#and side note i enjoyed adam warlock. curious to see how he will show up later

[bi-wolverine]

i watched the new guardians of the galaxy movie and i actually liked it

[agerefandom]

Evenings of Eternity (Chapter 1)

Fandom: Good Omens (mostly book, but set in the present day with bits of tv show influence)

Words: 2,500

Summary: Crowley has been many things throughout the millenia, but he’s never been a child. He finds himself curious about the idea of childhood, and Aziraphale offers to help him explore that curiosity. (regressor!crowley, cg!aziraphale)

Content Warnings: brief mentions of angst/grief, discussions of k/nk in a neutral tone, passing reference to n$fw material.

Some Notes: I have two chapters of this story written, and they work well together as a stand-alone, but I plan to continue the series, so let me know if you have any requests for these two! There is no regression in Chapter One, only discussions of it. Also, I headcanon Crowley as asexual and genderfluid, and Aziraphale as gay and agender (as far as we can label non-human experiences of gender and sexuality). It has very little bearing on the story, but I thought I would mention it!

Read Chapter Two Here!

After several thousand years, Aziraphale thought he’d gotten used to Time, with all of its intricacies. But after the non-apocalypse, he found that it was moving differently.

Well, that wasn’t quite right: it all changed when he moved in with Crowley.

Moving in together seemed like the natural thing to do, after everything, and after a few months with no word from Upstairs nor Downstairs, they both warily agreed to try a kind of retirement. Settle down together as housemates who could enjoy the sunshine without worrying about being treasonous or hedonistic, who could call each other friends without looking over their shoulders for eavesdroppers.

So Aziraphale tucked away his bookshop into a little dimension where no one would find it, and the books wouldn’t gather dust. He packed all of his favourites, which was roughly half the shop, into a suitcase, and carried it out to where Crowley was leaning against the Bentley. Crowley helped him load it into the boot with a decent amount of grumbling, and that had been it for London.

Here on the South Downs, Crowley’s plants spread across their house. They were more verdant than ever, as Aziraphale’s disappointed looks had proven a more terrifying threat than anything Crowley had thrown at them. The plants mingled with the books, bloomed in the well-used kitchen, and lounged in the window frames, soaking up the occasional day of sunlight.

From the very start, Aziraphale found that living with Crowley was like discovering Earth all over again. He had started counting his new life not from the apocalypse-that-wasn’t, but from the date when they moved in together.

Reading felt different with Crowley curled in the chair beside him, flicking through news apps. Bathing felt different with Crowley humming along to a record in the living room. Nights felt different with Crowley sleeping through most of them, leaving the silence heavy around Aziraphale, and much lonelier than the nights had been in his bookshop, with the nightlife of Soho all around him.

The whole world was new twice-over, once from Adam’s decision to save the earth, and again from the mere proximity of Crowley.

Time was re-invented, not moving in the familiar decades that bled into centuries, but suddenly made into mornings, evenings, and late nights. The days came alive in a way that Aziraphale had never experienced, and soon enough he found himself lying down next to Crowley every night just for the pleasure of waking up to another lazy morning.

--

It was nine months and twelve days after they had moved in together, and Aziraphale was still counting the mornings in wonderment. Aziraphale was walking hand-in-hand with Crowley down a path that curved around a local playground. It was an unseasonably warm day, and all of the children had run out to the playground, their laughter filling the peaceful quiet as the two not-quite-men wandered through the sunlight.

Aziraphale took advantage of the busy surroundings to glance at Crowley, and was taken off-guard by his expression. Crowley was looking towards the playground with what could only be described as grief, raw and unguarded.

“Crowley?” Aziraphale said softly, squeezing his hand. Crowley jolted, clearly startled, and turned to Aziraphale with his best attempt at a smile.

“Yes, angel?”

Aziraphale was face to face with his own reflection in Crowley’s sunglasses. He looked very anxious in the dark glass. “What’s wrong?” he asked, deciding not to avoid the point.

“Nothing at all.” Crowley sounded dismissive, but his head turned back towards the playground even as he spoke. There was a moment of silence, filled with the screeching laughter of the children. “They’re very… happy.” His voice was a mix of disdain and something else that Aziraphale couldn’t quite decipher.

“Do you want one?” Aziraphale regretted the question once he’d asked it. Crowley seemed genuinely taken aback.

“One what?”

