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Winter had well and truly arrived. The weather had been getting colder. Cold enough that Crowley’s knees and ankles declared winter’s arrival with a vengeance. It was getting to the temperatures where it made sense to sit around a fire; where you could do that comfortably without sweating through all of your clothes.
Fire weather, some humans would call this particular shade of grey and cold.
The cottage had a small, moveable outdoor fire pit. When they had moved in, it had sat accompanied by two chairs and a bench seat just outside the back of the cottage where it looked onto the garden. Since then, the concrete and cast iron fire pit had been moved to where it was now, propped up against the wall of the cottage.
Aziraphale had gone out that morning, heading into London to check up on his bookshop. Crowley would have gone with him, but the rapidly dropping temperatures that made them awfully sleepy in the mornings had also made it hard to really focus enough to insist upon that.
“I’ll only be gone four hours at most,” Aziraphale had told them before he had left.
At some point around eleven Crowley had finally gotten up, wrapped themself in far too many layers to still be considered fashionable but still was and made themself a cup of coffee.
They were standing in the kitchen nursing the mug when they spotted the old fire pit through the window. They should set that up, Aziraphale would probably enjoy sitting by a fire.
A fire…they ought to be able to at least see one without seizing up in panic. It had been six years since the bookshop fire, they should be over that fear by now.
Crowley’s now-empty mug was left beside the sink before they headed outside.
They rolled the fire pit back out to where it had originally been in front of those chairs. A miracle took care of not having any wood. A box of matches appeared alongside the pile. Good, now all they needed was something for it to catch on.
There was an apple tree in the corner of the garden that had dropped a decent amount of sticks recently. Crowley scooped up the ones that hadn’t already gotten damp from the grass.
Setting up the fire pit was easy, lighting a fire in it was less so. Crowley pulled a match out of the box and struck it against the side. Orange bloomed from the tip.
Their eyes were stuck on it, unable to look away or even blink. But then they blinked, shook their head slightly to dislodge the memories that were rearing their heads, and tossed the match into the fire pit before it could snuff itself out.
The sticks and dry leaves he had gathered up from the base of the apple tree caught quickly, it grew from a flicker to a small fire within moments.
If the lit match had been bad, this was far worse. The flame was mesmerising, in the worst way. Their entire body threatened to freeze up at the sight of it — and not just from the cold. But at the same time, something within them screamed for them to get up, to run and find Aziraphale.
Then the memories hit them.
Brittle, centuries-old paper being swallowed up as fire races about. It surrounds them and the heat presses in on them from every side, closer and closer and closer. Aziraphale’s diary, still sitting on his desk, surrenders to the torrent. The metal of the staircase leading up to the flat above creaks and groans as it gives way. Ash settles heavily against their tongue, clogging up their throat and making it hard to breathe, let alone speak. Yet they persist, pushing one name out through their ash-dry throat. Each time more frantic than the last. Shouting is made ever harder by the fact that they’ve stopped breathing, not that they’ve realised that.
“Aziraphale!”
Crowley whirls around, fully serpentine eyes raking over the burning shell of the bookshop.
Where is he? He’s always here; Aziraphale would remain in his bookshop even as bombs fell and destruction reigned loose on Soho. So why can they not find him?
“Aziraphale!”
There is silence, save for the roar of fire. But then their eyes fall on something — a corpse — and Crowley’s heart stops. Ice cold horror sets into their bones.
No. No. No. No. No. No. Please, no. Not him.
Their foot catches on something as they race towards the corpse of their best friend and they go crashing to the ground. They yelp rather undemonically as red-hot pain blooms across their palms when they hit the floor. Was the floor really that hot?
Someone is talking. Shouting their name? The firefighters? Why would firefighters know their name?
Crowley blinks, their eyes are stinging from the smoke. Someone else is screaming. Aziraphale’s corpse is lying mere centimetres from where they went crashing to the ground. They pull themself towards him — it.
The angel’s name falls from their lips frantic and distraught as the smell of burnt flesh hits them.
His vest and overcoat are blackened and unsalvageable. Near the cuffs, his pants are burnt away in parts to reveal charred flesh underneath. The flesh melted away to reveal bone beneath. The worst of all? Aziraphale’s face. An angry red line had been seared across the pale flesh like he had been struck by a fervent piece of wood. Stretching across his left eyelid and down across the bridge of his nose to end by the right side of his mouth. The rest of his face seems to have been pot-marked by embers, as small red dots litter it.
They touch burned-and-blistered fingers to Aziraphale’s neck in the futile hope that he’s still somehow alive.
Something rolls down their cheek and they swipe it away with their other hand, the back of their hand comes away wet. Their face is wet. Why is their face wet?
The voice is back (did it ever leave?). Is it the same as before? They’re not sure. It sounds like it’s coming from underwater.
Someone is grabbing at their arms, pulling them back, twisting around as they try to get free and get back to Aziraphale. But then a wave of something washes over them. It is so intense it would have knocked them clean off their feet if they hadn’t already been kneeling.
Crowley blinked, long and hard. The burning remains of the bookshop, and their angel’s corpse along with it, disappeared like someone took a cloth to the dry-erase board of reality. They blinked again and the sand-coloured pavers and the rest of the cottage’s back garden came into focus. The next thing they noticed was that Aziraphale, unburned and whole and alive, was holding them. The two of them were sitting on the pavers.
Oh.
“‘Ziraphale?” they croaked, then coughed. Crowley’s throat was raw, not from ash but from overuse.
