Chapter Text
One of the things Crowley didn’t like about the South Downs—and there were a few, if not very many—was that there were fewer places to hide.
There were plenty of hills and valleys, sure, and little copses of trees and seaside towns and one could always get lost in Brighton if one were dedicated enough about it, but it didn’t have the same panache as London for a hiding spot. No dirty, stinking alleys, no horrid little shops, no dens of sin and villainy. Sure, he could get pickled at some sea-salt worn bar, but then he’d be mistaken for a tourist; if he went up to Devil’s Dyke he might even be mistaken for a cliché, which was worse.
And there was no point anyway, with the Bentley. In London, the Bentley stood out but only really if you were looking and interested. There were plenty of old cars and fancy cars and cars that didn’t really have any business being driven casually about in London.
In the Downs, it was like driving a homing beacon. THIS ONE HERE!
Crowley gave some thought as to places he could go now. Aziraphale would avoid a tourist district like the plague, of course, and if Crowley were really desperate he could always pop into the tunnel over to France, where Aziraphale wouldn’t have followed him for all the holy water in the world. But that all seemed very petty, and Crowley was tired of petty.
He also felt like there was probably something altogether more satisfying in taking the high road on this one. Pettiness was only petty if you looked bad doing it, after all, and Crowley didn’t look bad doing anything.
So he went home. Parked the Bentley in the drive, just like he always did. Went into the house to turn the heating up, because Aziraphale would probably be cold by the time he got back, because he would probably walk rather than to get a cab from town, and left the light on for him.
Then he went out back into the stables, and waited.
His index cards still lined the wall above the sofa, white in the deepening gloom of the evening, though the pen marks were disappearing into the darkness. Facts and theories, changes and non-changes, dark red string connecting it all together. Crowley was beginning to think he ought to have skipped the whole thing and just asked, but there was a bit of an old wound there, around outright asking.
We can still go off together.
He didn’t hold it against Aziraphale, he never did. And Aziraphale had never held it against him, either, all those things that had happened at the end of the world. There was no point. They each knew each other well enough to why, and whether, and never again. And he was learning, truly he was—do you—can I—is this all right?—but the big things, the really big things, tended to stick to half-statements and assumptions and prayers that they were still on the same page.
Might need a break from London, for a bit, you know. Found this cottage with a library you’d like.
It just didn’t feel like the sort of thing they were ready for, a question like this one. It didn’t seem like the sort of thing Crowley could just spit out over the breakfast table and not expect to get his elbows knocked about a little.
Hey, Aziraphale—you falling?
But he could have asked it differently. He could have been straightforward, concerned, caring. He could have insisted, caught Aziraphale up against the kitchen bench while they waited for that pizza to arrive, held him close and let him know that Crowley loved him, would love him, would never stop loving him, blond hair or no. Angel or no.
He didn’t really think that would have gone too much better, though. Not if Aziraphale wasn’t ready.
And that was really the crux of it, wasn’t it? Aziraphale just wasn’t ready, and Crowley hadn’t had the patience. Had forgotten that sometimes Aziraphale needed patience more than he needed anything else.
Another flare of hurt sparked in Crowley’s chest. Sometimes Aziraphale needed patience. But what about what Crowley needed?
He needed answers. And honesty. And trust.
A second light came on in the cottage then, catching Crowley’s gaze from the corner of his eye through the windows of the stables. He waited, watched as a light went on in the library, then off again. A light went on upstairs, on the landing, and then in their bedroom. Off again. Off again. There weren’t any lights on in the stables, nothing to give away Crowley’s position, but he merely stood and waited.
He was being patient now.
The light at the back door came on. The sound of footsteps crunching across the gravel drive toward the stables.
A moment later, there was a knock at the door.
*
“Hello,” Aziraphale said tentatively.
Crowley looked away, leaning against the work table to look up at his wall of index cards. He instinctively crossed his arms, hated the instinct, fought it down and let his hands brace themselves on the table behind him instead. Through his sunglasses, Aziraphale looked dark and faded in the gloom. “Hi.”