“Well, you know. One of them.” Aziraphale gestured towards the playground helplessly. “An offspring, a child.”

“A baby?” Crowley laughed so hard that his sunglasses slid down his nose, revealing his familiar golden eyes. “Hell no! Have you seen our plants, angel? Do you remember Warlock? You want to try out a kid of our own?”

“That’s not what I meant!” Aziraphale let go of Crowley’s hand so that he could cross his arms across his chest. “I just thought that you- that you maybe- you seemed sad,” he finished lamely.

“Sad?” Crowley shrugged, a movement that rolled through his entire body. “Nah.”

Aziraphale gave him a Look and waited.

Crowley lasted five seconds before he spoke again. “Curious, maybe. If anything.”

“Curious?”

“I mean, we’ve been a lot of things. There have been a lot of years. Insurance salesmen, and magicians, and orators, and knights, and all that sort.”

“We have.” Aziraphale still looked back on his magician years with pride, although he couldn’t say the same for knighthood. Too much heavy armour and fainting in the woods.

“But we’ve never been, well, kids.” Crowley’s tone was trying very hard to be casual and wasn’t doing a good job of it.

“That’s true.” A silence fell, with Aziraphale looking at Crowley inquisitively, and Crowley looking at a nearby tree to avoid meeting Aziraphale’s eyes.

Aziraphale was about to ask what Crowley meant, but just as he opened his mouth there was a sharp cry from behind them.

They spun around to see a young boy falling from a nearby tree, hitting a few branches on the way down before landing on the ground with a heavy thump. Both Aziraphale and Crowley started forwards, hands reached out for help, but the boy bounced to his feet before they had taken a full step.

The boy was laughing, and so were his friends above him. He rubbed his back where a root had definitely left a bruise, and then reached for the lowest tree-branch, restarting the climb without a second thought. Their laughter and shouts mingled with the others from the playground.

And there was that look again on Crowley’s face, that heart-wrenching loss and grief.

Aziraphale’s heart pressed against his chest as he reached for Crowley’s hand, stepping forwards to press a quick kiss against the not-quite-demon’s cheek. Aziraphale could tell that this was something that struck deep for Crowley, and even if he didn’t identify with Crowley’s fascination with a human childhood, he couldn’t overlook the desperate longing that he’d found in Crowley’s face.

Crowley smiled and leaned his forehead against Aziraphale’s for a moment. Slowly, they started walking again, leaving the playground behind as they looped back towards the cliffs and the seaside, the serious moment passing.

Still, Aziraphale reflected, if there was any way to give Crowley what he obviously wanted so much, Aziraphale would find it.

--

If there was one thing Aziraphale loved the internet for, it was research. Well, more accurately it was the online auction sites where he could sit for hours bidding on a new book, trying not to curse at the other bidders. He tried to leave the fast-moving internet to Crowley and the hip young people, but it had its uses from time to time.

Crowley gave an arched eyebrow, but didn’t comment when Aziraphale sat down in his reading-chair with a tablet instead of his usual hardcover. The two of them sat beside each other, together in their own spaces, as was their afternoon habit, and tapped away on their separate screens.

Aziraphale was curious: while he and Crowley had been young, they had come into existence before Earthly time was created, and before the idea of growth had really been developed. They had no childhood at all, but surely some humans had nostalgia for their childhoods. Something that they might want to recapture, something that Aziraphale could offer to Crowley.

Regression therapy was the first thing that Aziraphale wandered through pages of research on, but he wasn’t entirely sure how to use it. Crowley had no prior childhood mindset, no natural place of nostalgia or safety to return to. Neither of them, Aziraphale realized, had ever been ‘safe’ in the way a child was supposed to be, never cherished unconditionally nor given the freedom to make mistakes. More and more, he understood the longing that had etched itself into the lines of Crowley’s face on the path by the playground.

Age regression and nostalgia-centered communities gave Aziraphale a bit more to go on, more varied and personal approaches to what it meant to long for a childhood, what it looked like to recreate or reclaim it. Some of the information was definitely relevant, and he found himself bookmarking several pages for later.

Aziraphale made a side-track into age-play communities, but quickly wrote them off. Power dynamics in the bedroom weren’t foreign to him, but Crowley had never shown an interest in any sins of the flesh, not as an active demon and certainly not since the apocalypse. Aziraphale noted some of the nonsexual elements anyways, structures of power and control designed to give a stricter space in which someone could give up responsibility, knowing that punishment was only a foot-stomp away.

