#I’m in a glass case of emotion. and it’s the Bentley.

[delilah-mcmuffin]

Stop it. Just… *sobs*

You’ve hurt my feeling.

gabriel went to aziraphale in the first place because he knew aziraphale would understand being in love with a demon

[kannra21]

Daisuzu one shot 💴💗

Suzue is angry for the first time and Daisuke needs to keep up with her bad mood the entire morning. How is he handling it?

~o0o~

This was supposed to be a positive morning for Suzue because Daisuke told her yesterday that he's going to take a day off just to catch up on his time with her and she was so enthusiastic about it that one simple thing as perid cramps decided on ruining her instantly. It was early in the day, 7:15h so to speak, and she was already in shock and fed up with the entire situation. And as if this wasn't troublesome enough; she wasn't able to find any medications in her drawer. She checked in the nightstand, closet, shelves, counter. Nothing, she couldn't find anything and the pain in her stomach was becoming more and more unbearable.

She couldn't leave the palace this instant because she needed to take care of Daisuke first. She entered his room writhing a little because of how much it hurted her. She already hated everything about this day and everything around her, she became more stressed and more emotional. She tried to wake him up gently at first but when he didn't react on her attempts right away, she took the glass from his nightstand and showed it back somewhat forcefully, making a loud thud. Daisuke jumped a little from how startled it made him and Suzue greeted him with annoyed look on her face.

"Butler already informed me about the breakfast. You're free to come down and join." She handed him certain clothes without asking for approval "You can also put these on. I'll be waiting for you once you're ready."

Suzue turned around and left without putting much of a conversation between them. Daisuke noticed how stiff she looked but concluded that she probably "woke up on the wrong side of the bed" and therefore didn't want to ask further about it. Still, it wasn't like Suzue to be this irritated in the morning since he always got used to her friendly greetings and a big smile on her face. He got himself dressed and went downstairs where an elegant spacious dining room was located.

A classic British breakfast was served, 7:30h, the pair was sitting at the dark wooden table with magnificent displays of gold plate from George IV's enormous collection and enjoyed their meal. If you were just a mere visitor to their household you probably wouldn't notice such things, but Daisuke was perfectly aware of Suzue's unnerved behavior. She cut her meal quite frustrated and she even criticized the lack of flavor in it. And although she wasn't showing it as much, her dissatisfaction was present and she became angry, much to Daisuke's surprise. Daisuke grew worried because, for him, the meal tasted just fine and as much as he wanted to hold himself back from further antagonizing her when she already felt bad enough, he couldn't ignore it and he needed to interfere. He didn't have the heart to ignore her like this.

"Suzue. Did you sleep well last night?"

"Of course I did. What kind of question is that supposed to be?"

Ouch that hurt. Daisuke would usually feel offended by such an act but this was Suzue he was talking to so he decided to be stubborn.

"I don't know. If someone upset you in any way you're free to tell me and I'll take care of them personally."

"Daisuke-sama, with all due respect I'm not feeling especially obligated as of today's date to worry much about when I'm supposed to be free to do something or not. I am a person, I have feelings, and I'll decide on doing things when I'm feeling like doing them. I'm not asking for anyone's permission to express my free will."

Suzue took her plate, handed it to butler and left the room.

For the first time in a long time Daisuke felt broken. It's funny because he usually never paid attention to other people or their unnecessary outbursts of emotions which he always found uncomfortable and incredibly impractical, but then again, this was Suzue he was talking to and he became seriously worried about her.

Whenever he wanted to check on her she made an annoyed expression and whenever he tried to start a conversation with her she ended it quickly.

"That video you wanted to show me the other day-"

"I changed my mind. It wouldn't be as entertaining for you because you never find anything funny anyways. I wonder what satisfies you anymore."

Another low blow and Daisuke felt like crumbling. Although he decided that he'll wait for her until she calms down. Or not? He wasn't used to her lack of attention and he enjoyed it so much while it lasted. Suzue was usually the clingy one in their relationship but today the roles were switched and he wanted to bring the old smiling Suzue back.

"What do you say about watching your favorite series together?"

"I watched it yesterday, today is the rerun."

"I brought you some fashion magazines I thought you might like."

"Thank you, I'll check them later."

"Would you like to check these new gadget parts I found with HEUSC? He couldn't estimate the quality of the product so I'm asking for your opinion."

"I'm not interested as of now, I'll search them when I have the time."

"Would you like some tea in your favorite kitty cup?"

Suzue put down whatever she was reading at the moment and looked at him with serious expression on her face.

"I'm perfectly capable of making tea for myself. I'm sorry Daisuke-sama, but why are you being like that?"

"Like what?"

"The way you're being, you're unusually clingy today and I didn't even ask for any of it. Why are you giving me such a hard time? I need a break."

Suzue was about to climb the stairs which led to her bedroom.

"I'm sorry." Daisuke said quietly and Suzue instantly stopped on her tracks. She never heard him talk like this before and it broke her heart. She could feel his hurt and regret and she wondered how it came to all of this.

Daisuke continued "I took a day off with the intent of spending more time with you and although I'm really bad at showing what I feel when expressing myself most of the time, the idea of being with you after so long made me feel genuinely happy. I'm sorry if it sounds self-centered or selfish, I'm always talking about me and my feelings when I never considered asking other people about their own. I always pre-determined what others should be doing without giving it that much thought about their opinions before coming up with my own decisions. And no matter how much I try I'm always screwing it up, I'm a terrible person."

When he looked up at Suzue he wasn't expecting her to cry and he became alarmed.

"Y-you're not a terrible person. Please never say that again. It's me, I'm the one who screwed everything. M-my stomachache won't subdue and I didn't take my painkillers."

...

"Oh."

Daisuke came up to her on the stairs and picked her up bridal style. Suzue squeaked a little.

"W-what are you doing?"

"I'm taking you to my room because I know where the stuff I'm looking for is placed. But I can always take you to yours if you tell me where you're keeping things."

"I-I don't mind your room.."

Daisuke smirked at her.

"DON'T GIVE ME THAT FACE MR.!!"

"Okay okay, jesus." he kissed her forehead and pushed the door with his leg.

Once he placed her on the bed, he tucked her in a bunch of pillows and blankets and gave her the phone.

"I'm sorry to say this but please wait for me 20min or so, I'll try to come back as soon as possible."

With this said, Daisuke disappeared into the hallways and left Suzue alone with her thoughts. She knew that Daisuke gave her the phone to entertain herself but right now she couldn't think of anything else but the thing that just happened between them and the way she mistreated him this entire time. The guilt squeezed her heart and worsened her stomach pain.

Daisuke, on the other hand, mentally panicked because he didn't know what to do right now. He never had a sister and his mother died and he absolutely didn't have the slightest idea on what to do. He did his research with HEUSC, he talked to butlers and once he grasped the concept of it, he drew his Bentley Continental GT *maniac style like he always did* to the nearest store and bought

✨💴 EVERYTHING 💴✨ *fu-gou ke-i-ji song playing in the background*. Even the cashier lady couldn't believe that a man could look this badass while buying half of the aisle lmao.

Daisuke returned on time with butlers helping him carry everything and Suzue looked surprised upon seeing so many bags being brought into her room.

Daisuke approached her with a bag of his own and squatted next to her.

"Here we have pain killers, snacks, napkins, hygiene products, essential oils, I even bought heating pads and massage pillows. I didn't know whether you'd prefer Twinings or Yorkshire so I bought them both-"

"You bought the companies?!"

"I bought the tea."

Suzue sighed in relief.

"And I bought cocoa, chocolate and double-layered socks to keep you warm."

"What's the package at the bottom of the bag?"

"Oh.. it's nothing."

"Daisuke-sama you're terrible at lying."

"Alright. It's something that I bought just in case."

He took the package out and Suzue blushed.

...

"I'm.. not implying anything it's just to make you feel better. If you want you can use me as well.."

".. Thank you."

The blush couldn't leave both of their faces so Daisuke put everything aside and headed towards the doors.

"I'm going to make Earl grey because it goes well with chocolate. I'll be right back."

With this said, he left the room and Suzue squeaked in her hands.

Did he.. seriously just thought about the things she assumed he did? He really considered it for her own sake..

When he returned he placed the painkillers, cup of tea and chocolate box on the nightstand before joining her on the other side of the bed. He searched Claire Luvcat and they watched Cream Heroes together. Suzue smiled so much upon looking at the screen showing her beautiful kittens. Daisuke made her smile again and it made him proud.

"Which one is your favorite?"

"Oh" Suzue was taken by surprise "I like Lulu because he's funny and cute."

"Should I buy him?"

Suzue just laughed sweetly "No it's her cat, I'm pretty sure she wouldn't put her cat on sale for any money in this world. Besides, the cat would be really sad when separated from her owner. It's where he belongs, they're practically inseparable."

"Like you and me?"

Suzue squeaked again and Daisuke smiled.

"Mr. Coco reminds me of Furry Elise a lot. I like him, they'd have a nice litter."

"Thinking of becoming a breeder?" Suzue teased him.

"Not really, although it brings good money. Somewhere around ¥158.386,50 for a kitten."

"Seriously?!"

"Yes if the parents are two purebred cats. Coco is a British longhair and Furry Elise is Maine Coon. Besides, you'll get too attached and wouldn't allow me to separate them from you so it's a losing game."

Suzue laughed fondly "It's true, sometimes money can't buy everything."

Daisuke hugged her closer to himself and kissed her head.

"Daisuke-sama.."

"Hm?"

"I wanted to apologize for everything I told you early in the morning. I didn't mean it, the things I said were not true and it was reckless of me to even address you with such disrespect. You were trying to make me feel better this entire time and everything I did in return was rejecting your every attempt. I'm so sorry for offending you like this."

Daisuke turned her face gently towards his own and made her look him in the eyes.

"You'd never offend me, Suzue. There's no way in millions years that you'd be able to do things like this, because you're kindhearted and overall a beautiful person. Remember that."

Suzue looked at him with so much adoration in her eyes.

"Besides, you're right. I'm not the one to decide what people should do with themselves and by not doing anything for you when you needed me the most, I'd feel like I'm letting you down and you definitely didn't deserve that. In fact, you deserve so much better and I'd like to live up to your expectations, if you let me."

"I do. I just hope that I didn't ruin your plans for today."

"This is exactly how I wanted it to spend, together with you."

Maybe he didn't deserve her but Daisuke promised himself to make sure that Suzue feels appreciated every single day.

@daisuzuship @innovativestruggles @narcopharmacist @unholysoggytea @riaymei @ieatcrumbs @cow-goes-oof @matchabucks @bluegleeful @levi-is-heicho @kakooshi @kokorokai @darknessrxse @fluffyyagiza @geniusmeemee @sungmnnnn @koalarin @alstroemerie @petiamaximoff38 @hellohellokookie @marialenikiforov @milcyuw

Smtng short but sweet. Hope you like it! 💞

[horrorslashergirl]

Could you do Chromeskull and The Collector (together or separate) 'falling' for a reader whose a famous crime writer known for writing gruesome and bloody murder scenes. :)

Something funny and cute; plus Jesse is a teasing asshole. Haha...I hope I did justice to these two outside the nsfw and murder writing.

Chromeskull x Reader x The Collector- Fantasy on a white sheet

Asa loved to read and that was a fact that even someone who didn't know this man could say. He always carried with him a book, just in case. Jesse wasn't one to be into books that much and always teased Asa for being a straight-up nerd, with his nose in the white sheets of paper.

Jesse asked Asa what was so 'exciting' about reading and the answer was simple and with no emotions.

"Try it."

Of course, Jesse just scowled at the response, rolling his brown eye and leaving Asas' house, walking to his Bentley and driving off into town. He later found himself looking over the shelves of the library who adored so many books that said man wanted to bang his bald head on the wall.

The old lady at the front was absorbed into her book too, glasses almost falling off her nose. Jesse internally chuckled and wanted to photograph her and send the image to Asa with a simple 'Just found your soulmate', but decided against it, trying to find something that wasn't boring to read.

He looked over the erotic ones but decided otherwise. His sex life was enough spiced with Asa and if his lover would see what book he chose to read he would probably give a smart remark and he didn't wanted that.

Brown eye looked past the romantic ones, 'booooring', action and comedy? Nahhh, he got lots of action in his life and he was funny enough not to need a book to make him laugh silently. Then he found himself in the crime selection.

He stopped his gaze on a black book with red details. Picking it up from the shelves he read the title.

'1000 murderous nights to remember'

Now that was more like it. The book looked pretty dark and the image on the cover with the silhouette of a dead woman along with splatters of blood caught his attention. Perfect.

After buying it, he drove back to his place, pouring himself a glass of whiskey and sitting down on a black leather armchair, opening the book and reading it.

This was almost 2 hours ago and Jesse didn't stop reading, he was so absorbed into the book, all the details and macabre mental images the book was giving him. He like it, no...Screw it, he loved it. It was like the writer had witnessed these murders or more taboo....done it. So much passion for bloodlust and death.

Jesse found himself looking at the clock, midnight when he finished the book. He was mesmerized; he needed to show Asa.

The next day, the two meet in the morning at Asas' place for coffee. Asa was, to put it bluntly, surprised to see Jesse with a book in his hand. Jesse with a book? Was he sick? Asa would have understood if he saw the bald man with a tablet or phone, but a book.

'Yeah, yeah....Laugh.' Jesse signed as he rolled his eye.

"I am not laughing, but I'm pleasantly surprised you finally took on my advice." Asa explained, sipping on his coffee.

'I brought this book so you can read it. You will be very much pleased.' Jesse signed, giving Asa a wink and tossing the book at the dark-eyed man.

Raising an eyebrow, Asa looked at the book, reading the title, then raised an eyebrow.

"I'm surprised you didn't pick a BDSM novel. Glad you didn't." Asa said, sitting down on the chair as he opened the book and began to read. He wanted today to read 'Honeybee Democracy' by Thomas D. Seeley, but this one seemed as interesting as the previous one.

It was only the curiosity about the title; both men had hobbies that implied blood, guts and cutting up humans into pieces.

After 4 hours of Asa reading and Jesse falling asleep on the couch, that was startled by Asa throwing the book at Jesse, waking him up and looking at Asa.

"Where did you find this book?" Asa asked with crossed arms over his chest.

'Where do you think? The library. Why? Wanna find the writer and give him some advice?' Jesse signed, rubbing his eye from sleepiness.

"Yes, and it looks like there will be a book opening for the second one. Let's get going." Asa said, pulling his denim jacket over his black turtle neck.

