Chapter Text
“I-I didn’t realize…” Aziraphale whispered, his fingers never actually touching Crowley’s back. They ghosted just above the marred skin, tracing the crimson and ink stain lines with a shocked, horrified silence. “Oh. God. There’s so many.”
Crowley flinched, but said nothing.
Of course he knew there were. So many, he’d lost count. So many, the pain all bled together. And everything, every time, all of it for his Angel.
After several minutes of what could only be described as terrifyingly honest and embarrassingly open for Crowley, Aziraphale cleared his throat. He was wringing his hands together, but his mind was sharp for the first time in days.
“Crowley.”
The demon clenched his jaw, fighting to suppress the slight tremors that had begun to overtake him. He hated the softness in the Angel’s voice. Behind him, the bed shifted and creaked, and Aziraphale came back into his line of sight. Crowley quickly dropped his gaze to his lap.
Aziraphale sat gingerly, as if fearing that a single touch would unravel Crowley completely. He had never seen his friend so troubled, so…tortured. He swallowed and pressed on, finding that pillar of strength within him, dusty with cobwebs and neglect, and tapped into it for the second time in a decade. There was the familiar taste of power, the electric zing of his potential igniting. He was a force to be reckoned with, a guardian of Eden’s gate, and Aziraphale was ready to reckon with the force seated next to him. He would fix, he would protect, he would guard—as it had always been his design to do.
“Crowley, look at me.”
“Angel-”
“Look at me.”
Yellow eyes rose and met the Angel’s intense ones.
“They’re all…the scars…they…”
Aziraphale shook his head slightly. He looked at Crowley, somewhere between pleading and surprised reverence. “They’re because of me. And I can’t ever forgive myself. My dear, what you’ve done, what’s happened-what you’ve endured on my account-”
“Don’t start, Angel,” Crowley tried.
“I’m sorry.” Aziraphale was as tormented as if he had laid the scars down himself. “I’m so sorry, Crowley.”
His eyes shone and his voice caught in his throat. But it was not a weak despair; it was a resolute solicitude, a brandishing of a shield. Emotions flickered like thousands of candles in Aziraphale’s bright eyes—but it was his emotions that made him stronger.
“Stop it, Angel. Don’t look at me like…that.” Crowley tried for a flippant retort, waving his hand weakly towards Aziraphale’s expression.
“Like what?” Came the low, amused challenge.
“Like that!” Crowley growled. “All soft and angelic and sanctimoniously protective and…”
At Aziraphale’s raised eyebrow, Crowley huffed in annoyance.
“It was my choice, Angel. It was my choice, every time. Every single time,” he said, quite hotly. “And I’d do it again. I’ll always do it because I’m selfish, and being here without you is so boring, and-and I’ve grown accustomed to your company, is all, so don’t go blowing things out of proportion. It was for selfish, self-centered, self-serving reasons.”
Aziraphale’s lips twitched in response. He gave Crowley a knowing smile.
“I see. If you say so, my dear.”
“I do say so,” Crowley replied testily, rolling his eyes.
Abruptly, Aziraphale sobered, holding Crowley’s gaze fiercely.
“I am sorry, dear boy. If I would have known I never would have-” He stopped himself. “Well, I would have tried to help. But maybe…you’ll allow me to help now?”
Crowley frowned.
“How d'ya mean?”
The Angel had a spark in his eye, a new star burning hot, intensity quivering in his brow.
“I’ve decided that it is only right that I should find a way to sort this whole thing out. And I have a theory.”
Crowley looked skeptically at Aziraphale.
“A theory?”
“Well, we must start somewhere, my dear.”
The Angel shifted towards the foot of the bed and selected a blanket. He turned and tossed it around Crowley’s shoulders, knowing the demon preferred to be warm. The demon’s slight shivering stopped beneath the added layer.
