#crowley & nine & maggie

[aziraphales-library]

Hi! I was wondering if you knew a fic where Muriel and Crowley are just like,, hanging out? Or if the soho gang (nina and maggie) comfort crowley or something? I really liked their dynamic in season two so I was wondering if there were any fics like that. thanks so much!!

Hello! We have a #crowley & muriel tag with a couple of posts. Here are some fics to add where Crowley spends time with Muriel, Nina, and Maggie...

The recovery of a bog body by Joseph_Amadeus (G)

On the third day of sitting in his car at the bottom of the Border Mires Crowley receives a prophetic vision — Dorothy Zbornak of The Golden Girls appears next to him, all gray curls and no-shit-taking attitude, and reminds him, as kindly as she can, that one shouldn't turn mourning into a way of life

Muriel And The Art Of Bookshop Maintenance by cosmic_day (G)

Muriel has taken over the bookshop, and is doing their best to run it, with helpful advice from Maggie and Nina, and occasional visits from the depressed demon who seems to come in a package deal with the bookshop. And for the first time in their life, they’re reading a book, a book called The Crow Road. All of it is new, and exciting, and wonderful, but it is quite a lot for one 37th class scrivener to handle.

Angels Like These by slapsticks (T)

They shifted back as Crowley stood up, smiling, "You know what? Forget about–all of this, Constable, I think I'll be going now." He declared, shoving the teacup into the startled officer's hands. "You know me, I've got errands, that terrible demon-y stuff," The cup and saucer clanked together as Muriel struggled to hold them. "But – you just arrived," They protested, almost sadly. "I'm..." The words died on their tongue. "Mhm, yeah-huh," Replied Crowley, hardly listening, or at least trying not to, sauntering towards the doors. "Nice seeing you – now, goodbye, for the forseeable future." "The forseeable future?" "For the forseeable future, Inspector!" in which crowley begins to form an unlikely bond with nina, maggie, and muriel ! birthday gift for my good buddy pal bro frank who basically wrote the last couple interactions with me and inspired the whole fic . i might be too dedicated. I Dont Care. happy birthday bro

In Nothing Else So Happy by Ducks Have Ears (NR)

"I count myself in nothing else so happy, as in a soul remembering my good friends." Richard II, Act 2, Scene 3 - Shakespeare Crowley had only ever had one friend and he was beginning to realise that maybe one friend simply wasn't enough. (Part two of the Crowley & Friends series)

That's What Friends Do by Barbarian_MP (NR)

Nina had found him, coming around the corner on her bicycle and at first not being at all surprised to see the car parked in front of her shop. The car seemed to be in that very spot on the daily. Little early for it to be there, sure, but maybe it had been there all night. She wasn���t all that worried about it until she noticed the car’s owner was inside, unmoving.

The F-Word by haleinedelail (T)

Post Series 2, how the living f**k is Crowley ever going to find solace or comfort? Whiskey? Coffee? Cursing? Antisocial behavior? Yes, all of the above. But HOPE is a puzzle that we all must put back together multiple times throughout our lives, and demons are no different. He will find it again, but it might take a village to get all the pieces together.

- Mod D

[gryffindraws]

i finally finished the comic i started back in october? i based it around the idea that aziraphale secretly planned the dance to confess to crowley <3 this comic was went though a few stylistic changes as i learned more about drawing the characters and the comic itself. so i apolgise for the weird continuity, this was genuinely just a fun little project tat turned into something I'm really proud of. as an aside, i will be running a dtiys for the last panel on my instagram @gryffin_draws sometime next week!

page text:

page one: Aziraphale: We're perfectly safe!

Crowley: No, we're not! We need to work out what to do

A: I have a plan. Besides... I think you're overestimating how much danger we're actually in

Page two: C: Angel, what are we doing?

A: Dancing? What does it look like?

C: Why the ball plot? Do Nina and Maggie really [need] a ball?

Page three: C: What do you mean? Who else would it be for?

A: Crowley

C: Angel?

Page five:

C: Did you set up a whole ball... to set us up?

A: Uh...

C: Ha! Hahaha! *Snort*

A: Stop laughing!

Page six:

C How can someone as clever as you be so silly?!

A: W-what? Oh, do stop teasing, dear?

C: Angel, you already had me.

page seven:

A: Do you mean it?

C: what have we been doing for 6000 years?

Page eight:

A: Dancing around each other?

C: Oh, you're such a bastard

A: My dear?

C: I guess there's only one thing left.

A: what's that?

Page nine:

C: Lead on, angel

[klikandtuna]

“Aren’t you scared?” he asks Az, one night when Maggie is about nine weeks pregnant.

Az is silent for a minute or two, one arm behind his head, the other hand tracing the freckles on Crowley’s shoulder. “Yes,” he admits at last. “But mostly because I simply want so badly for this to come about—for us to hold our child in our arms. As for Time… Darling, either it’s worked or it hasn’t, and either way it’s far too late to change our course of action. We have done the best that we could. We have acted with the most noble of intentions, following the path that seemed to have been laid out for us by Fate…and if Fate wished for us to do differently than we have done, then it really ought to have been more clear.”

—

Chapter 30, “This World of Mine,” is up! In which we dip a careful finger into the Pond of Time.

This penultimate chapter of Sky Clear Blue (rated E) is the longest in the story! If you’ve been waiting to jump in, now is the time — the final, brief chapter will post next Tuesday!

[noneorother]

There's a *puppet* show going on in the magic shop, and it looks awfully familiar...

(Insert unhealthy number of rewatches here) The magic shop in S2 is a real jewel box. There's so much symbolism and so many easter eggs, it starts to make your head spin. But I found something really weird going on with the puppets (or should I say angels) in the background...

Here's 1941 : you can see on the left what looks like closed red curtains, and a coatrack with puppets behind Crowley here.

Where am I going with this? Well, don't those puppets look familiar?

For my money, they really look like silly versions of Crowley and Aziraphale, with a few other familiar puppets hiding on the other side of the rack.

Now here's that exact same shot in the present. The red curtain falls away to reveal: An extremely symmetrical arrangement of truly weird puppets. The puppet in the glass case near the back is the same.*

It probably just looks like a creepy display, with our familiar Aziraphale and Crowley puppets, until I do this:

To me at least, this arrangement really looks like a depiction of a synaxis of the hosts of bodiless powers (i.e. angels) before Jesus. If you study European art history, you can't escape medieval religious iconography. It's kind of a big deal. I've put this example of Mary flanked by the nine ranks of Angels from a Cathedral in Exeter above, but you can find 100 examples of this kind of eerily symmetrical and hierarchical ranking of angels with god, Jesus, Mary etc... Before I break it down, you have to know that in the medieval period, and especially in religious art and iconography, the relative size and position of figures is WAY more important than realism or accuracy.

Obviously the costumes don't match one to one, but you get enough of a vibe that once you start seeing it you can't UNSEE it. The relationships of position and size here are fascinating to me. For one, what the hell are two Crowleys doing in a host arrangement in present day? He's not even an angel. In the second row we have archangels Gabriel, the flopsy twins Uriel and Michael, and a slightly larger Saraqael head in the center. Is Saraqael actually more important here? Technically Jim is still an archangel, so he gets the mirror of the Gabriel position, but as a sad clown wearing a tartan blanket. We also have two tiny dolls (not puppets) with star name tags, one keeled over wearing brown, and one sitting up and smiling, wearing blue. I've named them tentatively Adam & Jesus for now, because that's the vibe I'm getting, but who knows. Here's the usual position of the Jesus in a synaxis for comparison.

