Work Text:
10 March 1952, Mayfair
“Raphael,” Gabriel says, “I need to talk to you.”
Crowley stands in the middle of his own foyer. His hat is in his hand, and his hair is braided up for the workday. He has a ten hour shift that starts in half an hour. It takes him about twenty minutes to drive from Mayfair to the hospital if he obeys traffic laws.
He hadn’t expected Gabriel in his foyer. He hadn’t expected any of his siblings to know where he lives. He hasn’t used any miracles here since 1866 at the start of the Austro-Prussian War.
“I didn’t expect you,” Crowley says, glancing at where his Spear rests as a walking cane by his coat rack.
Gabriel is silent. His gaze had followed Crowley’s to the Spear and back. He looks around the foyer with its boot scraper, the door that leads to the unused servant’s quarters, and scuffed Georgian tile floor. They snap back as Crowley fingers twitch, still gripping his hat.
“Gabriel,” Crowley says, even though he knows it won’t matter, “I need to go to work.”
For a moment, Gabriel’s eyes flicker. Crowley estimates his chances of getting to work are less than twenty percent, and he’s got about as much of a chance of making a dive for his Spear without taking some damage. He does not want to fight Gabriel in his foyer. Gabriel is a more gifted combatant, and Crowley only has a chance of winning if he has ample space to throw his Spear.
“I need to talk to you,” Gabriel says, and then he does something Crowley has never seen any of his siblings do: he takes a deep breath. “I don’t expect anyone else to listen to me.”
Crowley’s stomach twists. His left hand loosens. His hat falls on the floor. He looks at his front door. Realises that it’s slightly ajar. Gabriel opened it somehow and walked in. He didn’t miracle himself here.
“You lockpicked my door,” Crowley says, weakly.
Gabriel’s lips are thin. He watches Crowley, and he’s waiting. He knows that Crowley could tell him to go away, or say he doesn’t want to listen, or even just brush past him and go to work as he’d intended. If this isn’t for Heaven’s business, Gabriel does not actually have a right to be here. But here he is.
“Will you listen to me?” Gabriel asks.
Crowley cannot remember the last time any of his siblings thought to give him a choice. He swallows before crossing the foyer. He pushes his door shut and reaches up to slide the rarely used bolt into place. He places his palm on the small sigil painted over the mail slot. His own work and highly specific.
Aziraphale. Danger. Don’t come in.
“I don’t recognise that sigil,” Gabriel says as Crowley turns back to him.
“It prevents political circulars,” Crowley says because it does do that for whatever reason. “Let’s go upstairs.”
Gabriel follows him, which is absurd enough. He walks up the stairs behind Crowley, looking at the lamps on the walls and trailing his right hand on the oak bannister. He even turns his head to examine the painting of Edinburgh by William Crozier. Crowley leads him into his kitchen, puts up a hand to indicate the kitchen table with its two chairs, and goes to shut his bedroom door. When he turns around, Gabriel is standing next to the kitchen table, frowning. His gaze roves around the kitchen with all of Crowley’s plants on the counters and windowsills, scotch bottles on the rolling cart, and the refrigerator full of medicine, ointments, and more wine.
“You’ve lived here for a while,” Gabriel says, bemused.
“Almost a hundred and seventy years,” Crowley says because he isn’t sure off the top of his head when exactly he came to be in possession of this flat, but he had been more concerned with sleeping as much for the nineteenth century away as possible. “I’m going to phone my work and then we’ll talk.”
“Phone?” Gabriel asks, but Crowley ignores him as he picks up the phone handle and dials the hospital.
Gabriel is not helpful as Crowley tries to explain to his supervisor his absence, trying to interject with things like what’s a sibling and where is the voice coming from and Raphael, you need not apologise to humans. The latter comment seems to create some sort of bizarre sympathy in his supervisor, which means that Crowley will have to face pity the next time he sees the man. No one calls Crowley Raphael, although it’s listed as his given name on his records, and he’s generally explained the lack of family in his life as estrangement due to religious differences.
Crowley, thanking his supervisor and saying his goodbyes, wants to burst into tears of frustration.
“Are you ready to listen to me?” Gabriel asks after Crowley hangs up with shaking hands.
“When you ask a question, you are giving the respondent a choice,” Crowley says, reaching up to unpin his hair. “Sit down, Gabriel, and I will join you, and we will talk like civilised beings.”
Gabriel frowns, clearly taking issue with nearly everything Crowley has said, but, after a tense moment, he surprisingly takes hold of the back of one of the chairs, pulls it out, and sits. Hands still shaking as he tries to occupy them with dislodging his hairpins, Crowley follows, shifting the other chair with his right foot and sitting down with more care than he usually would. He drops the pins on the tabletop, Gabriel’s eyes following the motion.
“You don’t use any miracles here,” he observes, unblinking.
“Why are you here, Gabriel?” Crowley asks, running his fingers through his hair.
Gabriel’s mouth is shut. Crowley watches him watch the way Crowley tries and fails to self-soothe himself with his hair. It’s a blunt sort of curiosity that humans could never imitate, and it makes Crowley want to slap him.
