Chapter Text
The manna tree blossom was in full bloom, the orange petals shading to red and leaving a mild sweetness on the air.
Aziraphale took a deep breath as he left Soho Gardens behind and headed back toward Whickber Street. Every spring the trees in parks across London flowered, a reminder that God had promised no one would be alone.
He would not be alone. The dream-memory of lavender tea and honey lay on Aziraphale's tongue, and he knew if sleep hadn't fled him so soon he'd have been able to step past the glare of the sun and see the full shape of the figure kneeling over the flowerbeds in the cottage garden.
He would not be alone. There was someone out there for him. He saw it every day with the couples who came in to his tattoo shop asking that their own soul marks be embelished to match each other's, or those who had come back after he had helped their damaged marks to grow again to introduce him to their soul mate.
The thought gave Aziraphale comfort as he turned left, away from his tattoo shop and crossed the street toward Twin Flames.
If a committed person wasn't looking for it, you'd hardly know it was there. A narrow blue door tucked away between a French restaurant and a coffee shop. Aziraphale had been side-eyeing the door from his window ever since he'd seen the removal van pull up a few months ago. He'd watched as a middle-aged goth and a woman decked out like mardi gras ferried boxes up the narrow stairs.
It was finally time. Finally time to admit that, at nearly fifty, his soul mark was fully developed and he needed help. To admit that finding the other half of himself wouldn't be the simple fairy tale that so many of his customers were blessed with.
With conviction, he pushed open the door of Twin Flames and stepped inside.
Ten ways to use crystal dowsing to locate your soul mate.
On reflection, ten was too ambitious. Crowley replaced ten with five. That didn't do much to help him think of more than three.
He sipped his tepid coffee and wondered when Tracy would get back with a replacement.
The article was boring, so Crowley rested his chin on his hand and gazed out of the small window to the tattoo parlour across the street.
A.Z Fell & Co. That seemed a fussy name for it, but then the old-fashioned-looking gentleman in cream and pale blue tartan who came in and out on the regular seemed quite fussy too.
Crowley was aware he'd paid more attention to their neighbour across the street than really necessary. He was easy on the eye, and his sartorial choices made him interesting. The shop's website also had a page on the enhancement and maintenance of soul marks, which had given Crowley rather too many things to think about.
None of which he should be thinking about now. He resisted the urge to open his web browser and look at the 'contact us' section of the tattoo shop's webpage.
Three ways to use crystal dowsing to locate your soul mate.
"Hello?"
Oh, thank fuck! Crowley minimised the Word file, but continued to click industriously on his mouse as the potential customer came up the stairs and into the tiny reception space.
"Oh, hi." Crowley sat up straighter as fussy tattoo man appeared. "You're the guy."
"The guy?" Fussy Tattoo Man frowned politely, brow crinkling in bemusement.
"Sorry. Yeah. From the tattoo place."
"Oh! Yes, indeed, I am the guy." His smile was nervous, but all the prettier for it. The hand offered over Crowley’s desk was very nicely kept. "Aziraphale Fell."
"Crowley."
It was a nice hand to shake too. Firm and soft.
"Crowley? Just Crowley or-?" Aziraphale asked.
"Yeah, just Crowley."
"Very well. I er, had an appointment. At two, I believe?" His fingers tugged at the front of his waistcoat. "Bit early."
"Do you?" Crowley began searching their diary. Paper only because, despite Crowley’s attempts to use the sleek, black computer he'd bought, Tracy would wave her hand dismissively and carry on like they worked in the fourteenth century.
He found the page, and although Tracy's writing was illegible, there was nothing else going on. "Sure. Tracy's not back yet, but I can start you off." There was a clipboard with the preliminary questionnaire already put together so Crowley handed it over.
Aziraphale accepted it as though he wasn't sure what to do with it. "I've never done this before."
"We don't expect you to." Crowley tried to make his smile reassuring while knowing full well it wasn't his strong point. "Take your time filling out that, then I'll look at your mark, and when Trace gets back, she can help us divine a way forward."
Aziraphale nodded, fingers rolling the pen nervously between his fingers. "It must be useful," he said quietly, "being able to see -"
Crowley felt his features hardening into stone.
"I'm sorry. It's just that your glasses…" Aziraphale turned away. "That's not my business, is it?"
"No," Crowley said as gently as he could. "Tea?"
Aziraphale shook his head. "I think I'd rather get on."
"Alright."