Aziraphale slipped in next to him, looking up at the wall Crowley was studying. Blinked in surprise at the index cards, cast about for a moment to look for the tapestry, then looked at them again and froze.
Crowley knew he’d be able to read them, even in the dark like this, if he wanted. He bent his head and waited for Aziraphale to get the gist.
“Oh,” he finally said. His voice sounded tight, fraught. “Oh, darling.”
“A bit, yeah,” Crowley agreed.
Aziraphale stepped forward to examine the index cards a little closer, as if he would be able to tell what Crowley had been thinking when he’d written them down. He snorted, once, a fingertip tapping on one of the theories cards. He followed the string down to a list of questions Crowley had written—how long? Any historical evidence? new corporation from Adam a problem?—and then followed another up into what had ultimately become Operation Save Aziraphale.
It was definitely not the cringiest thing Crowley had ever done—the less said about the fourteenth century the better—but it was probably the cringiest thing Aziraphale had ever caught him doing.
“I believe,” Aziraphale concluded, stepping back again, “that I may have gone and fucked up.”
Crowley choked on the laugh that tried to bubble up. “Don’t curse when we’re arguing, it isn’t fair.”
Aziraphale offered a small smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes. His hand skimmed the tabletop next to Crowley’s, but he didn’t close the last bit of distance between them. “Very little about this is fair, dear boy.”
Wasn’t that the fucking truth.
They stood there in the dark, not touching. They stood there in the dark, not speaking.
Crowley felt wrung out, like a wet sponge, still bloated at the edges and twisted around at the middle. The conversation they inevitably had to have loomed in front of him like a ghost, sapping his energy already. He would apologise for being pushy, Aziraphale would apologise for being insensitive. Crowley would not ask the question that had been preying on his mind and Aziraphale would probably not volunteer the answer—never the volunteering type, Aziraphale—and they would go back inside and drink cups of tea in silence and pretend it was fine until they both got too tired to keep pretending and decided instead that it was fine after all, and really, what was the fuss even about anymore?
It had happened before. It would probably happen again. It would happen and happen and keep happening, because they were who they were and they’d never learnt how to do any of this and they flubbed it up constantly and maybe they weren’t suited for this after all—
Aziraphale said, abruptly, “I’m not falling.”
Crowley was so surprised he nearly toppled over.
“I mean, I suppose I could be and just not have figured it out,” Aziraphale went on, in that fluttering little way he had sometimes when he was hedging his bets, with the self-deprecating smile and the wiggle that was not the pleased wiggle but rather a doomed sort of movement. “But I’m not falling just because my roots grow in dark. And I’m not turning into a human, either, thank God and all Her blessed mysteries. Dreadful.”
“Dreadful, sure, yeah,” Crowley said, a little blankly. “Mysteries. Right.”
Aziraphale turned to face him, slipping his hand over Crowley’s where it rested on the table. He said, trembling a little, though whether with fear or just the strength of his own forthrightness in this moment, Crowley couldn’t say: “I’m sorry that you worried.”
Crowley’s heart shivered in his chest, curling instinctively in on itself to protect the vulnerable bits. He sneered, and shook his hand out from under Aziraphale’s before he could think it through. “I’m not worried, demons don’t worry.”
It was such a bold-faced lie that Aziraphale actually laughed, his eyebrows shooting high as he glanced back at the wall with Crowley’s index cards mapped out all over it. As if Crowley had done anything except worry for the last six thousand or so years. Lord in Hell, that was embarrassing.
“Of course you don’t,” Aziraphale allowed, forgetting to be fearful for a brief moment, in favour of being an arse. “And you don’t name your plans silly names when you set out like a white knight to do a spot of rescuing either, I suppose.”
“Never been a white knight,” Crowley grumbled. “I’m the black knight. I’m terrifying, angel, you don’t know what those villagers went through.”
Aziraphale, who knew perfectly well what those villagers went through—an early version of unionization at the mill, a spring wedding of two lovers with feuding families who’d managed without anyone quite knowing how to resolve their land dispute, and a mysteriously unlucky tax collector who was as likely to find a glob of duck shit in his purse as the season’s taxes—took Crowley’s hand again. Crowley let him, this time, even if it was horrible.
