#Quality hot beverages

[twilightakiishi]

takiishi chika is not a simple man.

he’s hard to figure out. you can’t read him, hardly anybody can, and it makes it difficult to find things you share interest in. the first one is obvious— each other. otherwise, you wouldn’t be sitting across from him every morning, sharing his space. especially not over coffee.

every morning, without fail, a piping hot cup of black coffee will bring him from an impending threat to society, to whatever one peg lower than that is.

you don’t speak much in the morning, but he allows— or maybe enjoys— you to sit across from him with your coffee and breakfast. it’s peaceful, and quiet, if you’re comfortable being stared at. 

he watches curiously as you dip a thumbprint cookie into your cup and take a bite, washing it down afterwards. when you pull the mug back down, your eyes meet his inquisitive ones. tilting your head at him, you glance down to the other half of your cookie, placing it on a napkin and sliding it over to him with a soft smile. he stares at it, hesitating, before he mimics you. 

he blinks as he chews, and glances at you a few times, not used to being the one stared at. you avert your gaze so he feels like he has some room to breathe, and when you glance back up at him, he’s licking his lips. his expression doesn’t change, but you’re quite certain you know him well enough to gather that he liked it. 

your assumption is confirmed the next time you drag him along with you to the grocery store, when he disappears for five minutes only to return with a box of the cookies in his hand. and when you ask him a few weeks later what he wants from the grocery store, they’re the first item on his list. they run out so much faster when he’s grabbing one alongside you every morning, but you don’t mind.

not when suddenly, the two of you have another thing in common.

[dogmataleblog]

Void Update. Seems Nebula is doing a good job taking care of Killer and Blue with that take-out order.

Killer belongs to Rahafwabas; Blue belongs to Underswap.

[sanjisprincesss]

I could fall in love with you

⋆.ೃ࿔*:･Synopsis: How I think the one piece men would realize they’ve got it bad for you!

⋆.ೃ࿔*:･Characters: Monsters trio x fem! Reader

⋆.ೃ࿔*:･cw: fluff fluff and more fluff! Sort of proofread

⋆.ೃ࿔*:･ song credit: I could fall in love by Selena

⋆.ೃ࿔*:･ LUFFY

Realized when he started to feel even more clingy towards you.

With Luffy it’s a matter of whether or not he realizes or someone around him realizes. The minute he realizes he doesn’t hold back on his feelings and tells you immediately.

He realizes when he starts to feel a s way when Sanji or anyone grazes at you in any other way then friendly. Which is a feeling he never really felt since in any other situation he wouldn’t care about if someone flirts or flaunts over you.

He starts to crave your attention and presence more and everyone around him will most likely notice.

You and Luffy sit on top of the head of the thousand sunny pointing out clouds shapes making stories and backgrounds to them. Watching the sunset a beautiful ray of colors and scenery cover the sky.

“Shishi that one looks like a sea cow doesn’t Y/N!” Your captain said pointing and laughing at a cloud that strangely resembled a giant sea creature. You look to where he’s pointing to see the cloud he’s mentioning. You can’t help but smile and laugh at the remembrance. “ yeah it does look like a sea cow Luffy!”

As the laughter begins to die down, Luffy with an unreadable expression turns to face you without saying a word. As you turn to face him his famous smile returns to his face “Y/N i love you so much! You know that right!”

⋆.ೃ࿔*:･ ZORO

Realized when he got a little too overprotective of you even more than he’s willing to admit.

First of all, as soon as he gets the slightest hint that he’s head over heels in love with you he’s denying it and will try to deny it as much as he is possibly able to. DENIAL IS A RIVER IN EGYPT.

Which is also why he wouldn’t confess first.

Zoro is known for being the protector of the strawhat pirates, by nature he has his hand on his swords the minute the crew is In danger. It's not that he is more protective towards you than the crew, it's more like he’s more protective of you towards others that have pertenal feelings towards you. Which once again is not really his main train of thought yk.

Of course he would never admit, but he likes to have your company near him. May it be you reading a book in the crows nest while he trains or just being near him while he’s napping.

As the sun shines on the sea and everything in its path. You Nami and Robin were sunbathing on the deck as Sanji came by with fresh drinks for the three of us. Luffy Chopper and Usopp playing around the ship while laughing with zoro training in the crows nest.

“NAMI SWANN~ Y/N CHANN~ ROBIN DEARR~ I'VE MADE YOU LOVELY LADIES SOME REFRESHING BEVERAGES! SO BEAUTIFUL I COULD JUST MELT!”

He says with hearts in his eyes placing the drinks down on a table and hanging them out one by one.

“Aye, curly brows give em a break will ya!”

And that Is all you hear form the green haired swordsman before you and your friends share a knowing glare before smiling towards which other.

⋆.ೃ࿔*:･ SANJI

Realized he loves you differently than he would other women…

Let’s state the obvious: Sanji loves women. It’s a known fact about him. He has felt infatuation before to the point where he thought he was in love. That infatuation died down when he found another woman who crossed his path.

But with you it’s different. His infatuation turns into something that lasts. It doesn’t fade away when someone else is around him. He lowkey turns into Mr prince.

He goes that extra mile. He’s a gentleman all around and it’s really hot. He can have a conversation with you without any kind of questionable behavior or nosebleeds. No lustful stares of any sort, no signs of dirty thoughts, just quality time with his lover.

The crew had all departed ways to follow their regular duties and routines after dinner. However you stayed after dinner to help Sanji with the kitchen while of course he always insisted that there was no need for you to worry your pretty little head.

You always insisted on helping and how could he ever say no to you. So there you two are, wasting and drying dishes. One by one.

“ I wonder what different types of fish and seasonings are in the all blue?” “What color do you think the water is there?” You ask him while drying a plate. As he passes the next dish that needs to be dried.

“The all blue hm…you know just what to ask me, don’t you? A beautiful girl like you deserves a gorgeous answer.. don’t you think?” You nod while putting the last dish away.

“Let’s see..if I had to think of a color, one that matched the idea of all the world's fish swimming together.. I’d say sky blue. A brilliant sky blue it has to be!”

[suempu]

if you could, can you write sfw/nsfw hcs for senshi with afab reader pretty please with sprinkles and cherries on top

human reader

<3

senshi is a very reliable partner. maybe even the best. you can depend on him and he’s always happy to know that you trust him so much.

he’s very caring, will cook you food and remind you to do healthy things. senshi knows all your favorite dishes and remembers to stock up on its specific ingredients.

very good at listening whenever you’re feeling sad or stressed. he likes to make you sit on a mat and serve you warm, comfy food as he pats your head.

he’s very nice to snuggle with, he doesn’t mind being the small or big spoon, its usually up to you to decide. his head is always tucked under your chin whenever he’s the small spoon, like a giant teddy bear.

senshi’s skill is cooking so you know damn well he’s amazing with his hands. his thick fingers always stretch you out so nicely, its girth making you pleasurably tight.

he’s a service dom for sure, nothing is better than making his lover feel good.

unfortunately not much of a talker during sex, he’s a groaner and a grunter whenever he feels good, maybe even a whimper if you can catch him off guard.

his favorite position is cowgirl. loves seeing you bounce on him, your face flushed and sweaty.

aftercare is calm and fuzzy. you lay on his shoulder, nuzzling his surprisingly soft beard as he runs his hands up and down your hip and ass.

you two usually sleep it in and drink some water after.

being in a relationship with him is nothing but domestic (minus all the monster-dungeon-ey parts) senshi is mature with handling yours and his problems.

he can communicate his feelings and problems to you properly, unless its a particularly traumatic event for him.

it takes a while for him to come around but its only because he’s scared of reliving bad memories.

you two like sitting outside, cups of whatever hot beverage you prefer, while looking at the stars. you spend it talking about nothing and everything at the same time. its one of his favorite past times, spending quality time with you.

100/10 lover, he’s waiting for the right moment to propose to you

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Notes: Cocktails

"Cocktail," like many words, has evolved over time, broadening its meaning.

While it once indicated a narrow range of drinks—perhaps originally a single drink—it is now customarily used to cover nearly the full range of mixed drinks available in the bars of the world.

Purists may insist that a true cocktail include at least 3 ingredients, two of which are distilled liquor and bitters. Others may argue that any drink mixed on the spot from two or more ingredients, at least one of which is alcoholic, is a cocktail.

The first known references to drinks called cocktails come from the late 18th and early 19th centuries. At that time, alcoholic beverages were largely served in inns and public houses, and weary travelers and thirsty locals would order concoctions.

LONG DRINKS

Also known as tall drinks, are simply drinks in tall glasses with larger amounts of mixer than short drinks.

Some, like highballs, are simple and straightforward; others are complex concoctions.

What they have in common is a relaxed quality, in that they present a relatively low concentration of alcohol and, often, an easy-drinking accessibility.

SHORT DRINKS

A drink served in a tumbler or old-fashioned glass.

Since they contain a higher concentration of alcohol than long drinks, they tend to be built more for slow, deliberate sipping—but there are no hard and fast rules here.

UP DRINKS

The classic image of a cocktail: shaken or stirred with ice and served, almost always strained, in a cocktail glass.

The most elegant of the cocktails, and not only because of their presentation.

Subtle or intense, austere or rich, they tend to have distinct personalities.

SHOTS & SHOOTERS

The most recreational of cocktails.

Despite their popular image, most of them are actually rather low in alcohol; the danger of shots lies in the temptation to drink too many, too quickly. Given how delicious many of them are, that can be all too easy to do.

HOT & FROZEN DRINKS

Hot cocktails have a long history, having been used for centuries to warm chilled travelers and bar customers.

Frozen cocktails are a more recent development, but they offer a bracing kind of refreshment that is perfect for steamy summer evenings.

Some Cocktails

Classic Cocktails

Some drinks have become timeless, iconic libations of cocktail culture:

THE MARTINI Despite a myriad of variations since its first appearance in the nineteenth century, the classic Martini remains the quintessential elegant cocktail: a cool, somewhat austere drink, not showy, but certainly powerful.

THE MANHATTAN The richness and power of whiskey gives the Manhattan slightly rougher edges than the Martini. It gained prominence in the 1930s as one of the five Borough cocktails of New York.

THE OLD FASHIONED Long before Don Draper of Mad Men revived interest in this classic, adding bitters and sugar to whiskey was a mainstay of cocktail culture and one of the most basic drink preparations.

THE DAIQUIRI The classic rum cocktail, the Daiquiri was a favorite of Ernest Hemingway and John F. Kennedy, and has spawned a host of variations.

Seasonal Drinks

Though most cocktails inhabit the perpetual season known as cocktail hour, many capture—or help create—the distinct mood of each quarter of the year.

SPRING & SUMMER Light, refreshing cocktails dominate the spring. Consider such classics as slings, smashes, lemonade drinks, and colorful coolers. Go-to cocktail: a French 75 Summer is, of course, the season for clear and tropical cocktails. Fresh fruit fills the market stands, the sun pours down through long days, and a cold, sweet-and-tart drink is what you crave. While you could always go for a Gin and Tonic, for a bit more personality try one of the great Caribbean drinks—a classic Daiquiri will keep you cool.

FALL & WINTER As Keats put it, autumn is the “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,” and that vibe is what you’ll want in a cocktail. Deeper, richer drinks come to the fore. Any drink involving apple juice or apple brandy chimes with sentimental visions of autumn. Go-to cocktail: a Sidecar. When winter comes, linger over an Irish Coffee or Hot Toddy; or brace yourself against the cold with a potent whiskey drink—stay toasty warm with an Old Fashioned.

Champagne Cocktails

Occupy a distinct niche in cocktail culture.

At once colorful and elegant, festive and intimate, they lend themselves not only to romantic settings but also to expensive parties.

Source: The Ultimate Cocktail Encyclopedia by Walter Burns More Writing References: Wine-tasting ⚜ Drunkenness ⚜ Drinking

[sleepymarimo]

𝐝𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐞𝐬

summary: in which the swordsman is painfully unfamiliar with how it feels to be attracted to someone pairing: zoro x gn!reader cw: zoro is awkward and oblivious, mostly fluff an: i had pre-timeskip zoro in mind for this one when writing this hehe... oh and also i love this song sm!! this one was fun to write :) wc: a little over 1.1k, minus song lyrics!  ⤷ based on this song! ⤷ part of this arctic monkeys mini event!

this shithole of a club wasn't zoro's first choice.

too many flashing lights, people and an odd haze in the air that he figures is a mixture of artificial fog, body heat and cigarette smoke.

but alas, he nurses a jug of sake and finds himself tapping his foot to whatever heavy beat is reverberating through the ginormous speakers.

he leans against a grimy wall, his gaze falling upon some of his crew mates before he glares at some drunkard who accidentally bumps into him.

what a damn mess, he can't help but think, finding solace in how the sake burns his throat. "cheap shit." he mutters under his breath, not at all satisfied by the quality of his overpriced beverage.

another con of these shitty clubs? he has to actually put some effort into making sure that there were no threats around.

a song comes on and he rolls his eyes, taking a large swig of sake in the hopes that maybe he'd get so drunk that he didn't have to remember anything by the time the sun rose tomorrow morning.

get on your dancing shoes there's one thing on your mind...

his steel gaze scans the crowd, a disinterested expression marring his face.

it's nothing but sweat slicked bodies and vibrant colored cocktails, the rowdy scene making zoro wonder if he should just bail and take his chances with finding his way back to the ship.

hell, there weren't even any bar fights he could wedge his way into...

hoping they're looking for you sure you'll be rummaging through...

another sweep of the dancefloor with his sharp gaze. his posture is relaxed and confident, until he's looking into the eyes of someone else across the dancefloor.

oh and the shit, shock, the horror you've seen your future bride!

it's only for a split second, a quick glance shared between two strangers, but the effect is pretty immediate. his broad shoulders pull back and his whole frame goes rigid.

within that second, his senses, prepped and primed for battle, hone in on every minute detail about you. your hair, your figure, your cheeks and the unmistakable glimmer of curiosity that shines in your eyes.

what gets him the most is that little polite smile you give him, before looking away and continuing to dance.

he's dumbstruck and forced into a world of intrigue and trepidation.

yeah, but it's oh so absurd for you to say the first word, so you're waitin' and waitin'

did they just use haki on me? he asks himself, painfully unfamiliar with the notion of actually being attracted to someone.

an annoyed growl crawls up his throat, thinking that you were perhaps mocking him, but when he attempts to take a step forward, he finds that he's unable to do so.

his palms get a little sweaty, his grip tightening on his jug of sake.

this isn't right. this isn't him. he's impulsive and fearless, so why did his heart feel like it was just about ready to burst from between his ribs?