In the lowest row, we bizarrely have arguably the most powerful angel, The Metatron (shown here with a dark floppy overcoat hiding the fact the doll has no body) and what I can only imagine is Maggie with blonde hair and blue eyes? What? Now, the doll I'm calling God in the middle for the large size, and the fact their head is always cut off above the framing in the shot. God is clearly looming large over the rest of the host, but is in a lower hierarchy (with Muriel, Crowley & Aziraphale being fairly low ranking at this point in the show) and also has NO HANDS, a clown face and BLOOD SMEARS on their overalls. Yikes. If you take a look at the top-down shot of the dolls, you can see how they had to completely redo the god-doll's hair. This is a specific vintage English doll called "Bimbo the clown". You can see the original hair always has a fringe, and the yarn locks are usually much bigger. Compare with the new hair in the top view of the present-day shop.

Hey. Does that hair style look familiar to anyone?

Look. I don't want to go claiming something THIS insane from one doll's hairstyle in a background shot. I'm not trying to convince you this is irrefutable proof that there's some sort of storyline where Nina is actually God. But it's interesting they took the trouble to re-make the doll's hair (and costume) to look like Nina's, even when it is almost never seen, much less noticed. The fact that the god-doll is also a clown got me thinking of the Gabriel and Jim dolls, and that maybe there's another doll in the shop that should double with Bimbo? *Here's the only other doll with a name card in the magic shop in either time, the one in the glass case :

Even though we barely see it, we can tell it's wearing the same outfit as the 1941 magician. Why? If this one is the equivalent of the real god, and not the sad clown version, and if it's locked up in a box somewhere, unable to free themselves, is that why we haven't heard from them in season 2....? So many questions. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Thanks to @kimberleyjean and @embracing-the-ineffable for additional pictures.

[wordsinhaled]

Aziraphale returns to Earth, but his memory’s been wiped, like Gabriel’s was. He instinctively comes to the bookshop, but Crowley’s not there.

Muriel’s there, instead.

Muriel doesn’t really know what to do with him and Aziraphale… he doesn’t remember being Aziraphale. Just that something drew him inexorably to London, to this neighborhood, this street, this shop. He’s still wearing the bespoke new clothes he was given in Heaven, not a stitch of tan or tartan or vintage fabric anywhere on his person.

He’s subdued and pensive at first, robbed of his usual verve and lust for all of the beautiful things in life; and he doesn’t remember how he takes his tea, or even that this is his shop, actually—it couldn’t be. That’s absurd. He doesn’t believe Muriel that he is, in fact, an angel named Aziraphale. An angel owning a bookshop in Soho. Really, it couldn’t be any more fantastical if it came right out of a fantasy novel, could it?

Nina and Maggie come by, and when they see Mr. Fell’s condition Muriel very, very narrowly convinces them not to take Aziraphale to A&E right then and there.

And then Crowley shows up.

He’d stayed away, for a bit, at first. He’d wanted to stay away for always, maybe wish himself to another star entirely (not Alpha Centauri, that one was utterly out of the question, thank you very bleeding much). But being in his new, empty, hyperminimalist flat with only his plants for silent company is leagues worse than any torture hell has ever thrown at him before. It doesn’t really bring him the joy it used to. If he’s honest, which he would prefer not to be, nothing much does; but maybe that’s just what life as a demon is supposed to be. Joyless and colorless.

And so he’s taken to coming by; only for a bit, only about once a week if he’s very disciplined. Someone’s got to make sure Muriel hasn’t sold any of the books, don’t they?

And. Well. It hasn’t been that long, really, since Aziraphale left. Sometimes Crowley just walks up and down the street. Orders a nine-shot espresso from Nina. Visits Maggie’s shop, takes a listen through the records she keeps aside for him even though he’s never asked her to do it. But in the end, he finds himself back at the threshold of the bookshop, pulled there like iron to a lodestone. It’s all very… regular, very boring, very mind-numbingly bland and dull without Aziraphale there with him, and yet… it’s the only place Crowley’s found ever that feels remotely like home.

So. Crowley shows up.

But this time he looks through the window and almost discorporates on the spot, because that’s Aziraphale. That’s Aziraphale standing in the bookshop, lit gold by an afternoon sunbeam.

It’s worse, somehow, seeing him right there within reach, than it was simply remembering him. It feels a bit like being crushed slowly in a vise: a vise with great big spikes in it for good measure. Aziraphale is back. Back on Earth. Back in the bookshop, and he didn’t even look for Crowley, didn’t even try to find him—

(Of course he didn’t, Crowley reminds himself, because he’s not on their side any more. And there it is. There’s the lick of bitter, blunted anger he’s become used to, twisting round his heart alongside the aching, terrible grief he wishes he were too proud, or too disaffected, to still feel.)

He almost doesn’t go in. It would be better, not to go in, wouldn’t it? It would. He can pretend to himself, to everyone, that he’s there to look in on Maggie, or to pop into the brand new plant shop just opened a few doors over, he really has been eyeing the gorgeous Persian carpet flower hanging in the bay window. He doesn’t have one of those—

But blast it all, it’s almost like he’s summoned her because suddenly Maggie’s there with him on the pavement, and she’s a lovely girl, really, on most days, only he wishes she wouldn’t sound so distraught on this particular day, when Crowley’s already suffocating. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she’s saying. “It’s Mr. Fell. He’s back. And—I think he needs you.”

Crowley… well, he scoffs all the way to the shop door, scowls at the cheerful jingle of the bell, scoffs harder still as the door creaks shut behind him. It’s fitting that Aziraphale’s standing now turned away from the entrance, all the better not to see him skulk in. Aziraphale’d made perfectly plain that he doesn’t need him at all.

But all of Crowley’s thoughts go right out of his ridiculous, hopeless, besotted head the moment Aziraphale turns round to look at him.

He looks…

The tailored clothes he’s wearing are doing a surprising amount of wonders for him, actually. That’s Crowley’s first thought, he’s a bit ashamed to admit. The cool grey silk of the suit makes Aziraphale’s eyes an impossibly bright, crisp blue, or maybe it’s that Crowley’s forgotten somehow how blue they always were.

Crowley’s second thought is that he hates how much he’s missed him. He hates how, already, his shoulders are dropping down from where they’ve been perpetually scrunched up about his ears for weeks, just at being in the same room. He can’t stand the treacherous lump rising in his throat and the way the scent of violets follows Aziraphale everywhere and really, he’s got to thank someone in this hope-forsaken universe for the paltry sanctuary of his bloody sunglasses, because...

“Oh,” Aziraphale says to him. “Hello. I’m—”

“Aziraphale,” Crowley breathes, a little wetly.

“—Ezra,” Aziraphale finishes.

Crowley blinks. He takes a swaying step backwards. “…Ezra,” he says. And a part of him, see, a part of him is still livid, it really is, still bruised and raw and curled in on itself somewhere deep inside like a wilting blossom. But another part of him is—is confused. Aziraphale hadn’t chosen him. He knows that. He can come to terms with that. But surely… surely they aren’t going to be like this, now.

