In Which Aziraphale is very much an angel, and Crowley is very much a demon. This was originally two very short chapters, but I think they go better together.

Neither character belongs to me! Both belong to Pratchett and Gaiman.


Crowley wasn't thinking, didn't want to think. Thinking had not been going well for him lately. After he let Aziraphale out at the Prince of Wales Theater (there had been a half-hearted suggestion that Crowley come along as well, which Crowley had less-than-politely declined), he drove in circles for over an hour, then parked in a black mood and stalked into a club he was familiar with so that he wouldn't have to think. It was one of the lower-rated clubs in that part of Westminster, but it was a good place to go when he wanted easy tempting and easier distractions, and he entered fully intending to take advantage of all the possible nuances of the term "easy."

But he knew as soon as he set foot in the place that something was wrong.

Something was very wrong, if only because it felt so right-he could smell it, almost, if it was a smell, cold in his sinuses turning to fire in the back of his mind, thrilling its way into his bones. At the bottom line, after taxes, after dividends, Crowley was both a serpent and a demon. Both of those creatures have strong instincts—demons are stronger regarding weakness, serpents regarding prey, and whatever was so very wrong-right about this place was singing the song of a bad job well done to both sets of instincts.

His eyes fell closed and he lifted his face a little, lips parted, throat and jaw working soundlessly in an attempt to flood his senses with information.

Adrenaline and serotonin came first, flavored with the heady odor of human arousal, but that was to be expected. Identify the types, anticipation-release-anxiety-fear-lust-want-demand and something that smelled suspiciously corporate, ignore that. He moved deeper into the club, threading around undulating bodies with his eyes closed (he used his eyes because they were convenient and added an extra layer of perception, not because he really needed them, but in this situation they would only get in his way).

Alcohol, LSD, meth, cannabis, tobacco. A barrage of various prescriptions from what had to be nearly forty pharmacies (three of which Crowley didn't recognize), mixed with lazy-spiking hormones; some kids were having a pharm party upstairs. He grinned and stored the information away for later use.

He focused on the fear he'd smelled before, canted his head, licked his lips, tasted. Most of it was the type of fear Crowley would expect from a place like this: edgy, sharp, excited. But there was one thread—only one—that tasted legitimately terrified, and this was surrounded by calculation-curiosity-testing-one-two-three-BLOOD BLOOD BLOOD and PAIN and Crowley opened himself further with a little hiss of confused annoyance. The blood had no signature that Crowley could tell, it was almost totally clean.

Clean blood was an impossibility. There were no antibodies, no pathogens, no lingering molecular tags that Crowley could use for identification. He passed it by. Block out the blood and the pain. Ignore those. Focus on the terror-thread, let it precipitate out and dominate. Good. Now break it down into its component molecules.

Subject was male, confused, definitely drugged. Prescription, mostly pills, but there was almost certainly some anesthetic in there as well and something Crowley thought he didn't recognize but it sang to him, and it sang of fire and hate and vindictive glee.

There was one smell he did recognize, definitely, and it was that of a 1945 Chateau Rauzan-Segla threading its way through fear and rage and his eyes flew open. His awareness of individual chemicals faded somewhat, leaving him a little dizzy in its wake.

No, he thought, while something much deeper whispered yes, yes. But it didn't make sense, it couldn't.

If Crowley had been more cognitive, he might have had questions, might have wondered why Aziraphale was here, what had happened, whether other people had been involved. But he wasn't; he was running on instinct and had dropped all pretense of humanity, and all he registered was the sharp fact that something was wrong. Aziraphale didn't have clean blood.

He followed the thread to a back door that said Alarm Will Sound, pushed it open. Stairs. Wet on his hand, and he looked down and saw red on the push bar of the door, smelled blood, and he blinked slowly and moved onto the landing, let the door slam shut behind him.

There was blood on the stairs, too, but Crowley didn't bother with it, didn't need to follow it. The taste of rage was almost tangible, now, and he followed that to the cement of the alleyway, to the feathery shadows behind the rubbish bins.

The first things he saw were the wings, both corporeal and very, very obvious, blood and mud in the feathers. He let out a hiss of disgust, then composed himself enough to form words.

"Aziraphale, what the hell did you do?"

The angel's head came up, unfocused eyes blazing white, and it choked out a Word.

