Chapter Text
At a beautiful carved table, a demon sat. He wasn’t really your average demon by any stretch of the imagination. On this particular day, this particular demon was doing very tricky work, which involved quite a lot of cussing in very creative manners. After cutting up the finest of leathers, he was now sewing the pieces together, following the pattern of long, bony fingers. It was the last piece of his armour of righteousness and he’ll be blessed if it isn’t going to be just as good as the rest.
This wasn’t exactly your average armour. It wasn’t made to protect so much as to attract attention to him, hugging his sharp angles flatteringly. This was meant to convey a very important message: “You can trust me. I am somebody’s messenger”. As he was heading to a really important church official, the fact that his employer was Satan needn’t be mentioned.
His skin prickled with anticipation at what might be. This was a direct order from Below, the first signs of trust from the untrustworthy ever since he showed that carpenter the kingdoms of the world. He stared at his mirror but his vision was fogged by a cloud of doubt. “If this goes wrong…” he thought, “my leather armour will be the least of my worries”.
Combat-ready leather boots could be heard clacking on the ivory steps of the church. Crowley took his time admiring the paintings depicting various religious figures (all of whom, Crowley could tell you, were right bastards*), and traced his fingers on the golden foil. How was this not considered vain? Maybe vanity wasn’t a sin when the one above approved. He marched on.
Urgent murmurs could be heard from the main room, slithering their way into the halls, where the flaming-haired demon listened.
“You can not do this. Do not disobey Her, or you will face her punishment.” a level voice said. Could that be…?
“I won’t tolerate your nonsense any longer. Enough. Either you prove that you are speaking in the name of God, or you will leave me alone.” That voice he recognized. Leo IX, the man he had come to tempt, was apparently getting angry at his visitor.
“Foolish man, do not do this to yourself. You have one chance to redeem yourself, and you question Her messengers?” it was, indeed, what he had feared. Aziraphale, his supposed enemy, was here to right what he was sent to skew.
The human race, Crowley could tell you, had two simple constants. One, that they will always seek knowledge, and two, that when acquiring said knowledge, they will thoroughly ignore it if it does not conform to their goals.
“I said ENOUGH!”
The sound of a vase breaking. He felt the slight shift in the air, the tell of a miracle, angelic or demonic. If he had been another demon, his sense of self-preservation would’ve told him to leave and come back on another day. Being Crowley, a demon to whom the very notion of preserving himself seemed strange at best, he chose that very moment to step in.
“Good day, gentlemen.”, a smooth voice said
Aziraphale’s eyes widened quite a bit more than strictly necessary, considering he must’ve felt Crowley’s presence already. Leo looked at him coolly, and nodded.
“I think your audience is over, isn’t it?” he smiled cruelly, a practised act. “His Holiness and I have a lot to discuss.”
Aziraphale glanced at him, and he could see the hurt in his eyes, could feel his real form curling in on itself and hiding from the world, from him. Something shifted unpleasantly in his stomach, and some might even say it was his conscience, even though he would deny that he has one to his dying day (which, considering it would only happen via holy water or Armaggedon, was quite a long way away). He straightened his clothes and left, and Crowley could admit, if only to himself, that he would’ve liked if he stayed. On to business, then.
Convincing the pope that splitting the church was “a marvelous idea, really” hadn’t been hard at all. Privately, Crowley thought him a fool and while talking to him he understood why Pride was one of The Big Ones. This man could be convinced to do absolutely anything if it meant he was defying someone’s orders, or even Someone’s orders. After finishing his deed, he went on a walk around Rome, which obviously didn’t have the purpose of finding Aziraphale.
Which is why when he accidentally bumped into him in one of his favourite restaurants, Crowley was very surprised.
“Crowley? Crowley!” Aziraphale shouted, getting the demon’s attention. Crowley sat next to him, keeping his knees together and his back straight.
“This man is ridiculous!” the angel said, pouring himself another glass of fine wine. Crowley watched him do it and hummed in agreement. He wasn’t going to add anything to this conversation, mostly because he didn’t come all this way to hear Aziraphale talk about some priest. He had come to test a theory.
