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Pain — has an Element of Blank —
It cannot recollect
When it begun — or if there were
A time when it was not —
-Emily Dickinson
On a Wednesday, one month after the end of the world, Aziraphale drops his favourite mug.
It only stays shattered and spilling tea into the plush carpet for a second or two, and still, Aziraphale frowns — but not because he shall always remember the tea stain or that the cup had been miracled whole. He’s an angel. He’s not clumsy. Something else must be the matter.
He lifts his right hand close to his face, since it appears to have been the source of the commotion. When the hot porcelain had touched his skin, he’d felt a kind of sharp pain, similar to being stuck with a needle. It takes a couple of moments of inspection, but then, there. Aziraphale frowns, staring down at the faint glimmer coming off the life line on his palm.
***
Aziraphale has never undressed much. He simply never had reason to. The clothes don’t wear out because he doesn’t let them, and he doesn’t usually sleep. Crowley, however, sleeps a fair amount, and when Aziraphale comes to bed with him now, sometimes it’s purely to keep him company. To his amusement, Crowley objects to street clothes in bed. It doesn’t seem much like him; likely another demonic ploy to get Aziraphale to shed some layers for once.
He’s glad he decided to undress with his back to Crowley, on the night he unbuttons his shirt and finds that his chest is, for lack of a better description, splitting open. Starting on top of his right pectoral, moving across the middle and under his left one, his skin has cracked, like marble under too much pressure. It gapes like some kind of bizarre wound, opening to a vein of gold. Stunned, Aziraphale prods at it and bites back a pained sound. The edges feel raw and inflamed, though there is no redness. He doesn’t touch the gold. He cannot imagine that being a good idea.
Instead, he buttons the shirt back up, citing coldness. Crowley spends the night trying to warm him with his lanky, freezing limbs. Ever so often, he brushes against the cracks and Aziraphale clenches his teeth.
The next morning, having made sure Crowley isn’t looking, Aziraphale wills his body whole again. When that fails to work, he gathers all his concentration to draw on ethereal energy and first pull skin cells together, as he would for a mortal, then molecules and even smaller particles, the stardust the universe is made of. When he opens his eyes once more, nothing has changed.
***
It’s quite wonderful what they have now, easy, gentle. Still, even without their respective superiors breathing down the backs of their necks, Crowley kisses him like he’s about to get stolen away. Aziraphale doesn’t usually find that reason to complain.
Except for today. Today Crowley pushes him into a wall of the bookshop with his usual fervour. Aziraphale has changed into a bathrobe — God, the shirt had chafed — and Crowley fists his hands in the front of it now, grinding against him, and then he shoves his hands inside, eager, hungry, and his nails slash across the crack on Aziraphale’s chest.
Aziraphale manages to bite back a scream, but he can’t stop himself from gasping, unmistakably in pain. It can’t have been a loud sound, but of course, attuned to him as he is, Crowley has heard it all the same. He stills, confusion spreading on his face.
“Angel, what— did I hurt you?”
“It’s nothing,” Aziraphale says, pulling the robe tighter around himself.
“Didn’t sound like nothing,” Crowley answers, still bewildered, and puts a questing hand on the edge of the fabric.
After a moment, Aziraphale drops his arms.
“It’s nothing,” he repeats into the ensuing silence, avoiding Crowley’s stunned gaze. “I’m sure it’ll go away.”
***
Over the next week, the cracks multiply. They go all the way down his left thigh now, sneaking over his belly, a large one clefting the middle of his back. One has appeared, annoyingly, right along his cheekbone. Aziraphale stares at himself in the mirror for a long time, after that one.
“Come on,” Crowley bursts out, “That’s so obviously not nothing. Lemme try.”
“I already did, I do doubt—”
“Shhh. Maybe it just needs something a little more occult, huh?”
Aziraphale glares at him, but does hold still enough for Crowley to take a gentle hold of his arm. Something like hope starts to bloom in his chest. After all, Crowley’s done many a powerful miracle. Maybe he really could help.
Crowley puts a hand to his temple. Aziraphale can’t usually feel him do magic, it’s too effortless for that. Now, after a while, a strange shiver runs down his spine. Then Crowley furrows his brow, and the air begins to crackle. Had any mortals been present, they might have felt it too — as if the molecules around them are heating up from the magical strain.
