Chapter Text
It is in the nature of human beings to collect things, to gather hoards to themselves and show them off like preening magpies (magpies had, of course, learned this behaviour from certain angels who shall remain nameless). This is especially true of things that human beings should definitely not be collecting, and in fact should leave very well alone - but, as was evidenced at the beginning of all things, that which is forbidden is only coveted more strongly.
Much to the amusement of those who were not human, of course.
There is an auction house in central London that is well known to those with an interest in fine art and antiquities, and indeed is very popular for people interested in purchasing such things. It has many high ceilinged halls with wooden floors polished within an inch of their lives, perfect for displaying the lots going up for auction in the afternoon. The staff are unfailingly courteous, considerate and surprisingly knowledgeable about the varied lots that come through their doors, and the patrons that provide them. It is ostentatious to the extreme, because that is the image that is expected of it.
What is not well known, or expected in any way, however, is that this particular auction house has become a hot spot for a rather different kind of auction. The staff become more discreet, the clientele are significantly wealthier and more paranoid and attend by invitation only, and the lots are kept locked in a high security vault until they are brought upstairs to be revealed to the waiting bidders.
After all, when dealing with occult objects (and those interested in purchasing them), secrecy was a top priority.
Crowley huffed a dramatic sigh from his seat in the back row, flashing an obnoxious smile at the woman who turned to glare at him as he pulled out his phone. Fifteen minutes until the auction started and the seat next to him was still conspicuously empty.
He was most certainly not worried.
Not in the slightest.
It was simply a nuisance, that was all. Aziraphale still had ten minutes to show up, and he undoubtedly would - it would not do if he left Crowley on his own for this whole debacle.
Crowley dialled the shop for the fifth time in the last ten minutes, absent-mindedly letting it ring out as he glared at the door, willing the angel to walk through, all polite and apologetic with some excuse about…saving a baby or some such Heavenly duty.
Time ticked on, and the phone did not stop ringing (Aziraphale had no answering machine, of course) and Crowley growled low in his throat as he jabbed the disconnect button.
Aziraphale had never skipped out on a night out with him. Ever.
His leg bounced irritably as he slouched low in his chair. He never liked coming to these things - watching pretentious people swindling other pretentious people into spending as much money as possible on junk (and cursed junk too sometimes) just wasn’t his idea of fun. Aziraphale at least made it slightly more interesting.
Occult auctions were one of the few things that both Heaven and Hell were interested in - Crowley was tasked with “purchasing” anything that was Real and potentially dangerous to demons, while also cursing a few ordinary objects to cause some extra chaos; Aziraphale was equally tasked with ensuring that anything Dangerous was purchased and then later destroyed. Of course, under their usual Arrangement, only one of them would be needed to buy all the Real and Dangerous objects, and cause a little extra mischief along the way. Unfortunately, due to the nature of certain objects, their auras made them undetectable to either an Angel or a Demon (usually ones that would be harmful to one or the other).
This had given rise to what Aziraphale had affectionally dubbed The Exception: work together to buy anything Real, split it up later (Crowley could work some low level mischief in the background) and then write up some suitably dramatic reports over several bottles of wine back at the bookshop.
It was all very well and good until someone didn’t turn up.
Nowadays though, things were a bit different, post-failed Apocalypse and all. These days, their presence at the auctions was more to keep dangerous items out of the hands of any other agents of Heaven and Hell that might be interested in picking up a weapon or two to help deal with a Hellfire immune rogue angel and a Holy Water immune rogue demon. Meant he and Aziraphale could sit together at these things at the very least.
How was Crowley supposed to sense anything anti-Demon that might show up in tonight’s auction without an angel in the room? For that matter, how was he supposed to carry out any blessed objects without burning himself to pieces?
Ten minutes until the auction began. They’d be distributing the list of lots by now, and security would be locking the front doors to the auction house - if Aziraphale wasn’t in the building by now, he’d have to miracle himself in. And sure enough, when Crowley stirred himself enough to sit up and look, the staff were making their way through the rows handing out the programme and encouraging the groups of people still chatting in the aisles to take their assigned seats.
Where are you, Aziraphale?
