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Aziraphale stares into his wardrobe.
He doesn't have to, of course. He's only got the one set of his current outfit—just the one blue shirt and beige trousers and familiar, beloved velvet waistcoat. All of it, like him, worn soft with love and age.
So the wardrobe holds, instead, all the sartorial artifacts of his past. Robes he wore millennia ago, their threads held together with hope and a miracle, hang alongside pantaloons, various items of outerwear, and a number of assorted pieces with lace or ruffles. He touches the cravat he wore briefly just a few decades ago.
There's nothing in here he wants to wear, and when he looks down at himself, he knows it's time for a change, something entirely new. He feels different now, and his clothing ought to reflect that—that's always been Crowley's outlook, anyway.
With the thought of Crowley, determination overtakes him. He leaves the wardrobe, leaves the whole bookshop behind for the day, and sets off down the street to visit his tailor.
*
"So I want something quite like these, do you understand?" Aziraphale gestures down at his trousers. "Ah—perhaps a bit tighter?" He blushes as he says it. "I believe that's the fashion nowadays."
"Sure," his tailor, Mr. Souster, says. The name's a bit on the nose, Aziraphale's always thought. But then again, the trade's been in his family for generations, and he can't help that. "Yeah. And that's got nothing to do with your young man, has it? The red-haired bloke?"
Aziraphale fumes, although the other reason he's always frequented this shop over others is the thread of perceptiveness that runs through the family along with most of them being a deft hand with a needle. "My—my companion is really none of your concern, I think."
"Companion? Paramour, more like, the way you two've been carrying on lately." When Aziraphale turns to him and begins to protest, he waves away Aziraphale's concerns. "Nah, that's all right. I'm happy for you. Now, you mentioned you wanted to try something new with the color?"
"Ah—yes," Aziraphale says. "If you don't mind, I'd like to." His fingers go to the end of his bow tie, and he pulls it loose and holds it out to Mr. Souster like the prized treasure it is. "Could you do them like this? All over. The pattern's registered."
He infuses it with as much hopeful persuasion as he can muster, but he doesn't even seem to need it. Mr. Souster laughs, claps him on the back hard enough to make the bow tie nearly slip from his fingers, and says, "For you, Mr. Fell? I'll make your trousers any pattern you like."
*
The trousers are finished two weeks later, and Aziraphale debuts them that very evening when he and Crowley go to dinner together.
"Looking sharp." Crowley lets out a low whistle and circles him, keeping his eyes fixed on Aziraphale the entire time. He pays particular attention to Aziraphale's assets, Aziraphale notes with pleasure.
"You like it, then," Aziraphale says. "I wasn't sure if it might be too much."
"Love a good tartan, me," Crowley says, which is not what he's said before, but Aziraphale allows him to get away with it. "Especially on you. Trying to catch up to the times, are you?"
"Now that you say that, I may as well." Aziraphale rests his hand in the crook of Crowley's elbow; they cross the street like that, arm in arm. "Now that there's time left to catch up to."
Crowley hums as he muses on this. "May as well, indeed," he agrees, leaning in to kiss Aziraphale's cheek. Aziraphale's more than happy to let him.
*
Crowley's not about the next afternoon, and it's deathly dull, having the shop open with no demon lounging around and no customers to chase away. So Aziraphale does something he's never done before—he takes himself to the movies.
It's not like he's never been to the pictures during the day. He and Crowley go sometimes, usually when neither of them feels like working, or when Crowley's planned some cinema-related mischief that Aziraphale feels he simply must bear witness to.
But this is different—it's something just for him. Crowley doesn't much like the cinema in his neighborhood, Aziraphale's learned. This is because it only shows the obscure, literary sort of film that bores him, and Aziraphale always ends up making a sport out of thwarting him from throwing popcorn at the screen, except for those times when he agrees with Crowley.
He wears his new trousers, because he likes them and they feel good, and if that causes him to turn heads as he walks down the street, then the smug, warm feeling this evokes is nothing he ought to feel guilty about. After all, he's certainly not responsible for other people's reactions.
The film he chooses is something lovely but not too long, an intimate portrayal of love and loss and love again, and Aziraphale finds himself so moved by it that he winds up dabbing at his eyes with his handkerchief more than once.
When he glances around at his fellow patrons, it seems that most of them aren't having quite the same reaction—"who writes this garbage?" he hears one woman whisper to her companion—but that's all right.
When he comes out, blinking into the sunlight, it's to find a long streak of lanky demon holding up the building outside. Crowley pushes off and falls into step with Aziraphale as they walk back toward the bookshop.
"How was the film?" Crowley asks.
"Delightful," Aziraphale says. "You would have hated it," he adds with no small amount of relish. "How on earth did you find me?"
"Ehhhh." Crowley makes a wiggly gesture with his hand. "I was in the neighborhood."
This is often code, Aziraphale has learned, for either I went by the bookshop and you weren't there, so I went looking, or I was making a nuisance of myself across the street, but it was going poorly, so let's not make a big thing of it. In this case, given the lack of shifty expressions on Crowley's face, he very much suspects the former.
"Well, I'm very glad." Then, with a sudden burst of confidence—perhaps to be blamed on the trousers—he leans up and kisses Crowley, right on the mouth. In broad daylight, for anyone to see. "Do you fancy a bit of lunch?"
Crowley stops in the middle of the pavement and stares at him, lips parted, blushing furiously. "It's three o'clock," he says at last.
"Afternoon tea, then," Aziraphale declares, feeling the flush rise to his own cheeks. When Crowley doesn't move, he takes Crowley's arm and escorts him down the street, very pleased with himself.
*
Further explorations are undertaken after that.
A new waistcoat for going out, in a lovely pale blue brocade embroidered with gold thread. More occasions for going out, which aren't so different from before, except now he and Crowley can be open about what these occasions mean to them.
Shirts with subtle patterning on them, and even one in his own pattern, which Crowley makes him swear under pain of discorporation never to wear with the tartan trousers.
And Crowley, always Crowley. The one thing that's been a constant in his life, and the one thing he's determined to hang on to, no matter where they go from here. Aziraphale hopes very much that they'll go there together.
"Are you decent yet? Can we go?" Crowley calls from downstairs.
Aziraphale straightens his bow tie and bustles down the spiral staircase. "Apologies, my dear. All these options—they make it very difficult to decide sometimes."
"Don't know what you're so worried about. You always look great." Crowley looks him up and down, an appreciative gleam in his eyes, and Aziraphale feels himself glowing under the praise.
"As do you, obviously. Regardless," Aziraphale says, "I think it's time we were on our way. They won't hold the play for us, you know. Shall we?"
He offers his arm, to let Crowley hold on to him for a change, and Crowley takes it. "We shall. Let's go, angel."
And off they go, both of them with a new spring in their step, into a life best spent together.