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The cottage was quiet, as it often was, except for the soft fall of rain against the kitchen windows. Gentle swells of music filtered in from the living room, where Debussy spilled from the horn of a gramophone. Crowley shook his head nearly every time he saw the thing; archaic, he called it, and but he had yet to replace it with anything so new as even a tape deck. It was comforting, Aziraphale supposed. The rich swell of sound, the faint, cracked hum, was nostalgic. Aziraphale remembered the delight he felt at purchasing the thing, the knowledge that, for the first time in six centuries, music could be played at the drop of a needle.
Aziraphale found himself humming along to the tune, trying to calm himself for the task at hand. Crowley sat astride a kitchen chair directly in front of Aziraphale, the latest edition of The Sun (one of Crowley's inventions, of course) scattered in pieces underfoot. An article about the royal family stared up at Aziraphale, sandwiched between an advice column about infidelity and a tell-all from a reality television contestant. Aside from kindling, this was probably the best use for the newspaper, Aziraphale supposed.
“Will you be getting on with it anytime soon, angel?”
Crowley’s dry words did not match the soft tone with which he said them, but Aziraphale still gave him a light tap on the side of the head with the hairbrush.
“I would like to do this well, thank you,” Aziraphale said primly. “Tilt your head, my dear -- yes, that’s it.”
Miraculously, Crowley complied without any further quips, and Aziraphale smoothed the hair back from his face, gently pulling the length of Crowley’s hair so that it tumbled down his back. He ran the brush through the tresses carefully, every now and then eyeing the pair of shears that lay on the table.
Crowley had given him the fright of his long life when, just minutes before, he had come traipsing through the house with said shears in hand. He had been promptly reminded that to use said shears on anything other than fabric was practically a cardinal sin -- if not in the bible, then certainly in Aziraphale’s book -- especially for something so heinous as torturing his plants.
I’m not subjecting anyone to anything . It needs a trim, Crowley had said by way of explanation, using the blades to gesture to his long braid. It’s driving me mad.
It drove Aziraphale mad, too. In a rather different way, he supposed. A handful of years had passed since the Apocalypse had failed to happen and the two had quietly slipped away from the hustle and bustle of London to these windswept hills. Crowley hadn’t cut his hair since, and it had grown long. Longer than Aziraphale had seen it in centuries, possibly millennia. When it wasn’t pulled back in a plait, it curled long and loose over his shoulders, or dripped wet down his back, or fanned against the cream of the pillows --
At that particular thought, Aziraphale had, naturally, protested. And when that had failed, he had laid a hand on Crowley’s shoulder, slipped the shears from his hand, and said, Allow me.
As he stared down at the long ripple of red hair, however, Aziraphale wondered if he should have tacked “to recommend a barber” to the end of that sentence. Never in six thousand years had he needed to cut hair, not even his own -- Aziraphale quite liked the length of his hair, and therefore it did not grow. Crowley had settled more easily into his corporation, more easily still into fashion. For a couple hundred years, he seemed to have a different style every time Aziraphale had seen him, and Aziraphale was certain from the quality that none of those had been done in the middle of the kitchen by an amateur with a pair of fabric shears.
However Aziraphale might massacre it, he was certain it was nothing a talented barber or a desperate miracle couldn't fix. Aziraphale had helped avert the Apocalypse, for God's sake -- admittedly through an elaborate series of cock-ups, but still. He was older than time itself (though just barely), had seen the rise and fall of civilizations, and yet he was laid low by the thought of potentially giving Crowley a lopsided haircut.
It was ridiculous. It wasn't about how it looked, Aziraphale supposed, but rather that it was a part of Crowley, and for that he loved it, would hate to mutilate it. When he ran his hands through Crowley's hair, he could watch the years slip through his fingers with the red tendrils, every single one they had spent together in this little home. Wind it around his fingers, tighter still, and arch that slender neck, exposing the sharp expanse of his throat --
Aziraphale coughed. His face was certainly nearly as red as Crowley’s hair. Some thoughts were more suited to the bedroom than the kitchen, he supposed.
(But sometimes the kitchen. Or the bathroom. Or the living room. And on one memorable occasion, the conservatory.)
The soft slip of the brush through Crowley’s long hair parted the silence of the kitchen. When it was long like this, free of product, it curled -- long, looping red tendrils that dripped out of hair ties and braids. Aziraphale took his time, slowly brushing from the bottom so as not to disrupt the pattern of the curl. He touched his finger to one soft, well defined ringlet. It looked like this when we met, he thought.
The world had been different then. The world was always different, but it had been so… new. And Crowley -- Crawly, back then -- the only constant. The adversary, with his golden eyes and long red hair. He had worn it in much the same fashion for thousands of years, the strange color a mark of his infernal nature. How brightly it had shone in the light, how deep and lush in the shadows.
And then -- Aziraphale set the brush aside, and took the shears in his hand. How heavy they felt, heavier than any flaming sword. And then Calvary. Golgotha. The slow, sanguine slip of red down the wrists, down the ankles, from a crown of thorns.
I showed him all the kingdoms of the world, Crowley had said, eyebrows knitted together in mourning.
His hair had been short, the next time Aziraphale had seen it, curls pressed tight to the skull. Cut in the Roman style, as it had stayed -- for years. Centuries. He grew it longer, of course, as the fashion sashayed forward, but never again that long, untamed tumble from Eden. And, though it was almost impossible to catalog the merciless march not only of time but fashion, Aziraphale had wondered -- why?
Aziraphale brushed a hand forward, pushing an errant lock back from Crowley’s face, tucking it just behind the ear. His fingers ghosted over the skin there, thoughtlessly trailing down the base of Crowley’s neck. The motion elicited a shiver.
A loss of faith. That was what it was, Aziraphale was certain, but in what? The Ineffable Plan, that arbitrary wheel of time over which they all, inevitably, broke themselves? God Herself, so willing to forsake not only her son, but all of her children? Or humanity itself -- fragile, brilliant, crueler than any ethereal or infernal entity could ever dream to be?
For all his bluster, those damn memos sent Down Below, the ridiculous antics that had humans popping blood vessels all over London, Crowley loved humanity. Of that Aziraphale was certain. Hoped desperately for the best, even at the end of the world. What a betrayal, then, every time they did something cruel. Murder. Warfare. Acid wash denim.
One hand full of Crowley’s brilliant locks, the other wrapped tightly around the shining pair of shears, Aziraphale was reminded of another betrayal, millennia past.
The Nazarite Samson, he recalled. Hair and strength shorn in the lap of the woman he loved, bound and then blinded. Aziraphale’s fingers brushed the back of Crowley’s neck. How vulnerable, or perhaps stupid, Aziraphale thought, to place strength and weakness alike in the hands of another and trust they won’t destroy it. How brave.
Aziraphale gave the air above Crowley’s head an experimental snip. Crowley didn’t so much as flinch.
“Apologies in advance,” Aziraphale said, gathering a lock of hair in his hand and running a gentle thumb over the soft curl, “if I make a mangle of it.”
Crowley shrugged, the loose rise of his shoulders gently rippling the hair that spilled down his back.
“Suppose I’ll just have to trust you’ll do alright,” he said.
With a small smile, Aziraphale lifted the scissors, one curl caught between the flat of the blades.
And cut.