He couldn’t be in trouble - Crowley would know if he was in trouble. He could never explain how he knew, he just did. They both just knew when and where to show up when the other one needed them the most.
Crowley closed his eyes, letting the gentle human noise wash over him and out of his awareness as he cast his senses out farther. Out of the auditorium, into the entrance hall, down all the little corridors and up all the staircases, anywhere and everywhere the shadows reached. Something was distinctly off in the auction house tonight, he hadn’t been able to pin it down before. There was a… tightness in the building, like a spring coiled just too far, ready to snap at the next twist. He let his jaw open slightly as he took a deep breath.
Fear.
His eyes flickered open and he closed his jaw with a snap. How had he missed that? He let his gaze roam over the staff, seeing their pale tense faces, the stiffness to their movements hidden under practiced smiles and courtesy. Every single one of them reeked of fear.
Just what was going on with this place tonight?
“Ladies and gentlemen, if I could have your attention please?” Crowley’s head jerked round to the stage so fast that had he been human, he would have given himself whiplash.
An elderly man now stood at the microphone, his smile as false as the archangel Gabriel’s, his suit tailored within an inch of its life. Crowley resisted the urge to sneer in disgust - no human would be able to tell, but even from the very back of the hall, he could smell the taint of cursed objects - what had he done, climbed into Satan’s bath? - and yes, when he squinted he could see that one of the man’s hands had been bleached of all colour, stripped down to skeletal thinness.
Whoever this man was, he handled cursed objects regularly enough that they had seriously, permanently even, damaged him.
“Before we begin the auction tonight, I requested the chance to speak with you all,” he began, in a scratching wheezing voice. “Tonight’s collection…the collection you will be bidding on…consists on thirty-six items from my own private collection. Many of these are the pride of my collection—”
The audience erupted into whispered scandalous speculation - not a single one of them would have given up a piece of their own collections.
The man smiled, holding up a perfectly manicured hand for silence. “Friends, please, cease. Allow me to say only this: my collection is dear to me, but I have found something which is dearer than all these things combined.” His smile slipped from false to genuine for a flickering moment and Crowley’s skin crawled in response. “Which is why there is, in fact, a thirty-seventh lot.”
More whispered speculation overtook the audience as they fluttered through their programs, which, sure enough, stopped at the description of lot thirty-six - a solid silver spinning top, four and a half inches, engraved with an “unknown script”, and would, apparently, begin to spin itself in the presence of demons.
“Lot thirty-seven—” the man continued, raising his papery voice above the noise of the audience. “—is rather, hem, non traditional. It will not be an item for sale, per se, but rather, you will be bidding on an experience. The winner of this lot may accompany me down to the vault beneath the auction house and examine the priceless item I acquired just three days ago. While the item in question is not for sale, and I really must stress that fact, I can assure you all - it will definitely be worth your time and curiosity.”
Crowley barely managed to muffle a snort, and received a glare from the lady in front of him yet again. Humans. The more money they had, the greater their level of gullibility and stupidity - throw in rare “occult” (whether real or otherwise) items and it multiplied their stupidity by a factor of ten at the very least. Still, he was curious to see just what warranted such a special auction, as well as a ridiculous amount of money for the “experience” of seeing it.
Aziraphale was going to miss the most exciting auction in the last fifty years - or maybe the most boring. Crowley looked at his phone again and shoved it back into his pocket. Of course he hadn’t phoned, the daft angel was probably nose deep in a book by now, oblivious to the passage of time. It had happened before.
Just. Not when the Arrangement was involved.
He looked up just in time to see the man slowly making his way to his chair at the far left of the stage - Crowley had filtered out most of the closing speech, except his name, Grayson Mallory - oh, the owner of the auction house. He frowned, he could have sworn Mallory was a lot younger than the man on stage, he was in his forties wasn’t he? The Grayson Mallory on the stage had to be at least sixty, maybe even seventy. Not that he was good at guessing human ages, but he was better at it than Aziraphale was.
Mallory stumbled the last few steps to his chair, and sank into it with a weary sigh. His withered hand crept up to his neck, grasping at the chain half hidden beneath his waistcoat. A shiver ran unpleasantly up Crowley’s spine as he watched Mallory grab something small and white at the end of the chain, hiding it from view.
