Chapter Three: Cream & Cufflinks
Aziraphale woke to the sound of rain.
Inside, where it was safe and warm, he could look down upon the city, arms wrapped around himself, hair tousled from sleep, eyes catching lightning as his ears caught thunder.
...on the streets far outside his window men who worked in the early dawn light turned their collars against the rain, hurrying beneath awnings until they could finish their work and get out of the wet chill...
...the damp, gray sky was angry looking, like an old bruise finally fading...
...a woman or two stamped their feet down and hurried from doorway to doorway, perhaps bringing news of a birth, or a death, or a marriage, perhaps bringing only idle gossip, but it was no doubt more, for their determination could be felt in the pregnancy of the humid rain...
He was too far away to even see any of it, but he knew all this was happening.
And he was not a part of it.
Rich or poor, healthy or sick, young or old, he was not a part of anything of the earth.
...one child scurried in between newly formed puddles, sallow in the grayness, body thin and small yet there was still some life to him, causing splashes as he went, finding some comfort in the cleanliness of the rain...
...and it began to wash dirt free of the streets, it had been a long time since the last rain...
...and it also washed free the stench of wine rotting in the cracks of the cobblestones from the heat...
Aziraphale dressed in this eery, almost unnatural light and brushed his hair back, tying it up in a loose silk bow. Not for the first time he caught himself examining his reflection in the full length mirror beside his bed, the lines of his wrists, the curve of his cheek, the width of his waist, the blue of his eyes. Little things like that he had never thought to explore before, the way a shirt would compliment this aspect of his figure, or that tint to his eyes.
It was something in the air, he decided.
And the cufflinks that he wore, a gift he had received at the beginning of the century from Crowley, were the one thing he examined the most. Black opals, more discreet than Marie's had been, much small, much less garish, but they were a stone Aziraphale particularly liked, especially the way every color you could name and some you could not were flecked, to each their own own moment of contrasting opaque vividity down to the very depths of them.
His wrists felt delicate, when he wore them.
It was not, perhaps, the most conventional way of thinking for an angel, for they were beings not supposed to understand or even care about their own beauty, but Aziraphale was interested in the human body he had never properly explored. It was one he had worn for many, many years, becoming accustomed to, but not familiar with, it.
Aziraphale thought perhaps a cup of tea and some breakfast would do him more good than any mirrors or any windows or any stagnant rain could.
The mood of the Bed & Breakfast was heavy, noble-men and -women listless and lacking laughter, up for no reason at all, except for the rain of course, at this unusually early hour. Breakfast was served early by the starched, proper matron who ran the establishment, and Aziraphale settled himself down in a comfortable chair with a cup of tea, a slice of buttered toast and a good book to distract him. He had selected something that would keep him properly interested, Dante's Inferno, and though it was a rather unapropos for angelical reading, it was one of Aziraphale's favorites.
He had always liked good books.
The cream for the tea was sweet and the sugar sweeter. It was perfect for the early morning, perfect to improve his mood. The music to a saraband was still playing, unnervingly, throughout his mind, or perhaps throughout his heart, when it had not been doing so a few moments before.
"Mm," said a lyrical voice over his shoulder, "not exactly my style, but to each his own, mm?"
Behind Aziraphale stood Israfel, lounging with his elbow on the back of Aziraphale's chair, lips curved up like a few lines of music. He had eyes that were almost colorless, a page before a musician sat down to compose a symphony that had been carried around in his womb for months. Those very eyes scanned the few lines of the page Aziraphale had opened to, and then shrugged.
"Really," he went on, "it's a little bit too much."
"It's been a while," Aziraphale said, and closed the Inferno.
"All the music here has died," Israfel sighed, shaking his head. In the motion was the jingle of frost on the air and the tremble of robins in their trees. Music was not just notes breathless on a page or notes vibrating from an instrument. Music was the movement of all God's creatures, the sound of the air changing around their bodies, the murmur of their sighs, the faint tremor of their breath and the steady bass of their heartbeats.
"Is that why you've come?"
"A lot of us are around," Israfel said vaguely, sitting down in a chair that had previously been across the room, taking up in his graceful hands a cup of tea that had not been there before. "There is, you know, talk."
"It isn't just Paris?" Aziraphale felt grim.
"No," Israfel said. Places in the world were microcosms, replicas of all heavenly goings on. Paris, then, was reflecting some turmoil between Below and Above, feeling the ripples of malaise from that which it could not see and could not touch, and could only build skeletal churches to. "It's been a while since I've visited here, from Back There," the angel of music went on, "things really do change."
"The potential for change on this plane is greater than that on any other," Aziraphale murmured softly. That was why earth fascinated him. No one day was alike in any way to any other. Ageing a day made the people upon it change, the different air breathed in and out made the people upon it change, and in ten years the world could have transformed so drastically that it would be unrecognizable to an eye that had not watched it all, seen it all, and loved every moment of it.
"There is the smell of demons on the air," Israfel said, after he finished his cup of tea. Aziraphale did not flush or blink, though he knew Israfel could smell Crowley's scent upon him.
"There will be Death here, soon."
"Ah," Israfel murmured, "but Death, sweet, songless Death, is neither demon nor angel, Friend nor Foe, God nor man."
And he will be here one day soon for all of us, Aziraphale thought, unbidden, a prophecy that came to his mind swiftly and suddenly and left even before Aziraphale could catch it, and mull it over properly.
"I suppose I must get going," Israfel said finally, once he had finished three cups of tea, and he and Aziraphale had sat for a while in comfortingly companionable, angelic silence -- for angels did not need to speak, and gained more pleasure sitting side by side in the company of those that were their equals than talking about all the incredibly disheartening and dismal things they happened to Know. "You see, the queen is having a party to-night -- I hear tell she throws them all the time, and there is such music, such dancing, as you would never see again on this green earth! I wouldn't wish to miss is, or miss to wish it, if you know what I'm saying, not when I will never get another chance, they say, to see such gaiety again." Aziraphale nodded.
"I have been," he said.
"What was it like?" Israfel asked, then, "no, don't spoil it for me, I shall see for myself to-night. Perhaps I will see you there, and perhaps not, but I must say, those cufflinks are quite lovely, Aziraphale, but do make sure not to wear them around those smarter and more powerful than I am, for they reek of Below, and you can't be too careful."
...the children pressed themselves up against cracks in doorways in the depths of the city, listening to secrets they did not understand...
...puddles began to rise, like a flood of despair along the darkened streets, and it gave the women power as the watched it, for they thought that perhaps this was as Noah's flood, and only the city would be saved, while the bright lights and the sweet perfumes and the expensive silks of the palace would all be washed away by the waves rising higher...
...and somewhere in the city a demon was laughing in the rain, right outside the closed doors of an inn called La Fleur de la Libertie, where the light of a few weak candles shone through the slats in the window-shades, but offered little comfort to the cold world those gathered inside had locked away from sight...