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“Crowley!” comes that ever-posh voice, echoing past tree trunks and through foliage, loud in the still night. “Crowley, please!”
“Fuck,” Crowley curses, ducking under a branch and making a harsh right past a huge oak tree, the crimson end of his long tail drifting behind him. He cuts and weaves through the trees in the dark, hoping to make his path confusing enough that Aziraphale gives up the chase.
However, the hunter is incredibly persistent. “Crowley, you don’t understand! Please, my dear, slow down!”
Crowley doesn’t even deign to give him an answer. He just keeps running, pure adrenaline fueling him. Pure fear. He’s sweating, the pack on his back as heavy as anything, just trying to stay alive. To stay away from Aziraphale. One and the same, he supposes.
He manages to maintain the large berth between them for a good few minutes—more than he thought he’d last, less than he’d hoped. He had wanted to get away, but it seems that fate had other ideas. Instead, as he darts around a tree, a fork in the branches catches his tail and he falls to the ground with a pained sound, his palms and knees scraping as he lands in the debris of the forest floor below.
Of course, it doesn’t take Aziraphale long to catch up. “Crowley,” he says.
Before he can speak further, Crowley curls himself up on the damp ground with his hands over his head. “Please, don’t kill me! We were friends, weren’t we? We were—we—” What were they, exactly? Friends? More? They’d toed the line, for sure, back before they’d known what the other truly was. For Crowley, at least, it had been much more: it had been love. It doesn’t matter regardless; Aziraphale is the sort of man to hunt and kill Crowley’s sort of being, apparently.
Maybe Crowley never knew him. Maybe they were never anything at all.
(An anguish sparks in Aziraphale’s gut that mirrors Crowley’s—but where Crowley’s wonders if he ever knew his lover at all, Aziraphale’s is rooted in seeing Crowley like this, shaking in fear because of him. He can’t blame him, no, absolutely not, but he hates it. He hates that he made Crowley feel this way. He’s got to fix this.)
“I’m not going to kill you, my dear, please listen to me,” Aziraphale pleads, reaching to him with his soft, stout hands. “I would never hurt you. I don’t know how you think I could.”
Crowley is shaking when Aziraphale reaches out; Aziraphale’s hand never touches down. “But you’re one of them,” Crowley spits, his voice trembling. “One of—Saint Justina’s Hand.”
He says the name of the unicorn-hunting organization like it’s a dirty word. Aziraphale flinches at hearing it, as though it’s he who has been caught. Called out and splayed open for all to see. He pulls back from Crowley, seeing he’s unwelcome. When he speaks, he speaks darkly: “Yes, on the surface. But I’m not one of them; I’m nothing like them.”
“Oh, yeah? How can that be, Aziraphale? You’re wearing their garb, you’re carrying their weapons. I saw you with the hunting party. You found out what I am”—Crowley gestures at the long, single horn protruding from the middle of his forehead where there had previously been nothing but smooth skin, his true form having been forced out alongside his powers when he’d used them to escape the hunters that had caught him—”and you told them yourself that you’d take care of me. I’m not an idiot, Aziraphale.”
“No, you’re not,” Aziraphale agrees, looking down in what might be shame. “But you know nothing of what I am.”
“What’s not to know? You’re a killer, Aziraphale, you snuff out things like me. I can’t—I can’t believe we’re having this conversation! I can’t believe”—Crowley sniffles, then, the reality of his first friend in years being the antithesis to his own existence truly hitting him now that he’s still. “—I can’t believe I trusted you.”
Aziraphale’s brow crumples in pain, and even as Crowley tries to distance himself further from him, a part of him also wants to take him in his arms and smooth that pain away with his fingers. He doesn’t move.
“I would never kill,” Aziraphale whispers hoarsely, his own eyes watering. “I would never kill you or anything like you, Crowley, because I’m like you, too.”
The silence of the forest after this statement is deafening. A wind passes through the leaves; Crowley gapes, rendered speechless. Not understanding.
“What?”
Aziraphale takes a steely breath. “I’m like you. I’m—I—“
“Don’t say it,” Crowley stops him. “There’s no way. You can’t be—can’t be one of my own. You’re pulling one over on me. We’re extinct, I’m the last one.”
“That’s what I thought, too, until earlier tonight when your glamour fell,” Aziraphale explains, “I was shocked. I thought I was alone. But there’s… there’s you.”