“I’ve been thinking-”
“-dangerous pastime, Angel-”
“-and I’ve decided that determining the source may assist in finding a resolution,” Aziraphale continued, despite the grumbled interruption. “Now. You said you don’t know where they come from? You’re not certain if they are messages from…Above or Below?”
Aziraphale punctuated the A and the B in the words with small pointing gestures.
“Probably Hell,” Crowley said with a shrug. “Pissed enough demons off over the centuries, it’s one of my specialties. Could be a grudge of some kind or another.”
“Yes, yes, I see…”
“And your theory then?”
“Well.” Aziraphale scooted closer to Crowley, resting a hand lightly on the demon’s blanket-covered leg.
“My first thought upon seeing your scars was that they seemed similar in appearance to an angelic punishment I’ve witnessed.”
Crowley stiffened.
“And if it were something in Hell, why would they punish you here? Torturing is in the job description, and they seem to be more…hands-on in that department.”
Aziraphale’s hesitant assumptions gave voice to the doubts that had dug themselves into the deepest parts of Crowley’s mind.
“The method of it all, dear boy, has me thinking this can’t be demonically sourced.”
Crowley’s eyes were wide and he searched Aziraphale’s face. In a small voice, he uttered the question he’d hardly ever allowed himself to consider. Doing so broke something inside of him he didn’t know was still there.
“So you think this could be…from Heaven, then?”
“I think that may be why your efforts were fruitless, Crowley. If it came from Up There, I don’t know if your power could have made any difference. At least that’s the way I understand these sorts of things. And…” Aziraphale removed his hand from Crowley’s leg and smoothed at his pants. “I could…I could feel it. When I was looking at the scars. Not without a shred of doubt, of course, but I’m almost certain. I could feel the remnants of the power. It felt…well, it felt similar to mine.”
Azirapahle stopped his fidgeting and glanced down curiously at his palms.
“May I…?” The Angel looked back up at Crowley. “You said you’ve tried to heal them, and I don’t know if it’ll make much difference, but if they came from a power like mine, then maybe I could do something.”
“Do something like…?”
“I’m not sure, but I could try to take some of the pain away, or attempt to guard against future ones, or fix your-”
“Fix what, Angel?” Crowley interrupted, his words hard.
There was a flashing of an emotion within him, an inkblot staining his heart, that made him feel like his scars were what broke him, like his Angel saw them as ugly things to remedy and hide. Intoxicating, isolating shame. In the face of that acrid scorn, the demon lashed out with forked tongue.
“Fix what? The scars? Because they’re-they’re unsightly? Because they’re vile? Because you can’t stand to look at them? Because I hate them?”
Aziraphale reeled backwards as if he’d been slapped, mouth open in shock.
“Oh, my dear. No, that’s not-they’re just… scars, Crowley.”
The demon was silent, a storm cloud that threatened ruinous lightning and terrible thunder
“You…hate them?”
Aziraphale’s query made Crowley chuckle darkly.
“How can you not? They’re vile, grotesque, as black as the deepest pits of Hell and as red as the hottest of Satan’s flames. They’re so…they’re so…demonic .”
He spit the word out, sounding much too loud in the quiet room, voice dripping with disgust. Aziraphale could only stare. His voice had abandoned him, his mind racing everywhere but never landing.
Crowley lowered his eyes to his hands. They were clenched and rigid, as if he could keep himself from falling apart by just holding on tightly enough.
“I know what I am, alright?” He bit out cruelly. “I know that these scars are probably Her way of reminding me of my place. Reminding me what exactly I should be. I’m a Demon and saving an Angel is not befitting one who has fallen, because Satan forbid there’s any damned gray area in this whole fucking cosmic ineffable plan!”
Crowley’s anger turned the air around the two hot, prickling and crackling like the fire that had long since gone out in the fireplace. His hands twisted and wrung themselves in his lap and his eyes were burning. Aziraphale blinked, his face a sad, open book.