“I’m sorry I left you to worry,” he said, with rather more sincerity. “I should have just bucked up and told you. There’s nothing wrong with me, darling.”
“Your hair—”
“Has always come in dark at the roots. Always. Since the beginning.”
Crowley looked at him. It was a look that said, go on, pull the other one, you daft idiot, I’ve known you for six thousand years and I’ve never seen—
“Always,” Aziraphale repeated.
“And you don’t use a miracle to change it because—”
“Because Michael used to review my reports, you know that. It was one of the things she had pointed out to me that Upstairs thought was—insufficient. She thought it was offensive that I’d changed the corporation I’d been assigned. Thought I was putting on airs about it, wanted to know if I understood that vanity was a cardinal sin, when it was never about that, it was just, well, it wasn’t right, and—”
An image of Aziraphale, chained and miserable in a dungeon in, oh, when was that, 1783? 1793? floated into the forefront of Crowley’s mind. His ruffled lace. His satin shoes. His refusal to use the miracle to save his own neck from a supremely unpleasant, if ultimately inconsequential, afternoon. I was reprimanded last month. Too many frivolous miracles.
“—and once I played around with it a little I thought, oh, well, this is quite nice, this is what a principality ought to look like, you know, not so severe, not so doom and gloom, you know I have these little lines under my eyes and sometimes it made me look so dour, and—and—”
He was rambling properly now. Crowley squeezed his hand, firm and deliberate, until he stuttered to a stop.
“You great peacock,” Crowley said. “Is that all?
Aziraphale sighed heavily, like he was under some great burden of confession. “I like the way I look.”
“I do too,” Crowley said, which he felt was obvious enough to be straightforward about anyway. “But you do know—Aziraphale, it doesn’t matter to me if your hair comes in dark, you know that, right?”
But that great weight didn’t lift from Aziraphale. He didn’t relax. Instead he looked up at Crowley with wide, stricken eyes, but this wasn’t a plea for Crowley to fix it. There was too much anxiety in it for that, too much truth.
This was not a look that played for his attention. Aziraphale already had his attention.
This was a look that prayed for understanding.
“It matters to me,” he said, quietly. “I like the way I look. I like the tartan, and the waistcoat, and the hair. I like that people look at me and know exactly who I am, and it isn’t what they assigned me to be.” His eyes flicked upward, briefly, before settling on Crowley again. “I was never what they wanted me to be, Crowley. I could only be me and they could only be disappointed, time and again, but I couldn’t—I couldn’t. It’s—this is just me. Just me.”
Just me. That wasn’t a thing Heaven ever wanted to know, was it? Upstairs did not rejoice in the individual; it only cared for voices raised in chorus. Heaven only cared for blueprints, and perfection, and little else.
Crowley knew that. Crowley had fallen for it.
Aziraphale reached to run a hand through his hair, fluffing up the curls until they stood nearly on end. Playing with it between his fingertips, gentle and affectionate, a little protective even. Crowley had always thought of it like dandelion fuzz, ready to blow away on a wish, or like cloud cover, great huge cumulus things. Something soft, and joyful, and comforting.
Like Aziraphale himself.
No, he had probably never been what Heaven had wanted him to be. He’d been made a principality, a warrior and protector of nations. He’d been made for battle, armed with flame and iron and judgment, to stand like an icon at the head of his platoon.
And instead he’d made himself a guardian angel. A lover and a protector of people. The watchful beacon in the storm, guiding them through.
Not the flaming sword, but the shining heart.
Even if he was a bit of a bastard sometimes.
“Just you,” Crowley mused, cracking a tiny smile. “It’s a good version of you, I’ve got to admit. Probably my favourite all-time version of you.”
Aziraphale put his head into his hands, pressing the meat of his palms into his eyes. “Don’t tease, please, I couldn’t—”
Crowley wasn’t teasing. He reached up, pulled Aziraphale’s hands away from his eyes. Looked at him so intently that Aziraphale could not look anywhere else, could not see anything but Crowley, here, being honest. Being true.
