It smelled of iron and sulfur in the hallway outside Crowley's flat. Iron and sulfur and deep, abiding hate. Hate was something only angels could smell, and it smelled like death, but more bitter, more aggressive. Aziraphale stopped breathing, but it was already in his nostrils.
He didn't knock. Always, always since the beginning of The Arrangement, since the beginning of time, Aziraphale had knocked and Crowley had barged in unannounced. But tonight things were different, and the air was too still.
When the door swung open, there was nothing but black.
"Crowley?"
It came out like a question, as though he didn't know that the demon wasspit there, as though he hadn't been able to feel him since the moment he set foot in the building.
"Angel," came the cool reply.
There was something wrong. Aziraphale knew it like he knew Good from Evil, like he knew the heavens. He fumbled for the light switch, momentarily forgetting that he could shine pure divine light anytime he felt the need.1
The perfect, white floor was painted with blood like terrible art, as was the soft, white leather furniture. Somehow, it still seemed clean, like the blood was there for decoration, and please don't touch, it was dreadfully expensive. It was almost a full minute before he noticed Crowley sprawled on the sofa like a cheap prop in a horror show.
"What on earth happened to you?" Aziraphale heard himself say, practically splashing in blood to kneel at Crowley's side.
"Try what in hell," Crowley muttered, sliding his eyes towards Aziraphale's shocked face. It was odd – he'd never seen the angel look quite so aghast at anything he'd ever done. It almost made the pain worth it. Almost.
"What did you do?" Aziraphale asked, his hands hovering uselessly over the demon's impeccably black, though doubtlessly bloody, shirt.
"What did I do? I chained myself to a big, spinning wheel and had at myself for target practice," he grunted, struggling to sit up.
"I mean, what did you do to leave them feeling so… human Down There?" Aziraphale said with a slight shudder.
"Well…" Crowley said, trailing off strategically and waggling his eyebrows in a particularly expressive manner that spoke, if not volumes, then complete sentences at the very least.
"Crowley!"
"Yes, you keep saying that," Crowley mumbled absently.
"Oh dear. Oh. Oh dear. I didn't think – I thought, if anything, that I'd be the one to…"
"To get flayed alive and half-discorporated by a bunch of idiots with brimstone for brains?"
Aziraphale sighed. "You know what I mean."
Crowley rolled his eyes, which looked an awful lot like doing nothing at all, what with the black glasses, except that Aziraphale could always tell, somehow.
"You're in the clear," Crowley said.
"Maybe I'm not! Maybe Up There is just waiting for things to settle down. Reports can take weeks to make it to the disciplinary department. They might just be sitting on their hands until I pop up for a—"
"You're not in trouble! For Somebody's sake, sit down. And hand me that flask."
Aziraphale crossed his arms for moment, but then complied. "How do you know? Did Down There have intelligence or something?"
Crowley took a long, slow sip before replying. He winced slightly at the sensation of the alcohol on his split lip, but he was far and away too exhausted to miracle any injuries away.
"Yes. And they know about us. Obviously," he added bitterly. He thought he could still feel blood trickling down the back of his neck and he wondered if he should mention it. He took another swig from the posh, silver flask. "Everybody knows. It'll probably be on the nightly news."
Aziraphale looked for a moment as though he might faint, but he seemed to think better of it when Crowley lost his grasp on his drink and flinched as it tumbles to the floor.
"Here, let me just—" Aziraphale scooped up the spilled flask and placed it on the shiny glass coffee table, which had probably never seen a coffee in its shiny glass life.
"Give me that!"
"Be quiet. Where are you hurt?" Aziraphale asked, reaching for Crowley's shirt.
Crowley curled in on himself like a frightened animal. "Just a moment there, Casanova. Just because you had your way with me once—"
Aziraphale sighed louder than one might think possible. "You're being difficult."
"I'm not being—look, it's not… pretty. Alright? So don't go all swooning and polite, will you?" Crowley uncurled slightly, like a delicate flower in the first days of spring.
"I am an angel, my dear. We have swords and things. I've seen more than my fair share of—Oh goodness!" Aziraphale fairly shouted, his eyes darting across Crowley's chest.
It was not so much 'wounds' as it was 'wound.' More wound than chest, in fact. The skin-to-internal-organs ratio was a bit lower than a mortal might prefer, or even survive, and Crowley looked, unsurprisingly, exposed and uncomfortable.
