Chapter Text
And a softness came from the starlight
And filled me full to the bone.
W.B. Yeats, from “The Wanderings of Oisin”
Cold Open:
The Angel of the Eastern Gate has hair that reaches past her waist. It’s a shining blonde ringlet-y business, the colour of white sand or sun-bleached parchment. The colour of citrine, worn smooth and set in a ring.
Crawly hasn’t seen all of these things in person but knows instinctively they are the colour of the Angel’s hair.
As the storm clouds creep closer, and the wind builds with them, the curls whip across the Angel’s face, tangle around her fingers, catch in her mouth.
“ Phtah -” the Angel says.
Crawly stares at her.
The Angel laughs then, nervously, pulling the damp strands from the corner of her lips. “Think I might cut this off. It’s an awful lot of bother down here.”
Crawly stares at her.
Tries to think of something - something to say.
“Pity you gave that sword away. Could have done it in one go.”
The Angel laughs nervously again before she seems to think better of it. Then she gives Crawly a Very Disapproving Look. It shouldn’t be as charming as it is, except there are such lines between her eyebrows, scribbles of judgemental ink (there are many ways to fall. Crawly fell from Heaven like an anchor, or a bullet, or a lead bloody balloon. Looking at the Angel now, Crawly has the awful suspicion that she still falls in exactly the same way.)
“I don’t know if the Almighty would approve of her Divine Armament being used in such a manner.”
“Oh? And what is it being used for now? Its intended purpose, you think?”
The flaming sword is gone, and the garden is empty. Adam and Eve have survived - Crawly doesn’t know, maybe a couple of hours - in the mean, cruel, endless desert. The sky is getting dark, storm clouds moving closer. Crawly has another awful suspicion that she’ll be the kind of person who likes storms. She likes the colour of them already. The scent of electricity and hunger.
“I suppose not.” The Angel looks vexed, and then anxious, and then half blind as another thick curl hits her in the eye. “Oh, for - this hair.” She pushes it out of her face, and Crawly had been an angel once (it was a long time ago) but she’s never seen someone so completely look the part as this white-robed, golden-haired, absolute mess beside her.
She stares. She can’t stop staring.
They both hear the rain before they feel it, a pattering like fingers against stone. The Angel’s wing is over Crawly’s head before the first drop can hit her, and her feathers smell like struck-matches and sunlight, maybe a little like lilies too. It’s approaching the smell of heaven, but not quite. Crawly remembers the way heaven smells, it’s in her dreams sometimes.
It’s nothing like sunlight and struck-matches. Nothing like this.
She wishes the Angel hadn’t moved close enough for Crawly to know what she smells like. Hopefully it will be something she forgets.
They stay like this for a few moments, close and silent, as the first rain falls hard and Crawly falls harder (an angel and a demon, looking out over the wide, wet world.)
- peach
It started in a garden.
There was an apple, a pretty one, red as the oldest stars.
Then there was hunger.
There was a demon too, hissing suggestions against the shells of innocent ears, but she wasn’t the kind of demon Aziraphale expected. Not the kind she’d ever met before.
Back then she’d thought most demons were ugly, covered with maggots and flies and dripping honey from between their teeth, promising you everything while creeping slowly closer, close enough to bite -
But there’s nothing ugly about Crowley.
The demon in question is currently a nervous black exclamation point in the chair opposite. She holds a wine glass in one hand while her other rests on the linen tablecloth, clenching and unclenching like a heart pumping blood.
Her hands are pale and long-fingered, nails painted the colour of night (chipped). She’s twitchy this evening, glancing over her shoulder, flinching when a waiter passes by too closely. She is garnet-mouthed and angular as geometry, and nothing, nothing about her is ugly.
Quite the opposite in fact (and this is a dangerous path to take. How did we set out on it? Oh, yes - gardens. Apples.)
Aziraphale doesn’t like them.