He found himself returning to the regression pages, flicking through the various things that people associated with childhood and recreating their childhood mindsets. In his own mind, he was making a list of ideas and questions to bring up whenever it came up again naturally. They had centuries, after all, and there was no rush.

“What are you smiling about over there?” Crowley asked.

Aziraphale glanced up, surprised to know that Crowley had been watching him, and more surprised to feel that his lips were indeed curled into a smile.

Aziraphale opened his mouth to reply and faltered, knowing that Crowley wouldn’t be happy to hear that Aziraphale had been thinking about buying him a snake plushie and wondering exactly how adorable Crowley would be if he fell asleep while holding said plushie.

Crowley’s eyebrows raised even higher at Aziraphale’s silence.

“Are you looking at smut in the living room, angel?” His tone was teasing, and Aziraphale frowned at him.

“No, I was-” Aziraphale sighed and decided to see how Crowley reacted to the truth. “I was researching some things, after what you said the other day.” He paused, and Crowley gestured for him to elaborate. “About being curious, and human childhoods. I had some ideas, but I wanted to look into it first.”

“What did you find?” Crowley asked. Again, that casual veneer over a deep well of mingled interest and anxiety. Aziraphale put his tablet down on his lap and folded his hands over it.

“There are a few approaches to it, from what I saw. Many of them are dependent on human minds and memories, which isn’t applicable to our situation. There are some that explore dynamics of control: finding comfort or pleasure in giving up control to a responsible adult figure, while the other party is forcibly maintained as a child.” Crowley’s mouth screwed up at that, and Aziraphale smiled. “I did assume that wasn’t a direction you wanted to go in. We’ve both had our share of being told what to be, I think.”

Crowley set his tablet down as well, tapping black nails against the metal on the sides. “Is that it?”

“No, I also found some things that were more promising. Communities where the person is more in control of their own regression, and the caregiver is optional. A person who is there to make sure they stay safe while they’re exploring the world as a child. Giving them snacks, and affection, and removing any dangers.”

“Oh.” Crowley’s nails continued tapping. “I don’t know what it would be like.”

“To try being a child?”

“I don’t know what children are supposed to be like.” Crowley glanced up at Aziraphale, and Aziraphale felt a renewed wave of gratefulness that he had stopped wearing his sunglasses in the house. The ability to see the anxiety in Crowley’s amber eyes was more intimate than anything Aziraphale had shared with someone else before. “I won’t be very good at it.”

“My dear, I don’t need you to be anything like a human child,” Aziraphale said. “You can be anything you want to be and I’ll be here for you, I’m sure you know that.”

Crowley dipped his head, directing a badly-suppressed smile towards his knees. “You’re a nightmare, angel. You should write Hallmark cards.”

“Hallmark cards were all your lot,” Aziraphale sniffed, knowing quite well that it was a lie. “I was being sincere.”

“Of course.” Crowley flipped his tablet carelessly onto the floor and scooted over on the couch, a wordless invitation that Aziraphale accepted as soon as it was made. He sat beside Crowley with their legs pressing together and looked at their reflection in the dark screen of the TV in front of them.

“Do you want to try it sometime? I could get you presents, if you wanted. And we could go for a walk around the backyard.” Their cottage was a good way from any other people, the rolling hills stretching between the houses. Aziraphale imagined walking with Crowley, making sure that he didn’t get too close to the cliff edges, and the thought made him smile again. He wouldn’t mind taking closer care of Crowley, if such a thing were permitted now and then. “Or you could try it by yourself, the first few times, and see how it feels.”

“No, I- I think I’d like to try it together. If you would want to.” Crowley bumped his shoulder into Aziraphale’s. “I think it would be easier with someone else sharing the, the same idea. So that I didn’t have to make it up myself from scratch.”

“Of course.” Aziraphale rested an arm on the back of the couch, and Crowley leaned against him. Aziraphale knew that if he reached for Crowley’s hand, his fingers would be chilled. Crowley was still a little bit cold-blooded, glad for every bit of body heat that he could steal from Aziraphale. “It would be my pleasure.”

“Hallmark card,” Crowley muttered again, and Aziraphale gave him a little kiss on the top of his head as punishment.

Unfortunately, Crowley didn’t seem to mind much at all.