"No thank you!" Crowley shouted, jerking himself out of his chair by the arms, suddenly enraged by the fist banging on his door, "We don't want any visitors, well-wishers, or distant relations!" Film quotes came out of him at the strangest times, but were generally appropriate to the situation. "Or amazon or deliveroo or misplaced missionaries or—" He ripped open the door with a strangled raaah! sort of sound, having grabbed the knob with his injured hand, ready to give whatever hapless courier had wandered up to the wrong door a piece of his mind. But it wasn't amazon, or deliveroo, or even a trim young man in a white shirt and a black tie who was called Elder for some reason. It was Azariah.

"Hello," he said, breathlessly, "can I come in?" Without waiting for an answer, the librarian pushed past Crowley into the flat. Slack-jawed, Crowley stared at him, still holding open the door. Whatever he'd been expecting, it hadn't been this, and he watched dumbfounded as Azariah hurried to the kitchen counter and set down the large box he was carrying before shedding his coat. "Shut the door, Anthony," he said, hanging up his coat.

"Wha— how did you get up here?" Crowley asked stupidly, doing as he was told.

"I buzzed Mrs. Jenkins."

"Who?"

"The downstairs neighbour. Don't you know anyone in this building?" Crowley's brain slowly ground back into gear, and he took in Azariah's frenetic movement, the high, nervous pitch of his voice, his darting eyes, and the pacing steps he took between the entry and the kitchen, unable to hold still. Crowley snapped into high alert, stepping away from the door.

"What's happened?" Azariah wrung his hands, glancing at the box, then to Crowley, then back again. "Azariah, why are you here?"

"I couldn't go anywhere else." Azariah's eyes glistened, and the tension and fear in his voice struck Crowley like a knife. Instinctively he stepped forward, hands outstretched. Azariah rushed at Crowley and fell into his arms, and he could feel the librarian's body shaking.

"Hey, hey," Crowley wrapped his arms tight around Azariah, squeezing their bodies together, one hand on the back of his head, "hey, you're safe. You're safe here. It's okay. It's okay." Slowly Azariah collected himself, and when at last he stepped back, Crowley's hands remained on his shoulders. "Tell me what's going on." Azariah looked over at the box on the kitchen counter. Wordlessly, he pointed at it. Crowley looked at it, back to Azariah, and back to the box. Releasing the librarian, he walked over to the counter, and Azariah followed, lingering off to the side. It looked like a perfectly ordinary sort of garment box to Crowley. He lifted off the lid. Immediately the cardboard fell from his nerveless fingers, clattering on the floor.

"You recognise it, don't you?" Azariah's question trembled. Crowley reached into the box, and pulled out the tartan bow tie. The fabric was soft and smooth as he rubbed it between finger and thumb. He pressed it to his face, as if to inhale the aura of Aziraphale that came from it. Replacing the tie, Crowley picked through the things in the box, pausing with his hand pressed against the waistcoat.

"Where's his ring?" he murmured absently, and Azariah flinched.

"Oh! I—" Crowley turned to see Azariah pulling the small gold ring from his finger. He held it out, and Crowley took it, turning it over in his fingers. It was the real thing. They were all the real things. He looked up again.

"Where did these come from?"

"They were in my closet."

"In your closet? How'd they get there?"

"I don't know," the panic was rising in Azariah's voice again, "I don't know, I don't know Anthony, I don't know where they came from but they've always been there and I just never saw them and I don't— I don't—"

"Here, wait— come, sit—" Crowley cursed himself for never having gotten a couch, despite Azariah's repeated comments that he really ought to have one, as he led the librarian over to the living area. Comfortable as the chairs were they wouldn't do for this, and instead Crowley helped Azariah sink down onto the rug before the fire. He held Azariah's hands until they stopped shaking, then withdrew them onto his knees. "Tell me what you can." Azariah took a deep breath.

"I looked at the book. The page about Aziraphale. And then I started trying to remember things about my past, and I couldn't. Then I found the box," he shook his head, "I remember seeing it every day but it's like I never really saw it before, and then all of a sudden I did, and it had those clothes inside, and the waistcoat labelled A. Z. Fell, and it's like I remember them, but I don't, and they aren't mine, but they are—" Azariah clutched his head. Crowley waited. Disconcerted, he realized that he, too, had a vague recollection of seeing the box in Azariah's closet. How had he never noticed it, though? "They're his, aren't they? The clothes?" Crowley nodded.