Most clients were nervous. It was embarrassing having to ask for help finding your soul mate. It was supposed to be easy. As the marks grew, they were supposed to reveal your other half to you and then va voom! Just like in the movies with gorgeous light and music swelling.
Crowley snorted and went to make the tea.
The pen was a generic biro with the cap missing. Aziraphale tapped it against the edge of the clipboard and tried to focus on his breath. Even the easy questions like name and age were making his heart skitter about like over-excited squirrels.
Maybe he should just leave?
No. He was being silly. There was no shame in coming here, in admitting he needed help. If anything, it was the sensible and mature thing to do.
So, name. Aziraphale Fell.
Age. Too close to fifty to be comfortable.
Address. Just across the street. Excellent.
What are the most prominent symbols or patterns in your soul mark?
Aziraphale closed his eyes. A skull didn't necessarily mean anything bad. Nor did the snake. Change, he told himself, rejuvenation.
The fear of realising what was fading into being on his forearm after he'd come so close still left him cold.
Crowley blundered back into the room, and Aziraphale dropped his pen.
"How you getting on?" Dark lenses fixed on Aziraphale as Crowley put the cup down on the table next to Aziraphale's seat.
It was disconcerting not being able to see Crowley’s eyes. It was worse knowing that as soon as Aziraphale could see them, Crowley would be able to see so much more about him.
"Not well," Aziraphale admitted. He sipped his tea, face screwing up before he could stop it.
"Not good?"
"Needs a bit longer to brew."
"Coffee drinker only. That's my problem."
"You're forgiven."
Crowley glanced at the clipboard. He lifted his face to Aziraphale's. "It's only red tape. You can do it after."
And have Crowley look at him now? Panic reared its savage, many-toothed head.
"Up to you." Crowley stepped back and slurped from his own mug. "Or you can pop off and book in again at a better time."
Aziraphale wanted to weep with relief. He wanted to leave right now, to go back to his shop and tuck himself away in a comforting world of it just takes time, and maybe today followed by long, lonely nights of internet searching, does a skull mean my soul mate died?
"I think I'd like you to take a look now."
Crowley's eyebrows lifted above his glasses. "Come on through then. Bring your tea."
Crowley put on a soft pair of leather gloves and listened to the muted rustling of Aziraphale undressing behind the curtains. There were lots of layers to get through, and he needed the time to compose himself.
His coffee was making him anxious, so Crowley left it neglected on the floor in a corner.
The whole room was an eye-watering stark white, the better to assess soul marks by. Or rather, what was going on around them.
"What now?" Aziraphale's voice trembled.
"Get yourself comfy on the bed, lay your right arm on the armrest, and give me a shout when you're ready."
Crowley hated doing this, truth be told. It was awkwardly personal getting close to someone else's soul mark. He hated the enforced intimacy between himself and a virtual stranger. Plus, his confidence had never truly recovered from a time in his twenties when he'd got everything so wildly wrong.
Tracy was helping him with that, but Crowley wasn't convinced he'd be able to climb out of the safe little hole of a life he'd dug himself into. He didn't want to. It was fucking scary out there.
"Ready." Aziraphale sounded steadier.
"Ok. I'm just going to dim the lights." A headache was the last thing Crowley needed.
The lower light softened the bleak white paint. Crowley stepped around the curtain, not wanting to spook Aziraphale further.
He still wore a vest, of course, he'd wear a vest, but his arm was where it should be, underside facing up, displaying the tattoo-like images of his soul mark. They started at his wrist, twirling up to his inner elbow.
Crowley could see why Aziraphale was worried even before he'd taken his glasses off. Judging by the size of the mark and Aziraphale's age, there had been at least a decade of nothing new appearing. Not so worrying if you'd met your soul mate by then, because it was believed the whole purpose of the mark was about the finding. If you were still single, it could make you worry what had gone wrong.
Aziraphale's eyes were full of nervous hope as Crowley settled in the chair by the bed.
"Right, I'm going to take my glasses off and have a look. It's OK if -" Crowley swallowed. He hated this bit too. "You don't have to look."
He swept his glasses off and fumbled them into his pocket. The world lit up like fireworks. The experts called it manna pollen, and on the days when Crowley had been brave enough to remove his glasses outside, he had seen large concentrations of it drifting around the trees.
In the confines of the room, it looked like multi-coloured dust motes. They gravitated toward Aziraphale, swirling around him curiously like butterflies drinking from a flower. It was too much information, and panic began to settle in Crowley’s guts.
"Are you alright?"
Crowley blinked at the glowing, gold haze that was Aziraphale. Nobody ever asked him that.
