“Angel? Angel, talk to me.”

Aziraphale woke to the sound of Crowley’s voice and the sensation of burning. The red-hot pokers in his wings had gone, and instead his entire body was on fire. It was a different sort of fire, though; duller, more feverish. His every cell seemed too hot, and he ached with a bone-deep ache.

“Angel, please.”

He blinked his eyes open to see Crowley’s face hovering over him. His shades were off and his golden eyes looked shadowed with worry.

“Crowley?” Aziraphale’s voice felt dry and raspy.

“Oh thank Somebody. You’re burning up, angel. I didn’t know angels—or demons—could even get sick.”

“‘M not sick, ’m Falling,” mumbled Aziraphale. It was true that the feeling had changed, but when he awkwardly unfolded a wing against the back of the couch it was as piebald as ever. He’d just reached some new stage in the process that made the hellfire general rather than specific. He let the wing half-collapse over himself and peered at Crowley. “Anyway, how do you know if I’m feverish?”

“Didn’t even have to touch you, just putting a hand near your skin I can feel it. You’ve always run warmer than me, angel, but not that much warmer.” Crowley frowned at Aziraphale, and reached a hand out, hovering it over his forehead. Then he finally lowered the hand, cupping it over the feverish skin for just a moment.

Aziraphale gasped, and Crowley frowned further and made a softly puzzled noise as he pulled his hand back, then pressed it in again.

“Crowley?” managed Aziraphale, feeling confused. Crowley’s touch hadn’t hurt at all. Admittedly, every inch of him hurt, so perhaps the usual burning was only lost in that full-body ache, but the feel of Crowley’s infernal fire had always been more acute that that. He should have been able to feel it regardless.

Yet felt nothing but the deep ache that suffused his entire being. It was agony, but Crowley’s touch did not add to it.

“It stings a bit,” said Crowley, slowly. “Just static shock, hardly there.”

“Doesn’t hurt me at all. I mean, everything hurts, but it’s no worse.”

Crowley stroked his fingers over Aziraphale’s forehead gently, and Aziraphale felt himself sighing in response. It was an odd thing. He should have been so swamped in pain that the sensation was barely noticeable, but instead it was the only thing he could think about. It was a wonderful, hopeful thing, the way the faintest gust of a cooling breeze made you feel better on a stiflingly hot day, even if it couldn’t actually alleviate the heat.

“I wish I could think of something useful to do,” fretted Crowley, still stroking Aziraphale’s forehead, though he’d said that it stung and knowing Crowley that probably meant it was merely short of agonizing.

“Just be here,” said Aziraphale. He paused, then added, “A cup of tea would be nice, too?”

“Of course.” Crowley smiled, though it was a wan sort of thing, and rose.

Aziraphale slowly levered himself upright, since drinking tea flat on his back would be less than ideal, and re-arranged his piebald wings across the couch cushions. Go— Somebody, he ached. A shiver went through him, and he felt like his teeth might start rattling. Hadn’t Crowley said he was feverish? How could he suddenly feel freezing?

Fortunately a moment later Crowley returned, and pressed a teacup into his hands. “Thank you, my dear,” murmured Aziraphale, and sipped. The tea drove away the sudden shivering, but did nothing for the rest of the pain. Still, it was good, and he finished the cup before setting it aside.

“How are you feeling?” asked Crowley, kneeling next to the couch again.

“Moderately awful. Everything aches. I think my hair aches. I hope this stage of things doesn’t last the rest of the molt.” He frowned faintly. “I wonder, in fact… I suspect it’s like this because it’s at an equilibrium. If I was just a tiny bit more demonic, it’d tip over to the other side and I’d be properly a demon, I suppose.”

“Huh. That makes sense. I could probably do that for you. If I pushed a little power into you…”

Aizraphale nodded. “Perhaps you should. Anything that makes this process go faster seems like a good idea.”

“Right.” Crowley shifted, rising higher on his knees. “Let me just…” His hands touched Aziraphale again, a finger resting at each temple. Aziraphale let out another soft sigh at the touch. “Okay, here goes,” said Crowley.

