demon. It’s just nature. Rockslides happen, sometimes, and sometimes they hurt people, because these things happen while the world continues to turn. The difference is, that this time Aziraphale was there to witness it.
“I can help,” he says, hands spread, heart thudding. The old man screams and struggles again, his legs surely already crushed. Aziraphale doesn’t know if he even feels it, if that adrenaline coursing through his veins is drowning out the pain. His dog barks and yowls, fat with puppies. She’s getting too stressed, and Aziraphale knows what happens when pregnant animals get too stressed. He also knows what happens to old men when they’re trapped and left for dead in the wilderness, just far enough from civilization that no one hears his screams. “Please, remain calm. I’m going to help. I’m here to help you.”
He takes a deep breath. He rubs his hands together, little flickers of flame sparking at the friction. The breath pushes out from him, and he braces his hands against the boulder. It’s heavy. It’s heavy, even for him. It’ll be a miracle if he can even move it at all, and, well, that’s exactly what it’ll be.
He tenses and starts to push. The boulder doesn’t budge. His eyebrows draw and his teeth grit and he leans in with all his weight. Not just the weight of his human body, but all his weight. Slowly, the rock starts to shift, and he keeps at it, straining and pushing and sweating through his clothes. His shoulder is stabbing in a staccato, screaming, please stop please stop please stop! He tries to lean more to his other leg, because his ankle might give out if he keeps bracing against it like that. He ducks in his arm and braces the boulder between the top of his shoulder and his neck, and he yells and it moves. The boulder rolls away and settles a little further down the path, and the old man is free.
The man doesn’t thank him. He doesn’t question why his legs are fine, why he can stand and gather his dog and run. Maybe he’ll forget about the whole thing, because humans do that sometimes. Aziraphale stands on the path and huffs and breathes. His shoulder throbs. His ankle grips in pain. And crawling up his back are two icy pillars, a cold network of needles pricking at his muscles. He could—should—heal it now, catch it before it even begins. He doesn’t know what use it would be. It’s not like it’ll stop it from hurting.
It’s the late days, not the end-of-days late, but getting there. It’s winter, and it’s cold, brutishly so. He’s been out of the shop all day, running errands, meeting with people, just bustling out and about as he sometimes does. He’s not human, but he can enjoy their luxuries: a crowded grocery store, too-hot tea in a noisy café, not the book he wanted to find but maybe one he can enjoy anyway. It’s the little annoyances that he so relishes of being something like a human—they make his joys all the sweeter.
Except today the little annoyances are more than a little, not the store or the noise or the book, but himself. It’s cold, as was mentioned, and he’s grown tense and stiff with it. The winter has seeped into his muscles, icing over his bones. For most people, this would be inconvenient, but to him it’s maddening. His ankle is so stiff that it no longer bends, which makes walking much the hassle and much the pain. His back is hot and cold at the same time, twinging and pricking as he moves. His shoulder is the most docile, as long as he doesn’t use it, but it’s being unfair on what it considers to be use. His shopping bags feel like they’re full of lead, and even the motion of twisting his key in the lock sends shockwaves into his chest and down into his fingers.
He dumps his bags and his coat right at the door and doesn’t even both locking it behind him. He should, in case a customer happened to wander in and find him in this state, but he doesn’t. He stumbles awkwardly into the backroom, snapping his fingers to light the fire in the fireplace, and, oh, he shouldn’t have used that hand. He sinks right to the floor in front of it. Now that he’s warming, his body remembers how to shiver. He wishes it hadn’t.
He doesn’t mean to cry, because, really this is nothing new. But he also cries because, really, this is nothing new, he’s been hurting and aching and twinging and growing stiff for years now, for decades, millennia, and he’s so tired. He’s tired of the hurt, he’s tired of trying to ignore it and trying to live with it and trying to manage it. He wonders if he started over, started with a new body, just threw himself into the fire until he burned to nothing and came back different, if it would hurt less. Maybe he’s just old, and this is what happens. Maybe there’s something fundamentally broken within him, and that’s why he’s never been able to fix it. Maybe this was part of Her plan, to make him hurt as the humans do, to make him understand their struggle. Or maybe it’s for nothing. Maybe it just hurts.
He doesn’t mean to cry, and he certainly doesn’t mean for Crowley to find him like that, weeping in front of the fire, sniffling and hiccupping and wiping his cheeks. The demon has seen him cry before, they’ve known each other for 6,000 years, of course he has, and Aziraphale isn’t one to be easily embarrassed. But he is startled. Crowley comes in with a blasé, “You really should lock your door, angel—” and then stops short. Aziraphale twists in surprise. His back seizes. He grits out some sort of sound, something deep and pained, and slowly turns back.