Crowley is stunned, then, by his sincerity. His eyes are so clear, so honest, his stance is soft, his voice unwavering. Suddenly he’s transported back many months to their meeting, to when Aziraphale had found him shivering under the awning of a bus stop during a rainstorm for which he was ill-prepared and had handed his coat over wordlessly, expecting nothing in return. Sincere eyes, giving hands, unwavering certainty in his actions.
Over the past few months, Aziraphale has only ever shown that he’s honest. Gentle.
“Then why are you part of the Hand?” Crowley asks, hesitant despite feeling himself begin to trust again. With the situation no longer urgent, Crowley detangles his tail from the branch so that he can sit up, curled with his knees to his chest, looking at Aziraphale, who is still kneeling on the ground an arm’s length away.
“Protection,” Aziraphale replies calmly, rubbing his palms on his trousers. “If I’m among them, and they see nothing out of the ordinary in me, I’m not a target. I’m an ally. They wouldn’t hurt me.”
“Ah,” Crowley acknowledges with a nod. “It puts you last on their shit list. Clever.” He takes a deep breath and pushes it out through his nose. “Why should I believe you?”
“Because I’m here, and I’m serious, and if I were a hunter who wanted you dead, I would have had plenty of opportunities to do it before now.” Aziraphale keeps it sharp and concise, logical. It’s true. There had been too many bookshop naps, too many lunches out, and too many late night walks during which Crowley had been plenty vulnerable. If Aziraphale wanted him dead, he’d be dead, simple as that.
They exchange another moment of silence, both processing, both unsure what to say. There’s still more to sort through, but Crowley is plenty content, for the moment, just to appreciate being comfortable in Aziraphale’s presence again after having been so scared.
“Can you show me?” Crowley asks quietly, knowing the risk that that involves.
Lavender eyes break contact with his own gold. “You know I can’t. It’s too dangerous.”
“Aziraphale,” Crowley says. “If you don’t, I’m not sure I can trust you completely. It’s the only way I can think of to make me feel sure.”
Aziraphale looks off into the dark forest, mulling it over, his thoughts visible on his face. Crowley knows the risk intimately. Glamours of the sort that unicorns have always used cover not only one’s physical traits, but their aura, as well. Removing his glamour now would mean tipping off the aurally-sensitive hunters to their presence, would mean that they’d both have to flee. It would, in one of the clearest, most definitive and instinctual ways, key the hunters in to Aziraphale’s real identity. He could never go back to them, not if he reveals himself now.
But if he does, Crowley will protect him. If he does, neither of them will be alone anymore.
If he does, maybe they can run off together, the pair of them.
It’s clear when Aziraphale reaches the same conclusion. He looks back up at Crowley with longing, with want. For immortal, lonely beings like themselves, companionship is hard to find. Much less love.
Aziraphale closes his eyes, takes a breath, and raises his face into the moonlight.
As he exhales, the magic keeping his true self at bay evaporates like morning dew, leaving behind—oh. Leaving behind a man who resembles Aziraphale, yes, but who has the same pointed ears, silky tail, and shining horn as Crowley, even if all three characteristics are a bit more stout than Crowley’s own, in perfect proportion with the rest of him. His skin is almost iridescent in the low light, his eyes a bit more purple when he opens them.
What’s visible of his flesh is now spidered with pale markings—the true proof of his heritage as a unicorn, there, emblazoned upon his skin as they have been since his birth—which glow a celestial sort of blue in the low light. Crowley’s own ruddy red markings glow in answer.
When the wind whistles through the trees, Crowley shivers. Whether it’s from the cold or from the way he feels like he’s seeing Aziraphale for the first time all over again, he won’t say.
(What he will admit, though, is that before now he didn’t think that Aziraphale could get even more beautiful.
But he supposes he thought he was the last of his kind, too. He’s alright with being wrong.)
“Oh my god,” he croaks.
“Do you believe me now?”
Crowley can’t produce more words. He reaches up and disentangles his tail from the tree branch that felled him so that he can scoot closer to Aziraphale where they both sit on the forest floor. He looks at him with what must be awe, wonder, disbelief. “Aziraphale,” he breathes as he comes close, one hand reaching to his face. “Can I…”
Aziraphale looks at the hand, then at his fellow unicorn. “Yes.”
Crowley sits close, his legs folded underneath him. He touches Aziraphale’s face as though caressing the most fragile of petals. Aziraphale’s skin is cloud-soft beneath the rough pad of his thumb. “And I thought I was in love with you before…” he hums, the loss of Aziraphale’s glamour and the loyalty that proves going to his head, making him bold.
Across from him, Aziraphale’s breath catches. “In love?”