“Well, yes,” Aziraphale says, “of course. Ezra Fell. That is my name, isn’t it? And this! This is my shop. Naturally.” He smiles at Crowley beatifically. That smile, at least, seems unchanged, if the way Crowley’s chest seizes at the sight of it is anything to go by.

“Right,” Crowley says. “…Naturally.”

“And how may I help you, sir? Is there a particular title you’re looking for? Though I must tell you quite up front, I’m told I dislike selling books, but you might, if you’re very careful, be permitted to peruse them on the premises. You do look like a nice fellow, after all.”

And it’s then—only then (too late, he thinks, and isn’t he always too late?)—that Crowley begins to realize something is very, very, very wrong with Aziraphale.

[vidavalor]

Do you have anything on the way Aziraphale says pennies in the scene when he gets the record from Maggie? I love your posts and saw that you wrote about that scene. It might be a dumb thing to focus on but thought you might have some ideas. Thank you!

Hi there! 💕 Hope you're having a fun day today. Thanks for the kind words & the ask. I'm glad you like the posts. It's not a dumb thing to focus on-- there's no such thing. I'm tickled to have this question, in particular, as I almost included something about Aziraphale's use of pennies in the Shostakovich meta you mentioned but left it out of that since the coin-related wordplay is really its own topic.

On "eight pounds and seventy-five pennies" and coining a phrase or two (groan 😂) in Ineffable Husbands Speak...

In the Bible, a penny is a denarius, which is...

...an ancient Roman, silver coin.

The denarius was worth ten asses. That coin, in singular form, was called an as and, while it had nothing to do with human posteriors or donkeys, that is definitely not going to stop Crowley and Aziraphale from working that homophone. It's worth mentioning probably that the bookshop is referred to in Demon's Guide to Angelic Beings Who Walk the Earth as Angelic Embassy X and the Roman numeral for ten is X. Things relating to the letter X or the number ten = the bookshop.

So, a penny is a denarius and a denarius was worth ten asses, meaning: Aziraphale is sure this record is getting him some love in the bookshop later with his redheaded, ancient Roman, silver coin here because he tells Maggie that the symphony is actually worth eight pounds and seventy-five of those denarius pennies. Shostakovich is going to get them three-quarters of the way there. 😉

The amusing part of the bookshop's Heaven name being Angelic Embassy X is that it seems very evident that, even though that means ten in a human way, there were not nine, other embassies before it. X is a Roman numeral that can be used as a kind of filler as well-- an indicator of something that is first of its kind or for an unknown. The latter of those would be funny with the way that they use know/knowing with the Biblical connotation intact as an euphemism for being lovers. Angelic Embassy X keeps them unknown to Heaven but the word contains know and known and would also then mean that in their speak as well.

It is also because of what else it stands for that Crowley and Aziraphale likely picked it:

X, an independent variable in mathematics...

X, sometimes the indicator of a collaboration in artistic endeavors; X, as in adult content; and X, as in part of XO, the hugs and kisses sign off in a letter, email or text. The bookshop itself is made up of Os-- built in the round with a compass theme. The compass theme and its directions, plus Crowley's use of them in this same part of the Demon's Guide entry add to the idea that Angelic Embassy X/the bookshop is all X's and O's-- the place for hugs and kisses and all the stuff of life to be had in peace, made funnier by the fact that they're using a very common form of symbolic language to describe it. Further suggestion of this is Bildad's "XO" joke:

Denarius also sounds a bit like dinner, us, which fits the whole sneaking around, hiding Crowley's presence in the shop after dark thing, which Crowley also referred to as nightlife in 2.06 (when describing Alpha Centauri-- the plan, not the planets-- as being a "couple of decent planets. No nightlife to speak of.") The words containing the word us and the etymology of dinner and to dine are whole other topics that overlap with lunch, breakfast, fast and dangerous in their speak. It'd be going in a different direction from your ask, though, so we'll save that for another post.

Aziraphale talking about pennies is also not the first time that money-- including the denarius-- has been used in wordplay in the series. Given that Aziraphale is a business person and that Crowley is the local black market, what a business usually spends, takes in, makes as change, and seeks, in general, to make, is money. A lot of words related to types of modern money have linguistic origins in the same place that Crowley and Aziraphale's sexual relationship had some origins-- ancient Rome-- which is likely why they use a lot of words with ties to it.

It is, one might say, a bit romantic to do so.

Crowley uses a reference to the denarius back in S1 in his response to Aziraphale in the Seeds of Destruction scene, where we see a word-within-word reference to the denarius in a money-themed sentence, using the modern monetary term that evolved from denarius:

the dinar.

Ordinary: Contains or and dinar. Or is homophonic for oar-- what one uses to row a boat, in keeping with their whole fish and the sea sexual metaphor. To respond to Aziraphale wording him with an entire paragraph of very hot Ineffable Husbands Speak with a reference to the mess they're talking about on the surface being just "an ordinary cock-up" is actually to pretend to sound unaffected while saying in their speak that Aziraphale's got this ancient Roman silver coin ready to get into Aziraphale's pockets at the first available opportunity.

Other uses of ordinary and extraordinary, the latter of which includes the X of the above Angelic Embassy X/ten meaning:

Crowley doesn't "feel anything out of the ordinary" when Aziraphale starts going on about flashes of love...

...and when he wants to go home and shag each other senseless in 1.01, he says he's in the mood for...

...quite extraordinary amounts of alcohol.

Money, which Crowley specifically used in the Seeds of Destruction scene as we noted above, is also a word rooted in ancient Rome that ties to other bits of wordplay we've looked at before related to the mint tea, Maggie and Hell, and also a very Good Omens-y bit of Greco-Roman mythology.

Money comes from the Old French moneie, off of the Latin moneta, which meant both money and a mint where coins were first produced in ancient Rome. Moneta is either or both the title or surname (it's unclear & differs between stories) of the Roman goddess Juno. The grounds for a temple made to worship Juno was where coins were minted in Rome and, some speculate, where they might have also been stored.

One of the stories of Juno-- whose Greek equivalent is the goddess Hera-- has some interesting ties to how Good Omens describes Crowley's fall and might be a mythological story to which they are alluding. There are a lot of interpretations of these myths and some really terrible misogyny in the way that Juno and Hera are are treated by a lot of scholars but if we just take the skeleton of the myth itself and look at that, you'll be able to see something of a comparison here to Crowley's story.

The story goes that Juno and Zeus, the god of lightning, had a son, Vulcan. [The etymology of Vulcan is muddled & not worth rehashing here.] Juno rejected Vulcan as her child and tossed him off of Mount Olympus, causing him to have this very long, horrific fall that crashed him down below the surface of the Earth. This is part of the origin story across different Greco-Roman myths for volcanoes, as Vulcan would wind up being the god of fire and an artist who eventually would harness the power of fire to invent metalworking and blacksmithing as a result. Vulcan's fall-- both the psychological trauma of it and the physical pain of it-- left him broken and paralyzed him from the waist down.

He was rescued by a sea nymph who brought him to her underwater grotto and healed him. They lived there together for years, with Vulcan making art and jewelry out of combining together his knowledge of fire with pearls (the product of mollusks, like oysters) and other jewels of the sea.