They make her nervous. Take her back to a moment when she thought that maybe she’d ruined everything that yet existed to be ruined. Not that events in the Garden didn’t probably possibly proceed just as they ought to have, and the whole flaming sword incident has worked itself out more or less. But back in Eden (the tree and the fruit and the snake-sleek demon standing on the wall beside her, smiling like the both of them hadn’t just abetted Original Sin) well, it was all a bit much.
So apples are off the table for Aziraphale from now until whenever apples stop being a thing. She still has an odd and distinctly anxious reaction to the smell of them.
The bite.
Peaches are a different story.
( When are we? Years before the Antichrist, but more specificity than that doesn’t matter. It could be any meal they eat together, it always goes like this. Watch. )
The Ritz perfected La Pêche Melba centuries ago (Aziraphale enjoyed it then too), but the peaches must be particularly delicious today (Montreuil peaches, wonderful) and the ice cream is the ideal balance of bitter and sweet, vanilla with a hint of a burn to it. She scrapes her spoon against the side of the silver timbale, savouring each bite.
“You’re going to get us arrested, the way you’re eating that,” Crowley says with a shake of her head.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”
They’ve been seeing each other more regularly since around the 1970s. It’s an odd thing, and Aziraphale doesn’t quite know what started it. There was the Holy Water business and the - that panicked moment in the car that doesn’t quite bear thinking about. But after that, she and Crowley just started to run into each other.
Crowley will show up at the bookshop and Aziraphale will put the kettle on.
Aziraphale will stumble upon her at a park, and Crowley will take her for a spot of lunch.
They perform the occasional temptation or miracle of course, they still have work to do, but for the most part, they just - linger. Aziraphale is getting quite used to Crowley’s long legs stretched out over the arm of her sofa, talking nonsense about Lord Byron.
Crowley is getting used to finding fine strands of hair the colour of firelight clinging to her tweed coats and pashminas.
It’s fine.
Well, no, it’s not really. This sort of connection can’t be something that Heaven would ever approve of. An angel and demon - it’s unthinkable that the two of them would have any sort of relationship whatsoever, not to mention something skirting the edges of - friendship. Perhaps. Something in that neighbourhood.
Worse than that, though - is what it’s doing to Aziraphale. ‘The Crowley business’ (and that’s how she thinks of it in her head, when she thinks of it at all - which is hardly ever, really) has washed some feelings up on shore, feelings Aziraphale was quite certain she thoroughly drowned centuries ago.
She used to go years, decades without seeing Crowley. That was manageable. And when they did see each other they occasionally rowed and occasionally got falling-down drunk, and Aziraphale was usually unhappy to see the demon go but - but it never felt like this.
(Crowley is watching her. Aziraphale must think of something to say.
“My dear, you must try some of this! I believe there’s rosemary in this ice cream.”
Crowley eyes Aziraphale’s dessert like it might bite her. “I’m all right.”)
It feels like an injury.
Aziraphale was a warrior once, for all her soft cashmere sweaters. She was a guardian of the Eastern Gate because she knew how to handle a flaming sword. You wouldn’t know it to look at her current form, but she’s well-versed in injury. She’s had flesh rent, bones broken, fire licking against her feathers (the smell, you can’t imagine) on the demonic field of battle.
It’s a bit like that when Crowley leaves. But it’s not the ragged-edged tearing of skin, the slice of muscle - it’s a deeper sensation. An invisible sort of injury, a wrongness you cannot see from the outside, can only feel. The question without an answer - is there something broken? Am I hurt? What has happened?
The kind of injury you can convince yourself to bear. To weather. Perhaps the kind you talk yourself out of seeking help for. Suppose that it is just in your head, that there aren’t any closed fractures, shards of bone, pressing up against your soft tissue.
Missing Crowley is like an injury.
But then, lately, being around Crowley feels exactly the same way. So that’s -
Just -
Tickety-bloody-boo.
Aziraphale realizes she’s lapsed into silence again, and she takes another bite to give her hands something to do. The taste of peach fills her mouth and her nostrils, and she lets out a helpless little noise that draws Crowley’s attention immediately to her face.