Curiosity in angels is considered a very, very bad thing. After all, you can’t have a Perfect, Ineffable Plan that has contradictions or errors. And when such imperfections were discovered, the angel that brought them up was found in a pit of boiling sulphur. Crowley would know.
Hell and Heaven, he could tell you, were not that dissimilar, once you got past the appearances. So when Crowley asked questions, he was shut away. He then decided to get his answers like the humans did. Through experiments.
Aziraphale touched Crowley once. They were eating lovely food and got talking about the more obscure details of a human’s anatomy, which would later impress the doctors of their time.
“And you see, the most amazing thing about them is their hands” Aziraphale said
“Oh, really? Do tell me why.” Crowley retorted, not because he didn’t understand the miracle of Her creations, specifically of humans, but because the sun was shining brightly and bounced just right off of his angel’s white curls and his eyes were crinkling because of his smile and Crowley loved listening to him talk.
“You see, they have opposable thumbs, like so” Aziraphale demonstrated the concept, and the leather-clad demon barely suppressed his grin. “And so many nerve endings!” he traced a pale finger across the demon’s skin.
In that moment, Crowley burned. He burned with unsaid words and heavy feelings, with doubts and, he said to himself, holiness. Holiness must’ve been why his skin prickled, why every one of said nerve endings was aching. “He’s too holy for me”, he thought, and tears welled up in his eyes which he blinked back forcefully. Aziraphale had long since put his hands back in his lap and continued explaining something or another about how humans will have quite the shock when discovering their cells.
Today, there was no discussion about human anatomy. Aziraphale drank his wine and Crowley his mead in silence. Crowley quickly discovered that the material of the goblet and his leather gloves were not a pleasant combination, making him grunt in displeasure. His drinking companion stole just a few quick glances at him, making sure he was alright. Crowley had a quite terrible habit of hiding any wounds which made Aziraphale use miracles to find them on several occasions. This time, though, Aziraphale knew that it was just surprise at the bothersome experience of having a human body. That being said, he still needed to ask him.
“Is anything wrong, dear?”, Aziraphale asked, licking his lips to taste the last drops of wine**
“No, just this blessed metal rubbing me up the wrong way. The gloves don’t seem to help”
“I want to see them, they look absolutely lovely”
Crowley stretched out a trembling hand, which was grabbed by Aziraphale’s cold, smooth one. In the back of Crowley’s head the angel’s voice could only be heard as if from underwater, every wave of sound caressing his skin, making a dent in his flesh, wrapping around him like a lasso. But it wasn’t like the last time. His skin didn’t burn. He was protected, he was safe. Free to touch.
“You serpent! Of course you would get another layer of skin (someone else’s, may I add!) to cover yourself.” Aziraphale tried to fill the silence, slowly tracing circles with his thumb on Crowley’s skin. Or rather, the skin of a deer that he found dead in a forest and who is in a much better place now. There wasn’t really any bite to his scolding, with a soft smile streching the corners of his mouth. Crowley turned their hands around so that Aziraphale’s were the ones being inspected.
“Said the angel with a collection of rings. What, do you think I didn’t notice?” he said, as he was met with Aziraphale’s indignation. Of course, rings weren’t the same as gloves, and if he were honest with himself (which he never is) he would recognize that he was only making this observation to hold his hand for longer. If you squinted, you would see that neither of them had fixed fingerprints. That was because they had to will them into existence, and they really couldn’t be bothered to; except for now, when Aziraphale was giving himself some fingerprints that he hoped would be pleasant to touch. After twisting each ring in its place and making various witty observations about them and “Oh, how very Roman of you. Did you forget that time you were Socrates’s best friend or did you will yourself to forget?” and little smirks he gave to the angel without a second thought, he had to slowly let go of his hand. He liked wearing gloves. They made him feel as if, clad in expensive material as they were, his hands were worthy of touching Aziraphale’s.
Footnotes:
*except, of course, for Jesus, who was alright, really, and that one cherub that gave him quite the nice orchids once
**the monks had had a wonderful production fifty years ago, and they were more than willing to give him a few cases - miraculously, whenever he went to a bar they always had one of the bottles in those cases in stock