Aziraphale felt a prickling at his temples, a flash of warmth, a sudden rush of feverishness through his whole body, then a sudden chill, an odd feeling of loss, and then the ache that suffused him vanished. For just a heartbeat he was relieved, but an instant later dozens of points of fresh pain blossomed across his wings, starting as pinpricks and swelling towards searing agony, not red-hot pokers now but crackling lightning jolting into the base of each feather. Dimly he knew that it was the white ones that hurt now. Dimly he understood exactly what had happened, but only dimly, because he was too busy screaming, collapsing forward against Crowley as unbearable pain filled him to the brim.

It was far worse than he’d felt before, for when he’d been put to sleep only a fraction of the feathers had been black. Now half his wings were white, torturing him, and it was too much, he couldn’t do anything but scream and scream and scream, even though Crowley was holding him tightly and that didn’t hurt anymore but it didn’t matter, his wings were agony too great to even notice Crowley’s touch.

Finally, after an unbearable eternity that was actually only a few seconds, Crowley’s hand pushed against his forehead again and the world went away, taking the pain mercifully with it.

---

“Wake up, angel,” said Crowley’s tired voice, as Aziraphale swam back to consciousness once more. He blinked blearily, stunned by the fact that nothing hurt. Was this a dream? He felt weak as a kitten, wrung out like a dishrag, and there was a strange hollowness somewhere in his chest, but there was no pain at all.

Crowley smiled at him. “There you are. With me now?”

“I think so. What happened?”

“We’re both bloody idiots, that’s what happened. I tipped the balance to the ‘demon’ side, your white feathers started torturing you, and, well…” Crowley gestured behind him as Aziraphale once more levered himself upright to observe the drift of white scattered around the room. His old feathers. All of them. He glanced back at his wings. They were patchy, with large swathes of dimpled pink flesh showing, and broad gaps were nearly all his secondaries were gone—the primaries had already all come in black—but though all his feathers had to have been ripped out, and indeed he could see blood on the shafts of many of those lying scattered about the room, there was no blood on his skin, and not even a trace of pain.

The demonic feathers, his new feathers, were sleek and glossy and black, but without the white to make them look even darker than they were, Aziraphale could see that they were a squid ink sort of black, like the darkest possible sepia, a fractionally lighter and much warmer color than Crowley’s pure midnight black.

“You pulled them, and you healed me?” said Aziraphale, wonderingly.

“You were whimpering. Had to listen to you whimpering for days before, couldn’t take it anymore. I figured that’d solve it, and since our natures mix just fine now, I could actually heal you.”

“But to pull them you’d have to…” Aziraphale looked down at where Crowley held his hands cradled against his knees. Not resting naturally, but palms up, so that the ravaged skin wouldn’t touch his trousers. They were red and blistered, and Aziraphale felt his heart breaking with sorrow and love at once. Crowley had done that, for him.

“Oh, Crowley, dearest…”

He slid off the couch and knelt next to Crowley, then took his hand. Crowley flinched ever so slightly, as if tensed for the pain that had always come when they touched, but there was none at all. Aziraphale lifted Crowley’s hand and kissed each finger with slow reverence. He felt exhausted and worn, but there was a wellspring of power somewhere in his core, power that felt both like and unlike the angelic power he was used to, and he drew on that to send healing energy into Crowley’s hands with each kiss. “Had my lips been smitten into music by the kisses that but made them bleed,” he murmured, and pressed a kiss into Crowley’s palm.

“Oh not Wilde,” said Crowley, but his protest was half-hearted, and there was something gentle in his voice.

Aziraphale smiled against Crowley’s hand, now free of blisters, and moved to the other. “No Wilde then.” He kissed a finger gently. “Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all; What hast thou then more than thou hadst before?” He murmured each phrase in between a shower of kisses; accompanied the poetry with all the healing power he could muster.

“Yes, Shakespeare’s much better.” Crowley’s tone was trying very hard to be casual. “Though isn’t that the one that ends with the bit about spite?”

“Kill me with spites; yet we must not be foes,” said Aziraphale, and planted one more kiss on Crowley’s palm before looking up at him, eyes shining. “That one has always made me think of you, my dear.”

Crowley just shook his head, but there was a glimmer of what might be tears in his eyes. Aziraphale felt tears in his own, and he closed his eyes when Crowley reached out to wipe them away, then leaned into it when the demon cupped his cheek.

He felt the brush of Crowley’s lips against his forehead, and it was better than any celestial glory he’d ever experienced. How had he ever been afraid of Falling, when Falling had been all that had stood between him and this all this time?