“You understand more about humans than I do,” Gabriel says as Crowley drops his hands into his lap and clenches them. “Your reports on that last big war of theirs –”
“The Second World War,” Crowley says, nails digging into his palms.
“Yes,” Gabriel says, simple acceptance; Crowley feels himself blink, thrown. “You tried to explain to Heaven human motivation. You said that they have many ways of caring about each other, and sometimes it means they don’t care about everyone. You said that, among other things, they fought over ideologies—systems of ideas and ideals. Sometimes, you said, the differences were irreconcilable, so they could only see resolution by annihilating those they viewed as different. Is this an accurate summary?”
Crowley opens his mouth. It’s too dry. He closes it and swallows. Forces himself to unclench his hands before he breaks skin.
“Yes,” he says, giving up and bringing his hands together in his lap to rub the rough skin of his left cuticle against the skin of his right thumb. “That is a good summary of what I was trying to explain.”
Gabriel nods. Rather than looking pleased or triumphant, he is silent. His face is smooth, but his eyes drift downwards to Crowley’s hands. He doesn’t say anything for a long moment.
“I have come to the conclusion,” he says, slow and quiet and very, very true, “that I have an ideological disagreement with how Heaven conducts Her Work.”
Crowley tears off the dry cuticle. Blood wells up, and Crowley, out of habit rather than actual pain, hisses and puts his thumb in his mouth. Gabriel blinks, watching him with slightly furrowed brows. Crowley breathes in deep. A thousand different questions present themselves. He does not scream.
“Raphael,” Gabriel starts.
“Do not call me that name here,” Crowley says, perhaps too harsh; he pulls his hand away from his face with difficulty and fists his hands into the fabric of his trousers. “I’m not going to insult you and tell you such thoughts are dangerous,” he forges forward, against the mullish look in his brother’s eyes. “Is there a particular reason that you have found yourself at ideological odds with Heaven?”
Gabriel doesn’t move. His lips are pressed into a fine line. He sits straight and proper. Dressed in the pale creams and whites of Heaven in the form of a fashionable suit exactly shaped to compliment his broad build, he looks like a mocking mirror of Crowley, who has the physique of bare spindle and who lets Aziraphale or his work pick his clothes and mostly lives out of catalogues since they became a thing.
Crowley watches Gabriel breathe in.
“I met someone,” Gabriel says, and there’s a cracking feeling somewhere deep in Crowley that he’s never felt before, a kind of primal shock and fear that makes him think, completely absurdly, of Lucifer, aeons and ages ago, touching life to a star far, far back in the Before. “Thirty-seven years ago.”
Crowley opens his mouth. Closes his mouth. He forces himself to blink. Uncurl his fists, pressing his palms flat on his thighs.
“A human,” he says.
Gabriel doesn’t move for a long moment. Neither does Crowley.
“No,” Gabriel says, very, very quiet.
Oh, Crowley thinks.
Oh, he wants to breathe.
“A demon,” he says because he has always been brave, despite everything.
Gabriel breathes in. Nods. Breathes out and watches Crowley, apprehensive and tight.
“They don’t want another war between us,” Gabriel says, and it’s still so quiet, held so close to his heart; “I didn’t think there would be one, not until the End of Times, but then… And the End of Times will be our Final War, and…”
His mouth is still open, but he can’t seem to make himself speak. Crowley finds himself reaching out before he registers his own body’s movement. He offers his brother his hands, and Gabriel, after staring at them for a full, terrible moment, reaches out and takes them. He stares at Crowley’s hands, held between his own, broader and cleaner where Crowley’s are thin and bitten. His eyes flicker.
“You’ve always been the kindest of us,” Gabriel says, and, once upon a time, they were all so close; so full of wonder and love, and they’d shared everything with joy. “I’m sorry to burden you. I needed to tell someone.”
“Gabriel –” Crowley starts.
Gabriel shakes his head. He pulls his hands back and stands. Crowley, hands still extended, looks up. Gabriel’s expression is soft, and his eyes are misty. He smiles a little, and it dislodges tears from his eyes.
“Crowley,” Gabriel says, and he leans down, pressing a kiss to the crown of Crowley’s head as his heart constricts in shock and alarm. “Thank you. Good-bye.”
Crowley is alone in his kitchen.
He stares at the space Gabriel just was, mouth still open and hands extended. It’s so quiet, the only sound the low rumbling of the radiator and the distant traffic down on the main road.
“Gabriel?” he asks. “Gabriel, where did you go?”
He waits because, whenever he’s called for his brother, Gabriel has always answered.
But there is no answer.
In the Beginning, Before Adam and Eve, Before the Fall, Before:
Lucifer was Created first. Michael and Gabriel followed, and then there was Raphael. Uriel, Sandalphon, the Metatron, and everyone else came after, warm and welcoming presences that slowly took forms as such physical impressions came into Creation. Those early moments have drifted into a locked place within Crowley, the edges rubbed soft and the interior preserved in tissue and gauze. Especially in the past thousand years, Crowley has been very careful not to think that far back. Remembering those innocent times, spent in song and starlight, joyous and full of so much love:
It’s become too painful. Since the Black Death ripped through the Earth, Crowley has found themself in a strange place among their remaining siblings. They argue over orders and Heaven-made divisional rivalries, and they’re as quick to raise their weapons as their voices. Crowley, who is the only angel who lives on Earth, has found themself between his siblings more often than not, Spear in hand to prevent them coming to blows. They don’t know how to stop their in-fighting. They don’t know what She would have wanted. They don’t understand what their siblings want at all.