Jesse was driving with Asa next to him as they reached the mall complex where the book event was held. It was pretty crowded, so the two had to wait to reach the writer that was at the front.

While waiting, the two inspected the people among the crowd, looking for fresh meat to put it like that. Jesse was looking from the corner of his eye at two young girls, who giggled; too easy. Asa was having a bored expression on his face until he saw a middle-aged couple with a teenage boy; the boy would look good in his collection, shaped in the form of a Apis mellifera.

After half an hour the crowd disappeared after the bought the second book and got the autograph of the writer. That's when both men's eyes widened when their gaze locked on the small female at the desk with a smile on her face as she waved at the last one of her fans.

This woman was you.

Asa felt his stomach turn as he realized who the gruesome and sadistic writer was; a young woman who wasn't bad looking either, decent and well put together; his type.

Jesse, on the other hand, was more confident and walked straight to you. You smiled up at the man as he handed you the second book to sign. He pulled out his phone texting.

'Love your writing, doll. A masterpiece.' you read the text on his phone and you giggled.

"Aww stop, you're making me blush." you said and Jesse smirked victoriously.

Asa was sitting a few feet away. That sly bastard; it was his first book to read probably since 4th grade and he acted like he owned a bookcase.

Your eyes found Asa who has held a copy of the second book, then you looked back at Jesse who was smirking at the shy man.

'Sorry for my friend over there. He's a bit shy and I think he has a crush on you.' he texted and you blushed, looking at the obsidian eyed man, giving him a wave and smile.

Asa knew that Jesse texted you something about him, just by how smug that bastard was looking. Jesse beckoned Asa with his index finger to come closer.

'I swear I'm gonna murder him'

[readingwritingcrying]

Can you do a piece where Crowley is accidentally burned by the holy water Aziraphale gave him, and while it isn't enough to kill him he's hurt real bad and Aziraphale feels super guilty? I love your blog!

Thank you so much for the kind words and this prompt!! A bit canon divergence, because it has to be, but I tried to keep it about how things might have been. I hope you enjoy!

When Crowley first took the tartan thermos from Aziraphale, he held it gently, as if grasping it any tighter or bringing it any closer to him would reduce him to a sizzling puddle of black goop, right there in his Bentley.

This, of course, wouldn’t be the case, but he still handled it with extreme caution. It was only natural that he wanted the holy water as far away from him as he could manage – it reeked holiness, and Crowley could practically feel the power humming under his fingertips.

And then there was the sentence that might stick in his head for the rest of eternity: “You go to fast for me, Crowley”.

He tried not to think of it on the drive back to his flat, listening to The Black Angel’s Death, as if he were driving off into his next misdeed. He sped through London at a miraculous pace (he didn’t notice the traffic, so in turn, the traffic decided to not notice him back) and couldn’t pinpoint when Freddie’s voice started to take over, but it didn’t matter since he was back well before it changed fully.

With too much nervous energy to be contained in an elevator, Crowley ops to use the stairs instead, quickly making his way to the flat. The stairs didn’t dare make him walk up the full length of them, of course, so in no time he was slamming his door with a little less force than anger would require. 

Because he wasn’t angry. As much as he wanted to be angry at Aziraphale, he couldn’t be. Instead, Crowley just let the angel’s voice play on repeat. His chest ached the kind of way that only happened when you had begun to hope, only for that hope to be snatched right away again. He was more than a little empty, and definitely more sad than he’d ever choose to admit.

Crowley set the thermos down on a side table rather carelessly (still with some caution, he was upset, not stupid) and slouched himself down on his couch. What had he even been hoping for? For the angel to see him as anything more than an enemy? For him to agree, to spend the night together, to keep spending their nights together?

To be something to each other? 

Demons didn’t get things like that. They got aggressions, sins, and positively dreadful amounts of paperwork. He was lucky for all the civility - the kindness - Aziraphale had shown him. He should be grateful. 

Then again, he was a demon. Maybe it was a little bit his right to be selfish.

Crowley decided he should do what he did best when faced with a situation he didn’t like: take a nap. Preferably a long one. 

He changed into his black silky nightclothes and moved to his bed.

He closed his eyes.

He let each muscle relax.

He slowed his breathing.

….he tried counting, thinking of something boring. He shifted. He adjusted his pillows.

He couldn’t sleep.

Crowley didn’t say that lightly. He had indeed tried just about everything one would normally do, as well as several other things one would normally never try and do, to help ease him into sleep (humans couldn’t sleep on ceilings, perhaps, but when Crowley wanted to he could sleep just about wherever he pleased). But after a week, he finally had to admit defeat.

If he couldn’t fall asleep, then alcohol had to be the only next step. Because he was tired of thinking, of feeling things involving one certain angel that he shouldn’t even be able to.

Pouring himself a glass of wine, Crowley stalked through his flat. The wine quickly turned into something darker and much stronger, and before long, he was properly shitfaced.

It is in these moments, very bad ideas seem to become very enticing, and in fact, seem like Very Good Ideas instead. This is as true in the occult (or ethereal) as in humans. That might be why it shouldn’t be surprising that Crowley picked up his phone and dialed Aziraphale (who’s voicemail existed but had never properly been set up like his own).

“Zzziraphale!” He slurred into the phone. “Jus’ wanted to call you. Um. No, wanted to talk to you too! ‘Else it wouldn’t matter if you didn’t pick up.” Crowley paused, going silent for just a bit too long for a recording, but he had to at least make an attempt at gathering his thoughts.

“Guess you don’t want to, then. Didn’t think it’d be too much after some thousand y- well, doesn’t matter. Call me, angel.” This would have been a respectable way to end a phone call - or at least as respectable as you could be when drunk dialing your more-than-enemy angel. Ending it with a broken, hissing please would be much less so.

Aziraphale did not call back. 

Crowley called again. And then maybe a few more times. Each anxiously fiddling with the cable connecting his phone. Sometimes he would pace back and forth, other times he was sitting sprawled out on chair - or throne, really. 

If you asked Crowley what he had said during these one-sided calls, he probably wouldn’t be able to remember well enough to tell you. Certainly, nothing he would say to Aziraphale in his right mind. For a week, he would call a few times, then sulk, then try again. 

The last time he called, he slammed down his phone mid-sentence. Clearly, this wasn’t working. Aziraphale was still ignoring him in a way he hadn’t since much closer to the Beginning.

The phone made a satisfying crunch as it cracked on the table. This was when Crowley decided that he would sober up, at least for the most bit, since really getting drunk just made him more emotional cooped up in his flat alone. 

Breaking things felt much better. He stalked to his garden, quickly spotting a plant with slightly drooping leaves. “You,” he growled. Crowley picked up the quivering thing by the stem, and smashed the pot down, shattering it there and then. The shattered edges of the terracotta sliced at his palms, making him hiss. 

Stupid angel. Couldn’t he see how slowly Crowley was moving already? Why would he dangle something like that right in front of him, only to pull away again? And why did it have to feel like Crowley’s heart was breaking when it never should have been the Angel’s in the first place? 

He was a blur of destruction in his flat. Pots that were not made of stone or concrete were helpless to his wrath. Anything that could be ripped was torn without mercy. Anything that could be toppled over was pushed to the ground, letting Crowley revel in the crash. 

It was rather unfortunate when he tipped over a certain end table in front of him. Not because he liked the thing particularly. 

No, it just happened to have a tartan thermos set on it by a rather careless, emotional demon. 

It hit the floor, hard. The lid cracked.

Before Crowley could do anything but draw a sharp breath in, he was hit by a splash of water. 

He let out an inhuman scream, flesh burning painfully, skin from patches on his arms and his collarbones dripping off as little more than black goo. 

A quick demonic miracle was all Crowley could manage, putting the thermos the right way up to stop any more from spilling out. 

Just the effort from that task alone made Crowley’s vision turn spotty. He fell back onto the floor, panting and whimpering. His heart (although not necessary, but some humans had freaked out when they didn’t feel a heartbeat while he was in the middle of a nap once) was racing, pumping adrenaline through his body.

It hurt. Christ, it hurt. For a moment he thought it might actually be the end, as he clutched himself, screaming. How could it happen like this? A simple accident, something so careless. Being immortal, he never faced the concept of an end. It was there, in theory, but it didn’t feel as real as it was in those few seconds when he just didn’t know.

The sharp burning pain slowly turning into a dull throb, and Crowley realized he wasn’t going to die. His pained shouts quieted into ragged breathing with the occasional whimper or groan. 

His right arm and chest were badly burned, it hurt too much to even sit up properly. Crowly tried to shift his position, but it sent new waves of pain and nausea through him and left him gasping for breath that he really didn’t need. 

All in all; there was hardly any way this situation could get worse. So, naturally, it did just that.

A hesitant knock rang in his ears as someone thought now was an appropriate time to stand outside his flat. It really wasn’t. Every muscle tense, Crowley brought his (left) hand up to his mouth, biting down on his finger to stop any wayward noises of pain.

The moment of silence hung delicately, balancing on an air of tension, much like how one would balance a pencil on their finger. 

Then, “Crowley? I… I know you’re there.” Oh fuck.

Did Aziraphale really need to show up without any warning? Desperately Crowley tried to gather the strength to fix his apartment at least, but the effort just caused a pained groan to slip from his mouth, muffled as it may be. 

“That’s it, Crowley, I’m coming in,” The angel said, determination strong in his voice.

“No-” Crowley protests, but it was too late. The door opened for Aziraphale, and Crowley shut his eyes to at least save himself from the initial expression. His right arm was curled over his chest and with any luck, maybe he just wouldn’t notice.

The angel made a noise that choked in his throat. “What happened here, my dear?”

Bless the stupid angel and his stupid pet names. How could he just say something like that after saying that before, after ignoring him for months? Crowley wanted to hate the way Aziraphale spoke to him, that way. 

Mostly, Crowley just hated the way it made him soften. 

“Nothing. Me,” Crowley manages to get out. “Can we reschedule, Angel?” Crowley gestured with his unharmed hand, “Little busy.”

“With what?” Aziraphale’s eyebrows made a good escape attempt, disbelieving as ever when Crowley got around to looking at him. 

“Redecorating,” He growls back. 

Aziraphale’s face wrinkles and he kneels down to look into Crowley’s eyes. “I did listen to your messages, you know.” Crowley flinches, letting out a hiss that had much less to do with what the angel had said and much more to do with how moving tore at his raw skin, the fabric scraping painfully at the wound.

Crowley wasn’t sure how long he could keep any sense of composure at this point. He didn’t respond, and apparently, that was enough for Aziraphale to continue.

“Dear boy, you had me quite worried.” Aziraphale looked away. “I couldn’t come sooner, not while heaven was keeping such a close eye on me. Gabriel paid a visit, but well, that wasn’t it,” Aziraphale grabbed Crowley's right arm, and it was all he could do to keep from crying out in pain. He grits his teeth.

“You must know, Crowley… It’s not that I don’t, well, care for you,” he admitted. “I’m just…” Aziraphale paused, and Crowley realized his mistake.

Through clenched teeth, a whimper of pain has slipped out. IT’s a pitiful and desperate sound and one that has Aziraphale scanning Crowley immediately. “You’re hurt,” he says.

Crowley meets his gaze with his own demonic yellow eyes. He was breathing raggedly, each breath hurting just a bit more than the last.If it wasn’t such a dead giveaway, Crowley would stop the function altogether. 

“Not ssseriously.” Crowley denied. Well, that was a blatant lie. 

Aziraphale shook his head. “Crowley, tell me.”

“No!” Crowley snaps, panting. “Jusst leave, we’ll ressschedule this heart to heart later.” He wills his voice to be sharp and cruel, but it’s just tired and stressed. The drawn-out “s”s annoy him as soon as they were out of his lips, but like many a moment in his existence, he doesn’t have the control to stop it. 

Crowley almost regrets smashing his sunglasses. A bit of protection from this plain vulnerability would be more than helpful.

As the angel starts to ask again, Crowley looks pointedly anywhere other than at Aziraphale. He won’t tell the angel - after all, he’s still here, and he didn’t need him taking away his one protection from hell over a little bit of misplaced guilt for the demon,

Hell wasn’t the type for sternly written letters, after all. And if they got word of the Arrangement? No, Crowley would just keep quiet about the whole situation until Aziraphale grew frustrated and left him for the night. 

“...I apologize in advance for this,” Aziraphale said, and then did something Crowley had not at all planned on; he pulled Crowley’s arm from his chest. 

Crowley cried out, trying to squirm away from the firm grip. Aziraphale dropped his arm as if he had been burned instead. 

“No,” his voice broke. “Oh, no, what have you done to yourself?”

Crowley regained his voice slowly. “Angel. Angel, it was just a mistake, I would never-” he broke off. He realized how deeply he must have been afraid of Crowley using it on himself on purpose if the look of utter guilt on Aziraphale’s face was anything to go by. He cursed himself for not realizing that sooner.  “I was just… Thought you weren’t going to come ‘round this time,” he admits. “Got upset. Broke things.”

Aziraphale took another look around him, studying the surroundings with a deep sadness. His eyes fall on the cracked thermos, sitting just a few feet away from the two of them. 

Without speaking, he walks carefully over to it. Aziraphale picks up the thermos gently in his hands, and miraculously, it is free of any cracks. Carefully, he walks to a cupboard, opening it (and ignoring how the door hung off its hinges due to the state Crowley was previously in) and placed the tartan object high on a shelf.

“You can’t be so careless,” Aziraphale reprimands, returning to him. There is no real sternness in his voice, however. “Let me help, dear.”

Crowley nods. Aziraphale gently unbuttons his shirt, pulling it off of his injured chest and arms. Crowley chokes on the pain of the feeling, but doesn’t cry out - he hated the look enough on the angel’s face when he knew Crolwy was in pain.

A rather inappropriate part of his brain tells him that he would really rather the first time Aziraphale took off his shirt was in a much more pleasant, sinful context. 

Aziraphale studies the would carefully. A good spot of his flesh has been burned away under his collarbone, but not quite to the bone. Similarly, there is a strip of his forearm burnt where the water had dripped. Aziraphale tuts, face still scrunched with worry and sets about tending to his wounds.

There wasn’t much that could be done about them, in the way of miracles. Regular injuries were one thing, but one of divine origins just couldn’t be dealt with so easily. Doing the human thing was the best Aziraphale could do for him, and so that’s what he did. 