“Oh. Oh, Crowley.”
There was heartbreak in the way the Angel whispered his name, like the quiet prayer of a grieving soul. Slowly, Aziraphale reached a hand out and settled it atop Crowley’s own.
“How could I hate any part of you?”
He rubbed a thumb lightly over the back of Crowley’s hand, feeling the coolness of his pale skin. More than anything, he wished he could give his friend the answer to the ‘why?’ that had tormented him so. But would knowing that change anything?
Aziraphale used his other hand to raise Crowley’s chin, forcing the demon to meet his gaze. The yellows of his eyes swirled, anger and fear and despair crashing like waves in a stormy sea.
“Crowley. If anything is to come of this ordeal, let it be that you know this with certainty: I could never hate you. Nor any part of you. I have not ever entertained the thought, not from the beginning, not from our time together here on Earth, not from Armageddon, not now.”
The Angel swallowed thickly, eyes the color of a clear morning sky.
“And we are far more than just the labels we came here with, dear boy. We have made something for ourselves in the undefined shades of gray, becoming not better or worse, but more real. The truest forms of ourselves.”
A single tear shone as it collected like dew at the corner of Azirphale’s eye, falling off his cheek to land on the blanket between them.
“We are friends, Crowley. But we are even more than that, are we not? You have a special spot in my bookshop, and you know how to make my tea, and you meet me for walks in the park, and you go to dinner with me when I’ve found a new restaurant to try. Hate you? I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. You’ve shown me I need not stumble through this unending existence, I could live it, all of it, instead. You helped me fall in love with this world. I…I could never hate you.”
The last part came out as a gentle exhale of the soul, a whisper clad in layers of emotion.
“These-they don’t change anything?” Crowley choked out, feeling exposed and raw.
“You’re beautiful, Crowley. Nothing could ever change that for me.”
There was a delicious rose color spreading across the Angel’s cheekbones at the honest admission. The words made Crowley’s heart stutter in his chest. He averted his gaze, unwilling and unable to meet the Angel’s.
“I don’t know what you think will happen, Aziraphale. But you’re more than welcome to try.”
Aziraphale blinked, taken aback by the abrupt change in topic, but said nothing. It was easier to avoid the sincerity of the last several minutes than it was to acknowledge them outright. He’d recognize that tremble of fear in Crowley’s voice anywhere.
For the second time, Aziraphale got to his feet and sat behind Crowley on the bed. He settled with one leg tucked beneath him, his knee pressed lightly against Crowley. With great care, the Angel shifted the blanket from atop his friend’s shoulders, pulling it down to pool about Crowley’s waist.
There was no gasp or intake of breath this time, for which the demon was grateful. And there was the glaring absence of his earlier shame, the burn of his embarrassment. His Angel’s nearness set him at peace.
A sudden hand on his back made Crowley jump. Aziraphale’s thumb brushed against the fresh scar, eliciting a small hiss from the demon. The finger immediately moved.
“Sorry, sorry. I won’t go near that one.”
Aziraphale was quiet for several moments and Crowley found himself drifting, eyes drooping shut despite his best efforts. The Angel’s touch felt gentle on his skin. It was almost relaxing, the heat that lingered where Aziraphale’s hand traveled, he could just about get lost in it…
And then something in the air shifted.
It was no longer just the sensation of Aziraphale’s hand on his lower back, the softness of the blanket, the early sun filtering through the window. Everything grew sharp, the room all at once suffocating and choking with an electric power.
Crowley gasped and he arched upwards. His entire back blazed with a new warmth, not painfully like in the past, but in a pleasant sort of way. It was like the first rays of sunlight touching the Earth once the night was done, coaxing a resurgence of life with outstretched fingers.
The sensation was overwhelming. Crowley twisted his hands into the blankets, knocking his empty glass onto the floor with a loud crack. Whatever it was felt bright, and…good. It felt like Aziraphale. Angel. His Angel.