...the only reason that you came so what you scared for?

oh, don't you always do the same it's what you're there for, don't you know?

booze. he decides that he needs more booze, because surely the cheap shit he was drinking is to blame for his sudden unease. navigating through the crowd is easy enough, especially when they practically part for him as he passes by with a restless scowl.

the coolness of the bar counter makes him forget how hot and stuffy this dingy club is.

the lights are flashing down in here tonight!

mindless chatter surrounds him, nothing but meaningless gossip and boisterous laughs. the sound of crashing drums reverberates through the speakers and zoro can't help but feel downright annoyed.

he's handled warlords and sea kings, raging storms and things most people couldn't even dream of. so what the hell was his damn problem?

with a click of his tongue, he decides that he won't run. maybe after a cup or two or three of sake, he'd find you again. yeah... he could do that.

and some might exchange a glance, but keep pretending to dance...

he leans against the bar, shaking himself out of his stupor and waiting for the bartender to come over and get him some more damn booze.

his large frame takes up enough room for two people, but it's not like he really cares. so, he lazily scans the assortment of liquors on the top shelf, not really paying any mind to the other patrons.

don't act like it's not happening, as if it's impolite… to go and mention your name…

instead you'll just do the same as they all do and hope for the best!

he hears a voice beside him, practically yelling out an order in an attempt to be heard over the sound of the booming bass. "hey, bartender! two shots of the good sake on the top shelf, yeah?"

zoro's curiosity is piqued, an amused smirk quirking at the corner of his lips. whoever this person was, it sounded like they had damn good taste.

maybe he could share a drink with 'em?

as soon as he looks over and sees that familiar hair, that nose and that damn smile, he almost physically recoils.

the only reason that you came so what you scared for?

your elbows rest on the counter as you wait for your order, stuck inside your own head and not noticing how the green haired swordsman stares at you with an expression of half-irritation and half-wonder.

shit, there it is again.

well don't you always do the same it's what you're there for but no...

the sensation of his sweaty palms and frenzied heart make zoro feel uncharacteristically inferior, almost exposed. one of his hands instinctively falls to his wado ichimonji and he grips the hilt hard, finding some comfort in the action.

flashing lights and the scent of smoke make him feel even worse, his tongue heavy in his mouth. it makes him almost angry with himself, his frustration coming to a boiling point as he struggles to do anything.

get on your dancing shoes you sexy little swine!

out of the corner of his eye, he sees someone else approaching the bar. an ordinary patron, looking to get another drink.

it's no big deal... until zoro realizes that they're about to fill the gap between you and him.

screw that, he thinks. acting on pure impulse, he abruptly scoots himself closer to you and forces the club goer to take a different spot.

hoping they're looking for you… sure you'll be rummaging through...

his movements are a bit too rough, his shoulder colliding with yours hard enough to make you stumble to the side and slip on some spilled booze.

his large hand moves on its own, firmly wrapping around your waist as he catches you just before you could fall.

in a panic, you cling to his shirt. the white fabric bunches into your hands and you let out a relieved breath, then your eyes look up and meet his for the second time that night.

and I said the shit, shock, horror you've seen your future bride, yeah!

the hiss that comes out through his gritted teeth is drowned out by the music, his posture tensing as he silently revels in the warmth of your form against his.

well, damn.

both of you are silent for a second, hearts thumping to the tune of the bass as you observe one another under the neon lights. neither of you make a motion to move, as if the moment itself were made of glass.

the clink of two cups on the bar counter have both your heads snapping down.

oh yeah, those damn shots...

yeah, but it's oh so absurd for you to say the first word so you're waitin' and waitin'!

"m'zoro." he manages to croak out, opting to deal with this shitshow in the only way he knows how to. his head tilts toward the shots, cheeks aflame. "wanna drink?"

taglist: @dimplewonie

[ohmygraves]

there's this cafe near the base that soap likes to frequent. he's a regular, and he goes there everyday when he can. it's a nice, cozy cafe where he can sit back and relax, enjoying the quaint atmosphere away from sweaty soldiers running around the base. sometimes, he even brought price and ghost some coffee or tea, if they so prefer.

now, the base has a pretty great coffee machine, sure, but johnny likes to dabble on some other beverages. perhaps try some matcha latte or some hot chocolate, but if anyone asked him if he's there for the drinks, he would lie and nod at them, saying how the latte or the chocolate was the best thing he's ever tasted.

the drinks are amazing, don't get him wrong. the ingredients were high quality, and the prices were a little bit on the pricier side for a local coffee shop. but it was the cute barista that got him hooked in the first place.

you were the barista on the morning shift, and johnny would walk in at around 9am sharp if he could drop by. he'd always order whatever you recommend, being the lovestruck boy he is, and happily give them a try with your pastry of choice. and then, you'd always ask for his name, but he'd give you some funny names that would make you laugh instead. one time you asked him for his name, he'd say "pope turté the third" and you kept giggling while making his order. when you called the name of the order, it drew a laugh from everyone at the cafe, and johnny would proudly pick up his drink and pastry from you, giving you his signature smile before leaving.

it was just that, your whole friendship with him. he makes you laugh with his ridiculous names, and you'd make his drinks the way he asked you, perhaps give him a few cakes or pastries for free if you're feeling generous. both of you were too scared to go further, afraid of being too forward. but you knew that you adored him, and he adored you too.

so, the next time he comes over for a cuppa, you simply hand him a paper cup with a lid, already made fresh, together with a single croissant by the counter.

"thank ye, bonnie. hoo muckle?"

"seven quid with the pastry." you replied sweetly, a small smile on your face.

he happily paid for it with his card, handing it over to you. you processed it as he wanted, returning it with a receipt and his orders. as he bid you farewell, he took a sip of the cup, finding it to be a delicious hot chocolate, with some spices in it.

turning the cup, he sees his name, john, written on the paper cup with a marker, a heart as the "o". just below his name, a number with a "text me" was written, together with your own name.

somehow, his hot chocolate tasted sweeter than usual.

[kinley-cafe]

Kinley Café Current Menu

The menu may change based on the season or special holiday. Text version with full menu and item descriptions can be found below the cut

ORDER NOW

CONTACT DISPATCH

Drinks

🔥 "You Still Owe Me that Beer" Float  A deliciously tart and creamy root beer float made with quality craft beer and decadent French vanilla ice cream. This delightful treat comes with one turnout straw and one flight suit straw. 🔥 Fake Mouth Static Sparkling Tea  Extra fizzy kshhh butterfly tea ksshhh with honey, berries ksshhh and a helicopter ice cube 🔥 Cat 5 hurricane Cappuccino A rich and creamy cappuccino in a (possibly stolen) LAFD Helicopter themed mug.  🔥 “I took a guess” Mystery Coffee  Not like that. It’s definitely not what you want, but Buck tried his best and that’s all that matters. It's a random coffee with undisclosed, completely random ingredients, served in a green to-go coffee cup wrapped in a cardboard coffee cup sleeve, decorated all over with brown hearts and flames. 🔥“That Fire Was A Beast” thirst quencher  Hydrating strawberry dragon fruit, topped with whipped cream and soot colored chocolate drizzle. Served in a fire hydrant cup.

🔥 “You’re a vision” Birthday Cake Hot Chocolate A flirty and festive Belgian hot chocolate served in a red and blue cup, topped with a cloud of confetti whipped cream.

🔥 Buck’s Cozy Cup of Tea A nice, hot cup of black tea with lemon and honey. Each cup is wrapped securely with an (un)official LAFD crocheted cozy.

🔥 Harbor Station Pumpkin Spice Latte A mix of delicious traditional fall spices, topped with whipped cream and cinnamon. It’s served in a special Air Ops Winged Cup with a golden pumpkin stirrer.

🔥 Saturday Sparkling Cider A warm malted cider, with all the Saturday Night craft flavor, and none of the alcohol. Served at room temperature so it’s not too hot, and not too cold. It’s just what you’re ready for.

Desserts

🔥 118 Cream Donut Bavarian Cream Donuts with fire engine red strawberry frosting and ember sprinkles.

🔥 Flying Lessons Fudge Bon Bons Delicious fudge-filled bon bons molded with a headset and wrapped in a pilot jumpsuit colored wrapper.

🔥 Are We Still Talking About Cake? Layered Vanilla cake with Strawberries, buttercream icing and a candy LAFD logo. Go ahead and take it to your table. So you can eat it.

🔥 Open Channel Chocolate Muffin Chocolate muffins topped with cream cheese frosting and chocie talkies (chocolate walkie talkie shaped chips) 🔥“I’m An Ally” Cookie Bar Delicious copycat Italian cookie bars with bisexual flag layers. Made for any ally, or…more than an ally.

🔥 Date Night Cookie Pizza A delicious skillet cookie pizza topped with ice cream strawberries and. A perfect treat for your (hopefully) uninterrupted first date.

🔥 “Be With Your Man” Brown Sugar Mug Cake This warm and delicious brown sugar mug cake captures the ambiance of Buck and Tommy’s cozy dinner at home. The patterns on the cup are inspired by items from Buck’s dinner table.

🔥 Adorable Apple Pie Super sweet mini apple pies baked by Tommy as an ode to Buck and just how adorable he is. Each one is baked in a turnout tin and brushed with strawberry jam to resemble Buck’s birthmark.

🔥 Firefighter’s Flaming Candy Apple A sweet, sugar candy coated California grown Gala apple, decorated with a blazing flame.

Buck’s Happy Hour

🔥“I am free” This eye opener cocktail is a refreshing and invigorating beverage that features rich coffee with deep, malty notes of stout that lingers in your mouth, much like the sweet taste of a first kiss. It combines vodka, cold-brew coffee, coffee liqueur, stout beer, and a sweet brown-sugar syrup. Garnished with heart shaped mint.

🔥The 24 Hour Shift A highly caffeinated, creamy cocktail with sweet and smooth flavors, made to keep you going for hours. This cocktail is blended with nitro brew, bourbon, brown sugar, and half and half, topped with whipped cream and a cinnamon stick. 🔥Intermittent Showers This cocktail is excitement in a glass. A rush of sweet, smooth and fizz, made with cold-brew coffee, club soda, berry infused rum, simple syrup, topped with silver storm cloud whipped topping and a mini chocolate helicopter.

🔥The “Tommy, Actually” Made with craft beer and espresso to combine strong, bold coffee with the rich flavors of beer, featuring the unexpected sweetness of the heavy cream, coffee liqueur, and whipped topping. Topped with whipped cream and Edible gold Air Ops Pilot Wings.

Anytime Menu

🔥 The Q Word Have you been jinxed? Order one of these special to-go combos to help you get through the chaos ahead.

🔥 “Badass Coffee Mug” Ready to go up? Order this combo whenever you’re in the mood  for a Harbor Station tour from a hot pilot to put a smile on your face.

🔥 “I Need Mo Joe” Looking for a little comfort? Maybe a certain adorable  firefighter can whip up a firehouse family combo for you

Call Dispatch (send an ask) anytime you’re looking for a little pick-me-up and put in an order for one of these combos. 

[prettieinpink]

Urgent ask, how be a baddie as a extremely under confident person

BECOMING YOUR BEST SELF WITH LOW CONFIDENCE

i have no idea what ur definition of a 'baddie' is, so this post may have not been what you've been looking for, but I tried my best

A lot of us struggle with confidence, and it can be the main factor that holds us back from growing to be our best selves. So, I’ve created a guide on improving ourselves even with low confidence.

UNDERSTAND THAT IT IS NOT UNREPLENISHABLE. Confidence is like a cup of water, tea, coffee, hot cocoa, or whatever your favourite beverage is, it can always be refilled. While you don’t have to ‘fake till you make it’, remember that you do not live with a restricted amount of confidence.

ACCEPT IT. Whatever way you have to, crying, journalling, venting, you have to accept that you are a person who struggles with low confidence. However, instead of identifying yourself as that, identify yourself as learning to self-love.

E.g. ‘I’m so insecure’ → ‘I am still learning to love myself.’ ‘Why can’t I be like them?’ -> ‘I will learn that I do not have to be someone else.’

CONSIDER NEUTRALITY. You don’t have to live on this odd scale of loving yourself or hating yourself all the time, and letting it define you. Instead of what it looks like, what it can look like, what it can do, see it as a special vessel that homes your soul.

For example, my body can digest the food that nourishes my soul, my hands can write text messages to my loved ones which reassure my soul that they know they are loved etc. Seeing it in this perspective grows a deeper meaning and appreciation for your body.