Crowley’s eyes are hidden behind sunglasses, of course, but Aziraphale has spent millennia learning the shape of Crowley’s mouth and all the things it suggests. That mouth has been covered in wine-red lipstick since the 1600’s (didn’t always work out particularly well, there were a couple of awkward situations during the Witch Hunts, but that’s less of an issue these days. Shadwell aside.)
“Are you certain I can’t offer you any? These peaches -“
“I believe you, angel.” Crowley takes a sip of wine but keeps her eyes on Aziraphale, a little smirk twisting the corner of her mouth. Somehow she manages to make something as basic as a smirk seem rather – like an attack on decency.
And Aziraphale knows that all these little looks and gestures, the quirk of merlot-coloured lips, have nothing to do with her. Nothing at all. Crowley is a demon, and she’s wonderful, but temptation is second-nature to her. It’s what she does. It isn’t Crowley’s fault that at some point in the 1500’s, Aziraphale went and got completely the wrong idea about - everything.
It took her a few more decades to figure it out - the odd and prickling reaction to Crowley’s presence, like drops of wax against her skin (not painful, just startling.) Took Aziraphale a few decades after that to be informed (by a local midwife, lovely woman, had fascinating theories about rue) what her face did when she looked at Crowley.
(“Like a rose turning toward the sun,” the woman had said, and Aziraphale stuttered out a chorus of denial in three part harmony. The midwife laughed at her, shaking her head, and months later, when Aziraphale had access to a looking glass, she tried to see it for herself. She thought of Crowley the last time she had seen her, prowling around the grounds of a battlement, tempting sentries to drink. She thought of Crowley’s red red hair and red red mouth and - oh.
There it was in the mirror. A rose turning toward the sun, for Heaven’s sake. What a disaster.)
“What do you think?” Crowley asks, and Aziraphale realizes that Crowley has been speaking this whole time.
“Um - yes.” The angel does what she always does when she’s caught up in a troubling whirl of thoughts she has no right to - she smiles. Widens her eyes in the most angelic manner possible. “Haha, just so.”
“You aren’t even listening to me.” Crowley snorts. “You’re too busy making eyes at the rest of your sundae.”
“Sundae? My dear, this is not a sundae.”
“There’s ice cream and this-and-thats, how is it not a sundae?”
“Because -“ Aziraphale isn’t going to get into dessert semantics right now (she actually isn’t properly sure about the answer, this may be a question better suited for a philosopher.) “Because the ice cream is not the point. The peaches are the point.”
“You’re the point,” Crowley mutters, and then frowns. She quickly goes for her wine glass, tosses the rest of it back.
Aziraphale watches her throat as she swallows.
Aziraphale watches her pale fingers on the stem of her glass.
Aziraphale is getting dangerously used to watching Crowley. It’s becoming commonplace, like a routine: Aziraphale gets up, has a cup of tea, putters around the bookshop dissuading any customers that might want to leave with an actual book. Aziraphale has lunch, has another cup of tea, stares at Crowley until her vision goes white (and when Crowley isn’t there she thinks about her instead, sees her red red hair, and her red red mouth, and her long black legs kicked up over the arm of Aziraphale’s sofa-)
“Angel, honestly -“
( The way you watch her is not normal. You know this. There’s nothing of heaven in your eyes on her, nothing divine, it’s all brimstone and ashes and base, base, base. If anyone noticed, if Gabriel saw - )
“Aziraphale.”
“Sorry! Yes, I’m listening now. Just -“ She opens her mouth to come up with some excuse, something that doesn’t taste like burned sugar. “It is - a very good dessert.”
There, that’s something Crowley will accept: Aziraphale being driven to distraction by a bowl of peaches (they are really very good, though.)
“I was asking if you fancied a film after this? They’re playing one of those dull black and white ones you like in Leicester Square. “
“Oh.” Despite the turmoil in her head, Aziraphale can’t help the delight that breaks like dawn over her face. Outdoor cinema - that was her one of her’s. “That’s a splendid idea. Yes, let’s.”
Crowley cranes her head around, looking for their waiter. “This one’s mine, I owe you from the last.”
Aziraphale finishes the final spoonful of her dessert, letting the taste of peaches linger on her tongue. “Are you quite certain?”