He would also share the products of that knowledge with others and taught them to wield the elements of fire and water the way he does.

He also would make the Crowley-esque thrones and chariots.

Later on, Juno came to learn that he was her son and sought to have a connection with him, only now that he was renowned. Vulcan laid a trap for her by making her an ornate throne which, when she sat in it, held her trapped for a few days until her husband, Zeus, could be bothered to intervene. Zeus negotiated with Vulcan and told him that if he freed his mother, he could marry the goddess of love, Venus (Aphrodite, in Greek mythology.) Vulcan said fine and gave up his mom and mom-related trauma so he could go marry Venus, even if the myth gets a tragic ending of sorts, since it is said that raging fires would erupt whenever she was unfaithful to him.

So, if instead of a baby rescued by a sea nymph who acted like a mom to the child, you spun this around a bit and looked at it as Juno is God, Crowley is Vulcan and has been implied to have been a throne/dominion when he was an angel, the drop from Mount Olympus into the volcano is Crowley's fall, the paralysis is metaphorical for the anorgasmia story that is the turnip & the inkwell metaphor and which we looked at in Fish, and Aziraphale is both the sea nymph and Aphrodite/Venus, with the bookshop as their underwater grotto, then there are some allusions to the myth in Crowley and Aziraphale's story.

Aphrodite, for what it's worth, is also the goddess who is almost always drawn naked on an oyster shell and whose name is the root of the word aphrodisiac, speaking, as we have been, of ancient Rome.

Zeus is also the father of Persephone and the other Roman myth to which Crowley's story appears to be alluding is Hades and Persephone. You can follow the link in the mint paragraph above if you have not read that post and would like to read more about that.

Adding to this is what little we know of the literal part of Crowley's fall, which he described as "a million-light-year freestyle dive into a pool of boiling sulphur." Sulphur is mined from volcanoes and referred to by miners as "The Devil's Gold."

On a more humorous note, the denarius was eventually replaced in ancient Rome by another coin called-- I kid you not-- the antoninianus.

So, Aziraphale is standing there in Maggie's record shop, with his symphony with the Saint Anthony's Sermon to the Fishes joke in it, silently cracking himself up over the etymology of money-themed words tying to Rome and all that naked Anthony that Aziraphale knows this record is about to get him later on.

The history of the penny in the U.K. versus in America also makes the fact that Aziraphale said pennies in his sentence interesting.

While the penny has been a form of money in both places for a long time, how it is measured and what it is worth changed in the U.K. in 1971 when the British decimalized the pound. This meant that the penny became worth 1/100th of a pound, in the same way that a penny in the United States is 1/100th of a dollar. Changing how the British pound was measured was an act of government in the U.K. that aimed to make it more like America, which probably bemuses Crowley and Aziraphale and led to Aziraphale's love of the word pennies.

Even though America itself is far from perfect (like every country they use symbolically), America equates to freedom and liberation so Aziraphale probably was amused to use a word that relates to a moment of the British admitting for once that the Americans had done something better than they had. This is also because there's a real 'Heaven is the British Empire' parallel happening for them and in the show as a whole. As a result, Crowley and Aziraphale have a tendency to align themselves with countries that have complicated histories with England (The U.S., Scotland, the love for France, etc..).

(I would argue that while we probably have a good system of measuring money over here in the States, the rest of the world has measuring things like temperature far more under control and we desperately need to start following all of you on that.😂)

Crowley and Aziraphale, though, have a thing about using words related to forms of measurement that are used in America rather than other parts of the world. Despite being English-presenting beings who have lived in England for forever, they both use the word mile, for instance, instead of kilometers. The dashboard on The Bentley is even set up to show miles instead.

(I do always think it funny that Aziraphale says "ninety miles per hour" in this scene. It is the correct way to phrase how it's measured in the United States-- miles per hour, or mph-- but it is more common when speaking aloud to say: "ninety miles an hour." Aziraphale and his fussy formality-- intentionally or unintentionally-- is saying the American thing in the most English way possible and it's very cute.)

Part of the use of mile is probably also linked to its etymology being tied back to ancient Rome, which is also reflective of the influence of the Roman government and its system of laws, etc., on the founders of America. There's a bit of a direct thru-line historically between the two that also aligns with Crowley and Aziraphale's own history together and shows up in their speak.

There's also the fact that mile, as we looked at in another meta, comes from mil, which means one thousand. Aziraphale said "seventy-five pennies" to Maggie, which is 750 denarius-- 3/4ths of the way to a mil, in the etymological sense. Part of the joke there is that the homophone of mil is mill, a word that is at the cross-section of several different categories of words within their speak.

A mill is the machinery used to grind up flour for bread and other dough (see: the proofing banter in 1941 below) and it is also a factory where textiles are made (a bit of the seamstress-related language at work in there). Amusingly?

It also has a direct connection back to coins.

In terms of minting coins, to mill a coin is to mark the edges of coins with protective ribbing as a way of helping them to keep their luster and not disintegrate over time. To rib is to affectionately tease, all made funnier by the fact that these two have a certain history with some ox ribs and a bit of a focus on the edges of, ah, coins.

Adding to this a bit is the etymology of the word coin itself.

It comes from the Latin cuneus, which meant a wedge (which contains edge.) In ancient times, a wedge-shaped tool was used to form designs onto metal when making coins. This actually relates back over to the music theme of this post, as we'll look at below. The Latin cuneus has etymological links to cunnus, the basic Latin word for the vulva, and-- unsurprisingly to women everywhere lol-- an archaic, derogatory slang word for a woman that is basically equivalent to (and an ancestor of) negative use of the word cunt today. The word cunninlingus is from cunnus plus the Latin lingere, which meant to lick. The word coin is from the same roots as getting your garden box watered, and contains the Old French coi and its modern English-used spelling of coy, meaning demure or modest now but originally from the Latin quietus, meaning free, calm, peaceful, and restful.

Plus, coy's homophone... the koi fish. 🐟 They live in water gardens and koi ponds-- see: pounds and its connection to pond-- and are a form of carp.

A wedge is also just another name for the musical term of a dash, which is a direction in musical notation that signals that the note is to be played in a staccato manner. Staccato manner is notes played with emphasis but separately and with pauses in between. It's edging described in the language of music.

In modern musical notation, a dash actually refers to a note to be played staccatissimo, which is just very, very staccato. A dash is also the longer signal in Morse Code, making it also another reference to coded language. Aziraphale's magic words are actually all of the parameters of their hidden language spoken *in* their hidden language-- likely why he's repeating them to Crowley at every turn in 1941. A mark used to signify the notes to be played as staccato or staccatissimo is called a pike, which is also a type of fish, and is one part of the wordplay in the word Armageddon.

Within Armageddon lies the word ged, which is a term in heraldry for a type of fish-- the pike-- used to make visual, language-related puns on coats of arms. Various heraldry-inspired crosses and coats of arms are in the background in different scenes in the series.

Anyway, we just went in a big circle, so back to the "eight pounds and seventy-five" bit of the pennies line...