"Yes." He paused, then went on, "When you say you can't remember anything about your past—"

"I've tried to remember anything," Azariah's hands dropped, and he looked up at Crowley, "Anything about my childhood, my parents, where I might've lived before. There's nothing. I still can't come up with anything. Nothing beyond the past eighteen months, when I started at the London Library. What?" Something had changed in Crowley's face.

"That's," Crowley's took a long breath through his nose. In all his imaginings, he'd somehow never thought of this scenario: Azariah learning the truth, while still having no memory of his former life. The truth was, he decided, still the only way to deal with it. "That's right about when Aziraphale disappeared."

"What do you mean, disappeared?" Crowley sucked the breath in through his teeth.

"Azi, none of this is going to be any easier to hear."

"Tell me." The demand was shaky, but firm. Crowley nodded.

"Right. Okay. So…" He stared upwards, trying to figure out the best place to start. "So, Aziraphale used to live at the bookshop, right, and we'd just finished solving a big stupid problem between Heaven and Hell, which involved Heaven losing its Supreme Archangel to an elopement. Then God's spokesman, the Metatron, came down and asked Aziraphale to come back to Heaven and be the new Supreme Archangel. And for some reason," Crowley fought to keep his tone level, "he decided to go. Then—" he stopped, thinking of how to explain.

"That was when he disappeared? Back to Heaven?" Crowley shook his head.

"No. I— we— Aziraphale and I, we have this… connection," Crowley pressed his hand to chest, to that spot in his ribs where he'd felt like a dagger stuck while Aziraphale was in Heaven. "We could always feel each other, on Earth, and when we had to go to our separate realms. We could always tell that the other was there. But then, about a year after he went back upstairs… it disappeared. Just cut off one day. He was just, completely, totally, gone. I got Muriel to go see—"

"Muriel, from the bookshop?"

"Yeah. Erm, they're an angel, by the way. Anyway, I got them to go up and see what was going on, and no one in Heaven knew what was going on or where Aziraphale was, and they were all saying that he'd been erased from the Book of Life. Which is like… the ultimate death for celestial beings. You're just gone, removed from existence. So that's what I thought happened to Aziraphale. And when that happened lines up with the earliest things you can remember."

Crowley, who had been contemplating the rug as he tried to find the words to explain it all, finally looked up at Azariah. The librarian looked completely overwhelmed. His eyes were wide, his face pale, and his fingers were clenched on the fabric of his trousers as he stared at Crowley.

"Are you believing any of this?" Crowley asked quietly. Azariah's hands tensed even more, and Crowley could see him chewing the inside of his mouth. Then he nodded minutely.

"I think I have to be," Azariah said shakily, "I don't know how, but nothing else makes any sense. Not that this makes any sense. How could I be someone else and not know it? Where did I come from, if I used to be someone else? How could I be an angel? Am I really me?" He'd started to tremble again. Crowley reached out and covered one of his hands with his own uninjured one.

"I don't know," he said, holding Azariah's gaze, "I don't know, Azi, I don't have the answers, but I know you're here, you're real, and you're safe with me." Azariah nodded, looking down and taking several deep breaths to calm himself. When he glanced back up, his expression shifted, as he really looked at Crowley for the first time, taking in his reddened eyes, haphazard hair, the shirt hanging off his shoulder, his choice of pyjama trousers; the phone lying on the floor, and the phone shaped hole in the wall; the open bottle on the sideboard, and the glass of whisky on the table.

"You look terrible, Anthony."

"Thanks." Azariah looked down.

"What have you done to your hand?" Crowley made a non-committal noise, but his eyes slid guiltily sideways to the patch of rug near them that was dented in and splintered with shards of the floor underneath. "Anthony!" Azariah carefully took Crowley's crudely bandaged hand and pulled it over to his own knee. Delicately he picked at the knots until they came free and the black fabric strips fell away, revealing the deformed, discoloured appendage beneath. Crowley winced. Azariah's fingers hovered over it, wanting to touch, but not wanting to hurt. He made a decision, and looked up.

"Show me a miracle."

Crowley opened his mouth to object, but Azariah's gaze was firm this time, and he gave in. With his free hand Crowley lifted his fingers. At once his hand healed, bones knitting perfectly together, swelling, bruising, and pain all vanished. Azariah stared down at Crowley's hand on his knee, and his eyes followed it as Crowley lifted it, bending, flexing and turning it over.