Nothing happens to Aziraphale’s body but the beginning of a headache. Crowley snarls in frustration. The molecules arrange themselves back into their usual formation as he stalks off.
***
Over the next two weeks, the crack on Aziraphale’s palm deepens, until he can barely use his right hand anymore. Oh, he could see himself living with that small a limitation, definitely with only a difference in looks — if only that were the extent of it. But no, he can distinctly feel something bleeding from him.
The damning first instance finds Aziraphale shelving books, a little slower than usual with one hand only — though the occasional frivolous miracle certainly helps — when for the first time in, well, ever, he has to sit down and take a break. Something like humiliation burns hot in him, then. Losing his taste for food hurts almost more. See, he has never technically needed it, but it always amounted to pleasure and there is little pleasure to be had amongst exhaustion and ache. Aziraphale picks at shortbread, swallows onigiri like it’s a chore. Leaves too much scattered around the plate until he begins to feel inadequate about wasting food that could have gone to someone who would have appreciated it.
When Crowley takes him to a neat little French cafe, it feels like one last act of desperation. Aziraphale surveys the possibilities spread out at the counter, crisp financiers, Paris-Brest with immaculate piping, strawberry mille-feuilles, Saint Honoré cake with lavender cream — and sighs. They go home.
Unfortunately, that barely constitutes an improvement. There is little comfort to be found in chafing clothes either, so Aziraphale spends most of his time lounging around upstairs, in various stages of undress, attempting to at least retain some enjoyment of reading. The shop has been closed for weeks. He has always been impatient with the dreadful people who try to take his precious books away, even on the best of days, and he really is in no state for that now.
The first time Aziraphale falls asleep, he doesn’t realize it until he starts awake again. The moonlight seeping through the curtains tells him it’s some kind of ungodly hour, the comforter draped over him that he left his vulnerable body in good hands. It still scares him a little, blinking himself out of consciousness like that. However, it soon becomes obvious that he can’t help it. And there is something to be said for a couple of hours of rest from ache and feebleness, even if he will eventually have to wake to it again.
These days, it’s Crowley who sits with him through the night, a lanky figure hunched over with tiredness and concern. For all their closeness, he never used to be as ever-present around the bookshop as now. Had his plants not been too scared to die, they would have likely dried out weeks ago. And oh, Aziraphale feels awful about it, but he snaps at Crowley incessantly, and because of such trivial things too — because he’s tired and pancakes taste like mud on his tongue and he has to lie on his right side to avoid putting pressure on the cracks when he, for whatever reason, would prefer the left.
When Crowley does sleep next to him, Aziraphale flinches away from his touch more often than not. It’s hard to avoid the painful parts. But one night, Aziraphale feels a snake slip under the covers with him instead, carefully coiling around his leg, hip, chest, sparing the cracks. The coldness of the scales is quite soothing. Aziraphale reaches down to pet Crowley’s head. A thin tongue slithers along the side of his thumb and something inside of him twists up in a different kind of pain.
“Let me go and help you,” and the hiss near his ear is an echo of temptation, though this is more about the kind of words that are easier said into the dark. “Search for something, I dunno. Humans have all kinds of strange knowledge stowed away in the far corners of the world. Maybe something’s gonna match whatever this is.”
Aziraphale can only shake his head, trying to keep his touch light on the smooth scales, petting Crowley’s coils with trembling hands.
“Mean it,” Crowley adds, “I’d go anywhere. Climb every mountain,” and that makes Aziraphale laugh, the sound cut-off, like a sob.
He’s being torn to shreds. Like someone somewhere deemed him unworthy and is slowly stripping away layers and layers of him. What good would human remedies be?
“No, stay,” he breathes, in that same tone of forbidden things, “stay, please.”
***
In the morning, they brave tea once more, a humble, biscuit and cream-less affair in the backroom of the closed shop. Crowley looks ashy. He’s taken to wearing his sunglasses inside again and they’re somewhat in the way as he rubs at his temples.
“There’s gotta be someone who could help. You know.” Crowley points an index finger upwards.
Aziraphale takes a moment to examine his left hand for gold before picking up his cup. Thankfully, there is none but the glint of his signet ring. He’s swapped it to the other side when it had gotten too bothersome, cutting into already painful swollen flesh. It feels off; after millennia, it had almost become part of his right hand, but more than anything, gold simply doesn’t look as nice these days.