He opened his eyes and stared into Crowley’s, the demon—the other demon—mere inches away now. His glorious golden eyes seemed to fill the whole world, and the pain Aziraphale could see in them stabbed him through all over again. “Crowley? You alright there?”

“Just… Your eyes. They’re like mine now, snake eyes. You’ve actually gone and fallen. Doesn’t seem possible still, somehow.”

Aziraphale blinked, his reaction more puzzled than anything else. “Snake? But shouldn’t my eyes reflect my… Oh! They’re not snake eyes, they’re cat eyes. Of course. Still blue?”

Crowley blinked at him. “How are you not bothered by this? You’ve just…jumped into being a demon, headfirst. How can you be okay with it?”

“Because you’re here,” he said gently to Crowley. “Because you’ve been here all this time. Because I’ve had six thousand years to see that a demon doesn’t have to be a monster. Six thousand years to learn how to question Heaven. Six thousand years of longing for you, my dearest, and now you’re here, and I can touch you.” Aziraphale took Crowley’s hand again, interlacing their fingers, Crowley’s longer ones with his short, stout ones. “I know it’s not all poetry and roses and crème brûlée—it hasn’t been so far, certainly!—but how can I fear it, after all that? How can I regret it?”

“Oh, angel…” Crowley leaned in again, and the kiss he pressed on Aziraphale this time wasn’t to his forehead.

Aziraphale had kissed before, so he knew what he was doing when he kissed Crowley back, but kisses had never been like this. They’d been pleasant enough, generally, with a little frisson of physical passion running down his spine and a lovely feeling of caring, of human connection. But this was a thrill, a rush, a thing almost like lightning, almost like burning, but good, so very good. It made his heart pound and his head spin and all he wanted in that moment was more; more of this, more of Crowley, forever.

Crowley seemed to want much the same, for the kiss went on and on, tongues twining, exploring, bodies close, eyes closed as they both savored the long-withheld wonderfulness of it. Eventually, though, they broke apart.

Crowley was smiling now, as he stared into Aziraphale’s eyes. “Cat’s eyes, huh?” he said. “I guess that figures. Never did ask what your aspect was. But something prim, fussy, far too obsessed with food, associated with bookshops… It’s very you.”

“I’m not necessarily a house cat, you know,” said Aziraphale, with a little put-upon huff, though it came with a smile. “Any more than you’re a garden snake. I was a lion when I was first sent to guard Eden.”

“I don’t recall seeing any angelic lions about,” said Crowley with a chuckle and a raise of his eyebrows.

“Well, they went and issued me a flaming sword just after that, as you may recall, and lions are rather ill-suited to carrying weaponry, my dear.”

“Can you still change?”

“I suppose I can. I haven’t in ages and ages.”

“Why not? Always wondered that, really. Demons take up their aspects all the time. I figured maybe angels had lost the ability or something, since the Great War.”

“Oh no, it mostly just became, well…rather looked down on. Partly the fault of your lot—my lot now, I suppose. Demons are so fond of their aspects. You’ve seen how many of them work them into their human forms. Even you’ve got that little tattoo.” He furrowed his brow. “Perhaps I should get one myself.”

“You never struck me as the tattoo-getting sort,” said Crowley with a laugh.

Aziraphale laughed too. “I’m finding that after giving up on fretting endlessly about being righteous that I’m a rather different sort than I used to think.” Aziraphale felt another rush of that giddy, free feeling. He could get a tattoo if he liked! Or figure out how to manifest one. He could do whatever he wanted. “But in any case, there was also the business about humans being in the image of God. Human form was considered more Godly. Taking your aspect was imitating a dumb beast, it was lowering yourself. So it became something that was just not done Upstairs.”

“As if God didn’t give everyone their aspects in the first place. Bunch of stuffed shirts, the lot of them.”

“Oh yes, very much so. But not me, not anymore.”

Crowley chuckled. “You might be a bit stuffed, still, angel.”

“Well, I’m working on it.”

“Can you unbend enough to show me your aspect? I’m curious.”

“I’ll try.” Aziraphale straightened, still sitting on the floor, but sitting up properly, shifting to cross his legs, letting his eyes slide half closed.

His body shifted and flowed, and as Crowley watched with interest, he collapsed downward until a fluffy house cat was sitting there. Aziraphale looked down at his own paws, and saw that they were golden brown, and his forelegs seemed to be marked with broad black stripes. His ears went down flat, then flicked back up again. “Oh dear.”