I like to see my body, traits, and life as a gift from God. Me insulting these things, is an insult to him.

INDULGE IN YOUR STRENGTHS. When we have low confidence, it becomes almost second nature to focus on our weaknesses. Instead, try to actively focus on your strengths. If you don’t know what your strengths are at the moment, just focus on things that make you happy.

It would be beneficial to add one thing that you know you’re good at on your list of what to do. Something that you’re assured you’ll like doing and the outcome.

TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF. Eat a well-balanced diet, make an effort to achieve good quality sleep, exercise when you can, reach out to your loved ones daily and incorporate things that make you happy.

Just these simple things can improve your quality of life by far, however, our intentions to do these things may be impacted by our low confidence, and therefore we are unmotivated to do these things.

If that is the case, take little steps in doing each thing and remind yourself that intentional self-neglect is a form of self-harm and destruction.

[the-xolotl]

Thundering Rain

Qí Yù | Rafayel x Reader

𝒮𝓊𝓂𝓂𝒶𝓇𝓎: You and Rafayel cozy up during a cold storm to enjoy each other’s company when you realize he got up for something but didn’t come back to cuddle you.

—• TAGS: Domestic fluff, kinda ooc Rafayel (? if you squint), no use of Y/N, use of the pet name my love, beta read (imagine that)

A thunderstorm had been raging outside for hours now and you are thankful, for once, about the harsh seasonal changes because not just did you enjoy the rain and the majestic flashing of light that occasionally lit up the otherwise dark gray sky, you didn’t have to go to work. You could enjoy a leisure day indoors, listening to the calming sound of the rain hitting the window and the deep thunder clapping after each rapid flash of light with a warm blanket and hot beverages.

It’s true you loved your job, loved the adrenaline of being a hunter, the thrill of battle, but it was nice to sit back and relax for a bit. And some reprieve was definitely due after these past few weeks, Linkon City had been seeing more and more Wanderers roaming inside the more civilian populated areas, your team along with some back ups had been dispatched as first responders almost every time; it’s been busy to say the least.

And Rafayel had definitely not appreciated your constant absence. You don’t blame him, you missed him too. Because your job wasn’t just turning monsters to dust and protecting innocent people; each attack meant a lot of paperwork, desk work, meetings. It meant time away from home and away from your already clingy, needy lover.

Who, speaking of, had suspiciously gotten up from cuddling you in the sofa and hadn’t come back.

The now cool spot behind you made you realize his absence. But as you were about to get up to look for the purple-head you heard his voice, “Stay where you are, how you are, for another 30 minutes…” Rafa trailed off.

He didn’t even ask politely yet you remained on your spot no questions asked and turned your head back to look outside the large, tall window that gave the perfect view to the backyard. “So that’s where you’ve been the whole time,” you chuckled softly, of course he was.

“Inspiration should never be wasted or ignored. The best master pieces ever created were in spontaneous bursts of creativity,” He stated as if it was the most honest to god truth. Yeah, alright.

Amused you simply retorted, “Is that a fact?”

“Most likely,” he shot back before taking a small pause, “Besides, you barely noticed after almost an entire hour I didn’t come back beside you.”

The last part sounded more begrudging, you didn’t have to look at him to know he’s pouting. You couldn’t help but giggle, “Yeah, my back was getting cold. That’s how I noticed you were still gone.” Rafa let out the most offended scoff, he didn’t even dignify with an answer.

The room falls silent again save for the rhythmic pattering of rain, it’s then you realize he’s actually concentrating and you can’t help the little leap your heart makes. “Are you painting me?”

“As I was coming back from the kitchen the scene and atmosphere looked perfect so I just had to capture it,” he explains, “I haven’t had the opportunity to play around with darker tones or paints in a while and I recently acquired some very high quality materials to produce stunning shades. Very rare finds, honestly.” The Lemurian continued on to explain how and where he’d manage to obtain them, of course pointedly mentioning that he needed something to do in your absence because it was just so so boring.

More than half an hour had past, that’s for sure, as you filled the time with more banter and teasing remarks.

“Rafa can I move now? I’m going to have neck pain and be stuck in this position forever if I don’t get up soon,” you whine loudly, “The painting won’t be needed to immortalize this moment then.” He only tsk’s at you, calling you over to see the painting.

“Holy shit you weren’t kidding, the pigments are so rich!” You know little to nothing about art, any scattered knowledge or artsy lingo has definitely come from listening to your boyfriend talk about art. You study the painting detail by detail, from top to bottom. He really does deserve the fame, not that you’re biased.

Rafayel smiles big like a satisfied cat (ironically) at your praise and expression of awe.

Though the more you steady the painting the more you realize the gloomy tempest going out outside was definitely not the focus of this piece like you had originally thought, despite the fact that the oversized window gave the perfect opportunity to capture it so.

Instead you realize most of the spotlight was you. Rafayel had clearly taken his time; each curve of your features was perfectly drawn and shaded, the way the light made light and dark contrasts against the little skin that was not covered by the quilt, the shine in your eyes that reflected the lighting that occasionally flashed and the hair that framed your face. The content of your expression clearly denoting how engrossed you’ve been on the weather outside, he even included the faintest curl of the corner of your lip. And you looked cozy as hell with the blanket all the way tucked up to your chest and your hands wrapped around the (then) steaming mug of coffee.

A heat crept up your cheeks and chest. Is this how he saw you? Is this what his eyes see when he looks at you? Truly? You must’ve had your thoughts written in your face because he breaks the long silence with in a soft voice, “You are the inspiration of the painting, my love,” circling back to one of his earlier comments. You turn to face him fully, meeting eyes as he was already looking at you, as soft smile that matched the softness of his voice spread across his lips.

“It’s going to be part of the next exhibit, on a very special spot.”

“I’m sorry what?” You lamely ask, astonished but still in a monotone.

Rafayel had the audacity to laugh in your face as he gave the cavas a few strokes with the brush to accentuate some shadows. “It’s not finished yet, of course. I will accept no less than perfection,” he says slowly, words as methodical as his painting technique, “Specially when it comes to you.”

If you weren’t blushing before you sure are now. You shove him gently when he takes the brush off the painting, attempting and failing to hide how much he managed to fluster you.

Another long pause passed, but this felt more intimate, watching him closely add some details, switch between different size brushes for finer details. Rafayel sure went into his own bubble when he worked, yet he is always somehow very aware of his surroundings. At least at the moment he was.

“Not a lot of people get the privilege to watch me like this, so up close, let alone live. Are you feeling how privileged you are?” The tone of playful arrogance brings you back and pops the bubble of comfortable silence. But it does make you giggle.

These little moments make you fall deeper in love with him.

⟢ A/N: feels kinda funny posting my writing for the first time in the internet tbh. i usually only write for my friends/myself so i hope you enjoy my lil rot. it’s been raining so much in my area it gives me a very cozy vibe.

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© 2024 the-xolotl — all rights reserved. do NOT alter, translate, or repost my works on any platform without my consent, do not claim my content as yours.

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⤷ dividers : cafekitsune ✰

[eosbishova]

Kate, holding an explosive tip for an arrow: So, what does this do?

Clint: Way too dangerous

Kate, holding up another one: This one?

Clint: Way way too dangerous

Yelena, turns to Natasha: And you are partners with this man?

Natasha, shrugs: He actually can tell the arrows from all the mediocre labels

Yelena, under her breath: Perfect, just another Kate. Except, she titles everything with two or three sentences max. It is mouthful. You can name jar "cookie jar" but Kate names jar "Super Delicious Beverage For When Yelena Leaves For Solo Missions And I Have The House To Myself. Must Eat With Capri Sun" It is embarrassing.

Kate: I can hear you, Yelena. You act like you didn't name your other closet as: "My Hot Stash Of Clothes That Has Pockets For All Purpose But It Is Quality Material. Not Use For Missions With Mud"

Yelena:

Yelena: You named that one.

[vidavalor]

Hello! 👋 Just dropping in for a visit to my favourite online pub: your blog *chews on all your posts and slurps down your analyses*

I love the way you spell out the Ineffable Husband SpeakTM for us, and I was wondering what you think about Crowley’s “You don’t dance.” in 2.06, when Aziraphale asked to dance with him?

Crowley is mumbling a bit here & I wasn’t sure at first if he said “you” or “we” or something else, so I checked the subtitles as well. That aside, we know by this point that Aziraphale has done at least 3 I-Was-Wrong dances, so I wonder if Crowley is referring to something else?

Hi, @procrastiel! How's it going, love? Wouldn't say I spell anything out-- I just give my opinion-- but I appreciate the compliment! 💕Crowley's line is definitely "you don't dance" and ohh, yeah, I can deep dive on my opinion on what it means to dance. Deepest of dives-- this went everywhere. 😂 Mother of all metas for the mother of all Good Omens questions... We're having sandwiches-the-food tonight in honor of where your question crosses into God's tongue-in-cheek monologue on how many angels can get down on the heads of those Mrs. Sandwich seamstressing tools-- pins.

This is going to take a route through some heavy analysis of the argument over Gabriel and The Apology Dance and a few other things to get the root of your question, so, grab a beverage of choice before diving in. TW: Brief mentions of Satan's attacks on Crowley.

*rubs hands together and cues up the disco music* 😂

What does it mean to dance?

When we talk about dancing, there are roughly four different meanings of the word to look at with relation to Good Omens' story.

One meaning is the first one that comes to mind for most people, which is a physical dance-- as in, moving your body, usually to music.

The music, if it exists, can be in your head, a song you're singing aloud, or one that is playing in the room-- it doesn't matter. If you're moving, any and all of it would qualify as dancing. By this measure? Crowley canonically had seen Aziraphale dance before Aziraphale asked him to dance during The Meeting Ball because, well...

...here is Aziraphale dancing in front of Crowley in the bookshop in 1941:

Crowley's shock in 2.06 cannot be coming from never having seen Aziraphale dance at all, right? They've known each other for thousands of years and if Aziraphale was doing this fucking adorable little shuffle of excitement in the bookshop in 1941 then it's not really a stretch to assume that these two-- who canonically listen to records together in the evenings sometimes-- have danced together before.

In 1941, we see that Aziraphale liking to dance is not something he's actually hiding from Crowley because he's doing this cute little dance in front of him without a second thought. This is also interesting because one theory was that Crowley has no idea about Aziraphale liking to dance at all because he didn't appear to know about Aziraphale learning the gavotte. S2 turns that on its head a bit by saying that Crowley might not yet know about the gavotte-- we don't really know yet either way-- but he definitely does know that Aziraphale likes to dance and he was unsurprised to see him doing so in 1941.

The key thing here is that when they have danced together or in front of one another before? It was likely only in the privacy of the bookshop or another place like it. It was just the two of them.

When Crowley says "you don't dance" to Aziraphale, he's not meaning that Aziraphale doesn't dance at all. He's meaning something more expansive, as we'll look at with the other meanings of dancing below.

The second meaning is a verbal dance. These are interactions between more than one person in which the back-and-forth of what is being spoken has the give-and-take quality of a dance.

There can be different types of verbal dancing. Crowley and Aziraphale's word-nerdy flirting is a kind of verbal dance. It's a birdsong mating dance, especially since they are so hot for words. Being able to verbally entice and keep up with a partner makes flirting-- especially their kind of it-- a kind of dance and it's one they've been doing for thousands of years and both enjoy.

Another type of verbal dance between long-time partners is one that could be dubbed, as Crowley and Aziraphale call it, an "I Was Wrong" dance. This is an apology between partners who had an argument but want to get beyond it. No matter what you think the nature of Crowley & Aziraphale's relationship is, they've known each other for thousands of years and are de facto partnership married at this point so they have An Apology Routine TM. People who have been together a long time and who have the occasional spat often tend to fall into a rhythm with their apologies, knowing what needs to be said to just get to the other side of it, which they'd like to do as soon as possible because they miss each other and don't like being in conflict with one another.

When Aziraphale says he wants "a proper apology... with the little dance" as Crowley tries to get away with not doing the verbal dance that he knows he's going to end up doing lol, what Aziraphale means is that he wants the back-and-forth verbal dance they do as an apology. He doesn't want to just ignore what happened because he was really pissed and he's telling Crowley that he'd appreciate an actual apology and a bit of groveling before he's willing to let it go and move on.

The "little dance" in question isn't a physical dance-- it's basically the same apology dance we saw Crowley do back in S1 here:

When Crowley claimed he doesn't "do the dance" in S2, they both knew that wasn't true and so did we, really, because *points to the above gif* there's Crowley doing the dance in the middle of the street in S1. Claiming he doesn't "do the dance" is sometimes part of the dance if Crowley is the one apologizing as, unless Hell is actively, in that moment, trying to kill him-- like they were in S1-- he gets squirmy about apologies, even if he always eventually says them.

The reason why Crowley does the physical dance that he does during The Apology Dance is actually off of Aziraphale being just as dryly self-deprecating about the two of them and their relationship as Crowley winds up showing he is with The Apology Dance. It's rooted in Aziraphale's use of the word proper.

That word falls into the category in their speak of words like wily, thwart, smitten, demon, fiend, etc.. that have wildly contrasting meanings where they can be said on one level to mean one thing that is acceptable to an audience of angels, demons, or humans, but that also, on another level and within Crowley and Aziraphale's speak, has a funnier, more sexualized meaning.

Proper has an understood meaning of being something that is correct, acceptable, and appropriate. It means decent and respectable. It has a connotation that suggests that something deemed proper falls within the generally-accepted social rules of a society.

Within that word, though? Is the word prop.