Gabriel falling in love with a demon, trying to walk away from the mandated conflicts –
Crowley doesn’t know what to think. It’s not like how he and Aziraphale are. They have an Arrangement, and they crossed from allies into friends into lovers over the years in the sideways, ambling way they both have, but neither of them have ever walked away from their respective duties. Even though Aziraphale clearly hates when Crowley sinks into one of his moods after dealing with Heaven, even though Crowley despises how Hell ignores and belittles Aziraphale—they’ve never asked each other to stop fulfilling their Purposes. The thought never really crossed their minds.
These are Crowley’s thoughts as he draws sigils on his hands and knees on his foyer floor. The drapes he rarely ever uses have been drawn, and he’s turned on the electric lights that Aziraphale installed years ago. Most of the sigils he’s never drawn himself because sigils and alchemic work was always Uriel’s specialty, but Crowley has an archangel’s memory. He paints the symbols, lines, and curves for each component with the red paint he usually uses to touch up his front door, pressing his palm to activate each sigil, moving counter clockwise.
He hears his phone upstairs ring once. Twice. He’s drawing a sigil for encasement when the sigil on his front door flares. There’s a yelp but no explosion. It’s Aziraphale.
Unable to move and disturb the progress of his work, Crowley pulls his wings into the physical realm and presses the tip of his left to the sigil. It fades as the one beneath his hand glows. For a moment, Crowley crouches on the ground, breathing hard. He’s sweating. He needs to do four more sigils.
“Zira,” Crowley says, with as much volume as he can, “you can come in now, but please don’t step in the circle.”
There’s a pause. Crowley uses it to draw his wings back over himself, and he sits back on his heels, trying to catch his breath. He hears Aziraphale trying to work his key in the lock and finding it broken. The door opens, Aziraphale peering in, eyes blowing wide. He steps inside in a hurry, looking down to make sure he does step on the sigil closest to the door. He ends up standing in the boot scraper, gaze darting over the work, Crowley’s wings and his state of undress in undershirt and trousers and socks. He looks upset and scared and alarmed.
“Your supervisor’s secretary called,” he says, as Crowley moves to start painting the ninth sigil. “He said you didn’t show up for work.”
A bunch of questions present themselves for Crowley’s consideration, but he shuttles them away into a mental box to look at later.
“Gabriel broke in,” Crowley says, shaping the symbol for phosphorus.
Aziraphale makes a strangled noise. Crowley paints the rest of the sigil and presses his palm to it. It hurts, the call of the Holy Light outside of his Purpose, and he grits his teeth against the unpleasant sensation. It fades, but Crowley finds it leaves his corporation drained, heart pounding and nerves tingling.
“Shit,” Crowley sighs, sitting back on his heels and breathing hard.
“I recognize some of these,” Aziraphale says, very slowly; he’s always been good at reading sigils and Words of Power; “Are you trying to blow Gabriel up if he comes back?”
“I don’t want any of my siblings here,” Crowley says, and it’s too harsh and blunt, but he needs to draw the sigil for banishment next, and Uriel created that for Lucifer specifically. “I live here.”
Aziraphale shifts, the bristles of the boot scraper moving.
“Can I help?”
Crowley wishes he could kiss him. Instead, he moves to the next spot and dips the brush into the paint.
“There’s a rug in the unused room,” he says, beginning to paint the symbol for water. “If you can get that without stepping into the circle, I would appreciate it.”
“Yeah, sure,” Aziraphale says, mapping the path on the ground. “Is it safe to step over the sigils?”
“Not until the circle is complete,” Crowley says, closing the sigil. “Wait in the door after you get the rug.”
“Alright,” Aziraphale says and goes.
Crowley looks down at the sigil. He thinks of Uriel painting it onto the Western Gate of Eden. The paint had been gold and shimmered in the sun.
He presses his hand down.
The old wound to his left wing screams.
Crowley makes a pathetic noise. He can’t help but look over his left shoulder, half-expecting his wing to be on fire again. It is, however, exactly as it should be, although he can’t really see much as the damaged nerves fire haphazardly, causing it to spasm. Crowley rocks back, scrambling to keep himself from further damaging his foyer and his work, digging his fingers into the wingpit and willing the nerves back into a deadened state.
stop, stop, stop, stop
He sits on the ground, fingers clutching his feathers, sweat dripping down his face. In the unused room, he can hear Aziraphale moving the furniture to extract the rug. He is inordinately relieved that he didn’t have to see that.
Two more sigils.
The eleventh requires blood to fuse with the house and its foundations. Crowley bites through left thumb and paints the interior line with it. He draws the final sigil, which binds all the other factors together with the Weaving, which is close enough to Crowley’s own Purpose that he doesn’t completely collapse. He sits back and rubs his face with his undershirt. There’s blood from his thumb on it. He feels like he’s been pummelled.
