#i love crowley i want her to be more miserable than ever and for aziraphale to come crawling on his hand and knees begging to be taken back

[p4nishers]

i need s3 to start with crowley throwing up into a dumpster then sliding down the wall and crying hysterically which cuts to aziraphale doing nothing but spying on him with his little gay ass telescope exactly like this

[vidavalor]

I think you're the fifth blogger I've seen mention Shax's thing for Crowley... I still can't see it even though I really want to 'cause I think it's hilarious... send help... 🤣🥲😔

I can try lol. Chocolate cake? *slices*

More fun with Shax and Crowley under the cut. We're also going to look at part of Gabriel & Sandalphon's visit to the bookshop in S1 for some bonus fun since it fit in here as it's a parallel scene.

TW: Brief mention of Sandalphon and his homophobia.

For the most part, Shax isn't really in love with Crowley... she's just got a Mr. Brown-level pash on the Crowley that Crowley projects. While Aziraphale hides that he's an angel from the human world so Mr. Brown only believes him to be human, Crowley hides the extent to which he's human and living like one from the demons in Hell. As a result, the demon pursuing him has got exactly one thing correct about Crowley-- that he's hot lol-- but Shax's opinions as to why only partially overlap with ours and Aziraphale's because Shax believes Crowley's big reputation. She doesn't know what we know about him or see him the way we do. Like Mr. Brown with Aziraphale, she exists in part to highlight how insular Crowley & Aziraphale's world of their life together is and how much they have to playact in their respective worlds to keep that secret life they have with one another private and intact.

Shax is a demon who loves being a demon. That's what makes her crazy to us. Most of the other demons we've met are just miserable, even if they're playing along, but Shax is a real go-getter. She's ambitious and she lives to serve their master Satan. She wants to be good at being a demon and she's in love with *Crowley* lol. To us, this seems bananas because ain't no demon ever hated being a demon more than Anthony Jemimah Crowley... but it's proof positive of how decent a job Crowley has been doing at projecting an air of general demonicness for the last six thousand years.

Crowley has been a prince of Hell forever. He's gotten the top jobs-- the stuff of Shax's dreams, really-- and was a particular favorite of Satan, whom Shax worships. He was basically Hell's resident rock star, breezing in every few months to give a demonic presentation and shoot the shit in Lord Beezlebub's office for a half-hour before taking off for Earth again. If you were Shax, spending literally *thousands of years* in that overstuffed, dark, actual hell hole, Crowley showing up must have been like a visit from sexy Santa Claus. Shax is one of those Effort-making demons and most of the demons in Hell are more terrifying than attractive, ok?... even if you find terrifying attractive, like Shax sorta does or at least thinks she ought to.

Who's going to light your fire down there? Hastur? He'd *literally* light you on fire....

We've seen Shax have to deal with misogyny in the workplace (ugh Demon Josh) and you know she never got any of that shit from Crowley. She probably mostly got a "Shaaaaax! How's it hangin'?" from Disco Tony, who was thrilled to have remembered her name this time. Shax was playing it evil demon lady cool on the surface but girl just wants to be first string for the finest demon in Hell and she was swooning internally every time Crowley swooped in to grace Hell with his presence for a hot minute.

There has been suggestion in the series that several demons that we know of from Bible lore are, in Good Omens, all actually Crowley, which furthers this idea of Crowley and his big reputation a bit. The show has actually already done this with a Biblical figure, in that Bildad the Shuite is an actual Biblical character that the show just made be actually the demon Crowley under a different name, so it would make sense that the reason why we haven't seen other famous demons from The Bible in the series are because they're actually Crowley.

One is canon, basically, which is Astaroth/Astoreth, since Crowley was Nanny Astoreth in S1 and I doubt he stole the name from another demon who exists in the GO universe. When Crowley tells Aziraphale he changed his name when they are watching Jesus' crucifixion, Aziraphale first posits two other demons' names and neither of them exist in GO universe to date but both are, lore-wise, powerful: Mephistopheles and Asmodeus. A lot of other great meta has been written about these choices-- in particular, how well Mephistopheles fits Crowley to a tee, which I really, really agree with. You could assume then that the reasons why more audience-known demons like Astoreth and Asmodeus have never shown up in GO-- and we've met the highest-ranking demons already-- is because they actually *have* and they're all just really Crowley.

In demon lore, Astaroth is part of the "evil trinity" with Beezlebub and Lucifer and is a high-ranking demon in Hell... as well as is basically a genderbent serpent goddess with Crowley traits... so safe to say that's one of Crowley's aliases. Crowley has also had his name of "Crowley" for thousands of years by S1 but when he's rolling up in The Bentley in 1.01, Ligur and Hastur clarify what Crowley's "calling himself up here these days", indicating that he might have gone by more names than we might have realized.

Asmodeus, as we all probably know by now, is the demon of lust. A French novel from the 18th century also popularized the idea of Asmodeus as a sort of Cupid, which also goes along with Crowley, who loves love and got genuine joy out of trying to set up Maggie and Nina. So... from Shax's perspective, why *wouldn't* you want Crowley? He's the fine as fuck, Serpent of Eden, legendary prince of fucking lust here lol.

Shax showed up to reclaim his apartment for Hell and you know she expected a scene the likes of which have not been seen on Earth since a post-concert hotel suite occupied by Led Zeppelin lol. She was expecting (fantasizing lol) about having to wade through a rock music blasting, orgiastic drug den to find Asmodeus in his sex dungeon of a bedroom, somewhere in the black silk sheets beneath three playthings.

You know she actually found Crowley, alone, having just finished vacuuming the most fastidiously clean flat this side of Heaven, fully dressed and watching Barefoot Contessa on his massive plasma screen while the only drugs being mixed were special-blend fertilizer for his houseplants. Ina was making Jeffrey red-wine braised short ribs and Crowley didn't say so to Shax, of course, but he's always on the lookout for something his angel might like for dinner. Hang on a second, Shax, gotta save this recipe to my favorites...

At least the black silk sheets were accurate? lol

What probably confuses Shax a little is that she's been meeting up with Crowley and she still wants him and badly, even as it's becoming increasingly clear that he's a bit more complicated than she thought he was. Technically, she should consider him a traitor because of how he betrayed their Master but he's hot, ok, and maybe it's a little sexy to be so bad that you'd defy Satan? (Aziraphale agrees lol.)

Shax has Mr. Brown-level fantasies about where this could go. Crowley was a favorite of Satan's and she can bring him back into the fold. She can heal him. Yeah, this lady demon has gone and got herself one of those 'I can fix him' disaster scenarios. She hates this for her too but she can't help it. He's so sexy. She's been in Hell for a long time. She's sleeping in the bed and showering in the tropical rainforest paradise dream shower of Asmodeus himself, ok?

She's undoubtedly tried to get him to stay. She's so offered for him to live with her in secret and Crowley nearly choked on the air he doesn't need to breathe trying not to laugh at the irony of that one. It's not Shax's fault that he's just not that into her. She's a bad bitch and everything. That's just not his thing. He's just the lonely GI who basically fell asleep during a performance of The Ladies of Camelot. He has always given off the impression that he's into everything there is to sell the whole 'demon of lust' thing but he's really not. Shax doesn't know that, though, because to know that is to know Crowley well and Shax does not.

Does Crowley know that Shax is into him? Yeah, he does.

Shax's thing for him is basically the same thing as when Crowley tries to make a phone call after having taken out the mobile phone network for miles. It's the oh, shit, right, that thing I did that's now fucking up my day in the present... He didn't lead her on specifically as much as he just gave off the vibe in general that he's this debauched, wild, so very wicked demon and, well... if your name is Aziraphale, that's not terribly inaccurate lol... but if it's not, then it's actually not true at all...

...and this is why Shax cannot for the fucking life of her figure out what the deal is with Crowley and this angel.

Yes, Shax is trying to goad Aziraphale into confirming that he has Gabriel in this scene but this scene also comes off as Shax so incredibly done with how jealous she is over this, in her eyes, ridiculous being, and she's bitchy as all fuck about it. There were other ways to crack at Aziraphale than over his relationship with Crowley and she goes at that hard. She calls The Bentley an old piece of junk when she's really clearly calling Aziraphale that and saying that she doesn't know why Crowley hasn't gotten "an upgrade" since, implying that she considers herself just the upgrade Crowley needs. She brings up 1941 via the rumors that she heard "80, 90 years ago" that Crowley and Aziraphale were "an item", which we know are at least partially derived from what happened with Furfur, who his Shax's closest friend and totally has tried to tell her that this thing she has for Crowley is hopeless because he's doing that angel, Shax. (Poor, pining Furfur lol.)

Shax knows somewhere that Furfur is probably correct but she's decided to pretend that it's Furfur's thing for her that could have caused him to misconstrue at least part of it, right, because the demon of lust only having eyes for one being, let alone that being being this angel, is absurd to her (even if she thinks she can tame him lol.)

Aziraphale is an angel, for one thing. The bastards who did this to The Fallen and who cast their Master to Hell. Their sworn, hereditary enemy. It was one thing when maybe the angel was a dalliance. Asmodeus, lonely and bored on Earth, tired of all the sex with the mortals, and so very bad that he could corrupt an angel. That's a little hot, actually, if you're Shax, but it's the fact that that... does not appear to be what this relationship is... that unsettles her.

During S2, Shax learns that Crowley has a permanent invite into and keys to the bookshop and that Aziraphale can drive Crowley's car to an extent that Shax even has to trick him to allow her to enter it. The angel really seems like he might be Crowley's partner, which would mean that this wasn't Crowley fucking an angel on a whim in 1941 but that Hell's wild prince of lust has actually secretly been in a romantic relationship with Aziraphale for at least, to Shax's knowledge, almost a century.

The purported baddest demon that ever demoned, shy of the literal devil, is apparently mad for this fusty angel and Shax just cannot get it, ok?

Crowley is a a broody, black-clad rock star and Aziraphale is this twee little bookselling angel to her. Shax thinks maybe this was all part of Crowley's breakdown or something and she's Mr. Brown so she hasn't given up hope here, not for most of S2, but she's mostly been trying to figure out how to get Crowley's attention and that's the funniest part of her whole pash, imo.

Shax has no idea what Crowley is into. She can't figure this out to save her life.

She has no idea that it's over before it started because she is just not what primes the engine of Crowley's star factory over here. It's not personal. He just doesn't have a shred of sexual interest in her. Gabriel is getting more action from Crowley this season and he tried to murder him lol. Crowley's spent millennia cultivating a persona of a sex god and now he's got to live with it and he's just praying he never finds out anything she's fantasizing about him because he shudders at the thought of whatever she envisions them getting up to.

Look at what Shax is wearing when she comes to Earth to meet with Crowley, for one of the more hilarious things...

In Hell, Shax wears modern clothes. When she comes to Earth to meet Crowley in the year 2023, she wears a vintage-inspired outfit that is spanning the mid-1930s through WW2 in style (the era she knows he was involved with Aziraphale, who is her main point of reference for what attracts Asmodeus over here lol)... and the dress has the biggest damn bow ever seen. You could see that bow from space. It's like she's trying desperately to figure out what turns Crowley on and so far she's come up with well, he drives an old car and he's rolled that angel so he likes... old things... vintage clothes, like the angel's. She's trying to out-bow-tie Aziraphale.

Now that Shax can spend time with Crowley alone and the possibility of seducing him is ever-present (lolololol), she's spending time trying to figure out what turns on the prince of lust. She's trying to get Crowley's demonically lustful attention and she's reduced to bow ties, okay, take pity on her... she's just like I don't know what his deal with these are, exactly, as it seems kind of specific... but he can unwrap me anytime if that's his thing...

Then, there's that she's sitting too close to him on the park bench and raking her eyes over him while he's sprawling on it. He's not sprawling in a way meant to be enticing. He's actually mid-existential crisis here but that's fine by Shax. She likes 'em a little dark.

My favorite, though, is a scene that actually parallels S1 in a hilarious way and that's from the hot water boiler scene in the other meta that prompted the ask here but isn't a bit that I mentioned in that one.

As Crowley goes back into the bookshop (and he'd never been happier to be on the other side of that threshold in his life lol), Shax is then as physically close to him as she's ever been. If you notice, she actually inhales twice. The first is a regular breath-- which demons don't technically need to take but yeah lol-- and her expression is all oh Satan, he smells amazing and then she straight up sniffs the air as he opens the door. Girl is huffing her fill over here for those shower fantasies for months to come lol. Crowley knows it as his eyebrows are in his hair as he's turning back around like he's all did she seriously just *sniff* me? ugh...

Shax knows Crowley saw her (honestly, probably also *heard* her... Shax, love, a little subtlety wouldn't kill you...) so she covers it up by pretending like she smelled Gabriel in the bookshop. You smelled the archangel in there, huh, Shax? When you can't get through the door? When Gabriel is the same species as Aziraphale, whose bookshop this is, so this can't be some kind of angel-scent you're claiming you noticed here? lol This then parallels and adds to this Sandalphon scene in S1:

I know there's some debate about if there's such thing as an angelic or a demonic smell but I've actually always taken it to be that there isn't. It would seem to me that it would be hard for them to blend in on Earth if there was and if the demonic one was something off-putting to humans, at least. I think most of us, though, do believe that the "evil" Sandalphon is smelling in the backroom is Crowley but considering that the comment comes from Sandalphon, who is introduced to us with reference to his smiting of people in Sodom and Gomorrah, it honestly just comes off that Sandalphon is a raging homophobe and I've actually always taken that as the reason why Gabriel is here in this scene in the first place.

Absolutely nothing happens in this scene. It's a routine checkup. What is the Supreme Archangel of Heaven doing there? Why is he blowing so much smoke up Sandalphon's ass the whole time? It's kind of like he saw that Michael or someone had assigned Sandalphon to do a checkup of sorts on Aziraphale-- or Sandalphon had assigned himself-- and Gabriel pretended that he wanted to see in person how "the great Sandalphon" worked so that he could tag along and make sure that Sandalphon didn't bother Aziraphale. We also learn that Aziraphale hasn't seen Sandalphon in a long time and I'd bet that Gabriel is responsible for that. Gabriel's 'whatever, idgaf' response to Aziraphale's Jeffrey Archer books comment is so... Gabriel hadn't the first clue who Jeffrey Archer is or why his books would be evil lol. He could have easily further encouraged Sandalphon's pursuit of the "evil" scent. He didn't because he could care less what Aziraphale does in the backroom of his bookshop. If anything, he's jealous of him for having found a way to have some freedom and privacy. Gabriel is queer-- he is like Aziraphale. He's just closeted in S1. He's looking out for Aziraphale here by using his power to shut down Sandalphon and then "you can't have a war without war omg wow you are a poet!" him out of there as fast as is possible. If there truly was an 'evil'/'demonic' smell, Gabriel should have been able to smell it, too, and he doesn't. If he did, he wouldn't have been able to subtly shut down Sandalphon the way he did.

So, Sandalphon isn't smelling a demon. He's smelling another man. The "evil" is that Sandalphon can smell remnants of another cologne that isn't Aziraphale's in the backroom of Aziraphale's bookshop and Sandalphon is a homophobe, so he's implying that Aziraphale having sex and with a man is 'evil', even if there's no direct evidence here of that, just the implication of it.

This then would mean that Shax can't actually smell Gabriel in the bookshop in S2. Like Sandalphon, she's pretending to have a supernatural sense of scent but she's really just smelling Crowley. While Sandalphon was repulsed by the idea of Aziraphale's bookshop backroom having the scent of a man, Shax is just inhaling that same being's scent because omfg. so. good....

...something she can't stand that she has in common with that bastard angel, Aziraphale, who is actually allowed to breathe Crowley in anytime he wants... it's just ridiculous to her. Why the fuck does that beige bookseller get to have the sex god of Shax's dreams in his bed and she doesn't? What could Crowley possibly find attractive about him? That she doesn't know and can't really figure it out shows how little she really knows Crowley and also how little imagination she really has.

[hr-nm-grnd-zr]

AO3

"They just vavoomed" you said, as you watched them through the window.

S2 fix it fic, hurt comfort, no warnings

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It was pouring. Aziraphale’s hair flattened by the water. Their tears visible even through the rain drops rolling down their face. Crowley was standing under the canopy. He couldn’t move, he couldn’t think. After everything that happened the past few months… Aziraphale had never hurt him before and no one had ever hurt him as much as they had then.

Crowley felt as if his heart was tearing into pieces. He imagines this is close to what a heart attack must feel like. The demon wanted to punch the angel in the face, push them in front of a car and set all of their books on fire! He wanted to hurt them just as much as they hurt him. It had been hard to process and he was still not over it. But seeing Aziraphale like this. Standing in the pouring rain, their hair and coat soaked, face scrunched up from trying and utterly failing not to cry. Aziraphale looked absolutely miserable.

He couldn’t bare seeing them like this. He was still in love with this angel, obviously. But Crowley could only watch them standing there, not able to move. “I love you.” the angel spoke first. It came out quiet, the loud rain almost drowning it. Crowley couldn’t think.