“Do you think I don’t know you, angel?” he asked, gentle as anything. “D’you think I haven’t known just you, aside from everything they wanted you to be, for the last six thousand years? I’ve known you since you put up your wing on that wall and covered me from the first rain. And this—” Crowley gestured to the index cards still strung up on the wall, to his fears and worries and his careful plans. “You think I’ve done all this because I don’t love the you I know?”
Aziraphale’s face crumpled. “But what if it isn’t me? What if it comes in dark because me wanting to be like this isn’t right, what if I’m not really what I think—”
“You are,” Crowley said, not harsh but firm. He was standing his ground on this one. “You’re you, Aziraphale, and I know who you are. Even if it takes a little more effort for you to look the way you know yourself to be. That doesn’t make you not-you. That just makes you a little more deliberate about your choice to be you, that’s all, and deliberation, choices—that’s what makes us, you know?”
Like Adam, choosing not to end the world. Like his friends, choosing not to leave him behind. Like Tracy, choosing not to shoot a child.
Like Aziraphale himself, that day. Choosing not to fight, choosing not to fall in line. Choosing not to give up.
Like the both of them, choosing their own side.
“Like you,” Aziraphale said thickly, squeezing Crowley’s hands in his own. “You’re so good at choosing, you know, and you’ve always chosen such kindness—”
“All right, all right, no need to start the smear campaign. More like—I’ve chosen to be this sexy, that’s a better one. You think I wake up this sexy every morning? No, it takes effort, but that doesn’t mean I’m not the sexiest demon on planet Earth, right?”
Aziraphale’s smile shook a little, but it was there. “Depends on if you think drool is sexy.”
“I do not—I do not drool! Besides, what’s the competition, Hastur? Like my chances, thank you very much.”
They both laughed, a little, wet and stilted, the laugh of a releasing tension, of a loosening squeeze. Aziraphale’s brilliant hair dipped and danced in the darkness, and Crowley watched, heart full. He’d always know Aziraphale, wherever they were. He could always find Aziraphale.
That’s just who Aziraphale was. The guiding star, bringing Crowley home.
He looked back up at the index cards, the trailing string. His fingers snapped; the cards slipped off the wall and into a neat pile as the string wound itself back around its bobbin. The tapestry retook its rightful place above the old worn sofa.
“I’m sorry for making you worry,” Aziraphale said again, when he collected himself a bit. “I didn’t—I should have realised that you would, and I shouldn’t have shut you out. And I’m sorry for what I said in town, too. That was—ridiculous of me. I wasn’t thinking.”
“Not very hard, at any rate,” Crowley answered, though he said it softly, with a forgiveness he wouldn’t do either of them the embarrassment of voicing out loud. “But I’ve not got a monopoly on personal hang-ups, either, and I shouldn’t have pressured you about it. You’d have told me when you wanted me to know, I suppose.”
Aziraphale laughed again with a knowing grimace. “I wouldn’t have, but it’s sweet of you to think so.”
“Shove off. M’not sweet.”
“You are, you know. Positively the sweetest. What was your plan, if I was really falling?”
Crowley shrugged. “Dunno. But in fairness, you didn’t seem to have a plan either.”
“Because I wasn’t falling,” Aziraphale pointed out.
“Well, if you ever did fall, which of us would be prepared, hm?”
“Neither, I think we’re discovering.”
He had a point. Crowley decided not to acknowledge it. Instead they both lapsed back into silence, looking up at the tapestry, looking down at the stack of index cards. He glanced at Aziraphale out of the corner of his eye, and had the sense that Aziraphale had just looked away.
Everything still felt a little bruised, like the soft spots on an apple, sore and a little ill-used. It would all still be a little tender for a few days, probably, and the rippling tension of that aftermath felt exhausting, of all a sudden. Crowley wanted to go inside and sink into a cup of cocoa, to bundle up into bed, to turn over on his pillow and reach out a hand and—
Well. He wanted Aziraphale.
