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Jun 17, 2019

If We've Got Nothing (We've Got Us)

He finds the first on a Tuesday, well over two months since he had stood his ground before the head officers of both Heaven and Hell and refused to allow them to instigate the apocalypse. Over two months since Adam had gone back to his family and Aziraphale had gone back to his bookshop. Over a month since he had stepped into a bath full of holy water and sent the legions of Hell running with tails tucked over his simple request for a rubber duck.

Over a month since Crowley had walked into hellfire in his stead, and come back to him unscathed and ready to take on whatever came next.

Whatever Aziraphale had expected to come next, it was not… this.

A single, dark covert feather, nestled in the crook of his wing.

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It is out of place among all of his pristine, white feathers, a dark mark on an otherwise pure canvas. He thinks perhaps it is a trick of the light, and finds himself stretching his wing open under the sunlight, where the feather looks no different, except perhaps it shines a little brighter.

He swallows down the apprehension clawing its way up from his belly, and plucks it out.

This won’t, he knows, solve the problem, but for now, it will have to do. He’s got a shop full of books downstairs to tend to, a lunch date with Crowley in a few hours, and a meeting to make with a scholar from halfway across the country, to determine if the parchment fragment the man had discovered was genuine.

He does not have time to worry about whether or not he is Falling, or to wonder what that will mean for his future.

Which does not stop him from doing so, even a little.

——-

Aziraphale cleans the second sheath from a dark pinfeather three days later. It is another covert, this one on his left wing instead. He leaves it there for an entire hour before pulling it, as well. On some level he is aware that plucking them will not stop him from Falling; it won’t even delay the inevitable. What it will do, is prevent him having to stare at the evidence all day, and perhaps more importantly, it will prevent Crowley from worrying.

One might argue the latter is also the lesser of the two reasons, but in Aziraphale’s experience, when Crowley begins to worry, he begins to panic, and when he panics, he begins to just do things, like a dog that knows it is supposed to follow a command it does not understand. He misplaces the antichrist and makes plans to run away to other star systems and drives through hellfire in an antique car with only sheer will to keep death at bay. As they had just managed to save the world, Aziraphale certainly is not about to endanger it again by becoming the cause of Crowley’s next bout of anxiety.

He places the second feather with the first, and tries not to think too much about it.

——-

After the second, the feathers just keep coming.

There are three more, and then seven, and then ten, within a week. One pristine, shimmering white secondary drops out, to be replaced by a blood feather that doesn’t lighten as it grows to a pinfeather. He manages to avoid Crowley for two entire days, until it will no longer bleed when he plucks it. The missing space is obvious, and he finds himself hiding his wings as best as he can when they next see one another for breakfast.

It doesn’t really help. Crowley is nothing if not observant, and more than a little justifiably paranoid, given their circumstances. “What’s going on there?” he asks, as soon as Aziraphale takes a seat at the table.

“Where?” Aziraphale asks innocently, looking around.

“Right there,” Crowley says, pointing elaborately at the wings Aziraphale is trying to keep tucked tightly to his body. “To your wing, right there. You’re missing feathers. Get into a scuffle, have you?”

“Nothing like that,” Aziraphale assures him, and it is even a little true. It is nothing at all like having gotten into a battle. It’s much more like finding out he chose the wrong side of the battle, even though he had believed it was the right thing to do. Even though he still believes he had done the right thing. Even though he had known that this might be the consequence. “Just a bit of a moult, I expect.”

he doesn’t challenge the excuse. He turns back to his drink, and Aziraphale can hardly stand the silence. He wants so badly to ask for Crowley’s attention, all the while knowing that it is a blessing he does not currently have it.

Or perhaps, he thinks glumly, it is a curse. Hard to tell these days.

——-

After another week, Aziraphale fears he cannot keep hiding. There is only so long Crowley will let him not answer his phone, and he knows he’s reached the limit when the locked door of his shop jingles cheerfully and swings wide for the only other person that has no need of a key. For a brief moment Aziraphale considers hiding, but there are only so many places he could possibly go, and none of them would leave him any sort of dignity.

“Angel…?” comes Crowley’s soft call, as though he were in a library instead of a bookstore. “You in here?”

“Back here,” Aziraphale answers, without leaving the aisle he’s in. If he doesn’t leave it, he may be able to prevent Crowley from his usual orbit, and possibly even hide his wings well enough Crowley won’t notice.