When the cool cream hit his skin, Crowley wasn’t sure if the stinging pain or relief would win out. He gasped, trying to adjust to the pain, and Aziraphale paused to let him. “Keep going,” Crowley grit out. “Best jussst to get it over with,” he reasons. 

Aziraphale nods in agreement. “I’d just rather not see you in pain at all.” Still, he continues as quickly as possible while still keeping a tender touch. 

Next, Aziraphale wrapped the burns in bandages. The arm was the easiest, and although Crowley made rather painful noises at the sensation, once it was done, he did have to admit it felt better than before. 

Not much, but he’d take anything he could get.

The chest was the hard part. “You’re going to have to sit up, I’m afraid,” Aziraphale instructs. Crowley tries but is knocked back by the pain. He’s caught by soft hands, and Aziraphale is propping him up. 

If he weren’t in so much pain, Crowley might appreciate just how close they were in that moment. Certainly, this was much more contact than they had ever had before. 

“Tell me why you got yourself into such a state,” asks Aziraphale as he works. It’s said in a rushed way, the kind when you’ve been replaying a sentence over and over in your head, trying desperately to find the courage to say it out loud.

Crowley blinks. “You know,” he accuses.

Aziraphale sighs. “Perhaps. Best to say it anyway,” he insists. 

Crowley considers this. For one, he’s a demon, and by nature, he doesn’t trust easily. Especially with things that could hurt him. Putting that aside, there was only so much Crowley could even admit to. Not without scaring Aziraphale off. Not without admitting something he couldn’t come to grips with himself.

But Crowley wasn’t very good at refusing anything to his angel. 

“Youi.. you say these things, angel. That make me think just maybe you’d want… well, it doesn\t matter, but I just… got my hopes up, ‘suppose. Er. Thought you might, um, get scared away for good. Messed everything up.” He wasn’t sure if the words made sense, if they were in the right order, or if it was too much, too quickly.

Aziraphale finishes his bandages but doesn’t let go of Crowley. For a moment that seems to drag on into something like forever, they sit together in hesitant silence. “You know,” he says so quietly that Crowley can hardly make it out, “It might not be the Ritz, but there’s a sushi place I’m rather fond of. It would be a rather odd coincidence if, say, next week you’ve healed some and we manage to eat there at the same time.”

Crowley’s heart stutters. He nods, words stuttering, his brain not quite able to shape sounds into an actual sentence. Aziraphale seems to understand this anyways.

“For now, though, you should really sleep. Your body will need rest to heal this.”

“‘Course,” Crowley manages. With his agreement, Aziraphale helps him up, letting Crowley lean on him as they make their way to Crowley’s bed. 

He blinks, and suddenly he is fully-clothed, albeit in pajamas. They were black, but soft cotton as opposed to his usual silk ones. They almost smelled like the angel.

Once he had been helped into bed (and once he had reluctantly released Aziraphale, maybe holding on just a second too long) Aziraphale stood, walking towards the door.

“Aziraphale,” Crowley called. The angel stopped in his tracks. Stay, he wanted to say. But he knew it was too much to ask. “Thank you,” he says instead.

Aziraphale’s shoulders relax, and although Crowley couldn’t see his face, he is certain the man must have smiled.

Exhausted, Crowley slipped easily into sleep,

Although the angel was gone the next day, Crowley could not possibly miss how everything was miraculously whole again, as if he had never broken a thing.

Not quite in their right place, but Crowley had to count the gesture as a win, coming from the angel.

[vanxcks]

there’s something tragic about you

Word count: 1726

Sometimes Crowley and Aziraphale drive out late at night in the Bentley. The airbase is far out enough that the city lights don’t reach, and they can see the stars painted across the sky.

Aziraphale watches Crowley. He feels like there's something he's missing. Something he's forgotten.

Sometimes Aziraphale walks down the stairs, late at night, when the sounds of the city are less silenced than muffled, and the light doesn’t bathe so much as hang, tinny and faint.

He can hear the crisp sound of pages turning, and his heart speeds up a beat. Who is in his bookshop? It’s only when he sees the familiar black-clad figure sitting on top of the desk and reading that relaxes.

“Crowley,” he says, relieved and, admittedly, a fair amount perplexed, “what are you doing down here, my dear?”

“This? Oh, s’nothing. Just some light reading,” Crowley says.

“Light reading?”

“Yeah,” Crowley says, shrugging.

“What is it?” Aziraphale asks, brightening a little. “Maybe I’ve read it.”

“Oh, it’s—nah, it’s nothing, like I said.”

Aziraphale looks at Crowley, but he doesn’t reveal anything else. The book is flat on the desk, pages up, cover down, and Aziraphale can’t see more than the navy cover. He can’t even quite read the words, not without his reading glasses. All the little blessings that came with being an angel—being able to read without glasses, for one—had gone since the almost-apocalypse. It was worth it, though. Worth losing that cheap little bit of magic for something much more magical in return. “Well, alright,” he says, a little disgruntled. “Just—be sure not to stay up too late.”

“Of course, angel,” Crowley murmurs, not looking up.

In the morning, the book is gone. Aziraphale makes a mental note to ask Crowley where he’d put it and where it had come from. 

There’s a notable gap in the astronomy section. 

____

One night, Aziraphale wakes up to darkness. Not the sort of darkness that falls when you turn out your light, but the sort of darkness that falls when the entire city does. The air is thick and the silence is thicker, and there’s a cold and empty spot on the bed next to him.

“Crowley?” Aziraphale calls, sitting up. Then, frantically, “Crowley!” He scrambles out of bed and down the stairs.

Aziraphale finds him on the sidewalk, leaning against the outside wall of the bookshop. He sighs in relief when he sees him. Crowley’s staring upwards, pale blue moonlight cast over his face. Aziraphale can’t read his expression. 

“Crowley, my dear, don’t leave without telling me like that,” he says, wringing his hands.

“Hm?” Crowley asks, then looks over at Aziraphale as if he hadn’t noticed him before. “Aziraphale,” he breathes, and there’s something broken in his voice.

Aziraphale’s brow furrows. “Crowley, I—I thought you were taken! I thought the demons got you, or...don’t do that again!” Crowley doesn’t respond, just gazes upwards. “Are you going to say something? You nearly scared the living daylights out of me!”

“I’m—ngk—I’m sorry, angel, I shouldn’t have,” Crowley says hurriedly. “I just…” he trails off.

“You just what, darling?” Aziraphale asks, softening. 

“The stars,” Crowley says, gesturing vaguely upwards. 

Aziraphale had been right—the whole city was dark, in a suffocating way. Aziraphale is used to the bustle of London late into the night. It’s such a change from the sweeping, silent hallways of heaven, from the curt nods and the days of nothing. Everybody’s moving around and living their lives no matter what’s going on elsewhere in the world, and that’s so beautiful, so human. But now it’s dark and silent, and Aziraphale suddenly can’t get a breath.

“Yes, they are very beautiful, Crowley,” Aziraphale says, just to be polite. 

He’s already turning to hurry back into the warmth of the bookshop when Crowley says something more. His voice sounds thin, far away.

“Do you remember them? The stars, how they were made?”

The question puzzles him, tugs at him, like an itch that he can’t quite reach. Like knowing a book is out of place, but not being able to figure out which one it is. But of course—he remembers. “Of course I remember, Crowley, Raphael made them. The Archangel Raphael. Before he fell.” 

“Yeah,” Crowley says, the word falling flat as if he didn’t have the energy to form it properly. “Yeah.” There’s a pause. “What do you know about the stars, really, Aziraphale?”

“I’m embarrassed to say,” Aziraphale replies, “almost nothing.”

“Really? Didn’t they teach you this in Angel lessons, or something?”

Aziraphale tsks. “There’s no such thing as angel lessons, Crowley, you know that. You were an angel too, in case you’d forgotten.”

This is the point where Crowley usually corrects him, reminds him that he’s fallen, tries to pull back. But instead, he just says, voice heavy with an emotion Aziraphale can’t place, “I haven’t forgotten. Never, not once.”

“Oh, Crowley,” Aziraphale says. “Oh, Crowley.” He’s not sure how to continue, after that. Heaven is cold, distant. It’s only here on Earth that Aziraphale’s been confronted with the mess that is emotion, and he never knows how to meet it.

A gust of wind blows over them, crisp and harsh, and Aziraphale shivers.

“You’re cold,” Crowley says, looking up suddenly as if breaking out of a stupor of some sort. 

“Oh, no, no, it’s perfectly—”

“C’mon, Aziraphale, in you go,” Crowley says, groaning as he stands up, as if he’s sore. He must have been sitting there on the sidewalk for some time. 

“No, no, I must insist—” Aziraphale says, because he doesn’t want to be a nuisance.

“I must insist, Angel, that you go inside. C’mon, now,” Crowley says, pushing him through the door.

“Fine! Fine, you don’t have to push me,” Aziraphale says indignantly. 

“In, Angel,” Crowley says, and the door shuts, gently, behind them.

____

Sometimes Crowley and Aziraphale drive out late at night in the Bentley. The airbase is far out enough that the city lights don’t reach, or at least they fade from a harsh glow to a faint thing, an echo of a light on the horizon. Technically, Aziraphale and Crowley aren’t permitted to be on the runway. (Technically, they’d never been there at all; that fateful day had been erased. And technically, they never go again. The two figures on the ground out on the tarmac, picnic basket in hand, aren’t to be worried about. That’s what the general says. No one notices that strange shimmer in his eyes, or the way he calls each soldier “my dear.”) 

“That one, that’s Alpha Centauri,” Crowley says, pointing. He’s lying back, propped up on his elbows. Aziraphale sits next to him.

“The shimmery one?”

“I—” he cuts himself off. “Every star is shimmery, angel. It’s the third brightest. See, there?”

“Of course, yes, that one.” Aziraphale has memorized the planets and the constellations by now, but Crowley seems to enjoy telling him about them, so he asks, “Which one is Jupiter, again, my dear?” 

Aziraphale glances at Crowley, sees the faint smile on his face. He feels a little warmth inside him. 

Aziraphale knows what that feeling is, or at least he’s figuring out.

Crowley launches into an explanation, and Aziraphale watches him carefully, his thoughts halfway elsewhere. In the ruins of a church, reaching for a bag of books. In a garden, by an apple tree. Sitting down for dinner at the Ritz. And somewhere else, a garden of a different sort, someone with him, but Aziraphale can’t quite picture their face. All he knows is that they’re so achingly, heartbreakingly familiar.

He feels that warmth in his chest again. It’s something like love.

They open their picnic basket, eventually. A bottle of wine, prosciutto sandwiches. The blanket Aziraphale lays out is tartan, and Crowley teases him, but there’s not any bite to it.

“The stars really are quite beautiful, darling. Why do you know so much about them, really?” Aziraphale asks. It’s a question that’s been gnawing at him for some time. Crowley is by no means unintelligent, but this hardly seems characteristic of him. “I never did take you for the studious type.”

There’s a long pause. Crowley takes a breath, then says “I wasn’t always a demon, y’know.” 

“Of course not. You were an angel, before you fell.”

“Ngk—” Crowley makes a noise, frustrated. “Yes, yes, I was an angel, exactly. And I...created things. As an angel does.” He goes silent again, and Aziraphale feels the need to say something, positively aches with it, but he holds back. And Crowley speaks. “I was...I was something. Something good. And I did something good, and sometimes—” He looks up at Aziraphale, and there’s a sadness in his eyes millenia old, maybe older. “Wouldn’t you want to be reminded? That maybe once, just once, you made a mark on the world? More than shutting down the telephone lines, or starting traffic jams? That you aren’t all evil, aren’t all demon?”

There’s a moment of stunned silence, and then Aziraphale reaches down and wipes a single tear from Crowley’s cheek before it can properly fall. “Crowley, my dear boy,” he says softly, simply, “if you truly are a demon, and I’m not sure even of that as of late, then you are very well the nicest demon I’ve ever known.”

Crowley stares. And then, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world (and it is, really), reaches up, takes hold of Aziraphale’s face, and kisses him. A single, startling press of the lips.

An interesting word, nice. Simple and pleasant and worthy and good. Nice. It meant something else some years ago, although Aziraphale loses track of the exact number. Tidy, accurate. And that's what the kiss is. Simple and pleasant and worthy and good and so, so correct. Like it's the only really right thing in the world.

When Crowley pulls away, Aziraphale’s eyes are brimming with tears. Crowley reaches out hesitantly. “Was that alright, angel?” 

“Crowley…” Aziraphale trails off.

“Aziraphale, say something, please. I can’t—” Crowley’s voice breaks on the final word.

“It was. Okay, I mean.” Aziraphale says. “More than okay, really. Perfectly pleasant.” He blushes. “I'm sorry, it's just—that’s the first time we've done that.”

Crowley looks at him, and in his eyes Aziraphale can see what Crowley has lost. It’s so much. Too much to bear. Millenia, memories, days spent bathing in the sunlight. And there’s that aching familiarity again, pulling at Aziraphale. Like maybe he'd had more, once, than he can remember now. Like maybe more was a person.

“No,” Crowley says. “Not the first time.”

[af-answers]

Four Times Artemis Tries to Convince Holly to go with him to Mars and the One Time he Didn’t

This is part 1 of my Christmas/holiday contribution this year. :D Minor The Fowl Twins spoilers. Enjoy!

First Time

Part 2

The first time was in the Netherlands. It was a trip they’d been planning for a while: Artemis would meet Holly at the oak tree near Tara, and they would take a clandestine trip to the Netherlands for a couple days. Artemis had proposed the idea months ago, but she’d thought it a pipe dream. Then Foaly told her the Council had OK’d her leave of absence.

Getting leave to go topside didn’t surprise her. Ever since the Council found out Artemis was not only back from the dead, but a clone, they had dropped all subtlety in their monitoring of the boy. They required Artemis to come to health examinations in Haven every three months, Holly visited and filed a report on him every two, and he was to send a blood work-up every week. There was a small sect of the government who believed the clone Artemis was their property, and they should reclaim him for permanent, more invasive study. However, due to Artemis’s track record for being annoyingly useful and Butler being Butler, no one had made good on these threats.

But this wasn’t one of her bimonthly visits. Her next one wasn’t due for another two weeks, and she was never allowed to stay more than a day.

“You’re going to be testing some new urban camouflage Artemis and I have been working on,” he said.

Holly laughed. She’d been wondering what all this was about, and that sounded like Artemis. “I’m your guinea pig,” she said with a small bow.