“Carved in stone,” Crowley says, flicking herself in the temple (and only flinching slightly.)
The skyline is turning the uneasy pink of dusk by the time they leave the Ritz. They don’t walk arm in arm (they could, no one would notice, but Aziraphale is very careful about when and how she touches Crowley. She was a warrior once. She knows how to defend herself.)
The pavement is crowded, however, so the two of them stay close together. So close that Crowley’s coat sometimes rubs against Aziraphale’s shoulder. So close that their hips occasionally bump together (never their hands.)
Crowley’s still on edge, and Aziraphale doesn’t know why. She can’t seem to stop scanning their surroundings, or glancing anxiously over at Aziraphale, like she’s afraid she might disappear. Even as Crowley’s swaggering along, commenting idly on the sorry state of public shrubbery, Aziraphale can still sense the demon looking at her from the corner of her eye.
That’s fine.
Aziraphale doesn’t need to say anything, doesn’t need to ruin this with words, if she can simply feel the warmth of Crowley’s regard against her cheekbone. What would Aziraphale say anyway? There aren’t phrases, sentences, books deep enough to hold the way she feels about Crowley. There isn’t a well that wouldn’t be overflowing the minute Aziraphale opened her ridiculous mouth.
Angels are beings of love, but Aziraphale’s love burns pale blue. She is not the honeyed lamplight of temptation or charm, not like the demon. She’s heard all the stories, knows Crowley has been tempting her way across the globe for six thousand years. And Aziraphale has seen the way other people look at her friend as she struts around in black with her sunglasses and her mouth and her shock of carnelian hair. The stares Crowley gets are equal parts terrified and fascinated, and though Aziraphale knows that Crowley is more shadowy disaster than anything else, she does have a certain, undeniable - panache.
And Crowley is kind (even though she’ll never own up to it) and soft (even though she keeps that bit hidden) and terribly amusing once she’s got a few glasses of Château Margaux in her.
And Crowley is -
“Do you fancy a coffee on the way?” Crowley asks, smoke rolling in her voice.
“Lovely. Yes, all right.” Aziraphale’s voice shakes a bit, but Crowley thankfully doesn’t notice or doesn’t care to comment.
And Crowley is loved.
That’s the word for it, though it’s not a word Aziraphale will ever say out loud. How foolish would that be? What a bad joke. (Sometimes Aziraphale thinks about it and an awful, warbling sound claws out of her throat, something she tells herself is a laugh.) They’re on different sides, at cross-purposes, and regardless Crowley would never consider -
It’s fine, though. The status quo of dinners and drinks and walks in the park is more than enough. And if she catches herself loving Crowley in a way that feels too much like a cracked rib or a fever (leaving beads of sweat glittering against her pale hairline) that’s just something that will have to be managed.
Aziraphale loves a lot of things and none of them hurt this much. She’s determined to love Crowley that way too, eventually. It will just take a bit more practice.
(She was a warrior once. Her tolerance for pain is remarkably high.)
* * *
Back in the beginning (gardens and apples and what have you) there was some question of what form Aziraphale was going to take. Out of the infinite options available (and despite Gabriel’s unimpressed “bit matronly but okay...”) she thinks she made the right choice.
Aziraphale’s body is a good one. She likes to think so anyway.
She’s had it for over six-thousand years and it’s comforting now, comfortable. Rather like angora, or Egyptian cotton, or that lovely plush bathrobe Crowley bought her after Aziraphale complained about the state of the dressing gown she’d had since 1806.
Besides, there’s nothing wrong with being matronly. A woman of her age and description - slightly lined around the eyes, slightly soft around the middle - can go places without notice. It’s something that’s come in handy. Of course she’s had to use the odd miracle, but for the most part - from Ancient Greece to the late Middle Ages to the turn of the century - her presence at any significant event went unremarked upon. She was assumed to be a camp follower or washerwoman or someone’s mum, and people quickly glanced away when they saw her at all.