“Zira,” he says, and Aziraphale is standing in the doorway, holding the rug and clearly disliking everything that is happening; Crowley feels bad; he deserves better. “You can put the rug down.”
It’s not a perfect fit to cover the circle, but that’s not the point. They roll it out, and it doesn’t match the foyer at all, but it obscures most of the paint enough to a cursory glance. Aziraphale is careful to step over the paint and onto the rug. He crouches next to Crowley. Dressed in a nice brown three-piece suit, he looks respectable and approachable, a friendly bookseller with a middle-class bearing and pock-marked cheeks.
“I’ve never seen you do complex sigil work,” he says, careful and watching Crowley with an unreadable expression.
“It’s not my Purpose,” Crowley agrees, inspecting his thumb, which is sluggishly repairing itself. “I should explain myself.”
“I’d appreciate that,” Aziraphale says, and the tension in his shoulders eases. “Do you want to go upstairs first?”
“Yes,” Crowley says, shoving his wings out of the physical realm and extending his hand to call his Spear to him.
They climb the stairs, Crowley for once actually using the Spear in its cane disguise as such because his left side is numb; he’ll need to take a closer look at his wing at some point soon. Aziraphale watches his progress, frowning but holding his tongue until they’re in the kitchen.
“What’s wrong with your left side?”
“I shut my nerves off,” Crowley says, and he sits down heavily in the chair Gabriel had vacated. “The tenth sigil was crafted by Uriel specifically to keep Lucifer out of… the Garden…”
The Hellfire axe that went through his wing was probably crafted by Lucifer. Crowley realises that his mouth is still open, but he doesn’t have the ability to continue the rest of that explanation. He shuts it. Across from him, next to the refrigerator, Aziraphale’s entire face is pulled downwards in a thin, unhappy frown.
“Let me see.”
Crowley pulls his wings back into the physical realm. Shifts to sit backwards on the chair as Aziraphale approaches, twisting his head around to see how his frown deepens.
“You’re bleeding.”
“Really?” Crowley asks, and it comes out more surprised than he intended; he grimaces at the unhappy look that earns him. “How badly?”
“Enough,” Aziraphale says, and he reaches out and tears away the remnants of the ruined undershirt; he stares for a moment before dropping the fabric on the ground. “Is your kit still under the sink?”
“Yes,” Crowley says, feeling weirdly contrite.
There’s a large folding mirror in the kit, specifically for wing injuries. Crowley’s never used it before, but he’d gotten it just in case. Aziraphale turns up the lights and holds the mirror so Crowley can inspect the way the scarred flesh has opened back up and how a number of his feathers near to the old cleaving look like they’ve been scorched.
“Wow,” Crowley says, half a laugh. “That’s not too bad.”
“Jesus,” Aziraphale blasphemies with an exasperated sigh.
“Don’t do the poor lad like that,” Crowley says, smiling because what else can he do. “The feathers will grow back, and that’ll all heal. It doesn’t look like anything is deep enough to require more than a couple of days.”
Aziraphale sighs gustily. “At least let me clean it,” he grumbles, folding the mirror back up.
“Sure,” Crowley says because he knows it’ll make Aziraphale feel better.
It’s a shame, he reflects as Aziraphale cleans the broken flesh, that he can’t feel any of this. He’s too exhausted to turn his nerves back on, and it won’t help much either, since it would impede his ability to eventually get up and either bathe or go to bed. Crowley stares at the wall, at his phone with the business and calling card box and white and yellow pages beneath it. He thinks about Gabriel and how he left Crowley sitting here, confused and in shock.
“He didn’t know what a telephone was,” he says before he realises it was aloud.
Aziraphale breathes out audibly. “You mean Gabriel?”
Crowley looks at his thumb. It’s nearly finished healing. Depending on how bad he feels in the morning, he might need to call in sick. Crowley isn’t sure if he’s ever called in sick.
“He told me that he met a demon who doesn’t want any more war.”
Stillness. Crowley twists his head around. Aziraphale’s eyes are saucers. He has a bottle of rubbing alcohol in his hand and a bloody wad of cotton pressed to the inflamed flesh at Crowley’s mid-back. His lips are slightly parted, sharp points of his upper teeth showing.
“Sorry,” Aziraphale says, clearly struggling, “what?”
A small part of Crowley is extremely relieved that his own initial reaction was not entirely out of proportion. “He met the demon during the First World War,” he says as Aziraphale makes himself blink and pulls the soaked wad from Crowley’s back to dump on the floor. “He didn’t quite explain himself, but it seems like he agreed, at least to some extent, and then he said some very kind things to me, and he left.”
Aziraphale opens his mouth. Shuts it. He takes a clean cotton wad from the kit and presses it to the lip of the rubbing alcohol. He pressed it to Crowley’s back, muscles in his jaw working. The side of his hand brushes Crowley’s feathers as he works.
“So he and this demon are running away and leaving it on your shoulders.”
It’s low and soft and more than a little bitter. Aziraphale’s head is slightly bowed as he works down Crowley’s back. His touch is focused and gentle. It hurts Crowley in a very tender and young space that he tries to pretend doesn’t exist.