Of course, his plan fails to take into account the fact that the act of hiding his wings from Crowley would be unusual enough to notice. On any normal day this inattention to detail might have mattered a great deal, but today, Crowley rounds the corner in an unusually dramatic manner and says: “Where’ve you been? I’ve been calling all day.”

Aziraphale blinks. He has not heard the phone. “No service,” he says, brow furrowing. “Your doing again?”

Crowley gives him a dry look. “Wouldn’t be very smart of me, to ruin it if I needed to use it, now would it?”

“What do you want, Crowley?” Aziraphale says, hoping that the answer is something, because nothing has a lot more implications he doesn’t have the ability to handle right now.

“Nothing,” Crowley tells him, and a muscle in Aziraphale’s jaw jumps as he clenches it. “I just- well, you’re okay, aren’t you? We’ve got to stick together now.”

“I’m fine,” Aziraphale assures him. “Did you need something else?”

Hurt flickers over Crowley’s features, almost too quickly for Aziraphale to clock, and he might not have noticed it at all, had he not been searching for any sign that Crowley suspects he is up to something. “No,” he says, retreating a step. Aziraphale sways forward, but keeps himself from following. “I guess not.”

“Ah, Crowley?” Aziraphale says, before Crowley can escape entirely. Crowley pauses, and Aziraphale sorts through all of the millions of things he wants to say to him, before finally settling upon: “As long as you’re here, may I ask you something you won’t like very much?”

Crowley’s brows rise, clearly not having expected such a question, and Aziraphale can’t blame him, because he never expected him to say that, either. However, Crowley makes a little motion with one hand to invite him to proceed, and Aziraphale somehow keeps from wringing his hands.

“It’s, erm, it’s about… well, I’d like to know what happened when you Fell?” Aziraphale’s heart climbs up his throat when Crowley bristles, and he rushes to continue. “N-Not about- well, you see, I- I was wondering about what happened to your…” He trails off, because if he says what he hadn’t meant to be saying in the first place but definitely has to say now to prevent there being hurt feelings, Crowley will almost certainly guess his predicament. “To your wings…”

Even through the dark glasses, Aziraphale sees Crowley’s eyes shift to catch a glimpse of the wings Aziraphale is trying hard to keep hidden. Crowley’s are tucked neatly behind him, pitch-dark and almost inconspicuous, despite their size. He does not answer quickly. In fact, he does not answer at all.

“I’m sorry,” Aziraphale finally says, surrendering. He doesn’t want a fight. Not now.

“Nothing happened to them,” Crowley says, like it has been torn from him without permission. The soft sound of his feathers brushing against one another fills the room as he opens his sleek, black wings a little, just enough to emphasize his meaning. They look rougher than usual, with missing feathers in a few places and a vague sort of mottling along the lead edge that might only be a trick of the light. “Feathers all came in black, next moult after the Fall.”

“Black?” Aziraphale says, suddenly much more confused. He, obviously, had not associated with any demons immediately following the Fall. No one had. After all of the rebellious angels had been cast out of Heaven, no one had seen or heard from them for a very long time, and the next time they had, they looked… different. Worse for wear, certainly, but in the same basic form as they take today, black wings and all.

Crowley nods. “Been that way ever since.”

Aziraphale’s mind races. Black feathers. The ones he’d been plucking were darker than his own, but not black. He had assumed there was an interim stage, moulting darker with time or with deeds. “Not grey, then?”

Slowly, Crowley’s wings close and he stares at Aziraphale as though he’s just been socked in the gut, and he does his best to hide his wings now. Aziraphale really has overstepped, he thinks.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, only this time he manages to actually sound like he means it. “I didn’t mean-”

“Do you think it’s possible to Fall upwards?” The question is so out-of-the-blue that it startles Aziraphale, who can do nothing more than stare at Crowley as soon as he’s asked it. Crowley, for his part, does a very good job avoiding eye contact.

“Well, I- I think that’s just called flying,” Aziraphale says, unable to think of anything intelligible to give him as an answer. It’s not a very fair question. Being cast out from Heaven is an extremely one-way ticket on a train Aziraphale has accepted he is riding. But, he realizes with a second start, Crowley isn’t asking for Aziraphale’s sake. Both of Crowley’s wings have pink skin around the alulae, too. “Why do you ask?”