“Is it not obvious?” Crowley asks. “Thinking you were a hunter broke my heart. I’ve never loved someone so much as I love you, angel.”
The awe on Crowley’s face the moment Aziraphale had revealed himself is now mirrored back in Aziraphale’s eyes, shining with tears. “Oh, my darling,” he sniffles, “and I love you.”
A smile breaks on Crowley’s face like a crack of lightning: sudden, bright, striking. His similarly watery eyes spill over; unable to speak, he kisses Aziraphale softly, lightly, happily. Aziraphale presses deeper, pushes him up against the rooted base of the nearest tree, kissing him harder, the deep groan in his chest feeling like the rolling echo of the thunder that follows in answer.
But with any thunder comes the storm. They kiss only for a few moments before they hear the squadron of Saint Justina’s Hand approaching through the trees, shouting orders and casting bright beams of torchlight into the satin-black dark.
“We have to go,” Crowley pants, breaking his mouth from Aziraphale’s.
“Where?”
“I know a place.” He gets up, pulling Aziraphale up after him. He rights his pack on his shoulder and takes Aziraphale’s hand. “Follow me.”
Crowley has called himself a traveler for decades. Ever since he awoke from the fateful hibernation that kept him alive while the rest of his kind was hunted nearly to death, he’s never considered himself to have a home. He’s been a nomad, drifting from one place to another, never staying long. Never forming roots.
(There is, of course, a sort of restlessness that this has formed within him. A sort of longing for permanence, for a place to stay, for something, someone to call his own. When he met Aziraphale, that only got worse—he had never wanted a person like he wanted Aziraphale, and he knew that as the final unicorn, he’d be bound to his traveling. He’d never be able to stay by his side.
It’s an immeasurable, unbelievable relief that Aziraphale and he are actually the same. They can stay together. That can’t, can’t be discounted.
But besides all that—)
Crowley’s travels have often led him to places that are, in his opinion, very much worth remembering. Things he writes down, things he revisits, and things that come in handy. As it happens, in the very forest the pair of them are in is a system of caves that holds a very precious, very useful secret. Crowley’d discovered it years back when he’d been in the area, evading hunters much like he and Aziraphale are now.
They tuck and weave around trees and below branches with a swiftness, Crowley leading the way, Aziraphale hanging on tight to his hand and following close behind. The pair of them emerge from the shadows like rabbits evading foxes, slipping into the beams of moonlight peeking through the trees before disappearing once again into cover. Quick as night, survival instincts and adrenaline and bone-deep fear and soul-deep love fueling them.
It isn’t long before Crowley leads Aziraphale into the mouth of a dark cave, still running like hell. He pauses only momentarily in order to strike his finger on the wall like a match that he holds up and out from his body, illuminating their path with an eerie red glow.
“In here,” he says under his breath, pulling Aziraphale deeper inside.
The caves that he guides them through are labyrinthian, to say the very least. If it weren’t for the fact that Crowley has been here before, he’d never know how to get where he’s trying to go—there are simply too many forks in the path, too many dead ends, too many carefully-laid traps and open pits to fall into. Luckily, he’s got the memory for these sorts of things, and he leads them to their destination without incident.
At first, it appears to be one of the dead ends they’d been trying to avoid. “Oh, bugger,” Aziraphale mutters, touching the wall. “Suppose we’re deep enough now that we could settle and they couldn’t find us. We could sleep in shifts.”
“I’ve got other things in mind, angel,” Crowley assures, standing up from his backpack to hand Aziraphale a small, circular signal mirror with his unlit hand and then go back in to retrieve a thick, ragged journal. It’s messy, with several unattached pieces of paper folded between the pages.
(Aziraphale has two odd thoughts in the moments during which Crowley is flipping through it: one, this is the first thing of Crowley’s he’s seen that he would consider ‘messy’, and two, it’s no wonder that he hasn’t seen it until now—it’s awful book etiquette. If they weren’t running for their lives right now, Aziraphale would give him quite a talking-to.)
It only takes Crowley a few seconds to find the pages he’s looking for. With the book balanced between his forearm and his ribs, he extends his free, lit hand and wordlessly holds his palm up. Aziraphale holds out the little piece of mirror and Crowley takes it between his pinky and thumb, angling the reflective side so that it diagonally reflects on the cave wall.
At this point, Crowley lowers his ethereally-flaming finger to the surface of the page, igniting a sigil drawn in pen. It burns from one end to the other like a fuse, but, curiously, the page itself remains undamaged.