“Oh,” Crowley says.
“Sorry,” he sniffles. His back spasms and then starts to ease.
There’s a moment of silence, and then Crowley moves towards him. He hovers by his side, and Aziraphale doesn’t turn to look.
“Awfully cold day,” Crowley says, because he knows.
“Mm.”
“Bad one?”
Aziraphale takes a breath and wipes his cheeks. “Just tired.”
Crowley sinks down next to him, all limbs. Aziraphale can’t help it, he’s a little jealous of the way he sprawls, of the way he can move and lean back like there isn’t a thing in the world to stop him. He supposes there isn’t.
“Anything I can do to help?” he asks.
Aziraphale tames the little flare in his chest. Something like indignation, something like anger, something like want. His ankle twinges, and he shifts with a wince.
“No,” he says.
“You sure?” Crowley draws out the words, blinking at him over his glasses. He seems like he’s teasing. Is he teasing?
Aziraphale sniffles and wipes his face again. “I’m sure.”
“Shame,” Crowley says. “I guess there’s no one that will drink this, then.”
He reaches next to him, and from the air, pulls a glass. It’s filled with liquid, a clearish-white. Aziraphale eyes it suspiciously.
“What is that?”
Crowley shrugs, leans forward to sniff at the glass, his tongue flicking out briefly, and then holds it out. Aziraphale glares, but reaches out to take it with his good arm.
He sniffs as well, and though there isn’t much of a scent, it makes his eyes water. He puts it to his lips and takes the smallest sip. He spits it back out.
“Oh, that’s disgusting,” he says, face screwing.
“Drink,” Crowley demands, giving a stern tap to the bottom of the glass.
Aziraphale huffs, but, honestly, if Crowley wants him to drink it, it’s probably going to help (or it’s a prank, but even Crowley wouldn’t prank him on a day like this). And he’s willing to try anything. He’s in such pain that he’s grown dizzy with it, and if this disgusting beverage will take any of that away, he’s going to try. He’d drink a barrel of it to get a little relief.
He puts the glass to his lips again and downs the whole thing. He has to stop once to cough into the glass, and it burns all the way down, but he drinks it. He feels a little lightheaded afterwards, to be true, but very quickly he starts to feel better, if only a touch. His ankle feels looser, his back has started to slack, and no longer is there a pulsation of pain in his shoulder.
“What was that?” Aziraphale asks. “It was foul.”
Crowley smiles, looking away and scratching his nose. “You don’t want to know.”
“Crowley.”
“It was, uh.” He makes some sort of noise. “Ginger, capsaicin, lavender, about 1,600mg of liquid ibuprofen. The rest is flavored vodka.”
Aziraphale is silent as that sinks in. He feels a little nauseous.
“What flavor?” he asks.
“Orange creamsicle. Why, was it not good?”
“Oh, it was very terrible,” Aziraphale responds. “But I do feel better.”
Crowley slacks a bit, smiling. “Awfully cold day,” he says. “Probably a little heat would do you some good.”
“I already have the fire,” Aziraphale says, pointing, though he knows what he means. It’s not that he’s embarrassed, he just hates feeling like a bother.
Crowley holds up his hands, eyebrows arching a question, and Aziraphale’s back twinges, and he sighs.
“Well, alright, then,” he says. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt.”
Crowley nods and slips off his glasses. Aziraphale looks at those instead of him as he scoots behind him and starts rubbing his hands together. Aziraphale can feel the warmth that comes off of them from here, can hear the little sizzles and pops that come off his skin. It’s an effort without moving his shoulder, but he manages to shed his waistcoat and set it aside.
“Ready?” Crowley asks.
Aziraphale nods.
And then there’s this heat pressed against his back, separated from him only by his button-up. It’s not like any normal heat, but something soothing and only adjacently warm. It’s more a feeling of heat than anything literal, almost a memory of it, though he knows that doesn’t make sense. It’s like changing into pajamas after being caught in the rain, or drinking honey lemon tea when you have a sore throat. Crowley’s hands start low on his back, drawing slowly up, taking their time. The tension in his muscles starts to unknit. There’s a particular spot that’s been bothering him all day, a knot of pain that keeps twinging and pulling. Somehow, Crowley finds it, his fingers digging in. It loosens. Aziraphale sighs.
“Helping?” Crowley asks.
“Yes,” Aziraphale sighs, eyes closed.