Whatever that was, it set off every alarm bell that Crowley possessed. So much so that he almost missed the whispered argument between three staff members at the doors, so when he did finally manage to quieten his mind enough to tune in, he only caught the tail end of it.
“—shouldn’t have gone in the vault in the first place!”
“—wouldn’t stop screaming—”
“Hush. The auction is starting, just keep everyone upstairs and away from the vault.”
He had a very very bad feeling about all this.
Crowley tried to pay attention to the first lot being brought out onto the stage - the grimoire of a fifteenth century warlock who had, according to the auctioneer, discovered how to summon fire spirits to guide him to wherever he wanted to go. Crowley vaguely remembered that warlock: good for a bottle of wine, very bad at knife juggling, and certainly very flammable. Memorably so.
He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, unable to stop his eyes from straying over to Mallory. He should be watching the auction, that grimoire was probably something he should be stopping the humans from taking home, but he just could not settle down. The audience was already getting antsy around him as the bidding on the book grew fierce.
After twenty minutes of rapid bidding, cursing and scowling, the grimoire finally went to a man in the front row with an exceptionally smug moustache (No, he didn’t know what made the moustache smug, it just was), and by then Crowley had had enough.
There was a game demons were fond of playing - and by “game”, they really meant “a form of self-preservation”, and by playing, they meant “using in order to avoid the notice of avenging angels fond of smiting” - and it was rather useful for those up to no good around human kind. If it had a name, lesser demons would have termed it something simple like “Notice-Me-Not” but Crowley was not one of them.
He stood up from his chair, drawing on the minor miracle that allowed human awareness to simply slide past him without asking too many awkward questions. Anyone who did manage to notice him found that they forgot seeing him only a few moments later, or confused him with someone else, say someone who did, in fact, have permission to go or do whatever Crowley was doing at the time. Of course it wouldn’t work if Crowley was doing anything particularly dramatic, or that might hurt them - then their own self-preservation instincts would kick in and the illusion would break.
As it was, it was enough to get Crowley out of the auction room - lot two was just coming onto the stage (a glass orb that apparently held angel tears, which Crowley noted absently was definitely a fake, it was the wrong colour for angel tears for a start) and the noise of the audience was an excellent cover for his sneaking away.
Now what?
The auction house was not a building Crowley had ever actually explored before - usually he just came in, bid on whatever he was supposed to, and left again as soon as he could. He’d had no desire or reason to go wandering around, and as such, actually had no idea where the vault was. He hissed past his teeth, standing at the top of two staircases that curved downwards in opposite directions. The vault was down, but which down? Left or right? Who in their right mind had designed this place?
He took a deep breath, letting the impression of the room wash over him - humans were messy, they left imprints on everything. Their scents, their emotions, their memories were stamped firmly, noisily, on objects they even slightly brushed against. For someone like Crowley, for whom reading the history of most objects was as simple as breathing, it only required the lightest touch to glean everything he needed to know. Of course, it was a lot more difficult if he was reading something occult, or had been handled by an angel or a demon. There were a lot of very blank objects in the bookshop, for example, that had long since forgotten any human impressions. It was…oddly peaceful.
But to the matter at hand: he brushed his fingers lightly over the banister of the stairs on the right. Sweat and frustration, another glass of wine, no one would know—relief, not late, not going to get fired today—panic, bewilderment, heart pounding, it was just here a moment ago—
Crowley yanked his hand away. Nothing more than the comings and goings of the overworked staff. Their break room must be down those stairs then, tucked away from the prying eyes of guests and patrons alike.
Which means…
With a pleased smirk, he set off down the lefthand stairs, feeling the guilty pleasure of buyers layered over anticipation as he let the impressions from the banister sink in. Oh yes, the vault was definitely this way. Mortal greed was a very distinct impression.
Plush carpets muffled the sound of his steps as he descended down the dimly lit stairs. The stairs went down a considerable way farther than he would have anticipated, curving down into darkness, as the lights became more functional but fewer, and the carpet of the auction house giving way to iron-wrought steps that clanged unpleasantly with every footfall.