The number eight is a homophone for the word ate, which Crowley is referencing in a scene that parallels this one but took place in 1941:

Crowley and Aziraphale are wording each other a bit in this scene and here's an use of another monetary word with a Rome-to-America history-- cent-- in percent. Crowley uses eighty here which is, phonetically: ate, tea and is referring to their use of food and drink as sexually euphemistic in a scene in which the two of them are using improving (i'm proving/proofing), proving, and proof in ways that refer to both the measurement of ethanol content in alcohol and the activation of yeast or a fermentation process causing a rise in bread and other dough as an arousal metaphor. Probably made more evident when you look at Crowley's "lovely bottles of joy" comment above with the knowledge that the original definition of joy was actually sexual ecstasy.

So, Maggie innocently says that Aziraphale's pile of records- the only one to which he's given any attention being the Crowley-linked Shostakovich symphony-- would cost him "eight pounds", a phrase that is sort of funny in Crowley and Aziraphale speak, since eight is both a number and a reference to food and pound has a history ripe for the wordplay picking.

Pound comes from the same etymological roots as pond, giving it a tie to their bodies of water/fish metaphor. It's slang for fucking and also originally meant pint, a form of measurement that is also the name for an ale or a beer, which is alcohol, more on which can be found in the link.

At one point, the pound, in monetary form, was specifically a way to measure only a pile of silver... just, ya know, while we're chuckling at Crowley-related things. He even refers to himself using silver to Shax in S2:

Additionally, the word pound as a form of measurement came from the Latin word libra, which also meant a balance of scales and is from where the zodiac constellation comes.

Even scales in Ineffable Husbands Speak is also funny-- as scales are a musical term referring to a range of notes and also what fish have. In the magic shop scene in 1941, Aziraphale flirts with Crowley by way of a fish joke, saying he's looking for "something with scale, something climactic." (Scale also contains a form of alcohol in ale.)

Even, referring to a sense of balance in their fish world, and Aziraphale uses the word even with Maggie in this same mash of even scales/libra-related words, telling her that, where value is concerned, there is a balanced exchanged in her rent for the records and that they can "call it even."

Even is also part of the wordplay around seventy, in "seventy-five pennies", as it's one of the words contained in that word, along with seven.

Seven has been regarded as a lucky, magical and/or perfect number and there are a variety of reasons that could be all applicable here and in the overall symbolism of the show. Others have looked at it and it could be its own post. I think one of the funniest ones from an Ineffable Husbands Speak perspective, though, is that seven is the root of septentrion, which refers to the seven stars of the rather innuendo-laden-in-name The Big Dipper in The Great Bear, which has real language of The Dark Priesthood of Ancient Mu-type vibes. The word septentrion comes from a mashup of the Latin septem (meaning seven), triones (meaning-- I'm not kidding-- plow ox) and the root of terere, which means to rub.

One wonders if, in the Good Omens universe, Crowley and Aziraphale might have possibly had a hand in influencing the naming of constellations. 😂

In the opening of Good Omens, God says that The Earth is a Libra-- a phrase that could be a whole exploration on its own but which I thought I'd also mention in here since we're talking about the pound and scales.

Five in the "seventy-five pennies"-- especially with the way that Aziraphale emphasized the "iiiiive" part of it a little-- seems likely to me to just be the fact that it includes I've, which then makes "I've pennies" out of the end of what he's saying. Pennies as denarius-- bookshop sex with Crowley, Aziraphale's favorite ancient Roman silver coin, is vavoom sordid/sorted, thanks to this record-- but also that within pennies lies the very old penis euphemism of the pen.

Aziraphale and Crowley are using pen and ink euphemistically in a bunch of scenes-- Crowley's response to Aziraphale's French (the gardener doesn't have a... pen); the "tartan's stylish" on the park bench in S1 (stylish from stylus/pen); the turnip & the inkwell, etc..

Additionally, a pen is an animal enclosure so the bookshop, full of literal pens and books penned by others, is a pen in the sense that it's a dwelling for these ancient, word-nerdy dorks to get their animal on.

"Eight pounds and seventy-fiiiiiive pennies" is Aziraphale joking over how metaphorically (for now lol) hard getting the record has him and his excitement for the eight pounds' worth of fun he and Crowley are going to have that evening over it. Or would have if not for, ya know, the rest of S2.

"I know what I'll be doing for the next twenty-one minutes."

Next, actually comes from nigh and words relating to it that mean near or soon, as opposed to referring to the very next immediate moments. It also has links to Anglican nesta, and sounds like nest (which did emerge otherwise independent of next.) Theoretically, it can refer to the then-near future in their nest that is the bookshop.

Twenty, from the Old English twegan, meaning two, and tig, meaning a group of ten. Twenty-one = the two of them (he and Crowley) are a group of ten (the Angelic Embassy X group), and this record is going to be quite the muse for getting them to be literally one for a bit later on.

While making these coin jokes, Aziraphale is buying a symphony-- a bit of musical score. A score to help the angel score with his ancient Roman silver coin over here 😂... not that he needs any help in that department but a little music never hurt.

Music, from the Greek mousike techne, meaning the art of the Muses. In ancient Greece, the Muses were the goddesses of the arts and science, and considered by people to be the sources of knowledge that inspired all works of art, literature, poetry, music, and scientific experiments.

The wordplay in Crowley's line in 1.01 is that, in that moment, Mozart = Most art. The line is really "Because most art's one of ours," a reference to the two of them as akin to the Muses and, also, to being two beings whose own muses are the humans and their scientific and artistic endeavors.

From muse also comes the word amuse... and what could be better than something that both makes you crack up laughing but also turns you on? Crowley in 1827 had certainly found the perfect bit of amusement for Aziraphale, as Aziraphale recounted in their speak in his journal:

Dear Diary,

Last month, Crowley and I both happened to be in Edinburgh and he insisted that I visit a local graveyard at midnight. He said he had come upon something [ahem lol] that might amuse me...

Here is where we can also note that during The Meeting Ball That Was Totally Not About Maggie and Nina, Aziraphale had Gabriel circling with trays of free, tiny versions of the sometimes more dinner-sized vol au vents, which would be classified as an amuse-bouche-- literally: "to please the mouth"-- the French term for an appetizer selected by and often crafted by the chef out of thought that it would be an inspiring appetizer that would compliment the meal still to come.

So, Aziraphale's original intention was to woo Crowley with the music of that particular performance of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5 and obtained the score on record to do so. The term score comes from its original definition of keeping tally. Score, from the late Old English scoru, meaning twenty-- thought to be because tallies of things with large numbers were thought to be done in batches of twenty...

...or, in Ineffable Husbands Speak, two people living one, shared existence, who make up the group of ten/X.

Or, they would have been if not for, you know, an unexpected, if very amusing-- in all definitions of the word-- arrival...

There's Shostakovich in the South Downs in your future, Crowley, just hang in there...

[returnsandreturns]

“Thank you, my love—so sweet of you,” Aziraphale says, when Crowley holds open the door for him in the coffee shop, and Crowley feels a layer of him melt off.

“In public?” he hisses, clinging to his arm.

“What did you do to him?” Nina asks, grinning from behind the counter. “Are you getting two getting a bit naughty this morning?”

“I just say nice things about him,” Aziraphale says, “and he acts like I’ve spouted off the most obscene verse right in his ear.”

“Have you tried calling him a good boy?” Nina asks. “Or girl—they’ve both got a nice ring to them.”