“Given our circumstances, I would prefer not to walk back into their arms in a body that is quite literally falling apart. I’m sure you understand that.”
Crowley breathes out in a hiss, like he wants to protest but can’t actually think of anything to say. He jingles his spoon against the side of the cup.
“Would you quit that, dear?”
Crowley drops the spoon again and fists his restless fingers in his hair instead.
“How long?”
Questions, questions. Aziraphale sighs, takes a sip. At least tea is still enjoyable.
“Recent.”
Crowley throws his hands up in frustration.
“Was it hell, somehow? Was there anything—”
“Just the water. I doubt it.”
And then, a terrible thought that had started growing in the darkness last night takes hold of him; it is only after several large gulps of tea that Aziraphale dares to voice it.
“Crowley, is this. Am I falling?”
Crowley makes a desperate noise, somewhere between a laugh and a cry.
“No, angel, I don’t think so. Falling was nothing like this.”
A while later, when Aziraphale has almost managed to focus on a tome of Milton again, Crowley suddenly bangs his fist on the table, upending the rest of the tea.
“Oh, fuck’s sake. The devil child!”
“Crowley!” Aziraphale chides out of habit — and freezes.
***
On the way to Tadfield, Crowley drives, at least by his own standards, at an almost torturous pace, keeping on looking over at Aziraphale like he’s about to shatter into pieces.
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” Aziraphale snaps when he can’t take it anymore. Crowley accelerates by five mph. They’re still barely over the human speed limit.
Aziraphale turns away, lips pursed, and watches the hills of Oxfordshire go by. The closer to Tadfield, the more of the late autumnal trees still have leaves, and the more of the leaves are golden — which Aziraphale wishes he could still enjoy — though a fair amount of them have also been raked into neat heaps on the ground.
At least the boy does have a sense of appropriateness, both seasonal and otherwise.
***
“There must be more polite ways to go about this,” Aziraphale says, more of a token protest, as Crowley marches across a neat lawn to kick open the door to the Young family home. It gets stuck halfway into opening, caught on something that breaks with a pitiful crack as the demon forces his way further inside.
“My angel,” Crowley snarls at a round of astonished faces in the neat living room, which inexplicably yet perceptively darkens at his voice, “is dying.”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” Aziraphale mutters and snaps his fingers at the TV Crowley had managed to scare into shutting itself off. The quiet murmur of an evening comedy program fills the cosy space once more.
Mr Young gapes at them over the top of his newspaper. Mrs Young blinks and giggles nervously.
“Tea?”
***
Adam’s parents will remember very little about this conversation, except that it inexplicably made sense to them.
“I think I might've made it too small,” Adam says when he finally appears, hair still ruffled and boots dripping mud onto the carpet, “for your aura, you know.” He makes a gesture encompassing however he imagines that to look like. He’s not exactly right, but he’s not exactly wrong either.
“I… I don’t know how to fix those,” he continues, nodding at the lines, “but it’s going to stop now, I promise.” He buries his fingers in the dog's fur. “I’m sorry,” he adds after a moment, chewing on his lip.
Aziraphale had thought it might have been appropriate to muster up some anger or at least frustration at the being responsible for his state. He had rather failed in this attempt and seeing the boy only cements it.
Adam really is just a child.
“Well, better than nothing, huh,” Crowley mutters on the way out, stepping over the remnants of an umbrella neatly snapped in half. Aziraphale doesn’t say anything. Perhaps he should be relieved about this not being some kind of punishment from Above — although who knows? The Almighty seems to prefer acting through people these days. And all larger implications aside, he can’t stop thinking of the marble statues he remembers in their heyday, adorned, painted, whole; now, crumbling pale shadows of their former selves. Aching for all eternity.
“Wait!”
They turn at the gate to see Adam — plus dog — running after them.
“Maybe Anathema can fix you,” he pants. “She’s an occultist, you know. She knows so much!” And with that, he proceeds to drag them down the lane towards a familiar cottage.
“Oh yeah, of course,” Crowley mutters, “an occultist. Maybe she’ll feel like paying you back for your heavenly bike repair services. Maybe she’ll even put a couple of extra wheels on the car.”