“Aziraphale?” Crowley was watching with fascination plain on his face.

“Last time I did this, I was quite definitely white-furred. I suppose demons aren’t permitted to be white. How repressive.” His tone was disapproving.

“You look quite handsome, angel,” said Crowley. “Much more interesting than boring white.”

Aziraphale looked back at himself. “I suppose. I wish I had a mirror.”

“Here, let me… Hmm. Should be right there in the bedroom… Ah, yes.” Crowley frowned in concentration, then snapped his fingers. A moment later a big standing mirror in a sleek black frame appeared. “There you go, angel.”

Aziraphale looked in the mirror, taking himself in. He was enormous for a house cat, stockily built, with a thick coat and a long, exceptionally fluffy tail. His fur might perhaps have been called brown tabby, but it was brighter than many brown tabbies, with a rich tawny color like burnished gold, marked with broad, bold, black stripes. His eyes were a clear, bright blue, brighter, perhaps, than a human’s eyes could have been, and they flashed when they caught the light just so.

“The stripes are more interesting,” he said, turning himself around to get different angles.

Crowley, meanwhile, could no longer resist, and reached out and stroked a hand down over Aziraphale’s soft fur. Aziraphale leaned into the touch, and somewhat to his own surprise, started purring.

“Oh that’s nice,” said Aziraphale. “But I want to see what the rest of them look like, now. They were all just plain white before, even the ones that usually have spots or stripes.”

“Let’s see ‘em, then. I bet they’re all handsome as anything.”

“Oh, well,” started Aziraphale, about to voice his usual safe self-abnegation. Wouldn’t do to be prideful. But he might as well tick that sin off too, mightn’t he? “I suppose they probably are.” He tilted his head again, admiring the way his eyes contrasted with the honey-gold of his coat. “Let’s find out.”

A moment later the tawny house cat was gone and an immense tawny lion stood in its place. The lion had an impressive black mane, and the same blue, slitted eyes, even though lions proper have round pupils. Like most angels or demons, his eyes were one thing Aziraphale couldn’t change, no matter what form he took.

“You’re bloody huge,” said Crowley, grinning.

Aziraphale only laughed, and became a Siberian tiger, even larger than the lion had been. He was tawny like this too, though tigers should be more orange, but he was a golden color, and his stripes were thick and broad and the same sepia-ink shade as his wings.

He tried several more big cats, and then a few of the small cats as well, in quick succession. They were all gold and black. He frowned and tried something else. “Even the snow leopard. Except that it makes me look like an Amur Leopard. Does that mean I can’t be a proper snow leopard? Oh, no, this is an Amur leopard. A golden snow leopard just doesn’t seem right, though. Foo.”

“You’re completely ridiculous, angel. And I can’t see any difference between this one and the last one.”

“They’re completely different species,” huffed Aziraphale. “The snow leopard was larger, and they have wildly different facial structures, dearest.”

“They’re both great, big, fluffy, spotted buggers,” said Crowley, grinning.

“Hmph. You might as well say that grass snakes and adders are both the same since they’re both barred,” said Aziraphale. “I mean really, my dear.”

Crowley just laughed.

“Gold and black,” said Aziraphale, angling himself again in the mirror, looking at the long, dense fur of the Amur leopard. “You know, I’ve seen some quite attractive gold and black tartan patterns. It’s not the most common color combination, but there are some.”

“I thought you were going to bring your wardrobe into the twenty-first century, angel.”

“People still wear tartan,” said Aziraphale stuffily. They were both smiling though, even if for once Aizraphale’s grin was more sharp-fanged than Crowley’s. A moment later he melted back into the fluffy little house cat.

“How do you feel about petting cats?” said the former angel.

“Hah. Hedonist. But then you are a cat.” Crowley got up and seated himself on the couch, then patted his lap. “Come on, then.”

Aziraphale jumped into Crowley’s lap and curled up there. Crowley immediately began stroking him, running his hand down Aziraphale’s back over and over. Aziraphale gave in almost immediately and began purring, letting his eyes slide closed. This was simply lovely.

“You know, I could just about fall asleep like this. I don’t, ordinarily, recent events to the contrary, but… It’s lovely. You’re lovely, Crowley, just lovely. I could stay here like this with you for all eternity.”

Crowley only smiled and continued petting.