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When the band of feathers at the base of his wings began to darken, Aziraphale wasn’t really all that surprised. He had, it seemed, pushed too far, questioned too much, and even doubted a little. It was only to be expected after all.
“You’re not Falling,” Crowley tells him firmly, sprawled over the couch in the bookshop. “I’d know.”
Aziraphale gestures mutely to the line of feathers that were beginning to turn a deep grey-blue.
“Look, it doesn’t happen that way. If you’re gonna Fall, you Fall, angel.” Crowley waves a wine glass irritably. “It’s not a gradual thing. There’s no halfway phase between Heaven and Hell.”
Aziraphale raises an eyebrow. “Haven’t you always said you just sauntered vaguely downwards? Perhaps I am… Sauntering?”
Crowley looks uncomfortable. “That… may have been a slight exaggeration on my part,” he admits. “But seriously, you are very definitely still an angel.”
Aziraphale bows his head. “It’s kind of you to say so, but I think I know my transgressions.”
“Oh for… if you’re going to turn this into a self-flagellation exercise I’m off,” Crowley snaps. “Maybe you’re just moulting. Have you been sleeping properly?”
“Angel wings do not moult!”
“I moult.”
“Well, you were a snake!”
And then the rest of the conversation either deteriorated or improved into a very loud argument, depending on one’s point of view.
***
Aziraphale continues to worry, but the feathers never turn fully black, settling instead into a rather deep amethyst colour. Then the next few rows begin to darken as well, but stop at a paler shade this time, more of a lavender.
“Lavender’s blue,” Crowley objects.
“Dilly dilly!” Aziraphale sings.
“Don’t you go bringing folk songs into it!”
“What about you?” Aziraphale asks.
“What about me?” Crowley snaps, defensively.
“Any… changes?” Aziraphale asks delicately.
“No!” Crowley snarls, obviously lying.
Aziraphale just nods and lets it go.
***
Folk songs aside, the next few rows are definitely blue.
“Possibly cyan?” Aziraphale suggests. “Or sapphire?”
“Blue,” Crowley insists. “Blue like a thing that is blue.”
“Sapphire’s are blue.”
“Blue like the sky.”
“Sky-blue then.”
“Really?”
***
The arguments over shading become even more vehement when the next few rows turn a vibrant viridian.
"Oh, we’re starting with the ridiculous alliteration now, I see,” Crowley mocks. “As if the silly colour names weren’t enough.”
“I’m sure I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about,” Aziraphale sniffs. “Viridian is a perfectly valid visual description.”
Crowley audibly grinds his teeth and refuses to look at or even speak about the green feathers for a week.
***
The next row doesn’t darken much at all, instead settling into a pale dark-creamy shade, with hints of a warmer tone. More of an off-white, really. Possibly ecru?
“They’re yellow, angel,” Crowley says flatly, having been dragged back into the weekly wing checks, very much against his will. “Pale yellow, but yellow. How do you even know what ecru is?”
Aziraphale huffs and ignores him. Weeks pass, and the next band darkens past ecru (“Yellow!”) and into more of an amber-jonquil shade.
“Have you been reading Georgette Heyer again?” Crowley demands. “That’s orange and you know it.”
“I like jonquil,” Aziraphale said tranquilly. Crowley rolls his eyes and mutters “Orange” under his breath.
***
The bickering over shades ends when the final band of feathers, at the very top of Aziraphale’s wings, changes colour overnight, completing the rainbow.
The two beings stand in Aziraphale’s shop and observe the finished change.
“Red,” Aziraphale states firmly.
“Red?” Crowley raises an eyebrow. “What, just red? What happened to carnelian? Or cerise? Or claret? Speaking of which, got anything to drink?”
“No, just red,” Aziraphale says calmly. “See, it’s the same colour as your hair.” He extends a wing and gently wraps it around Crowley. The top layers are, indeed, the same colour.
“Well,” Crowley says awkwardly, “This is… that… I mean…” he splutters to a halt. Aziraphale raises an eyebrow at him this time.
“And now, Crowley,” he says, pressing his advantage. “I have shown you mine, and I think it is past time that you showed me yours.”
Crowley splutters some more but he can’t slither out of it this time and he knows it.
“Oh, alright, fine,” he says. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Before Aziraphale can point out that, in fact, he hadn’t warned him, Crowley steps out of his winghold, removes his jacket and spreads his wings wide. Aziraphale involuntarily steps back as colour seemingly erupts from them.
Crowley’s wings look like an explosion in a paint factory, followed by an explosion in a fireworks factory, followed by a bunch of other explosions, viewed by someone on LSD. Vivid splashes of colour are wildly sprayed and seeded throughout his wings, with no rhyme, reason or pattern. Red dominates, but it is a fierce, seething red - a crimson or scarlet perhaps. There is no ecru or jonquil here: the colours are all neon and electric, screaming and fluorescent. Vibrant, brilliant, chaotic colours.
Aziraphale finds his eyes watering as he tries to comprehend the whole of it.
“Some of them even glow in the dark,” Crowley says grimly.
“Um,” Aziraphale says faintly.
“Want to borrow my shades?”
“Yes, please.”
They help, a bit.
“What do you think it means?” Aziraphale finally asks.
Crowley takes a long look at Aziraphale’s rainbow wings and then glances, wincing, at his own.
“I think,” he says slowly. “That it means we’ve picked our side. Not black or white, heaven or hell, but…”
“Earth,” Aziraphale breathes, and it feels so right. Even the differences in their plumage feel right. “Not an Angel of Heaven or a Demon of Hell, but an Angel and Demon of Earth.”
Crowley smiles crookedly. “Exactly. Still intrinsically ourselves, but…”
“On our side,” Aziraphale finishes.
“Yeah.”
There’s a long pause.
“So, about that claret…”
“My dear Crowley,” Aziraphale says firmly. “Put it out of your mind. This occasion calls for champagne.”
“And truffles?” Crowley asks teasingly.
“Well, naturally.”
There is indeed champagne and truffles. (There also winds up being a nice brie, some jalebi and cham cham, and half a block of Cadbury’s dairy milk chocolate (because Crowley’s taste for sweets is “common” and Aziraphale won’t let him bring Hershey’s into the shop).) There is also laughter and conversation, and later some drunken singing (“We Will Rock You” and “Don’t Stop Me Now” feature prominently). But there is mostly love and friendship and an angel and a demon who have found their home at last.