It was distinctly reminiscent of the escalators that led into Hell. Crowley didn’t like that reminder one bit.
And then he fell.
This was no vague saunter, no casual descent; his foot hit the edge of the next step and he windmilled for a terrified moment - if his heart had needed to beat, it would have stopped in sheer shock, even so, his breath caught, choking back a yell - before landing painfully on his back and sliding uncontrollably down the remaining steps to land in a boneless heap at the bottom.
He groaned, feeling simultaneously horrified, embarrassed and very determined to find who had designed this building and put the fear of Satan in them. And if they were already dead, he would find their soul and throttle them anyway. Stairs. In the dark.
Whatever was down here, whatever Mallory was giving up half his precious collection for, had better be damn well worth it.
Crowley let himself lie there for a moment, feeling an ache spread through all of his limbs. He ran a hand over his face and then clicked his fingers. A light, soft yellow and pulsing, sprang into existence, casting the room into relief.
In sharp contrast to the opulence above, this room was dark, drab and cluttered - even the presence of Crowley’s little light wasn’t enough to illuminate everything that had been stuffed into it. Wooden boxes were stacked high, haphazardly, as if they had been hastily packed and shifted. Crowley frowned, levering himself upright - he’d been lucky enough not to crash into any of them falling down the stairs. Shouldn’t these be in the vault?
The wall opposite the stairs was what really caught his attention - a massive vault door dominated, unnecessary large and showy, exactly the sort of vault door that rich clients would feel reassured by. As Crowley approached it, with a hesitant (and definitely not limping) step, he could see that the entirely of the steel door was etched with tiny esoteric protection symbols from across the world. He snorted. Most of them were either drawn wrong or just plain ineffective for keeping anything safe. There were a few that Crowley could feel some power from, but they were so scattered and without any support that they were next to useless. It might keep out all but the best human thieves, but it was certainly not keeping out anything occult.
In fact… Crowley pushed one of the boxes to one side, and smirked - there was a tiny patch of moss creeping out from around the hinges of the vault door. The humans would have no clue, especially with all the boxes stacked here there and everywhere, but if they didn’t deal with it soon, the devil’s moss would eat everything in this room, including the stairs especially with all this darkness for it to flourish in. It was small now, but Crowley knew plants and this one could easily consume the entire auction house in a week if left alone.
He knelt down, gave the moss a gentle pat of encouragement and a hissed grow better for extra encouragement and then turned his attention back to the door. It was time to find out what exactly Mallory was hiding in here, what it was that was so very important to him.
With a snap of his fingers, the vault door swung open. Crowley had to take a step back to avoid being hit, which mildly ruined his dramatic moment, but there was no one around to see - he could always embellish it later for Aziraphale.
Crowley stepped into the vault, taking a deep breath of the stale, recycled air as the cheap electric lights flickered to life. The room stank: human fear and sweat mostly, layered over old greed, and then faintly buried underneath it all was the sharp scent of pain with the metallic tang of blood.
He barely noticed the door swinging shut behind him, the pneumatic hiss of the seals sliding back into place, his attention entirely absorbed by the interior of the room instead. He wasn’t entirely sure what horrified him the most. In truth, everything in the room was horrifying in rather equal amounts.
The vault should have held various display cases, tables and occult objects, all perfectly preserved and waiting to be taken up to the auction - the usual objects, of course, as Crowley had seen, had been shoved out front to make space for all of…this.
A thick black curtain sealed off the back half of the vault, heavy and ominous, and frankly if Crowley could get away without looking behind it, he’d be grateful. He knew he would have to eventually, of course, but the more he could put it off, the happier he’d be. Whatever was hidden back there was plainly a new addition to the room, he noted, eyeing the scrapes in the paint on the walls, and hastily done too. That never boded well.
Dominating the right side of the room were piles of books, scattered on tables and stuffed into a massive bookcase that had seen better days. Crowley stepped towards them and then wrinkled his nose in distaste - they were mostly occult books, nasty ones if you had the wit to hear the horrible things they whispered, others were unpleasant, but mostly harmless - a few were lying open, with notes scribbled in the margins or covered in post-it notes. He imagined that if he’d had to listen to some of the nastier books for a while, it might drive him to be very unpleasant. He hissed a warning at some of the noisier books (one of which had said downright unkind things about Crowley’s hair) and they finally shushed.