It’s much the same these days. She has a face just gamin enough to seem friendly and a bit eccentric, she has a beautifully unremarkable body, she’s of an age where most of the world has resigned her to wallpaper that occasionally asks questions and tips very well.
It’s splendid, frankly.
She doesn’t mind being overlooked, it gives her more time to do the important things, like go for dinner, or feed the ducks, or pour over that new leather-bound book of Tennyson with Cokeworth etchings that she procured on an electronic sort of auction site (with Crowley leaning over her shoulder the entire time, cackling with annoyance and occasionally delight. Apparently pop-up windows were Crowley’s doing in the nineties, though - when Aziraphale thinks back to Crowley’s hair at the time, she’s surprised they both haven’t repressed the entire decade.
“No, no, nothing’s happened to Princess Kate, just exit – no, there, click up there - “
“But that looked serious.”
Aziraphale secretly adores the way Crowley’s fond irritation hisses up against her neck, the way she scoffs in disbelief and runs her hands through her hair. There's still something of the desert caught in that shock of red, and when she’s close enough Aziraphale feels like she’s been flung back in time thousands of years, feels sunlight hot on her face and Crowley's beautiful (never unremarkable) body there beside her, tall and jagged-edged and black as the devil.
“Oh, look, I’ve won a prize!”
“For Satan’s sake, Aziraphale-”
“I’m not going to learn anything if you just take the clicker away.”
“It’s not a - you know, nevermind. Call it whatever you bloody want but please stop typing in your credit card information -”)
Crowley’s form is more shifting, changes a bit every few centuries or so, but Aziraphale’s body has remained constant. She just can’t imagine doing any better. Besides, she knows what it likes now, and it’s taken no small amount of research to figure that out. Aziraphale has refined a long list of Things Her Body Likes over years and years of intensive study (she is a scientist and a scholar, ink-stained and stoop-shouldered and wholly committed to her purpose).
Food, for one thing (and not just fine dining either. Of course she won’t say no to a lobster risotto or a lamb ragu with a bit of mint, but street food is a world of delight all its own: muu daet diao from that little stall in Bangkok, tantuni (highly spiced) from the Turkish foodtruck that occasionally shows up at the Brick Lane Market , or grilled-cheese with enough grease to soak through the napkin - her appreciation for food is wide and generous.)
Wine is on the list as well (occasionally very good port, or cognac, or sherry in a pinch. Once, at Crowley’s suggestion, tequila! She’ll never tell Crowley, but it was a thoroughly enjoyable suggestion. Aziraphale got to study Crowley’s ridiculously pickled face every time she took a bite of lime, as well as her tongue darting out to do dangerous things to the salt on her wrist. The first time Aziraphale noticed it, that bit of pink at the edge of Crowley’s dark lips, she felt the burn of feathers against her shoulder-blades, her wings longing to unfold and dance through the crackling air.
There has been no tequila since. Probably wise.)
Music: the first time she heard a lyre being played, goosebumps sprung up on her arms. It was an unexpectedly visceral reaction, something she had not known her body could do. Now she is more prepared for it, will have full-body shivering responses to the vibration of violin strings, or a particular note in an aria, or the low, electric voice of Mama Cass (whatever Crowley thinks, Aziraphale’s musical tastes haven’t stayed entirely out of the 20th century; it’s not her fault that anything made after 1968 was derivative.)
Hot water: oh, we can’t forget that. It used to be harder to come by in those early centuries, but in the past hundred or so years Aziraphale’s gotten frightfully used to it. Showers are a special kind of invigorating, and Aziraphale is equally taken with baths. Any sort of hygienic maintenance could be accomplished with a simple miracle, but bathing is far more enjoyable. The edges of Aziraphale’s tub are packed with bottles of various oils, scents, bubbles. Really, what’s the point of having skin if you aren’t going to give it a good soak now and then?
And then there are those pleasurable pursuits that often require a bit of…company.
They’re on the list too.
Aziraphale is well-acquainted with the many carnal delights that fascinate the authors of some of her favourite works of literature. Not that she’s made a habit of it or anything (and it’s been quite some time since her last liaison) but she’s had several millennia of time on her hands -
No pun intended there (though she has tried that as well.)
