“Honestly, angel, I’d say you rather have gluttony under your belt by now.” Crowley smiled as he sat beside Aziraphale at yet another interesting little restaurant, where the two were having dinner.

“I thought I’d start out easy, since it’s only a few pinfeathers so far,” said Aziraphale with a dismissive wave. “But if I’m going to be a demon, I’m going to do it properly.”

Crowley’s eyebrows went up in amusement at Aziraphale’s prim tone. Proper demons were hardly prim, but Aziraphale was Aziraphale, and apparently a little thing like falling from grace wasn’t going to change that. “Ticking off the seven deadlies isn’t actually a requirement, as such.”

“Oh, I know. Nevertheless, it seems like I really should at least give them all a try. But today I mostly just wanted to get out of the bookshop. Molting always makes me a bit tetchy, even without all this extra bother.” It had been two days since he’d found those first two pinfeathers, and they’d been followed by quite a few others, including several of his larger primary coverts. None of the primaries or secondaries proper, yet, but he was well into the molt, shedding feathers constantly, and it was even odds which was worse, the pinpoint burns of demonic feathers scattered symmetrically on each wing, or the abominable itching that completely covered them both.

“But while I’m out,” added the no-longer-entirely-angel, “I might as well see what this sinning business is all about. I fully intend to order more food than I will actually want, stuff myself until I’m sick, and leave some of it.” Aziraphale grinned wickedly, feeling giddy with the very thought. “I always resisted ordering everything that sounded good on the menu, because it would be sinful to let food go to waste when people are starving, but that’s actually rather silly to care about, isn’t it?”

Crowley chuckled. “Your self-abnegation wouldn’t give the hungry a single bite.”

“Not really. Like quite a lot of ‘righteous’ behavior, it’s about reassuring yourself, or about public appearance, not about actually doing good. If I want to do something about hunger, I need to feed somebody hungry, or at least make a donation to a food bank, or somesuch. Abstaining personally accomplishes nothing but make me feel righteous. So why bother?” Aziraphale’s eyes slid over the menu in a manner that could indeed be called “gluttonous”, and he tallied up the list of things he wanted. This was a Thai restaurant, and he was ever so fond of Pad Thai, but he intended to also get Panang, his favorite curry, and at least two other kinds of curry, for he’d never gotten around to the avocado green curry, and he had no idea what in the world “Gang Puck” even was. It might be a delight he’d been missing out on, or it might be terrible and he’d have to leave it uneaten, and if that happened, he didn’t have to care anymore, so he was going to go ahead and get it.

Crowley smiled indulgently while the waiter came and went with Aziraphale’s completely ridiculous order. He himself had ordered nothing but a drink, not even his usual nod towards pretending to eat, but given the six dishes the waiter had scribbled down on his pad for Aziraphale, he didn’t think he’d have any trouble if he wanted to have a bite or two.

“So how is it, ah, going?” asked Crowley, cringing at the awkwardness of the question even as the last word was leaving his mouth.

Aziraphale shrugged. “For now it’s not much worse than any molt. The itching is bothering me more than the black feathers are. I expect it’ll get worse.” He paused, then added, “Once the flight feathers start coming in I expect it to get downright agonizing. But eventually it’ll be over with.” He smiled at Crowley. “I’m rather looking forward to what I hope will come after that.”

“Angel…” Crowley halted, his expression pained, even behind his dark glasses. “I guess I can’t call you that anymore.”

“It’s a perfectly acceptable pet name, my dear.” Aziraphale smiled warmly at him.

Crowley’s mouth quirked up at one corner. “I suppose.”

“You are my dear, you know. I tend to rather spread terms of endearment about, but you’re the only one where I mean them in that way. I’ve been a bit of a git, trying to pretend your ‘dear’ was just like anybody else’s all this time. It never was, not even a little.”

“Oh angel…”

Aziraphale chuckled. “It’s a good thing I don’t mind the ‘angel’, either, because I’m not sure you could stop doing it.”

“Ang—! Aziraphale!” Crowley scowled at him, and Aziraphale grinned back. He still couldn’t get over how free he felt. He could do or say anything, anything at all, and if any of it turned out to be bad, then that was exactly what he was supposed to be doing. And if any of it turned out to be good, well, he didn’t mind that either. Declaration about the seven deadly sins aside, he had no intention of trying to be a “proper” demon. He could do what felt right to him and not what Gabriel or Michael or anybody else expected of him.

It felt like stretching his wings out after keeping them hidden and folded away for centuries.

It felt wonderful.

Even without Crowley, even without all the rest of it, he was starting to wonder if Falling was really all that bad.

Of course he hadn’t been down to Hell yet, or dealt with any demons other than the usual one. Crowley had said some things that suggested there were costs to Falling besides the pain in his wings.

Still, as the waiter arrived and began filling the table with platters of mouth-watering food, Aziraphale still thought that Falling was proving to be much nicer than he could possibly have anticipated.