His hands climb, fingers leading up over the muscles, steadily rising. They pause once they hit his shoulder blades, press inward and up, then circle around and down. Aziraphale hadn’t realized how clenched he’d been keeping them, but his shoulders drop.
“Keep going?” Crowley asks.
“Please.” He doesn’t mean for his voice to sound quite so desperate. He clears his throat.
Crowley chuckles and continues his ministrations, hands sliding down his back to start again. He continues like this for a while, until Aziraphale grows doughy and soft and content. His back is sore, but the tight, cold pain is only a memory to him now.
Crowley pauses. Aziraphale points to his shoulder.
The demon snorts. “As you wish,” he says, and moves to get better access. He’s sitting to the side of him now, and Aziraphale can see him from the corner of his eye.
He raises his hands and presses them first against Aziraphale’s bicep. His thumbs start to work the muscle, coming together and apart in little circles. Aziraphale watches him. He looks … focused. Relaxed, one might say. Like he was suited to this.
“You’re very good at this,” Aziraphale says, blinking heavily. Crowley starts a bit and looks to him, then away.
“Don’t get used to it,” he says.
“I’m serious. You need to offer house calls.”
Crowley huffs and grumbles. “What is it that you think I’m doing now?”
Aziraphale smiles, pleased, and closes his eyes again. Crowley’s hands move to either side of his shoulder, one on his chest and one on his back, and starts to push from each side. Aziraphale can feel the warm magic surging between his hands, traveling through his muscles and tendons. He can feel something in his shoulder pull tight, but in a good way.
“Next you’re going to tell me this is a normal massage and I’m just drunk,” Aziraphale says, and it’s definitely the sudden calm of his body that has him slurring like that.
“Nah,” Crowley says. “That’s the ibuprofen poisoning.”
Aziraphale laughs. “I see. Well, it’s quite pleasant, at any rate.”
Crowley snickers and keeps up the pressure. Eventually, Aziraphale’s shoulder drops. His hands fall away.
“Ankle?” Crowley asks.
Aziraphale blinks his eyes open and twists his foot. “It’s okay, actually,” he says. “The fire did it some good.”
Crowley nods, and his hands fall to his lap. Aziraphale feels the loss. “You good?”
Aziraphale takes stock: straightening his back and slouching again, rounding his shoulder. “Yes,” he decides. “I am, actually. Thank you.”
Crowley nods again, staring into the fire.
“I mean it.”
His throat bobs. “Happy to help.”
Aziraphale smiles at him, soft, and then is taken by a yawn that almost cracks his jaw. When he’s finished, Crowley is smiling at him, just a shy little thing.
“I know you don’t sleep,” Crowley says, “but it might do you some good.”
Aziraphale nods, rubbing at one of his eyes. “Have to sleep off the ibuprofen poisoning.”
Crowley barks a laugh, surprised. “Yes. Yes, exactly.”
They’re still for a moment, and the fire calms and puffs out. The room grows darker, night twinkling outside the windows. Aziraphale isn’t sure what to say, what he could to show his contentedness. His muscles are sore, his body is tired, but he feels … good. He feels good. He hasn’t felt like that in a while.
He’s about to say something of the sort, and the “Crowley—” is out of his mouth at the same time Crowley goes, “Well—”. They both stop.
After a moment, Crowley continues. “I should be off. Places to go, people to … well, you know.”
Aziraphale nods, his tongue gone mute.
Crowley nods, slaps his hands to his thighs, and stands. He hovers for a moment, and then a hand is ruffling through Aziraphale’s hair, affectionate and still warm.
“Get some sleep, angel.”
He walks across the room, and Aziraphale turns to watch him. He can turn to watch him, now, and that’s a feat.
“Crowley,” he says, finally managing to find his voice as the demon pauses in the doorway. Crowley turns. “What did you come over for?”
Crowley stares for a second, and Aziraphale realizes he’s left his glasses, but doesn’t say anything. His nose scrunches, and he waves a hand. “Just to say hi. Don’t worry about it.” He leaves, and the sound of the front door opening and closing follows soon after.
Aziraphale turns, watching the last of the little embers flicker out in the fire. It’s like the memory of the heat is still on him, phantom hands soothing away all his aches and pains. He shakes his head and gathers himself, wandering upstairs to change and fall into his rarely-used bed.
He settles under the covers and pulls a pillow against his chest. Outside, he can hear the cold wind winding around the trees and rattling at the windows. But he’s warm under his blanket, and there’s warmth in his muscles, and warmth in his chest, and without the ache and the pain and the burn he can close his eyes and drift, without the hurt he can sleep, and he does.