“Zira –”
“We can’t just walk away,” and Aziraphale’s hands are so, so gentle, cleaning Crowley’s wound and soothing the frayed edges of scorched feathers; “The Plan –”
“Is Ineffable,” Crowley says, and Aziraphale drops the soiled cotton wad. “Gabriel –”
“Left,” Aziraphale bites out, prepping another cotton.
“He told me he was sorry,” Crowley says, louder than he intended.
Aziraphale meets his gaze in shock. “What?”
“He called me by my name,” and Crowley is speaking, but it’s like he’s listening to himself rather than speaking, and Aziraphale is staring, rubbing alcohol spilling into his palm. “He thanked me, and he said good-bye.”
Slowly, Aziraphale rights the bottle. Sets it on the kitchen table. He stares at the cotton and liquid in his hand. Crowley shifts, cumbersome and awkward, wings rustling as he faces Aziraphale. He reaches out.
“Oh –”
Aziraphale breathes out. Blinks. Tears fall with the movement, and Crowley wraps his arms around his waist and feels how Aziraphale buries his face in Crowley’s hair. This close, Crowley feels how Aziraphale’s entire body is vibrating.
“Zira…”
“It’s not fair,” and the words are so jealous and bitter, hot and aching where Gabriel had kissed Crowley. “Damn it. Damn it.”
Crowley breathes in. Out.
He folds his wings around them, and Aziraphale cries.
19 May 1952, Charing Cross
Crowley is two drams in and Aziraphale has had a pint and a pile of chips at the riverside pub that they both like near to Crowley’s current employment when Crowley looks up from the bar and sees his supervisor and his secretary filtering in the door.
“Shit,” he mutters, just as the barkeep refills his glass.
Aziraphale looks to the door and hides his grin by eating the last of the chips as Crowley’s colleagues catch sight of him and make their way over. Crowley tries his best to plaster a smile to his face, even though that just makes Aziraphale laugh into his handkerchief, sounding vaguely like a cough.
“Crowley!” Davies, his supervisor, says, sliding into the bar next to Crowley and grinning like this is the best thing to happen to him all day. “Rare to see you out and about after work.”
“Doctor Davies, Mister Jameson,” Crowley says, and he hopes he sounds at least passably pleasant or Aziraphale is going to have a giggle fit at his expense. “Is there an occasion?”
“Jameson’s going to be married,” Davies says in his booming voice, clapping his secretary on the shoulder because he’s a menace.
“Sir,” Jameson says, going pink in the face.
“Oh, congratulations,” Crowley says, even though he had absolutely no idea Jameson was seeing anyone.
“Thanks,” Jameson says, and his smile is warm and very genuine.
“Aziraphale, yes?” Davies asks, peering around Crowley, to Aziraphale, who had just signalled for three pints.
“Yes,” Aziraphale says, and he smiles close-lipped but reaching his eyes, obviously pleased that Davies not only remembered his name but pronounced it properly. “Good to see you, doctor.”
“Tonight’s on me,” Davies says, very loudly, just as Crowley starts to rescue his abandoned dram. “Don’t drink all of my wallet, Crowley—my wife will be angry with you.”
“Hah hah,” Crowley says as Aziraphale and Jameson snicker.
It’s pleasant. Aziraphale gets along with Davies because the old doctor has a boisterous, ne’er-do-well streak, and they’re happy to sing and dance, entertaining other patrons. Jameson, once Davies is no longer breathing down his neck, shows Crowley a couple pictures in his wallet of his girlfriend, a sweet-faced woman with a lower aristocratic claim about a decade his senior.
“It’ll be her second marriage,” Jameson says as Aziraphale and Davies make a happy ruckus. “Her first husband, so, he died in the war. They’d gotten married just before he went out and he died in Arnhem. I didn’t think she’d want someone like me, but she’s so sweet, and her family has been very kind, even though I’m not very good, especially because I don’t mind we won’t have little ones.”
“She is lovely,” Crowley says, and he doesn’t look directly at Jameson, who knows that Crowley was at Arnhem but never speaks of it. “I have sisters. I know a little of what women like. Would you like some advice?”
Jameson smiles, shoulders falling in relief. He holds the pictures out and Crowley takes them, holding them carefully between the meat of his thumbs and fore and middle fingers.
“Abigail loves calligraphy,” Jameson asks, and he’s so earnest and eager; he was maybe thirteen or fourteen at the beginning of the Blitz; “I don’t know the first thing about it, but I thought maybe I would try to get something commissioned or buy her a special quill or something.”
“Ah,” and this is easy, and it makes Crowley smile. “I can give you something. Here –”
He hands the pictures back to Jameson and leans down to rifle through his briefcase. With his hands briefly hidden under the counter, Crowley threads his fingers through his moulting wings, dislodging a couple of his outer feathers. He straightens up and holds out the white feathers, watching how Jameson’s jaw falls open, Abigail’s pictures still in hand.
“Give her these,” he says, and the way Jameson looks at him is so full of wonder and joy that it makes the risk worth it. “I haven’t prepped them yet, so she can do so to her preference.”