---

Aziraphale sat on the couch at the back of his shop and whimpered quietly. His wings were out, spread untidily across the couch, because the phantom pain when he had them folded away was paradoxically worse than the real pain when they actually existed.

They were visibly mottled now, though still more white than black. But plenty of the smaller feathers had finished growing and sat there, dark and glossy. There were gaps in his primaries now, too, where ebony pinfeathers were lengthening every day, and the pain where the shafts met skin was indescribable agony. It was like having a red-hot poker pressed against him, but a real poker would have seared the nerves out eventually. This never stopped, it just went on and on and on.

He hadn’t opened the shop in days. He had managed to drag himself out to get a pastry yesterday morning, but the pain made it hard to think, hard to act normally, hard to do anything at all but lie here and whimper softly. It even made it nearly impossible to concentrate on reading, which left him with nothing to do but feel.

Another whimper escaped him. His throat felt raw. There had been screaming earlier, not even so much in pain as in futile frustration at the fact that it never stopped, never relented, never eased. There were tears in his eyes, suddenly, and he felt completely pathetic. Lying here weeping, doing nothing, when nothing was actually wrong with him, other than how his wings ached. It wasn’t as though his leg was broken or he was actually ill. And yet he was too pathetically overcome to even get up and make a cup of cocoa.

He heard the shop door open, and since he was certain he’d left it locked, his heart jumped. Only one person was likely to be opening that door without a key. A moment later Crowley came into sight around a bookshelf.

“Angel,” he said, going instantly to the side of the couch and kneeling there, hovering again, obviously wanting to touch and not daring.

Aziraphale tried to gather himself together. “Hullo there.”

“How are you doing?” asked Crowley gently.

Aziraphale shrugged. “Hurts like the dickens. There’s two pairs of primaries coming in now, one set’s nearly done, even. It’s going to look deucedly odd for a while, all piebald like that.” He frowned faintly, managing to come up with a thought through the haze.

“Oh bother.”

“What is it?” Crowley sounded alarmed.

“I’m going to have to do something truly terrible.”

“What?” Crowley looked alarmed too.

“They say that everything looks good with black, but it just isn’t true. You can’t just drape a swathe of black behind all that tan and cream and call it stylish.” He heaved a deep sigh, almost distracted from the pain for a moment. “I shall have to update my wardrobe.”

Crowley’s expression froze, then— “Ha!” Crowley grinned broadly and fist-pumped. “Yes! Tell me you’ll let me take you clothes shopping, angel, please?”

“You don’t go clothes shopping. I know perfectly well that you miracle all your clothes.”

“I do too go shopping, I just don’t buy. How would I know what was in style if I didn’t go see what people were selling these days? Although I’m shocked you won’t just carry on with all that tatty beige. You, caring about being fashionable? And it’s not as if anybody will be seeing your wings clashing, you hardly keep them out.”

Aziraphale managed a weak chuckle. “Would you be caught dead wearing something that would look bad with your wings out?”

“Well, no… But still, you? Fashion?”

“I have an impeccable sense of fashion, thank you very much,” said Aziraphale putting on an offended air. “I merely do not concern myself with what’s trendy, only with what’s actually stylish.”

“Only with what’s eighty years out of date, you mean.” Crowley looked him up and down, though now wasn’t really an ideal time to comment on Aziraphale’s fashion sense, as he was wearing a robe and slippers. Admittedly, they were also every bit as old-fashioned as the rest of his wardrobe.

“True style is timeless,” huffed Aziraphale, but he smiled as he said it. Having Crowley here was a far better anodyne to pain than anything else he’d tried, including somewhat reckless amounts of over the counter painkillers, and equally reckless amounts of alcohol. Though he hadn’t been so insanely reckless as to do both of those together.[2]

-----
2. If he got discorporated while halfway between Heaven and Hell, which one of them would issue him a new body? And that question wasn’t even visiting the fact that neither organization was likely to be enthusiastic about said issuing.
-----

Nothing could do more than blunt the edge of the pain, though, and he could hardly turn up at a doctor’s and go “My wings are burning with demonic hellfire” and get a prescription for something stronger.

It wasn’t that Crowley made it hurt less, but he distracted Aziraphale, kept him from dwelling on it, took his mind elsewhere, even if the searing fire of it kept yanking his mind back.

“Is there anything I can do for you? Anything I can get for you?” Crowley was still hovering, an anxious edge to him, obviously frustrated by how little he could do to help.

“I could just about kill for a cup of cocoa right now,” said Aziraphale, and Crowley shot to his feet.

“Right, good, I’ll just… Er…” He looked around. He’d been to the shop many times, but he didn’t drink cocoa and Aziraphale had always made his own until now.

“In the kitchenette, through there. Cupboard right above the stove. You can just microwave the milk, two minutes, and stir the mix in.” Giving the instructions, Aziraphale felt pathetic all over again. It was the simplest thing in the world, just walk a dozen steps, get out cup, milk, and cocoa, then heat and stir. It took less than three minutes for the entire process, including the walking, and yet he hadn’t done it. He’d just lain here, being a sad sack.