“Curiosity,” Crowley says, looking distinctly uncomfortable, which is an obvious lie, or at least mostly a lie. “I just thought, you know, that if angels can Fall, shouldn’t demons be able to un-Fall?”

Aziraphale tries to follow his meaning. “You mean, become angels again?” He finds that as soon as the words are out of his mouth, they bring with them something he is certain he does not deserve: hope.

“And why not?” Crowley asks defensively, even though there is nothing to fight against. He looks very much as though he would like to slither out of his skin to escape the conversation he’s started, but he forges ahead anyway. “What’s the point, what’s the point of all of it, if you can’t ever get better? Where’s the reason to do good, if Hell’s just going to punish you for it, and Heaven won’t let you back no matter what? Doesn’t make any sense.”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale asks, and he knows it sounds like an argument brewing, so he continues through the beginning of Crowley’s half-formed rebuttal. “I hope you’re right.”

“-and… er… you what?” Crowley stops to take a breath he doesn’t need, and just stares at Aziraphale.

Aziraphale hesitates, holding onto the last vestiges of his former hope, the one where he did not want to worry Crowley. However, if he’s guessed right, something is going on and they’re both going to have to deal with it eventually. So, he loosens his wings, letting them sag open enough that his bare alulae and plucked secondaries are clearly visible, and Crowley’s eyes can’t seem to look anywhere else.

“Your wings…” Crowley breathes out, sounding every bit as damaged as Aziraphale had felt when Crowley had told him the bookstore burned down.

“I think I’m… I think I’m Falling ,” he says, the words so fragile he is afraid they might break as he says them. “I think I have been, for a while now.”

Crowley is still staring, and although Aziraphale has known Crowley for over six thousand years, he does not recognize the look in Crowley’s slitted eyes. Aziraphale has seen pain and anger and upset and worry. He had seen, or thought he had seen the full range of human emotions cross Crowley’s features at one point or another, but Crowley is not a human and Aziraphale comes up short.

“Why didn’t you say something?” Crowley manages, eyes finally ticking up to meet Aziraphale’s. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You’ve done enough worrying for the both of us for months,” Aziraphale says. “And what could you have done about it, even if I had?”

“I could have made sure you weren’t alone, for one,” Crowley says, his wings drooping a little before they spread out halfway, and then flare into full view. Aziraphale can see missing feathers all over the insides of them, and two primaries gone from damaged skin. He’d plucked them, or cut them out, or clawed them out, by the looks of it, and Aziraphale couldn’t understand why .

“Why wouldn’t you want to- to un-Fall?” he said, not sure what they should be calling it.

There’s an expression he recognizes; offense. “Well I didn’t exactly mean to, now did I?” Crowley asks. “It was all that saving the world business that did it, I expect. Very un-demon-like of me.” His face falls back into something unrecognizable, but Crowley’s next words bring with them sharp relief and understanding. “And apparently very un-angel-like of you.”

Regret, Aziraphale thinks with a twinge behind his ribs. It doesn’t suit Crowley at all, and only serves to make Aziraphale wish to smite whatever had caused it, which is terribly inconvenient, as he suspects that is himself.

“What do we do now?” he asks instead, small and more than a little frightened of the answer.

Crowley’s wings fold, but not tightly. He has no reason to hide them anymore. “We keep going,” he says after a moment of thought and a shrug. “Nothing else we can do, really.”

———

They do not, exactly, Rise or Fall.

Aziraphale has never appreciated the experience of a moult. The outcome, a brand new set of undamaged, clean feathers, cannot be argued with, but the process is always messy and itchy and exhausting. As soon as he stops plucking, it seems that he drops feathers even faster, and their return in the form of soft, grey feathers leaves him utterly drained.

Normally, angels have no reason to sleep; it’s a vaguely horrifying idea, just going unconscious like that and not knowing if you’ll come back or not. Aziraphale tried it once, four centuries ago during his last moult, and had regretted it as soon as he’d woken. Four days had gone by, just like that. He could have gotten any number of things done. He could have read a book. Ghastly business, sleeping.

Still, he finds himself nodding off at his desk, and winds up at Crowley’s flat a few minutes later, with no idea what he plans to do next.

“I don’t want to sleep alone,” he says, and only realizes how that sounds after he’s said it.

Crowley seems to understand anyway, and lets him in and shows him to a bedroom that looks as though it’s never been used. “Do you want me to wake you?” is all he says.

He hesitates, and then nods. “Please.”

