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“Come on!” Crowley called, halfway through the window and with a beckoning hand outstretched towards him. Aziraphale took it with a huff and let himself be pulled closer, distracted for only a second by admiring how nice their fingers felt intertwined before Crowley laughed and pulled away. Then came the scrambling up the roof, with the clattering sound of heels trying to find purchase on the tiles, until Crowley called out again, distant now, “Hurry up, Angel! The moon is full, you have to see it.”
Aziraphale climbed through with more caution, leaving on his legs what would probably be sizable bruises by tomorrow if he hadn’t quickly miracled them away. It left the angel with one leg still inside and the other with only a window ledge preventing him from falling down. It would discorporate him for sure, a drop like that, but Aziraphale couldn’t bring himself to focus on that when there were faint sounds of music and chatter from inside and the fresh air outside. But mostly there was exhilaration, the feeling of doing something stupid and slightly dangerous. It was something he only got to feel with Crowley, when they dragged him out somewhere beautiful or wild.
But now, with their fingers around his wrist to help him up and bite of cold air on his cheeks, he felt invincible. Aziraphale scrambled up the roof with his teeth flashing in a grin, laughter caught in his throat. It made him want to dance or fly or something, anything, but instead he just settled across from Crowley, back against the chimney.
Aziraphale had always liked high places. It reminded him of flying, and it had been so long since he had gotten to feel the wind in his feathers. The view stretched out endlessly below him, rooftops and roads so small and insignificant. It made him wonder if this was what it meant to be human, endlessly wondering about their own place in the wide universe. He knew his, of course, because it had been stamped into his essence at his creation, shaped with all of the care and love She put into all things.
Crowley pulled out a cigarette from somewhere else to hold their lips, and if Aziraphale’s gaze lingered there for a second too long, there was nobody who would know. Crowley was too focused on lighting the cigarette in the wind, holding the lighter of equally mysterious origins up to the tip and illuminating their face in warm light. Finally they managed it with a triumphant grin.
He wondered if Crowley knew their purpose. He wondered if Crowley still flew. And, well, there was a pleasant buzz from the wine they’d drunk inside and a looseness to his tongue. If there was a time for asking questions, it was now, with the moon bright and brilliant and no listening ears around. The tiles of the roof were dirty where he sat, and the chimney he leant against more so, and he was already being a bit reckless. It was in the air, in the potential to fall from his precarious position.
“Do you still fly, these days?” He kept his voice soft—it was just the two of them, for once. No humans, no fear. If She would judge them for this it would already have come, but there had been no divine wrath—but he couldn’t think that.
On his braver days, he had wondered if there was a chance She didn’t care, but then again, Aziraphale had never been a brave person.
“No.” Their answer came after such a long pause it made Aziraphale start so badly he almost lost his balance, reaching out to steady himself on Crowley’s leg, withdrawing his hand just a shade too quickly. Aziraphale was still blushing when they continued, gesturing with the hand that held their cigarette, “Doesn’t seem worth it, y’know? To much fuss and bother, all that business with feathers and bones. Gotta figure all that out before you really take off and by then it’s a bit of a chore.”
“Are… are you saying that your wings don’t work?” Aziraphale said, amusement showing in his voice despite his attempts to hold it back. He could imagine Crowley’s wings clearly in his mind’s eye, sleek and beautiful in all their black splendour. He’d always found it very pleasant to imagine Crowley flying, but he’d never paid much attention to the mechanics of it.
“What, and you’re saying yours do?” Crowley asked as if it was the most ridiculous question in the world. “Angels were made before all that business with birds, and w—you have all that holiness, she could allow a few design flaws.”
“She can’t make mistakes,” Aziraphale said absently, reciting the phrase without any belief behind it. He was stuck on the bit about wings, and if they worked, and the comparison between actual birds. “But I’ve flown!” he said in distress, voice going high as he considered all the opportunities he had used to fly.
“Was there much flapping involved?” Crowley asked with deadly seriousness, waving one arm in a vague approximation of the action. It made the ever-so-slightly tipsy Aziraphale burst into a fit of laughter. Crowley beamed at him, hopelessly fond, with the cigarette dangling limply from two fingers.
“Would you, if it was easy?” Aziraphale asked, and Somewhere a pair of impossible wings gave a single flap.
“Maybe—I… you have to do it anyway, don’t you?” Crowley leant forward slightly, their red hair bright in the moonlight and face animated. It was like an elaborate choreography, an act to cover up what he was saying. “All I’m saying that is if it was easy, there… I would, yeah. I try to every now and then, anyway.” They leant back again, a closing gesture. The curtain falls, the crowds applauds, and one angel finds himself unable to take his eyes off a demon.
Aziraphale studied them, the way the fabric of their dress fell and the pearl strings that adorned their neck and headband, the matching earrings. There were two feathers sticking up from their headband, he noticed, one black and one white, and the sight of it made him want to—well, that didn’t matter. “I’d like to.” He tilted his head to the side, looking down on the streets again. “Heaven doesn’t approve, you see.”
“Oh, Hell doesn’t really either,” Crowley said as if it was a footnote, unimportant and trivial, despite the way they weren’t quite meeting Aziraphale’s eyes. “They say they do, but it’s… frowned upon.”
Aziraphale found he couldn’t stand the way that kind of acceptance looked on Crowley’s face, tired and resigned, like it was an unshakable fact. The demon didn’t do unshakable facts, he knew that. That had always been more his thing. “Can I have a puff?” he asked, hand already held out. There was a tinge of self-consciousness to his words—because he was asking, because it was such a human indulgence. A dirty one, too, killing ever so slowly. Not that he could die like that, but it seemed so human.
But then there was a gentle brush of a hand against his, Crowley passing the cigarette to him, watching him handle it with practiced fingers. He handled it with ease, no sign of awkwardness in his actions as he bought it to his lips and breathed in deeply. Crowley’s eyes were fixed on the trail of smoke, following it as it drifted away.
“Never thought you’d be the type to smoke,” they said idly. “If Heaven didn’t approve of flying, I can’t imagine what they’d think of this.”
Aziraphale took another drag of the cigarette, enjoying the feeling of it, a small smile curling the edges of his mouth. He savoured the sensation of it in his lungs, hot and dry. His eyes drifted closed, blocking out the sky and streets and Crowley’s eyes, yellow and beautiful and so close to loving. Instead it was just the buzz from the wine, the relaxed feeling smoking gave him. Petty human vices, but they were better than reaching out, better than leaning closer and kissing them.
He opened his eyes to see Crowley’s outstretched hand, nails painted black, and their smile was so impossibly fond it took the breath out of his lungs, made his eyes burn. It was a confirmation of what he had known since the very beginning. It was the worst thing that could ever happen to him.
“They don’t,” he said softly, and passed them the cigarette with a sad, quiet smile. “Approve, I mean.” Aziraphale huffed a soft laugh. “They don’t approve of much.”
“Yeah,” Crowley said, taking the unspoken implication. That they wouldn’t approve of this, of them, or the way they had danced before, close and free.
The two sat on the roof in silence, passing the cigarette back and forth and listening to the sounds of humans coming from inside. It was almost peaceful.