***
Anathema doesn’t ask questions. She rarely has to, in these matters. Instead, before Adam even gets the chance to explain, she sits them down among the mess of her overstuffed kitchen. There, eyebrows furrowed behind her thick-rimmed glasses, she starts mixing, arnica, marigold, goldenrod, common yarrow.
Adam gets bored soon and takes out the dog; the former witchfinder private appears in his stead. He tries to make awkward small talk with Crowley, who deigns to a couple of disinterested hums. All the while, Aziraphale can tell, even behind the sunglasses, his eyes are trained on Anathema grinding, distilling, adding powders and liquids.
Aziraphale watches her too, silently, only because the ordeal of a long car ride in uncomfortable clothes has left him too exhausted to make a scene. A passable witch she might be, or at least her ancestor was, but what could a mortal possibly accomplish where they failed? And yet — what's the point of refusing help right in front of him, offered freely? Even if all he gets out of it is a quack concoction.
At any rate, running off would be quite silly and he would be left waiting for Crowley by his car anyway.
Eventually, Anathema scoops the resulting cream into a robust glass jar that used to hold, according to the faded label, elderflower jam.
“I can make you more, if you need,” she says, ever so helpful.
I very much doubt that will help, Aziraphale almost answers and bites his tongue, because he’s supposed to be the nice one. He manages a charitable smile as Crowley accepts the jar in his stead.
“Don’t forget to keep it in the fridge!” Anathema calls after them.
“Won’t be necessary,” Crowley mutters, his already cool fingers turning almost blue around the glass.
***
Aziraphale ignores the jar for the better part of the evening. At least he tries to, since it turns out to be within reach whenever he looks around.
“I must say,” Aziraphale scoffs when he looks up from Borges to find it levitating an arm’s reach away.
“Just try it,” Crowley says from where he’s perched on the desk, aiming for nonchalance and betrayed by his taut jaw, “please.”
“Fine,” Aziraphale says testily, and snaps his book shut.
Lying face down on the bed, he lets Crowley administer the ointment to the wound going down the middle of his back. It burns. Crowley had spared him from his execution, but if asked to describe how he imagines hellfire to feel, Aziraphale would say it might be something like this. Perhaps the pain is worse because Crowley is a demon, but he refuses to give room to that thought. Who else is there, anyway? Who else would he have touch him? So Aziraphale clenches his teeth and cries quietly into the pillow, while Crowley does him the favour of pretending not to notice.
Over the weeks, he will learn to dig his fingers into the mattress, bite down on starched linen, breathe deeply against the pain.
***
“...you know, dear,” Aziraphale says one morning, after looking down at his hand in silence for quite a while, simultaneously quenching hope and being unable not to rush towards it, “I believe it’s working.”
Crowley whips around so fast he trips over his own feet.
“Really?”
“Well, it is certainly doing...something”
Aziraphale flexes his fingers. He doesn’t dare close them all the way, but they move further, easier than before. Crowley stays frozen for a moment longer, then stalks up to Aziraphale, coming to an abrupt halt before winding his arms around him in a careful embrace, no doubt cheating with a couple of convenient snake-like elements in his anatomy. Aziraphale hugs him back, as much as he can.
***
The shop stays closed for now, but Aziraphale sits downstairs, dressed, a tome of Sappho levitating at eye level and a tin of biscuits at his left side, his right hand bandaged up with the last of the cream. It is a nice day — not lovely, perhaps, but the crisp air of the early winter made him throw the window open despite the cold. Just the right weather for tea. Aziraphale can’t remember when he’d put on the kettle, but, as Crowley would say, it would stay hot if it knew what was good for it.
“Would you get the tea for me, dear?” he calls, only to turn and find his cup poured already and the demon nowhere in sight.
Crowley can’t have been gone long at all. In fact, Aziraphale thought he’d only stepped out for pastries, but when he comes back, he’s got country wind in his hair and a glass jar in his hand. Aziraphale’s eyes flick from his demon swaying insecurely in the doorway to the faded label — strawberry-rhubarb, this time — and he finds that it hurts to breathe, all of a sudden, but in a kind of strangely good way.
He clears his throat.
“I do hope you thanked the young lady.”
Crowley makes a displeased sound.
“Well, her herbs won’t dare grow badly now.”
Aziraphale starts laughing despite himself.
“My dear, tell me you didn’t sit in her garden yelling at her plants. Whatever did the neighbours make of that?”