He saw the angel was shaking now. Aziraphale looked scared of what his reaction might be. What would Crowley do? Crowley doesn’t know how it happened. If you were to ask him, he wouldn’t be able to explain it. The demon stepped out into the rain, grabbed his angel by the collar of their coat, like he’d done so many months ago, pulling them close and kissed them.

For a moment there was a squeeze in his heart, afraid Aziraphale would push him away again. Then he felt the angel’s arms wrap around him, holding on tight on the back of his own coat and pulling even closer, their whole bodies embracing each other. That was the moment when the sparks started.

Neither of them both could tell how long the kiss had lasted. Nina and Maggie however, who were watching the scene from the coffee shop window, would be able to tell you that it had lasted a whole of 40 seconds at least.

When the kiss stopped they didn’t pull apart. Instead Aziraphale hid his face in the crook of his demon’s neck. They were still shaking, maybe even more than before the kiss. “I’m so sorry.” the angel blurted out. “I was so stupid, you didn’t deserve this, I …” “Don’t bother, angel.” Crowley interrupted them, his voice soothing. That was when Aziraphale started sobbing.

Pulling Crowley even tighter, they let out all of their anger about themselves and all of the frustration which had build up over the past few months. If someone would mention it, Crowley would totally deny what he did then. He held his angel close, kissing the top of their head. “I forgive you” he said honestly. Burying his face in their wet hair he, subconsciously, rocked them both back and forth.

They were both drenched now from the rain. Yet they stood there, a demon soothing his crying angel, letting the rain do what rain does. This part as well, they weren’t able to tell afterwards, how long it had lasted. Maggie, if you were to ask her, could tell you it was about 10 minutes and she would totally admit that she had watched the whole time, while Nina had to resume serving customers.

When Aziraphale had calmed down they barely broke apart to look at each other. The rain too, one could say almost miraculously, had calmed to a light shower completing the now softer mood of the atmosphere.

Aziraphale’s face was still red, their eyes a bit puffy from crying and they had definitely smeared some snot on Crowley’s black coat. But in that moment Crowley swore he had never seen anything more beautiful in all of his existence. Not even his nebula could compare.

Aziraphale lifted one of his hands to take off Crowley’s glasses. Instinctively Crowley grabbed their hand to stop them. “We’re outside.” he argued. “Let me see your eyes. Please.” the angel insisted and took off the glasses revealing the demons surprised expression.

They observed the demon’s face for a moment. “Never change Crowley. Not who and not what you are. Not for anyone.” Aziraphale stroke a finger over Crowley’s cheek wiping away a tear, which had escaped his left eye while he was still processing. “You are perfect just as you are.” Crowley didn’t know what to do. His heart was pounding loud in his ears. This was his biggest fear. That him being a demon would never be good enough for an angel.

This time it was Aziraphale’s turn to kiss Crowley. It was soft, longing and full of love. Even though he would definitely deny it if Maggie were to mention it the next day when they met at the café, saying it was just the rain and she surely must have imagined it, there were tears rolling down his face now. They were many but they were happy tears. A huge weight had just been lifted from the demon’s shoulders.

When they broke apart Aziraphale kept wiping them away, which didn’t help anything considering there was now water dripping from Crowley’s hair. “Let’s go inside the bookshop, get a change of dry clothes and make a hot cup of tea.” they suggested. “And put some gin in it.” Crowley agreed and held out his hand. Aziraphale took it without hesitation and, just like when they had danced together, giggled and pulled the grinning Crowley over to the bookshop.

They had a lot to talk about. They needed to sort out their feelings, which Crowley wasn’t looking forward to at all. Then there was also the matter of Armageddon 2. But this could wait for a few moments. Because right now they were both in heaven. Not the same heaven which Aziraphale had just escaped from, no. The sort of heaven that went with them wherever they were together. Crowley was very much looking forward to that part, he might even admit it if anyone were to ask him.

Aziraphale also had a short dance to perform. If you were there, watching through the shop’s windows, you would be able to see the rose the angel miracled into their hand at the end of their dance, offering it to Crowley. And if you were to stay a bit longer, you would see the demon rolling his eyes and groaning but accepting the rose anyway.

Thanks for reading and let’s hope for a good ending in Season 3.

And if you were to come by the shop later that same day, you would be able to see Aziraphale and Crowley moving the demon’s plants inside the shop. There they would get a nice place by the windows, where they were to stay for a very long time to come.

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notes: I hoped you liked it. In my headcanon they both use he/they pronouns. I used they/them for Aziraphale and he/him for Crowley just to make it easier telling the two apart.

[inconveniently-discorporated]

"Why not put it on the top of a tall mountain -- or even the moon?"

Oh Crowley, maybe God was never testing the humans. Maybe God was testing you.

I've developed a headcanon theory that maybe angels never really knew what evil was until the Fall. Perhaps they were never told, never warned, and perhaps many angels didn't mean to fall at all. Maybe if they had known, maybe if they were given the context, they would've made a different choice.

In that way, humans would represent a parallel to the angels. Innocent beings, living in paradise. A demon lurking amongst them (Lucifer in Heaven/Crowley in Eden). The fall from grace, by creatures who never really understood the consequences to begin with.

More specifically, they would mirror Crowley, for whom Lucifer was the serpent. No wonder he finds them so endearing. No wonder he finds it so miserable when they choose to do evil.

Maybe the question wasn't, "Will humans give in and eat the apple?"

Maybe they would never have eaten it if Crowley didn't tempt them. Maybe there was never a doubt they would, if Crowley went through with it.

Maybe the question was to Crowley. Maybe the question was, "Now that you know, will you make the same decision?"

Maybe the question was, "Was it worth it? Will you put them through this as well?"

Maybe every challenge thereafter was asking, "Will you show them the strength to keep carrying on?"

Feels sort of like bringing children into this world. We know there is pain and suffering in life, all species are molded by it by definition of there being species at all. We are who we are because we are who survived. The question is -- is it worth it?

Is the pain and suffering worth the beauty of nature, and all of the stars above us and all of the seas below? Is it worth the spark of a human connection, the joy of art, the thrill of being? Is it worth experiencing the depth of what a brain can do, the fact that we can imagine worlds bigger than our universe inside a circumference of around 20 inches of bone and meat?

Once you know, you can never go back to that paradise of innocence. And of course we all want to protect our children, but here's the thing: evil may likely find you anyway. And if it found the angels in Heaven and if it was so tempting that it pulled half of the entire host, it can find the humans on Earth.

And perhaps there was a question for Aziraphale, too: "Will you protect them? Will you show them what it means to have love, even in their darkest hour, even when we tell you they are not worthy of it?"

She plays an ineffable game of her own devising. Who knows what She was really planning?

(These questions thanks to I Only Ever Asked Questions - about an angel who got caught up in unionizing the host in the name of good intentions. I'm down to wrapping up editing on the final few chapters now, which ends where we begin: in a garden. Posting just about every day because I'm impatient to get it all out there.)

[bustyasianbeautiespod]

I find it so interesting how closely Aziraphale holds onto his identity as an Angel as opposed to Crowley who plays the role of demon but knows very well that it’s just a role and that heaven and hell are just labels. I do think it goes back to their loneliness and sense of belonging, maybe. Because Aziraphale wants (wanted?), far more than Crowley at least, to belong in this whole system even tho he knows he doesn’t. Crowley knows he doesn’t belong in the system but he does want to belong somewhere and that somewhere is, well, with Aziraphale. And it’s so sad because you know they both are outcasts and hurting and only have each other and they both want more but in different directions. UGH! I love them so much. They’ll figure it out, they’ll be okay (<- affirmations)

HELLO WORDS THAT MAKE ME FEEL AND THINK THINGS.

crowley really does fully think it's a job! there's soo much book stuff for that ("Anyway, why're we talking about this good and evil? They're just names for sides. We know that." + Now, as Crowley would be the first to protest, most demons weren't deep down evil. In the great cosmic game they felt they occupied the same position as tax inspectors-doing an unpopular job, maybe, but essential to the overall operation of the whole thing. + "We were only doing our jobs," muttered Crowley. being part of the climax) that I loveee (this is not the point of your ask at all i just love anthony j crowley w all my heart and soul). and that's prob bc they already decided heaven was bullshit before the beginning and has seen and gotten the chance to evaluate both sides firsthand. but it still has to be devastatingly lonely and it isss bc p much everyone in hell is a traumatized betrayed person taking it out on the ppl below them in the command line and deciding that Being Nice is an executable offense so it's tough to find companionship there. and as for humans, do u ever think about how it must have been SO hard for her before she got sunglasses. like obv ppl would react differently to his eyes depending on culture/religion/etc but i'm sure it was often hard to talk to people! and i think enjoying wine and technology and constructing fun things for her job was satisfying enough to get by and having someone who Gets Him (But To A Hard Limit) in aziraphale helped add joy to it all but in s2 they're stagnating and depressed and she LITERALLY wants to belong somewhere and that somewhere is aziraphale......

for aziraphale i think that post-fall heaven had to be like "did you have fun killing your former friends with swords? well you were all chosen to stay angels for a reason but every day you should be terrified that if you step one toe out of line you're unworthy of god's love. lol." (also michael's whole "you've been a bit of a fallen angel" being a valid way for angels to refer to bad behavior) and it makes so much sense for someone to come out of that propaganda feeling the way aziraphale does! grey and i just recorded 2.02 and the ways in which heaven makes aziraphale feel silly and inadequate there but he's still crying his eyes out on that rock at the thought of falling make me soo. and 2.01 aziraphale saying it's nice to tell someone all the good things you've done now that he's not reporting to heaven is soo. showziraphale rlly needs outside reassurance and to belong somewhere and for millennia that somewhere has been heaven despite them all hating his ass. GOD IT'S SO MISERABLE

i think often about how by episode two of the show grey already said "I find it fascinating that both of them are situated as 'They’re different from the other people of their community,' like, Aziraphale is different from the other angels. Crowley is different from the other demons. And what they are most like is each other." well. i also love them and believe that they'll figure it out and be okay! (whether neilman is able to write that in a satisfactory fashion is something i... don't have the highest hopes for, but they will figure it out and be okay regardless of what that guy writes)

- Crystal :)

[shipaholic]

Episode 3: “I Know Where I’m Going” / “The Resurrectionists”

I’ve slept for about two hours, so it’s episode 3 liveblog time! Spoilers under the cut.

- Goob gets his own hand-stencilled mug and hot chocolate powder. What a life.

- The mysterious Mrs Sandwich...! I know nothing about her whatsoever, and I still don’t.

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- When Muriel sits down with the box visible over their shoulder, it feels less like they might see it and more like it’s watching them. I think the box itself is a good deal more important than any characters seem to be aware of.

- And now Aziraphale and Crowley have left Muriel alone with the box. HMM.

- “I don’t know how you lot have managed to stay in charge all this time.” “I’m not sure we have, have we?”

- “That’s how you lot measure miracles? How many times you could have brought someone back from the dead?”

- (Re. Nina and Maggie) “One fabulous kiss and we’re good” HMMMM. Something tells me Crowley is going to attempt one fabulous kiss himself and things afterwards will decidedly not be good.

- What was Muriel going to say about humans falling in love? They started to say, “Oh yes, especially -” gesturing back into the bookshop, and then Crowley finished the sentence for them. Especially what, Muriel? What opinions can you have already formed? Did you read all of Pride & Prejudice in the last three minutes?

- Crowley is so whipped it is actually embarrassing for him. Anyone less nice than Aziraphale would tease him about this until he disintegrated.

---

- Number of people meddling in Nina’s love life in first three episodes: Aziraphale + Crowley + Maggie  + Mrs Sandwich + Muriel = 5. She is the world’s foremost meddled-with woman.

- AZIRAPHALE DRIVES WORSE THAN CROWLEY THIS IS NOT A DRILL

---

- I realise that Aziraphale is very English (as am I), but it was still jarring to hear him pronounce it “A - Zed - Fell”. I have to admit A Zee Fell flows much better.

- Did. Did Aziraphale just shoot a dirty look at Crowley because he described Gabriel as beautiful. Guys. You cannot both be jealous of the same terrible man. No-one has ever been less of a romantic threat to your relationship.

- So far, in all the scenes set in the past, Crowley has been having a whale of a time, while Aziraphale slinks along miserably under the weight of one moral crisis after another. Meanwhile, in the present, Aziraphale is darting around absolutely having the time of his life while Crowley sulks and fumes in the background.

---

- Aziraphale gets to pick the tunes, and he immediately goes for Danse Macabre. Neither of them are beating the goth allegations.

- Ooh, Crowley taking over the radio and twisting it just like Hell used to do to him.

- The yellow Bentley: perfect no notes.

---

- Beelzebub seems surprised that Hell has no news about Gabriel. Admittedly that’s a dent in the theory that they want Aziraphale and Crowley to successfully hide him.

- Aw. Beez is having an emotional crisis. And confiding in a random demon about it. And not punishing him. You’re in charge, Bzzbzz. If you want people to have more job satisfaction in Hell, the change starts with you.

---

- My Best Games Of Chess. That is definitely a book that Gabriel can get nothing out of besides demonstrations about gravity.

- Crowley carefully carrying armfuls of books around the shop, only to toss them over his shoulder when he loses focus. He’s as much of a menace as Jim.

- Is this the most dressed-down we’ve ever seen Crowley? It’s a good look, tbh. Very slinky.

- Are those. Elbow slits. To show off his elbows. ?

- Crowley. My dear one. Please stop saying “Vavoom”. Even Jim is mocking you now.

---

- This is a contender for being the worst thing Aziraphale’s ever done. Just. Piously, obliviously cruel. Didn’t undo any of the ‘wickedness’ Elspeth committed that night, just ensured she wouldn’t get paid for it. I expected her to splash him with a good dollop of pickled herring-corpse soup.

- Ohhh we’re acknowledging that only Crowley is capable of stopping time. I’m prepared to wait patiently for an explanation of why he and only he has that power.

- Aziraphale won me back by tearfully rocking the jar with the tumour in. He just loves so much, and he lives surrounded by mayflies.

---

- OK this is a lot of clues all at once!! The publican mistook Gabriel for a mason (why a mason specifically??), and assumed so was the person he was with. And of the two of them, Gabriel was the most memorable. Who’s that going to be then? Not Beelzebub, surely? The Metatron, perhaps??

- When I paused the video, the notes on Amazon say re. the jukebox, ‘This is a Multi-Horn High-Fidelity Record player. Another definition of fidelity is “degree of exactness with which something is copied or reproduced”.’ So, Nice And Accurate, then?

---

- The laudanum is sold by “C.M.O.T. Dibbler”. Haha, nice.

---

- Crowley what in the world is this Alice in Wonderland shit.

- David Tennant is doing his utmost, but I cannot handle the cringiness of laudanum-drunk Crowley, I’m sorry. This is like “ETERNITAAAAAAAAY” on crack.

---

- Oh noooo oh myyy they’re walking along and Aziraphale has his arm around Crowley’s waist hellllp this is cute as all get out you guys stoppp I mean it

- Oop there he goes.

- “And then I never saw Crowley again (for many many years)” ERM. Oh God. That’s a bring-down. How. How long did Hell torture Crowley for this. ...Is this minisode set before the Victorian holy water scene in S1. Is it. ???

---

- I LOVE Aziraphale sweetly and with great prepossession handling himself like a boss around skinheads. Yeah he has nothing to fear from Mr NO RECEPTS. I wish good things for the grindr guy, though.

- All he’s doing is calling Crowley? No selfie with the Gabriel statue?

- Considering it was the whole point of this Edinburgh excursion, Aziraphale has been MISERABLE at bringing back clues. He didn’t ask anything useful about the jukebox or about the statue. This was basically just a nice holiday for the Bentley.

- He is the MOST cute though. His little face. <333

---

- Nina. How can you resist Maggie’s beautiful blue eyes.

- “Did they vavoom?” No Goob. They vavoomn’t.

- EEP, the one-two punch of Gabriel doing a creepy possession speech and Shax banging on the window got me. Whose voice was that underlying Gabriel’s? It didn’t sound like God - it was American and female, but different to anyone we’ve heard so far, I think. Tempests? A Leviathan reference, maybe...? We haven’t seen any weird weather so far except caused by Crowley. And God and Satan in the Job episode.

- The shot where Gabriel’s eyes go back to normal *chef’s kiss*

- The thing about Shax, is that even though she is an antagonist, she is completely honest and straight-up about everything she’s doing. There is no manipulation here. She is not just honest about her actions, but her limitations, too. She freely acknowledges she can’t enter the bookshop. (Or fix the boiler!) I still find it quite endearing.

- Also. Is Shax a vampire???

- Another puzzle piece about Beelzebub... after being told by another demon earlier in the episode that there was no new intel about Gabriel, Shax turns up with the apparent news that Beelzebub knows Gabriel is in the bookshop. Either Shax is bluffing (which she doesn’t seem capable of doing), or... Beelzebub is lying to other demons but letting Shax into their confidence. Not all the way in, I imagine, but more than Demon Bob or whatever he was called.