To his left was a table covered in tools and bottles and a large briefcase, all looking very scientific and very much out of place. The bottles were filled with a golden fluid that made Crowley extremely uneasy to even look at, but he forced himself to approach. The tools had been meticulously cleaned and scrubbed within an inch of their lives, but there was an energy about them that made his stomach lurch whenever he went to pick one up. He took a deep breath, reluctantly flipped open the briefcase instead with an idle hand.
He retched, staggering back from the table.
It wasn’t a briefcase at all.
The display case unfolded smoothly, revealing dozens of feathers, pearlescent and glowing dimly, all neatly strapped into their proper place. He forced himself to look again; it seemed there were at least two of each kind of feather, from the large primaries all the way through the structure of the wing to tiny pinfeathers and soft down, and the base of most of the shafts were broken and dipped in a golden sheen. Like the liquid in the bottles, he thought distantly.
Oh it was disgusting. These weren’t moulted feathers; these had been pulled out. Brutally in some cases - which explained the strange energy on the tools. Violence done to an angel’s wings left marks for years. Crowley’s own wings shivered in sympathy, safely tucked away in their celestial plane.
Crowley’s bad feeling was getting worse by the second.
He picked his way across the vault, careful not to touch anything, or disturb any of the chalk lines and symbols that covered the floor. He didn’t want any of the feelings from this room lingering on his hands - or in his nightmares; he wanted to leave and get outrageously drunk as soon as possible.
His feet dragged as he approached the curtain. The sooner he got this over with, the sooner he could go. And the longer he dithered, the more likely it was that Mallory would send someone down to the vault to check on his precious items - or even that the auction would finish and Mallory and his “lucky winner” of lot thirty-seven would be down for their delightful little visit.
Crowley grabbed hold of the curtain and yanked it aside (fear, excitement, nausea, glee, all rippled from the curtain in a disgusting wave over his senses).
Behind the curtain was a massive display case, stretching from wall to wall and from floor to ceiling; made entirely of glass, save for the solid metal door that was jammed up against one wall. But there was no object on display, no statue or artefact he could miracle away. Up against the far wall, however, was a small crumpled figure, huddled beneath gold-stained tattered wings, frighteningly still. Crowley covered his mouth with a hand. He would know those wings anywhere. He known them for six thousand years.
“Aziraphale.”
The angel stirred feebly, his feathers fanning a little, only enough that Crowley could see his eyes peeking through, glazed and heavy, but with no recognition - only pain, fear and exhaustion…
Crowley pressed his hands up against the glass, forgetting himself.
“Aziraphale,” he called softly. “It’s Crowley, I’m here.”
“…the priceless item I acquired just three days ago…” Mallory’s speech from the start of the auction flickered back through his mind, and rage washed over Crowley. Three days. Aziraphale had been here, being tortured for three days and he hadn’t even known. And the humans had been torturing him. Humans. Aziraphale had given up everything for human beings, and this was how they treated him?
Crowley’s demonic aura flared, responding to his anger, and the glass beneath his hands shattered into tiny shards. Aziraphale flinched, eyes snapping shut and his wings covering him tighter.
“Shit.” Crowley immediately reined in his emotions, shoving them back down. That was dumb. The last thing Aziraphale needed was a psychic blast of rage from a demon. “Sorry, Aziraphale, sorry. Just…shit. Hang on.”
The angel did not move or open his eyes again. Crowley stepped into the case - the cage he corrected himself viciously, because that’s what it truly was - and stumbled, overcome by a sudden dizzy spell. He spat a curse, looking down at the floor again and seeing, for the first time, the myriad of sigils and runes that had been etched onto the stone floor. Not enough to contain even a lesser demon, but enough to slow him down and hobble his magic.
Doesn’t matter. Aziraphale first.
He knelt by the angel’s side, his hands ghosting over broken feathers, hesitant to move Aziraphale’s wings himself without warning. Even damaged as they were, if he got spooked, those wings would certainly be strong enough to send Crowley flying.