I probably do not need to further define that but one sense of the word prop is that it is a theatrical term to describe an object being used in a play. From this, it also come to mean an object being used in sexual play. The humor for Crowley and Aziraphale comes from the fact that proper is a word related to what is considered acceptable in society while bedroom activities involving props have historically been considered "deviant" by those same societies.

The word exists in the sexual meaning in several other scenes in Good Omens. Such as:

Aziraphale in 1941 flirting with Crowley in the magic shop by using the silver rings magic trick as an innuendo-laden stand-in for handcuffs and going on about having a "gift for prop"... and in 2019, when Crowley joked that Aziraphale did not need to do his literal magic act because: "You can do proper magic. You can make things disappear."

Words containing the word thin relate to Crowley and disappear/appear are words with a root meaning of to come into view-- heavy emphasis on the to come part. Crowley sounds like he's talking about Aziraphale's supernatural magic abilities (and he likely also is lol) but he's wording it in such a way as to be really referring to Aziraphale's other skills as a true magician in bed.

Aziraphale, hilariously, teasing Crowley back by joking that making him come is not as fun as pulling a coin out of his ear 😂:

This is also the joke around Aziraphale doing things like popping into view from around corners or doorways or, in my favorite, from the other side of The Bentley in S2, as well as things like Crowley apparating into a space to see Aziraphale. They're magical so they can apparate-- literally appear and disappear from view-- and would do so to meet up with one another at times, as we've seen. It's a visual joke on appear/disappear and the verb to come.

There is also the hilarious "only I can properly thwart the wiles of the demon Crowley" from the deleted 1800 bookshop opening scene-- a sentence made up basically entirely of words with double meaning that make them sound like Aziraphale is saying to Gabriel and Sandalphon that he's the only one who can correctly stop Crowley's evil demonicness when he's also, with the same words, trying to alert Crowley, who has just arrived in the doorway, to the fact that the angels are here to recall him by saying a sentence that is like: but you can't take me back to Heaven! I'm the only one who has the first clue how to shag Crowley right.

So, in S2, Aziraphale is being a bit arch when he says he wants "a proper apology." They both know that he means it in terms of saying he wants a genuine, decent apology and nothing more than that. His dryness in choice and delivery of the word proper is Aziraphale being tongue-in-cheek with Crowley and aligning their history of well-balanced, healthy, sexual power dynamics with the fact that their argument was, at the core, a lot about aspects of trust and control that they *both* struggle with outside of their proper bedroom, where things are very different.

The argument was really a perfect storm of triggering both of their traumas and they both, technically, were right and wrong about things. Aziraphale's apology dance is, essentially, the whole 'our car/our bookshop' that becomes the rest of the season. The reason why it's Crowley doing The Apology Dance, though, is actually less about the subject matter of their argument and more about which one of them fucked up when it came to the stuff the argument shows us that they're working on together.

The argument over Gabriel actually shows us the extent to which they're a couple, in that they've clearly talked about working on things they do which trigger each other's trauma and are trying to be better at it. They're proactively working at trying to get better at arguing, which is the most married thing in creation. This is also indicative of both of them trying to manage different traumas and PTSD that they have and doing the best they can do while still not yet able to fully escape the root causes of those difficulties. That is something which any therapist will tell you is nearly impossible to do but they are both trying anyway and doing a pretty good job of it actually, all things considered. Where can we see this in the argument over Gabriel?

It is in that they each both do something when upset that is a trigger for the other's trauma and has, in the past, caused their discussions to implode, and how they both handle that with one another during this argument. When Aziraphale gets upset and anxious, his anger can take the form of saying words he doesn't mean-- words that are often completely and utterly absurd from an objective standpoint. Think of the bandstand argument, for instance, and Aziraphale's ludicrous attempt to say that he and Crowley aren't friends and-- the best one lol-- that he doesn't even like Crowley.

The audience and Crowley alike know this is bullshit and so does Aziraphale but it's the product of Heaven being a place of emotional repression and Aziraphale's perfectionism, which makes him feel like he's not supposed to ever actually feel the depression and anxiety and anger that he does. When upset, this bubbles up in him and explodes and the results are words he doesn't mean that make him feel terrible, further contribute to his pattern of negative self-thoughts, and hurt Crowley.

In S2, we might also notice, Aziraphale phrases his go-to of telling Crowley it's over as a defense mechanism as saying that Crowley is "at liberty to go", which has an implication that a certain amount of staying was occurring. While Crowley isn't living in the shop to the extent that he's there in the mornings because they're still trying not to get caught, this plus things like "we both get plenty of use out of it [the bookshop], don't we?" indicate that Aziraphale never really notices that Crowley no longer has his flat because Crowley just kind of lives in the bookshop now. He's there every day, to a point that Aziraphale defaulting to his usual anger response of breaking up with Crowley when upset is now phrased in such a way as to try to kick him out of the house. Crowley, though, knows better-- just like how Aziraphale knows better where Crowley's own issues are concerned.

Even though Crowley knows Aziraphale doesn't mean what he says when he's upset and is patient about it (the not even batting an eyelash "you doooo" in response to "I don't even like you" in the bandstand argument), it still hurts. So, that's what Aziraphale is trying to work on and we see that Crowley is working on it with him, an example of that being when Aziraphale is starting to lose it during the Gabriel argument and Crowley's response to it:

Crowley is basically saying honey, you're doing the thing-- and it works. This is what they've agreed upon as a way that Crowley can help Aziraphale when he's upset. He points out that Aziraphale is doing the thing he does, which seems to be something they've agreed on as a strategy for communicating better. He gives Aziraphale room to take a breath and say what he really means. Expressing how he really feels when the emotions are not positive ones is hard for Aziraphale because it involves admitting that he has these emotions in the first place.

So, Aziraphale does his part in their agreement and he rephrases what he was saying into what he actually means: that he would love for Crowley to help him with Gabriel but that if he won't, he won't. He is open about how he feels, which is Aziraphale doing what they agreed to do, and is a world of difference from how they were fighting before. He also expresses it in an especially positive way, as he uses words like 'love' and 'help' to say how he feels and what he needs.

This is why it's Crowley who winds up doing The Apology Dance.

What Crowley does in an argument that triggers Aziraphale is to leave. While, technically, sometimes leaving for a breath is not a terrible strategy in an argument, Crowley's tendency to leave is a flight-or-fight PTSD response that stems from a lack of trust in anyone but himself (and, honestly, often not even himself) to keep him safe. It's honestly not how he really feels about Aziraphale, whom he actually does trust with himself, but he sometimes lets fear and anxiety overwhelm him when triggered by situations in a way that relates to his past traumatic experiences.

Just as Aziraphale's struggle with his more volatile emotions is understandable considering what he's been through, so is Crowley's tendency to panic and bolt. The problem is that, just as Aziraphale's angry words can hurt Crowley, even if he understands where they come from and knows Aziraphale doesn't mean them, Crowley's tendency to leave hurts Aziraphale because it feels to him that Crowley doesn't trust him to make decisions that would keep Crowley safe.

They both are aware that their knee-jerk reactions of running away or sniping in anger are trauma responses and not terribly logical but they're both working on trying to heal enough to not have those responses with one another. In S2, they're stuck trying to manage all of that while still living in an environment that is dangerous for them and in which Armageddon could be around the corner again at any moment-- making it obviously harder to deal with things and also making the fact that they are both doing reasonably well with it all the more impressive and an indicator of how good they are for one another.

(It also makes the end of S2-- a series of miscommunications, some of which are not even their fault, that led to epic fucking disaster-- even more devastating because it doesn't actually reflect the healthy relationship that the beginning of the season emphasizes exists.)

Compounding these issues and part of why they're trying to work on them is that both of them trigger each other's PTSD when they react like this.

Aziraphale's words in anger and his tendency to push Crowley away leave Crowley feeling less secure around the one person who otherwise is the safest person he's ever met while Crowley's tendency to bolt in a panic, instead of staying and working through things, triggers Aziraphale's fear of abandonment (both in general and with Crowley) and, even more so, his terror over losing Crowley.

He's never sure when Crowley goes out the door if he's ever coming back because it's not really safe for him out there and S2 illustrates that Aziraphale has real trauma dating back to the time Crowley was taken in front of him in 1827, shown in him going to the spot in Edinburgh in the present where he lost Crowley and needing to call him from it to hear his voice. And, well, also to get a bonus praise kinky little boost from his partner for a job well done on working on his trauma stuff:

So, long story short, the argument they have over what to do about Gabriel's arrival really illustrates the extent to which they're both trying to manage a great deal of trauma together and, to help one another to do so, they have put some strategies into place for trying to do that more effectively. Aziraphale kept to his end of the bargain in this argument. He used more productive and open words to express how he was feeling. Crowley, though, did not hold up his end of the bargain here. He did when it came to helping Aziraphale with Aziraphale's part of it but he didn't when it came to managing his own trauma.

To be fair to Crowley? This situation was basically the exact perfect storm of a trigger for his PTSD and neither he nor Aziraphale are really going to be able to get much of anywhere significant with healing until all of this Heaven & Hell stuff is over in S3. So, that he fucked this up here is both sympathetic and not terribly surprising. It's also the root of him then spending the season reassuring Aziraphale that he's coming back and part of why he goes out the door in the end of 2.06 but he stays by the car. But, when it comes to just this argument over Gabriel in 2.01, it was Crowley who didn't try and that made Aziraphale upset.

This is where, though, that The Apology Dance shows that they're actually pretty healthy about arguing overall. Just the mention of this having existing for ages is establishing that trying to be better at disagreeing and having this little routine for getting back to a good place and starting to talk more after they've argued is not just something that has existed post-S1 but has been going on for, at minimum, hundreds of years, if not a whole lot longer. In essence, The Apology Dance exists as a bridge back to a place where they are less reactive and can talk through what's upsetting them-- which a lot of evidence suggests they are actually very good at doing with one another.

So, when Aziraphale tells Crowley that he wants "a proper apology", he's already injecting some humor into the moment, even if he is serious about not letting Crowley just skip over genuinely saying he is sorry. He is upset but he also loves Crowley and he's aware that the situation was pretty much the ultimate trigger for Crowley. It's just difficult for Aziraphale to watch because he wants Crowley to feel safe enough to heal more from a lot of this and feels like that he can't fully provide that, even if he is doing everything in his power to help Crowley with it. In a way, it's a foreshadowing how Aziraphale is going to fall in the end of S2 over the temptation of power that he thinks might help Crowley be safe.

The reason why Aziraphale chooses to use the word proper in saying he wants an apology-- and in that particularly dry tone-- is because he is very, very pissed that Crowley walked out the door rather than trusted him to have not put him into danger with Gabriel and to help him manage the situation. He's pointing out that Crowley trusts him implicitly in so many other ways, with the use of the wordplay there being a reference to the fact that he and Crowley have a healthy balance of power and an enormous amount of trust in their relationship overall, for which Aziraphale is using their positive sexual power dynamics as an example.

As different scenes have illustrated, when they mess around with those dynamics, they switch off allowing one another a sense of control over the other, even if the overall dynamics of such situations are never as cut-and-dry as that. The point is that Aziraphale's use of proper here is a direct reference to the fact that Crowley went out the door in a panic-stricken fit earlier but they both know that Crowley does trust Aziraphale to a great degree, and a great example of that to Aziraphale is the fact that Crowley-- as eleven hundred scenes in the show suggest lol-- is very into letting Aziraphale restrain him in bed. The reason why we even know this is because of how the show uses aspects of their sexuality to illustrate the level of trust and intimacy in their relationship.

Just as the wall slam scene in S1 exists to make it abundantly clear how much Aziraphale trusts Crowley and how he has nothing to fear from him by contrasting that with Aziraphale's response to being jumped by the angels in the street, the scenes that are referring to them using restraints, while illustrating that they both do, are centered around Crowley's thing for it, in particular, to help illustrate that he has the same kind of trust in and feeling of safety with Aziraphale that Aziraphale does with him.

The reason why Crowley liking to be tied up or handcuffed is given weight enough that it's a recurring thing mentioned in the story is because of how it's a different level of trust for him than it might be for someone else. While the wall slam scene contrasts Aziraphale's safety with Crowley versus the abuse of the angels, the handcuff thing is showing that Crowley, who is a survivor of attacks that render him unable to move or otherwise assert any control over himself and who has demonstrable PTSD from it, trusts Aziraphale enough and feels safe with him enough to explore with him the complexities of being a survivor of attacks involving a loss of control who also finds sometimes being restrained and giving up some control in bed arousing.

So, Aziraphale's "proper apology" is dryly mocking both of their control and trust issues by use of an example of a place in their relationship where they handle those issues without conflict, and that's in the great communication and ease of care for one another in bed. With use of proper, Aziraphale is subtly pointing out that Crowley is an assault survivor who trusts Aziraphale to him tie him up but he runs out of other situations in a panic, which is an example of the lack of logic that can occur in the face of trauma sometimes. It helps to prove how ridiculous they both are really being in general.

Which Crowley agrees with. Because he knows he was. Trauma isn't logical, it's knee-jerk emotional, and he felt bad about storming out and even worse when he found out from Beez what the repercussions of not helping might be so he's come back, heard the 'proper' comment, and is like fine, yes, you're right. We're ridiculous. I was ridiculous.

This is healthy as all fuck:

It matches the humor Aziraphale put in around his genuine anger with additional humor. It's self-deprecating and ego-free, just an admittance of having messed up and showing he's sorry by being a little ridiculous because how he reacted earlier, he knows, was also a little ridiculous. There's the hearing of proper and responding to that with a mock-submissive, self-deprecating, little dance and a bow and scrape. There's a dry, affectionate mocking of the two of them and their long history of apology conversations that all boil down to the lyrics of the little song Crowley makes up here: "You were right, you were right, I was wrong, and you were right."

