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English
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British Angels and Demons
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Published:
2019-07-28
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1,829
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1/1
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With Wings Aflame

Summary:

It always went something like this: he’d wake up in a sweat, tangled hard in his sheets and gasping as if the Earth had run out of air.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Work Text:

It always went something like this: he’d wake up in a sweat, tangled hard in his sheets and gasping as if the Earth had run out of air.

Usually, the breathing would get easier. He’d tune out the dream, get out of bed, take it out on his plants, and then start the day. It wasn’t good or nice. (But then again, neither was he. He wasn’t. At all.) But it was something. It was something.

This time, though, everything happened all wrong.

The breathing got harder, the dream filled his mind, he fell out of bed, and couldn’t quite get to his plants. He also couldn’t start the day; that was because, judging by the darkness of his room, it was most definitely still night.

He had fallen. He had fallen. From where? He had fallen... It burned. Breathe. In. Out. No; that burned, too. He had fallen. From above? No, from the bed. The floor was cold on his cheek. It did nothing to stop the burning.

It burned.

It burned.

It burned.

Then, he was drowning, choking on acid and sulphur. His wings were flames. His lungs, two bombs, exploding, firing shrapnel that cut and tore and seared.

He pulled, untwisted, and suddenly he was free, tearing the binds off his limbs. He had fallen. From where? The bed? The sheets lay wrinkled and damp at his feet. The only sound in his quiet, lonely flat was the pounding of his own heart—so human, yet so incredibly far from it.

He hated these dreams, the nightmares of his demonhood, because they made him hate. His superiors. His kind. God. And most importantly, himself.

How dare he have asked so many questions? How dare he have felt the blazes of Hell? How dare he have failed at every turn, too good to be bad, yet too bad to be good? He shouted down his plants with these thoughts, just loud enough to block out the hammering in his chest, just loud enough to see their leaves tremor and rattle in their pots.

It wasn’t enough. They just couldn’t understand. They would never understand.

It wasn’t enough.

He’d thought, in his scrambled and raging state, that maybe the furniture might understand. Maybe if he threw them hard enough, far enough, slamming his throne into the wall, flipping his desk, sending his answering machine backwards (he’d nearly smashed the bird statue too, the very one, the one that saved not only Aziraphale but himself that fateful night, but caught himself just before he could lay even a finger on it), might make them understand.

It didn’t.

They didn’t understand, and he understood even less.

He had fallen again, to his knees this time, a strangled cry choked by the vice of his throat and his fists in his hair. There was a weight on his shoulder blades, and though he wasn’t feeling close to passing out (though his exhaustion begged to differ), he saw black out of the corners of his eyes.

His wings weren’t flames. They had been, once, and he felt the pain now as if it was happening all over again. But they were ash, now. Cold and dry. Singed and scorched. Hideous.

His fists flew. Black feathers between white knuckles. They fluttered helplessly to the ground.

Again. And again. Until he cried out, and it ceased.

 

 

Sleep was meant to be an escape—why else would a demon do it?—but now it was only becoming a problem in itself.

An escape from his escape, that’s what he needed. Alcohol was out; his hands were shaking too hard to hold a glass, and his legs would not budge. The only other thing he could think of was down in Soho, most definitely not sleeping and most likely tending to his books.

 

No. Absolutely not. He couldn’t let the angel see him like this.

But it wasn’t getting better. Usually it got better.

The breathing would get easier. He’d tune out the dream. Get out of bed. Take it out on his plants. Start the day.

It was all wrong. Everything was wrong. It was all out of order, and there were pieces missing.

The answering machine and his home line were unhooked. Crawling, he picked his cell phone from the wreckage and dialed blurrily.

 

 

Somewhere down in Soho, an angel would hear a bell ring.

The angel in question, of course, already had his wings, so it shouldn’t have come at such an interest.

What did come at an interest was how exactly it had rung. He could’ve sworn he’d closed up shop hours ago, yet here it was, the ringing of a bell, and for no good and welcome reason. He huffed, putting down his book and his glasses, and made his way out of the back room.

“Aziraphale,” a voice came by his ear, and he nearly jumped right out of his shoes.

“Oh! Oh, Gabriel. What a... what a pleasant surprise, seeing you here.” Aziraphale swallowed.

“Isn’t it? Anyway, we caught wind upstairs that you’ve been involved in a little... affair?”

Aziraphale's blood ran cold. They couldn’t have found out. Surely they couldn’t.

“...Oh? I don’t... Erm,” Aziraphale fumbled with his ring. “Affair, is it? And which one, pray, might that be?”

“You know! The foreign affair.” Gabriel looked on expectantly.

Aziraphale blinked.

“...The American one*?”

Aziraphale had to resist breathing a sigh of relief. “Oh, that one! Yes, yes, right. Quite a thing that was. Very good.”

“Yes! Doing good work down here. Which one did you think I meant?”

Aziraphale's blood ran lukewarm.