Now at Tara, she snagged an acorn from a low-hanging branch of the ancient oak and tucked it in her pocket, then jogged over to the waiting Bentley.

“Shielded, Commodore?” Artemis said over his spectacles as the side door opened seemingly on its own. Artemis called her by her new title so much he barely used her name anymore. It got kind of annoying, but she suspected he did it because he was proud of her, so she didn’t comment.

“Yes, Mr. Fowl,” she said, kicking her overnight bag into the floorboards. “You never know, there may be a kidnapper about. What are these?” She snatched the spectacles from his nose. “You don’t need glasses.”

“No,” he agreed, gingerly retrieving them. “I’m working on programming NANNI into them, for Myles.”

“Ah.” Something about his reply bothered her, be it the sad way he smiled down at the glasses case, or the tone of finality in his words. It made her uneasy.

Her unease mounted every time his sad smile made an appearance, because Artemis didn’t do sad. He didn’t do happy, either, more often a smug satisfaction or neutral contentment. So for him to mask one uncommon emotion with another made her very suspicious. Her gut reaction was to ask for a blood work-up a right now to see if something were wrong with his new body, but she stifled her paranoia. This was sort of a vacation, after all, and he was normal in all other respects.

Their first day in The Hague he gave her what looked like a child’s headband with a little blue bow on it. She sneered at it, turning it over in her hands but not putting it on.

“The bow is, in actuality, a holocloaker,” he explained.

“But why a bow at all, Arty.”

“Because the purpose of this camouflage is not to be unseen, but to blend in,” he said, checking some diagnostics on his phone, “and while I could program a 150 centimeter tall female for this exercise, the illusion would break as soon as you threw a punch.”

“You say that like punching is something I do often,” she protested, then punched him in the knee.

An hour later she walked down Frederik Hendriklaan in broad daylight, unshielded. She hadn’t been able to see her holo-self in the hotel mirror, something to do with light refraction and physics, but Artemis did show her a picture of what she should look like.

“That’s Beckett,” she said, deadpan.

“Yes,” he replied, equally calm. “In a dress. I wasn’t going to build a human rig from scratch.”

Old ladies waved at Beckett-Holly from park benches and a young couple encouraged her to pet their enthusiastic Scottish terrier. On the technical side of things, the only hiccup was avoiding walking too near windows so their ruse wouldn’t be revealed.

“We should do this more often,” she said, accepting the ice cream she’d ordered from a street vendor.

At this Artemis smiled, sadly.

When she turned around and cut him off Artemis, eyes on the hologram read-out on his phone, almost ran into her.

“OK Mud boy, what’s going on?” She planted her free hand on her hip.

He looked at her like she’d lost her mind. “What’s going on is we’re conducting a secret fairy experiment,” he whispered, but with a lilt to his voice so anyone who overheard would think he was playing a game with his little sister.

“Not that.” She sighed, and her frown eased from annoyed to concerned. “I know you, Artemis. I can tell something more is on your mind.”

He put his phone in his pocket, looked over her head, and nodded at Butler who watched them from across the street. “Come with me,” he said.

Holly barely contained her impatience as they ordered lunch from a delicatessen, took a bus to a park, and found a secluded spot. Three times she almost accused him of trying to dodge her before catching Butler’s eye and calming down. When the manservant made a point of giving them privacy in the park, sitting out of earshot but in their eye line, Holly’s suspicion bubbled over.

“What wrong?” she asked, not bothering to unwrap her sandwich. “Are you alright? Healthy? Did something happen at home?”

“No, no,” he said quickly, the sad smile fixed now. “Nothing like that. Good news, actually.”

She watched him with wide eyes, unconvinced. He laughed when he noticed her expression.

“Truthfully! I’d planned on telling you, well, asking you on our last night here, but—“ he inhaled deeply, grounding himself.

She raised an eyebrow. Now this sounded like something else entirely, something she had not picked up on at all.

“I’m going to Mars,” he said.

Her derailing train of thought suddenly sprouted jet engines and shot the moon, leaving her tracks barren.

“You mean— you’re sending a robot?”

“The robot launched in the ship prototype months ago. It hasn’t reached Mars, obviously, but the self-winding engine is working perfectly. It was never the point to send a robot, that’s been done. No, the goal is human passengers. Well, human and—“ he looked at her.

“Me?” she pointed to herself. “The Commodore?”

Artemis sighed. “I’m sorry, I have to turn the hologram off, it’s very distracting and this is a serious conversation.” Thankfully, they were safely ensconced in a copse of bushes, only visible through the one entrance Butler guarded.

“Yes,” he said when she was once again herself. “Five years is nothing to you, and I’m sure Foaly could come up with a sensible explanation for you to come with me—“

“Foaly,” she said, gritting her teeth. “He knew about this, didn’t he? This trip wasn’t just to test your urban camouflage!”

Artemis shrugged. “I’m sure he suspects, but he hasn’t collaborated with me. This is a personal project. As for this weekend, I simply took advantage of the privacy and beautiful locale to approach a delicate subject.”

“And you’re so sure Foaly would take your side on this?”

“Foaly rarely takes my side on anything,” Artemis pointed out. “What matters is, are you with me?”

Her brows knit together as she seriously considered this question. Regardless of whether she took his offer or not, did she support this crazy venture? Going into space, millions of miles from medical care, relying only on the fellow crew for sanity and community. It sounded terrifying. And yet, she had that tight excitement in her stomach she got whenever she took down a wily suspect or executed a perfect barrel roll. It was all too much at once.

Artemis saw the conflict in her eyes.

“Take as much time as you need,” he said.

She nodded, her gaze dropping to her lap.

They both stared at their unwrapped lunches, appetites gone.

[mtwalker]

Weekly Writing

Something a little different this week. This is some Good Omens fanfiction that I wrote shortly after I watched the show. A little bit of backstory on sort of why I wrote this. So I read Good Omens when I was in High school, after one of my English teachers had introduced me to Neil Gaiman’s writing via the graphic novel series, Sandman. After hearing about Good Omens, and being in the midst of a deep obsession with Supernatural, I started searching every bookstore I went to for the novel. I eventually found it at Joseph Beth and read it in about a day. Obviously, I quickly fell in love with the novel and pretty much everything about it. In college, I was able to get my friend, @name123things, to read the book after getting her into Supernatural as well. I think my exact words were “Well, if you like the apocalypse stuff happening here, you should read Good Omens.” She too fell in love with the story, and we began waiting for about two years for the show to be released. We watched the whole thing the night it premiered on Amazon Prime and then spent about four hours afterwards  talking about how it blew all of our expectations out of the water. The next day, I couldn’t get Crowley’s emotional scene in the bar after the bookshop burnt to the ground out of my head, which inspired me to write this little one shot.

______________________________________________________________________         This was important. He had to know. He just had to. Otherwise it would bother him for the rest of the night, and he would be miserable. And while he wasn’t the happiest of beings, he had an easy solution to this particular problem and he was determined. This was a good idea. He knew it. He just had to be sure.

         Crowley banged his fist harder against the auburn door. One more minute and he’d be breaking the damned thing down. Probably. Aziraphale didn’t take kindly to vandalism. But this was important, damn it. And he could just miracle the door back together or something. No problem. Hell, if people would just stop staring at him like he was crazy, that would be fantastic. Didn’t they know he was doing something important? Just leave him be.

         Aziraphale cracked the door open, his tartan pajamas barely visible in the dim light of the book shop. He had a concerned look on his face, which made Crowley’s nerves spike.

          “Crowley? What’s happened? It’s two in the morning.” Crowley grabbed the angel’s arm in a firm grip and took in a deep breath. His head seemed to clear for a brief moment and, now satisfied, he felt a little foolish standing here on the book shop’s doorstep.

         “Nothing. ‘m gonna head home.”

         “Wait. You can’t leave.” He stopped, not turning to face the angel. “You’re in no state to drive back. Honestly, I can’t fathom how you made it here in one piece. Come inside.” Crowley closed his eyes and weighed his options. If he went inside, Aziraphale would press him with questions, that he was sure of. Besides, he longed for his nice apartment. There he could sit and dwell without prying eyes. Yes, he should just walk away now.

         But then Aziraphale would be disappointed. He’d make that face. The one where his eyes got wide and he pinched his lips like he was holding in how upset he was. He’d fidget with his sleeves and sway side to side a little. He’d watch Crowley walk all the way to the car and wouldn’t shut the door until the Bentley was out of site.

         Crowley turned around and walked into the book shop.

         “Crowley, please tell me what’s the matter. I’m worried about you.” Crowley was seated in the leather armchair across from Aziraphale. Their postures were polar opposites, as was usually the case. The angel sat on the edge of his seat, a cup of cocoa beside him that had sat untouched for the better part of the last ten minutes. His eyes never left the man across from him. The demon, on the other hand, was lounging. One leg was folded over the arm of the chair while his upper body was turned away, not even facing the man addressing him.

               “You worry too much,” He grumbled back, but there was a layer of exhaustion underneath it.

         “I feel I worry the necessary amount. You never act irrationally. I just want to make sure you are alright.” There was that face again. How could an angel look so much like a kicked puppy? Crowley was convinced he knew the power that look had. He may play innocence, but after six thousand years, he knew some subtle manipulation. The demon had to hand it to him, there was a little pride in witnessing it. Preferably not directed at him, as it often was.

         “Had to make sure.”

         “What?” Aziraphale leaned forward. Any further and he might topple out of the chair. Crowley scrunched up his nose while his stomach did some sort of flip. He hated talking about things. Personal things. Feelings things. It was all too serious. They’d been doing serious for the last week. Couldn’t everything just go back to how it was before?

         “I had to make sure, okay?”

         “Make sure of what?”

         “That you were-” He gestured at the angel in a vague way. After a couple seconds of connecting the dots, Aziraphale’s eyes grew wide. There was the pity. Ugh. Crowley pulled off his glasses and tossed them to the side, slumping further down in the chair. “Doesn’t matter. It was stupid anyway.”

         “It’s not stupid. We both went through quite a lot these last couple weeks, and neither of us have discussed any of it.”

         “Discussion’s not really our forte,” Crowley chuckled, picking at an invisible spot on his trousers.

          “No, it’s really not.” They sat in silence for a while, taking in everything that had happened with the Apocalypse-That-Almost-Was. They had both almost died. Multiple times. Had fought. Sometimes with each other, sometimes against. For the first time in six thousand years they had to face who they were and what they meant to each other. That was a lot to take in. And they had dealt with it the way they had dealt with all other difficult things that had happened to them. They had tried to ignore it. But this wasn’t an argument over the acquirement of Holy Water, or almost being shot by Nazi spies. This had been different.

         “’m sorry.” Crowley was the first to break the silence.

         “For what? Knocking earlier? There’s nothing to apologize for.”

         “No, not that. I wasn’t here. When you…” He gritted his teeth, looking disgusted with himself.

         “Now, Crowley. That wasn’t your fault.”

         “Of course, it was. I yelled at you. Said horrible things. Drove off. I hung up on you when you tried to call-”

         “You were being attacked-”

         “And then when I finally made it here everything was burning, and I ran in and I screamed,” He looked up at Aziraphale, his yellow eyes full of pain from the memory, “I screamed for you over and over, but you were gone. You were dead. And I wasn’t here to save you. I’m always there, but I wasn’t. And you were dead. You were dead, and it was all my damned fault.” At this he stood suddenly and started pacing around the room. He’d let Aziraphale down. It was the one thing he could be counted on, and he had failed. He was so disgusted with himself. The one thing he cared about on this whole damned planet and he couldn’t manage to keep it safe. How useless was he?

         A soft hand grabbed his wrist lightly, but the touch made him stop. He couldn’t bring himself to turn to face the angel.

         “I’m not dead. I’m right here. I’m alright.” The other man’s hand slid down his wrist and their fingers entwined. Crowley squeezed Aziraphale’s hand like it was a lifeline. “It’s not your job to save me, Crowley. I appreciate it. I always do. But if something were to happen to me, that wouldn’t make it your fault. Your job is not to protect me, as mine is not to protect you.” Crowley took a deep breath and closed his eyes. After a couple seconds, he felt a hand run through his hair in a soothing rhythmic manner. Hell, that felt good. Something began to burn in the back of his throat. Something that had to do with emotions, Crowley was certain.

         Crowley finally released his hand but was reluctant to do so. He slipped them into his pockets to stop himself from reaching out again. At this, the hand in his hair, gently pulled away, and he had to actively hold back a whine. There was only so much emotional crap he could deal with in one sitting, and he was reaching his quota.

         “I should head out. It’s late.” He leaned down to retrieve his glasses and slid them back over his eyes, shielding them from Aziraphale’s knowing gaze. He felt like he should apologize for showing up, but the angel had already said there was nothing to apologize for on the matter. Then should he say thank you? No, that felt wrong. He settled for a small wave and a half smile, turning on his heel towards the door.

         “Wait.” Crowley paused again, only a couple feet from the door. “You could stay. I want you to stay. As you said, it’s late and you are already here.”         “Well,” He took a couple steps back and spun around once more. “If you’re tempting.”

[somethingjustsouthofbrilliance]

Too Weak to Fly (chapter 2)

Don’t know if I should be tagging anyone on this or not.🤷‍♀️ All stories are cross-posted on AO3 if you happen to miss anything.

--------------------------------

“Lucky I taught’ya… t’drive…”

 Crowley sits slumped against the passenger side door, head resting against the glass as he watches Aziraphale from under half-lowered eyelids, and Aziraphale tightens his grip on the steering wheel to distract himself from the way those eyelids flutter, struggling to stay open even at half-mast, from the dark stain spreading steadily across the leather upholstery behind the demon’s back, from the pained struggle of each breath, each panted out word…

 “Lucky...”

 The idea to give Aziraphale driving lessons was blurted out by Crowley one night over the third bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape, two years into their post-Armageddon existence.  “It’ll be fun, angel, you’ll see,” he had slurred drunkenly, and Aziraphale was just drunk enough to agree. They did have fun, in fact – once Aziraphale got over his fear of wrapping Crowley’s cherished automobile around the nearest tree (and once Crowely got over his fear of the same), and it turned out to be a rather pleasant bonding experience for the two of them.

 He thinks back to Crowley’s sudden boneless weight in his arms, to the sticky wetness of Crowley’s blood on his fingers, to the agonized cry that tore out of the demon’s throat when Aziraphale threw them both into the waiting Bentley, his panicked brain thinking of nothing else but to get them both out of there, now, now, now….