The tongue-in-cheek vibe of Yes, you're correct. Are you satisfied now, my king? that pokes gentle fun at both of them and that actually winds up illustrating just how much trust and love there is between them as a result.

Aziraphale finding it hilarious to a point that he's working hard not to laugh long enough to respond with equal humor with the little soft dom-ish "very nice" and then miming a kiss at Crowley showing that they are actually good at this. They allow each other to be imperfect, know how to talk openly about how that makes them feel, and can recover from an argument with humor and affection.

This is also a good example of Crowley being supportive of Aziraphale expressing emotions and of Aziraphale trusting Crowley as someone safe to do that around. Aziraphale told Crowley exactly how he felt and what he needed here in a clear way that expressed his anger and frustration without descension into anything harmful and Crowley listened, acknowledged those emotions, and responded in a way that was supportive and positive.

The argument over Gabriel and The Apology Dance is what their relationship is really like when they can speak openly and directly to one another because they have the safety and privacy to do so. They actually do know how to talk to one another and they do it very well. Their present situation as of the end of S2 is more of a nightmare of unfortunate events and misunderstandings and it actually took a lot to get it to go that wrong because, normally, as we can see? It's relatively easy for them to get it right.

So, Crowley's Apology Dance was both verbal and a literal dance, yes, but Aziraphale's bemused response to it indicates he wasn't expecting the literal dance and the fact that Crowley made up and did the literal dance off of Aziraphale's use of proper, as we looked at, indicates that it was something he did for the first time in that moment, rather than how The Apology Dance usually goes.

The usual nature of Crowley and Aziraphale's "I Was Wrong" Dance is strictly verbal.

We can tell this by one of the years in which Aziraphale mentions that he did an "I Was Wrong" dance in the past: 1793.

When Aziraphale shows that he's really hurt by Crowley leaving and needs him to apologize, he lists three, prior times when it was Aziraphale who had fucked something up between them and was the one doing The Apology Dance as a result. The three years he uses as shorthand are 1650, 1793 and 1941. While we don't know anything about 1650 right now... and while we know about 1941 but not how it ends so maybe not yet quite enough to say we know why Aziraphale was doing an apology dance (though I would argue that maybe 1941 itself is a bit of a joint apology dance)... the one year here we do know enough about to use to inform our opinion about what their apology dances usually are is 1793.

What Aziraphale is apologizing for in 1793 is the rescue scenario winding up a bit of a disaster because of Aziraphale neglecting to take into account that if Jean-Claude The Executioner was having that much fun cutting people's heads off, he probably was disturbing in other ways as well. While Crowley covers up his reaction to apparating into the room just as Aziraphale is saying "no" and Jean-Claude is trying to get his clothes off, by the end of the scene, we see that Crowley is more bothered than he was letting on.

Jean-Claude becomes the only human in the entire series to date that we ever see Crowley intentionally push straight towards Hell and, in doing so, he renders Jean-Claude unable to form more than muted sounds of protest-- not at all projecting his own experiences of assault onto him or anything. Crowley makes the very dark joke that's in the above gif, savagely mocking a so-common-it's-cliche victim-blaming response to rape, making it clear in doing so what's been brought up for him as a result of what he saw when he first came into the room. Crowley is half out of it for the last moments of the scene and, at one point, sniffs like he's trying not to cry. Aziraphale had meant for it to be a fun, dashing-hero-to-the-rescue type of thing but the torture-happy prison cell atop the trauma trigger is what would make Aziraphale feel the need to apologize afterwards, even though Crowley knew he didn't intend any harm.

So, ask yourself this: did Aziraphale apologize for that by doing a silly dance?

I really don't think he did...

It wouldn't have been appropriate. The last thing Aziraphale would have done then is make light of how they both were feeling about something relating to this kind of trauma. It's not to say there wasn't any humor involved-- particularly, their form of really dark gallows humor-- but not in the midst of the genuine, actual apology. Aziraphale's "I Was Wrong" dance in 1793 was a back-and-forth of him verbally apologizing and Crowley insisting that it was fine and then Aziraphale, more or less, you were right and I was wrong-ing with other words until they both were okay to talk more and move forward.

Both of them were alright as a result and clearly had a memorable time in Paris afterwards, as Aziraphale is referencing it as a good example of the two of them working through things together in a positive way when he tells Crowley that Paris, 1793 is what he "wants for lunch" in 2008.

It's really why Aziraphale says he wants 1793 in the first place, when they have a zillion other times he could have referenced. The scene in 2008 is taking place after Crowley went missing the night before on assignment for Hell. Aziraphale doesn't need to be told by this point that Crowley was hurt but they've been in public the entire time since they've met up so there has not yet been a moment to try to really acknowledge it. By bringing up Paris 1793 in response to Crowley saying he wants to lunch, Aziraphale is using it as a shorthand to convey both that he's aware and that they'll handle it, like they always do, and it will all be alright. Paris 1793 seems like it is a particularly memorable example of them managing that to them, so it's the one that Aziraphale brings up.

This also accounts for the discrepancy in Aziraphale's expressions in 2008 when he talks about this particular time. When he first mentions Paris 1793, his response is layered. There's regret mixed in there. Pain. Complicated emotions. His smile to Crowley is kind of flat, like he's trying to remain more upbeat than he actually feels.

It's very different from the cheer of we had crepes! that emerges after Crowley's response to the suggestion is positive. It speaks to Paris 1793 being more complex than only the fun, memorable romp in France that it also was.

So, this would mean that The Apology Dance is usually a verbal thing, even though Crowley did a literal dance along with it in S2. This actually is not terribly surprising because Crowley and Aziraphale's language is an exercise in the literal and the figurative.

Everything in it physically exists as well as figuratively exists and that's part of the fun of it for them. It all has to work on the surface level as well as on other levels. There are literal crepes and figurative crepes, for example, while we're on the 1793 topic. Literal fish-- sushi, gravlax in dill sauce, etc..-- and figurative fish, like the two of them. When Aziraphale asked for "the little dance" of light grovel with the apology, Crowley did that by also giving him a literal dance to go along with their traditionally verbal dance. Why? Because Aziraphale called their apology routine a figurative "little dance", so Crowley gave him a literal one to go with it. Eventually, all the figurative has to be at least a little literal in some way. It's why God made sure that an actual nightingale-the-bird was actually singing in Berkeley Square at the end of S1 as her last language lesson to us. There were then now literal angels dining at The Ritz so a literal nightingale sang in literal Berkeley Square.

The S2 Apology Dance is likely then the first Apology Dance that involved a physical dance. I'm not sure that there were others in the past but I think there definitely will be more going forward and that's a good thing since a bit of silliness is very healthy. 😊

Ok, so, back to the "you don't dance" moment... remember ten years ago when I said there were roughly four meanings of dance?

We've defined two of them already: a literal, physical dance and a verbal dance. The other two are the dance of society and dance as sexual euphemism. Historically, these weren't always mutually exclusive things and Good Omens overlaps them in some ways a bit as well.

The dance of society is being an open, active participant in your society. Even though Aziraphale basically built the society around him through being the founder of the street, we've seen how he tends to keep himself one step removed from life on Whickber Street.

It's best summed up by his relationship to The Whickber Street Shopkeepers & Traders Association: he is a member of it but, until S2, he's never hosted the monthly meeting. He doesn't fully see himself as one of them because, as an angel, he's not supposed to want any of this human living stuff, even if he desperately does. He has imposter syndrome for days, feeling like he's always about to be exposed as not really one of them.

Aziraphale does enjoy himself at times. He does engage with the world around him. He just doesn't allow himself to belong to it and his reasons for doing so are not only about his angel feelings.

The human world hasn't always been a place where he fit, either.

It's only been very recently in history-- and Aziraphale has seen literally *all* of history-- when it has been comparatively safe enough for people like him and Crowley to live more openly. It's still not completely safe, obviously and unfortunately, but there is more general acceptance now, more acknowledged human rights and more laws to help secure those rights.

The things that Crowley was hoping were around the corner in 1967-- when England decriminalized homosexual sex between men over the age of 21 and he suggested that maybe he and Aziraphale could go for broke and try being less of a secret-- actually are here by the present of the story in both S1 and S2.

A lot of that is at the root of the humor in S2 as Gabriel's presence in the shop forces Crowley and Aziraphale out onto Whickber Street in the daylight for the first time and creates scenarios in which the shopkeepers-- chiefly, Nina-- are throwing them off by being more comfortable with having their relationship be acknowledged publicly than they are. Part of the joke is that they're still closeted in London Soho in the year 2023 and the humans cannot understand why because Crowley and Aziraphale can't tell them that it's their supernatural world causing them to remain a secret.

It is only relatively recently in human history that people at formal social gatherings like the ones in England that Aziraphale has been to for years danced with anybody they felt like, regardless of relationship or lack thereof to that person. For many years, while someone might stand up with the occasional maiden aunt out of politeness or whatever, most of the time, a request for a slot on a dance card was a declaration of romantic intent. It was done within the public eye and, while matchmaking was often economical more than romantic, it was at the heart of how society functioned.

To dance, in that sense, was to be a part of society.

Aziraphale was never a part of society in that way. Not just because he's an angel who is supposed to remain above the human fray but because he is queer and society, for a long time, was not built to openly accept him. He was on the fringes of it for both supernatural and human reasons. From what we've seen, literal, physical dancing has always been something of a metaphor for this struggle for Aziraphale.

When Crowley says that Aziraphale doesn't dance-- and it's really more, as we've seen, that Aziraphale doesn't dance in public-- what he means it that Aziraphale keeps himself back from being a fully engaged part of the group, out of a fear that it's not for him because both the supernatural and the human worlds have been teaching him for a long time that it is not.

To host a meeting of the local business association and have everyone to his house for a party... to have Gabriel and Maggie under the same roof... to have everyone knowing that Crowley is his partner... to be able to openly dance with Crowley in front of others like the couple that they are, in the same way that the Chengs and Mutt and his spouse are?

That is to dance.

That is Aziraphale trying for a life he's never had before.

It is this form of dancing-- the dance of society-- that Crowley has never seen Aziraphale do before and why he is so in shock when Aziraphale asks him to dance.

This is where we have to talk about what this has to do with the gavotte, the photo from 1941, Mrs. Sandwich, Duns Scotus, and disco... 🪩Yes, I know. Lots to chat about. 😊

Back in S1, as Crowley traps Hastur in his answering machine, we are treated to one of the best parts of God's narration: Her cheeky take on the human philosophical debate around the question:

"How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?"

The phrase comes from Protestant theologians in the 17th century who were mocking Catholic scholastics like Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus-- whose name is quite literally the origin of the word dunce, so overt was the mocking of these dudes' ideas. The show via Crowley also is referring to Duns Scotus in Demon's Guide to Angelic Beings when Crowley mocks the demons by spelling 'residence' as 'residunce' in Aziraphale's entry, joking with him about the fact that the demons will not be able to understand what the entries really contain. So, why the mocking of Duns Scotus and pals?

While it's not totally know if they ever did debate this question exactly, questions very much like it were debated in their circle and others in different parts of the world and these philosophers would get a bit in the weeds in the wrong direction with things. This isn't to say there is a right or a wrong way to think so much as to say the way they chose to approach questions like this was full of absurd focus on the least consequential things someone could look at and failing to really think about how considering these questions at all could impact their understanding of the world around them and contribute to making that world better.

They were not asking questions like: do angels exist in the first place? If they do, do they dance? If so, what makes them want to dance? What would it say about angels and living-- and us and living-- if angels did dance? Why the fuck would they want to dance on the head of a pin when they could dance anywhere? 😂 What does it say about us and our views on angels and ourselves that we're spending a great deal of time and resources debating questions about beings that we cannot even prove fucking exist in the first place?

Instead of considering anything like that, Duns Scotus and pals would spend time just working on the most arcane details of angelic and demonic existences-- on things like trying to figure out if angels could exist in more than one place at once or how small they could get and how they would get that small and how many of them could fit on the proverbial head of a pin and still dance on there?

You know... real, relevant, thought-provoking, big picture questions that we've all asked ourselves at one time or another. 😂

Those mocking questions like this made the question "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" a kind of catch-all for pointless debate and it has since become a shorthand phrase meaning basically a bullshit question of no relevance, the debate over which is a colossal fucking waste of time.

Some scholars went so far as to blame those engaging in this type of debate as being responsible for the fall of Constantinople, saying that basically these scholars were sitting around listening to themselves talk on absurd things of no importance to such an extent that it caused mass death and collapsed an empire.

It might be of note then that this question is so notoriously tied to the fall of Constantinople that Good Omens might be winking at the fact that angels dancing around a seamstress might be a prelude to Aziraphale's fall, which some of us think is what's happening at the end of S2.

So, when Hastur and Crowley go into Crowley's answering machine, God jumps in with a little wink to this question in an effort to prevent anyone from focusing on the single most non-important question in all of Good Omens:

How did they get into the answering machine?

The answer to that is that it doesn't matter. They're magical-- that's the answer.

It's not to say that there is not a ton of small detail in Good Omens worth exploring-- and other scenes encourage doing just that, like Shakespeare's "in your role as the audience, could you give us something more to work with?-- but the details worth looking at are ones that will underscore what the story is saying in a bigger picture, thematic sort of way.