- Oh god. Crowley being so protective of Aziraphale, and at the same time so fatalistic. “It’s always too late.” That’s the third time he says “too late” this episode, and it’s clearly a reference to the time it always is in Hell. I guess it makes no difference having the ability to stop time, if it’s already too late.

---

- Bagpipes theme song is another winner.

---

General thoughts... I wasn’t really feeling this minisode, to be totally honest. I found it a bit cartoony. I think I prefer when Crowley and/or Aziraphale drive the action rather than tagging along behind someone. I greatly enjoyed the bits set in the present day, though.

[new-endings]

fic idea # 735 - Parasite AU 

or But it was all just a metaphor

((in the good omens universe, some demons including beelzebub, hastur, and ligur have animals on their heads, and it's popularly postulated that these are their true forms. but what if these creatures are the "demon"— sinister, insidious things—that have taken over the empty vessel of a fallen angel?

the "demon" itself is a parasite. it latches onto these fallen angels, no longer protected and shielded by Her and it feeds off the remains of their divinity, their souls, until what's left is an empty husk.

when the first angels fell, their transformation to demons didn't happen simultaneously. the fall, yes, the pain, the loss of Her Grace, Her love—ripped open and left to fall at different speeds, that was within an instant—

but not the transformation.

not quite.

but crowley...crowley’s a bit different. he has a mark of a snake. he can transform into a snake. this can mean that sometimes— sometimes, the parasite can fully take over. but not always.))

the being known as crowley has been staving off a complete transformation for millennia. he doesn't quite know how he's managed for so long—maybe because he'd always been different from the other fallen. maybe different enough to see the creature and instead offer it a deal.

after all, who would want to fully animate a celestial vessel full-time?

or maybe it's because of the strange little angel by his side, the brightest, warmest Light he'd known since the vaguest memories of Heaven—that when the parasite first saw him, there upon the garden's wall—even it was drawn instantaneously and slithered up by pure instinct.

crawley, as he was called at the time, didn't know why. all he knew was that he had to make painfully, awkward conversation with the strange angel up there as the parasite suddenly receded back into the crevices of his soul, leaving the fallen to quietly basked in the strange angel's Grace.

it happened again and again as time marched forward and the humans populated the earth. always, always, the parasite would find the angel but always retreated leaving—now crowley— to deal with him and now…

crowley grew accustomed. crowley grew comfortable. and crowley grew to look forward to these meetings.

yet the more he saw him, the bolder the parasite would be. what was stretches of epochs between meetings became once every few centuries—and then Rome happened.

crowley had been miserable. and then this angel— his angel, something purred at the back of his mind— invited him for lunch, a little "temptation" of his own making.

there was a thunderstrike of realization and crowley understood then what this parasite wanted.

it wanted this angel to fall.

crowley thinks for thousands of years that the parasite wants aziraphle to fall so it can take over the principality as its host instead of crowley. after all, to crowley, aziraphale is pure light, unlike anything crowley's ever seen. of course he’d attract it like a beacon, finding him far more appetizing than the charred remains of crowely’s own dwindling light he has to offer.

and it's no secret that aziraphale...doesn't...always excel at his job. the poor dear tries but… he’s the living example of “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.” he tried to rent out the entire inn for mary and joseph— he ends up forgetting to tell the innkeeper who the rooms are for, forcing the son of God to be born in a manger. he tried to avert the whole "Nero disaster” by turning the boy's aspirations to music for God's sake. that’s not to say that aziraphale was incompetent—but every flaw cataloged by heaven made crowley more and more nervous.

so the arrangement was born. crowley could take over his jobs for him—and so aziraphale can bungle up his jobs in turn. that way aziraphale can get a double commendation for doing his work properly— and for inadvertently messing things up with the other side.

((doesn't work. aziraphale absolutely excels at being a demon. he carries out temptations flawlessly. this is a great source of stress on crowley for centuries))

in the 1800s, crowley and aziraphale have a massive fight. crowley asked aziraphale to get him some holy water. a single drop is enough to kill a demon. crowley asked this for protection, in case the agents of hell found out about their arrangement.

and aziraphale denied him because it would be too dangerous, but what's interesting-- what's really interesting--

is that aziraphale's immediate reaction was to call the holy water "a suicide pill!" in this iteration, the context can have a very, very different meaning in that aziaphale is right: crowley would intend to use it on himself. aziraphale knows crowley by now. has known him for millennia. and he's right. it's a last resort if crowley ever feels that his control slips, that the parasite takes over, he has to have a way to take care of the problem before aziraphale becomes targeted by the creature lurking inside him.

and crowley does slip.

when crowley runs into the burning bookshop, reaches out and pleads to the parasite's senses to comb through the fire and ash in the air, and screams out that he can't feel aziraphale anywhere—that's when his control crumbles.

he's given up.

he's lost his angel.

there was nothing left in this world now. nothing left to do but to let the wars rage.

so he gives in. this vessel is his.

-

((from there, it’s a canon divergence from when aziraphale comes to the bar, seconds too late as the creature takes over. notice how hastur was scared of crowley during his drive through the wall of flames? he could likely smell exactly what crowley had become now.

canon events still occur with crowley acting...acting just a smidge off. a little less dramatic. a little ...darker.

but he's there at the airbase, willing to stand by his angel's side. this demon's been waiting for millennia to have that angel for himself. so he stands his ground. he won't waste the golden opportunity.

the meddling fallen...

maybe a fragment of him still exists in there.

maybe he's there when he sees their angel, their sweet, clever, wicked thing propose the switch

maybe he's there at the crevices of his mind when he spits hellfire at the archangels and rejoices with him as they burn.

maybe he's there when he takes their angel—his angel, has always been his angel— to bed, marking him, branding him, inside and out.

maybe he's there when aziraphale sighs in the quiet dark and says "I love you, Crowley..."

and maybe he's there when the demon smiles, sharper than before, and with a glow in his eyes more triumphant than the angel had ever seen.

"I've always loved you, Aziraphale."

-

in the events following the botched armageddon, its mask is slipping. for a while, it tries to uphold its persona as "crowley" but of course, it's not crowley. not completely. both crowley AND the parasite coexist to form the entity that aziraphale knows and loves.

he's…crueler. more dangerous. protective. possessive. he always knows where aziraphale is and of course a part of it is because he obviously is concerned for the angel's safety. the ruse won't be kept hidden forever, after all.

but it's more than that.

the fallen known as crowley thought that maybe being around aziraphale has kept the parasite at bay—but no, no he was wrong.

the only thing that kept the creature at bay had been crowley himself. when the parasite saw the angel for the first time, it slithered its way to the wall and crowley's immediate instinct was to take back the reins.

and the creature let it.

the deal they made was that crowley gets free reign to do as he pleases, but the demon can take control to have its fun in its own time. a bit like clocking in and out of work: many of the horrors humankind had made were indeed makings of their own.

but some were not without a bit of demonic influence when crowley wasn't around.

((there's a reason why crowley's so fond of sleep))

so when he tells aziraphale that he's been "asleep" it may or may not mean mean that the parasite has been taking his skin out for a spin.

so why didn't the parasite simply take aziraphale during these times?

well for one, crowley would most likely take control again. the creature may sense the angel's whereabouts, but crowley has his own special sense to know when aziraphale is in danger.

the other reason...is that he needs this fallen to court him.

win the angel over with his company, effortless banter, and teasing words all while the creature watched and learned, mimicked and mocked. it's a parasite— it doesn't know much about romancing and sweet-worded affections

but it knows quite a bit about getting what it wants.

-

((or maybe this was all just a metaphor of crowley's more demonic nature. he doesn't embrace "evil" and "sin" the way other demons do. and a large part of that is because he retains who he was before the fall. he didn't "fall" as much as he "vaguely sauntered downwards.” he was afraid of hell. he wanted to be here, on earth, with his angel and the humans he'd found equal parts amusing and equal parts frustrating. he didn't want to embrace what he'd become.

but the moment aziraphale turned him away for the last time, the moment he'd lost his angel--  something in him might have broken. it's no longer a sense of keeping propriety, it's now a matter of survival

yes, he's scared of hell. but now, he's more scared of losing aziraphale.

maybe the parasite was all in his head.

maybe he created it as a way to dissociate himself from the reality of his fall. maybe he and the parasite are one in the same.

and it's only now— now, after the very frightening reality of having lost aziraphale once— that he's willing to use whatever means he has to make sure aziraphale stays with him—

by his side.

like he's meant to be. like he was always supposed to be.

or maybe that's just what the parasite wanted him to believe))

[mostweakhamlets]

Cake Heals All Wounds

This fic was published on patreon on August 14th as part of the four exclusive stories that you can read for $2 a month! This one is sort of a Great British Bake Off AU

--

Aziraphale sighed in relief as soon as he was out of the tent and in the open, grassy field. While the sun was hot and beamed down directly on his head, it was better than the suffocating heat that had been trapped inside with the contestants and crew and the two of them.

“Fuck the producers for scheduling the longest bakes in the middle of a heatwave.”

Crowley lifted his hair off the back of his neck. His cheeks were splotched with red and sweat soaked his hairline. The poor thing looked miserable in his all-black outfit that had become his signature style.

Aziraphale tutted. “You can’t expect them to predict the weather when they schedule the series months ahead of time.”

They had managed to escape before makeup cornered them to dab up their perspiration and re-apply powders and concealers. Aziraphale was tired of having tissues shoved into his collar and towels pressed to his forehead. He just wanted a moment of peace without a camera on him.

“It happens every year,” Crowley said. “I think they’re doing it on purpose. It’s either their longest bakes or something with chocolate. It’s psychological torture at this point.”

Aziraphale did feel terrible for the bakers who were on the verge of breakdowns induced by both stress and the heat. Crowley was right, though. It wasn’t anything new. Filming was coming to an end, and the tension was increasing every minute along with the temperature.

Crowley had his conspiracy theories that the producers intentionally made every other episode miserable for the bakers for entertainment. Aziraphale doubted that they were that evil. But he knew what ratings looked like, and he knew how people took to social media when dramatic episodes aired. It was good for the producers, but it couldn’t have been intentional. At least not totally. Not every time.

“Oh God, they found us,” Crowley mumbled.

Two women, who were always well-meaning, approached them. The dabbing of tissues and the assaulting with brushes began.

Aziraphale was ready to be in the studio for voiceovers. He didn’t have to be in the heat with every scent of bread and cake clinging onto him by the end of the day (which he didn’t necessarily hate, but it did grow old). He could be in his own comfortable clothing rather than the dapper get-up that the audience expected to see him in, and he wouldn’t need layers of powder on his face for him to scrape off later.

“They’re getting ready to decide who’s going home, we think,” one of the women said, removing tissues from his collar.

Crowley chugged the water bottle he was handed as his makeup artist tried dabbing a powder puff into his cheeks. “I hate that part.”

“Well, I have to say it this week,” Aziraphale said.

Crowley smiled at him. “Yeah. I’ll make it up to you.”

“You could try taking your turn.”

“But they love it when it’s you.” ‘They’ was the audience. “You get all choked-up.”

“Just take your turn next week, and we’ll call it even.”

“Next week is the semi-finals.”

It was the last time someone would be sent home and the most emotional week of the series. Whoever didn’t make it would be devastated after making it so far and getting nothing. And Aziraphale and Crowley would be heartbroken having to be the bearer of bad news and see a familiar face leave. It was their annual tradition to go out after filming and buy a couple of bottles of wine and whiskey and sit up all night while binging on their alcohol and take out.

“I’m aware.”

Crowley scoffed. “I was thinking something along the lines of dinner.”

“You can take me to dinner, too.”

“Unbelievable.”

Crowley slid his sunglasses off to allow his eyes and nose to be touched up. Aziraphale watched as the off-hazel, nearly-yellow looked off in the distance. His eyes gained him a bit of celebrity. They were a “distinct feature” as talent agencies and IMDb declared. Crowley had grown sick of them and never saw anything quite special about them in the first place.

Aziraphale was obsessed with them.

“Alright, let’s get back inside before we get yelled at.”

Crowley walked back into the tent. Aziraphale followed.

—

“What do you mean you have another gig?”

“I mean that I have another gig, angel.”

Aziraphale wished the conversation was happening in public. That way, Crowley could see how huffy he looked. He could furrow his brow and purse his lips. But as it was, he could only try to convey his near-tantrum over the phone.

“What is it?”

“I can’t really say yet. All I can tell you is that I’m not going to be at the studio at the same time as you. Is it really that big of a deal?”

“Yes! We’re always there together.”

“It’ll just have to be different this time. Listen, angel, I have to go. I have a rehearsal soon.”

“Rehearsal for your new gig?”

“Yes. I’ll talk to you later. Are we still on for lunch Friday?”

Aziraphale thought about canceling the plans just to be a bastard. “Of course.”

—

“Anathema’s ‘Occult Occake’ is an aesthetical twist on the traditional jam cake. Dyed black with squid ink, the cake will be layered with homemade strawberry jam. It’ll be shaped as a demon-summoning circle with powder sugar symbols and fondant candles.”

Aziraphale wished he could record the lines before knowing the results. Anathema would have been the winner that week if that cake had turned out as she had envisioned it. The jam, which she had attempted to make in the tent, had been far too runny and seeped into the cake. Aziraphale had stood by as the hosts cut into it and revealed the soggy mess.

It was the first time Anathema had cried on camera, and it was all Aziraphale could think about.

“Can we try that again, Aziraphale?”

Aziraphale nodded. If Crowley were there, nothing would feel amiss and Aziraphale wouldn’t be flubbing his lines.

“Anathema’s ‘Occult Occake’ is an aesthetical twist on the traditional jam cake…”

He wouldn’t be thinking about Anathema’s face crumpled as soon as the hosts looked up at her with disappointed raised eyebrows and comments about how “Really, we expected better from you.” It was the worst Anathema could be confronted with—disappointment. Aziraphale had picked up on that by helping her plate biscuits and giving her mid-bake pep talks. She didn’t care if her presentation went wrong or if flavors didn’t work well. She only cared if she had expectations set on her, and as it looked as she was going to win the entire series (and as nearly the entire country hopes for it), she felt the pressure.

“Anathema’s ‘Occult Occake’ is an aesthetical twist on the traditional jam cake…”

If Crowley were there, he could point out how Anathema had quickly dried her tears and how Newt had run over to hug her as soon the cameras cut. He could take Aziraphale’s mind off the ordeals they had to go through.

“Anathema’s ‘Occult Occake’ is an aesthetical twist on the traditional jam cake…”

—

“Try this one.”

Aziraphale turned around and a bite of cake was being shoved in his face. He took Crowley’s hand and held it away so he could have a little dignity while taking it in his mouth. Once he realized how their fingers were touching and for so long, though, he pulled away with burning cheeks. It was obscene.

When the cameras finally went off for the last time that year, Aziraphale and Crowley were free to finally eat the cake they had watched being made for hours. And they were always determined to eat their fill of each of the three cakes presented before they were divvied up among the crowd of past-contestants and family.

Aziraphale hummed. It was rich and sweet and moist and satisfied his growling stomach. “Is that Newton’s?”

Crowley nodded and stabbed at the mangled piece on his plate. The cakes were supposed to remain pretty after being cut into, but Crowley somehow had the ability to make a mess out of anything he ate.

It was endearing if a bit annoying when Aziraphale wanted to take his time savoring every bite. Aziraphale could never be too annoyed with anything Crowley ever did. At the end of every day, he thought of Crowley and smiled.

His chest was tight, and his mouth was dry. He regretted not grabbing a glass of champagne.

“I was thinking,” Aziraphale said, “of taking a holiday in a few weeks.”

Crowley shoved more cake into his mouth. The dear would end up sick if he didn’t pace himself. Again, it was endearing yet annoying.

“Where’you goin’?” Crowley asked around the cake.

“That’s the thing.” Aziraphale rubbed his hands together and smiled. He could hear his heartbeat in his ears. “I was wondering if you’d like to join me, and if you would, I’d like you to have some say.”

Crowley froze. He swallowed his cake. He looked away.

“Uh… sure. I don’t have much on. Just a little filming over the next month.”

“Oh, of course. Your new gig.”

Aziraphale’s heart sank, though he wasn’t sure why. He wasn’t disappointed. He got what he wanted. A holiday with his friend whom he fancied that could potentially lead to more. But he wasn’t happy, either.

“Yeah.”

Crowley was becoming more popular, Aziraphale had to admit. While Aziraphale had made his fair share of guest appearances since the show gained its devoted, international following, Crowley was becoming an actual celebrity—noticed in shops, gaining masses of new followers on social media, earning nominations for bougie awards. Aziraphale was happy for him. But he also knew that with the newfound popularity, there was less time to spend together.

There would always be new gigs and interviews and publicity. There would be business dinners and coffees and contract meetings. There would be conflicting schedules and canceled lunches and postponed traditions.

“I’ll check my schedule, and we can plan something around it.”

“Around your new schedule. Right.”

And there was always the fear of Crowley leaving the show for good. What would Azirpahale do then? They were a duo at this point. Would Aziraphale be asked to leave the show? Would he leave on his own accord if his partner—filming partner, totally professional—wasn’t around anymore?

And if they weren’t filming together anymore, then would they grow apart?