“It’s nine o’clock in the AM,” Maggie calls, from back in the office. “God is listening.”

“She probably isn’t,” Aziraphale says, shrugging a little, smiling when he sees Crowley slumped down and fuming in his chair in an attempt to hide the fact that he has butterflies doing aerial tricks in his stomach. “Do you want me to stop, dear?”

“No,” Crowley huffs, mouth a thin line.

“You used to get cross with me when I said you were kind, you know,” Aziraphale says, taking his hand and squeezing it gently.

“That’s when I was a demon, y’know, by trade,” Crowley says, squeezing his hand back, sitting up a little. “I’m a free agent now. I can indulge your little compliments all I want.”

“Little compliments,” Azriphale echoes, affectionately, turning Crowley’s hand over to press a soft kiss to his palm before saying, low, just for him, “You’re a very good girl, Crowley.”

Crowley very, very slowly puts his head down on the table.

“Ngk,” he says, hoarsely, a little smoke coming out of his ears.

[brainwormcity]

Wait, did anyone even curse in series 2? 🧐 The only one that comes to mind is Mrs. Henderson and it's censored.

Edit: totally forgot that Maggie and Nine both cursed. Missed opportunity though for Crowley to ask Gabriel "what the fuck are you doing in this bookshop?" And Gabriel to respond "I am fucking dusting" without even knowing what it means.

[queenofthearchipelago]

We've been speculating that there's timeline nonsense going on in season 2. That's a main facet of the Sideburn Theory. But it never made any sense to me until maybe just now.

I'll have to rewatch it later to see if it actually makes any sense, but what if in the Original Timeline, Crowley wasn't there for any of this?

What if he was off doing something else and when Aziraphale called, he didn't pick up? Which leads to Aziraphale doing everything on his own, taking care of Gabriel. He takes the train to Edinburgh. The angels and the demons still come to the bookshop. The Metatron still gives Aziraphale the offer. He thinks of Crowley, how dangerous this all is and how much worse (and how much better) it would have been if Crowley had been there.

Crowley shows up at the end, to say No, let's just run away together. Don't go to Heaven. What are you even talking about? What happened?

And Aziraphale goes to Heaven anyway. Leaving a heartbroken Crowley behind.

And what if that Original Timeline Crowley, this being who can stop time, realizes he can reverse it? He goes back to a few days ago, when Aziraphale was still on Earth, he sets up a meeting with Shax who he has found out is his replacement. He wants to talk about what's going on these days.

"What's even the point of it all?"

And because he's in the car when the phone rings, and he was headed to Aziraphale's anyway, he's there to help.

"How can I help you?"

He sees Gabriel in the bookshop, he freaks out. Oh, so THIS is what happened. Get him out of the bookshop, Aziraphale doesn't leave.

Doesn't work. He gets kidnapped by Beez, who tells him about Extreme Sanctions and what Aziraphale got himself into. Crowley realizes he has to follow this path a bit longer. He goes back, apologies for saying Aziraphale would be doing this alone. They work together. They protect him.

Eventually, Aziraphale wants to go to Edinburgh. He wants to take Crowley's car. Not the train. Aziraphale reaches out to touch the car, Crowley slaps his hand away.

"The Bentley is MY car."

But he lets Aziraphale go. He protects Gabriel, he protects the bookshop, he knows they're coming for Aziraphale. But the angel isn't here. Crowley is nervous, but also relieved.

And then Aziraphale comes back. They plan the Street Meeting. Crowley still doesn't know how he's gonna try and keep Aziraphale on earth. Aziraphale doesn't know what's going on with Gabriel.

And then Nina talks to Crowley about love. Crowley realizes, that's it. Maybe I can just love him enough to stay.

The battle happens. Crowley figures out what happened to Gabriel. He lets the Metatron talk to Aziraphale because that was inevitable anyway. Nine and Maggie tell him to tell Aziraphale he loves him. Crowley realizes that would help, in every way that would be good.

He's nervous but he says the words.

Or, he tries to.

Aziraphale still wants to go to Heaven

What? Even now? After I supported you these past days? After we survived this together? After 6000 years? After everything? This is still the choice you make?

So Crowley tells him he loves him, as best as he can.

It doesn't work.

He kissed him.

It doesn't work.

Nothing worked.

Aziraphale goes to Heaven anyway.

And this time, Crowley lets the time tick forward

[chocolatecoffeeshot]

Boop! Inspired one-shot | AO3 LINK

Fluff with a boop of angst (prank)

Summary: Azirpahle wakes up to an empty bed and a missing Crowley with no proper explanation. Has Crowley been dragged back to hell or is it something else BOOP ME A KISS

Aziraphale woke to his left arm and toes shivering. This shouldn’t have been possible at 6am as Crowley was supposed to be curled up into them. Maybe he was just downstairs, panic rose in Aziraphale’s chest, maybe hell had pulled him back. But oh, there was a note.

“Out to get some fresh air” scrawled on it. This was usual as Crowley woke up at only after 10, like a bank (nothing like a serpent) and the first thing he did was saunter over Nina’s for his espresso shots. Then he would get back a cupcake or a pastry for Aziraphale, occasionally a brownie to split, as a midday snack. Aziraphale’s waddled up to the window pulling the blanket around him and peeked to the blinds and saw the Bentley. “Maybe it is an early morning stroll after all.” Aziraphale cast out his sense and sensed Crowley near St. James. So he fell back to bed.

At nine he went over to Nina’s himself, as Crowley was yet to return. “Hi, Aziraphale, where’s your thin dark duke today?”, Nina greeted cheerily. “Crowley went out for a morning walk today, I rather wondered he might have made his way here after that”, Aziraphale said hopefully. He hadn’t been able to sense Crowley after he’d woken up. More importantly Bentley was missing. “No, not come this way. Wasn’t expecting him to as yet. Say you want to order something and wait here? Camomile perhaps?” she offered. “Oh a chamomile sounds rather lovely”, Aziraphale took his order and settled by a corner seat and went through his list of why now would be good time to panic about Crowley’s absence.  Nina meanwhile got him a vanilla frosted cupcake, which accidentally made unfortunate contact with his nose on Nina’s careless account. Very lightly but yet. “Oh I’m so sorry!!” Nina yelped and offered up a tissue instantly. “It’s alright, I’ll just head back anyways I think. Can’t seem to sit around” he gave a polite smile. “I’ll let you know if I see Crowley”, Nina called. “Thanks Nina” Aziraphale grumbled and made his way to the records shop.

“Crowley did come in today yes, asked for a CD, and left”, Maggie said. “Rather fast, no time to chat he said”. “He got a new CD?”, Aziraphale was surprised. This day kept talking weird turns. Too weird. Something was not right anywhere. “We’ll I don’t think he particularly browned for one, just picked up the first of the rack, really.” “I see”, Aziraphale muttered. There was no rhyme nor reason for this behaviour. “Mr. Fell don’t mind me but I ought to…”, Maggie reached out and brushed her finger over his nose. “There, there was a leaf stuck”, she said with a pursed smile. “Ah” Aziraphale gave it a few more stern brushes to ensure any remaining stickiness was gone.“There was a frosting incident.” Maggie’s giggles were dangerously close to spilling out so Aziraphale considered it as his cue.