Crowley shrugs.
“Neighbours didn’t hear if they know what’s good for them.”
Still shaking with mirth, Aziraphale beckons him closer, and grasps him by his scarf to pull him down into a gentle kiss.
***
Weeks later, the edges of the cracks have pulled themselves together to little more than a thin glint of gold. Aziraphale suspects that they might never close all the way, but it’s good enough. It’s damn well better than nothing.
In many ways, life is different now, but there is also much he's still finding his way back to, slowly. One night, he’s undressing for bed when he catches Crowley, propped up against the headboard, looking at him. His arms crossed behind his head seem nonchalant, but his legs fall open invitingly, and his hungry gaze—
Disregarding the book on the bedside table, Aziraphale climbs up on the bed, between Crowley’s spread legs and leans back. It doesn’t hurt too badly, so he stays. Crowley wraps his arms around him, traces along the cracks. It feels like nothing like a comparable touch might have, weeks ago. Aziraphale sighs, almost despite himself, and then again, deliberately, because it’s been way too long. Crowley moans into his hair and reaches down and for once, Aziraphale chokes on something other than pain.
Crowley isn’t rough, but not overly cautious either and this insistent touch turns out to be exactly what Aziraphale needs. He’d forgotten what it's like to be touched with more than fearful gentleness. His body comes alive under the firm strokes; Crowley doesn’t shy away from Aziraphale’s groans and whimpers, sounds that are probably quite close to pain. Aziraphale hopes the sounds of his pleasure overwrite them, at least for a little while.
Afterwards, Aziraphale is floating. Oh, it’s not unconditional bliss, of course. His thigh aches and the cheek he’s rubbed on Crowley’s neck is rather irritated, but then, he’s never quite comfortable these days anyway.
He’s thrown out of his revelry by Crowley making a small sound.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Didn’t sound like nothing,” Aziraphale quotes with a smile, and Crowley huffs.
“Oh, shut up.”
There is a pause, but Aziraphale waits and sure enough—
“I didn’t want to say it before, well. It’s just,” Crowley takes a deep breath, “you’re beautiful like this.”
Aziraphale swallows.
“I’m sorry,” Crowley adds, barely a whisper, “That’s not— I don’t—”
Aziraphale looks down his body, gold veins like cracked Japanese porcelain. He looks down and he sees heaven seeping out of him.
“It’s- I mean, you’re,” Crowley tries again, his voice all awe and love and pain, “you’re more.”
Aziraphale traces the dusting of hair on Crowley’s forearm, recalls the shimmery scales lurking just under the surface.
“You’re plenty, my dear.”
Crowley breathes out roughly against the side of his neck and lifts Aziraphale's hand to very carefully press his lips first to the signet ring and then to his palm.
It only stings a little.
***
Crowley’s scales lean silver, but his eyes are a deep, fiery gold. Aziraphale imagines that once upon a time, before he knew him — or before he knew him as Crowley, at least — they might have been even closer in colour to Aziraphale’s new marks. Not that it matters now.
Crowley is above, inside of him. They could do it in a different way, an easier one, and Aziraphale knows he will be sore after this. Today, he thinks he can take it. After all, sometimes pain is an unworthy obstacle, and a price worth paying. Sometimes he still shies away from leaving the house, but fresh air, the taste of a new delicacy or other, or an opening night in the West End are usually worth it, even if they might leave him in need of more ointment or a nap.
Sometimes, of course, it’s pain that wins. Sometimes he has to stay home; sometimes, he has little energy for anything more than letting himself be held as he's falling asleep. Crowley is at his side all the same. It doesn’t fix anything, naturally. But it helps.
For quite a while now, Aziraphale has been thinking that whether this is really just an unlucky mistake by a well-meaning child, or some kind of punishment after all — it doesn’t matter much. He still tries to trust in the Almighty, even if he doesn’t trust in Heaven anymore. And the consequences are what they are, either way. He’s learning to live with them. There are so many things one can learn to live with. Crowley fell, didn’t he? And here he is. Here they are.
“What?” Crowley pants when he catches Aziraphale staring up at him, and Aziraphale smiles.
“We match,” he says, lightly touching first his own cheek, then Crowley’s eyelid. Crowley blinks and then swoops down to catch him in a desperate kiss Aziraphale can’t help but laugh into.