“We can figure it out,” Crowley said. “And then we can decide where we’re going.”

“Alright.”

Crowley smiled. “Why do you look sad?”

“I don’t! I’m quite happy. There’s no reason to be sad.”

Crowley clearly didn’t believe him. He cut into Anathema’s winning cake and handed a somewhat sloppy piece to Aziraphale.

Cake healed all wounds.    

[earsofducks]

Day 8 - Soulmates

Well, this is it. 

Wow.

Thank you to @ineffablehusbandsweek for a fantastic week of prompts, and for setting this all up and reblogging and stuff. Amazing.

Thanks also to everybody that read my stuff. It brought me a lot of joy to know that some people actually ENJOYED some of the things I wrote. Y’all are fantastic.

Also thanks to Gaiman and Pratchett and Tennant and Sheen for a fracking amazing OTP. Gawsh. They’re so good.

Anyway, I’ll shut up now. Thanks for everything.

Crowley took a long time to realize Aziraphale was his soulmate. 

It certainly wasn’t the first time he’d met him. Crowley hadn’t heard any of the lore at that point, probably because he hadn’t spent any more time than was necessary in Hell. All he knew was that the angel had beautiful eyes and lovely wings and a heart that prioritized a pregnant couple’s wellbeing over his own. 

And that was more than enough.

It wasn’t even when he first heard the chatter about soulmates.

He’d gotten himself discorporated. Hung around Sodom just a little too long. (He’d been so sure he could convince - well, it doesn’t matter now.) And while he was waiting for his new body, he’d had nothing better to do than hang around and listen to the other lowlifes discussing the latest news, which was that apparently every demon had an angelic counterpart that was their soulmate. (When Crowley asked why the Almighty would give demons angelic soulmates when they could never really be together, the consensus was that it was all a big joke. That was when Crowley first started feeling bitter at Her for creating soulmates.) Also, continued his hellish colleagues, when demons were in close physical proximity to their soulmate their black-and-white vision would burst into colour, but the angel would remain unaffected.

And Crowley, being an idiot, thought huh, weird, instead of when I was around Aziraphale I noticed his eyes were blue.

No, Crowley didn’t put two and two together for a very long time. This was mostly because somewhere between being told about soulmates and being given his new body he’d managed to convince himself that it was all a big misunderstanding. Soulmates weren’t real. How silly! No, they were probably invented by some poor sod who was missing being an angel and thought to comfort himself with a daydream. (Crowley had not yet realized that ‘imagination’ was not very popular in Hell.) And then, shortly after Golgotha, he and Aziraphale were drinking in a tavern somewhere and he absentmindedly remarked on the bright red of a piece of pottery and then it struck him like a bolt of lightning. 

Oh no, he thought.

He spent a while trying to avoid Aziraphale and the many difficult feelings that arose when he was around Aziraphale, because it was all so much to handle. But the longer he spent away from his angel the more miserable he felt and the more bleary and unbearable his black-and-white existence became and when Aziraphale turned up in a bar in Rome he found himself unable to say no to oysters.

After that, Crowley accepted his fate. He was in love with Aziraphale. Aziraphale was his soulmate. He would never be able to tell Aziraphale about either of these things, because Aziraphale was an angel and he was a demon and angels and demons weren’t allowed to… well. Do the things Crowley would like to do.

*

And life goes on like this, with Crowley loving Aziraphale as quietly as he can and having his heart broken every few years and screaming drunkenly at God about how the soulmate joke isn’t funny, until the Apocalypse. Which doesn’t actually happen.

After he and Aziraphale go to the Ritz, they retire to the bookshop for a good old-fashioned nightcap. They drink and drink and drink until they’re both thoroughly smashed, and that is when it happens.

“Why’s your corporation so faulty?” Aziraphale asks, apropos of nothing.

“Wha?” Crowley asks, understandably confused.

“The - the - the - ” Aziraphale waves his wine glass around and makes a variety of expressions while he wracks his brain for the right words - “The colours.” 

“What about the colours?” asks Crowley, whose stomach has gone very cold. He feels very sober very suddenly. 

“They’re….” Aziraphale squints as he thinks very hard. “They don’t happen.”

“Oh,” says Crowley, relieved. “Nah, can’t see colours. Lost that when I - you know.”

“I’m terribly sorry, dear boy,” says Aziraphale, looking less drunk. Crowley looks at the wine bottles, which are less empty than they were a moment ago. Looks like they both accidentally sobered up a little.

“Doesn’t matter,” says Crowley, trying to shrug and discreetly sober the rest of the way up at the same time. 

“But not all the time,” says Aziraphale, pointing a finger at Crowley. 

Oh no. Oh no, oh no, oh no.

“Uh,” says Crowley.

“When your corporation was near my corporation,” continues Aziraphale, oblivious to the panic which is rapidly taking over Crowley’s brain, “colours happened.”

“Ah,” says Crowley. “Mm,” says Crowley. “Ngk,” says Crowley.

“Why?” asks Aziraphale again.

Crowley hems and haws and hedges until Aziraphale starts to get annoyed and says, “really, my dear, I don’t know why you’re making such a fuss. It’s not as if you could say anything that would make me like you any less. I wish you’d just tell me.”

Undone by the ‘my dear’ and the ‘nothing would make me like you any less,’ Crowley does. 

Aziraphale sits very still. Crowley sits still, too, tense and nervous and full of regrets. What a pathetic excuse of a demon he is. In love with an angel. Unable to let go of said angel, even when he knew it wouldn’t work out, wouldn’t lead to anything but pain for him and awkwardness of Aziraphale. Refusing to let go of - 

“Soulmates?” says Aziraphale, very softly, and there’s something in his voice that makes Crowley’s foolish heart leap. 

“Er, yeah. ‘S - dunno what She was thinking. That it was good for a laugh, probably. Watching me - uh, I mean us - I mean, demons, you know - when we couldn’t have what we - uh - dunno. Weird. Silly. ‘S silly, isn’t it? Sorry.”

“No,” breathes Aziraphale, and Crowley’s heart climbs higher. Stupid organ oughta know that the higher you are the more the fall hurts. “No, my dear, my very dear, my most beloved - oh, no. Not silly.”

Crowley’s brain cannot be expected to handle both very dear and most beloved at the same time. 

“Yungrhwha?”

“Crowley,” says Aziraphale, and he’s beaming, he’s shining, he’s radiating… something, something that Crowley is scared to think about, scared to hope for - “Crowley, you’ve waited so long for me.”

Crowley doesn’t say anything. He’s blushing and painfully aware of how pitiful he is and unable to meet Aziraphale’s eyes. 

“Crowley, my darling,” says Aziraphale, and Crowley can’t breathe, “I love you.”

Crowley lets out a sob at that, a harsh, punched-out sound. He didn’t mean to. It just happened.

“Beloved,” says Aziraphale tenderly, and reaches out and pulls Crowley into a soft, tight, warm embrace. Crowley cries harder and grasps at the fabric of Aziraphale’s jacket. “I love you,” Aziraphale says again, and Crowley doesn’t know how to do this. “I love you more than I will ever be able to say. I’ve loved you for millenia. I never knew - ” Aziraphale’s voice trembles. “Soulmates,” he says at length, full of awe. “We’re soulmates, Crowley. We were - darling, we were made for each other. She made us for each other. I’m yours, lover of mine. I always have been. I always will be.”

“‘Ziraphale,” gasps Crowley, overcome. He’s reasonably sure that demons were not meant to hold this much happiness. “Angel - angel - ”

“Shh,” croons Aziraphale, clutching him impossibly tighter and rocking back and forth. “I know, my heart. I know. You gorgeous, brilliant, impossibly sweet thing. You’ve been telling me as long as we’ve known each other. I know.”

It takes Crowley a long time to calm down, to start breathing normally again, to stop hanging onto Aziraphale like the angel will float away if he so much as loosens his grip. Aziraphale murmurs comforting, devastatingly lovely things the whole time. 

“Love you,” says Crowley, as soon as he’s found his voice again. It’s croaky and hoarse. He doesn’t care. “Love you. Love you, love you, love you.”

“Crowley,” says Aziraphale, sounding like he might cry, “I love you, too.” 

And they sit there, holding each other, for most of the night. Crowley’s breathing evens out completely. He gets a crick in his neck but doesn’t budge an inch, unwilling to risk anything when he’s just gotten everything he’s ever wanted. “Soulmates,” Aziraphale says wonderingly, every so often.

Crowley falls asleep thinking that he’s not mad at the Almighty for making soulmates. Not anymore.

[readingwritingcrying]

Hi, are you still taking prompts? If you are, maybe something like Heaven taking Crowley in order to hurt Aziraphale? Just some great whump 🙃🙃 love your writing

I might have gotten carried away with this oopsie,,, Here’s part one of this story! Thank you so much for sending in this prompt!!

Honestly, Crowley should have seen it coming.

He should have guessed, should have realized that they couldn’t possibly be let off the hook so easily. That they could just fool the rest of the powerful occult and ethereal beings in the universe by a simple swap and be done with it forever and ever.

Crowley should have sensed the strange angelic presence in Aziraphale’s bookshop when he was lounging peacefully on the couch.

He didn’t.

Crowley usually didn’t pay too much attention to presences. He couldn’t sense nice emotions like Aziraphale, so the whole thing just didn’t have much appeal to put any effort into, except if he was trying to locate his angel.

This is why he was completely unprepared when the bookshop door opened, the bell ringing to announce an intruder. Crowley glanced up, and he was honestly expecting some poor human customer he would frighten away with a flash of a much eviler face than the one he usually wore. (Aziraphale usually didn’t let him do this, but Aziraphale wasn’t there at the moment, and it was the human’s damn fault for ignoring the ‘closed’ sign).

However, Crowley was not expecting to see the Archangel Fucking Gabriel, a satisfied grin on his oh-so-punchable face.

“Crowley! Just the demon I was hoping to run into!” Gabriel said, his falsely-pleasant voice causing fear to ooze its way through Crowley. He sat up, every muscle tensed and ready to either run or if he had to, fight.  His pose on the couch was still deceivingly sprawled and twisted, it might even pass as relaxed to the untrained or simply uncaring eyes.

“Not sure I could say you’re the angel I wanted to see,” Crowley gathered himself enough to sneer at Gabriel. To his credit, he only sighed, looking vaguely annoyed and bored.

Once, very long ago, Gabriel would have cared, Crowley thought. Before even the Beginning, and at least before Lucifer Fell. That Gabriel, however, was not something he would see any time soon, if at all.

It was too late when Crowley noticed the way Gabriel’s eyes flicked above his head, instead of looking down on him as if he were a stain in a crisp white shirt that just wouldn’t come out.

He looked up, only to see the blur of movement as Sandalphon brought down the blunt edge of a sword on Crowley’s head. Hard. He didn’t even have time to shout before consciousness failed him, and the bookshop turned to black.

…

When Crowley woke, he was in about the last place he would have ever thought he’d be. Heaven.

Of course, he didn’t feel very heavenly. Demonic nature aside, his head hurt like… like…

His head really hurt. Throbbing in a way that made his thoughts disjointed, which really wasn’t fair because he wasn’t even corporeal. Shouldn’t have to hurt so blessed much.

He was in what was most assuredly a cell, although it had the appearance of a boring plain white room. It was awarded heavily, Crowley found, as he tried to test the door. Against demons and angels alike, and went even so far as to have dissuasions for human souls as well.

Heaven, at the least, was still worried by the stunt him and Aziraphale had pulled after the apocawasn’t.

‘So they don’t believe they can kill me,’ He thinks. And it was a relief because at least he wouldn’t be leaving Aziraphale forever. And if they wanted him dead through means of holy water or sword, he would have been gone by now.

Crowley didn’t recognize where in heaven he was, although he suspected by his last visit he might not recognize much if any of it. It was too different from what he once must have known. That certainly put a damper on any escape plans, even if he did manage to squirm his way around the wards.

At the very least Aziraphale must know something had happened to him, or he would soon. Crowley could feel it in the very way his being ached that his physical body had been left at the bookshop; him instead being harshly ripped away from it by the Archangels.

Which, now that Crowley thought about it, was odd. Surely if they were getting rid of him, they would want to make it as clean as possible, not risk Aziraphale discovering it was heaven who had him?

Unless… that was exactly what they wanted, Crowley realized in muted terror. For his angel to try and rescue him.

He was bait.

If heaven couldn’t rid Aziraphale with hellfire, they must have wanted to find another way, since God didn’t seem to care enough to make him Fall, a fact Crowley might have admitted to thanking Her for if he was drunk enough.

He didn’t know if it was to punish his angel or control him or what, but it was the only option that fit all the pieces together.

He wasn’t sure how long he stewed on that realization alone in the blank room. It was impossible to get a real sense of time, but it felt like much too long. At the very least, Heaven didn’t burn him, not like consecrated ground or other holy things. It just filled him with fear of what might happen to him and Aziraphale, and gave him a dull sense of longing he refused to admit to even to himself, and probably wouldn’t even with all the alcohol in the world.

Just when he thought he might actually loose it from the pure nothingness, a door that had not been their before opened.

“Now Crowley, I’ve had to hear thousands of years about how wily you are, so you must have some idea why you’re here?” Asked Gabriel, voice patronizing. Crowley hissed, and the Archangel shook his head. “Really, there’s no use for that. It’s not like it’s personal – but if Aziraphale insists on remaining an Angel, we have to hold him in line somehow. Michael thought of it actually, a great idea. If his priorities lay with you and not heaven, why not make them match up? He does what’s needed of him, and you won’t get hurt,” he smiles proudly.

Of course, it was Michael, Crowley thinks. Gabriel wouldn’t have been so creative. “It won’t work,” he spits, “I’ve been through hell there isss nothing you can do that’ss worsssse.” He wouldn’t show any hurt for Aziraphale, wouldn’t give them the show they wanted.

But Gabriel just nods with disinterest. “But we can do better,” he points out. And Crowley doesn’t understand until Gabriel’s hand is on his shoulder, holding tightly so that he can’t pull away.

He lets out something in between a gasp and a sob because suddenly he was being filled with Grace and Love and it was too fucking much. Grace was something foreign to him now, and it burned through the very core of him. Love was less so, but the love he was feeling right now wasn’t the love he had for Aziraphale, or even the more casual feeling for his Bentley or music, it was Love with a capital “L”, something godly and angelic that he couldn’t possibly know being outside of the Host.

For all it burned through him, he grasped at it, craving it. He never meant to fall, to lose this along with a name he could no longer say. He needed it, even if it felt like it was tearing his very essence apart.

With a shock it was gone, Gabriel’s projection roughly pulled away from him with his hand and Crowley collapsed. Tears streamed down his face, and he looked up to Gabriel with all the weakness and desperation as he looked to the heavens when he first Fell.

There was only a slight flicker of emotion in Gabriel’s eyes before he blinked it away and left.

Crowley was alone. He felt so empty, so cold. He was a miserable sight, shaking and pathetic in a way Hell could not possibly draw out of him. He couldn’t even speak. Even if he could, what could he possibly say?

Scream, turning his pain into rage? Call for Aziraphale to get him out of here? Beg for Gabriel to come back, to let him feel Light like that until it destroyed him?

He couldn’t do any of that so he just pressed himself against a wall, pushing his hands into his chest in a vain attempt to fill the empty feeling he was left with.

When Gabriel returned, Crowley had not moved. He had tried to sleep, but when exhaustion (the mental kind, at least) tried to overtake him he was flooded with a mixture of dreams and memories of his Fall.

Silent, Crowley watched as Gabriel approached with cold determination. Crowley did not flinch away from his touch, did not want to give the Archangel that kind of satisfaction. He just braced himself for what he knew was coming.

Somehow knowing was so much worse.

“Bring him in.” he heard distantly over his own choked sobs. He was raw, cold, empty, weak.

“Oh, dear.” Aziraphale. His voice broke, murmured sympathy and guilt and Crowley knew that the Archangel’s plan was just this, but he couldn’t stop the desperate gasps coming from him as he reeled in shock from the loss of grace for the third time in his life.

As much as Crowley wanted to, he couldn’t look at Aziraphale. Not like this, not now. “What have you done to him, Gabriel?” Aziraphale’s voice was accusing, angry in a way that Crowley was not used to hearing. Focusing on his voice and his presence, he tried to calm himself at least enough to open his eyes without starting to beg.

“Only what was necessary, Aziraphale,” Gabriel stated without sympathy. “Since the world is still, well, here – thanks for that one by the way – you’re still going to be required to work for heaven. Little to no chance of promotion, I’m afraid.” His tone was dripping with sarcasm. Aziraphale looked like he was about to snap, ready to lunge at Gabriel.

Crowley sent a pleading look to him, begging the angel not to get himself into any more trouble. Aziraphale took a sharp breath. “And if I don’t agree?” He dared question.

“Well, you see,” Gabriel waved his hand, gesturing towards Crowley. “Unless you’d like to have a demonstration sooner than later, then I’ll let you watch as he is punished for your mistakes.”

Aziraphale looked from Gabriel to Crowley crumpled on the floor eyes wide.