 “Not ssssure disss…sscorporating ‘n���a car crash… ssss’any better, angel…”

 The carefully disguised tension in the slurred out words cuts off the swirling stream of frenzied thoughts, and he blinks, forcing his attention back to the here and now, to the scenery along the side of the road that’s zooming by much faster than he had intended.  Briefly he glances down at the needle of the speedometer, frowning when he finds it pushing well past 100.  Perhaps he really should slow down before they crash and find themselves discorporated after all.

 He eases his foot slightly off the gas pedal, forces his fingers to relax a fraction from the death grip they have on the steering wheel.

 “I’ve seen you go quite a bit faster than that, dear boy,” he deflects primly, keeping his gaze trained on the roadway ahead, careful not to look at Crowley’s pale (so frighteningly pale) face. “And, given our current circumstances, the sooner we get to our destination, the better.”

 He can feel Crowley’s gaze on him, silent and scrutinizing, and he wriggles his shoulders, disguising the uncomfortable urge to squirm under the need to shift his grip on the wheel.

 “What’ssss the destination?”

 The words are quiet, unconcerned, but there’s a tone to them that tells Aziraphale that Crowey knows the answer, or, at least suspects.  In any case, there’s no point in hiding it.

 “Tadfield,” he murmurs, shooting the demon a furtive, sideways glance.

 There’s another beat of silence, then Crowley’s hand reaches for him, ice-cold fingers brushing along his wrist before it falls limply back down to rest on the seat between them.

“Pull over.”

 “I rather think not, my dear.  We don’t really have time to–”

 “Pull… over, angel.”  There’s a harshness to Crowley’s voice, an emphatic insistence dampened only slightly by the strained edge of pain that tinges the words.

 Aziraphale complies.

 “Crowley,” he begins, twisting in his seat to face the demon.  And, oh, it’s a mistake, a big, big mistake. Because now he can’t help but note it all – the minute twitches of the jaw muscles tightened almost beyond their limit, the alarming gray of the sweat-dotted skin, the fevered intensity of the pain-glazed, weary gaze.  And he can’t help the way his needless heart clenches in fear.

 “Ssss’a bad idea.” The demon pauses, bone-dry lips parted as he drags in a breath that seems somehow to require an extraordinary amount of effort. “You know it is.”

 “It’s the best option we’ve got, Crowley,” Aziraphale rolls out his argument, hurriedly, trying his best to keep the building panic out of his voice.  “Anathema’s a witch, a hereditary one.  She has the ability to see energy patterns within living things, and that means she should be able to influence them.  She may not be able to heal you outright, but, with my guidance, she might, at least, stop further damage and, perhaps, mend your corporation enough for you to last until we get our powers back.”

 There’s a twist to Crowley’s mouth – worried and unhappy, disappointed almost.  Disappointed in him, Aziraphale realizes with a start.

 “They are human, angel,” he breathes out finally, disappointment spilling into his gaze when he adds a pointed, quieter, “and they have kidssss now.”

 Ah, yes, the kids. Twin boys and a girl three years their junior.  He and Crowley have been invited down to Tadfield for every significant celebratory occasion involving the newest offspring in the great Nutter line, and Crowley has proudly embraced the title of “unca Cowly” that had been bestowed upon him by the youngest Device during their last visit.  

 “I have not forgotten,” Aziraphale insists, frowning at the silent reproach in the demon’s stare. And he hasn’t, despite the near-overwhelming panic that has gripped him the moment that Crowley collapsed in his arms in front of the bookshop, and that has only grown since in light of the demon’s rapidly worsening condition.

“I haven’t, my dear. But… well….” He twists in his seat, throwing a worried glance at the road behind them, searching for any sign of their pursuers.  The road has been empty so far, but that meant nothing. Those people have already tracked them down before; they will do so again – it’s only a matter of time. Time they can’t afford to waste.  

He looks back at Crowley, who has sagged even further into the seat in the few short minutes that they’ve been talking, his paper-thin eyelids drooping down to leave a barely perceptible slit of yellow.

“Do you have another suggestion?” he asks, even though he knows he shouldn’t, that it’s a terrifically bad idea to give a desperate, injured demon a chance to voice a likely equally desperate plan.

He’s right, of course. And when Crowley laboriously raises his gaze back to him, divulging his plan on a rattle of an exhale, Aziraphale feels as though ichor itself has turned ice-cold in his veins.

 “You let me out here and you leave.”

 He can’t even muster a breath to respond, too numb with the horror and shock of it, before Crowley ploughs on, resolute.

 “You leave, angel.  Get… get out of London and–”

 “And what, Crowley?” Aziraphale snaps, having found his voice again.  “What?! I run off and leave you behind to die? That’s your plan?”

 “Yesssss.”

 There’s a quiet, unruffled certainty in the demon’s voice, a calm acceptance of the doomed that makes the river of cold inside Aziraphale crackle and break, splitting off into a myriad of razor-sharp icicles that spear and stab straight through his heart.

 “That’s not going to happen.”

Aziraphale turns away from him, hands clenching once more around the wheel because he’s shaking so hard he feels as if he would come apart if he has nothing to hold on to.  He’s surprised his voice was as steady as it had sounded in his ears.

There’s an odd sort of pressure in his chest, like an iron fist squeezing around his corporation’s heart and lungs.  Almost as if he’s been shot along with Crowley, although he knows that to not be true. It’s uncomfortable, painful even. It makes it hard for him to take a breath.  Makes his eyes water for some inexplicable reason.  He gasps, blinking harshly to clear the watery veil that washes out the road in front of them.

“I’m… I’m not–”

 “They’re coming, angel. And I can dissstract them.” Cold fingers brush his wrist again, tentative, apologetic almost.  “Long enough for you to–”

 “NO!”

 He rounds on Crowley, trembling with fear and fury.  Dimly he thinks that if he still had his powers, the whirlwind of emotions he feels right now would have had him virtually blazing with Grace; that he could have hurt Crowley even more; that his lack of powers was probably a blessing now that he can barely control the extent of his outburst.

 He forces himself to breathe, to let go of the steering wheel long enough to grasp Crowley’s hand – his true, his only anchor.  His grip is painful, he knows that much.  Can see it from the way Crowley flinches minutely, his eyebrows tightening with discomfort.  But the demon makes no move to pull away, stays perfectly still beside him, yellow eyes watching him with a knowing sorrow.

 “I’m not… leaving you, Crowley,” he says finally, when he feels steady enough to do so.  “You can’t ask me that.” He takes another breath, swallows harshly against a threatening prickle of tears.  “I will call Anathema, explain the situation to her.  They’ll be warned of our coming, they can get the children out of the house, take any other necessary precautions.  But Crowley…” His voice trembles again, forcing him to stop.  He presses his lips together, his grip on Crowley’s hand tightening involuntarily as he struggles once more to steady himself. “She’s the only chance we’ve got,” he breathes out, his eyes filling once again, “the only chance you’ve got, and I…”

 “Angel…”  

 Crowley’s voice is soft, so, so unbearably soft and regretful, like he’s already accepted this, has given up.  It makes Aziraphale want to scream.

He reaches out with his other hand instead, places it reverently against the gaunt pale cheek.

 “I’m not letting you die, Crowley,” he tells him with all the fervor he’s capable of.  “Not after everything we’ve been through.  Not with everything I still want to… to experience with you.” He stumbles once more, his breath hitching.  Leans across the seat to press his dry, trembling lips against the demon’s.  

“I can’t lose you,” he whispers, desperate, urgent.  “Do you understand? I… I can’t…”

 There’s a feeble movement against his palm, a nod, a ghost of a breath, “I underssstand.”

---------

Back to Chapter 1

[erideights]

Everything that we never get to say.

Request by @lady-of-black-roses : Our best angel x reader, the moment they met, their relationship through the years and a kiss in the end.

Pairing: Aziraphale x Fem!Reader (Good Omens)

Word Count: 2066.

Warnings: SO MUCH ANGST. Death. War.

A/N: I'm totally fucking sure this isn't what you was thinking this would be, but you wanted angst and I had this horrible idea and... I'm so sorry.

''—and then I said ‘Pardon me, what!? No way.’ My Bentley! Buy MY Bentley! Can you believe it?"

Aziraphale's gaze was lost in the distance through the transparent and clear glass of the window of the back room of his shop, where his most precious books were safely kept in his old desk.

He heard Crowley's voice, but he didn’t listen to him, so when the silence fell, almost like a cue to give his opinion, he just hummed.

It was raining, and the drops of water that slid down the impeccable surface before him were reflected in his eyes, eyes that for the first time in oh, so many years, mirrored a regret, sadness and longing the demon would never have believed possible in the angel.

But he was watching his back, so, in any case, he didn’t witness such an atrocious image.

"—angel, angel! You're listening? Where the fuck are you? Get down from the clouds."

But again, the blonde platinum angel didn’t answer, just sighed deeply and allowed his whole body to rock to the rhythm of that breath.

Only the red-haired demon's hand on his shoulder, who had been forced to leave his comfortable seat in search of his friend's attention, was able to tear our Aziraphale from his daydream.

"Hey, you okay?" Crowley asked when through the eyes of the angel crossed confusion and bewilderment. Question to which, quickly but worse pretended than he would have expected, Aziraphale replied:

"Of course, of course I am! I was just trying to imagine a world in which you existed without the car. But it has been in vain, certainly. I can not visualize you without it."

But it was evident that he was lying, and Crowley knew it.

The sad story our beloved angel was reviving begins a few years before the outbreak of the Second World War.

We are in London, on a lost street in a neighborhood not very rich but not poor either, where sad gray buildings stood to the sky and people walked down the street as if life had been taken from them.

The atmosphere was tense, there was no doubt about it, with the war about to explode at any moment, to allow oneself to be happy and to wear a smile was complicated to see.

But even so, there were always those special individuals, unique in their kind, who with only a slight upward curve of their lips, seemed to radiate their own light and bathe in it all who came and wanted some of its warmth.

She was just like that.

Y/N, a young librarian who worked day and night in the most lost and desolate of libraries in all London, but for some reason, was always surrounded by children hungry for her charisma, her love and, above all, her stories.

The first time he saw her, Aziraphale was desperately searching for a book of prophecies that, people told, had been discovered a few years ago in an attic of an abandoned building by the area, and like most books lost and/or without owner with real value for the state, it ended up in the town hall or in the closest library to his find.

That same day he crossed two large wooden doors, worn, scruffy by time but cozy in its tender, eccentric and strange way. And there she was, hair tied in a bun that after so many hours of work was practically undone, smile in a mouth full of white pearls for teeth and eyes that could make the most insensitive of men fall in love with her.

She chatted animatedly with a group of what Aziraphale considered mothers, their children not many meters away, huddled around a round table like knights in shining armors, reading similar books that they would later exchange and use to create a story to be able to play in the park.

The angel Aziraphale would swear he had never experienced what love was, but the moment their eyes met, the common description of that emotion was the closest thing he could feel in his more than 5,000 years of life.

She was Heaven in Earth.

But as it was habit for him, those feelings that seemed to surface in his skin were completely ignored, buried at the end of a dark chamber that until a few years later he wouldn’t have the audacity to open.

Not until it was too late.

With an affable smile and his hands, nervously playing with the end of his cinnamon-colored vest, the thousand-years-old angel made his way to the counter of the small, old but cozy library, interrupting —without wanting to— the conversation between his charming and mysterious unknown woman and the mothers of the neighborhood, who soon began chatting between them several meters away.

"Good Morning!" she chirped happily, as charming as he had imagined her. He found himself sighing and drawing the most beautiful of his smiles just for her. "How can I help you?"

Over a few years, their relationship developed between —not so— random fortuitous meetings in the library, all caused by Aziraphale under the pretext and the excuse of enjoying the calm that reigned there —he assured that, in other libraries, ‘’the tumult came to overwhelm him’’— and other approaches not left to chance itself, but by the initiative that the young Y/N showed in order to spend more time with him.

She would be lying if she said that after some time she hadn’t fallen in love with those eyes that seemed to hold all the love in the world, that tender and adorable giggle that rang in his throat when he was nervous or how he seemed to treat her as if she were the most precious thing in the universe.

His heart, his lovely personality, his empathy and how extremely intelligent he was also helped to shape those feelings that often reduced her sleep hours and kept the girl away from reality and in a constant daydream.

Oh, c'est l'amour.

But no matter how hard she tried, how many hints she dropped or how much effort she put into it; her feelings for Aziraphale didn’t seem to be reciprocated.

And that was good! She was satisfied, —or so she wanted to think—, with the shelter of his friendship with the angel.

That was enough.

But the war came to London, and one is unable to appreciate and understand the treasure that is the calm of a simple life until something like this explodes in front of you and plunges you into the flames of despair.

Chaos, destruction and crying soon seized the streets of the largest city in England.

The families were divided, the great national treasures were lost among the most atrocious fires, innocents died, and among the ashes, one couldn’t even find consolation in mourning those who lost, because in reality, there were no bodies left to mourn.

Events like this didn’t harm or disturb in the least celestial beings free of all guilt and exempt to die, anyone could think, but from the corner of one of the most lost streets in the whole city, where a small and cozy library used to be, an angel began to cry.

Aziraphale found rubble where walls and shelves once stood up to join the roof and collect all the knowledge that such a place could hold; ashes where thousands of books used to rest, waiting for someone to read again what they had to teach; a huge void in the counter from where, he then knew, the love of his life used to smile at the sight of him arriving.

A sharp thud on the ground, —a huge leather bag full of books of ancient prophecies— signaled the exact second when Aziraphale, in shock, began to walk and enter the chaos he once considered a home.

His lips trembled as did his hands and practically the rest of his body.

No, he didn’t even want to think that...

''Y/N?'' He asked in just a broken whisper, unable to raise his voice, unable to verify whether or not she had been a victim of that disaster.

Please, God, do not let her be a victim of this disaster, he thought.

'’Y/N? '' He tried again, this time louder, so the pain in his voice was so obvious that anyone who could get to hear him would know, in effect, that the soft angel was crying.

The bomb couldn’t have fallen more than a couple of hours ago. He knew it because he was there, with her, begging her to hide and search for refuge before what he thought would be a furtive meeting to hunt the enemy.

Please, God, I hope that she has listened to me, he prayed again.

But soon he would find out that God didn’t have mercy for anything and anyone. That no matter how much Aziraphale prayed, he had no greater power over the grand plan.

Because it was ineffable, right? Everything had to happen for a reason in order to achieve a specific goal.