“All right,” Crowley finally managed, inhaling deeply and turning to Aziraphale. “That was actually the full extent of my mature conversation for the year, so, unless you’ve got something else—”
“Oh, good Lord, no,” Aziraphale breathed, like he’d been waiting too, wanting too. “Come here, darling.”
Crowley went. It had been days since Aziraphale had held him like this, and he was warm and still had the smell of the spring chill on his collar as he slipped one hand around Crowley’s waist, tugging him in. He wrapped himself around Aziraphale, pressing them together, as if he could press the rest of all that tension out.
Aziraphale held him for a long moment, and let himself be held, and then he patted Crowley’s bum affectionately, and said, “What do you think about some cocoa?”
*
The tension did last for a few days, as it always did when things came to a head between them. It was all right. They both knew that it wouldn’t last forever. Old wounds healed quickly, these days, and in the meantime they were a little more gentle with each other, a little more quiet around each other. Prone to lingering together, hands clasped: settling, reassuring.
And things did settle, as they always did. Aziraphale read another murder mystery out loud, chapter by chapter; this time, he figured it out first. Crowley made a rosemary focaccia, lest the plant in the garden overtake the smaller herbs, and he and Aziraphale stood side by side in the kitchen, eating it fresh and warm right out of the oven. They went into town, and picked through the hobby shop, which Crowley had decided ought to stay; Aziraphale picked out a yarn in a red so dark it was nearly black, and spent several hours on Wednesday nights out of the house, gossiping with the knitting club. Crowley planted the seedlings for real, and watched with a scrutinizing eye as they began to sprout, and time went on.
Eventually he stopped wearing his sunglasses in the house again. The first time Aziraphale had found him, bent over his mobile in the kitchen, tapping out fake Reddit entries on some thread about arseholes, with his eyes open and bright in the afternoon light, he’d bent over and kissed Crowley’s temples, and then his eyelids, so carefully, and then his mouth.
“I love you, darling,” he said, and Crowley believed him.
“Hey, angel?” Crowley said, and Aziraphale had smiled and smiled, already knowing what he was going to say, believing it before Crowley’d even said it. He had a knack for that, Aziraphale did. “Love you too.”
*
Crowley had almost forgotten about it, by the time it came up again. Three or four months had gone by; he’d not seen any hint of Aziraphale’s roots again, and he’d chosen to forget that there was anything there to see.
Until Aziraphale came home one afternoon with another bag from Boots, and said, about as casual as a mouse among cats, “I wonder if I could ask your help with something?”
The houseplant Crowley had been eyeing up shivered in relief as he turned to look. “Course, angel. What’s up?”
“My hair,” Aziraphale said, holding up the bag. “Would you?”
It took Crowley a moment to catch on, but when he did, he carefully set down his spray mister next to the relieved dieffenbachia, wiped his hands on his jeans, and stepped forward. His breath stuttered a little in his chest. “Where do you need me?”
He followed Aziraphale into the bathroom. Helped him to untie the bowtie, to undo the cuffs of his shirt, to slip off the waistcoat and everything else. Aziraphale was flushed pink halfway down his chest, and trembling a little, but Crowley touched him slowly, one bit at a time, smoothing his warm hands over uncertain skin as it was revealed. It was terribly deafeningly quiet in the little bathroom, each breath echoing back off the tiles, and so terribly intimate that Crowley was sure one wrong move would send everything crashing down.
There were no wrong moves, though. Together they got Aziraphale undressed, and together they draped him in a stiff, plasticy sort of gown. He looked tiny in it, somehow. He breathed in, settling himself down onto the closed lid of the toilet, and said, “All right. We start with the developer.”
He walked Crowley through it, piece by piece, teaching his hands how to navigate all the bits and bobs he’d laid out on the counter. Developer, lightener, little plastic bowls, the funny little brush. How to measure, and mix; how to read the colours, how to know what Aziraphale’s hair in particular needed.
There was something ritualistic about it, something more holy than Crowley had known in nearly six thousand years. Even the overpowering scent hung in the air like incense. His heart pounded in his chest.