“Come on, let’s get you out of here - lift your wing, there’s a good angel.”
There was a plaintive muffled whine, and then very slowly, the uppermost wing began to retract with none of its usual smooth grace - it jerked and stuttered and then finally collapsed into a half-folded heap on Aziraphale’s back.
The angel himself was in no better shape - he was bound hand and foot with thick iron shackles that had been fixed to floor by heavy chains, and a gag had been tied painfully tight about his mouth. Crowley was painfully reminded of the time he had rescued Aziraphale from his near-beheading at the Bastille, but there was no playful twinkle in Aziraphale’s eyes now, no witty dramatic banter. Even with a cursory once over Crowley could see the many tiny cuts that peppered the angel, the needle marks, and his natural glow was subdued to an unhealthy wanness.
“Oh,” he sighed, mostly to himself. “What have they done to you?”
He ran his hands lightly over the gag and shackles, wishing them away with a miracle that should have only taken an instant, but in this awful place it took an age, made worse by the fact that Aziraphale shivered fearfully beneath him the entire time - though his natural glow did return a little once he was free. Crowley had to force down another wave of rage, plastering a reassuring smile on his face that he did not feel at all. He would only feel better once Aziraphale was safe and healed.
“Let’s get you home. The bookstore. My flat. Anywhere that isn’t here, you know.”
Slowly, and with a great deal of care, he manoeuvred Aziraphale onto his back, trying to jostle him as little as possible - but even so, the damaged wings still trailed on the floor, feathers dragging through the glass dust. In any other situation, he would have just carried Aziraphale out, but with his wings fully manifested (and injured), it would only be awkward (and painful) for both of them.
“Cr-cr’ley?” Aziraphale’s voice breathed in his ear, barely audible. His hands weakly gripped Crowley’s jacket for support.
“I got you, angel, just relax. I’m getting you out of here.”
“The f’thers—the circle—” Aziraphale’s voice kept breaking, and Crowley could feel him straining to get the words out. “Sum’ning circle.”
A chill ran up Crowley’s spine. A summoning circle. Great. That would be how they’d managed all this.
He breathed sharply through his nose. “Not to worry. I’ll handle it, and the feathers too, all of it. Let’s just get you somewhere safe first.”
Aziraphale, thankfully, did not protest, his forehead pressed against Crowley’s shoulder. He shifted his grip, lifting Aziraphale a little higher on his back (He adamantly refused to call it a piggy back. He would not).
Step by tottering step, demon and angel made slow progress out of the vault - Aziraphale was not heavy by any means, but his wings dragged against the floor despite Crowley’s best efforts, and he did not dare move any faster and risk reopening some unseen injury. The last thing either of them needed was Aziraphale to cry out and alert Mallory to the fact his “priceless item” was being carried away right under his nose.
An angel being stolen by a demon. Crowley would have laughed if he’d had any attention to spare.
He kept up a steady murmuring of reassurances as they made their way back up the spiral staircase - he couldn’t be sure Aziraphale heard any of it, in fact he was almost certain that the angel was unconscious by now. Was that better? He didn’t appear to be in any danger of immediate discorporation, and wouldn’t that be a nightmare and a half?
Crowley tottered out into the main reception hall, mostly not out of breath, thank you very much. He was definitely going to dig up whoever had designed those stairs and throttle them anew. Had they never heard of elevators? Proper spooky, elevators. Especially if they led down to a sinister vault full of cursed objects.
Though, knowing his luck, there would be an elevator somewhere and he’d lugged the angel up the stairs for nothing. That would just so typical, a grand cosmic joke—
A startled gasp broke through his ranting thoughts.
Crowley’s head snapped towards the noise, his sunglasses disappearing in a blink. Stupid, stupid demon, he’d forgotten to miracle another perception filter around them, he’d been so focused on trying to keep Aziraphale together and complaining about the stairs—
The woman stared back at him with frightened brown eyes, her hands covering her mouth. She had been coming up the staff stairs opposite, her uniform rumpled, her face tear-stained.