"You don't have any skin left," Aziraphale said, almost wonderingly.
"I have! A bit. See? Right there, between those ribs."
"How long have you been sitting here all… gutted?"
"I'm not what you'd call certain, really."
"What did they even do?" Aziraphale asked in horrified awe.
"They had me down for tea, what do you think?" Crowley readjusted again, this time so that his head rested gingerly on the arm of his poor, soaked sofa. "Look, if you're not going to put me out of my misery, can we perhaps save the logistics for another time and make with the divine healing and whatnot?" His eyes felt heavy, like there were tiny dumbbells on each of his eyelashes, but he sensed, on a human level, that he should probably stay awake a little longer.
"Of course," Aziraphale said gravely.
Contrary to every televangelist ever, angels did not heal humans. At least, it was considered crass in the more respectable heavenly circles. So it'd been a while since Aziraphale had healed a man, let alone a man-shaped being, and he wasn't entirely certain he'd be successful. He wanted to pray about it, but it seemed inappropriate.
With the face of someone about to perform impromptu brain surgery (which isn't so far off, actually), Aziraphale placed his hand in the center of the red and squishy area that used to be Crowley's chest. He was pretty sure the only thing keeping Crowley from being discorporated was pure stubbornness, but even bodies fueled by demonic impetuousness had their limitations, and Aziraphale could feel Crowley's nearing its.
"Could be worse, I suppose. At least they sent me up here to, how did they put it? 'Crawl like the filth I am until the end of days,' instead of keeping me… local."
"You got fired?" Aziraphale asked, looking alarmed.
"Nah. Not officially. They suspended me for Lack of Enthusiasm for the Pursuit of Evil. I think it's just Hell's way of keeping its collective arse out of the fire. Apparently, I'm more of an embarrassment than I'm worth."
It took concentration to revive the cells and molecules and other tiny earthly things that make a body, and Aziraphale didn't realise how tense he was until Crowley moves and he almost squealed.
"Oy, careful there," Crowley said softly. The skin on his chest was thin and sort of iridescent, but there was a lot more of it than there had been a minute ago, for which he was thankful. He was also thankful, against his better judgment, for Aziraphale's smooth fingers on his sternum. They were warm and comforting, which was ironic, since those hands were the reason for all the oozing and whatnot, however indirectly.
"Sorry, so sorry," Aziraphale muttered absently. He looked far off and focused. "Crowley?" He said quietly.
Crowley's head fell back and he closed his eyes, no longer concerned that they wouldn't open again. "Yes, angel?"
"Tell me again, how do you know I'm not to be called Up for our – for us?"
Crowley let out a sigh. He'd known it'd come to this. He'd known from the moment he touched the angel's naked skin that it would all come down to crippling humiliation and self-effacement. "Because your representatives were there, too."
"What?"
"Heaven, hell, a few go-betweens. It was the event of the season."
"But why would heaven—"
"Because They had a stake in it too, now didn't They? Wanted to see if I tempted you or if you were trying to save me, or some other absurd thing like that," Crowley spat bitterly.
Aziraphale's hand, the one on Crowley's nearly-whole torso, felt like it was on fire, and the sudden, desperate importance of the moment knocked the breath out of him, not that he needs it.
"Crowley, what did you do?"
"I told them… I told them it was, you know, the second thing. The idiotic one that most certainly did not happen," he added sharply.
Aziraphale shook his head. "No, it wouldn't. But you, you said that I tempted you to be good?" Aziraphale felt confused and more than a little horrified.
"If you want to put it that way. Although, I think your choice of words leaves something to be desired."
"You lied to them. You lied to them, Crowley, why did you do that?"
"For you, you stupid tosser. I'm a demon; we're built for torture. You, you're all delicate and squishy 'round the middle. You wouldn't have lasted ten minutes once heaven got hold of you. They'd have had your halo on a hook and your wings for curtains, angel, I'm telling you. They were fuming," Crowley ranted. It took effort, and his lungs hadn't quite re-acclimated to having flesh all over them. He still refused to open his eyes, more out of horror now than exhaustion.
A long, slow minute sidled by, in no apparent hurry.
"You… You lied to protect me?" Aziraphale asked, sounding a little baffled.
Crowley opened his eyes deliberately and glanced at Aziraphale.
