Tight Trouser Never Won Fair Angel

Chapter Thirteen (I Got You Blue)

Aziraphale lemme smash.

A/N: When I originally posted this chapter to Ao3, I was practically vibrating with excitement. Now I'm vibrating again, I can't WAIT for y'all to read this chapter.

-/-

"I don't suppose there's any point in telling you that you aren't supposed to be here, angel," Crowley said, not looking at Aziraphale.

"Your labyrinth is making all of the decisions," Aziraphale said. "I think it wanted me to see this." He looked around, and added, "It's very beautiful. Why is it meant to be off-limits?"

"Because it's not finished yet. It's missing something." Crowley slithered down from the statue to join Aziraphale; Aziraphale gave him a subtle once-over and, deciding that it would be appreciated, an obvious twice-over. Crowley grinned. "Thought you'd like this better than the last one."

He'd swapped out his billowy shirt and tight trousers for a jazz suit, deep navy with fine red lines, and a brown homburg to top it off, a snake-headed walking stick suddenly dangling from one hand. He obliged Aziraphale's sheepish thrice-over with a twirl before leaning on his stick, one hip cocked out.

"Well, it is a good look for you," Aziraphale admitted, and then held out his arm. "Come join me, I want to talk to you. You can show me this beautiful park you've made."

Crowley, for one long moment, just looked at Aziraphale's arm like it was some kind of new intruder in his labyrinth, something for him to inspect for danger levels before deciding what to do about it, and then, very hesitantly, looped his own through it.

"You... want to talk to me?" Oh, they were walking now. All right.

"Yes."

Despite this, he was silent for some time, just looking and taking in all of the beautiful things the park had to offer. (Crowley, for his part, watched Aziraphale, and was glad that Aziraphale was paying too much attention to the park to notice.)

(Aziraphale noticed.)

"Have you been monitoring my progress through your labyrinth?"

"For a little while. I spent some time in- um- after I left, I came here and watched you. You were with Newt when I tuned in."

"Ah, yes." Aziraphale smiled. "The boy who comes here for a hobby and always gets home in time for dinner."

Crowley shrugged. "He's a good kid. Kind of dim, but all right. Takes home fruit to his mother when he thinks I'm not paying attention."

"And she comes to no harm from eating food grown in a Fae realm," Aziraphale stated, and finally turned to Crowley with a soft smile. "It's all real, isn't it? Everything, or nearly everything. You didn't imagine it."

He turned to meet a dazzling grin from Crowley. "Figured it out, did you?"

"Your labyrinth told me- or rather, gave me the clues to realize for myself." His grip slipped down Crowley's arm to join with his hand. "It's astonishing. Truly. I've never seen anything like it."

Crowley said nothing. His brain had stopped, his gaze fixed rather firmly on Aziraphale's hand laced with his own. He made a sound a bit like 'Ngk?', and when that proved insufficient, followed it up with, 'Unk?' This also proving fruitless, his brain gave up the ghost and he fell silent, content to stroll hand-in-hand through the park with this wonderful, brilliant fairy.

Eventually, his brain rebooted, and he broke the soft silence floating around them.

"The- in the goblin city I was brought up in- the king there was really into, mm, you know, brutalist design. Really dank and crowded and unpleasant. Demotivational posters. That sort of thing."

Aziraphale said nothing, merely squeezed Crowley's hand, and waited for him to say more.

"I wasn't the only prince there, I had a few siblings, but- I was always different to them, and I was a little bit the favorite, too. So I got to go outside a lot- outside, you know? Into the mortal realm. It was always so much better there. Filled with wonderful things. Exciting things. I loved it- and I loved the gardens best of all."

"So you built your own," Aziraphale guessed.

"Mm. Tried to- tried just imagining one up, but I could never get it- you know, right. Then I figured out that the less stuff I was imagining, the more space I could create, and decided to do things the hard way- brought in soil and seeds and water. I built this place, from the ground up."

"It's beautiful. It's nearly the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."

"Nearly?" Crowley asked, and Aziraphale gave him a Look so significant that his cheeks flamed as red as his hair and he suddenly became very interested in a pair of ducks arguing on the surface of the pond.

He cleared his throat nervously, and Aziraphale said, "You said this place wasn't finished yet. What is it missing?"

Crowley turned to Aziraphale to tell him that he wasn't sure, but before he could say so he was struck by how right the fairy looked in his park, surrounded by the most beautiful things he'd been able to collect for six thousand years, set out on display in careful rows and chaotic arrangement but always, always missing some crucial element that he couldn't define, and what came out of his mouth was a sound a bit like, "Mrngh?"

"Sorry?"

Crowley cleared his throat and tried again. "I said, it doesn't matter. You said you wanted to talk to me? Or was that what you wanted to talk about?"

Aziraphale gave him a smug, sidelong look. "My dear, I didn't say I wanted to talk to you about anything."

Crowley clamped his mouth shut with a click. He was rapidly losing his footing with Aziraphale: he had thrown on the suit in the hopes of flustering him some more, but so far Aziraphale was the one doing all of the flustering. If Crowley's ears got any hotter, he was going to catch fire.

And there was the matter of the bog- he wasn't sure why, but he suddenly wanted to explain himself. But how could he even start? 'I have an entire area of my labyrinth that exists for me to take out my anger on'? Aziraphale seemed willing to overlook what he'd seen, or at least not bring it up yet, and Crowley would happily keep putting it off as long as he had to if it got Aziraphale to look at him like that again.

They had circled the duck pond and were approaching the eastern gate to the park. Aziraphale instinctively checked the timer Crowley had given him, and made a quiet pained noise.

"Three hours," he said softly, an ache in his voice that shook Crowley to his core.

Crowley brought them to a halt under the archway of the gate. "Angel," he murmured, and the fairy looked up at him with eyes that swirled from sea-grey to moss-green in a violent whirlpool of anxiety. Crowley took his hand, brought it to his lips. "This is where we part. You've reached the last leg of the labyrinth and I can't help you here. No one can, not even the labyrinth. You have to do it on your own."

"I know," Aziraphale whispered, turning his gaze to their joined hands. "My godson..."

"He's safe. He's in my tower, and I'll be waiting for you there with him." That was all he'd meant to say, but suddenly he needed Aziraphale to know, to understand. "Listen... angel... I never had a champion. No one came for me."

"Oh my dear..."

Crowley kissed Aziraphale's hand again. "I'll be waiting for you," he murmured against his skin, then turned and was gone.

-/-