God's point here is that if you're hung up on the Magical Technical Whateverness that is stuff like how the angels and demons travel, you're being a bit of a Duns Scotus and trying to solve a mystery that the show has zero intention of ever making be relevant to anything and doesn't really consider much of a mystery in the first place. You can sit there until you're blue in the face doing calculations and looking up scientific explanations and it just simply does not matter. You're barking up the wrong tree because the thing you're talking about has no significant relevance to the story.

"How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" is basically the olden days, scholarly equivalent of rolling your eyes at half the comments in an online discussion for any sci-fi show that has ever existed. My friend and I call this kind of debate 'Photon Torpedo Jerk-Off' and what I mean by that is this: if you watch an episode of, say, Star Trek, and you think the most important thing to talk about that happened in the episode you just watched is whether or not these writers were accurate about the range of the photon torpedoes when they had the Enterprise blow up that Klingon warship, then you have missed the point of the episode entirely. If you're sitting around arguing about the sci-fi magical Whatever Tech and not talking about the story you've watched, you don't understand the point of what you've watched.

In Good Omens, the reason why God's monologue about how many angels can dance on the head a pin begins when it does is because it is a very sly joke on Duns Scotus-like debate, using the fact that the questions that were absurd to consider in real life are actually-- hilariously-- among the most pertinent to consider where Good Omens is concerned.

God brings up the pin-dancing question as a way to answer the question of what's happening with Crowley and Hastur going through the answering machine. She amusingly doesn't really answer the question and, instead, starts going on about the parts of "how many angel can dance on the head of a pin?" that should have been the bits being debated-- like whether or not angels dance at all and what if means that they do. Basically, Good Omens' response to how the answering machine bit works is "something something electrons" and they're proud of it and they should be because it doesn't fucking matter, which is why God's monologue in the answering machine sequence is really all about the bigger questions of the show and not the Duns Scotus-y question of "but how are they traveling through the telephone system exactly?" God simply just says that they are and moves onto more relevant things.

Even though the original debate over questions like "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" was theological and philosophical, the thoughts behind the absurdity of it very much apply to interpreting works of art. Because of its ties to religion and to angels, it makes for a very humorous way of telling the Good Omens audience that they will not really be explaining much of anything regarding to the technical whatzits of how angels and demons travel through electricity and things like that because that could not be less relevant to understanding the story.

The question "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?", at one point, also had several variants. One was the same question but wondering how many demons could dance on the head of a pin, while others involved whether or not angels were "sexless"-- a question that was so confusing at the time that several sub-variants emerged as a result because people weren't entirely sure what that question meant...

Was the question asking if angels had a biological sex-- and, if so, was it asking if they had sex organs? Was it asking if the angels had a form of gender which, at the time and with these theologians, was mostly a question of whether or not angels could be what humans would have called male or female, with gender binary ideas of what that would mean intact? Many others thought a question of whether or not angels were sexless might be more directly about whether or not angels had sex.

(Amusingly, that question didn't really ever get asked about demons, as the sexuality around demonic lore has always been pretty notorious.)

The problem with these questions being asked by theologians is that they never took the opportunity to reflect on what it might say about humans and our societies that we thought these the most pertinent questions to answer about angels and demons. They never stopped and thought about the fact that to ask these questions meant they were not sure that this supernatural world that they believed in had the same sort of structure when it came to things like gender, sex and sexuality that humans do and how that is where the more interesting thoughts exist. Just by asking those questions, you could start to follow a path that maybe suggested that they were different from humans and it might be better if humans emulated some of those ideas, right?

But that's definitely not where these guys took this...

When scholastics would approach questions like this, they'd do so to make the concepts of angels and demons fit more securely into the worldview they were promoting. The very conservative would usually say that angels were genderless and also usually "above" sex and things like this reinforced their holiness. The demons could usually fuck because they were evil and nephilim and the like made for the usual brand of good, scary, weirdly sexual Bible stuff. The ones that did think that angels did gender thought angels thought about it in the same very rigidly binary and traditional ways of most societies.

In other words? Theologians took the mythical creatures of angels and demons and made their theories about them fit human societies to further their own, human goals, instead of using angels and demons to reflect upon those human societies and consider how different viewpoints might improve them.

Good Omens is completely sending up this mindset.

In Good Omens, the supernatural characters are a way of poking fun at these kind of humans who approach ideas about what angels and demons might be like with such rigidity and treat their fellow humans in the same way. The angels and demons are basically all queer in human terms by default because, in Heaven/Hell, gender is a constellation, biological sex is a 'do whatever you want with that, if anything at all', and, just like with the humans, asexuality and sexuality and everything along every possible spectrum related to it all exist. For the most part, human prejudice does not exist-- though prejudice itself does, in the form of the "other"-izing of the demons. Some of that human prejudice has slipped through-- see: Sandalphon-- but it's not as ubiquitous as it is on Earth.

The angels and demons in Good Omens come from a world where everyone is sort of assumed straight-out-of-the-box non-binary by default and queerness is more normalized because when your concept of gender begins without rigid ideas about what that is, damn near everyone winds up being what humans would refer to as queer because that umbrella is then basically anyone other than a cisgendered, heterosexual person... and what is a cisgendered, heterosexual person when gender is design-your-own-concept-of-this from the get-go? How would anyone be heterosexual, when the definition of that is rooted in binary views on gender that do not exist in the supernatural world of Good Omens?

The point of all of it is that if humans thought this way about one another more, the world would be a better place. Good Omens is a story about angels and demons that is using them to ask questions about humanity of a lot more value than "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" but, ironically? Some questions that come about as a result of considering that question in a different way-- as God helps us to do with her monologue-- like the question of whether or not angels dance and consideration of what that might mean-- are examples of some of best questions to ask to get to the heart of what Good Omens is saying and what it's story is all about.

In Good Omens, neither the supernatural world nor the human world are perfect. The supernatural characters seek to learn how to really live from the humans but the humans have a thing or two to learn about themselves that the supernatural beings-- with their choose-your-own-adventure ideas relating to gender, in particular-- could show them when it comes to true freedom.

If we made like the supernatural world of Good Omens and placed less focus on defining and labeling gender and sexuality in such strict terms and just looked at everyone else as fellow people and let people present themselves as they like and identify as they like and be attracted to who they're attracted to and love who they love, we'd just be seeing each other all as people-- which is what we all are.

It's also the point of the intentional vagueness of Gabriel's whole situation during his naked arrival in 2.01.

There is a fuckton happening in this scene but one of the biggest is the decision to make it unclear as to what was behind the box-- and that's the point. Are there a couple of hints here and there? Sure. You can make arguments in different directions and, for sure, the decision to make it vague, instead of including a suggestion that Gabriel's for sure Don Drapering it in that moment is a whole decision in and of itself. The point, though, is not to fixate on determining what, if any, situation Gabriel was rocking during his rather challenging Monday morning in S2 but to just ask yourself why it would matter to know?

There's nothing wrong with some idle curiosity, I don't think, but the ambiguity is the point. What would it matter if Gabriel was running in angelic neutral or sporting, as I think the scene is suggesting, some lady parts for the morning? It doesn't change anything about Gabriel because only humans would look at Gabriel and assume that he has a penis and find it shocking if he didn't because many of us are that limited in thought. Only humans would box (bad, unintentional pun lol) him into pronouns as a result and try to tell him that he can't use he/him if he sometimes doesn't have that penis.

All these humans are looking at his body and judging it-- who gives them the right?

Whatever you feel about Gabriel, you do feel for him in that moment because no one deserves to have their body judged by a zillion critical strangers... and isn't that what many of us are doing online? Isn't that what a lot of humans do about everything from gender to sexuality to weight and looks? We categorize and label and put all of these parameters on meeting the standards of those categories when none of it matters and everyone is unique and beautiful in their own ways.

The genius of the supernatural characters in Good Omens is that, in so many ways, they are not free and a lot of their issues overlap with those of the humans but in real, fundamental ways, they have default mindsets that humanity could really benefit from adopting. The Gabriel arrival scene underlines it by turning the camera back around on us by showing us an example of a very masculine person by traditional human standards, implying that his genitalia might differ from what we've been conditioned to expect from a person with his looks, and then making us consider how we feel about that and if maybe the whole idea of these kind of expectations isn't bullshit in the first place.

So... while Good Omens is sending up the limited mindset of the Duns Scotuses of the world, the joke with God's monologue is that, in the context of Good Omens itself?

From the standpoint of this story?

The related questions about angels and dancing and gender and sex that arise from asking the question: "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" are excellent questions.

They happen to be questions that, if you're asking them, you're getting into many of the themes of the story and you're looking at how the story is using angels and demons to talk about the experience of human living. What does matter in understanding the story of Good Omens is, ironically, the dumbass questions that these humans were asking back in the day about dancing angels and demons and their relationships to human ideas about gender, sex and sexuality at which Good Omens is poking more than a little fun.

To add to this, we also have the very funny way in which God presents the answers to these questions to us and that involves a wink towards the last type of dancing-- dancing as sexual euphemism.

In the original question of "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?", the reason why it's a pin is obviously that pins are very, very small but it was sometimes referred to as well as a question of how many angels could dance on the head of a needle? This was because the detractors of this school of thought were creating puns, so they could call the debate of the question things like a "needless point" in their writings-- very Good Omens-y humorous of them. 😊 We're also now bringing into to conversation via needles and pins language related to the make and repair of clothes-- seamstress work-- as being tied to questions of sex and dancing as sexually euphemistic.

The visuals shown to us during God's monologue include Crowley and Aziraphale dancing separately, in different eras, with other beings-- Aziraphale with some humans and Crowley with some demons-- but with an undertone of sex in both scenes that gets at dancing as sexual euphemism. In Crowley's scene in the 1970s/very early 1980s, he and Hastur and Ligur are in some trippy disco sequence in which they are dancing with a pin but the pin is being used as different kinds of sexual dance-related poles.

This is a visual parallel of the innuendo around seamstress-related language in the series, with a pin-- a tool used by those who make and mend clothes-- being used as a pole, highlighting a (hilariously-presented) aspect of sexuality in dance. Mrs. Sandwich runs a bordello but the coded 19th century-era speech of Aziraphale's magic during The Meeting Ball results in her attempting to describe the sex work menu of her girls as being coded in the language of those who make and mend clothes. This comes from sex workers writing on government forms the 19th century that they were seamstresses to evade authorities (why Mrs. Sandwich says her girls stand on their own two feet "like the government said") and a use of seamstress language as euphemistic for sex that overlapped into coded slang of, in particular, homosexual men.

In one part of the disco sequence, Hastur, Ligur and Crowley are going around the pin like it's a maypole, which were involved in courtship rituals and fertility dances. In another moment, the three of them then turn the pin into a stripper pole and bust out some exotic dancing moves, all less using the pin/pole as prop in a seduction of someone else but more seemingly in place of that someone else, with exactly zero awareness of one another.

What the living fuck is this scene, really? 😂 Is the pin really large? Are they very small? Why can I still not stop laughing at the fact that they aren't dancing on the *head* of a pin but with it? Is Hastur trying to make out with the pole? Did Ligur really invent part of The Macarena decades ahead of its time? What perspective is this scene supposed to be shot from? lol Are we all just assumed high at this point from the disco lights and general trippiness of the sequence? Are any of these the most important questions of this sequence? Not by a long shot lol...

*tilts head* hiiiii Crowley...

What's that? Oh, sorry, right, finishing up the epic journey that is this meta... Yes, yes, sorry. Got distracted by the dancing snake... Which reminds me!

We can't talk about dancing as sexual euphemism without mentioning that the little glimpse into Crowley's bedroom in S1 that we see shows us that he has a wooden figurine of a dancing snake on a table in the corner, which seems like a wink towards Crowley and Aziraphale joking about being like the magician or musician who would play music to "charm" snakes into dancing for them. Crowley kept the dancing snake figurine in his bedroom so that is probably the ultimate in dancing as a sexual euphemism possible and it's another indicator that it's hardly the idea of dancing together being a form of sexual overture that has Crowley so confused when he says "you don't dance" in S2. Dancing, in that sense, is not new to them.

So, God's monologue is winking pretty heavily at dance-as-sexual-euphemism. In showing the dancing this way, God is using dancing to mean both literal dancing (as in, when she describes that Aziraphale is the only angel who dances-as-in-moves-to-music because he learned the gavotte) and also as an answer to the question of whether or not some of the angels and demons have sex. While not all of them do or have interest in doing so-- just like with the humans-- having Crowley and Aziraphale both exhibit a sense of sexuality in the dancing scenes here is more than a little suggestive of the fact that they both do.

So, how does that fit into our whole idea of dancing as it relates to a being a part of society?

Both Crowley and Aziraphale are shown dancing in different situations in different eras in which queer people existing on the fringes of society found a place in which they could express themselves-- but they are very different ways of expression.

Aziraphale learns to dance in a private club for wealthy, gay gentlemen and that is the only place in which he dances because he can do so freely there without too much concern that it will have repercussions for him in both his supernatural and his human worlds. Everyone there in the club is someone who also has a sense of secrecy and a need for discretion in common and they're all well-connected enough to ensure that their privacy remains intact. It's through basically finding a safe space in this club that Aziraphale can have a microcosm of what it would be like to exist more openly in the larger society as a whole.

Crowley, on the other hand?

While Crowley also lived through all of these eras alongside Aziraphale and had the same types of social limitations, we see him dancing openly in the liberation of the disco era. Disco changed everything. It was full of people who had never fit into society and gave voice to, in particular, more female, Black and queer people than ever before. The eventual backlash to disco had nothing to do with the music and everything to do with the changing attitudes about race, gender, sexual orientation, and sex itself at the heart of it.