“You can’t just give these to me,” Jameson argues as Davies and Aziraphale along with a number of other patrons grow louder, singing How High the Moon.
“I can,” Crowley says because he wants to.
Jameson takes the feathers in his left hand. Crowley picks up his dram, sipping it as Jameson turns them, looking at them alongside Abigail’s pictures. In the dim, yellowish light of the pub, the features look very, very white.
“Thank you,” Jameson says, and he looks at Crowley like he’s meeting him anew, and he smiles. “I don’t know if anyone has ever told you, but you’re very kind.”
Crowley is glad for the burn of the scotch. He swallows. Tries to smile. It’s probably too honest. Jameson smiles back. He is young and full of love and so much hope.
“God be with you and Abigail,” he says because it feels right.
The night dissolves.
In the Garden of Eden:
Crowley used to grow herbs along the river. They didn’t think about medicine or practical purposes then. They grew herbs that flowered like stars in the night’s sky and that gave off sweet and pleasant scents. Michael liked roses and fruit-bearing bushes, so they and Michael worked together, tilling the soil and coaxing the little buds into bloom. Crowley remembers that Michael would tuck their arms together as they worked, and the stardust that still clung to her skin sparkled in the moonlight.
“Raphael,” Michael says, in the modest vegetable garden at the front of the Davies’ home, “have you heard from Gabriel?”
It’s nearly three in the morning. They had all ended up back at Davies’ home near to one in the morning, and Aziraphale had left around two with a joke about needing to open his shop in the morning. Crowley had been just making his excuses when he felt the telltale rippling in the atmosphere that usually followed the appearance of one of his siblings. Michael stands in the lamplight, dressed in a white suit and no hat, her hair flowing and undecorated. It is not usual.
“This isn’t a good time,” Crowley says, not allowing himself to glance back at the house to see if Davies, his wife, or Jameson are watching; he lowers his voice. “Michael, you look very odd to humans.”
“You are too concerned with human sensibilities,” Michael says at a normal volume before her head cocks slightly. “Are you well? You’re in moult.”
Crowley resists the urge to scream in frustration. “Had a sigil incident,” he whispers because that is true; “We really shouldn’t be talking outside at this hour.”
“I don’t have time for this,” Michael says, very annoyed. “Have you heard from Gabriel or not?”
“Crowley!” Davies says, opening his front door and standing at his full height; he is not a small man. “Do you know this person?”
Crowley opens his mouth as he raises his hands in defense, panicking.
“That human is marked by Her Grace,” Michael says, blunt and quite surprised.
“What,” Crowley says, looking between Davies, who thankfully has fairly poor hearing, and Michael, whose gaze moves to Crowley in a strangely contrite way.
“I’m sorry,” she says, and Crowley is speechless because he’s been apologised to by his siblings more in the past few months than all of existence. “I’m disturbing your Work.”
“What,” Crowley says as Michael turns and begins to leave.
“Crowley,” Davies calls, stepping into the garden.
Michael turns the corner and is gone.
“Who was that?” Davies asks, his wife and Jameson peering out the door, before he lowers his voice to say: “Are you alright?”
Crowley realises that his hands are still raised, revealing a noticeable tremor. He hastily lowers them, twisting his fingers over each other to stop the shaking. His wings itch furiously.
Davies is touched by God, he thinks wildly.
Michael, what the fuck, he wants to howl.
“My sister,” he says instead, as steadily as possible; he desperately wishes Aziraphale was still here, but he’s not, and it would be too dangerous if he was, and Crowley needs to deal with this; he forces himself to breathe and concentrates on the itching to ground himself. “I am well, doctor. Just surprised.”
Davies looks at him, still concerned. Crowley holds still. He never noticed that Davies has God’s favour, but Crowley generally goes through life among humanity since the Black Death without utilising any aspect of his own grace or divinity. It allows him to treat everyone equally. It eases the raw pieces he tries his best to ignore.
“Is it safe for you sister to be out alone at night?” Davies asks, although it is obviously not what he really wants to inquire about.
“Yes,” Crowley says; Davies blinks at him, brow furrowing, and Crowley curses himself because he’s going to have to explain, but he doesn’t immediately know how.
Davies opens his mouth. Shuts it. He studies Crowley very closely. Crowley lets him. He wonders what Davies sees.
“Come back inside,” Davies says, quieter and not at all what Crowley expected him to say at all.
In the game room, Davies motions for Crowley to sit and excuses himself with wife to put on the kettle. Jameson lights a cigarette and smokes next to the open window, and Crowley allows himself a moment of weakness to scrub at his face and chew on his nails. He feels tired and wrung out. He wonders if Michael will try to find him again, and if she’ll accidentally get blown up by entering Crowley’s home.
Aziraphale was right, Crowley thinks, semi-hysterically.
I thought I had more time, he admits, upset and frustrated.
Davies comes back in. He sits down across from Crowley. He takes a deep breath.
“How did you know your sister was outside,” he starts before asking, even lower, “and how did she disappear so quickly at the corner?”