Crowley yelled and threw himself out of the way, resisted the urge to retaliate (it ran counter to his interests, though not his instincts, but after centuries of faffing about with an angel he was pretty good at resisting his instincts), and grabbed Aziraphale by the shoulders before he could get out another blast. "It's me, you stupid fuck!"

The angel was raving under his breath in seventeen languages at once (most of which had never been heard by human ears) as Crowley hauled him out of the narrow space he had holed up in. He flailed blindly, missing the demon entirely, then sagged back to the ground, panting, curling around broken ribs.

Most of the blood wasn't Aziraphale's; this was the source of the clean blood Crowley had smelled earlier. But Aziraphale was out of his mind with pain and rage, and was high as a kite on a blend of narcotics that would have laid any human out flat in ten minutes, and Crowley would have bet real money that he hadn't done that to himself. One wing was dislocated, the other was broken in at least two places; God only knew why he had them out in the first place, but it didn't bode well at all.

Crowley reached down and tried to pull Aziraphale to his feet. It wasn't far to the angel's shop, and Crowley really didn't want to put him in the Bentley, and as long as he was conscious they might as well walk, but Aziraphale screamed and lashed out again with wings and fists. His aim was better the second time around, and Crowley staggered back.

Crowley swore, his lip cut and bleeding, and squinted in the sudden light of sunset. Never mind the sunglasses; he'd get new ones, but for a moment he seriously considered leaving Aziraphale where he lay. It wasn't his lookout, after all, and it had been a long time since he'd seen Aziraphale like this. Last time, Crowley had been the one who'd done it. Fixing this might be more trouble than it was worth, and he might have actually left if the raving hadn't slipped to human languages for a few seconds.

"Needles." The angel's voice was low, very nearly a hiss. "Needles…hands, hands. The river. Hot. It's on fire. Everything's," and he went over to French, "on fire, climb out of it, I," Latin, "can't see, can't," back to sobbing Aramaic, "fly, so much smoke, God, please don't—"

Crowley had heard enough. "All right," he snapped. "All right, you complete arse, hold still. Fine. Okay." He moved like a striking snake, grabbed Aziraphale's wings and shoved him down, managing through sheer luck to trap one of Aziraphale's arms underneath him. He planted one knee squarely between his associate's shoulder-blades to pin him down, other knee across Aziraphale's free arm (it was an uncomfortable position, but it worked). He used his elbow to press the broken wing flat, then grabbed the dislocated one in both hands and twist-pulled. There was a pop, and Aziraphale yelled and tried to scramble away, but all he managed was a pathetic little fluttering motion; Crowley had him by the wings and there really wasn't much he could do about it.

But then Crowley let go. Mistake.

Aziraphale tucked his broken wing close and rolled, rose to his knees and spun, snapping his good wing—the one Crowley had just fixed—up and back and catching the demon in the mouth as he started to stand. And as Crowley stumbled, Aziraphale swept the wing around again and knocked his legs out from under him. The back of Crowley's head hit the pavement with a crack.

He saw stars, and then he saw red, and he stood, walked to the stairs, and twisted off a piece of iron banister maybe two feet long. Behind him, Aziraphale hunched on one knee, a study in asymmetry: one wing extended in warning, the other dragging on the ground; one arm clutched against his chest, the other braced against his knee for balance as he watched his Enemy turn towards him. His eyes narrowed.

Crowley approached warily, the iron bar in one hand. There was no way Aziraphale was going to listen to reason; the angel had passed way beyond that and was now focused entirely on survival, and he saw Crowley not as his friend but as his Adversary. He would kill Crowley if he could.

Aziraphale snarled another Word, which Crowley sidestepped, and Aziraphale shrieked and lunged, off-balance but still very dangerous. Crowley stepped to meet him, careful, careful, time it, don't miss

You can make a lot of different noises with an iron bar. Hit it against another metal bar and it says spang, tap it on a brick and it says tink. Iron and PVC make a delightfully sharp whumping noise when struck together. The noise that iron makes when it hits an angel's left temple at high velocity sounds something like whunch.

Crowley breathed through his nose for a minute, enjoying the sudden silence. And then he set about bundling the angel into his car.


Aziraphale swam up through dreams of fire and red-tinged darkness and surfaced with a gasp, then winced when his ribs creaked. He sat up, being careful about his ribs, but they didn't protest again.