“Crowley,”
“You’re—” They cleared their throat and then winced at how painful it was to do that. “You’re home early,”
The demon felt, rather than saw, Aziraphale nod.
“Yes, the shop that I was planning on going to after checking up on the bookshop was shut today,”
Crowley sat up properly, pulling themself out of their angel’s arms. They twisted around to check on the fire pit… which had a small pile of ash at the very bottom of it.
“It’s a good thing that I arrived back when I did because I found you’d started a fire, ” Aziraphale said. “You’re terrified of fire. We both know that. So what were you thinking?”
They ducked their head, embarrassment colouring their cheeks.
“Thought you’d like sitting by a fire, it being ‘fire weather’ and all,” they said. “‘nd I should be over that bloody fear by now, it’s been six years since the— since that happened,”
How pathetic of a demon were they that they couldn’t even say the word ‘fire’?
“Thank you for that consideration, love. But you shouldn’t have done that. I wouldn’t have enjoyed it if you weren’t,” he told them. “And there is no deadline for you ‘getting over your fear’; There is nothing wrong if you never get over it,”
Crowley wished they could disappear into the ground (actually, what they really wanted to do was bury their face against their angel’s chest again but they’d never admit that out loud).
“Now, may I see your hands?”
It was only when Aziraphale asked about their hands that they realised they were still stinging, and rather badly at that. That hadn’t been part of the flashback…hallucination? Illusion?
Their palms were red and puffy, and badly blistered in some places. It looked like they had touched a hot stove.
Crowley hissed when Aziraphale poked slowly and gently at the worst spot right by their thumb and black spots appeared in their vision.
“What happened?” they asked as he finished looking at their hands and released them. They had no memory of doing anything that could have caused this.
“You tried to brace yourself on the fire pit when you tripped,” he said. “And I wasn’t quick enough to stop you from touching the metal rim,”
The angel said that as if it was some great failing. As if it was his fault that Crowley had been enough of an idiot to trip over their own feet and touch a fire pit with fire in it.
“Isn’t your fault,” they said. “‘s mine, shouldn’t have tripped,”
Then they waved their right hand over the left. The skin healed, mostly, with the miracle they weaved over it. But blisters were left behind, although less angry than before. They tried to miracle that away but nothing happened. So they repeated it with their other hand and got the same result.
“Hmh,” Crowley huffed, displeased.
“If miracles aren’t working, would you allow me to treat your injuries, the human way?” Aziraphale asked.
They shrugged.
“Sure, might as well try,”
The two of them got to their feet. Crowley stumbled a bit. Their ankles were stiff despite the boots.
Wow, okay, maybe they were colder than they’d thought.
The pair relocated inside. Aziraphale headed to the heater to turn it up before joining his demon in the bathroom.
When the angel made it to the bathroom, Crowley was standing with their back to the door, staring at nothing.
“Crowley,” he called, making sure that he wasn’t standing directly behind them when he did and that they could see him.
They blinked once. And then a second time. The dull look in their golden eyes receded as awareness filtered back in slowly. They looked up at him.
“Hold your hands over the sink, palms up, please. I’m going to wash them out and then bandage them,” As he spoke, a miracle made a roll of bandages and a cloth appear on the counter beside the sink.
Crowley did as he requested. Aziraphale turned on the faucet and dampened the cloth with it. A tremor ran through them when the cloth made contact with their palms but they didn’t say anything so he continued.
Their gaze drifted off again as he worked. Aziraphale finished with the cleaning part and picked up the bandage roll, planning to bandage their hands. The moment that it made contact with Crowley’s hand, they yelped and flinched backwards. So far back that their back bumped into the doorframe.
“No no no. Somebody, no. You— can’t be —you’re not,” They sucked in a breath that caught in their chest. “You’re not dead. You’re not!” Crowley was pleading, and Aziraphale’s stomach had dropped into his shoes. They hadn’t said a name but the angel had a hunch he knew exactly who they were rambling about: him.
“Aziraphale!”
He stepped towards them, hands raised but not touching, yet. He didn’t want to make it worse.
“I’m here! I’m fine; I’m alive!” he said. The words fell on unhearing ears.
Unblinking, fully golden eyes, much like they had been out in the garden flickered about the bathroom, not settling on anything. And not a flicker of recognition anywhere.
Damn ‘making it worse’, Crowley didn’t appear to have heard him and he wasn’t going to stand around and watch his demon get tortured by whatever they were imagining any longer.
Aziraphale reached out again, but not with his hand this time. The miracle slipped into Crowley’s mind to rid it of whatever horrific thing they were seeing, and to bring them back to the present.
Gold started to shrink, white returned to the sclera. Their eyes settled on him, saw him.
“Alive?” The doubt and the careful hope in the single word made the angel’s heart ache.
Are you alive? was what Crowley was asking.
He nodded. “Yes, I’m alive and I haven’t been discorporated,”
“We’re not in the bookshop?”
“No, we aren’t. We moved out here to our cottage last year, don't you remember?”
“Right...” Crowley trailed off. “You were gonna bandage my hands?” They nodded towards the bandages that had been abandoned by the sink.
“I was, yes, but I can do it later—“
“You can do it. Best to get it done now or it’ll never get done,” They stepped forwards, towards the sink.
Aziraphale nodded and picked up the roll again. This attempt went far smoother than the first and soon enough the demon’s hands were bandaged up.
If Crowley didn’t take their eyes off of their angel for the rest of the day and refused to be more than three meters away from him for the next week, well that was for only them to know. And when their closest neighbour woke up the next morning to find a fire pit had appeared in his living room, he believed it to be a Christmas miracle.