When he wakes, Crowley is perched on the end of the bed, not paying him any attention but not leaving him alone, either, exactly as he had requested. Crowley’s wings are more grey than black now, paler than Aziraphale’s own but nowhere near white. He’s got them open, limp to either side of him a little like a bird, sunbathing in a particularly delightful sunbeam, except there is no sun, and Crowley is hardly a bird.

Perhaps most surprising of all, is that there is a book in Crowley’s lap. Aziraphale has heard of dreams feeling real and, despite the fact that he knows angels and demons do not have dreams, he worries for a moment that he’s in one.

“Pigeons,” Crowley says, only looking up when Aziraphale fails to answer because he has nothing at all to say. Crowley tips the book up so Aziraphale can see the covers, and it appears to be a bird identification book. Crowley lifts one wing and twists and turns it to its limits, just so he can look at it, and then splays it across Aziraphale so he can look, too. “They’re pigeon grey.”

Aziraphale’s heart goes soft and warm and he cannot help his smile. “Pigeon grey,” he repeats, so fondly. He loves pigeons. “They’re very human birds,” he tells Crowley as he struggles into a sitting position as well, facing Crowley at the end of the bed. Crowley’s wing lifts only enough to allow him to move, before settling back on his lap as though on display. “Humans called them rock doves and domesticated them ages and ages ago, because they loved them so. They believed that they were kind and beautiful and peaceful creatures. That they were perfect to live alongside.”

Crowley smiles, the sort of smile Aziraphale would not mind getting lost in for a few days. “Do you really think we’re anything like that?” he asks. “We’re a bit too rough around the edges, I think.”

“Even feral pigeons are well-loved by humans,” Aziraphale says. He manages to stop looking at one part of Crowley in order to look at another, his fingers tracing down the line of a single, sleek primary toward the tip of Crowley’s wing. “There’s always someone feeding flocks of them in parks and cities.”

“There’s only two of us,” Crowley says, eyes ticking to Aziraphale’s silvery wings for only a moment. “Hardly a flock.”

Aziraphale chuckles and looks up so that he can watch Crowley’s face when he says: “They bond in pairs for life, you know. Pigeons, I mean.”

Crowley holds very, very still, without breaking eye contact. “Do they really?” He obviously has not missed Aziraphale’s meaning.

Aziraphale nods, just barely a motion at all, and smiles uncertainly. “I don’t think we need a whole flock,” he ventures tentatively. “Do you?”

Slowly, Crowley closes the book and sets it aside, his wing dragging over the covers between them to fold out of the way. He shakes his head and a small smile alights on his features like a wary bird. “No, dove. I don’t.”

———-

Their new, Earthly wings grow in, one feather at a time, until they wear matching soft greys, dark and light and patterned in ways no angel’s or demon’s have ever been. They spend their days among the humans, where Aziraphale continues to not sell anyone any books, and Crowley continues to cause mischief he no longer needs to take any credit for with anyone and they are, if not happy, at least content.

And at night, when the humans around their home are asleep and the world rests upon her laurels awaiting the break of day, Aziraphale can be found, more often than not, at Crowley’s flat. Or at least, what used to be Crowley’s flat, but through virtue of occupation now belongs to them both. This arrangement is new and unusual and tentative, and unequivocally what both of them want, which is why it works so much better than their last arrangement, which hadn’t gone that badly at all, in the end.

They do not hear from either of their previous sides for a very long while, and not in the way they are accustomed. The first to arrive is an angel, who folds his wings to his body so tightly they look like a backpack, and he ducks his head and tells them almost without a sound that he thinks they did right, to stop the apocalypse. He asks to join them, and Aziraphale looks at Crowley until Crowley concedes that no, they cannot turn him away. There’s another war coming, and they may as well collect as many as they can before then. The angel, Hadriel, gets his first silver feather less than a month later, only days before the first demon arrives to join them, too.

“Perhaps,” Crowley tells Aziraphale that evening, after they have settled on the couch together, “we will have a flock after all.”

Aziraphale spreads one wing over Crowley’s lap like a blanket, every atom of his being relaxing into the gentle feel of Crowley’s fingers as he begins to preen Aziraphale’s sleek, silvery feathers. “Wouldn’t that be something,” he says, and he closes his eyes, and he smiles.

#good omens #good omens fic #ineffable husbands #my writing #if We've got nothing (we've got us)#pigeonverse

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