And for the third time that night, Crowley’s heart froze, forgetting to beat, as he locked eyes with the woman. He really didn’t want to hurt her—but she must have known, they all must have known, they’d kept Aziraphale down there—the suppressed rage in his chest flared hot and he gritted his teeth—any second now, she would scream and people would rush out, and they would take Aziraphale away again, and lock Crowley up as well if they could. They’d managed to successfully hold an angel against his will - a Principality no less - for three days. Holding circles for demons were far more commonly known than angelic ones; it was a holdover from the days when the Archangels had used the humans to hunt down and capture demons for them, rather than stir themselves to action.
Could he tackle her before she screamed? Both of his hands were occupied holding Aziraphale up, and he didn’t want to drop him. But he had to do something—
Aziraphale’s fingers tightened on Crowley’s jacket, almost imperceptibly so, a gentle restraint, and then with a great deal of effort, lifted his head.
The woman’s gaze snapped to Aziraphale, and she took a step back, recognition lighting her features. “You—You can’t be—”
“Please,” Aziraphale interrupted - and Crowley’s chest tightened, only a great deal of screaming could have reduced the angel’s voice to this hoarse, broken plea. “You never saw us. You’re going home now.”
“I-I—” the woman’s face softened into a frown, dark eyes glazing with confusion. “I think I need to go home, I’m not feeling very well.”
“Go home,” Aziraphale urged. “Go home, and forget.” A faint blue light flared out the corner of Crowley’s eyes and he quickly looked away. The woman sighed softly, a relaxed blissful noise, and then turned and went back down the stairs without even a second glance at them. Aziraphale’s head thumped back down on Crowley’s shoulder with a groan.
Crowley hurried forward again, making a beeline for the doors, wrapping them both in a perception filter, as he should have done the first time. “That was so stupid. How can you be so clever and so stupid at the same time? You should be saving your strength to heal, not miracling some girl’s memories away. I could have handled her.”
“There’s been enough violence here of late, dear boy,” Aziraphale mumbled, his voice muffled by Crowley’s jacket.
Crowley hissed in annoyance, readjusting his grip on Aziraphale’s legs, and tried not to feel too guilty when Aziraphale whimpered. There would be a lot more violence tonight, if Crowley had anything to say about it. But if Aziraphale knew about that, he would make that face and then Crowley would feel bad.
But once Aziraphale was safely out of harm’s way… well then Crowley would happily burn the whole building down, guilt-free.
There were, miraculously, no guards by the doors or any staff in the entrance hall as Crowley stomped through, and the doors sprang open at a thought. The Bentley was parked just outside, or at least Crowley’s imagination assured him it would be because he needed it to be. The old car had appeared exactly at the bottom of the steps, looking oddly larger than usual, and the rear door (that hadn’t existed until a moment ago) sprang open as they approached.
“Right,” Crowley said. “Almost there, angel. I’m going to put you down now, okay?”
Aziraphale didn’t respond, but seemed lucid enough as Crowley gently let him slide down off his back - though he did not once let go of the angel, too afraid that if he did so, Aziraphale would simply buckle. As it was, it was an awkward effort to wrangle the barely conscious angel, wings and all, into the back seats of the car, which had flattened themselves helpfully in order to make room for Aziraphale’s wings.
Grey eyes blinked slowly open from the shadowy interior of the car as Crowley finished tucking Aziraphale’s feet in and draped his coat over the shivering angel’s shoulders. “Crowley… it hurts.”
“The pain will pass, Aziraphale, all things do,” Crowley reassured him, straightening up. “Stay here and rest. I mean it, don’t go getting blood all over the seats, okay?” He tried for a small self-assured smile, and wasn’t entirely certain he’d succeeded. “I won’t be long, I promise."
Aziraphale’s eyes widened in panic as Crowley shut the door, his mouth opening in silent pained protest as the car doors locked and the demon walked away. Crowley pretended not to notice. It was for his own good. He’d be safe in the car, and Crowley needed both hands free in order to deal with everything he’d seen down in the vault.
Rain began to fall slowly as Crowley ascended back up the steps to the auction house, a new pair of sunglasses dropping into his hand. He slid them on, and got to work.
All things pass, he’d told Aziraphale, and they did.
Such a shame that that included mortals too.