“Zira. S’ fine, I’m-“ He can’t say he’s okay. He can’t even lie about it. Gabriel spun towards him, eyes cold. He was pissed. Crowley wasn’t supposed to be in any state to try and comfort the disobedient angel in Gabriel’s eyes, he guessed.

Gabriel took a step toward him, and Crowley let out a low whine.

“I’ll do it,” Aziraphale said hurriedly. “Whatever assignments you want me doing, I’ll do it, Gabriel.” The Archangel paused and sighed in almost disappointment before nodding.

“Great! Glad to have you back,” said Gabriel, and Crowley never realized how easy an angel could lie.

After Aziraphale agreed, Crowley was left alone again. He felt hopeless, even if there was a way to get out of the blessed room, he didn’t have the effort to look for it anymore. Occasionally, he could sense his Angel visiting heaven, sometimes nearer to him than others, but he never saw Aziraphale.

At least when he had to experience his fall, he landed in Hell. There, demons easily took out their pain and anger on each other. Not exactly a healthy coping mechanism, but there was nothing for him here, and he was only stuck with his feelings festering. What he wouldn’t give for some plants to terrorize.

As time went on, he was at least allowed to get himself put back together. He was no longer a shivering mess on the floor, he was more of a somewhat mobile and very bored mess who only shivered a little when he felt a flash of Gabriel’s power. Which still wasn’t great, but he’d take it.

It was a long time before anyone decided to check on him. Long enough, at least, that if he were human he might be having some serious problems. Crowley, luckily, being a demon, could just sleep for a few days when the silence of his cell became overwhelming. He was starting to understand why his angel kept things so cluttered.

But still, being in heaven, with its holiness and light and love, twisted as it may have become, bad as the situation may be, made some part of him wish to stay. To belong, again. Which was confusing, because even if Crowley was offered a place again by God herself, he probably wouldn’t want it.

It was that conflicting nature he had been thinking about, pacing around his cell when a door opened, and in walked Aziraphale. Crowley turned, eyes brightening. “Aziraphale!”

The angel did not meet his eyes.

Gabriel entered after him.

Oh.

“Well, go on, explain why we’re here today,” Gabriel prompted. Aziraphale’s lip trembled.

“Crowley, I’m sorry I didn’t mean to, I just,” Aziraphale hiccupped, “I just messed up using a miracle, oh, please Gabriel. Let me fix this some other way,” he begged.

Gabriel tutted. “If there were any other way.” Gabriel approached Crowley, who bristled in defense. He was going to do this? Now, in front of Aziraphale?

He could feel himself start to panic, but tried to push it down. He would have to keep it together for Aziraphale. He’d like to have no reaction at all, not even a little bit of distress and encourage the angel to do things his way.

Heaven was a bag of dicks, and if anyone was Good it was Aziraphale.

But he wasn’t naïve enough to actually believe things would go so well.

Gabriel grasped his arm, and Crowley thought he might scream. Gabriel’s grace was projected through him, burning as it went. He clenched his jaw so hard that if he were a truly physical being it would have surely broken.

He didn’t scream.

His breathing was rapid, coming in pants and gasps, completely unsteady. He wouldn’t be standing if it weren’t for Gabriel’s tight grip holding him up. He felt like he would dissolve into ashes any moment. But he didn’t scream.

He refused to. Not in front of Aziraphale.

Not when somehow, Crowley must deserve this.

Gabriel must have grown frustrated because all of a sudden, Crowley’s head split open with a cacophony of voices. Prayers, angel communications, everything the Archangel could muster projected onto him.

“Please, please, please, stop, no, please,” he heard along with it. Vaguely, he knew it was himself. He still did not scream, but he was a mess of incoherent babbling and low whines as he begged for the quiet he had hated previously to return.

“Gabriel, Gabriel you’ll kill him!” Aziraphale’s panicked voice rang. The Archangel didn’t let up, and suddenly, Aziraphale’s voice powerful in an almost deadly, threatening way. “Gabriel, if he’s gone, I have no reason to be loyal to heaven again.” His voice had never contained so much Wrath.

Gabriel may not have been against a war with hell, but another war with angles was something he’d do anything to prevent.

The noise stopped. Gabriel’s grace, the Love, the Light was being pulled away so quickly that Crowley was sure some of himself must have been coming with it.

No, no not again, don’t leave me like this again. He tried to cling to it, the completeness that it offered, fighting it just as hard as when God had stripped it from him when he Fell. But it was a losing battle; this grace had never been his. He had just been allowed to feel it.

When it was gone, he screamed.

It was a tortured sound, not fitting of almost any creature, much less something close to human. Gabriel took a step back from him, shaken by the ordeal even as Crowley blindly grasped the air in front of him.

The painful sensation of his knees hitting the ground was the only indication he had collapsed, and he wrung his hands through his hair, pulling, trying to ground himself, his eyes tightly shut. He sobbed and keened and gasped and begged, although no words were close to comprehensible. Somewhere distant, his angel was crying for him.

The sound of the door opening again was the only thing that managed to break through to him; the sound of another angel whose Presence was overwhelming entering.

Crowley shoved himself backward, scrambling to press into the corner of the room away from the angels. His vision was blurry with tears, but the new face he saw was not familiar.

Waves of terror and panic crashed over Crowley. His eyes were blown yellow, his chest throbbing with stabbing pain, something like a hiss escaping him as a warning to the approaching Angel.

The Angel stopped, hardly looking at him. He was saying something to the other angels. Crowley’s mind couldn’t keep up with the words.

Pain, longing, terror threatened to overtake him. He found he couldn’t fight it.

The world went black.

part two HERE

[vidavalor]

Ok, now I want a little tiny Crowley crank tool that I can put on my Christmas tree lol. That would be the cutest thing ever. You make some great points @havemyheartaziraphale. When it comes to preparedness and what Aziraphale was saying about The Heavenly Zoom of Discorporation Beam of Light Thing, I do think it's something that can be applied to more than just that beam itself but I'm not sure that Aziraphale was prepared to get into the elevator. One of the other reasons why I'm all 'THAT IS SATAN' about "The Metatron" in The Final 15 is because, essentially, the whole season (and definitely the last two episodes) are about facing yourself in such a way as to be prepared to face the devil at the door, imo. It's about keeping the demons at bay-- figuratively and, then, quite literally. The whole season builds to this basically:

We forget but Shax is of The Devil-- she's a devout minister of Satan. She's probably the most devout one we've met, along with maybe Ligur. Most of the demons are just kind of miserable. Shax takes her job working for Satan seriously. The demons are viewed as a collective in servitude of Satan. Crowley has always privately rebelled against this. Beez does, too. But Shax does not so when Shax showed up at The Meeting Ball, it's the The Devil at the door. It's also why, imo, Shax gets scarier at times during this exchange than she has been all season.

The bit where she starts mocking Maggie by saying aloud her thoughts? The bit where Walking Pathos Mr. Vacuum faces off against The Devil unprepared? (And uses the word "interfering", unknowingly using language of Satan to further suggest what's going on?) It's comedic when he goes flying out but it's also dark as all hell. He disappears into the night. He's just gone. Mr. Arnold and Justine remark to Crowley about it when they get outside and they're terrified and Crowley doesn't disagree with that fear. It would have been less scary if Mr. Brown had been shown missing an arm or something-- instead, he just disappears, screaming, into the night. He was unprepared for The Devil at the door. He crossed a threshold for which he was unprepared. I feel like the same is actually true for Aziraphale, only because there's an anger in his eyes at his realization in the elevator. Something has happened here that he didn't anticipate but that he now understands as a result of these last few seconds in the season. That has to be something to do with a fall to me.

I go back and forth with what I think about hellfire and holy water not being actual threats. Part of me thinks that it would go along with what they're doing thematically if they aren't real threats, like you pointed out. If we hadn't had any examples of them being used, I'd be inclined to go that route but there's the Ligur problem. Ligur was dissolved by holy water before he even had a chance to realize it had hit him, basically, so that would seem to me to suggest that the threat of holy water to the demons is real (and so the hellfire threat to the angels is probably also real.)

This sort of also makes sense to me because if you were Heaven casting these rebelling angels down to Hell and labeling them as evil and putting on this whole charade, what keeps them from rebelling and overthrowing you? There would need to be some kind of legitimate threat to them that would keep them in check and keep Hell functioning and extinction by holy water seems like it has been working as a threat for awhile now. For that to be the case, the demons would have had to have seen it happen before. Likewise, the angels seeing hellfire as a threat to them. It's like a nuclear pact-- mutually-assured destruction. Crowley and Aziraphale knowing that what Heaven tells angels and demons about their demonic powers is not true but still believing in hellfire and holy water as threats to them means it's probable they've seen examples in the past that cause them to believe that much is real. (I really do love these sentences we all write in talking about this. I'm just over here casual typing 'extinction by holy water' as I eat my lunch lol...)

If Saraqael is up there erasing people's memories with a push of a button, then it's probable that there's something they switch in the makeup of an angel when they cast them to hell. It might be something that's actually fixable in the long run of the story.

<<Or possibly, the container is safe enough to consume, and Aziraphale is happy to know he's safe and ready to explode if he needs to.>> There's something that happens on his face in the elevator and it's not a sense of happiness or safety, imo. We see him come to a realization. He's contemplative, then there's a hard kind of understanding and it morphs into that wild smile. To me, honestly, at the 2/3rds mark of what is, essentially, 3 act play, it has to be him falling that we're watching because, really, the whole story has been leading to that from the start. The whole story is Aziraphale sauntering vaguely downwards so him actually hitting the bottom right about now feels right for setting up the last season to me. I could be very wrong-- we'll have to see what happens in S3-- but I think the angel is a demon now... whatever that actually is. 😉

There's not much else that I think could put those expressions on Aziraphale's face in that way than that and I kind of went backwards with this in terms of ok, what makes him really come to the realization that this is what's happened? And it might be that the thing in his mouth is a cheat to get out of it that Crowley gave him out of desperation to try to help him and Aziraphale, after hearing "we call it 'The Second Coming'" and knowing for sure that he's going to fall/die if he gets in the elevator, gets in as a form of suicide attempt, tries the supernatural cyanide or whatever it is, and when nothing happens, he knows the truth: he be a demon now. We can be together forever now, Crowley, ironically, hahahahahaha *mad smile* omg I'm gonna burn this place to the fucking ground and /end cliffhanger see you in nine years lol.

Great Balls of Fire

Ok, I've got a Final 15 theory on the kiss and the elevator and... pie?

This is for-- and in thanks to-- @indigovigilance, @ineffablelunatics and @somehow-a-human, as their metas reminded me of the idea of something in Aziraphale's mouth after the kiss and their talk of ball bearings and The Bullet Catch has eaten my brain alive and so here we are. Thanks also to @kayleefansposts for drawing my attention to 2/3rds of the metas. 🤗

What, exactly, happened in The Final 15? Maybe this...

As observed by many of us and discussed in the metas of the people I mentioned above, Aziraphale visibly has something in his mouth when he pulls back from the kiss. We also see him move the object around in his mouth-- or, we do, if his expression doesn't distract us first.

Because it's on his tongue, this isn't just light being weird or showing a filling or something. This is, clearly, a piece of metallic-colored something in Aziraphale's mouth. @indigovigilance pointed out how aspects of this parallel aspects of The Bullet Catch and I would agree with that. @ineffablelunatics, off of @somehow-a-human's post on the object, said it looked like a ball bearing and that's actually when I realized that I think the show might have subtly told us over the first two seasons what it is. And if it is what I think it is? The object is the reason for Aziraphale's reaction after the kiss-- not the kiss itself.

So, what is it?

To explain that, we have to start with two scenes, one from each season: 1601 and Crowley in Heaven with Muriel in 2.06.

In the 1601 scene, we learned that Crowley & Aziraphale experimented with their powers after they got tired of canceling each other out and that they discovered Heaven's dirty little secret in the process. That secret is that basically the only differences between them are the colors of their feathers and the lack of immunity to hellfire/holy water. Heaven has been telling everyone that some magic was "demonic" and that angels couldn't do it and they also had told everyone that demons no longer possessed angelic powers. Crowley & Aziraphale realized that this was bullshit-- Aziraphale could do temptations and Crowley could still do blessings. It's this discovery that allowed them to start fulfilling each other's assignments. They didn't tell a soul because of the danger of admitting they knew, especially because admitting it would be acknowledging that they had worked together to figure it out. This means that, with the exception of holy water being dangerous to him since he fell, Crowley is effectively still an angel in terms of the power he possesses.

This would mean he can magically make just about anything he could make when he was an angel. It's relevant because Crowley, as we'll see, made the object he slipped into Aziraphale's mouth during the kiss.

When Crowley is in Heaven with Muriel in 2.06, he opens the file on Gabriel's trial, which we are told can only be accessed by "a throne, or a dominion, or above"-- further showing that the truth is that Heaven actually can't strip angels of their power to do miracles. They're just simply telling them that they have done so as a form of social control and casting some to Hell to use them as way to discourage rebellion. This scene also reminds us of Crowley's awareness of this and shows him using his "angelic" powers to get information to help Gabriel.

The same scene with Muriel and Crowley that showed us that Crowley still retains his angelic powers reminds us again of the rank of throne/dominion in Heaven. (I say "throne/dominion" because Muriel's verbal commas and the way the sentence is structured-- along with the scene in S1 when Crowley goes from his throne to dominate his plants lol-- suggests that it is possible to be both ranks of angel at once, which is another topic so we won't go too far into that right now.) Crowley was undoubtedly a throne/dominion-- and it's not even just the fact that he had that hilariously tacky throne in S1. It's relevant here because of ties of throne-related things to what it is that Crowley made and slipped into Aziraphale's mouth.

Thrones are apparently God's chariots. They are concerned with justice and reside in the areas of space "where matter originates"-- which feels very Before the Beginning, right? They are symbolized by big wheels that rotate and by eyes that change color.

Yes, by wheels and eyes that change color... seems very Crowley, no?

The eyes repeat on the symbolic wheels and are in the position of what we on Earth would call ball bearings, apparently looking kind of like this:

...and remember the interconnected, turning wheels in the scroll that Crowley had Aziraphale hold in the moment they met, at the start of 2.01?...

It could be said that Crowley... a throne, a polymath, a scientist, an inventor... a being whose signature thing is the sexiest old car on four wheels... could make ball bearings from his body when he was an angel and, since we know that he still has basically everything but the ability to make holy water from his angel days, it means that he still can make those ball bearings...

...but we also know what else he can make from his body since he's also a demon-- and not just from his hands but from his mouth...

...hellfire.

Yes, I'm saying that it really was a ball bearing in Aziraphale's mouth-- but it was not hollow or empty. Not by a long shot. It was full of hellfire. It wasn't for Aziraphale's memories as Crowley didn't think that Aziraphale had time or opportunity left to extract them.

It was a suicide pill.

The story was calling back to The Original Ineffable Divorce in 1862...

Think about what Crowley saw when he was up in Heaven in S2...

Crowley is the one who put together what happened to Gabriel. He watched the video of Gabriel's sham "trial" and he saw The Metatron basically order Gabriel killed and cast down through the ranks and he knows that Gabriel only evaded Hell because of how it would have diminished the power of the institution of Heaven to send him there. Crowley knows that Aziraphale does not have this same amount of political power. He knows that The Metatron is a shifty motherfucker and that Michael cannot be counted on. He knows how much danger Aziraphale is in.

So, he takes a page from Lord Beezlebub after seeing that they protected Gabriel with the fly... only it's not exactly the same thing.

Beez's fly was given to Gabriel to help save him. It was a place to store his memories to help protect him long enough to keep him safe until they could make sure he was safe and intact. It worked because Beez and Gabriel had time to make a plan together. By the time Crowley is in Heaven watching the video of what happened to Gabriel and then getting back to the bookshop to sort it all out, there's no time for he and Aziraphale to make a plan. They are not alone again until after "The Metatron" has already shown up and, by then, Aziraphale is already on his way to being lost.

Beez is actually the first character we ever see make their signature thing on-screen and when they do? I mean...

Evocative of a kiss, with that big closeup on Beez's mouth. We watch them push the fly gently out of their mouth with their tongue. It foreshadows Crowley making something in his mouth and ties delivery of it to the kiss. We know that Crowley knows that he can make a single object that is of aspects of both Heaven and Hell combined-- like a ball of hellfire tempered, unless consumed, by a ball bearing.

Plus, earlier in the season, there's Gabriel tying The Fly-- which came about as a result of Beez trying to help him manage his depression by helping him to feel safer-- to metaphorical suicide when he spends the scene where the angels show up chasing it around the bookshop, trying to kill it with one of Aziraphale's Bibles, symbolizing just what Heaven is doing to everyone's mental health here...

But this is just where this possibility starts, really... because why else do I think it's a hellfire-full ball bearing suicide capsule that Crowley gave Aziraphale?

Well, for starters, there is all the holy water that is all over this plot at the end of S2... At the end, Crowley stands in Whickber Street outside The Bentley right across from The Dirty Donkey in a nod to-- among other scenes-- the 1967 scene, when Aziraphale brought Crowley the holy water.