But why, of all the millions of people that existed on the planet, of all those who perhaps deserved it, his blue eyes, sad, crystalline with tears, had to rest on the unconscious body of the woman he loved?

''No, no, no, please, no.'' He muttered in a choked way and so quickly that he couldn’t even understand himself, rushing to reach the body and hold it in his arms while his corduroy pants were destroyed by the ashes on the ground.

''Y/N...'' he begged, caressing her face, brushing the strands of hair that had clung to her sweet features from the sweat of her skin

She was breathing, but not for too long.

Her heart was beating, but his heartbeat was numbered and the clock was only moving forward in time.

''It's okay.'' she suddenly murmured, her voice no more than a barely audible whisper between her forced breathing and the silent crying of the blond angel.

She couldn’t open her eyes, her body didn’t have the strength to do it, but she could recognize that warmth anywhere; after all, she was in love with him, right?

''It's okay.'' she repeated, knowing that from her first two words, Aziraphale's eyes had been fixed on her face and that he was probably afraid to blink and that when he opened them again, she would no longer be with him.

‘’I’m sorr—’’

‘’I love you, Aziraphale.’’

His breath stopped, he was frozen in place, unable to look away from the lips that, after her confession, had drawn a tired smile.

She should tell him, right? She couldn’t leave without telling him at least once.

''I'm sorry I took so long to tell you.''

Prey of his own panic and everything that perhaps he wanted to say choked at the beginning of his throat, the only way out that Aziraphale found to give free rein to the feelings that for years he repressed in his little Pandora's box was to kiss that smile that so many times it had stolen his breath.

And he did.

Then a blink.

He, again, had allowed himself to be carried back to that memory of more than 70 years ago.

His hands caressed, distracted, the green cover of an old book that Crowley had never seen before and that he, at that moment, peeked curiously from the shoulder of the angel, wanting to ask for it but knowing, inside his chest and for some unknown reason, that he shouldn’t.

If he had, Aziraphale would have replied that it was simply a gift from an old friend.

Actually, it was the first gift he received throughout his long life.

''Do not tell anyone, but I stole this book from some archives of the Senate House Library when I was a child and I have always kept it as a treasure.

It has not prophecies, or stories of religious interest, but I think the love story it contains could make you smile on a dark and rainy April afternoon.

With all my love for my guardian angel,

Y/N.''

[nancywheelxr]

I was wondering you could write a Good Omens fic where Crowley is insecure about his eyes and aziraphale makes him feel better (if you don’t write for Good Omens then just ignore this)

If they don’t leave in the next five minutes, they’re going to be late.

Aziraphale knows this and he knows that Crowley also knows it, but it’s been nearly fifteen minutes and the demon is still rushing around his apartment like a bloody chicken. 

“My dear,” he says cautiously, fidgeting on the couch, helpfully points out, “we’re going to be late.”

“I know, angel, I know, I’m almost ready,” Crowley calls, opening and closing cabinets somewhere behind Aziraphale. “I just need to find– oh, bless it, where are those blasted things–”

Twisting on the cushions, Aziraphale leans on the back of the couch, craning his neck to catch a glimpse of Crowley flitting from the kitchen back to his bedroom, a dark shape rushing through. “What is so important that is putting you in this state, anyway?”

The question stops Crowley misstep, pausing in the doorway, and his eyes are shuttered in a way Aziraphale finds he does not like at all. “Erm, nothing too important, well, I mean,” he clears his throat, “it’s just, you see, when Adam brought the Bentley back, he didn’t think to include my stash of sunglasses.”

Oh. Now that he said it, Aziraphale notices Crowley hasn’t got his glasses on since he came over his apartment. Particularly, Aziraphale prefers it this way, enjoys seeing the emotions flickering across his golden eyes, and thinks of a time standing on top of a Garden with the sun reflecting off his hair. He had known, even back then, that something had just started.

“In that case, you could always buy a new one tomorrow,” he suggests, “but we are really going to be late if we don’t leave now.”

“I can’t go out like this,” Crowley sputters, draping himself over the back of the couch and glancing up at Aziraphale quite pitifully.

“It’s dark out,” he counters patiently, “the humans won’t notice.”

Crowley mumbles some more nonsense. 

“But,” Aziraphale starts, giving in and carding his fingers through Crowley’s hair. It’s even softer than he had imagined. “If you must know, I think I prefer it this way– your eyes, I have always found them so lovely, it’s nice to see you without the glasses.”

Under his hand, Crowley freezes, goes completely still, and Aziraphale wonders if he might have gone and put his foot on his mouth again.

“You’re killing me, angel,” Crowley hisses fiercely, but when he raises his head, he’s, well, Aziraphale wouldn’t say blushing, but. It’s a remarkably near thing. “But if it would make you happy–”

“It would.”

“ –then I suppose we should get going.”

“Are you sure, my dear?”

Crowley pauses, stares at him right in the eyes. Aziraphale gazes calmly back.

“Yes, yes, I’m sure, come on, now, you hate being late–”

He allows Crowley to herd him out of the door and allows himself to smile softly at his back. They might be late for the Theater, but Aziraphale can’t bring himself to be anything but terribly fond.

[mordellestories]

In which A.J. Crowley has a fit because he got exactly what he wanted; an 'evolving, exclusive, intimate relationship' with his angel.

Chapter Excerpt from Ineffable Timing; 

It is not well known that the chemical release within a human body associated with excitement and fear are one and the same. Many humans purposefully place themselves in situations to instigate such a release as one will do when watching a horror film, or riding a roller coaster. The only real difference between exhilaration and downright panic is one's mental state at that point in time. So, to some extent, one has control over which emotion they would rather feel depending on the circumstance. As with the example of a theme park ride or a scary movie, the fear is anticipated, which gives a person a chance to enjoy the experience.

However, if you are a demon whose love of their immortal life and best friend has just, out of nowhere, decided that now, after six millenniums, would possibly - someday - like to play a game of “Mr Wobbly hides his helmet,” well, this would be considered unanticipated. In which case, the demon in question, Anthony J. Crowley, had been faced with a term you have probably heard before, the Flight or Fight response. He chose flight.

The Bentley was nowhere in sight. He had no patience to hail a taxi or wait for a bus. Crowley tore down the street in some strange, exaggerated saunter on his Satan- given legs in the direction of what he would soon find out was a pub. All the way there, the demon yelled to himself while gesticulating wildly and randomly kicking his long legs, looking like a roadside flailing Tube Man.

“Shit-shit-shit-shit-shit! What just happened?! What in Satan's name just bloody happened?! Ah right! Let's just change everything! One moment to the next just decide - oh yeah - let's just have an 'evolving, exclusive, intimate relationship' after nil for aeons and aeons like-like-like we just decided on ordering a pizza !"

Before he knew it, he was in an establishment that served alcohol. Loads and loads of alcohol. He snapped his fingers and pointed at the bartender. "Oi! Whiskey!"

The frumpy man behind the bar quirked a brow. "What kind?"

"ALL OF IT!"

There was nowhere to sit. Knowing full well he shouldn't be doing too many miracles outside Anathema's established parameters, lest Hell knows where he was located, he snapped his fingers again and sent a drunken patron halfway across town and sat in his stool at the bar. It took another miracle for no one to notice the stunt. The bartender was quick to slide a glass before him and began to pour. When he was done with his pour, Crowley thanked him and grabbed the bottle right out of his hands. The bartender could not see the glare behind his dark lenses, but he sure as Hell felt it. He held up his hands in surrender and let the demon be.

For the first hour or so, Crowley was silent and concentrated very hard on getting as drunk as possible. Once he hit his peak, he was slurring aloud to himself.

"Six thousand years. Took six thousand years t' finally, finally, get t' this poin'!" He groaned with misery. "Y' know, I should be 'appy, but-but it's jus' so sudden? I think. I mean, 's wha' I wan'ed. I dunno what's wrong with me."

The air suddenly felt thick.

"Well, how do you feel?" Asked a stranger sitting next to him.

Crowley turned to face the voice. He tried to focus his blurred vision and failed. Whoever it was, a listening ear was too tempting to pass up. "Like hell. And-and I know somethin' 'bout that. Believe me you - you me!"

"I dunno, mate. Sounds to me you might have some doubts. Maybe it's not what you really want."

The demon shook his head, nearly sending him toppling off his seat. "N-n-n-no. I wan' it. I-oh-I wan' it. Been wanting it. For-for--"

"Six thousand years, yeah, I get it." The man chuckled. "A long time. Well, look, taking things to the next step is always a little odd, but, and correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems you're wrestling with some demons."

Crowley laughed. "You've no idea."

"Ah, there it is! Guilt maybe."

The demon frowned and turned to the man again after looking down at his empty glass for a long and thoughtful moment. "Why would I feel guilty?"

The man's tone grew severe and profound. "Oh, I dunno. I mean, why did it take so long to get to this point, you think?"

Crowley had trouble handling the bottle to pour himself another drink. He gave up and took a sip straight from the bottle. He knew the answer. He knew what he'd done, been doing for six millenniums. "It took some convincing," he drawled, quite depressed. "I, erm, wasn't his type, let's say. Different… beliefs." He elongated the S. The conversation was going down a path that Crowley had dreaded ever having to say or admit aloud.

"Religion?"

The demon pursed his lips. "You can say that." He stayed silent, contemplating on everything he had done over the years to make Aziraphale budge, one smidge at a time away from the light. He swallowed down his guilt. Guilt. So, it is guilt then.  

"Hey, mate." The man patted his shoulder reassuringly. "People change, with or without anyone's help. If that change has finally brought you two together, what does it matter how? It's in the past. Just enjoy it while you can." Another pat to the shoulder and the man got up and left.

From that point on, Crowley sat immobile, staring at his empty glass.

Read Ineffable Timing on Ao3

[anotherhawk]

Good Omens Fic - Making Plans

Random short piece of fluffy getting together nonsense which is absolutely none of the fics that I’ve been talking about or writing randome lines for.

Summary - A few weeks after the notpocalypse Aziraphale frets, Crowley broods and in a rare display of competence they actually manage to do something about it.

“He frowned at the money tree trembling in his face. “Honestly, what does he do to you?” he asked, going on to murmur a litany of soothing words. In response the plant promptly shuddered and produced a shiny red apple, almost bending in two beneath its weight. “Yes, well…” Aziraphale looked aside in embarrassment. It wasn’t the sort of thing he’d ever been crass enough to bring up, but inanimate objects tended to take on a life of their own around Crowley. The Bentley had its own tastes and Opinions for a start, and there had been that viol a few centuries back which Crowley had been so fond of and which Aziraphale would swear had bit him one night after he’d misguidedly plucked a string.”

Read the fic on AO3, or click the read more link.

Aziraphale was fretting. It was an activity he was both naturally suited for and very well practised in. On this particular occasion he was expressing his fretfullness by making numerous cups of tea and allowing them to grow cold, picking up and reading the first few pages of several absolutely blameless books before setting them aside, and glancing frequently at the telephone and the bell above the shop door, both of which adamantly refused to ring.1

It wasn’t as though he had any reason to worry, he told himself firmly. Crowley hadn’t said he was going to come over today, they certainly hadn’t had any plans. It was just that…well, it was just that since the notpocalypse Crowley had made a habit of popping in to see him of an afternoon. Most afternoons. All afternoons. And now it was well after teatime and heading towards dinner and not a word. Surely heaven or hell couldn’t have got a hold of him. They’d both been sure they’d be left alone for the time being at least. And if either side had figured out their little body switcheroo surely they would have descended on both of them.

He took a deep breath and carefully laid the book he had been trying to focus on aside. Really it wasn’t like he should expect Crowley to just show up. In the beginning they’d gone centuries without seeing each other after all.2 But centuries had gradually turned into decades then years and in recent times what with young Warlock, and then the apocalypse and being on their own side and everything, well, they’d practically been living in each other’s pockets.

It would make sense that Crowley might want some time to himself. He only wished, rather selfishly, that the dear boy had just said something. He’d rather thought they were heading towards something new here. Redefining the nature of their relationship, as it were.

A horrible thought suddenly struck him. If that was what they were doing hadn’t he been relying on Crowley to make all the effort? Here he was waiting for Crowley to come over or call…maybe he hadn’t been showing enough commitment of his own? Maybe Aziraphale hadn’t been appreciating him enough, and now Crowley thought his presence was unwelcome and he was going to stop popping round and get into one of his moods again and do something unfathomably silly, like sleep for another century,or move to America and cut off all his lovely hair again, or find whatever new intoxicants the humans were using and overindulge. And heaven…no-one only knew whether he’d remember that being discorporated wouldn’t just mean a quick trip down below for some unpleasantness and paperwork in order to get a new body.3

At that thought Aziraphale snatched up his coat, ran out the door and hailed an idling cab whose previous fare had miraculously decided to get out and walk the rest of the way.

*

1Actually the shop bell had rung twice that day, but on both occasions it had proved to be a customer which was the last thing the bookshop needed.

2This wasn’t quite true, in the Beginning they hadn’t known each other at all, and in the time immediately after the Garden, which was more what Aziraphale had in mind, their temptations and blessings had been very much focused on the one existing family and so they’d seen each other nearly every single day, though they’d rarely exchanged more than the odd embarrassed nod.

3You might think that this is rather a lot of panic and suppositions over someone who has only been ‘missing’ for a few hours. But Aziraphale had had a very trying time of it lately and the effects of adrenaline take longer to fade in those of angelic stock than in humans.

*

He had been to Crowley’s flat before of course. Well. Once. The night after armageddon’t. But even if he hadn’t he’d have been able to find it by following his awareness of Crowley through London, though admittedly that particular method of navigation would have been difficult to explain to the cabbie. The door was locked and he knocked a couple of times before walking in, rationalising to himself that he was just checking that everything was as it should be.

“Crowley?” he called from the hall, shifting uncomfortably as a wave of heat and humidity hit him. “It’s me, dear. I thought I’d see if you wanted to get dinner?”

There was no answer. He moved deeper inside, telling himself that he wasn’t really intruding, after all they’d known each other for 6000 years and Crowley was always popping into the bookshop unannounced. Turnabout was fair play and all that. It really was very warm in here. Perhaps Crowley was just taking a nap. He always did like the temperature far too high, old serpent that he was.