She just wanted to know what all the fuss was about, wanted to know what Crowley was getting up to whenever her temptations ran in that direction or someone struck her fancy (apparently there have been several nuns, surprising absolutely no one).
And sometimes, lately - when Aziraphale is alone -
Well, she can’t be held responsible for the sort of imagery her mind dreams up in those rare occasions she treats her body gently (or roughly, depending on her mood). If sometimes she imagines fine red hair slipping between her fingers, or held fast in her fist.
(The things I would do to you -
If you wanted them. If you wanted me. If you asked.)
She really does try not to think about her friend during those desperate times. It seems vaguely distasteful.
But Aziraphale is out of practice at not thinking about Crowley.
(They talk about it the night Crowley tells her about the Antichrist. Trade reasons to save the world back and forth like playing-cards while becoming increasingly too drunk to function: old bookshops. Stephen Sondheim, sloths.
“Love, I suppose,” Aziraphale says for absolutely no reason, none at all.
Crowley chokes on her wine. “Oh?” she says, with a charred-black voice. “Been in love have you?”
“I didn’t mean - I meant love generally. Between all people, you know, mankind. Not between me and - and - and -“ She is a skipping record, might repeat ‘and’ over and over again until Armageddon happens. “Why, have you ?”
Crowley doesn’t say a word. Aziraphale tries to drink more wine without choking on it and promptly fails. Sometimes she is deadly certain that the demon knows exactly what she’s thinking. How could Crowley not? Aziraphale’s face is too bloody expressive and is always fully two steps ahead of her brain - right in sync with her terrible and unnecessary heart.
“Surprised at you, angel,” Crowley says at long last. “Thinking a demon could feel love.”
Aziraphale rolls her eyes even as her chest caves with relief. “ Crowley - my dear, that’s not fair.”
“More your side’s thing, innit?”
“Oh, for - dogs, then.” Aziraphale changes the subject uncomfortably, and Crowley looks disgusted.
“You’ve never even had a dog.”
“I’ve met them! Very friendly. Darling little chaps.”
“A dog would tear all your lovely books to shreds. Would chew right down the spines of ‘em.”
“They never would.”
“Hell’s got dogs, angel. Or whatsit - hounds . We’ve got hounds. Great slathering things. Don’t think you’d like them as much.”
“Well, let us hope I never meet one.” Just keep the conversation going, steer it toward calmer waters where you never have to discuss anything about love ever again. Quickly, quickly, before you drown . “Suppose you’re a cat person, then.”)
In her list of ‘Things Her Body Likes,’ Aziraphale would not add love. She might have at one point, a fanciful sort of gesture, but now that she’s more experienced she is crossing it out (thick, frantic strokes of black pen.)
Love is not a pleasure.
It is not a delight either, whatever the Caoineadh said.
This discovery should not have been as staggering as it was. Aziraphale should have seen it coming. All the poets of her acquaintance wasted away from the feeling in one form or another, and there’s no shortage of literary lamentations for (and from) the broken-hearted.
Looking back through history, Aziraphale’s rather afraid love might be a terminal sort of thing - though of course it won’t be in her case. More’s the pity. If it isn’t going to kill her, that means she has to live with it.
But she can. She has. She will.
(“We’d be godmothers,” Crowley says later, after they’ve sobered up enough to form words again.
“Godmothers,” Aziraphale says, feeling her too expressive face smile helplessly.
“Maybe just you should be the godmother. Fairy godmother, right? I’ll be more like his - vodka aunt.”
Aziraphale laughs, hopes it’s enough to disguise the waves of anxiety radiating off her skin like ultraviolet.
“Well,” she says. “I’ll be damned.”
“It’s not that bad when you get used to it.”)
And Aziraphale tells herself for the hundredth time that that’s exactly what she’ll do. She’ll get used to it. Get used to this feeling until it’s nothing more than an old war wound, a phantom pain.
She’ll have all the time in the world to do so, as long as the, er, world doesn’t end.
(Unfortunately enough for the two of them, the world nearly does.)