Outside the door of his bookshop lay a tiny black cat, mewling it's guts out. Aziraphale crouched down to examine it, perhaps a miracle was needed. The second he touched it, the cat shot out his paws, smacked him on his nose and shot out. “For God’s sake would you leave my nose alone!!!” Aziraphale yelled in despair. His Crowley was nowhere to be found and his nose was close to being battered! This was the worst day, since since .... “Angel? Issss that you?”, a voice hissed out from inside. “Crowley? Crowley you’re back?” Aziraphale rushed in, arms open and engulfed the demon in a hug. “I thought you’d gone” he whimpered, “left me.” “I would never!? A ludicrous accusation that”, Crowley pulled back. His eyebrows arched,"I left a note, yes?”

“Yes but Bentley was gone by the time I woke up. What was I supposed to think you fiend?” Aziraphale smacked him on his arm.

“You saw a missing Bentley and went to Nina’s to look for me there?” Crowley asked sarcastically.

“Well I wasn’t particularly cool minded and I thought she might’ve noticed ….. hold up how do you know I went to Nina’s?” Aziraphale wondered.

Crowley’s smirk grew like a Cheshire cat’s, a little guilt flashing on his eyes.

“Anthony Crowley Fell, WHAT have you been doing?” Aziraphale spoke threateningly.

Crowley swindled and flopped on the armchair and put his legs up.

“So you see spring has started right, a new month has rolled around, I thought I might get a little gift angel,” he said sweet nonchalance laced in his words.

He miracles a paper from below and present it to Aziraphale.

“I say, I say, IT WAS YOU!!!” Aziraphale’s was shocked and surprised. The paper, photograph really, was a collage of a his recent nose accident’s. All snapped at the exact time his nose was squished, his entire face scrunched up.

“Explain yourself!” Crowley stood up in one swoop, pulled Aziraphale back into his arms and kissed him on the nose.

“Boop!”, he whispered quietly. Colour of vibrant red crept into Aziraphale’s cheek.

“ What?” “Boop!”, Crowley kissed.

“Again.” Crowley obliged the blue pleading eyes, slowly softly and Aziraphale gave his kiss back.

“Happy April Fool’s, angel. You made a very cute one.” Crowley’s golden eyes ablaze.

“Hang on a minute, were Maggie and Nina in this too? The cat!?” Aziraphale felt incredulous.

Crowley was laughing now.

“The gift was for me, Angel. Won’t this be perfect over the mantelpiece” he winked.

“I’m going to get you back for this.”

“Well, you have all the time in the world.”

[haemey]

Oh you guys liked my "we could have been... us" take?

Here's another heartbreaking thing I basically never see people talk about: when Crowley drives back to the bookshop to apologise for the fight over Jim, "Good old-fashioned loverboy" is playing in the Bentley. We cut to Nina and Maggier trapped in the coffeeshop, then back to Crowley.

This is in real time, the song lines up. You know what part we don't hear over Nina and and Maggie’s concersation?

"Dining at the Ritz, we'll meet at nine precisely, I will pay the bill, you'll taste the wine."

We hear the instrumental bridge before and we cut back to "driving back in style in my saloon." But, well... Crowley does get to drive back in style in the end, heartbroken though he may be, but they do not get their dinner/extremely alcoholic breakfast at the Ritz.

This is excellent foreshadowing, I love it! It hurts everytime.

(Maybe I've seen no one talk about it because I only really joined the fandom in November and this was old news by then, but, well... in that case, let's bring it back!)

[aziraphales-library]

ello ello ello!

i am looking for fics where, human or not, crowley and azi grow up being together being friends and turns to lovers ! thank you for your blessed job <3

Hi! We have #childhood friends and #friends to lovers tags, so check those out. Here are some to add to the collections...

Stronger Than Hurt by TawnyOwl95 (E)

Everything changed the summer that Crowley fell off the Eastgate's garage roof and broke his arm. Fourteen years later he stood outside a tattoo shop with a picture of the drawing Aziraphale Eastgate had done on his cast, and hoped for a second chance.

Christmas light by Tigerphoenix (T)

After years of neither hearing form his father nor sibling Crowley is convinced to return to his childhood home. He knew from the start it wasn’t a good idea, but he did it anyway. Maybe something good comes out of it. Aziraphale returns home to his family home every year for Christmas. But Christmas with nine people is exhausting. Nothing wrong with some time alone, right?

I scorn to change my state with kings by bearwonder (T)

They’d seem an unlikely pair, if anyone saw them from the outside — Crowley in black skinny jeans and Aziraphale in beige corduroys — but no one does, and that’s just how they want it. Crowley and Aziraphale meet in kindergarten. This is the story of their lives.

What About Hope? by AppleSeeds (M)

Crowley met Aziraphale in the spring of 1989 while he was on his lunchbreak from the factory, his attention immediately drawn to the posh boy sitting by the canal writing poetry. It was immediately obvious that they came from entirely different worlds, but the time they spent together was the happiest Crowley had ever known. With Aziraphale, Crowley experienced many firsts - his first kiss, his first love... his first heartbreak. Twenty years later, they are reunited when Crowley, now a successful writer and vlogger, comes to work as an Associate Lecturer in the university department where Aziraphale is an academic. Seeing Crowley brings back Aziraphale's intense regret for allowing himself to be persuaded to leave him behind all those years ago. Aziraphale desperately wishes to renew their acquaintance, but Crowley seems determined to keep his distance. Aziraphale can't blame him for not forgiving him, since he has never been able to forgive himself, but when Crowley begins to spend more time with him, Aziraphale is left with the hope that maybe they could at least be friends again - no matter how much it might hurt.

And a Silver Sixpence in His Shoe by smolalienbee (T)

If there is one thing to be said about Aziraphale Z. Fell is that he leads an ordinary, quiet life. He lives in Soho, London, above an old bookshop that he’s been fortunate enough to inherit in his late twenties. He likes sushi and good wine. He has a few friends - like Nina, who works at the coffee shop across the street; or Maggie, who runs the record store that he takes an absolute pleasure in frequently purchasing from. (He’s lonely. Terribly so. He’s been lonely for about ten years now, since - he does not want to think about that.) Today is his 35th birthday. At age 15, Aziraphale made a Promise. At age 25, he had an Earth-shattering fight with his childhood - and closest - friend. At age 35, that same friend shows up at his doorstep and suddenly, Aziraphale’s entire world is thrown upside down. A story of something unexpected, something old, something yellow, something stolen, something new and something promised. (It’s going to be a long week.)

Dancing in the Dark by Demonicputto (T)

In search of inspiration for his next album, rock musician Tony Jay is headed to London. It's not the atmosphere he's after, but a reunion with Ezra Fell, his dearest friend from childhood. A one sided, adolescent crush fueled Tony's first songs and, now that they're both older, he's hoping those feelings might finally be requited. But, Ezra may not be ready for that. In his eyes, their relationship is far more complicated. Unlike Tony, he remembers who they truly are: the demon Crowley and the angel Aziraphale.