He was in the little-used room above his shop. Morning sun slanted gold through the curtains and spilled onto the floor, splashed across the faded quilt, and he half-smiled. He rarely used the first-floor flat above his shop, but he liked it well enough. The hardwood floor was old and dark, and bare but for a braid rug by the side of Aziraphale's bed, and none of the furniture was under two hundred years old (tightening the bed-ropes and changing the ticking every spring wasn't that big a price to pay for comfort).

He stretched experimentally. He felt stiff, but the pain had dulled to a low ache, almost a memory, so he swung his legs down and put his feet on the floor and started to rise. One foot protested a little, but the skin was whole, the bones and tendons knit. Good.

"One of these days," he said into the quiet, "I shall have to stop going places while I'm not conscious." Because really, this was the second time he'd turned up in his shop with only a vague memory of how he'd come to be there, and it was getting ridiculous.

He stood fully, straightened, and frowned, trying to remember. Blood, pain, drugs—a circle, and he shuddered—slipping, dear God, sliding, and everything was fever-hot and there was a haze of smoke and his wings wouldn't work, then cold pavement beneath his hands, angry yellow eyes in a sharp face. It's me, you dumb fuck! Wake up, you have to turn over, you're concussed. Come on, you have to drink something, blessit, what d'you think I bloody am, a bloody nurse?

Aziraphale started to laugh. Two for two, he thought, and reeled in his wings and started to dress. I have to find Crowley. Hopefully this time I won't have to deal with him kissing me

And his thoughts ground to a halt and he stopped dead, blinking. That was it, wasn't it? That was the bit he'd been trying to recall. There had been an Incident last time, he remembered that, but Crowley had been the one to initiate it. The first time, he'd had little choice, but the second time, that was just after Aziraphale had told him—

And it all fell into place. He almost laughed. He'd been so dense. Well, that's all right, then.

He finished getting dressed, went downstairs, and there he found another surprise: three circles, hastily drawn but not a line out of place, names and dates correct, a burned and bloody feather in the middle, and the Heptameron open on the floor beside it. And, on the desk, a bowl of what could only be holy water. It was accompanied by candles and chalk and something that smelled suspiciously of Mastic.

What in Heaven?

For a few minutes, Aziraphale stood like a stone, thinking, concentrating. He recognized the circles, of course; he knew better than anyone how to read them, how to draw them. He knew without consulting any reference that someone had opened a direct line to Heaven (dies Mercurij, hour of Beron, and Aziraphale was unsurprised), but these were human magics and he hadn't seen them in nearly five hundred years.

Someone had summoned Raphael. The technique laid out in the Heptameron called up a host of angels, and while the circles on the floor were in the traditional layout, these had been designed for Raphael alone. That particular technique wasn't documented in any text Aziraphale knew of.

"Think," he said aloud. The last day he remembered was Saturday; he'd gone to the theater alone and had wanted to walk home. Okay. He'd started to walk home. Okay.

Next thing he remembered was waking up in some club full of pounding be-bop. A disco of some sort, probably. And after that...after that, a rush of visions he didn't want to think about, followed by darkness. He remembered enough. He remembered Names, four of them. It was enough, and he nodded to himself.

It was a good place to start. The circle on the floor had been active on Wednesday evening—again, he was unsurprised. Raphael ruled Wednesday, and Aziraphale had been badly in need of a healer. So he'd spent at least three full days in the shop, almost totally unconscious, and today was…when? It didn't matter.

He briefly considered calling his superiors and asking what had happened, but decided against it—attention was the last thing he wanted to be calling to himself right now.

He took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. All right, then. The facts as he knew them were as followed: Crowley had found him, brought him home, kept him from dying until Wednesday. Then someone other than Crowley had called down Raphael (Adam? Adam wouldn't need a circle. Besides, Aziraphale very much doubted the Antichrist was the type to do this sort of thing. Unidentified Third Party, then) and banished him again. Aziraphale had slept for another day or so, probably, and here he was.

He had questions, and he was going to get answers. There was the small matter of the people who had drugged him; he would have to take care of that before he did anything else. It wouldn't do for them to be allowed to leave.

That they might have already returned home did not occur to Aziraphale. He knew how demons thought. These would remain on earth until their poison had run its course, and then report their success to their superiors. He grinned, eyes like flint. Foolish. Oh, very, very foolish.

No time to waste, then. He had to catch them before they caught on that they were being hunted or that he was uninjured. Aziraphale didn't anticipate any problems; he was good at hunting demons, and he had made very sure when they'd laid hands on him that he would be at least a step ahead. Hard little smile still in place, he took a file and, very carefully, began to clean his nails.