The difference here is that disco was free to a point that you could dance with anybody. You and your friends could dance, you could dance with someone you wanted to hook up with, you could dance around to it in your house with your family. It didn't matter. While people had long since abandoned the formal rules of dance in mainstream society that existed in the eras of Jane Austen, by the time disco turned up, popular dance had freed itself to being just about self-expression and having fun. It was still sexy but it was no longer playing a formal role in the matchmaking process of people in society. It's about having fun and doing so in the open and much more free.

This is where we're going to look at what your question has to do with the gavotte and Aziraphale's cotillion ball in S2...

The gavotte scene in S1 is one of the most fascinating scenes in the series because nothing else like it exists in terms of how it is filmed. The scene of Aziraphale dancing the gavotte is filmed in such a way as to suggest we are actually watching a video of him doing so. Part of this comes from the lighting, the slightly jumpy 'old time movie' feel of the scene. But, it also comes from the fact that Aziraphale looks directly into the camera at several moments during the scene, in such a way that it makes it feel like he's not looking at *us* in a fourth-wall-breaking sort of way but that he's looking at a camera that exists within The Hundred Guineas Club and is filming them dancing.

This was likely possible at the time, especially in a club patronized by wealthy men. The Lumiere brothers patented the first movie-making cameras in 1895 so it could be argued that Aziraphale and friends are being filmed using a prototype of that technology. (A bit of film-related technology being a bit too early for the time by our human history standards is also shown on Good Omens in S2, when Furfur has a Polaroid camera just under a decade or so too soon, though some prototypes were in development not long after the time Furfur was shown with one.)

The point is that Aziraphale looks like he's letting himself be recorded dancing. Actually, the point is that Aziraphale looks like he is loving letting himself be recorded dancing and that's an enormous thing...

Think back to 1941 for a moment. Crowley and Aziraphale were nearly killed over the picture Furfur took of the two of them together. No audio/visual evidence of the two of them together exists. If they kept the picture, they've hidden it really, really well because they've been terrified of anyone finding them out. Does this recording of Aziraphale still exist, though? Does he have it? Was he going to show Crowley, maybe after everyone left The Meeting Ball?

Living-- existing-- can mean having a record of that existence. That's actually at the heart of the meta I wrote recently about Aziraphale's excitement over getting the Shostakovich record being about having a recording of a performance with history to him and Crowley.

Being a part of the world can mean letting yourself be a documented part of it.

We are shown that, in the late 1880s, Aziraphale let himself be recorded on video dancing with some human friends... which is to say that Aziraphale let himself live.

He let himself find some kindred spirits, learn something new, be an active participant in a group, and enjoy himself. He let all of that be documented and his kind of manic, unbridled joy over all of it is the mark of how rare a thing this level of engagement is for him.

So, why did he?

Why this dance? What does this have to do with The Meeting Ball?

Notice the backdrop of this scene. Other than Aziraphale and the other gentleman and the walls, there is really only one thing of note in the scene and it is in focus for much of the scene: the chandelier.

The gavotte is both a specific kind of dance and a kind of umbrella term for French folk dances from the 16th-18th centuries and a separate, different dance in the 19th century. It was apparently popular in the court of King Louis XIV, whose reign is referred to several times in Good Omens. (Crowley's gauche imitation Louis XIV furniture in his flat in S1; he was king in the time mentioned by Aziraphale in the French scene in S2; his mistress being Madame du Pompadour, historically credited with originating the hairstyle worn by Crowley since prior to Earth's existence, etc....)

Gavotte comes from gavoto, which meant mountaineer's dance or the dance of the mountain people and which, in turn, came from gavot, which meant a boor and a glutton. A boor is a country person or a farmer but it comes from the Latin bovis, meaning a cow or an ox. Etymologically-speaking? Of course this is the dance Aziraphale learned because the gavotte is a French dance of the ox glutton who enjoys a good "mountain" climb.

(The theory that they wrote The Sound of Music lives on. 😂)

Aziraphale learned the gavotte, of all dances, because he knew that Crowley would find the two of them dancing together to this dance in particular very amusing. He learned this dance in the late 1880s, likely with the intent of maybe, someday, being able to dance it with Crowley, which is likely why he was he was annoyed when it went out of style.

Still, we could theorize that one of the reasons why he allowed himself to be filmed dancing it is to have a record of his efforts to learn it-- not just for Crowley but in general-- and that maybe the chandelier in the bookshop is the one from his long-since-closed gentleman's club. It all shows that Aziraphale has wanted to dance, openly and publicly, both in general and with Crowley, for a very long time.

One of the reasons why he likely miracled everyone into 19th century speak during The Meeting Ball and brought down the chandelier and old style dancing was so that he could finally do just that. It isn't so much that Aziraphale needs to stick to old-fashioned dancing in general as it is that he just wanted to have an experience like those of other humans during that time that he wasn't allowed then to have-- by the rules of the human world, not just because of the dangers from his supernatural world.

But it's 2023 in S2 now. Queer people have been able to get married in England for a decade and partnership rights have been around for even longer. Mutt and his spouse's relationship would have been illegal in nine different ways barely a breath ago but they can live openly now. Gabriel has left Heaven and moved into the guest room. Things feel like there's a chance of change everywhere and Aziraphale has just had it and can't take one more night of Crowley slipping out before dawn so this whole "Maggie and Nina" party?

Do you remember how Aziraphale phrased the idea to Crowley?

Cotillion balls aren't just any ball. While cotillion was a style of country dance kind of like the gavotte, a cotillion ball was a coming out ball for young ladies in society. In parts of the world, they still exist, sometimes called now debutante balls.

What's so endearing about Aziraphale fixating on this idea is that a) Maggie and Nina are both women, which is not a match that would have been sanctioned by a cotillion ball in Jane Austen's day, which makes it sweet that Aziraphale is, in a way, trying to give this traditionally romantic idea of love at a dance to a pair of women who would not have had it be an option for them, historically, which is something to which he can relate but also b) Aziraphale is just really semi-consciously using the idea of a party styled after a coming out ball for women in society as his thinly-veiled excuse to have a coming out party of a different kind, of sorts, for himself and Crowley.

Aziraphale isn't closeted in the sense that he's not actively trying to convince anyone that he's straight (good Frances, what a waste of effort that would be lol) but he'd like to be just like everyone else and not have to hide his partner. In the scene where Mrs. Cheng tells him that she and her husband will be at the party, for example, Aziraphale has this kind of wistful look for a moment. He wants that. He'd like to just be chatting with the neighbors and tell them that yes, definitely, he and his husband will be by later on. It's a season of things like Muriel literally opening the door to them hiding in a closet to talk privately and Crowley insisting in the street to Nina that Aziraphale is not his partner but then saying nothing to correct her when she refers to Aziraphale that way when they're in the bookshop. It's Mrs. Sandwich knowing Crowley in part because she sees him slip out the bookshop side door every night but Nina not knowing him in 2.01 because they're hiding the fact that they're a couple so morning coffee is never a thing until it is in S2. The Meeting Ball is Aziraphale taking steps towards them no longer hiding it by having people over when Crowley is there and letting everyone know or assume that Crowley is his partner.

The party is really for Crowley. Having everyone speak outside of time, the theatre curtains, Gabriel circling with trays of food (which was honestly so funny-- The Supreme Archangel walking around all "try an ox rib" to everyone), the vol-au-vents (etymologically linked to nightingales and some of them seemed like they might have been oyster vol-au-vents), etc.. He did it all to dance with Crowley and ask him to stay.

These two are fucking adorable. Look at this angel, I mean, seriously:

Aziraphale has been hitting that since ancient Rome and he's over here, nervous and giddy like he's at his first middle school dance, so fucking excited to ask that dashing ginger currently having an anxiety attack to dance. They have been basically married for millennia and Aziraphale is standing there like I'm going to ask him, I'm going to really do it, I'm going to hold his hand and dance with him in front of everybody and they're all going to know he's mine. We're going to be like everybody else-- just people on Earth.

It's so damn cute.

So, lastly, there's one thing we have to talk about when it comes to dancing and that's the fact that it is a form of self-expression. This is where Aziraphale and his perfectionism come into play a little.

God, in S1, said that not dancing is one of "the distinguishing" features of angels and that Aziraphale, through learning the gavotte, is the only angel who dances (at least, in terms of literally dancing.) This contrasts with the demons, who all dance, though many of them are not particularly good at it. This is the fundamental difference between angels and demons.

The demons are all demons because they were all willing to express themselves as individuals, which is what dancing fundamentally is. The reason why Aziraphale is the only angel who dances in S1 is because the other angels who know how to dance are all now demons.

Dancing means putting yourself out there a bit. You have to be willing to make some mistakes. You have to be willing to look potentially silly in front of other people and learn to not care as much about it. You have to take some chances. You have to engage with others if you want to dance with other people-- so, you have to participate in the world around you a bit. You have to try new things, like hearing new music and learning new ways to move. You have to be your own person, in the sense that you have to have music you like to move to and decide what you'll look like doing that. You have to let yourself take up some space and work hard at shutting off your damn brain enough to enjoy it.

In the 1941, Part 2 scene that we started this meta out with, we saw Aziraphale openly dancing a bit in front of Crowley, a sign of how comfortable he was and is with him. He doesn't have to be perfect around Crowley. Just as Crowley doesn't have to be perfect around him and is willing to look ridiculous to around him, as in the case of The Apology Dance. Being able to be silly and vulnerable is a sign of trust. When you can lean on people you trust and have that kind of intimacy with them, it can make you feel braver to take some risks in the world as a whole. If you let one person in enough and learn how to dance in one or more ways with just them, you'll eventually feel like you can dance free, no matter who is watching.

In the same scene, Aziraphale admits to his conflicts over going to Goldstone's and how he worries that maybe the things in life that he enjoys are "for professional conjurers only"-- for humans only-- with Crowley helping to quiet that imposter syndrome noise in Aziraphale's mind. Crowley's gentleness and the care in his response are examples of why he is who Aziraphale chooses as a partner and why it's with him that he's long-dreamed of having be his dancing partner when he finally is able to publicly dance alongside others at a ball.

Aziraphale is equally considerate in how he treats Crowley and is not put off by spending their first dance in public together essentially trying to calm what he thinks at first is just Crowley's usual level of anxiety talking, knowing Crowley well enough to know that, for all his talk about wanting to live a more open life together, he's as afraid as Aziraphale is. Crowley is dancing anyway. Aziraphale wants to so that's enough for Crowley to do so.

Aziraphale doesn't need some perfectly smooth first dance out together-- though they dance easily and very well together. It doesn't matter how long he's waited. He cares more about trying to reassure Crowley and ease his stress. They actually aren't as safe as Aziraphale believes them to be at this moment but it's the intent that's sweet. He knows this dance is as scary as it is lovely and, as always, it's important to him that Crowley feel safe.

You have to admit that you're a person to dance.

That's what the dancing is all about.

You have to admit that you have a life and to start to accept that you are allowed one. You have to accept yourself as part of a community to publicly dance with a group. You have to feel ready to host the monthly meeting of The Whickber Street Shopkeepers and Traders Association because to do so is to be a participating member in a community and to be a participating member in a community is to be a person living a life on Earth.

It's not surprising, then, that when Aziraphale gets to a point-- a very delicate point but a point, nonetheless-- of feeling like it might be time for him to claim that life for himself, doing so begins with the first night that he's ever been able to be at a party and, just like a zillion other people before him, ask his partner to dance.

[shinybearnerd]

"Under The Rain's Look"

Hi! So, this is a request made by the lovely @shuichiakainx. I hope that you like it, my darlings. Enjoy!

Pair: Crowley x GN!reader Words: 2,4k Genre: angst, fluff at the end (our favourite demon is an idiot)

Story: Y/n have feelings for Crowley but they are afraid that he won't reciprocate and therefore won't declare themself. One day, in Aziraphale's bookshop, Y/n overhears the two talking about them as Crowley starts being an asshole...

English is not my first language. I'm sorry if there're any mistakes.

(he's so hot. I can't...)

The atmosphere inside the bookshop was calm and relaxing. A Tchaikovsky’s vinyl was playing, echoing all over the room with Aziraphale’s humming. The angel scribbled something on his desk while Y/n was on the armchair, enjoying both the music and each other’s company. Spending time with Aziraphale was one of their favourite things. Especially when outside, like in that moment, for example, there was a storm. Even in times like that, where they weren’t talking to each other. But if there were a chance to meet a tall and mysterious demon, they wouldn’t mind breaking their quality time… God… They really shouldn’t think about him, or they wouldn’t be able to stop. They shouldn’t think about the way his fabulous red hair flamed against the sunlight. The little smirk on his face that he shows every time he teases them. Or his laugh echoing through the room. And they really shouldn’t think about how their hands accidentally touch. The little winks that he sends them, lowering his glasses so their eyes can meet.

His eyes! So deep and expressive. Him being so sweet and gentle, trying to hide it in every way possible. Yes, they shouldn’t think about this cause other thoughts could occupy their mind… Like, his physic. So strong and tonic. The way he uses to sit with his legs open, making them wish they were between them while- <<My dear?>> The gentle voice of the angel and his delicate touch made Y/n return to planet Earth. <<You’re okay? Do you feel well?>> <<Oh?- Yes, Aziraphale. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.>>

The celestial creature was well aware of their feelings towards their shared friend. But revealing their thoughts would be rather embarrassing. For both. <<Oh, do not worry.>> The angel smiled. <<I was wondering if you wanted a cup of cocoa.>>

Yes! That should keep their mind off things. <<Oh, yes. I’m going to make it some.>> They replied and got up so fast that Aziraphale didn’t see it coming. <<Dear, there’s no need- >> <<Oh, don’t worry, Zira!>> They were already in the kitchen. <<I’ll make it. My treat! I’ll make it extra sweet, just as you like it!>>

In hearing that, the angel could already feel his mouth-watering.