"Could you please not make it sound so damn soppy? It was selfish, that's what it was. If they'd torn you to shreds, I doubt you'd be half as good in bed." He let out a small grunt of pain without meaning to, and yes, there was definitely still blood dripping down the back of his neck, and his hands and feet were a little numb and tingly.
There was a quiet snort, then an even quieter pressure on Crowley's cheek. Aziraphale's hand against his face was oddly alarming in a way that the hand on his chest was not. The hand on his chest had a purpose. The hand on his cheek probably did too, come to mention it, but not one that Crowley particularly felt like sussing out at the moment.
"Aaangel…" he groaned warily.
"Be quiet, my dear," Aziraphale said. His fingers ghosted over Crowley's lips, which were cool and still bloody. He sealed the cut with his fingertip, and sealed Crowley's mouth with his lips.
There was a long moment of absolute stillness. No one moved, no one made a sound, no one breathed. Finally, Crowley turned his head away a little and said, warm and close, "Uhm, angel?"
Aziraphale closed his eyes.
"Yes, Crowley?"
Crowley cleared his throat quietly.
"Does it occur to you that this is, you know, blatant and undeniable defiance of our respective superiors?"
"Do you even have superiors at the moment?"
"Fair point."
"And if I recall correctly, Up There has a personal stake in our continued fraternization," Aziraphale said thickly, his lips grazing the corner of Crowley's mouth as he spoke. "It's just. You lied for me, Crowley, do you understand what that means? Do you understand why that is so very important?"
"No…" Crowley said slowly. His still-numb fingertips seemed to be digging into Aziraphale's arm, and he wasn't sure how that had happened, but he couldn't figure out how to stop.
"You did something selfless. Something, dare I say, Good?"
Crowley made a small annoyed sound in the back of his throat and rolled his eyes, again. "Why must you insult me?"
Aziraphale smiled, and Crowley, though he could not see it, felt it against his cheek. "It means you have potential."
"I have what now?"
"You, my dear, have F.A.R.P."
"I do not!"
"Crowley, it's not a bad thing."
"Exactly! And I am. I am a very bad thing!"
Aziraphale let his mouth slip against Crowley's again, for a moment, and it had the desired effect of cutting him off mid-rant.
"All the more reason I should carry on trying to save you." It was not technically possible for an angel to be mischievous, but Aziraphale did a good impression.
"Are you serious? You are, aren't you?"
"Yes," Aziraphale said solemnly, "yes, I think I rather am. If you want me to be, of course."
Before Crowley could reply, delicate hands were removing his glasses, making his eyes smart. Crowley blinked rapidly, like a newborn foal, and waited for his eyes to adjust to the light—only, after a few seconds he realized that it was Aziraphale shining rather more than usual.
"You're really serious."
The angel smiled. "So you've said."
For one tenuous, heart-stopping moment, Crowley didn't move. There were several reasons why this was probably not a Good Idea, and quite a few of them involved words like "flaying," and "ooze." But there was one thing Crowley couldn't seem to ignore, and it was the way his black and scaly little soul reacted when Aziraphale was near. It shot bolts of protectiveness and contentedness through Crowley's ethereal being, and it made the thought of being alone seem unbearable, even though he was alone in hell and never knew the difference. But now he knew, and it seemed that this time the angel was the one holding out the shiny, red apple.
Crowley was tempted.
As best he could, Crowley leaned up, trying to kiss Aziraphale hard enough that he wouldn't have to think about what it all meant and why it felt so bloody good. Fortunately, Aziraphale reciprocated as enthusiastically as he could without getting blood all over his shirt.
Careful hands found their way to Crowley's belt, mindful of his chest, and Crowley could do nothing but twitch and moan and try not to move as Aziraphale's blessed, damned fingers squeezed and twisted and grasped at him with startling grace. A hint of vulnerability was just beginning to creep into Crowley's mind when Aziraphale pulled away and looked down at him.
"Am I—Is this too much? You're hurt and I. Is it?" Aziraphale asked, pleasingly out of breath.
Crowley could do nothing but smile and shake his head, helpless and undone, weak and willing and completely, utterly unconcerned. Without a second glance, Aziraphale slid down his body. After that, there was little else worth noting, except that apparently Crowley wasn't the only one who'd learned to make the most of the human tongue. And jaw. And throat.
1Though it didn't seem polite, given whose flat he was in.