Crowley does not need to breathe. He’s been in this situation before. He thinks of the priest he blessed in Perth after Gabriel appeared back in 1351 and who was granted sainthood. Of the many humans that he’s had to wipe the memories of because they saw or heard something they weren’t supposed to. He thinks of the way their lives were never quite the same, and how, with how humanity has grown and changed, it’s much harder for those touched by divine grace to continue to live their lives.
Michael already knows that he is here.
Crowley raises their hand.
Time dematerialises.
Davies blinks at their hand. Looks around the room. Jameson and his cigarette’s smoke is frozen. The kettle’s whistle is immaterial. Davies looks back at Crowley, eyes widening as he takes in much more than before.
“You’re –”
“I am the Archangel Raphael,” Crowley says, and they hate that it has to be this way as shock and alarm overtake Davies’s face. “My name is Crowley, though.”
Davies swallows. He looks over Crowley, at their long hair and bitten nails, the Spear at their back, their moulting wings. He looks back at Crowley’s eyes, and he is pale but very focused.
“I’ve seen you before,” he says, and his voice is honest and strong and very determined. “In 1916. Verdun.”
Crowley wants to cry.
“I saw you wearing our uniform riding a horse through the fray,” Davies says, and his shoulders are relaxing; he’s clearly held this story secret for years. “You had your hair long and had that spear, and you seemed to be looking for something, but then the whistle sounded, and I went over the top, and when I looked again, all I could see was smoke. I thought I was hallucinating. Both then and when I first met you again three years ago. I tried to write off your resemblance to my memory.”
“I was at Verdun,” Crowley says, thinking of how Aziraphale was so confused and in so much pain.
Davies sags, the weight of uncertainty and a secret so long kept lifted. “Did you find what you were looking for?”
Crowley squeezes their eyes shut. Opens them. Davies reaches across the game table, offering his hands. Slowly, Crowley reaches out and takes them.
“Yes,” they say because they did.
They found Aziraphale, and they protected him, and that was all that mattered at the end of the battle when Crowley looked around and found they had been left by their siblings to deal with the carnage. They had held Aziraphale in the mud and looked up through the smoke and haze, and they had begged God for mercy.
She had granted it, although they hadn’t known it then.
“I’m glad,” Davies says, and he is, and Crowley understands what they must do.
“God be with you,” Crowley says.
They rise. Davies does as well. He walks with Crowley to the front door. For a moment, they observe each other. Crowley raises their hand.
“Are you going to come back to work?” Davies asks.
“I want to,” Crowley says, and they love him deeply. “I have to sort out a few things first.”
“Alright,” Davies says, and he stands back.
Crowley snaps their fingers.
20 May 1952, Soho
Before:
When there was no suffering to ease, Crowley’s Purpose was to craft the Heavens. They threaded stardust and helium and hydrogen, and they brought to fruition millions upon billions of galaxies and black holes and wandering bits of astroids and comets. The other angels had been given different Purposes, so Crowley was alone for long, long stretches of time, but that was alright. They didn’t know loneliness or loss or even pain yet, so they had no reason to feel isolated and unhappy. They had the stars and planets and all the wonder and beauty of Creation.
Since the First War, Crowley’s memory of those bygone ages, eras, aeons has grown increasingly foggy. An angel’s memory is perfect, but Crowley sometimes tries to think back to those days and finds themself up against massive walls of grief and sadness and longing. The beauty of the stars and planets they made with Lucifer are blotted over with the knowledge of all that came to be. They can’t remember the faces or the voices of the many who fell, the memories they hold replaced with their discorporated and mutilated forms. So, secretly, Crowley has been forced to conclude something is integrally wrong with themself. They might still be an angel, but their memory is injured, warped, and maybe even evil.
It was in the moments when they held Aziraphale’s body in the slush of Verdun, surrounded by screaming and choking and dead humans, demons, and angels, that Crowley raised their face to the Heavens and said, with clarity they had never felt before:
“I love him. Aziraphale is your child still. Please, God, I beg you, have mercy:
“Let him live.”
There was no Light. No Voice. No Answer.
Not then.
Now:
Crowley is standing in the foyer of Aziraphale’s bookshop. Aziraphale stands at the top of the stairs that lead into the flat, dressed in his grey housecoat and barefoot, revealing webbed toes. His mouth is open, hundreds of sharp teeth showing.
“What –”
“I love you,” Crowley repeats because they’d said it when Aziraphale rushed out upon hearing Crowley arrive in a cloud of moulting feathers and divine grace.
“Crowley,” Aziraphale says, looking like this is both everything he’s ever wanted and also completely horrified. “Are you insane? You’re going to Fall –”
“I am within the scope of my Purpose and Her Work,” Crowley says, and they are certain because She Works in mysterious ways. “Back at Verdun –”
“You need to let the Bells incident go,” Aziraphale says, clearly hysterical.
“I begged God for mercy,” Crowley says, louder and stepping forward to the base of the stairwell, craning his neck back to keep Aziraphale’s gaze, “and She granted it because I love you.”
“Oh,” Aziraphale breathes, raw and aching. “Oh my God.”
“Yes,” Crowley says.