All the same, when Crowley brought him the cocoa, he felt a little better. Their fingers brushed as Crowley passed over the mug, and it still burned, but what was that, against the continual agony he was feeling right now? He almost wanted to hold Crowley’s hand for a while, and might have reached out and taken it if not for the knowledge that he’d be hurting Crowley too.

Aziraphale sipped, letting his eyes slide half-closed, and Crowley sat on the floor, leaning against the couch in that way he had, as if his body still knew more about being a snake than about being anything like human. The dim amber light of the sun coming in through dusty windows at the front of the shop was just enough to show the red of his hair, and for no doubt the millionth time Aziraphale ached to run his fingers all through it.

Go- Sa- Fucking Somebody, everything about his life was torture right now.

You just have to get through the molt, he told himself. Just a few weeks. A few weeks of constant torture that’s only going to get worse. What would it feel like when all the flight feathers had come in? There were twenty on each wing. Forty red-hot pokers stabbing him all the time. But surely when it reached that point it would be over? Crowley wasn’t in pain from his wings all the time. Surely when the last one came in, it would be done with?

Surely, so that means you only have to suffer through feeling thirty-eight red-hot pokers, he found himself thinking sarcastically at himself.

He took another sip of cocoa and tried to relax and push the terror that thought caused out of his mind. Just the four was already nearly unbearable, but what could he do? There was no stopping this, there was only enduring it. He’d get through it somehow, though he didn’t know how.

“Crowley?” he found himself saying.

“Hmm?”

“What was it like when you, you know, Fell?”

“Not like this,” said Crowley softly. “It was… I don’t know.” He tipped his head back against the couch. “I jumped, you know. I make a joke about sauntering on down, sometimes, but there’s some truth in it. Most of the Fallen were cast down after Lucifer. I saw the Hosts of Heaven coming at me, and I saw that we’d lost, and bugger if I was going to give them the satisfaction of pushing me out of Heaven. So I stepped off myself and Fell. The Falling was…I don’t know. Space didn’t work the way it does now, then. Time didn’t either. It might have taken a century, it might have been about ten minutes. My wings burned all the way down though, every feather of them. By the time I reached Hell it was done with, and it didn’t hurt, except…”

He heaved a deep sigh and was silent for a long time.

“Except?” said Aziraphale gently.

“Except the other kind of hurt.” Crowley put his hand over his chest. “I didn’t set out to be on the wrong side of a war, I just wanted to know why. They wouldn’t let you choose your own sides, though, they just started smiting all the angels who were ‘rebelling.’ I was doomed to fall the moment I started asking questions.”

“I’m so sorry,” said Aziraphale softly.

Crowley shrugged. “I wouldn’t go back to Heaven if you paid me. So it’s just as well.”

“Don’t think I would either,” said Aziraphale. The cocoa cup was empty, and Crowley fell silent. It was the kind of silence that often stretched between them, a comfortable sort of silence. Yet in it, Aziraphale once again found himself focusing on the intense pain he felt, and his wings trembled. He wanted to weep again. He wanted to scream again. How could he continue to endure this?

“Crowley?”

“Hmm?” said the demon again, tipping his head back against the couch to look up at Aziraphale upside down.

“Would it be… Would it be cowardly of me to ask if you could put me to sleep for a while? I’m not sure I can handle weeks more like this. I’m not very good at sleeping. But if you did it for me…”

“Oh, angel. Not cowardly at all, only sensible. Nobody wants to be in pain.” He smiled suddenly. “Anyway, you’d be checking sloth off the list of sins, right? Sleeping for weeks.”

Aziraphale managed a chuckle. “Oh, yes, of course. Very demonic of me, then.”

“Very,” said Crowley with a nod. He glanced around the space at the back of the shop. “Why don’t you get yourself comfortable? Do you want a blanket?”

Aziraphale nodded, and folded his wings in so that he could lie stretched out along the couch. He winced, though really changing their position didn’t alter the pain in any way. If it had been a mundane burn, the movement would no doubt have made it worse, but nothing could make it either worse or better, it just was. It was dilute hellfire, born of demon’s feathers, and not for the last time he considered trying to pluck them. But of course they’d grow in again, and pulling a growing primary would hurt like the dickens too, so it would end up only adding to his pain.

Crowley came over with an armful of blanket, retrieved from the cupboard where Aziraphale stored such things, though it was half full of books, as was every other storage space in the place, including the cupboards of the kitchenette.

He spread the blanket out over Aziraphale, his movements careful and tender. Aziraphale sighed softly, letting his eyes close. “Thank you,” he murmured. Pain still seared through him, but relief was in sight at last, and that helped.

“You’re welcome, angel,” said Crowley. Aziraphale felt a prick of fire against his forehead as Crowley touched a finger there, and then sleep closed over him and everything blissfully went away.