Giving the spot on the floor where once had lain the foul remains of a demon and a thermos of holy water a wide berth and an unhappy grimace1, he followed a sense of fear and anxiety through a closed door at the end of the hall and was confronted with a wall of green. Oh, yes, of course, Crowley’s plants. Gardening was one of those human preoccupations that Crowley had always been partial to, like sleep or music or gender. Aziraphale didn’t exactly understand it, but he had once read that having separate interests was very important so that was alright. He didn’t have to.

Well, this seemed to be where the anxiety was originating from anyway. He frowned at the money tree trembling in his face. “Honestly, what does he do to you?” he asked, going on to murmur a litany of soothing words. In response the plant promptly shuddered and produced a shiny red apple, almost bending in two beneath its weight. “Yes, well…” Aziraphale looked aside in embarrassment. It wasn’t the sort of thing he’d ever been crass enough to bring up, but inanimate objects tended to take on a life of their own around Crowley. The Bentley had its own tastes and Opinions for a start, and there had been that viol a few centuries back which Crowley had been so fond of and which Aziraphale would swear had bit him one night after he’d misguidedly plucked a string. It wasn’t like Crowley went around whispering 'Let there be life’ all over the place, it was just that he could get a little overfocused on his obsessions.2

“Anyway,” he said brightly, dusting off his hands and getting back to the original point. “Crowley! Crowley, dear boy, are you in?” He tried another door and found himself in a study of sorts with…was that a throne? He pressed his fingers up against his lips, suppressing a ridiculous. How absolutely ridiculous, he thought fondly. And how typical.

There was a slight noise behind him and he turned quickly to see a twelve foot long black snake with a bright red hood inches away from his face.

With a yelp the angel leapt back about three feet. With a hiss, so did the demon.

“Really, my dear,” Aziraphale said, brushing off his lapels carefully. “You startled me.”

“Ssstartled you?” Crowley exclaimed, surprisingly expressively for a snake. “I’m ssorry, whosse home are we in again? I wass assleep.”

“Yes, well.” Now that he was actually here in front of a Crowley who was evidently unharmed and wasn’t noticeably pining away he felt rather silly. “I thought we’d been going out this afternoon and when you didn’t show up I thought maybe I should meet you here.”

Crowley reared back, his tongue flickering agitatedly. “We didn’t have planss, did we? I would have remembered plansss.”

“No,” Aziraphale said stiffly, somewhere between the point of wishing himself far away and actually miracling it. “I suppose I just rather assumed.”

They stared at each other for a long moment.

Eventually Aziraphale coughed. “Well. I won’t intrude any further,” he said, turning to walk away.

“Don’t!” Crowley transformed in an instant, hand reaching out to lightly grasp Aziraphale’s sleeve. “I’m sorry, angel. I didn’t mean to chase you away. I was just surprised to see you is all. But not all surprises are bad.”

“Well.” Aziraphale felt his cheeks pinken. “That’s alright then. Shall we have some wine?”

*

1Aziraphale had been the one to carefully miracle it away that night. But he would always know it had been there.

2Aziraphale did have the grace to be aware he was being something of a hypocrite here, but in his own defense his books had never expressed any emotions of their own.3

3They did tend to take on the emotional aura of those around them, however. In most cases Aziraphale’s collection reflected love.

*

A few moments later found them on a leather sofa that was impossibly comfier than it looked, drinking a vintage that was rather superior to the one it had been when Aziraphale had bought it.

“I didn’t know you were scared of snakes, angel,” Crowley said, pouring them another glass.

He sat up indignantly. “I am not! Why would anyone be scared of snakes?”

“Dunno. But lots of humans are. Think maybe it’s because they think all snakes are poisonous?”

Aziraphale quickly glanced towards him and equally quickly looked aside. “Well, my dear, that would only be a problem were I planning on eating you.”

He hid his smile behind his wine glass as Crowley choked.

“What have you been doing today anyway,” he asked before the demon had a chance to fully recover.

The light vanished from Crowley’s face in an instant. “Oh, this and that. Thinking, mostly.”

Brooding, Aziraphale mentally translated. “There’s nothing…wrong, is there?” he asked hesitantly. “You haven’t heard from…” He gestured vaguely downwards.

“No. No, nothing like that, ’s just…” He tilted his head back to look at the ceiling. “Do you think Warlock’s doing okay?”

Aziraphale blinked. He hadn’t been expecting that. “Oh, I’m sure he is. Why wouldn’t he be, after all?”

Crowley drained his glass. “Well, I mean, it’s just that I’d – we’d – always been there for him since before he can remember, and now we’re not. And you know what his parents are like.”

He nodded, even though in his experience Mr and Mrs Dowling had been perfectly unobjectionable. His lips twitched. “You’re worried about him.”

“No! Course not. I put a lot of work in with him, that’s all. I’d hate to see all that go to waste. Who know what influences he’s going to fall under now? They might be nice. They might not know when to make him the hot chocolate with the stars and when to just sit and play Minecraft with him until he’s ready to talk.”1

Aziraphale blinked again but more slowly this time. Apparently there was quite a lot he’d missed while he was out in the garden. “Maybe - “ he started, but Crowley was already talking again.

“Sudden changes can be extremely distressing for children, all the books say so.”

“Books?”

Crowley looked at him and Aziraphale just knew he was rolling his eyes behind his shades. “Yess, books. I can read, you know.”

“I know you can, I just didn’t know you had,” he tried to explain. “No, hang on, that sounds worse.”

“Do you have any idea what kind of qualifications you need to be a nanny these days? I thought if I didn’t know any of the latest buzzwords it might look suspicious. So I glanced through some child development books in preparation. Which, I might add, is more than you did to be a gardener.”

He couldn’t help the smile. “I love you,” he said, immediately following it up with “Meep!”

“Real gardeners don’t encourage slugs, and do you even know the first thing about compost…what did you just say?”

Aziraphale currently had both of his hands clamped against his mouth. “Mmmph,” he said, hoping that somehow that would be enough.

Crowley was staring at him, sitting rigidly upright on the edge of the sofa like he was considering either running or just discorporating there and then. “I…you…no, you can’t…are you sure?”

One of them was going to have to be brave. Unfortunately it looked like it was going to have to be him. “Quite sure, I’m afraid. I’ve known for, oh, almost seven decades now.”

Crowley continued to stare.

He shifted nervously, wondering again about miracling himself somewhere far away. “My dear, it would really help if you said – mmph!” He was interrupted by Crowley surging forwards and kissing him.

It wasn’t a very good kiss, all things considered. There were far too many teeth clattering together, and Crowley never had been all that sure just how human tongues were supposed to work. The second one was much better. As was the third.

Later, soberer, they lay back on the sofa together, feathers lightly entangled.

“We could take a trip to go and see Warlock tomorrow,” Aziraphale suggested.

“If you like,” Crowley said, like it was a great favour he was willing to confer.

He was, as always, happy to play along. “It would make me feel better. We could say goodbye properly. Maybe even give him a forwarding address.”

Crowley squeezed his hand tightly. His sunglasses were gone now and his eyes were luminous in the dim light. “Aziraphale…you know I do too, right? Love you, I mean.”

“Oh, yes,” he said, and he did. And that was everything that seemed to matter.

1For those wondering what an ancient demon and an eleven year old not-antichrist might build in Minecraft, the answers vary from a volcano lair complete with McDonalds, a theme park filled with screaming villagers, and a remarkably accurate recreation of the hanging gardens of Babylon.

[horrorslashergirl]

Well hello this is my firts time talking to you I was wondering if you could make a second part of “Home sweet home, wife”it was amazing I love it thank u so much

Part 1 here

That is a surprise because I didn’t plan for this to be a two-parts, but here it is! Also, I try to work more on Jesses’ dark side, try to keep him in character as much as possible. This has some NSFW content with non-con, just a heads-up if you are too sensitive.

Chromeskull x Reader- Home sweet home, wife! Part 2

Jesse was in his study, a glass filled with whiskey in one hand while the other one twirled one of his hunting knives, looking over the shiny blade as his thoughts were running back to you. Even after that bloody workout he still felt the tension in his body and he grew frustrated with every minute.

You were probably sobbing, locked in his bedroom and he felt the anger begin to surface. He basically gave you what any woman could want; money, clothes, jewelry, the luxury that most would trade their souls for and here you were all defiant.

Jesse was a patient man, but even his own could break at some point, and after almost four months of trying to make you fall for him and give in, he began to wonder if he should just take it. He could, you had no power against him, trapped in his own house at his full mercy.

Finishing up his whiskey he got up from the leather arm-chair, stalking out of his study and upstairs to his bedroom. A sigh left his scarred lips as he opened the giant doors to the master bedroom, seeing you look out the big window.

Your eyes locked on his as you heard him come inside. You were relaxed, after so many encounters with him you weren’t afraid anymore, but just vigilant in case he decided to really get out the heavy treatment.

“What do you want?” you asked, venom lacing your voice.

Jesse didn’t show any emotions, he was lost in thoughts of why he came here or what he planned to do. One thing he knew, he wanted to see you.

Taking out his phone he began to type his message. That was the only way he could make his thoughts known on you, seeing how you didn’t know ASL. Walking towards you, he showed the screen of the black and silver phone.

‘I wanted to see you.’

You scoffed at the message. You were tired of this bullshit already, all this wife-husband thing was just his sick fantasy and by Gods, he was driving you insane. You debated what you should do. Fight him? That would most likely end with him winning; he was twice your size!

A sly idea hit you, but it was very risky and you had to be careful or else you might end up buried 6 feet underground. Well, you didn’t have other ideas.

“Alright.” you said, trying to sound assertive. Jesse gave you a confused look, not getting what you meant.

You took slow steps toward him, your eyes locked with his brown functional one. He stiffed once you were just inches away from him, your hands running up his chest, towards his neck, your fingertips brushing the pale skin.

His mouth parted, half-lidded brown eye looking down at your figure.

“You know...I’m tired of fighting.” you declared, resting your forehead against his clothes chest, one of his hands running up your back to your hair, massaging the scalp.

You couldn’t deny that it felt nice. No, not nice; wonderful. Not having human contact made you so sensitive and you couldn’t deny that you longed for affection. Still, you needed to keep yourself in check if you wanted this plan to work.

Jesse on the other side was over the moon when he heard you say these words. Were you finally giving in, surrendering to him? A sigh of pleasure left your lips, your eyes opening to look up to his face again.

If you could describe a desperate man in need of affection then Jesse was the perfect image. He looked at you with such vulnerability in his brown eye, like an animal that was starved. He leaned his face closer to yours, maintaining the eye contact as his lips inched towards yours until they were flush against yours.

The kiss started slow, careful, then it got heavy as he noted that you were actually kissing back, his tongue rubbing against your bottom-lip asking for entrance. You were kind of hesitant, not knowing if things would do to deep.

A hand grasping your hip made you open your mouth and he took the opportunity to push his tongue inside, the tip brushing against yours in dance for dominance.

You had to stop this or else things wouldn’t go according to plan. All you needed was to take the keys to his Bentley, kick him in the balls and make a run for the door. Simple.

Only for things to take a dark turn, when he roughly grasped both of your asscheeks, picking you up like a ragdoll, a show of pure masculine strength and before you knew it your back hit the bed, the feeling of cold metal at your wrists.

Your eyes widened when you came down from all that kissing and finally realized that Jesse handcuffed you to his bed.

Jesse looked down at you with a smug look, wagging the keys to his car in front of your face.

‘Looking for this, doll?’ he typed on his phone, making your eyes widen with fear. He knew? How did he know? Were you that obvious?

“H-How?” you asked in a shutter, trying to make as much space between you and him, only for him to pin his body over your waist, each of his leg on either side of your body and his crotch way too close to your face, making your cheeks heat you.

‘You think I’m stupid, piggy? Although it was very brave of you to get so close into the tigers' cage.’

That made you shiver in fear, his words making you wonder what he planned to do. You would so much bite his dick off, but you knew then he would probably kick your teeth out.

‘I hate liars and much more so fake piggies. Now, I might forgive you, if you will be a good little piggy for daddy.’ your face was probably priceless to Jesse when you read this message, your eyes looking up from the screen to his smirking face.

The real fear began to course through your body when his hands moved to the belt and zipper of his black slacks.

One last message was typed on the phone for your eyes.

‘No teeth, piggy.’

Oh God no...

[rorykillmore]

and this one is for @spearitsandmonsters who requested an au with one of our more recent dynamics! i decided to do sly and emerald because i wanted to have some fun with our sly cooper au idea. i ran with the whole “em and merc get recruited for the sly 3 heist” idea. there were a lot of ideas i had to cut for the sake of focus and flow (god i NEED emerald interacting with dimitri someday) but i wanted to explore how she’d react to the panda king in particular, so!

merry christmas spear!!! here’s to another wonderful year of being friends -- okay, it hasn’t really been a wonderful year, maybe, but the parts with YOU have been wonderful. from all our fantastic rp dynamics and plots to the fandoms we plunge into together to the fact that we always seem to be on the same page when it comes to salt, you are and have always been a person i jibe with so naturally. it hasn’t been an easy year for you, and you’ve had to deal with a lot of ups and downs, but you’ve worked so hard to be present and kind to your friends despite that and to contribute to some great things to denny, so hopefully this fic honors that <3

“What does power mean when you only use it to destroy? Until it begins to erode at your very self?”  The Panda King sounds more bitter than Sly would have expected, although his anger doesn’t sound like it’s directed at Emerald.  “What does loyalty mean when the people who demand it would see you steeped forever in your own rage, or doubt, or self-loathing, for their better gain?”

The whole gang’s assembled (maybe too organized a word) by the time Sly gets back to the hideout with their two newest recruits.  And... Sly can see that Bentley and Murray, at least, have recognized them immediately.

“Oh,” Murray says, puzzled.  “It’s those guys.”

‘Those guys’, in this case, being Emerald and Mercury.  A rival duo of thieves who Sly admittedly expected to cause a few ripples, not only because they’d been competing with the Cooper Gang for months now, but because of the rumors that sometimes flitted around about Mercury’s more... less than savory work. 

It’s not worth the discomfort of immediately pointing out that Bentley’s newest choice of recruit has more blood on his hands than either of Sly’s do, but Sly has the defense ready all the same.

“Glad to know we’ve left such an impression,” Mercury notes dryly, while Emerald shifts a little at all the attention in the room being centered on them.

From where he’s perched on the couch behind Murray, the Guru murmurs an inquiry, and it’s Bentley who responds.  “Guru -- everyone -- meet Emerald Sustrai and Mercury Black.  Fellow thieves, former rivals, current...”

“Allies,” Sly cuts in firmly. “They’re here to help us with the heist, just like everyone else.”