Aziraphale bursts into tears. Crowley climbs the stairs as Aziraphale stands at the top, arms akimbo as he sobs. Crowley reaches him and gathers him into a hug, and Aziraphale tucks his face against Crowley’s left shoulder and weeps. Crowley pulls his wings around them and rocks Aziraphale so he doesn’t have to because his demonic nature is that of a shark, slow and gentle and forced to constantly swim else he’ll drown.
“I love you,” Aziraphale says against the drooping collar of Crowley’s shirt, fists curled tightly in their vest. “I’ve loved you since we met on that stupid rock formation, south of Eden.”
“I remember that,” Crowley says, and he rests the side of his face against Aziraphale’s head; his hair smells like soap and salt and newspaper ink. “Did you ever remember why you were there?”
“No,” Aziraphale laughs, sobs; “It doesn’t matter.”
They hold each other. Outside, the market is setting up. Crowley looks at the wall and the flat’s door and frame. As soon as Aziraphale moved in, he carved sigils into it and into all the windows and doors downstairs to deter anyone and everything that he could possibly imagine wanting to keep out. Unlike Crowley’s Mayfair home, the bookshop was warded with a demon and former Principality’s paranoia and possessiveness.
In their arms, Aziraphale is calming. Crowley feels his hands open and close. Too sharp nails held at careful angles to avoid tearing the vest.
“I’m not going to open the shop today,” he says, slowly straightening and reaching up to wipe snot and tears from his face. “Tell me what happened.”
“Michael appeared not long after you left,” Crowley says, fishing out his handkerchief and offering it to Aziraphale, who takes it even as his face twists in alarm.
“Are the Davies and Jameson alright?”
“Yes,” Crowley says as Aziraphale blows his nose. “I went out as soon as I noticed, and she was looking for Gabriel, but she’d caused quite a disturbance—you know my siblings don’t know how to blend in with humans at all—so Davies came to the door, asking what was happening, and Michael noticed he’s been touched by Her –”
“He’s what?” Aziraphale asks, gobsmacked.
“Yes, he was at Verdun,” Crowley says.
“Shit,” Aziraphale breathes.
“So, Michael had a misunderstanding that I was doing Her Work and left,” Crowley says as Aziraphale mops his face with the last clean corner of the handkerchief.
“Davies knows then,” Aziraphale says, and he looks sorry, and Crowley loves him so much.
“I revealed myself to him,” Crowley agrees, “and he was relieved; he’d seen me at Verdun. I think he’s worried all these years that he had gone mad. He invited me back to work, and then I came here.”
“You didn’t,” Aziraphale starts before he grimaces and shakes his head. “No, probably better not to wipe his memory if he bears Her favour. Are you going to go back to that hospital?”
“I want to,” Crowley says, drawing their wings back and watching a few feathers drift onto the floor; the new, bright white downy bits that are growing in their place itch awfully. “Maybe after I finish moulting.”
Aziraphale laughs, rough and with too many emotions. He rubs his face, like he’s trying to wake up. He smiles at Crowley, and, after a moment, takes their hand.
“Let me help you.”
This is how Crowley ends up sitting naked on a stool in Aziraphale’s bath, letting him work through their wings, dislodging the feathers that are ready to detach and running his fingers through the rest to help relieve the overall discomfort. Aziraphale himself no longer has flight-capable wings. Crowley has only seen them once back in the seventeen hundreds when Aziraphale pulled them into the physical realm to scare off a band of witch hunters. The wings are simply bone and skin, broken and deformed and tightly scarred by Hellfire.
“Do yours ever hurt?”
“My wings?” Aziraphale asks, very mild; there is nothing more calming for him than when he’s taking care of Crowley. “Not so long as I go swimming or at least have a salt soak regularly.”
There’s a stock of epson salts under the sink. During the Second World War, Crowley traded their coffee rations for epsom salt that they would slip to Aziraphale whenever they ran into each other. Very gently, Aziraphale passes his fingertips over the old wound on Crowley’s back as he transfers his attention from the right to left wing.
“It’s been a long time since we’ve gone swimming together,” he says, very softly.
It has. Crowley stopped swimming without realising it after nearly getting blown up on the SS Maid of Kent. Aziraphale, who had been in the relocation brigade for the wounded, had never asked after that.
Crowley breathes out.
“We should,” they say as Aziraphale strokes the feathers at the join of Crowley’s left wing to their back. “I would like to have a day with you. As a couple.”
A low, wrecked noise. Crowley turns his head. Over his shoulder, Aziraphale is looking at him. Wide and wanting, and so full of joy and love. His hands are full of Crowley’s feathers. He holds them like they are worth all of Creation.
Maybe, Crowley realises, to Aziraphale, they are worth that much.
Maybe, they also realise, this is why Gabriel is walking away from his responsibilities. If Gabriel and the demon that he loves want above all for there to be no conflict, no war:
Maybe they’re right.
But neither Crowley nor Aziraphale want to walk away.
Once upon a time, in the grass and surrounded by edelweiss:
They promised to share their love for humanity with each other.
“I’d like that,” Aziraphale says as Crowley turns around on the stool, leaning forward and slightly upwards and pressing their foreheads together. “As a couple –”
“We’ll figure out a way,” Crowley says. “One day –”
They kiss, warm and deep, and, in that moment:
They are wonderful and full of joy.