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He stands in their cottage, still and silent. He has quite forgotten what he was doing, vegetables half-chopped on the counter (for Crowley, they would hold themselves in terrified stasis; for Aziraphale, they refuse to wilt or brown because they love him. Crowley has done that much, and everything he touches is a little bit sentient.)
But now Aziraphale stands, dinner forgotten, knife dangling from his hand. He looks out the window onto the green of their garden, just edging toward brown on the leaves of their apple tree. (The tree, too, loves him, loves them both. Only the apple tree doesn’t fear Crowley. It bears apples of a variety that only two living souls on Earth have ever tasted. They make pies and cider from it, and never share them outside their cottage.)
A dark figure moves outside, ducking branches and slithering around beds. The entire garden is his partner; plants touched directly or swaying in his path, moved by the eddies and swirls that come off the tips of his wings.
It’s an old, old dance-- nearly as old as they are. Maybe more; Aziraphale remembers something like from the hazy before-times, when everything was bright and none of them knew shadow or winter or grief.
Nightblack feathers break light into a thousand colors with the twitch of muscle, then coax iridescent rainbows from the weakening autumn sun. This one, he thinks, this dance-- he’s never seen it done by Crowley, not like this. Not by any other angel or demon in history. He’d have remembered, surely.
The movements, yes, arms and legs, human forms following human steps. Adapted for harvests, for weddings, even for swordfights. But he’s always thought of it as such a deeply human thing.
He’d never seen the missing parts before-- how the entire tone shifts, intensifies with those enormous wings curving through space, slicing the air into glittering shards. How there is always space left, where another body might step in.
This is what should have been all along. This is as close as they can get, on Earth with its sunshine and gravity and these corporeal forms, to what they should have had-- leaping through dimensions, sliding together for sheer joy. For love of each other and creation.
He is brought back to himself by a clatter-- the knife, fallen from nerveless fingers onto the slate cottage floor. He startles, laughs. Lays the knife on the counter.
Finds his eyes straying again, to the figure in the garden.
He watches a moment more, then huffs and tugs off waistcoat and bowtie, draping them gently over his chair.
By the time he reaches the door the room is full of his feathers.
Crowley starts when the door opens; they still haven’t got round to sorting the creak. “Angel! I--” he says, and gets no further as Aziraphale’s wings follow him outside, stretching high in the sun.
“You may have to help remind me of the steps, love,” Aziraphale says softly, reaching for his lover’s hand.
Crowley blinks, then breaks out in a blinding grin and bows, wings mimicking the motion. “Won’t you come and join the dance, angel?” he says.
And everything is perfect.