#goodomensdrabbles

[1650-1793-1941]

Aziraphale had always been able to feel when a place was loved. As an angel, love was very much in his remit. Often it was just a sense of warmth in a local coffee shop, or the infusion of countless weddings into the stone walls of a church keeping damp at bay. Tadfield had been a special case, Adam’s love for the place multiplying the feeling to almost unfathomable levels, but every close-knit village across the country hummed with a similar, albeit it far subtler, joy.

It was therefore not particularly strange to settle into the Bentley, reading himself for the drive to Edinburgh, and feel a wave of love from the vehicle. Crowley had loved the car for ninety years. That kind of attachment couldn’t possibly not leave a mark. Usually when Aziraphale was in the Bentley, he was sitting beside Crowley, whose terrible emotion processing skills worked hard to suppress the feelings, but now Aziraphale was alone he could tell the car was so clearly cherished. He couldn’t help but smile, running his hands over the leather of the steering wheel to reassure the car that he’d take good care of it, because it clearly mattered to Crowley so deeply.

It was thirty miles out of London that Aziraphale started to become aware that there was something slightly different about the love infused into the Bentley. Usually it went one way, a place was loved but it couldn’t really love back. The car, however, seemed almost fond of him. It played classical musical when Aziraphale asked it nicely, the horn honked merrily rather than with the aggression Crowley usually forced from it on the rare occasions he thought it worth using at all. The travel sweets and the new yellow detailing, the comfortable and warm leather seats, the safe driving speed – Aziraphale could feel the Bentley desperate to please him.

It was only after Crowley checked in through the radio that Aziraphale realised what was going on. It seemed mad to even think it, but it was the only logical answer. Crowley’s love, not just for the Bentley but for Aziraphale specifically, was laced into the fabric of the car, so strongly it was echoing back. He would never have believed it, but the same feeling he got from the car was threaded under Crowley’s words. He might have complained about the yellow paint and the travel sweets, but really he was checking in to make sure Aziraphale was alright. After millennia of existing together, Aziraphale had learnt to read between the lines. So when Crowley asked him to drive faster, he knew that didn’t mean put yourself in danger to get my car back to me quicker, it meant get yourself back to me as fast as possible, because I feel better when I know you’re safe. Aziraphale knew better than to point it out, but he also wasn’t going to protest – he loved a good caper, but he knew he’d also feel better when he was back at the bookshop. Back with Crowley.

[esmemoonblood]

"Angel!" The front door swung open and Tir came barreling into the shop. His fine clothing was rumpled and his gaze was wild with panic. "Where the heaven..."

"Hello Tir." Anemoi stepped between the Shopkeep Demon and Raphael who lay on the floor in a pool of red and gold blood. "My Brother and I have been talking about you."

Tir snarled at Anemoi "And by talking I assume you mean you've been asking questions and he has been not answering them."

The Demon Prince shrugged and kicked lightly at Raphael's hand where it lay outstretched above the Archangel's head. "Surprisingly he's been very tight lipped considering your betrayal earlier today." Raphael didn't so much as groan. "I guess he still holds out hope for you...pity he didn't keep any for himself."

Tir tried to look around Anemoi, to see how badly Raphael was hurt. "Oh Angel, why didn't you just answer the call and go back to Heaven?"

"Call? You really believe that Jegudiel would call our dear brother back to Heaven? Did you imagine that something like him would be worth the risk when they failed to make him fall after the Last War?" Anemoi laughed. "But he even failed at that, crashed into Earth like a wingless bird. They kept him down here to keep him contained...keep him isolated."

Tir opened his mouth and closed it... reevaluating six thousand years of veiled comments and unspoken things... of secrets that seemed to be betrayal just a few hours earlier. "Oh Crowley..."

[1650-1793-1941]

It was rare for a demon to be in possession of either optimism or an imagination, and altogether unheard of for one to be in possession of both, because Crowley made sure to keep any hopefulness he might feel to himself. Demons could get in trouble for that sort of thing.

The mix of imagination and optimism had never bothered Crowley much before. It helped him understand humans, who were so often optimistic to a fault, even when all hope ought to be lost. His imagination had helped him to wrong-foot Hell, when it suited him, and Heaven, when it suited Aziraphale. But Crowley had never thought it would put him in this position: standing beside the Bentley as he watched Aziraphale step into the lift that would take him to Heaven forever. Take him away from the bookshop, from Earth, from Crowley.

Despite his better judgement, Crowley waited until the last possible moment Aziraphale could have changed his mind. He could imagine it, you see: Aziraphale telling the Metatron no, stepping out of the lift, and rushing over to assure Crowley that his feelings were returned, that they should be an us. Crowley could see the image playing out before him so clearly, wanting it more than he’d ever wanted anything. He could smell Aziraphale’s cologne, feel the fabric of his jacket, taste the salt of relieved tears. He let a tiny part of himself believe it was still possible, until it wasn’t. The lift doors closed and Aziraphale was gone, and Crowley made a promise to himself to never be optimistic again. Hell had been right all along: hope was far too dangerous to indulge.

[1650-1793-1941]

Just a little drabble to ruminate on That Kiss...

Before Crowley had introduced him to food, Aziraphale had never thought he’d needed it. Hunger wasn’t something he’d been familiar with, the absence of substance a normality rather than the torture he knew it was for humans. After the first taste of ox rib in Job’s basement, that need had become familiar to Aziraphale too. He knew it wasn’t the same. Nothing happened if he went without food. He wouldn’t die, or even discorporate, but his desire to taste it again built up inside him like a kind of starvation, and so food became something he wasn’t sure he could comfortably live without anymore.

The moment Crowley kissed him, he knew it was going to be even worse. It wasn’t anything he’d ever considered doing, the gesture so deeply human. Even when he’d realised, amongst the ruins of a bombed out church, that he was irreversibly in love with Crowley, to kiss him would simply never have occurred to him. And now Aziraphale didn’t know if he’d ever be able to think of anything else for the rest of eternity.

It wasn’t a particularly good kiss, far from comparable to the most romantic scenes found in the pages of books. No, it has been fierce and desperate and salted with tears, and even so Aziraphale craved it again the second Crowley stepped away. He wanted to be kissed over and over, making the most of their mutual lack of necessity to breathe. He wanted to kiss, to return the gesture and relish it like he did sushi and wine and cake. But the kiss wasn’t a prelude to an benevolent addiction the way the ox rib had been. It was as much a last kiss as it was a first. An only.

Aziraphale was going to ache from the hunger for the rest of time, but at least he’d gotten one taste. He would take the starvation as payment for that one moment, and, like he always would, he forgave Crowley for getting him hooked on another human drug and this time taking away the only source he’d ever want it from.