“No, we just dropped by for pizza and drinks,” Emerald quips. The joke appears to be lost on Murray, who starts to look hopeful at the prospect.

“Well,” Bentley continues, still eyeing Sly, but clearly addressing the two newcomers.  “You already know Murray and I, obviously.  I’ll just run through the rest of the introductions briefly. This is the Guru -- our chief mystic.”

“He kind of does that... spooky illusion thing, too,” Sly tells Emerald, waggling his fingers for emphasis. “I figured the two of you might have a thing or two to teach each other.”

“Right.” Emerald eyes the Guru dubiously until, courteous as ever, he dips his head to her in greeting, and she seems to relax slightly.

“And Penelope, our RC specialist...”

“I would love to get a closer look at your weapons. -- You know. Since we’re  allies now, and all,”  Penelope tells them immediately, pushing her glasses further up her nose as she leans in to get a closer look. “I might even be able to make a few nifty modifications, if either you wanted...”

Bentley glances over his shoulder almost hesitantly, and Sly follows his gaze to where the Panda King’s bulky form is visible hunched over his desk as he tinkers with what looks like a few small explosives. He’s the only one, notably, who hasn’t joined the welcome party.  “And that’s...”

“The Panda King,” Mercury cuts in, his eyes glittering with interest and some other unreadable emotion.  “Yeah. We’ve heard of you.”

“Demolitions?” Emerald guesses his role, likely clued in not only by what the Panda King is doing now but by his long, infamous history of blowing up villages who refused to pay tribute to him. Bentley nods.

“He’s ‘reformed’,” Sly says, the sarcasm and doubt in his voice perhaps a little too clear. The Panda King himself doesn’t react, but Murray and Penelope are starting to look a little uncomfortable, and strangely, even Emerald won’t quite meet his eyes.

“Well,” Bentley breaks the silence after another stiff moment.  “We’ve certainly got the makings of a fine team, here. If I was the kind of person who liked to jinx things, I’d say Dr. M’s fortress didn’t stand a chance.”

Sly - who has already clued Emerald and Mercury in on the situation with his family’s treasure vault being heavily guarded by an evil super genius who bought the island it was located on - fills in the remaining gaps.

 “We, uh.  We have to fulfill our end of our bargain before we move out to the island, though.” Mercury frowns and Emerald raises her eyebrows, so Sly continues, “We promised the Panda King we’d rescue his daughter. In exchange for him lending us his services.”

“What happened to his daughter?” Emerald asks. Sly opens his mouth to answer, but before she can get a word out --

“She’s being held prisoner. By a military general who would force her into marriage against her will.” The Panda King’s rumbling voice cuts through the conversation, surprising everyone. Sly turns and sees that he has set down his tools at the table, and keeps still as he pushes himself to his feet.  “If you will all excuse me. I have some other preparations to make.”

He exits the room without so much as glancing at their new recruits.

“Wow. Just as charming as I’ve always heard,” Mercury drawls once he’s gone.

Emerald shifts beside him. “Never pegged a guy like that for being such a devoted father.”

Sly doesn’t particularly want to dwell on the subject. Instead, he shoots them both a friendly smile.  “Come on, I’ll show you where to get settled in. Luckily it’s a pretty spacey place for an inconspicuous thieves’ den.”

----

Later that night, he braves the cold to go sit on the hideout’s rooftop, letting the drifting snow settle softly into his fur as he tracks the guards below on their nightly routes. General Tsao’s certainly no slouch when it comes to security, but something about that makes this all the more satisfying -- being hidden right under his nose.

He almost doesn’t notice when a lithe, shadowy figure hops up to join him, but all things considered, there’s only one person it can really be.

“It’s freezing up here,” Emerald immediately complains.  “Why aren’t you inside?”

“Why aren’t you?” Sly teases back, twitching an ear towards her. “Getting attached to the pleasure of my company?”

He can practically hear Emerald rolling her eyes in response.  “Ha. You wish, Cooper.”

But then, to his surprise, she settles down beside him at the edge of the roof.  She must want to talk to him about something, then, and Sly patiently waits in silence without pushing her until she gets around to breaching the subject. 

“Let me ask you something. Did you just hire me and Mercury to piss off your turtle friend?”

Sly’s ears prick up in surprise.  “What? No. Why would you think -- ?”

“Things just... seemed kinda tense between the two of you, is all.” Emerald shrugs nonchalantly, gazing out at the view beyond.  “Sort of seemed like you didn’t like him inviting the pyromaniac along.”

“Well, I don’t.” Sly catches himself before he can sound too bitter, suddenly self-conscious and a little more clear on where Emerald might’ve gotten her impression that he only invited her along for petty payback. Sheepishly and feeling he owes her some kind of explanation, he draws a breath.  “...I just... don’t trust him. He was... part of the gang that killed my parents.”

There’s a brief, almost fragile pause. “Oh.  Jeez. I’m sorry,” Emerald says finally, the sympathy sounding a little brittle, but not insincere.  “I... didn’t know you were an orphan. Me too.”

Sly glances over at her carefully, but she still isn’t looking at him.  “Kinda seems to be a common sob story in our line of work.” He keeps it casual, but his tone is gentle.  “Bentley and Murray grew up without their parents, too. ...What about Mercury?”

Emerald shrugs again.  “He grew up with his dad, but... honestly, from what I’ve heard, he probably would’ve been better off with no parents at all.”  She laughs bleakly, and it’s more than telling.  “Kinda funny how an actual mass murderer cares more about his kid than Merc’s ever did about him.”

Sly gets the feeling that this isn’t the kind of thing he should admit knowing to Mercury -- ever. Which means that... maybe Emerald trusts him more than he realized, if she’s sitting here talking about it. He opens his mouth, searching for words, but Emerald abruptly changes the subject.

“So why did Bentley invite the Panda King into your gang, if you guys have such a horrible history?”

Faced with the question, Sly can’t say that he thinks Bentley ever had any ill intent. And, of course, he’s always known that. “Because he thinks we need him, I guess. Even I have to admit, I don’t know of a better demolitions expert out there, and... that vault’s gonna be tough to crack.”

Emerald pauses, frowning.  “...Do you think... there’s any chance he could actually change?”

No, is Sly’s first, immediate instinct, but if he’s being honest with himself, it might be more deeply rooted in his own anger than any objective assessment of the Panda King that he’s made. He’s not sure whether or not he would safely call the Panda King reformed, but technically, he has already changed. He isn’t the same person he’d been when Sly had confronted him three years ago. And neither was Sly.

“I think we all change,” Sly says finally. “One way or another.”

It’s part of being alive. He thinks - suddenly and unbidden - of Clockwerk, who traded that essential spark of life for immortality, and wound up trapped in stagnant hatred for all of his supposedly eternal life. It’s almost enough to make Sly pity him.

The Panda King isn’t Clockwerk. Maybe it isn’t impossible for him to step beyond the various ways he’s trapped himself. And abruptly, Sly wonders why Emerald even asked.

He glances at her again, more thoughtfully, and smiles.  “You know... saving the Panda King’s daughter isn’t the only way we’ve helped out our new recruits. We helped the Guru protect his home back in Australia, and won Penelope’s flying competition.  I guess what I’m saying is... we kinda owe you and Mercury one too. If you ever needed help with anything.”

He senses - without really needing to ask - that she has some kind of past that she’s running from. Something altogether separate from her dead parents.

Emerald blinks at him slowly, cautiously, and Sly can tell she’s trying not to seem too surprised.  “...Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” she says finally, but something about it seems contemplative, like the offer is actually weighing on her.

So Sly only laughs, in no hurry to push her. 

“Yeah. Okay,” he agrees, and they watch the sun rise together.

----

It’s two days later when, in the midst of waiting in the van’s passenger seat for Murray to come out and drive them to their latest tag-team mission, Sly catches a glimpse of the Panda King approaching in the rear view mirror. 

He activates his ancestor’s invisibility trick before he can even really think about planning it -- maybe because a still suspicious part of him wants to see what the Panda King’s doing poking around out here on his own. Maybe just because he’s not really in the mood for a friendly chat with his former adversary.

But as the Panda King throws open the van’s back doors and begins rummaging around, Sly realizes that he’d been mistaken -- the Panda King isn’t out here on his own.

“Bentley has recommended we make use of these custom communication devices during the mission,” Sly hears him rumble to someone else.

And then he recognizes Emerald’s voice answering, “Well, he is the resident tech nerd. Guess we’d better take his word for it.”

Bentley must’ve had another mission for the two of them, Sly guesses easily. He’s not entirely sure how he feels about it -- but he’s starting to feel a little bad about eavesdropping.  He’d consider silently slipping away, if he didn’t have to conspicuously open the passenger side door to do it.

“His intellect is... more then sufficient,” The Panda King agrees carefully. “And the way he has modified that chair to compensate for his injuries, more than worthy of respect. I once believed that an old associate of mine was the most skilled inventor to have ever lived. Perhaps I was mistaken.”

There’s a pause, which Sly spends trying not to feel a reluctant glow of pride at one of his most bitter enemies praising his best friend.

“...The... people you used to work with,” Emerald ventures casually -- or ‘casually’, because Sly is starting to be able to tell the difference between when she means it and when she’s feigning it.  “Do you ever... I don’t know.  Question whether you were right to leave them?”

Sly pricks his ears, surprised. The Panda King’s brief silence suggests that she might have caught him off guard, too.

“It was not my decision,” he growls eventually.  “The organization was falling apart at its seams, thanks to Cooper’s interference.  In the end, there was hardly anything left to leave.”

“So does that mean you would you go back?” Emerald asks, still sounding idle. “If you could?”

“What does power mean when you only use it to destroy? Until it begins to erode at your very self?”  The Panda King sounds more bitter than Sly would have expected, although his anger doesn’t sound like it’s directed at Emerald.  “What does loyalty mean when the people who demand it would see you steeped forever in your own rage, or doubt, or self-loathing, for their better gain?” 

Emerald is quiet for longer, this time. When she speaks, her voice is a little softer, almost partially inaudible from Sly’s position.  “You remind me of someone I used to work with.  He had your... sense of integrity. I guess. Honor. Even when we were doing some pretty terrible things.”

And it only hits Sly just then why Emerald has seemed so cautiously, tentatively curious about the Panda King and Sly’s opinions on him up until now. He feels an unexpected pang of sadness for her, and remorse at the fact that he could have inadvertently given her the impression that he didn’t think it was possible to come back from... wherever she’d been.

“And did he ever walk away?” The Panda King asks more lowly.

“I don’t know. He always wanted Mercury and I to get out, but I... never really found out what happened to him, after we left.”

“Making peace with the past is never simple,”  The Panda King sounds thoughtful, or maybe troubled -- Sly can’t really read his tone, but it’s one he’s never heard before.  “And doubt along the way... is not a sign of weakness. Merely a symptom of wounds that have yet to fully heal. The only remedy is to move forward even still, and fight for the things that are dear to us. When you have something to fight for... that makes it easier.” 

“Like your daughter,” Emerald provides quietly.

“Yes. And what do you fight for now, Emerald?”

Brief silence, again.  “...I guess I’m still trying to figure that out.”

“I think perhaps... you are in the right place, then.”

There’s a shuffle as the equipment they needed is evidently located and removed from the van. And then the doors slam shut, and Sly can hear nothing more.

He drops back into visibility once he’s sure they’re both gone, complicated emotion twisting in his chest. The Panda King is the last person in the gang Sly would have ever expected Emerald to connect with, but maybe that’s his own oversight.

Maybe - whatever he thinks of the bear himself - his insight is valuable. To Emerald, at least. And maybe Sly is already more invested than he’s realized, because this makes it more valuable to Sly, too.

He settles back in his seat, closes his eyes and then opens them again, and tries to grab hold of that slowly building hope for the future.

[swampythesweetsketch]

Canon and Beta AU

THE GIST OF IT

The Cooper Gang were doing a test run of Bentley’s time machine, modified to work without the heavy reliance of artifacts to get them to certain time periods.

But items still are only needed once in order to get to a time period, the modification making it so the artifact doesn’t have to be the exact year they need to go to.

The test is an old backpack Sly used in his days of Thievius Raccoonus.

During the trip through the time portal, the van hits a “bump”, causing the pack to smack against the glass case, scratching the pack’s metal clasp.

Thus sending the Gang to the Beta!verse via object alteration.

The Gang runs into their much younger (and very beta concept-y) selves.

The Beta Gang are TJ (Beta!Sly), Ben (Beta!Bentley), and Murphy (Beta!Murray)

TJ and the Beta Gang come from New York, USA. Very obvious with TJ’s voice.

The Beta Gang met later during middle school and stayed in the same foster home until graduation.

TJ is the embodiment of a New Yorker, heavy accent, the cane is replaced by a baseball bat with the Cooper hook attached to the handle.

Ben is a nervous wreck, he’s very flighty and has a voice more cowardly and squeaky than Bentley’s. Besides hacking, no one knows what he likes or what his goals are.

Murphy is flamboyant (much to Murray’s confusion) and is the baby blue vest, silk scarf adorn gay hippo. He’s being experimental with his sexuality since he’s now free in a new area and not suppressed in the child care symptom/no longer in oppressive foster homes.

Carmelita is now Chase Montoya Fox, and her accent is much like her the one in the Beta, more exaggerated and also a white shirt to replace the canon! corset Carmelita wears.

BETA!GANG RELATIONSHIP(S)

TJ and Chase are not a romantic couple. Nor are they interested as TJ “knows better” than to mingle with the law.

Murphy is BIromantic Homosexual, his “Sly Envy” is not one of ‘being like TJ’, he has an actual crush on TJ cause they’re one of the only men that he’s grown to trust over the years.

Zig and Zag, the meerkat journalists are back! And they seem to be Ben’s only friends outside the Gang, as they help him get data on criminals or stalk targets.

Ben and TJ have the usual co-worker dynamic, but usually Ben will show signs or other emotions besides “congested fear” that only TJ seems to catch onto.

TJ and Murphy like each other! But the relationship falls on a one-sided crush Murphy has on TJ. But the two enjoy figuring out the raccoon’s thief ensemble.

Ben and Murphy seem to have a chemistry that only TJ sees, the two are the ones left in the van at hiest time. Of which TJ teases them with ‘don’t you two get frisky while I’m gone~!’ Resulting in Ben getting flustered and Murphy missing it cause of his stronger feelings towards TJ.

They look at the Canon Gang and get confused about the severe differences and timeline.