Crowley clutched at his chest, at the heat that had taken residence there, clawing at his skin as if he could wrench free the emotion raging within. Everything, everywhere, felt like his Angel.
Behind him, Aziraphale’s eyes were blown wide, his hands trembling. He watched as the patchwork of scars, old and new, flickered to life beneath his palms and begin to glow.
The deep red and black of the scars seemed to well up like blood from a wound and then dissolve into the air, fading effortlessly from existence.
A bright light enveloped the room, emanating from the pair. It expanded to fill every corner, a dazzling supernova, and then collapsed in on itself, falling back and hiding away inside the now changed scars on Crowley’s skin.
What was left behind were rivulets, streams and brooks of gold, beautiful amber lines adorning the demon’s back. His skin was like fire beneath the Angel’s fingers but he dare not move them.
And then it was quiet. There was a vacuum of silence, a stifling stillness.
The air still held the lasting embers of raw energy and power, but the gentleness, the familiar ink and old paper and brewed tea of the bookshop, was returning.
Crowley came back to himself not slowly, but all at once. From a weightless singular feeling to the crushing reminder of reality. His body felt shaky and boneless, his mind shrouded in a fog, his pain …gone? He struggled to open his eyes. There remained that peculiar feeling welled up and poised inside of him, he couldn’t place it. It felt like it was too much to hold within him, hardly contained by his corporeal form. Crowley shut his eyes, feeling faint and feverish and…changed.
“Angel…”
Darkness tinged his vision and he pitched forward, no energy left to remain upright. Aziraphale jumped after him, hands soft but strong on his arms.
“Crowley?”
The Angel pulled Crowley back to lean against his chest. That familiar cherry wine hair was plastered against the demon’s forehead, his profound yellow eyes half-lidded and unfocused.
“Crowley, are you alright?”
Aziraphale searched his friend’s face worriedly. After several nerve wracking moments, Crowley’s gaze focused and he found his Angel’s eyes.
“What happened?” He rasped out.
Aziraphale sighed in relief and sagged back against the headboard. He gently held Crowley to him, as close as possible.
“I…I don’t actually know, my dear.” Aziraphale swallowed. “It was just supposed to be a regular miracle, of sorts, a standard healing, but then…”
He searched for the words, watching Crowley’s face through it all.
“Then it changed, Crowley. The minute it left me and the light touched your skin. I’ve never seen anything like it.” His voice was humbled, awed. “It was so powerful, so-so-”
The Angel shook his head. He didn’t quite know what to say. Absentmindedly, he began to run his fingers through Crowley’s hair to hide the way they were shaking.
“They don’t hurt,” Crowley mumbled, his eyes slipping shut.
“Good. That’s good. But, Crowley. Your scars, they-”
Aziraphale floundered, all language failing utterly short. How to tell his friend that the scars on his back now shimmered like sunlight on water, a sunset setting fall leaves ablaze, warm and golden and glittering? He hardly comprehended what had happened himself.
“They’re…different now. They changed.”
Crowley’s brow furrowed. His mind tried to focus on the words being spoken above him but they skittered away from his grasp. With a shiver, he burrowed further into the Angel’s arms, face pressing into Aziraphale’s chest.
“I really don’t know what that was, my dear. But if it eased your pain, it was worth it.”
Time, which had felt suspended and frozen around the pair, seemed to restart. Aziraphale became aware of how tired he felt, the tangled mess of the blanket beneath them, the faint ticking of a clock. Everything had been moving so fast and now it all slowed.
Just as he had those agonizingly long days ago, Aziraphale watched the very human rise and fall of Crowley’s chest. He counted each one out of habit.
With a sigh, he settled back into the pillows and found a comfortable position. Who knew how long they would be like this. The world, the galaxy, the universe could wait. Aziraphale had no intention of moving before it was strictly necessary.