"Yeah." Which was a lie. "Takes a while to adjust." Which was less of a lie. "If you're ready, I'll take a look at your mark now."
"Are you ready?" Aziraphale's voice was gentle, and it was now Crowley who couldn't look at him.
"Yep." The colours and movement were starting to make sense to Crowley now. His subconscious brain gave him information that sparked through his body. The most forceful of these was that Aziraphale was good. Powerfully and resolutely good. The predominance of gold around his head was halo-like, and the glow it gave to his skin and eyes made him look otherworldly, like one of God's own messengers. Even with Crowley's eyes, it hurt to look at him and left his head and heart too full of a terrified wonder.
Crowley shook his head to clear it and reached out so his gloved hands, no more than black blurs, voids amidst all the colour, could touch Aziraphale's arm.
Aziraphale gasped.
"OK?" Crowley asked.
"Yes, just-"
"Yeah, I know. Won't be long." He'd really try not to be. It was hard not to get drawn in when you saw someone like this, hard not to absorb some of their story, and Aziraphale felt very safe. Like a brand of home Crowley had given up even looking for.
He focused on the soul mark. The skull was the most obvious, the skull and that long, sinuous snake sitting on the top of it like a crown. There were stars below and, although Aziraphale was probably desperate to know about the more dangerous-looking elements, it always paid to start at the beginning.
"Stars," Crowley said, running his thumb over the blue and silver-tinged marks closest to Aziraphale's wrist.
"Do you know the constellations?"
"Tracy might. I work less on facts and more on, urm-" Crowley waved his free hand about. It caused the manna pollen to shift and re-settle. "Gut."
Crowley sensed Aziraphale nod as it caused streaks of gold to swirl around the upper part of the room, leaving trails like comets.
"Stars," Crowley repeated, his thumb running over the marks and watching them light up, only a fraction of what would happen when Aziraphale's soul mate touched them. "A creative person, excited and full of wonder. Obsessive too. Good luck calling them to dinner when they're working."
"He sounds lovely."
"He? How do you know?"
"If God has done her research properly, they will be a he."
Crowley snorted. His gaze drifted up to where the blues shaded to purple and then deep reds, like flame. "Not death." He rubbed the skull's jaw. "Close, metaphorically speaking. A loss of innocence, perhaps?"
"What happened?"
"Maybe he just grew up?"
Assuming Aziraphale's soul mate was the same age as him, and the soul mark had appeared when Aziraphale hit puberty, the skull would have appeared in his later twenties. Life had a way of losing its gloss around then, as Crowley was all too aware.
"And the snake?"
The snake was interesting. Mostly red, like the skull, but hints of a dark, glittery black. A black so dark there were other hues fighting in it. The glitter was almost gold. "A trickster," Crowley said. "Not what he seems." His gaze ran up to Aziraphale's inner elbow. The snake's head was rampant, thrown back with its jaws wide and teeth bared. He was wreathed in flowers all shooting upward. "Resilient. Reinvention. Growth." Almost. Crowley knew his flowers better than his stars, and he saw carnations pulsing yellow, petunias. Not good news. "Bitterness," he murmured, shifting on his seat to get closer to Aziraphale's skin. "Anger and resentment."
"Why would my mark stop growing? I've had nothing more appear since my fortieth birthday."
Crowley sat back, weary. A headache was starting to make itself known right between his eyes. "Maybe he's stuck? Trapped. Gone as far as he can. Sorry." He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes.
"Of course," Aziraphale murmured. "You've been very helpful."
Crowley was always less helpful than people hoped. Aziraphale had probably been inspecting a name and forwarding address, and all he'd got was the patchy character analysis of a bloke who sounded like he'd be an absolute wanker.
Crowley slipped his glasses back on and blinked as the colours faded, leaving only faint streaks across the inside of his skull. The room settled into a blanket of welcome charcoal.
"You were very helpful," Aziraphale said. "Considering I didn't even know if…" His lips pressed together. "It sounds like he isn't very happy."
"No one is entirely happy all the time." Crowley rubbed at his temples, not caring for how Aziraphale was looking at him. There was sympathy there for his soul mate and understanding for Crowley too. Now that the goodness in him had been seen, it was hard to ignore. It still flooded out of Aziraphale in waves, and Crowley couldn't stand it.
Why hadn't his own mark led him to someone like that instead of, well, it was done now, wasn't it? All done. Crowley launched himself out of his chair. "I'll leave you to get dressed."