“Ah, er, well! There have been so many over the years, it’s quite easy to lose track!” Aziraphale wished, at this very moment, that Gabriel would kindly make himself sparse. He had a rather good book waiting for him back on his desk, after all.

It was then, of course, in saving grace, that the phone began to ring.

“Must be a customer,” Aziraphale said with a smile he really hoped didn’t look too nervous, “I really should answer. Good for business.”

Gabriel just raised his eyebrows. It was a wordless, safe answer. Aziraphale appreciated those. Nearly out of earshot, he picked up the ringer. (He eyed the clock as he did so. 3:20 AM. Well, no matter.) He answered with the same polite, business answer that he always did, as appropriate for one running a business. On the other end, someone was breaking down.

 

 

Ring.

Ring.

Ring.

“Hello, Fell and Company, how may we be of service?”

The voice cut through the smoke in his mind, clear as day and warm as sunlight. Crowley, however, realized too late that he couldn’t find his.

His breathing was ragged, his throat stuck and stinging. He slammed his fist on the feather-littered floor as he heard confused “hello”s from the other line.

Aziraphale would hang up. He’d hang up and Crowley would be alone again if he didn’t say something.

“Angel,” he choked out, suddenly exhausted by a single word. There was a pause on the other end, long enough that Crowley thought he’d gone, but then the voice came around again.

“Yes, I do have quite a wide selection of Oscar Wilde’s works. I’d be happy to come take a look at yours.”

Another pause, a bit of shuffling, and then the line went dead.

 

 

Through a stroke of pure luck, Aziraphale had managed to politely and curtly rid of Gabriel’s presence in his shop without so much as a hint of suspicion. (Or so he hoped.)

He had business to attend to, and so talk of the American affairs would have to be postponed. (Probably to Sunday. Hopefully to Never.)

He half-travelled, half-miracled his way to his destination, bringing nothing other than himself. That was really all that was needed for these sorts of calls. It was usually more than enough.

He reached the door of the flat, unlocking it with the spare key from his pocket. He’d never seen the flat in such disarray as it was right then.

Walking in, the place was dark; the only light came from the moon through the windows. Everything was scattered in a way that was entirely wrong for Crowley’s usually neat and tidy flat. His desk lay smashed, trinkets laying about like shards of glass. The throne was toppled and unseatable. There was a particularly nasty hole in the wall, and a plant lay shaking on the floor, spilling dirt from its pot. The corners of the walls, as well, looked sharper and colder than usual.

Aziraphale righted the plant before addressing the heap lying in the middle of the office. It was hunched and shaking, quite like the plant, but quite unlike the plant, it wasn’t spilling dirt. It did seem, however, to have spilled something else. He took in the mess of black feathers scattered around and hoped they had simply fallen.

“Crowley?” he called, as softly and carefully as possible. The heap did not budge, but it shook a bit harder. Aziraphale chanced some steps closer, until he was just near enough to hear a particularly heartwrenching sob. Then, through the muffled sounds, he heard his name.

He dropped to his knees, bundling Crowley in his arms. “It’s alright, my dear,” he whispered into red hair. “Just breathe. Breathe with me, alright?” Aziraphale inhaled, then exhaled, coaxing Crowley to follow. Crowley's own breath stuttered, once, twice, three times, before finally falling into a comfortable rhythm.

The sobs kept coming, breaking through the breathing, harder and more painful.

“There now, that’s it. You’re alright,” Aziraphale hushed, shifting their positions so that Crowley was using the angel’s chest as a pillow. He combed his fingers through Crowley's hair (which was much softer than he’d expected). “We’re just going to relax. Alright?”

(He’d tried to comb his fingers through his feathers, too, but a stern flap of wings told him otherwise.)

Minutes passed, maybe hours, before Crowley had finally calmed. Sunlight began to filter though the curtains.

“Crowley?” Aziraphale tried.

“Mm?” If Crowley hadn’t already been exhausted before, he most certainly was now.

“Alright?”

“Mm,” It didn’t sound like an affirmative or a negative. More like an acknowledgement.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“Alright,” Aziraphale paused, then tried something else. “Your wings...”

“Don’t.”

“They’re beautiful, you know.”

Silence.

“They really are. Like a raven’s.”

Silence.

“Such sleek and graceful birds, ravens. Quite a beauty.”

Silence.

“It’s not your fault, you know. The wings. They’d look beautiful on you no matter the colour. Plus, you always take such good care of them.”

A sniff.

“Come, let’s get you cleaned up.” As an afterthought, he glanced around the room at the carnage that remained. Crowley ducked his head as if in guilt. “I’ll help with the rest. Don’t you worry.”

Crowley finally looked up; he looked as if he hadn’t slept in centuries, but he didn’t seem quite so worse for wear.

 

“Thanks, angel.”

Notes:

*Although not usually interfering with American affairs, Aziraphale did, just this once, in 2008, because he believed, in a fit of grace, that the country deserved to have a proper leader for once. Whether he was right is to be debated, as with all else, but to this day he sticks by his decision and wouldn’t have changed a thing.