Aziraphale knew that Crowley also secretly wanted holy water as a last resort and Aziraphale initially couldn't handle the idea of losing Crowley and reacted badly before eventually coming around to the idea that maybe Crowley needed to have some supernatural cyanide at his disposal in order to feel safer and that he should have that option. Based on the holy water story, Crowley, then, would be the first person to think that Aziraphale needed a suicide pill as an option if he found himself in trouble he couldn't get out of.

In 2.06, Crowley knows how likely it is that Aziraphale could be harmed by the angels and/or sent to Hell-- which is the domain of Crowley's assailant, who is literally Satan, and who hates both of them for, among other things, turning Adam against him. Crowley knows Aziraphale is a good person who wants to believe the best is possible but he also knows how unlikely it is that this is going to go well for Aziraphale. Crowley can't stand the thought of Aziraphale suffering so he gives him a way out as an act of love because Crowley would sooner lose Aziraphale for eternity than see him suffer.

When it becomes clear that Aziraphale is going with "The Metatron" and Crowley is out of ways to convince him not to, he sees Aziraphale look away and start to cry. Crowley goes back and kisses him as a last resort but Aziraphale is initially resistant-- not because this is their first kiss and not even just because they're upset (though that's part of it) but because to kiss Crowley then would be to let him in... (after all of those symbolic doors and "let me in"s happening in the story)... when Aziraphale making the mistake of trying to shut him out.

Aziraphale eventually, though, can't help but let Crowley in a little...

...because, ya know, it's Crowley...

...and, when he does, he opens up a little, and Crowley slips a suicide pill into Aziraphale's mouth.

It's also definitely worth noting that one of the reasons-- the primary reason, even-- why Crowley kisses Aziraphale is because he needs a cover to both make and give the fireball to Aziraphale without being noticed-- and to do so in such a way that Aziraphale would be assured of the ability to have it on his person when he got to Heaven-- even if he lost his clothes in the process, as like what happened to Gabriel when he was cast out. It has to go in Aziraphale's mouth for easy consumption for it to work and kissing him is the only way to do that. What's really worth noting, though?

Crowley's plan hinged on Aziraphale eventually giving in and kissing him back. He couldn't tongue the fireball into Aziraphale's mouth without Aziraphale parting his lips and Crowley knew he would... because he always does. Not that they're regularly trying to kiss while being super miserable lol but mah point is that Crowley knows that Aziraphale can't ever not kiss him. That's not indicative of this being a first kiss-- that's indicative of the complete opposite of that.

Anyway...

Aziraphale knows what Crowley can make and what it is that he just gave him and that's why this is his reaction after the kiss:

The devastation isn't over the kiss itself. It's because Aziraphale trusts Crowley's interpretations of things more than his own sometimes and, by secretly slipping Aziraphale a suicide capsule out of fear and love and delivered in a kiss, it really hits home for Aziraphale that Crowley thinks they are now in a situation where there probably isn't going to be another way out. It's not because it's a first kiss-- it's because it's likely a last one-- and things are so dire that it came with supernatural cyanide.

It's the realization that Crowley really thinks Aziraphale has been fooled and Aziraphale can't bear it because he knows, deep down, that Crowley is probably right and he's embarrassed. 'Pride goeth before a fall' and all that... Aziraphale is lovely-- an absolute poppet-- but he's imperfect, just like us all. One of his worst traits is that he doubles down when he's been embarrassed as a way of trying to save face and retain pride. It's maybe his worse flaw and it gets very dangerous for him here. Crowley is no stranger to trying to stop situations where it could happen, like this paralleling time in 1941:

Some other reasons why it's a fireball suicide pill before we get to what then happened in the elevator...

There's the fact that the show had a scene set in S2 in The Dirty Donkey-- where the elevator is. (As the start of the scene, Crowley & Aziraphale even walk through the door where the elevator will materialize at the end of S2.) Part of their conversation is very possibly Crowley recounting their first kiss-- at minimum, it's about kissing-- and then Aziraphale makes it also about balls, combining the two to, among other things, foreshadow The Final 15:

The wordplay here is already threefold in this scene off of Crowley's joke that follows Aziraphale remembering Jane Austen's balls: balls (testicles), the phrase that x person "has balls" (is badass), and balls (of the cotillion/dancing variety). This continues into the meeting that Aziraphale hosts-- the disaster of a ball that goes straight into the end game of the season. Here's Aziraphale making yet another ball-related wordplay joke-- this one, during The Meeting Ball:

"We're having a ball" as in they're literally having a ball-- a party-- but also the idiom "we're having a ball" meaning "we're having a great time." We are now up to four different meanings of the word 'ball' in S2, stretched across different scenes, emphasizing the importance of it. One of the missing ones still needed here to complete this idea is a literal ball-- and the ball bearing would not only meet this idea but would then make all of the ball-related wordplay have had the purpose of building towards it. We think it's building towards The Meeting Ball-- and it is-- but all of it, including The Meeting Ball, would actually then be building towards the hellfire ball, which is the actual ending of S2.

Then, there's what this all has to do with the eccles cakes...

Yes, eccles cakes lol... Eccles cakes, as a lot of us already know, are popularly referred to as "fly cakes", off of how the currents sometimes look in them, but the significant thing here is that, despite their name, eccles cakes are not actually cakes at all-- they are really pies.

Ball bearings are also used in Good Omens' favorite metaphor of food to weigh down dough when baking pie crust. Pie weights and ball bearings are basically the same things, just put to different use. It means you literally cannot make eccles cakes from scratch without a jar of pie weights... which are just, structurally, the same thing as ball bearings... and Crowley can make them. You also make pie dough by first rolling it into a ball.

Which is likely why this hilarious moment exists:

Please hold The Cake-Pies of Symbolism, my pie (and Pi)-loving dear...

Crowley's face at having to stand there holding some little pies 😂...

The eccles cakes-that-are-really-pies go along with this theory as well because look how the show presented the forthcoming apocalypse to us back in 2.01:

The horse is Crowley, the rider is Aziraphale, and they're headed for Armageddon-like mental health disaster-- all ushered in by the four eccles cakes, representing Gabriel, Beez, Nina (who suggested & gave them the eccles cakes) and Maggie.

Presumably, The Lords of the Flies are the two eccles cakes that are already canoodling on the back of the plate while Maggie and Nina are the two in the foreground who are aligned but not yet together. Crowley's S2 plot is largely working at the behest of these wonderfully rebellious pies. He looks after Gabriel, finds out what happened to him and connects it all to Beez... and this is after he spent the season on his vavoomy Operation Lovebirds to get Maggie and Nina together. He's responsible for the pie crust-- the containers of the eccles cakes-- in a show obsessed with containers. Crowley is, symbolically, a jar of pie weights in being form by way of his actions-- which is suggestive of the fact that he can probably physically make them. (There's also: "Just a few million years to bake," which Crowley said of his stars-- which he made-- in the opening scene of the season.)

"Nina, what do you sell that calms people down?"

Calm is from the Greek kauma, which means the heat of the day. Heat, as in slang for a weapon. Heat, as in hellfire. Heat, as in what's needed to bake. Heat, as in passion. Heat, as in "bringing the heat." The heat of the day-- the sunny daylight of The Final 15. Eccles cakes-- really: pies-- calm people down... they bring them heat, in every possible way, and it sets them on a path down-- to Hell.

Then, there's Agnes Nutter...

When The Witchfinder Army came to kill Agnes, she hid gunpowder (a weapon) and roofing nails (the construction-related metal that enabled it) in her dress. Agnes blew up-- she became a literal. fireball. Crowley wasn't necessarily suggesting that Aziraphale turn himself into an Agnes-like bomb in Heaven when he gave him the capsule but he was giving him a weapon involving fire with which he could kill himself if he had no other way out.

Then, there's the theme of suicide in examples from earlier in the season:

Crowley saving Elspeth (on the night Crowley was dragged to Hell)... The bit when Aziraphale then calls Crowley from Edinburgh in the present and tells him that he's read that Dalrymple left in disgrace and killed himself... "The Bananafish" being a short story about trauma by J.D. Salinger which ends with a traumatized man suddenly killing himself... Crowley setting Gabriel up to jump from the window and then stopping him from doing it...

There's also the fact that the end of S1 was Heaven and Hell forcing Crowley and Aziraphale into forms of suicide (getting into hellfire/holy water) and the "Aziraphale" in the Heaven part of it was Crowley spitting hellfire-- at Gabriel, no less, whose story is what jumpstarts S2.

Then, there's that the song that is The Clue to everything in S2 is "Everyday", the significance of which is that it's a foundational song of American rock 'n roll. Rock 'n roll is a blend of musical styles that actually wouldn't exist without first the big band/swing that Aziraphale loves that came before it-- symbolizing how Crowley & Aziraphale paved the way for Gabriel & Beez. There's another song, though, that, like "Everyday", is from the pivotal rock year of 1957 that is equally influential and is enormously Good Omens-y, in the sense that it cleverly uses wordplay to the effect of barely disguising sexual euphemisms and often through amusingly church-y language:

You shake my nerves and you rattle my brain/Too much love drives a man insane/You broke my will/But what a thrill...

Goodness gracious... great balls of fire...

[Also: less part of the theory and more just a possible nod but... "The Metatron" brought Aziraphale a coffee, there's a threat of non-existence, and Aziraphale might have gotten a 'kiss of death' from a being who is, essentially, a cherry pie lol... so, those of you who know that other greatest television show to ever television show might see a bit of a nod to Twin Peaks in here as well.]

Speaking of kisses of death... the film that popularized the word "vavoom"-- and which GO S2 is homaging all over the place-- is called 'Kiss Me Deadly.'..

So, after the kiss, Aziraphale gets the capsule and keeps it tucked into his mouth and he's gone too far with the conversation and doesn't want to admit that maybe he's wrong and Crowley is right. Crowley goes out, "The Metatron" comes back in, and Aziraphale keeps looking at Crowley staying by the car out the window and he's a bit more nervous now ("what about, um, my bookshop?"). Even if he still wants to be right, he's beginning to doubt even more that he is.

He almost tells "The Metatron" to go. He almost goes to Crowley. We see him start to say that he thinks he made a mistake but he doesn't go through with it. He's too embarrassed. Fraulein Maria can't face The Captain and is trying to run back to The Abbey over here.

Aziraphale goes out with "The Metatron" and the significant moment is this revelation: "We call it 'The Second Coming'."

This is the moment that Aziraphale realizes for sure that he's been tricked and there is no Supreme Archangel job for him. The Metatron doesn't want to change Heaven or save anybody-- he wants to destroy the world, same as he always has-- and there's no way that he'd ever trust Aziraphale to carry that out when Aziraphale is who stopped the first round. Heaven will never admit they did wrong by Crowley-- to do so would be to collapse the system because then every demon would want to appeal their own status and demand justice and the Heaven/Hell regime would fall, in the sense that their little supernatural empire would crumble. The Metatron would never allow that and Aziraphale realizes in this moment for sure that he has been played for a sucker.

It's still possible that, at this moment, Aziraphale might still believe that this being who has tempted him with the possibility of the justice he wants for Crowley more than Crowley actually wants for himself-- and with false reassurances that he and Crowley could be together forever-- actually is The Metatron. Or, Aziraphale might be starting to get the sense of what's actually happening but, either way, he now knows that he's been fooled. He knows now that while he and Crowley both got some things wrong (suggesting they run off and proposing suddenly were not great moves on Crowley's part)... about this bit anyway? About being in danger if he believes the being who came to the door? Crowley was right.

So, Aziraphale has a choice: does he go to Crowley or does he get in the elevator, knowing now that to do so is to go to a form of death?

He can't face Crowley. He knows Crowley would forgive him and just wants him to be safe but, in the moment, Aziraphale is too ashamed and too embarrassed to admit that he was fooled and to deal with how awfully he just behaved. He's also exhausted from being hounded by the weight of his halo and Heaven for thousands of years. Negative thought cycles in overdrive-- he's never truly believed that he deserves Crowley and he has convinced himself that maybe Crowley might be better off without him. Maybe they just don't get a happy ending and maybe Aziraphale is so tired and can't run and hide anymore and just wants it to end.

Imagine spending thousands of years in service of an organization that also doubles as family and who abused you and abandoned you and who now wants to kill you... and you so hoped that change was possible that you clung to the idea beyond a point of reason-- to the point of hurting the one you love, with whom you have the only real love you've ever known. And you know he'd forgive you in a heartbeat because he loves you and he just wants you to be safe but you can't face him because you can't yet face yourself... that's Aziraphale deciding between Crowley and the elevator.

Aziraphale can barely glance over at Crowley and when, he does, it's also The Bentley he's looking at because he's telling the car to play Crowley their song. Crowley said "no nightingales" but Aziraphale says, in response: "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square." His last moment on Earth and he uses it to basically leave a suicide note for Crowley that says nothing but I'm sorry. I love you.

Their song plays when Crowley starts the engine of The Bentley, which calls back to the first time they met in the Before the Beginning scene that began the season and showed how they started the engine of the universe together.

Aziraphale might be trying to warn Crowley about Armageddon by sending an "engine trouble"-type of message or he might be calling back to when they first met or, as I suspect, he might be doing both but the show, at least, is referencing Before the Beginning here with this, whether or not Aziraphale intentionally is.

So, Aziraphale? He makes his choice. He gets into the elevator...

...and he swallows the fireball. Which we can see him do here:

Or, as this was foreshadowed in S1 by the being whose own fall and subsequent arrival at the bookshop door set all the events in this season into motion:

(The eerieness of the fake grin on Gabriel after seeing how it foreshadows S2 ending with Aziraphale's mad grin...)

Because, when all is said and done, this poor bastard really would have a death-by-swallowing-something story over here, wouldn't he? Can they just hurry up and destroy the Heaven/Hell system so Aziraphale can have food and sex in peace already, please? 😄

Aziraphale knew he'd been played and he didn't want to go through whatever came next. He didn't want to reach the top floor of Heaven because he knows that only forms of death await him there. They'll take his memories. They'll cast him to Hell. Being a demon is no picnic and Aziraphale has seen that in being with Crowley for so long. Satan is not exactly the biggest fan of Aziraphale and Aziraphale, better than most, knows what Satan is capable of. He doesn't want any part of that. He ingested a suicide pill to avoid being captured by the enemy.

Crowley gave him the pill because angels are not immune to hellfire. That's what made it a suicide capsule, right? It was supposed to kill him within seconds. It was supposed to be quick and relatively painless-- a way to escape the horrors that might await him. Even when Aziraphale is at his worst-- as Aziraphale was in their last scene in bookshop-- he is still a pure-of-heart, lovely being to Crowley because Crowley loves Aziraphale as he is-- imperfect. Just enough of a bastard to be worth knowing. It never occurred to Crowley that the capsule might fail. Why? Because Aziraphale is, always and forever, his angel.

Both Crowley and Aziraphale thought the fireball should have protected Aziraphale from pain and suffering by killing him almost instantly once he ingested it.

By that measure, Aziraphale should have burst into flames in the elevator, seconds after he swallowed the pill just after stepping inside.

But he did not.

We watch as the seconds start to tick by... and we see the realization play out on Aziraphale's face as each second that passes is another one where he's still here...

...the look gets more and more unhinged as the elevator keeps climbing until we get the slightly mad dark grin as the last shot of him before a fade to a deathly black... with Aziraphale having spent the final splitscreen since he got into the elevator on the other side of Crowley, symbolizing what's happened.

In the elevator scene, we are watching the dawning realization play out on Aziraphale's face as the fireball doesn't work and there's only one reason why it wouldn't-- because he's no longer an angel.

Aziraphale has been sauntering vaguely downward for the season and maybe for awhile before then. He's been letting the darkness in, more and more, throughout all of S2. We have been watching his fall happen. The 'falling from a great height into a pit of boiling sulphur' part of falling? Ceremonial. An aftermath of sorts-- an additional punishment. It awaits Aziraphale when he gets off the elevator in Heaven but it's something we likely don't really need to see and never have seen in the show yet because that's not actually the main point of a fall. By the time you're literally falling from a great height, you've actually already fallen.

Aziraphale's determined-- but also just really half-mad-- final grim smile in the elevator over his understanding of what's happened is both the pain of thousands of years of religious trauma and abuse-related misery and a bit of completely unhinged I'm gonna burn this place to the fucking ground fury.

Aziraphale swallowing the capsule also parallels Gabriel having to "consume" The Fly to open it. The Fly went through Gabriel's eye and allowed him to "see"-- it give him realization and understanding by returning his memories to him. For Aziraphale, he swallows the fireball and it also gives him a kind of sight-- realization and understanding of what's happened and what's to come... all of this also in the moments before his memories (and, so, his sense of self/his life) will likely be taken from him.

(For a time-- he'll be fine eventually. *mantras* South Downs Cottage, South Downs Cottage...)

"And from his mouth go burning lamps and sparks of fire leap out." The Job quote on the matchbox. The matchbox contained the fly-- it's the equivalent to the ball bearing containing hellfire. Works now on several different levels but one of them then is: And from his mouth (Crowley's mouth/the kiss/the fireball/Aziraphale swallowing the fireball)...

