#Slightly Too Real joke of the day courtesy of thorne

[monarch-ambrosia]

why is everything either "i want to do this thing but i don't want to have done it"

or

"i want to have done this thing but i don't want to do it"

[snakeley]

cont. with @therighteousnessofgod​

   Zadkiel, if he had been human and had a short enough life for it to flash before his eyes, would have seen it do so for the second time that night. As the lights grew increasingly brighter and closer, the angel couldn’t help but think that this was it. Death was quite literally barreling straight towards him and he had only just gained his own freedom. Some sort of heavenly joke this must be. He did the only thing he thought he possibly could do. He closed his eyes and waited. He waited for the horrible impact. He waited to be completely washed in bright artificial light and to be done for. To be absolutely discorporated and sent back to the place he had just been thrown out of, quite literally. He waited. What must have only been seconds felt like years.

    A screech of tires assaulted his ears and the only thing he felt was the warm air that accompanied the car. He slowly opened his eyes to see a sleek, black car right in front of him. He let out the air he hadn’t known he had been holding and placed a hand on the hood not only to steady himself but to also reassure that he was, in fact, still there and that this car was real.

    The thudding of his heart being so loud in his ears and the feeling of his pulse throughout his body was new. His eyes went in and out of focus as the adrenaline from almost being hit by a car faded away and the pain came rushing back. He took in a deep a breath as he could to calm down, pain causing him to whimper slightly. He tried to focus on anything, Jesus Christ anything, and settled for the steady drip of gold that was landing on the black metal underneath him. He stared at it intently, trying to remember the last time he had seen it.

♫ A voice from behind me reminds me Spread out your wings you are an angel Remember to deliver with the speed of — ♫

    The music snapped him back to reality. He looked up too quickly and swayed from the lack of equilibrium before steadying himself once more. The shush followed by immediate darkness sent a jolt of fright through the damaged angel. In his current state, he was having a hard time seeing anything really when the lights had been on but now- Now he felt almost blind.

    A faint smell of- what was that? Brimstone? No. It couldn’t be. Maybe humans were just into some weird perfumes these days. It wouldn’t be. Please God. Please just let it be weird cologne. Zadkiel wasn’t in the position to fight off a demon. Out of pure fear and a general inability to guard himself in any other way, the angel curled his wings around himself to created almost a secure cocoon. The golden tips of his white wings were singed and the white of the feathers seemed to be dirty with soot.

    “ Wwhhhh—— you all right there, mate? ”

    Zadkiel flinched at the noise and opened his feathers just slightly to look at the being in front of him. He had to stare for a few seconds to allow his eyes to adjust to the night around him. Once they had, he saw a tall and slender man, clad in black clothes with sunglasses on the bridge of his nose. Sunglasses? In the middle of the night? The only thing the angel could see at the moment that was colorful on the man was his fiery red hair.

    The angel opened his mouth to speak but all that came out was a heart-wrenching sob. Tears spilled out of his eyes and down his cheeks, creating little lines through the gold and soot on his face. Sobs wracked his broken body as he sank to his knees, his wings falling limp at his sides. He couldn’t stop the crying. He had held it in for so long. For before the Apocalypse that didn’t quite happen. Long before the Antichrist had even been born. There was no stopping them now.

    All he could think about was how uncomfortable this must have been for the creature across from him.

      There’s no mistaking it. Really NONE. The miserable shape before him, huddling bent and broken on the pavement in a self-embrace of frayed wings, actually is an angel. Fancy that - another split second of inattention, the slightest hesitation to slam his foot on the brakes, and the poor sod would’ve been roadkill. 

      In the manner of a true lover of cars, unswayed even by an emergency, Crowley cannot help but notice the freckles of gold splattered across the immaculate polish of his Bentley. ( Bless it. ) He doesn’t WANT the sight to stir anything within him, let alone that perpetually itchy part of his psyche he tends to keep locked away in an airtight chamber, courtesy of hell. But —-

      —- But you can destroy him, sizzles an ancient instinct with the voice of a flame. You could, easily. Right here. Send a bit of hellfire through those brittle bones, make him WISH you’d run him over. Admit it, fork-tongue. Confess that there’s no sweeter satisfaction than towering over one of theirs, seeing the wretched creature tremble in the headlights like a wounded rabbit. Useless. Helpless. Abandoned just as you are, and no more deserving of mercy. Finish it. Do it. Just once, fulfil your duty.

      A lump of thorns and thistles grows in his throat. The serpent swallows it with some effort, licks his dry lips. He knows without needing the confirmation of a horrified glance at his reflection that the yellow of his irises engulfs his eyeballs wholly by now, hungrily, monstrously. 

      {  Fuck this.  } With agonising gentleness, so as not to startle the last spark of life out of the outcast, Crowley crouches down beside him, balancing uncertainly on the balls of his feet. “ Er … ”          It’s like setting off a grenade, with the difference that the silence bursts around a sob rather than a bang. The sound is desolate and raw and drives itself straight through the demon’s heart. He knows the brand of tortured loneliness, is the whole truth of it. Shit. He’s NEVER  been meant to patch up wounds inflicted by hands so much more powerful than his own. Wouldn’t even know where to start, really - thousands of years, and he’s barely sorted out himself. 

      The street lies dark and empty amidst the dormant houses. It’s just him, and the ball of singed feathers, and the god-forsakenness that binds them together in a way that means TROUBLE. No heavenly ambulance careening ‘round the corner, no radiant cloud plonking out of the sky to collect its lost passenger. Oh, for Hell’s sake. The demon passes a fevered hand through his hair, curls his fingers into the sinewy flesh strung tautly along the back of his neck. Shit, shit, shit. What do I do?       Aziraphale. Aziraphale would know. And he’d say … what? Well, what would he say? Come on, THINK. Come up with something. Anything. Be useful. 

      “ Uh ... ” Where have those eyes gone, peering at him through a gap in the feathers? Would be nice to stare that quivering heap of misery in the face, at the very least. “ Hey, er ... look, can I ... drop you off? Anywhere at all? ” Drop. Not a great choice of words. Implies going DOWNWARDS - sensitive territory at the moment, he’s sure. A never-seen-before strangeness lurks in that soot pattern on the angel’s wings: they’re not burnt, not blackened by the soul-wrenching journey between Above and Below, but ... stained, smudged by a handwriting he recognised at first glance. Divine consequences. Unlucky bugger’s not Fallen, per se, not in the original sense. Perhaps he merely fell, lower-case f, and shattered both his halo and his limbs in the process. 

      “ I mean, can I, er ... give you a lift? ” he attempts, each word increasingly more desperate. Not much better, that - lift. As in going up. “ A ride?! ” There. A horizontal movement, also known as the only course left to those who get caught between the crossfires. THIS is what he calls empathetic language.