- Mod D

[argylepiratewd]

Chapter: 1/25

Rating: Explicit

Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), background Maggie/Nina (Good Omens), background Beelzebub/Gabriel (Good Omens)

Characters: Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley (Good Omens), The Metatron (Good Omens), Maggie (Good Omens), Nina (Good Omens), Muriel (Good Omens), The Bentley (Good Omens), Michael (Good Omens), Uriel (Good Omens), Sandalphon (Good Omens), Saraqael (Good Omens), Shax (Good Omens), Furfur (Good Omens), Gabriel (Good Omens), Beelzebub (Good Omens), Original Angel Character(s), Original Demon Character(s)

Additional Tags: Pregnancy, Mpreg, Male presenting pregnancy, Dubiously Consensual Pregnancy, Morning Sickness, Pregnant Sex, Pregnant Character in Danger, Pregnant Aziraphale (Good Omens), Protective Aziraphale (Good Omens), BAMF Aziraphale (Good Omens), Supreme Archangel Aziraphale (Good Omens), Experienced Aziraphale (Good Omens), Virgin Crowley (Good Omens), Protective Crowley (Good Omens), BAMF Crowley (Good Omens), Crowley Has Chronic Pain (Good Omens), Post-Season/Series 02, Wing Grooming, Massage, Heaven is Terrible (Good Omens), Hurt/Comfort, Major Character Injury, Fluff and Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending

In a desperate attempt to delay the Second Coming, Supreme Archangel Aziraphale makes a proposal: Jesus should be completely reborn—gestated for nine months in the human way, then raised to adulthood on Earth. When he volunteers to carry the child himself, he doesn't think anyone will agree. Somebody, however, does.

What will his unexpected condition do to his strained relationship with Crowley? And what will happen once it becomes apparent that something is very much amiss in this whole "Second Coming" business?

Updates on Wednesdays

[roguelemon]

Iiiiits metaphor time!!!

So, it's been shown a few times that Crowley and Aziraphale are opposite but similar, different sides of the same coin, ect, etc.

One very important metaphor for this is the yin/yang. Its been mentioned in interviews multiple times and I think its very true "little bit of a nice person"/"just enough of a bastard" fit this SO well.

But those lines are s1, they fit together because they both represent one side and everything is balanced. They fit together, they dine at the Ritz.

In season 2 however, they don't. At all. Aziraphale makes a point to do more "good deeds" even if they arnet in line with heaven. The whole "very good at forgiveness" and him being visibly upset in the Edinburgh minisode where there are no solid lines to be drawn for morality indicate a bit of negative development on his part. Perhaps the fact that he no longer reports to heaven makes him feel like he has to do more good to make up for it. Hence why Az gets defensive about telling Crowley the good things he's done in the coffee shop scene.

I mean, he was almost about to get Crowley to kill a child in s1, his ability to bastard has decreased.

On the opposing side, Crowley is better this season. Infact I'd say he isn't good or bad. Bad for heaven sure but he is just entirely indifferent to the humans for the most part.

At least that's what I thought until I rewatched it. It's in the way he let's Maggie and nine out of the shop without hesitation, even when he could be mischievous. Its in the way he guides the shopowners out the bookshop trying desperately to stop people getting hurt. Hell, even in the minisodes (ESPECIALLY THE EDINBURGH ONE) he's just floating somewhere between chaotic neutral and chaotic good. (Possibly even neutral good).

While he does also do good in s1, he denies it much more strongly, so perhaps being distanced from hell has allowed crowley to just, do whatever he wants (which just so happens to be good).

There is a point here, let's get back to it.

So, using the colours black and white as in the yin/yang symbol. They both get more white. Obviously, this causes an imbalance. I reckon, crowley pretty much becomes his own symbol, having equal good and bad in him (lets be honest, the "bad" is just him beign a silly little guy). Now I'm deffinetly not saying he doesn't need Az at all, only that he functions as moraly independent. His biggest flaw is that he wants to get away from things instead of fixing them, probably becaue3 he's to scared to try.

Az on the other hand, still refuses he can be bad at all. He's an antihero at worst, doing bad things for perfectly good reason, (hiding Gabriel to PROTECT him). Its this inability to compromise that eventually leads to him blurring the lines between actual good and heaven good, causing him to be delusional and fall back into his old way of thinking at the end.

Pair this with the whole "they want the same thing but are going about it in diff ways", "they don't talk", ect.

They are no longer the yin and yang, they no longer fit together as a pair because Crowley is trying to make himself whole and Az is either ignoring the problem altogether, or trying to be only good. He is trying to have a calm life on earth without letting go of the divine good of heaven and its just not going to work.

I have a feeling that next season Crowley is going to be shifting between emotional and nilhistic (just because he's more moraly stable doesn't mean he is emotionally, bless). Az is going to have to struggle with trying to fix a system that is broken in the name of the one leading the system (god). HOPEFULLY these cause them both to reevaluate their flaws (crowleys running away, Az with his inability to do so) and just erase the moral obligations altogether.

[rhosmeinir]

Fictober 2024 #9

Prompt #9: "Don't listen to me, listen to them"

Fanfiction: Good Omens

Rating: G

Warnings: None

Pairing: Ineffable Husbands/Aziracrow

Other Notes: In Aziraphale orders a coffee. 270 words below the cut and on AO3!

“Angel, this is absolutely ridiculous.”

“It is not.”

The set of Aziraphale’s chin and the jut of his lip would have been enough to warn off any ordinary, sensible person. Crowley, however, was neither ordinary, sensible, nor a person.

“I’m telling you, you can’t just walk in anywhere and ask for this just because someone decided to indulge you once.”

“Says who?” The mulish tone ought to have been enough to cow even Crowley, but unfortunately it was not. 

“Fine! Fine, don’t listen to me, listen to them.” Crowley jabbed his finger at the counter, where Nina and Maggie had been leaning across sniggering to each other, and at once straightened up and found other things to do. “Oh come on!” Crowley howled, “You cowards, this is all your fault in the first place, and you were literally just saying—”

“Hey, not our fault mister halo there has addictive tendencies.” Nine shot back, with raised brows and hands, while Maggie tried and failed to stifle a giggle.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said sternly, picking up his cup. The elaborate confection piled high with whipped cream, sprinkles, a jaffa cake, and what appeared to be a slowly melting flake, jiggled dangerously. “If I want a large triple shot white double-chocolate hazelnut caramel mocha with eggnog, cream, and accoutrements, I don’t see why I shouldn’t be able to order one! All the coffee shops have seasonal specials, after all.”

As Aziraphale pursed his lips in a ducklike fashion, attempting to find an entry point to his drink, Crowley clutched his face and resolved to at least film his future ordering attempts for TikTok.

[contritecactite]

So you're telling me I made it through nine weeks of regularly posting chapters and never once remembered to mention here that I'm writing a Good Omens post-s2 multichapter. I'm soooo good at using Tumblr.

Title: Endless, Numbered (ao3 link!)

Rating: T

Fandom: Good Omens (tv, mostly)

Pairing(s): Aziraphale/Crowley, background Nina/Maggie

Tags/warnings: semi-epistolary, references to real-world events, a range of moods but a happy ending

Desc: 37k (fully written and will top out around 47k). Medium-burn s2 fix-it-ish. After attempting to start over somewhere new to enjoy the world while it lasts, Crowley ends up with Aziraphale's diary. Aziraphale asks him to read it, and, well. It's not like Crowley has anything better to do.