...go burning lamps (the light that goes out in the bookshop when Aziraphale is in the elevator)...

...and sparks of fire leap out. Several meanings:

Literal sparks-- in that Aziraphale can now spit hellfire, like how Crowley did in his body in Heaven in S1.

Sparks of fire leaping out, in the sense that Aziraphale has made the leap-- he is a demon now.

Lastly, though... sparks of fire leap out... as in, Hell (and Heaven) hath no fury like this very, very, very pissed off Angel of the Eastern Gate whose whole thing is freeing those imprisoned by corrupt systems...

Visually paralleling the elevator with a grey wall behind him and light/darkness alternately striping Aziraphale is the 'Aziraphale and God' scene in 1.03, setting up its sister elevator scene in 2.06, where Aziraphale realizes that he has been tempted by Satan and has fallen. (Ironically, a realization about having fallen that happens while going Up in an elevator.)

God: "Aziraphale. (dryly) Angel of the Eastern Gate. Where is the flaming sword I gave you, Aziraphale?"

Aziraphale, unintentionally foreshadowing the fuck out of the plot:

"...must have put it down here somewhere."

Yeah. 😉 Give 'em hell, Aziraphale.

Bonuses:

The awning of a new age/Dawning of a New Age joke. An understanding/a daybreak that begins a new era...

"Oh, listen, I think it's about to happen-- the 'awning' of a new age." Yes, indeed, Crowley. A dawning of a new age was imminent...

...and, finally, if you substitute 'Aziraphale' for his parallel of 'Job' in these sentences, Bildaddy summarized the season endgame quite nicely in 2.02:

[softlyblues]

30th April 1876, Paris

Very little from the exhibition actually sells, because this is before they are very much in vogue, and Manet is still young with a spring in his step, and Renoir still follows Monet with hope in his eyes and a brush behind his ear. It is 1876, the second Impressionist exhibit in Nadar’s studio, and they are all young and full of vigour, skin so thick as to shrug off criticism because what would they know?

L’homme Distrait is a painting in the corner of the room, below a collection of Renoir’s studies of water. People’s eyes pass over it, oddly put off, although there isn’t much wrong with it. At first, anyway.

It is by a young man named Alfred Sisley, and it is odd because Sisley is known (already) for his landscapes. It is a very small canvas, all light and the spill of shadow,  the press of a hand against a pillow, the fall of hair along bare shoulders, a shirt slipped down to cup the upper arm, to reveal a smattering of intimate freckles along the back of the neck, trailing ever-downwards. Morning sun spills through the window the figure looks out of, and his face is hidden by the picture, captured from behind. His fingertips press into the pillow, clutching a little of the fabric, and what little the viewer can see below him shows bare feet tucked underneath bare legs, a tantalising peek at whatever else might lie beneath. It is tender.

Three paintings are sold, at the second Impressionist exhibit, although the publicity is a lot greater than that of the second. Two are sold to an art collector from Normandy, who has felt the way the wind is blowing -

And the third is sold to the strange man in the old-fashioned suits, who came every day of the exhibition to stare at the Sisley painting in the corner, an odd look of yearning in his eyes, his hands neatly tucked behind his back as though he doesn’t trust himself not to touch. He pays in cash and vanishes.

☼

2nd September 1889, London

Aziraphale does not have many houseguests, but he makes an exception for a few of his favourite people. It is just before the decade turns, and Oscar cuts a pompous figure lying on his chaise-longue with a wine glass hanging from his hand, but he’s a lonely soul and his young man - his Alfred, an undergraduate at Oxford just turned twenty - is chasing him. Oscar comes to Aziraphale to complain, wryly, that young men will chase without any of the idea the hurt they can cause, and Aziraphale is there with wine and an ear to lend.

“That painting,” Wilde says, waving a hand at the corner, “Often I’ve wondered about it. My tongue is too loose, but my friend - yours is too tight.”

Aziraphale doesn’t have to turn to know which painting Wilde refers to; over the years, he’s wondered if he should discard it, but every time he tries to his hand stills. “I found it in the Impressionists,” he says lightly. “A trifling thing.”

“An odd choice of subject matter for the air-silly men, surely,” Wilde says. He can be astute when he wants to be, damn the bastard.

Aziraphale shrugs. “I thought it was unique, and Sisley was only too glad to sell.”

“Do you know who the sitter is?”

“No,” Aziraphale says.

Oscar’s eyes, mostly full of self-pity, swell with gentle laughter. “My friend - you never did learn how to lie.”

“I don’t know him,” Aziraphale says, “I - I know his name.”

“Oh?”

Aziraphale fills his glass, and then Oscar’s when he holds it out. “His name is Anthony,” he says steadily, and wills his voice not to tremble overmuch, “But we have - that is to say, I do not see him anymore. I haven’t in a long time. I saw the painting at the exhibition and it seemed like I ought to buy it, although I never told Sisley my name and I cannot imagine Anthony would be too happy to know I bought it.”

Wilde laughs. It isn’t a very happy laugh. “You and I,” he says, and tips the edge of his glass against Aziraphale’s, “Must be the most miserable men in all of England. Our lovers run away.”

Aziraphale doesn’t disagree.

☼

And On The Seventh Day, He Rested

That is not even close to how it begins, but it is a view of things from the other side of the mirror.

Crowley doesn’t remember his life before the Fall, only that he must have had one, and that he must have had a good reason for leaving Above and going Below. He remembers the pain of it, of everything burning and the feathers on his wings scorching black with the heat, a God angry at the rejection of one of Its children. Crowley remembers screaming, and then blackness, and then Hell.

He hadn’t liked Hell at all. When they asked for volunteers to tempt on this new experiment God was creating, Crowley had jumped at the chance, back when he was still just Crawly and nothing much separated him from all the rest of the poor bastards down there who had just wanted to know why.

And he got up there and found out that the world was open and airy and beautiful, and things smelled of peaches, and Eve was nice to him, stroking a finger along his scaly back. “You’re pretty,” she tells him now.

This is how it begins.

“I will call you a snake,” Eve tells him, and Crawly rears up all proud of himself, because he has a name someone else has given him and it seems to fit him as though it always has. Like a glove. “You are a snake because of the hiss you make.”

To make her happy, Crawly does it.

Her laugh is beautiful, and he is proud of himself for making it - that is something he has done himself, created all on his own, and it feels so good to create joy in the air, especially for Eve. Crawly likes her ever so much more than he likes Adam, who is a bullyish man, stomping about the garden and forcing names on things that don’t suit them at all. A part of Crawly wonders if Adam will be happy about snake.

“Hello.”

It is a few days later, and Crawly is testing out his other form, sitting on the wall of the garden and swinging his legs over the side. He’s eating an apple. It’s green, juicy, running down his chin, full of good flavour and a sharp bite, and this is why he volunteered - because there are no apples in Hell.

“Hello,” something says again, and a vision all in white settles beside Crawly.

Crawly scrunches up his nose. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m a Principality,” says the angel, almost apologetically. “I think I’m meant to be guarding Eden from temptation and things like that? It’s all quite exciting. I’ve been speaking to Adam, a lot.”

“Good,” Crawly tosses his apple over the wall, where it rolls into the barren sand.

(And why is Eden the only place of life? What has made it special?)

(Something takes root.)

“You’re the temptation, then, I gather,” says the angel. He is quite pretty, objectively, a spray of short white hair over an amicable face, a sharp little nose and bow-shaped lips. His robes fall to his ankles, suitably demure, and his hands are folded in his lap as though he’s awaiting a lecture from God Itself.

Crawly shrugs, and feels very sinful. “I’m the temptation.”

(Later he thinks this is part of the Holy Punishment. It must be. To love, and to never be loved in return - a black hole, a void in reverse, giving and giving and never receiving. This is the last and first joke, by a God cruel enough to laugh at it, placing the one thing Crowley wants in front of him and saying: this is not for you.)

“You look very benign,” the angel says, like an apology. “I - oh! I’m very sorry. I’m Aziraphale, Principality. Your name can’t just be temptation.”

“Crawly,” Crawly says, going scarlet at the saying of it aloud. “Although I’m thinking of changing it.”

“I’m very pleased to meet you,” says Aziraphale politely, and Crawly thinks oh so this is what it’s like to see the sun rising.

He doesn’t mean to tempt.

Truly, he doesn’t.

“Oh, snake,” whispers Eve one golden night when the sun is hanging over the sky, a guest that refuses to leave, “I am so sad, and I don’t know why. I wish you could speak to me, snake - sometimes it feels like you’re my only friend.”

Her and Adam sleep at opposite ends of the Garden. Eve curls beneath a bush, her hair bouncing over one breast, and shivers in the cold; she has nothing to clothe herself in, and even in the desert the nights are freezing. Crawly can’t imagine surviving with warm blood in his veins, instead.

You are my dearesssst friend, Crawly hisses, his tongue flickering out to brush against her cheek. He can’t help it - and anyway, Hell would tell him if he was doing anything truly wrong. Right.

“He hurts me so,” Eve says. Water pools underneath her pupils, and spills over her cheeks, and when Crawly bumps his nose against it he tastes warm salt. “I wish he didn’t, snake, but he does, and he expects me to forget and be his wife. Loving. I love him, and he says he loves me!”

Love is cruel, Crawly says to ears that cannot hear him. As though he knows anything.

“But if he loved me he would be kind.”

Crawly is silent, but his eyes are drawn to the tree in the centre of the garden, and he wonders… all he wants to do is help.

“I wish I knew! For good or ill, I wish I knew!”

And Crawly wraps around her shoulders, and whispers in her ear, and Eve hears.

They leave soon after that.

But Aziraphale gives them the flaming sword, and surely that must count for something? Something meant for good will turn out badly, but something meant for good might still work the way it was intended.

Crawly leaves, belly flat in the sand, and behind him an apple tree takes root, and a single Principality takes flight, dove’s wings in the burning blue of a sky too new to be clouded.

☼

Summer 1194 BC, Troy

The funeral is solemn. The sight of the pyre, hot and sticky in the air of summer, makes bile rise in the back of Crowley’s throat, although he hides under the wraps of a mourning widow in the crowd, unseen to most everyone - he doesn’t want to be bothered, doesn’t want to be talked to.

What a fucking waste.

He is present at the council, too.

“The boy asked for his ashes to be mixed with-”

“But that’s it. He is just a boy, and a war hero, and that other-”

Crowley adds his voice to the chorus. “Achilles is a hero,” he says roughly, dressed now as a war general and not a widow, “And a hero deserves to have his last wishes honoured, does he not? Come to your senses! Would any of you, any of you, wish to be buried in a way not of your choosing?”

For a brief second he holds the sway of these powerful men, men who have grown powerful by getting rid of the caring. He can see them considering. But -

“Achilles was a war hero,” says someone roughly, in a voice much stronger and less stricken than Crowley’s, “And Patroclus was nothing but a man in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was Achilles’ one blind spot, and we can forgive the man, but we cannot let this continue past his death. Patroclus was a murderer.”

“Let them be,” Crowley says, one last attempt, “Let them be.”

He is shouted down.

“Hello,” Aziraphale says softly.

Crowley is sitting by the seashore, already deep into his cups with no sign and no intention of slowing down yet. “Hello, angel,” he says gloomily. “Come to gloat?”

To his surprise, Aziraphale sits down beside him, rather heavily. The two of them tend to avoid each other, still, even with all the awkward camaraderie of the ark and the garden and the following the Israelites around their sorry mission - Crowley just can’t get past it, somehow, the way Aziraphale looks. The way he moves. The way it strikes a yearning in his heart.

“Gloat?” Aziraphale sounds injured at the very thought of it. “I thought - I thought they would let them rest. They were so young.”

Wordlessly, Crowley passes the wine over. “It was Pyrrhus, in the end, who swayed them. I think he was embarrassed by it all. Patroclus-”

“They were in love,” Aziraphale says softly.

Crowley looks across, although he tries not to.

(When he meets Aziraphale, he tries always to look away, because the sight of the angel brings him such unbearable pain, deep down in his heart where he can’t heal it away. Aziraphale is always ringed in a peculiar light that doesn’t glow, as though Crowley’s eyes can see what Crowley often forgets; that Aziraphale is a heavenly body, and Crowley is not.)

Aziraphale is dressed like a foot soldier resting, half in uniform and half out, his undertunic white, a little smeared with sand. His hair is the same as it always was, because he doesn’t seem inclined to change as much as Crowley does, and the straps of his sandals are done a little messy. He is crying big, fat, ugly blobs down his cheeks, two streams meeting at his chin and dripping off to plop on his hands. “They were in love,” he says again, “They didn’t deserve it.”

“Oh, Aziraphale,” Crowley says. He tries to say something else, and then stops.

Aziraphale passes back the wine. “They didn’t deserve it.”

“Deserving has nothing to do with anything,” Crowley says before he can stop himself, “Nobody deserves what they’re given. You should know that by now.”

Oh, and does he feel like a heel when Aziraphale turns blue-stained eyes on him. “How can you say that!”

“All those people who drowned to make a new world. Those children, those babies,” and Crowley is only letting himself say this because he’s drunk and bitter, “All those people who died for Its purpose - did they deserve to drown? Did Noah deserve to live? Does Pyrrhus deserve to continue when Achilles is gone? Did Patroclus deserve to die? None of it has to do with who deserves anything. It’s all a game, angel, and all we are is another pair of playing dice.”

“You don’t believe that,” Aziraphale says. He sounds hurt, beyond hurt.

Crowley digs his fingers into the sand. “I have to believe that,” he says. “Because if Achilles deserved to die, if Patroclus deserved to die, for nothing - just for being in love - then nobody deserves to live at all.”

“Crowley-”

He’s done talking. He doesn’t want to talk about love with Aziraphale, on a beach, the smell of burning body drifting down the wind, Patroclus trapped and Achilles sent to the heavens, Troy falling and soldiers revelling. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he says, and perhaps he sounds so small that Aziraphale listens.

Although they only have one jar, the wine never runs empty, not until the sun rises and Crowley turns beside him and sees only marks in the sand where an angel should be.

☼

Autumn 570 BC, the Leucadian Cliffs

The woman on the cliff is a small, white-haired, bent-over lady, who holds herself with the poise of a woman who knows she was once beautiful beyond compare. She does not cry.

Crowley is here, but Aziraphale he hasn’t seen in almost a century.

“My love,” she says to him. “I miss you ever more by the day.”

Crowley reaches out, grabs her by the shoulder; in this body, a young woman from Lesbos itself, the strongest thing about him is the red of his hair. His translucent hand goes right through her. “Please, my love,” he says, in a voice high and flute-like. “Don’t do this.”

Sappho smiles at him sadly. “You are but a ghost,” she tells him. “The ghost of my one love. Claudia - Claudia. When I die I will see her in Hades, and that will be more gift than this - this existence on a rock.”

“Please,” Crowley says again.

(He has been discorporated for the last five years, the female body he liked so much, killed by a lingering disease, but he hasn’t yet had the courage to go Below to ask for a new body. And so here he is, hanging around the woman who fell in love with him, avoiding the angel he’s fallen in love with by a haunting. He wishes he couldn’t. He wishes she wouldn’t.)

“My Claudia didn’t love me, truly,” Sappho says. She’s still beautiful now, and Crowley sees her as the small, vibrant woman she was and is - black hair wrapping around her waist, blue eyes strong and seeking. “My Claudia loved another, but she never would tell me who. Would you tell me, spirit? Before I die?”

“I’ve given my heart to an angel,” Crowley confesses. The sea hits the rocks below, and almost drowns him out. “Please-”

“And the angel is well deserving of it,” Sappho says.

She doesn’t scream, on the way down. She only smiles.

Is this what Crowley deserves?

☼

21st April 33AD, Golgotha

“Crowley,” Aziraphale says.

“We have to stop meeting like this,” Crowley replies, and it should be a joke but John is sobbing on the grassless ground and Aziraphale’s bottom lip is wobbling and all he can hear is Mary wailing for her son. Her son. Not anybody else’s. What’s the point in a father that never shows up?

Aziraphale’s hand touches his arm, and Crowley tries not to startle; instead, he turns his palm up, and Aziraphale’s falling fingers touch Crowley’s, and then their hands are linked without either of them quite knowing why.

Crowley doesn’t let go. Neither does Aziraphale.

“I tried, you know,” Aziraphale says dazedly. “I think it was the wrong thing for me to do - but I met him in the desert, just before he came here, and I told him he could have all his Father’s love if he just - if he didn’t-”

“Ineffable,” Crowley says, voice dull. “I met him in the garden. I told him not to do it. I told him he could have the world, he could have John if he wanted, and he said he couldn’t. I tried.”

Three years ago, and Crowley is in the crowd, when Jesus meets John, and just as the clouds part for the dove he sees Aziraphale on the other side of the river. Aziraphale smiles at him, a look altogether too fond although they have been working more together these days, less likely to fall apart, and John touches Jesus very gently, as though he might break.

“My lord,” he says.

“Aziraphale,” Crowley says, on the other side of the river now as though he’d always been there, and if he speaks in the same tone as John he prays (hah) that nobody notices.