He chuckled slightly, patting his waistcoat. <<Well… If that’s the case, then.>> Y/n smiled as they started to move inside the kitchen with ease. They spent a lot of time in that bookshop that they could make a very detailed drawing of that building with their eyes closed.

The angel walked silently inside the room, looking at them, smiling. Y/n noticed his presence and turned towards him before returning to making the sweet beverage <<What?>>. <<Nothing, my dear.>> <<Zira?>> They knew for granted that something was up. They could feel it. <<Oh, all right…>> he said, getting closer. <<Did you talk with Crowley about- >> <<I’m sorry, but I’m gonna stop you there.>> Crowley was a very delicate topic. Maybe the most delicate of all. <<As I told you before, I’m not going to tell him anything.>> <<But, dear child- >> <<No, Aziraphale. Please, don’t twist my arm in this.>> They shook their head. That familiar knot in their throat was showing up again. <<I appreciate everything you’ve been doing for me, but I’ve seen it already... I start to feel something for a person, I decide to tell them ‘cause it seems like they feel the same way, and then… bam! I make a fool of myself.>>

Aziraphale tried to say something, but the little bell inside the shop rang. <<Hold that thought.>> he said, fixing the waistcoat. <<This conversation it’s not over.>> <<Believe me, it is.>> Aziraphale turned towards them one last time, mumbling, and then returned to the bookshop.

<<Hello. I’m afraid we are quite- Oh, it is you, Crowley!>> The angel couldn’t help but smile at his demonic friend. <<You want some cocoa? In the kitchen, there’s- >> <<No, I’m good, angel.>> <<Oh, okay then.>> Something about his friend seemed a bit off. He wasn’t his usual teasing self. Aziraphale watched him as he sat on the sofa next to his desk. If “sitting” was the correct verb to use, considering the way the old snake did so. The angel, tho, was so used to it that he didn’t even seem to notice.

<<So…>> He started, sitting on his armchair. <<Don’t.>> <<I didn’t say anything!>> <<I know what you’re going to say, Aziraphale. I’m fine.>> The celestial being nodded, even if he knew that wasn’t true. In fact, he continued <<Is this about Y/n?>> Crowley had a weird look on his face. Like his face was neutral but had something under it. Like he was wearing a mask. <<Y/n? What do they have to do with this?>> <<I don’t know. You seem to be a little… gloomy when they aren’t around.>> <<“Gloomy”? What are you talking about? I’m always like this.>> Aziraphale decided to not pay mind to that, shaking a hand like he was shooshing it away.

<<So, when are you going to tell them how you feel?>> <<Aziraphale, what on heaven are you talking about?>> Crowley felt suddenly tensed and much irritated by all of that. <<Oh, come on, my dear. I see the way you look at each other! You’re very cute together- >> <<Ok, now you listen to me, angel.>> Crowley got up instantly, towering over his friend with his height. <<I have no feelings whatsoever for Y/n. They’re just a little stupid human, okay?>>

<<Crowley!>> Aziraphale got up immediately, shocked and horrified by the way he was talking about them. <<What are you saying? Stop it! That’s not true.>> <<I don’t know how we both manage to stand them, with all that… human talk. I’ll never have feelings for them! Do you hear me? I’m a… demon.>> The last word was delivered with hurt. The angel was finally able to figure out what was really going on only at that moment. Aziraphale shoulders relaxed. On his face an expression of pity and understanding. <<Oh, Crow- Y/n!>> When Crowley heard the human’s name he turned around quickly. His heart shattered. Did they hear what he said? Both the angel and the demon got white as a ghost when they saw the human standing in front of them. <<Y/n, I- >> The human didn’t give the time to him to explain himself. They didn’t want to see him anymore. He was just like everybody else. Of course he was. They were like a magnet to those kind of people…

<<WHY THE HEAVEN YOU DIDN’T TELL ME THEY WERE HERE?>> <<I WAS GOING TO! You cut me mid-sentence when I asked you about the cocoa! Y/n was in the kitchen preparing it.>> <<Oh, Satan…>> Crowley was hyperventilating. He went up and down the bookshop with a hand on his forehead. Whispering <<It’s over. I fucked all up… I know I would…>>

Aziraphale was shocked and unamused. <<That’s why you didn’t tell them? My God, you’re an idiot!>> Crowley looked at him surprised. <<They love you, you fool!>> <<They- What? WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME BEFORE?>> <<BECAUSE THEY TELL ME NOT TO, YOU MORON!>> <<STOP INSULTING ME!>> <<YOU DESERVE IT!>>

They both panted, overwhelmed by all that screaming and all those raw emotions. Suddenly, a lightning lit up the whole street, followed shortly after by a thunder. <<The storm is getting worse. I-I need to go after them.>> <<…THEN. GO! What are you waiting!>>

The angel saw his friends running out of his bookshop, forgetting his glasses inside, and going on in the Betley, rushing after Y/n. He noticed them only after the car was nowhere to be seen. Aziraphale took those and folded them nicely, mumbling <<Lord, give me strength with those two...>> as he put them on his desk.

The thunderstorm had worsened more and more by the second. Y/n was drenched and cold but they didn’t care. All they had in mind was the way Crowley was talking about them. <<Y/N!>> They recognized that voice. They’ll always recognize them, even in a room full of people… But they didn’t want to do anything to do with him anymore. <<Y/n, please. You’ll get sick! Get in the car.>>

They kept ignoring him, starting to walk faster. The demon steered the steering wheel as he pressed on the accelerator. The Bentley was now on the road in front of Y/n, blocking their path.

The human stopped abruptly. Both tensed and angry.

<<What the hell do you think you’re doing! You can hurt someone!>> They screamed as they watched Crowley approaching. <<I’m sorry, I really am. I didn’t- >>

<<“-know you’re here”? Yeah, I figure that out.>> They turned around and started to walk away. Crowley was immediately after Y/n, trying to stop them. <<That’s… true. But it wasn’t what I was going to say!>> <<I think you said enough, Crowley. Don’t you?>>

Crowley tried to open his mouth, but nothing came out of it. He was very aware that Y/n was right. That he was behaving like a child. But he couldn’t let them go like that, with them thinking that they weren’t enough. He needed to come clean. For them.

He continued to call their name, trying to grab their arm to stop them. Nothing, however, seemed to work.

<<Let me go!>> <<Please. You have to listen to me…>> <<Why should I?>> They jerked their arm, freeing themselves from his hold. They look at each other's eyes for the first time that day. Y/n was surprised. They noticed that the demon’s eyes weren’t covered. Did he get out of the bookshop without them? He had some for backup inside the Bentley, they thought immediately after. So it was all for the show. They also noticed, tho, that his eyes were red with a look full of sadness and fear. Like… like he was feeling the same way as them.

With a shove, they got him away from them. Crowley was surprised and hurt by that. But he knew he deserved it. <<Why would you say that? What I’ve ever done to you to make you say those things? Uh?>> Another shove. <<Y/n, I…>> <<You made me feel horrible!>> Another one. <<Wortless!>>

Another… <<I thought you were different! But you’re just like everybody else!>>

…and another… <<Why should I listen to you?>> and another followed. Pushing the demon away from them as they started to feel tears in their eyes. <<Y/n, please… Stop…>> He didn’t even have the energy to fight anymore. Seeing how he was able to wreck them… Since he understood that he felt something for Y/n, he decided that nothing could happen between them or he would hurt them. But now, seeing them like this, because of him, made him realize that that was worse. <<Why?>> <<I-I love you…!>> Y/n stopped. Gazing up at him, as they take a step back. <<What?>> <<You heard me…>> He blushed a little, looking away ‘cause he was flustered. <<Say it. Again.>> Crowley huffed. <<I… I love you.>> He looked at them. <<I love you.>> Y/n didn’t know how to feel… <<I think I always have…>> …it was like in one of their dreams… Minus the angsty part of course. <<I didn’t tell you anything before because… I’m a demon, and you’re far too nice to want something to do with me in that way.>> With that sentence, their heart shattered. <<Crowley…>> <<Y/n, I never even for a second thought that.>> He walked closer to them. <<Believe me… I was just being an idiot…>> <<But why saying those things? You could have just said “No” to Aziraphale.>>

Crowley groaned softly, in pain. <<Every time I look into your eyes, I see them…>>

<<"You see them"? What are you talking about?- Have you gone mad?>>

<<The stars, the galaxies that I created! I-I see them every time I look at you… I made the stars more than six thousand years ago. The more I created them, the more beautiful they were. Creations worthy of God Herself! They always told me it was to enrich the sky, like a giant wallpaper for your people. …But then you-you came along and…>> They could see the change in his posture and his gestures. From huffing and mumbling something, trying to find the words and an escape. To seeing his expression softening, his eyes getting teary.

<<I realised that I created those galaxies. Those nebulas. To celebrate your beautiful eyes. Those fucking beautiful eyes… Every time I see you looking at the sky. I see you smile, saying how beautiful the stars are… I feel something in here>> He touched his chest. <<a kind of pride because you do nothing but admire my creations. But also jealousy ‘cause I think that all I ever did was create an enormous looking glass in which you can mirror yourself. And nothing else… &lt;<And-And if before I cursed Her because She gave me those eyes so that I couldn’t see them again… I thank her ‘cause She gave me… you.>> Y/n didn’t know what to say. Crowley looks around, growling, frustrated by all these emotions. <<I feel a nebula creating stars in here! That explodes and makes me want to see and hear you and only you. That’s what I feel! <<I can not live without you! I can't function properly. I want to be with you! I want to kiss you. I want to hear you whisper my name while I kiss your neck. While we make love… And I wish it would never end. I want all these things! But I won't tell you because I know you’ll never feel the same way. So I stay quiet. And-And I do the asshole ‘cause is the only way to protect myself…>>

<<…holy shit!>> Is the only thing that came up in your mind. And it seemed to eased up the tension a bit. You even chuckled. <<God. You're such an idiot!>> Without giving him the time to reply, you took his face, kissing him. Crowley was startled but he then took their hips, bringing them closer. Deepening the kiss. They separated when they heard a thunder. They both were breathless, looking first in the sky and then at each other and starting to laugh before kissing again. <<You know, I have to say that you were right about the “kissing under the rain” thingy.>> The demon chuckled. <<There isn’t the canopy, tho.>> <<No, I guess not.>> Huffed amused. Y/n put their arm around Crowley’s neck, while he caressed their hips, kissing them again.

[nocturnesmoon]

Writing this while laying in bed and trying to combat my period pains. The painkillers are in fact not working, so maybe fantasizing about these two will instead-

Simon "Ghost" Riley x John "Soap" Mactavish x Transmasc!Reader

I just feel like Simon and Johnny would be amazing at caring for you, doing your period. Maybe they wouldn't be the most knowledgeable at first, but they are quick intuitive learners, and seeing their darling in pain isn't something they can stand for.

If they happen to be home during your period, expect the utmost and best care of your life. Don't feel like eating anything? Don't worry, they've made something just in case you get hungry. Need to take a shower but don't got the energy, don't worry, I'm sure both of them would be happy to help you out.

There is not a single craving they will not help satiate. Chocolate? Johnny's got something to spare, chips? Already in the cabinet, gummies? One of them is going to the shop while the other one cuddles you. That one very hype specific food craving that's really an absolutely ridiculous request? What do you mean ridiculous love, they've got it right here.

I normally get really bad cramps, and the only type of painkiller I'm allowed to take, doesn't help whatsoever. And if that was the case, I just have to believe that, the boys would then do everything else in their power to make you comfortable. They've got the heating pad ready in the charger, a hot beverage on the bedside table. If the heating pad isn't enough, they'll help with pressure instead, by either laying on top of you or having you on top of them and pressing their rough hands on the spots where it hurts.

You're not left alone for a second, unless you specifically request the alone time. If one has to go somewhere, the other will stay with you until they get back. He would put on your favourite movie, while you lay in his arms and snack on whatever it was you're craving. Don't feel like watching something? That's okay, you could read a book together, play a game, or even just lay and talk.

If there are chores to be done, they'll get it done for you, unless you insist that you can manage. Even then, once they see you huff and puff in pain, they'll practically order you away from the task, taking over for you and finishing up.

They know you're perfectly capable of doing it yourself, even in pain, but they'd rather have you resting on the couch, as comfortable as you can get, while they take care of it for you. You already do so much for them when they're home from deployment, doing everything you can to make sure they're resting, and spending quality time with you. Let them return the favour once in a while, making sure you're well cared for.

They know that your period can be a source of dysphoria, when it turns extra bad. They won't stand for your own self-deprecating thoughts. They'll reassure you at all the right times, as if they can read your mind. Reminding you that, you are their beautiful boy, the only man they could've ever wished for, that no matter what your silly head makes you think, they've always seen you as exactly who you are. It doesn't matter what you think your physical appearance might say, to them, you'll always be their man.

Maybe I'm just delusional, but I just feel like they'd be amazing for you. No matter what you might need from them, they'll do their best to provide. They love you so dearly, if there is any slight thing they can do to alleviate your distress, it's already been done before you can even ask.

I think the fact that I'm laying here alone, and I don't have a Simon or Johnny to take care of me should be a crime.

Anyways that's all Moon out-