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The first time Aziraphale’s wings betrayed him he was admiring a different pair, pitch-perfect canopies of onyx-carved feathers, black and glossy and shimmering, like two stubborn windows into a starry night against the damp blue sky of day.
“... you what? ”
The owner of those remarkable appendages was grinning at him out of sun-hued eyes, warmth spreading to the angel’s cheeks, his chest, tiptoeing a tentative melody along every rib and cord, and then...
“Eh, didn’t know your wings could turn bright red, Angel, they’re flaming like anything!”
Aziraphale smiled, and breathed, and kept alternating the two until the heat subsided a little in the welcome drizzle of the first rain.
The second time caught the angel off guard as he was slowly sinking into bored gloom, thoughts crawling tediously from stone to lonely stone on his board of Terni Lapilli, when suddenly--
“What have you got? Give me a jug of whatever you think is drinkable.”
Aziraphale felt his wings burst out as evanescent tendrils of joyful orange, glowing, stretching towards the familiar voice.
He was no longer in the mood for games. Maybe he would get to taste the titillating, salty flesh of oysters on his tongue all over again.
The good people of Rome who had gathered in the tavern that day remained blissfully unaware why their ordinary afternoon shone a little brighter.
The next occasion was far less pleasant.
“You don’t want to get Gabriel upset with you.”
Even as he was saying the words Aziraphale knew his wings revealed his fear, forming a protective cloak of sickly ochre above his head; an ethereal extension of his mind, imperceptible to anyone but himself and Crowley. The demon would not let it show, unfittingly kind as he could be at times, but he had to be aware what a shameful, yellow-bellied coward Aziraphale was!
“We’re not having this conversation. Not another word!”
As he was riding through the grey, suffocating fog of a Wessex forest, the angel told himself that he could not let his wings show him up like that, never again!
It went well for a while. Until it didn’t.
At least he was alone that time, preening his feathers with undue harshness as his thoughts resisted grooming, a hopeless, ruffled mess of sticky vanes, hooklets buried in vain into hardly unexpected words.
“I have lots of other people to fraternise with, angel.”
Aziraphale forced himself to pull a few nasty green coverts from his flesh that night. It was no good, they weren’t allies or comrades, barely even travel companions, they weren’t--
“Friends? We’re not friends!”
It was an unusually chilly evening for the time of the year, scaring the handful of Londoners rushing through Battersea Park into pulling up their collars, bracing against the piercing wind. None of them could make out a lone angel perched on the hard metal roof, wrapped into a veil of blue barbs, yet each felt a sudden bout of inexplicable sadness clutching at their throat as they passed by the bandstand.
It was the end of the world.
The end of the world felt strangely peaceful. Liberating.
Aziraphale took a deep breath, spreading his wings to their full, unapologetic span. The white of clouds, of sand freed from its glass, soaking up the calm indigo of the sky reflected in Adam’s jacket.
The human boy could be anything. And so could he. So could they.
For a moment of breathtaking clarity Crowley was smiling at him out of sun-hued eyes, a look of wonder and promise, hidden behind shades too soon, but not for long.
The warm twilight of their bedroom was not meant for hiding. It was meant for tender exploring and fluttering and unfurling.
That purple hour stretching between light and dark was theirs forever.
“I didn’t know yours did that, too,” Aziraphale murmured, running soft fingertips along the length of a violet rachis.
“Only with you, Angel.”
Crowley whispered it in his ear once again, a little later, as the angel’s hands were buried deep in mauve-coloured down, a dizzying rainbow exploding against his closed eyelids.
“Only with you.”