“When you start to apply,” Aziraphale finally said, tongue darting out to wet his lips, hands clenching and unclenching at his knees, “you have to be thorough, and you have to be quick, so it all develops at the same rate, do you understand? You’re going to focus only on the roots. Take that comb there, with the tail, and do like this.” He tipped his head, gesturing along the lines he wanted Crowley to draw.
Crowley stared. He went to slip the comb into Aziraphale’s hair, and found he couldn’t. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe. It was too much. It was too much to be allowed.
Then there was a warm hand slipping over Crowley’s wrist, steady and sure. “Darling?”
“I don’t know if I can do it,” he said honestly. “It’s—important.”
Aziraphale’s thumb skated over the delicate skin of Crowley’s inner arm. If he’d trembled before, there was no sign of it now; he was the oak tree, the granite stone. The rock in the storm.
“I trust you,” he said simply, looking up at Crowley with those cloudcover eyes. “I have faith in you.”
Crowley closed his eyes, and breathed in once, twice, and then brought the comb through Aziraphale’s hair.
It was persnickety work, so fussy Crowley help think it suited Aziraphale as much as the result would, but it went quickly, once he started. The little brush darted easily along the lines Crowley drew against Aziraphale’s scalp, separating and sorting, covering the bare new beginnings of dark brown roots with the developer mix. He went over the left side, and all the way down to the nape, as quickly and as cautious as he could; then he did the right side, taking care not to gloop the mixture all over Aziraphale’s ears, his forehead, down his neck.
Then there was a plastic shower cap, firmly fixed into place, and then the wait.
Aziraphale was practically lazy with ease, now, the soothing rhythm of the little brush and comb having lulled the last of his anxieties away. Crowley watched him, and wondered at how many times he must have done this by himself. How many times he’d shut himself away, completing his ritual in silence, in secret. Every two weeks, every three?
It seemed like such a long, long time to be alone and hiding, stuck with the overpowering smell and the awkward angles, trying not to miss a spot.
Crowley opened the bathroom door, and then pushed up the sash of the window, letting the early summer air in with its salt breeze and its floral birdsong. Aziraphale wasn’t hiding anymore.
Together they washed Aziraphale’s hair, bending awkwardly and laughing in the shower spray before Crowley got fed up and pushed Aziraphale’s trousers and socks down, pushed his pants aside, and pushed him under the water, following after him in the next minute, just as naked. He tipped Aziraphale’s head back and washed his hair out with careful hands, thinking about baptism. Thinking about holy water. Thinking about promises, and vows, and worship.
Then Aziraphale taught him how to use the toner, and they did the whole thing over again.
“There,” Aziraphale said, his voice thick with satisfaction as he smiled at himself in the mirror, watching Crowley blow-dry his curls into their usual style. “Darling, it’s perfect.”
It wasn’t. It was a little uneven in the back, where Aziraphale couldn’t see it, and Crowley had gotten the mix down more of the length of Aziraphale’s hair than he’d wanted, and he was worried he might’ve damaged it. He’d been a little slow about the whole thing, and a little too clumsy, with hands more used to pruning vines and stalks than the delicate roots Aziraphale had offered up to him, but he’d done it.
He set down the dryer and the brush, and wrapped his arms around Aziraphale’s neck from behind, burying his nose into the skin just under his jaw.
“Thank you,” he said. “For showing me.”
Aziraphale tipped their heads together for a while, then used one hand to guide Crowley’s head up, so he could kiss him properly. “Thank you,” he said. “For knowing me.”
Crowley kissed him again, and again, and this blessing did not burn.
*
“Angel?”
“Yes, darling? Oh—oh, yes—”
“I’m just wondering, you know, just having a bit of a think—”
“Ah—ah, oh, right there, don’t stop—don’t—what could you possibly be thinking about at a time like this?”
“I mean, we spent something like three hours doing your hair the other day, right? And I’m just wondering . . . when on Earth did you match the carpet to the drapes?”
“Crowley!”