The mirror must be enchanted, because it picks up on the low, magical light of the scarlet flame and burns the sigil onto the cave wall in perfect replica. Upon burning into the stone, the rest of the wall begins to light up in similar patterns as the sigil like a flame following a gas trail, with the original sitting in the center.
The dead end slides open with a smooth, solid sound. Crowley pulls them both through the door just in time for him to press his hand to an indent on the inside, causing the door to thunk closed behind them.
They can hardly make out the shape of the room with just the flaming tip of Crowley’s finger to light it, so he slowly makes his way to where he knows various lunashards stick out of the wall and he lights them with a touch. The crystalline juts of rock cast a blue glow that ought to be ominous, but is oddly welcoming after the dark of the forest and the gaping void of the cave.
“It’s called a Socket,” Crowley explains quietly, expecting that Aziraphale has never been to one of these before. “Sort of a… a hostel for magical beings who find themselves in need of a, er… soft place to land. Uh, well—probably more like hide, I guess.”
In the light, it’s easy to make out that this is one cavernous common room with several doorways to smaller rooms around the edges. It’s an underground bunker, essentially. The rooms are all vacant—not exactly a surprise at the moment—and the entire Socket is in a near-unsettling state of quiet.
“I’ve heard of these places before, but I’ve never been in one myself,” Aziraphale responds in a tone that straddles the line between awe and fear, holding tight to Crowley’s hand. (He’s heard of these places, yes, but he’s never needed one—and something about the fact that Crowley seems so familiar with them causes an ache in his chest that he isn’t sure what to do about.
Maybe hold him extra tightly tonight. Make sure he’s alright. Maybe ask him about his times in these caves deep in the Earth, in these pockets of packed rock where friendship and community flourished despite all the pain wrought on the surface above.)
Crowley remembers when he came here for the first time nearly two centuries ago now. A group of draconic refugees brought him in when they found him gravely injured in the surrounding forest, not even having known he was a unicorn. As a crossroads for all sorts of magical travelers, it had no lack of helpful souls who were willing to work together to nurse him back to health. He’d returned the favor as he’d gotten better, using his blood to help heal those who stumbled through the door, mumbling about needing to hide from the hunters, about burn wounds and claw traps and sharp swords.
He’d learned a lot during his stay, and by the time he was ready to leave, his journal had become much thicker with knowledge.
That was only the first time he’d stayed in a Socket while hunters ravaged the magical populations above ground, but it was not the last. They’d always provided him camaraderie and a place to call home in dark times.
The life that used to permeate this place is gone, but the sense of safety is still there. He tries not to think about the fact that this place has gone dark, just takes Aziraphale’s hand and keeps moving. “Come on, let’s find a room. I’m bloody knackered.” Aziraphale hums in agreement.
He feels out the space and leads Aziraphale to a bedchamber further toward the back of the commons, putting distance between them and the Socket’s entrance even though he doubts the Hand will be smart enough to get that far. The room has been left in massive disarray after its last occupants left in a hurry. He doesn’t think about it—he’s too tired and has too much else on his mind, he can’t.
Crowley drops his bag at the door and rights the room with some magic, flicking his fingers this way and that until it’s presentable—sheets clean, nest fluffed, any remnants of past occupancy disappearing—and sighs, releasing Aziraphale’s hand to turn and collapse in the nested corner with his arms outstretched.
Aziraphale says nothing until he crawls into the bed by his side, one of his hands sliding up Crowley’s chest in a gesture of comfort as he tucks himself beneath one spindly arm and pulls the duvet up and around them. “It’s been a long one, hasn’t it, my love?”
A little smile makes its way to Crowley’s lips. “My love,” he repeats with wonder. “Today was all worth it. Never g’nna get tired of hearing that.”
“I highly doubt I’ll tire of saying it, either,” Aziraphale replies, pressing up against his side and tangling their legs. At the beginning of the day, he wouldn’t have believed he’d end up here—running from hunters with Aziraphale at his side, an Aziraphale who loves him. He’d thought it would be a normal day. He didn’t anticipate the hunters, the miscommunication, the panic, or the resolve. He didn’t expect to learn he was, in fact, not the last of his kind, or to find out that Aziraphale loves him too, loves him enough to choose him over the life he’d spent so long building, so long protecting.
Maybe later, Crowley will feel bad to have taken that away from him. He’ll apologize, he will.
But now, as Aziraphale tilts his jaw with a gentle finger and presses soft, adoring kisses to his mouth—as Aziraphale crawls atop him, holds him fast and tight and reverent and joyous, and as they revel in one another, in no longer being alone—he has a feeling there will be nothing to forgive.