"Good as new." Crowley dropped his newly-healed hand into his lap. "Azi, I'm sorry," he said suddenly, "for all of it. For not telling you the truth sooner. For deceiving you. I didn't mean to, but I did. I just…" he trailed off, looking for the words. "…I tried not to want you. I tried not to let my past with Aziraphale influence me. I guess I didn't try very hard in the end. But it's you I care about, for you, not for who you used to be, or might be. I hope you can believe that." Azariah sniffed loudly, and cleared his throat.

"I can try," he managed to say, glancing aside into the fire. After a long moment he said, "Is Anthony your real name?"

"More or less," Crowley said with a slight smile, "I gave it to myself, a long time ago. It used to be just Crowley, but I decided the modern world needed a full name. Anthony J. Crowley."

"What's the J for?" Crowley shrugged, and gave the same answer he'd given once before.

"It's just a J, really. I liked the sound of it." Azariah managed a breath of laughter at that.

"And is this," Azariah gestured vaguely at Crowley, "what you really look like?" Crowley nodded.

"I can look like other things, and change my general appearance pretty easily, but this is my body. Had it for a long time. Can't do anything about the eyes though," Crowley pointed at them, "they, er, weren't my choice. Oh, and there's the wings. I usually keep those put away."

"Wings?" Azariah exclaimed, distracted from Crowley's comment about his eyes.

"Yeah. Hang on, I'll show you." Crowley clambered up from the floor and backed away, judging his distance carefully from the wall. It'd been quite a while since he'd had his wings out, and it was with a sigh of relief that he let them grow and unfurl from his back, huge and black, reaching nearly across the room as he stretched them, before letting them fall into a relaxed, semi-folded position. Azariah rose slowly and moved towards Crowley. His arm stretched out, then retracted itself quickly.

"May I?" he asked. Crowley nodded, and Azariah reached out to carefully touch the wing closest to him. He'd been expecting it to be hard and smooth like a raven's wing, looking at the shine, but the feathers themselves were soft against his fingers. Wonderingly, Azariah circled around Crowley, trailing his fingers through the feathers and to the tip of the wing. He took in the raggedness of the wings' edges, the missing feathers, the patches where they were thin. There were places he thought he could see skin beneath them at the top of the wings, but didn't dare touch. Where the wings' structure was thickest, near Crowley's back, the feathers were much smaller, and looked softer, almost like down. Azariah stepped closer without conscious thought and reached up to run his fingers through them, down the spine of the wing, almost to its roots between Crowley's shoulders. Crowley shivered and made an unintelligible noise, and Azariah snatched his hand back.

"Did I hurt you?"

"No, uhhh," Crowley's voice had an embarrassed edge to it, and though he couldn't see his face, Azariah was sure he was blushing. "Just, er, just, maybe don't touch them right there."

"Oh. Oh, oh my—" Azariah's eyes widened as he made the connection. "Is that— Is that why those two spots on your back are so— oh my god," he stammered, flushing himself as he realised what he'd accidentally been doing during intimate moments without knowing it. Hurriedly Azariah made his way back around to face Crowley, which allowed them both a moment to pretend that hadn't happened. "I wasn't expecting them to be so soft," Azariah said, breaking the tension.

"Well, they're still angel wings," Crowley said, shrugging awkwardly, "Just… damaged." Azariah glanced out the kitchen window, where at some point the sky had gone dark.

"I should go," he said, and started to move towards the door.

"No, wait—" with a rustle of feathers, Crowley folded away his wings, and reached out to catch Azariah by the arm, "Stay. Please stay. Azi, look," Crowley let go, but moved slightly closer. "I don't know where this leaves us, but I know you're frightened. You don't have to go through this alone." He rubbed the back of his head and sighed. "I don't have all the answers. In fact I've barely got any at all, but please, stay. We can talk more tomorrow. If you want." Azariah wavered, then nodded. "Great! Great," Crowley said with an explosive exhalation, "well, erm, you know where everything is. You take the bed, I'll see you in the morning."

"What about you?" Azariah asked, knowing full well there was nowhere else suitable for sleeping in the flat.

"I, er, don't actually need to sleep," Crowley said sheepishly, "I just like it." Azariah's mouth opened, then closed. Then he said,

"Goodnight, Anthony."

"Goodnight, Azi."