It was enough, the Angel mused, that Crowley was there with him and breathing and alive…more than enough. Real beneath his fingertips. Free of pain. Beautiful in every meaning of the word. Worthy of all the stars and sunrises and rainstorms and planets that he had created.
Aziraphale’s mind slipped back to the miracle, to the fantastical glow and ferocity of the power.
Had he just believed hard enough?
Had he just refused to consider that there was no discernible answer, so he pulled one miraculously out of thin air?
Aziraphale shook his head uncertainly. It was as if the energy within him and the energy within Crowley had connected, something inside them flaring to life and heightening the miracle.
At that, a thought sparked and fizzed in his mind like a firework.
The feeling he’d had as his hand had brushed over Crowley’s scars was the strongest one he harbored; it was as much a part of him as his wings, his bookshop, his affinity for the tastiest of human delicacies.
Love.
The very depths of his soul whispered the truth that he’d clutched foolishly within him. It was a word neither of them had ever before uttered, for fear of what door might be opened at the sound, of what uncharted and unknown future it promised. He’d hardly ever let himself think it consciously.
Love. Or at least, the emotion they shared for one another. Their connection. Their partnership. Their-
Aziraphale couldn’t think of another term for it. It spelt love in every language he knew and existed in every second spent beside Crowley.
Could it be so simple? Aziraphale hardly dared to think it.
But it was true that the mind and the heart played integral parts in the harnessing of such ethereal power. His imagination, his belief, in a way, was what was tested each time he grasped at the ivory well of his energy. It would stand to reason that the strength of his emotions could tip the scales.
Love, as the poets and writers and believers sang, was a many splendid thing, the stuff of dreams, an ever fixed mark. Did this not capture the stardust and wonder and sweet nectar of hope within him? His unwillingness to go on without Crowley, his stubborn refusal to be parted from him? The way Aziraphale was who he felt he should be when he was by his side?
It was a desperate hope, a desperate wish. Love. Love.
The hand in Crowley’s hair stilled. He brushed a thumb delicately across the resting demon’s brow. Foolish, so it was, but maybe just foolish enough to have made all the difference in the world.
Aziraphale watched as Crowley’s lips moved and he bent closer to hear.
“What was that dear boy? I didn’t quite catch it.”
Crowley forced his eyes open and stared up at Aziraphale. His expression was vulnerable, his voice a hoarse whisper. It was as if every thought that had blossomed and fallen within Aziraphale’s mind had been spoken aloud, each one known intimately by the demon he held tightly to him. It was jarring to be so known when they’d spent so long hiding.
With a gentle smile, so genuine it surprised the Angel, Crowley repeated his words.
“Thank you.”
Aziraphale searched the vibrant yellow of Crowley’s eyes before they slipped shut again, his throat tight.
“Always, my dear.”
Was it fifty? More than one hundred? He hadn’t had the time to count the scars on Crowley’s back and had hardly dared to consider the true number. He wasn’t aware it had been that many times. How close had he come to danger, to death, to discorporation and he was none the wiser? How much violence had been nudged off course in order to save him? And each one, each instance, another lash upon Crowley’s back. For centuries they had been scorched crimson and soot along his skin, cruel and painful. Now they lay golden and warm and radiant. A true reflection of the goodness that remained within the fallen Angel.
With tears in his eyes, Aziraphale rested his hand atop Crowley’s head as the demon settled into a relaxed slumber. There were birds beginning to sing outside the bookshop window and the rising sun promised the first day without rain in weeks. For the moment, with Crowley held in his arms, Aziraphale felt like maybe the days in front of them might finally look different than the ones they’d left behind. And maybe they would finally admit what they truly meant to one another.
Maybe.
After all, life was a wonderful jumble, assortment, and portrait of maybes.
And both a Demon and an Angel had decided that their lives were—and the shared existence they’d built for themselves was—worth living.
They had a whole future worth of lovely maybes to sort out.
Together.