Aziraphale is smiling. “They’ve found each other, Crowley! I always knew they would. Oh - oh, it can’t go wrong. He’s the one, you see?”

John follows Jesus through Israel, and Crowley and Aziraphale follow in turn, part of the faceless crowd that grows every time Jesus goes to speak. He preaches on mountains, on boats, in towns, in villages, by wells, in the countryside, by grass that no longer grows, and John supports him and helps helps baptise the converted and Crowley watches him fall in love. It is beautiful to watch.

They collect the forgotten, on the way. Peter, skinny and young and growling in displeasure; James and the other John, fishing boys who drop their nets, Phillip, Thomas, Matthew, the other James… Thaddeus, Simon, Bartholomew. All too small, all too young, all full of fervent faith. He and Aziraphale meet often, in this time.

It feels like the end of the world is coming.

“John loves him,” Crowley says. They’re sitting on the top of an inn where Jesus is preaching, on the roof where nobody will disturb them.

Aziraphale is eating olives very daintily, his lips wrapped around each one. He looks divine. “Jesus loves him too, I’m sure,” he says like he’s never had cause to doubt it, “They pair of them are - well. Made to be together. I was speaking to John in the last house they were at, and I’m glad for him. I think Jesus feels the strain.”

Crowley relaxes, looks into the starry sky. John loves Jesus. Jesus, the Christ Child. John, the man. “They seem very happy. That can’t last.”

“Oh, Crowley,” Aziraphale sounds so disapproving, “I do wish you weren’t such a cynic about love.”

I’m not, Crowley thinks. “I’m not,” he says.

Aziraphale laughs and pats Crowley’s knee, a single spot of burning warmth. “You always have been, my dear, ever since I’ve known you.”

I’m trying to convince myself, not the rest of the world.

Crowley doesn’t say that bit out loud.

And Judas comes later, the youngest of them all, sixteen and wary, round brown eyes under curly hair, robes that don’t reach his ankles and feet dusty with dirt that isn’t ever properly washed. Crowley sees him and thinks you poor child, and he sees in the way Judas looks at Jesus that there is love, too, with no hope of ever being returned.

John the Baptist kisses the Emmanuel under a fig tree by moonlight, with Aziraphale and Crowley the sole watchers, strolling along the gardens. “Oh,” Aziraphale says softly.

Crowley wonders what it is like to do that - to do as John does. Cup his lover by the cheek, a thumb under the jaw, tip the face up so lips can meet, eyes brushing shut and eyelashes tangling, hair mussed, robes slipping from their fastenings, the sounds of two young people in love drifting over the air.

He looks at Aziraphale, and wonders if he’s thinking the same thing.

Judas finds nobody, in all their three years of wandering. Crowley wills him to, most desperately. Love is not what you think it is, he tries to say without saying, but Judas doesn’t want to hear.

Which brings them to this hilltop, this place, John beating his fists against the ground and weeping apologies to a God who planned this all along.

“We both tried to do the same thing,” Aziraphale says, as though in a daze. “I wonder - does that make me good, or you evil? Is this the good outcome?”

“You cannot look at this and tell me this is good,” Crowley snaps.

On the cross, Jesus has long since stopped making noise, and the sight of his body makes Crowley feel a little sick. Surely one human shouldn’t have that much blood in them; surely one human shouldn’t look so twisted, so wrong. The thorns have torn the skin on his scalp, and the blood has run down his face, down his cheeks, like some sort of awful parody of tears. John is screaming. It is the only sound in the world.

“I can’t believe God would ever,” Aziraphale says, and stops, and his face is twisted in anguish, “I mean - this is so awful. There must be a good purpose behind it. There must.”

Otherwise what is there?

“He truly loved him,” Crowley says softly. “And now he’s dead. What will John do now?”

He can’t wait to hear Aziraphale’s answer - he doesn’t think he can bear it. It’s the work of a second to slip into the skin of a snake, the animal Eve loved the most, and to slither away under the scrubby apple tree clinging to sand to survive.

☼

14th February 1212, Cologne

“This is foolish,” says Crowley. He doesn’t have to look to know Aziraphale is beside him.

“Crowley-”

“They are children, Aziraphale!”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale says, and he sounds broken. He’s dressed like a German shepherding man, this time, and it oddly fits with Crowley, dressed as he is like a minor noblewoman from the Rhineland. They blend into the crowd here, listening to the child Nicholas speak, shaking his tiny fist in the air. Encouraging his crowd to war.

The cheers are high-pitched, because not a single voice among them has broken. The crowd must be thousands strong, tens of thousands, all whipped up into holy fervour by the dreams of one child, and now they’re going to march to war.

“They are children,” Crowley hisses. “You can’t talk to me about the ineffable plan. Not now. Don’t have the gall to speak to me about that.”

“Come with me,” Aziraphale says. His hand wraps around Crowley’s, like they did at Golgotha, and holds him tight. “I can’t do anything, and I can’t watch any longer.”

Aziraphale miracles them away to a quiet mountain in the southern part of the world, somewhere that will be found by Columbus in a little bit, somewhere that the native people call only home. This mountain is remote, tall, and huge trees spread their branches over the top of it, casting shadows that protect the pair of them from the watchful eyes of the sun.

As soon as Crowley balances himself from the miracle performed, Aziraphale is letting go of him and pressing his hands to his eyes. “They’re all so young,” he’s shouting, and he sounds angry. “So young! What do they know of the Holy Land!”

It almost frightens Crowley - he’s used to Aziraphale explaining it all away, calling it ineffable, saying it’s part of the Plan, and to have this -

This uncertain Aziraphale -

Crowley’s heart aches for something he’ll never deserve.

“Angel,” he says, and catches Aziraphale by the wrists, prying his hands away from his eyes, “Aziraphale - oh, don’t. Please don’t.”

Aziraphale’s eyes are rimmed in red. “They’re all going to die,” he whispers. “What are we going to do?”

Crowley doesn’t say there’s nothing they can do, because Aziraphale surely knows that, and it would hurt too much to say. He just keeps holding Aziraphale, underneath a wide and spreading tree, and curses Above and Below until he’s sure to be blue in the face, until he can curse no more.

He doesn’t know when they sink to the ground, only that they do, and Crowley can do nothing but sit as Aziraphale wipes wet eyes on his shoulder. “I’m so sorry,” he sniffs. “I never meant for this to happen.”

“You had nothing to do with it,” Crowley says, and he says it as though it’s fact.

(Although in truth, he’s had very little to do with Aziraphale this past decade; he just assumes, and knows he’s right to do so, that Aziraphale would never do anything that would lead to something like this.)

“But he’s doing it in the name of God,” Aziraphale’s voice sounds wet.

“Angel,” Crowley says, and cynicism makes a home in his heart even though he doesn’t mean it to, “You know as well as I do that God has nothing to do with what happens down here.”

He sits, and lets the angel wring himself dry of the tears. All the same - it is a long time before they go back to Europe.

☼

in between, always, everywhere

Crowley learns from humanity, the lessons he’s been taught himself since before time began. Love is patient, love is kind… love is cruel, love is blind. He and Aziraphale meet and tangle, and hold hands, and once Aziraphale holds him by the cheeks and kisses him drunkenly on the forehead. They are wrapped together, and the world seems far too small to hold the both of them.

Crowley loves him. Nothing more, nothing less.

Aziraphale is beautiful, and in his laugh and his smile and the crinkle of his eyes Crowley finds a very particular peace. He can live without having the love returned, so long as he gets to exist around him.

He tells jokes, and he likes fine wine, and he reads poetry, and he never stumbles on quotations when he’s drunk. He goes very fast and very slow, all the time, flitting from country to country and then staying in one village for a hundred years. He does good deeds and bad deeds, and when he sees Crowley after a long absence, his eyes soften and his mouth opens and he says oh my dear, i’m so glad to see you! and something inside Crowley’s chest grabs him tight. Holds him. Vice-like, it says You Love Him and stubbornly Crowley refuses to listen.

Love is patient, love is kind. Crowley watches Aziraphale eat, watches him flirt, watches him be as cruel and dismissive as the harsh sting of a winter morning, watches him pour blessings like water to a flame, and watches all the while.

Nothing more, nothing less.

☼

5th October 1589, Cornwall

The wedding isn’t a very happy one. Crowley hovers in the crowd, wrapped in his shawls, and watches the bride walk down the gravel path to the church, her face stormy, the bruise on her cheek stroking the skin there like the kiss of a mother. The groom is inside, and walking with a limp.

This far South, the Romans and the Christians after them were pretty successful in wiping clean the slate of Celtic spirit, which Crowley finds quite a shame. He always enjoyed the spirituality of the druids, the manic chanting, the fun behind the myths - but he can’t quite complain, either, because the Celts haven’t quite as much fear of demons as the Christians. The Celts would have befriended him.

Still, in Cornwall the old ways cling on a little, and the wedding is between two peasants without a single bean to their name, and no need to care about the Christian path. The couple are Bakerson, Robert and Millie, and they are marrying through an arrangement with their parents, so somebody can inherit the small village bakery and the farm that goes with it. The Bakersons are a wealthy family.

“Poor girl,” says a voice in Crowley’s ear, and before Crowley can jump Aziraphale’s hand grabs his wrist. “It’s only me, dear.”

“Aziraphale,” Crowley manages. “I-”

“She was in love with the tinker,” Aziraphale says sadly. He’s wearing the clothes of a travelling gentleman, and looks quite out of place in a crowd of peasants and their cousins; all the same, nobody looks at him twice. A simple miracle.

“I know.”

“He was in love with the bootboy.”

“I know,” Crowley says again. An odd bitterness fills him. “I’ve been here for almost ten years, angel - I know these people. I was trying to let her run away with the thrice-damned tinker, much good it did them, and the bootboy was never meant to get cold feet.”

“Temptation,” Aziraphale says disapprovingly.

“I tempted them to nothing,” Crowley says. The church bells ring. “I only tempted them to forget the wills of their parents and do what their hearts told them, and look what that got me.”

“Honour thy father and mother,” Aziraphale quotes. In his mouth the commandment sounds soft and gentle, like something to encourage.

Crowley feels ill. He is gone before Robert and his new bride emerge, glowering in the light of a new day, although Mr Fell stays in the village a while longer, and for a long time their little community is blessed with incredible good fortune - the travelling tinker man stays several months, next time he visits. Miss Crow, though, is never seen in the place again, and rumour has it she was herself a spurned lover, and something happened between her and the fine gentleman. Mr Fell will never confirm nor deny, but he looks awfully sad when she’s brought up.

☼

1st December 1801, London

They are drinking in Aziraphale’s bookshop - drinking rather expensive wine - and Crowley is so, so tired.

He gets like this sometimes. Tired of existing maybe, without a break since the world first began, tired of loving Aziraphale for so long and knowing this is all he’ll ever get in return, tired of living in a world that was never designed for him to exist in. This is why sleep is the only real human indulgence he goes in for. He needs to rest.

“You need to drink,” Aziraphale hiccups, and splashes more wine into the cup in Crowley’s hand. “You look so cold, my dear, you need to drink!”

“I don’t really think I do,” Crowley says, but he does as he’s told. Does what Aziraphale wants.

(Hah!)

They’re drinking a very fine whisky; Crowley’s spent a lot of time in Scotland, and has developed quite the taste for it, orange fire down his throat. It burns. Aziraphale doesn’t like it as much, says he prefers the wine and port and drink of southerly places, but Crowley likes alcohol made only to keep you warm at night. Either freeze, or drink fire. Either way you end up dead.

Aziraphale winces when he next takes a drink, but he doesn’t say anything. Crowley watches him out of the corner of his eye, as he always does, otherwise he’d miss it.

The bookshop is a new addition, one that has arrived since the last time Crowley saw Aziraphale - although that was a very long time ago, almost half a century. Seventeen-sixty-three, when Aziraphale had been sent by heaven across the water to one of those continents untouched by human hands yet, when Crowley decided to wander over to Ireland on sabbatical. Fat lot of good that had done him. United Irishmen? Hah.

But the bookshop suits Aziraphale down to the ground, it does. He’s always been a lot more rooted to places than Crowley, who prefers to be on the move, through the change… Aziraphale likes to pick a place and settle into it like  a mother hen ruffling into a dirt bath. Cooing. Content. And this way, Aziraphale has his collection to hand without anyone trying to burn him for witchcraft, which is always a plus - considering.

A drunk finger lands on Crowley’s knee. “Stop thinking,” says Aziraphale with the gusto of the happily tipsy. “You think too much. Stop it.”

“I can’t help but think,” Crowley says, even as he takes another deep slug of the whisky.

“Ridiculous. Should be against the law.”

“Thinking?”

Aziraphale nods. “Precisely.”

But none of this helps the fact that Crowley is still so very tired, and all he wants to do is sleep for a hundred years. He wants to stop loving Aziraphale. It hurts too much, and even more because he knows there is no reward - there is no breaking point, no place he can hit that makes everything alright. He just loves and sinks and keeps loving and sinking, and Aziraphale shines with all the brilliance of a thousand suns and that’s all Crowley will ever be, right up until the end of the world.

“Angel,” he says, and then stops, shocked at how cracked and broken his voice sounds. “Aziraphale.”

Aziraphale looks briefly alarmed. “My dear boy-”

“I’m very tired,” Crowley says, a little lamely. “Do you mind if I skip out on the after-drinks?”

“No, no, but-”

“I’m tired,” Crowley says again.

None of this helps that, even in the breaking point, he knows he’ll never stop loving Aziraphale. This is as low as he’ll ever go, and even then -

And even then -

It never ends.

☼

the first day of the rest of the world, London

“Where did you get that painting?”

Aziraphale had spent the night after the apocalypse in Crowley’s flat, where they’d shared the bed and stayed up all night, each convinced the other was asleep, wondering how on earth to proceed without making the other feel uncomfortable. Now, though, they’re in the bookshop with some tea and buns, because nothing feels more solid than a scone with butter and jam on the top.

(Crowley refuses to mention which way round. He doesn’t want to anger the Cornish.)

“What painting?” Aziraphale stops with his cup halfway to his mouth, looking a bit confused.

“That one,” Crowley nods towards it. In truth, he recognises it well enough, even though it’s been over a hundred years since it was painted; Alfred was such a lovely man, so accommodating, and Paris in the 70s (no, not those ones) had been such a friendly place. Full of so much - newness.

He’d only woken up to refresh himself, really, because sleeping for almost a hundred years does take it out of you, and by chance he’d wandered onto the streets of Paris and found himself in a bundle of men in black hats, all talking very excitedly about colour and light and how absolutely mad it was that nobody would let them in. It had all been rather fun.

“Anthony,” Alfred had said, a little breathless, “Won’t you let me paint you? I have excellent studio light, and you beg a painting. I can see it. Please?”

“Oh, if you must,” Crowley had said, as though it meant nothing.

It had been nice, the kisses. Very soft. Alfred loved him and didn’t seem to mind that his Anthony was detached, because it was Paris in the 1870s and you took what you could get and you didn’t care about the secrets everyone was hiding. It had been nice.

So  -

“Where did you get it,” Crowley asks again, in the now, after everything.

Aziraphale looks a little flustered. “I - it was in Paris, you see, and it was almost going to be seventy-five years after I’d seen you… you remember that sleep you took, all of the nineteenth century, and I - well, one of my friends, a sort of… he was a confidant, you see, Oscar and everything, and he mentioned this delightfully odd art movement in Paris, and so I went. Sisley was very… delicate. And that awful art critic was there. And-”

“Did you ever learn who the sitter was?”

If possible, Aziraphale looks even redder. “Um. Sisley never said-”

“But you know,” Crowley says. “You recognised it.”

“I hadn’t seen you in almost a century!”

Crowley shrugs. “I told you I was tired.”

“And then I saw you in that painting, so of course I was going to buy it,” Aziraphale looks almost angry at him now. “Alfred Sisley! And of course, when I asked where you’d gone he said he’d had his heart broken by you and he had no idea. I spent all that time looking for you, and then-”

“I was asleep.”

“You could have told me!”

“I did,” Crowley says, watching Aziraphale get more and more frantic with a sort of wild confusion, “I said I was tired, and that I was going to bed, and I’d see you in a bit. I thought… I didn’t think you’d mind at all, really.”

“Mind!”

“Uh.”

“Of course I would mind!” Aziraphale doesn’t often raise his voice, never mind making the sort of shrieking yell he is now, so when he does it makes Crowley shut up and listen. “Crowley - you idiot! Of course I would mind, you frustrating, ridiculous, stupid-”

“I did it because I was in love with you,” Crowley says.

Silence.

“I was in love with you and I couldn’t stand it anymore, so I went to sleep. For a long time. I thought when I woke up I would be over it.”

Silence. There’s a blob of strawberry jam on Aziraphale’s nose, where the scone he was eating had obviously proven a bit too unwieldy.

Crowley finishes his cup of tea and sets it on the table, very deliberate, and quite loud. “And that’s the end of it,” he says, “And I hope there’ll be no more. Any scones left, or did you eat them all- mmf-”

Aziraphale is not a good kisser, and neither is Crowley, because until very recently both their Head Offices looked down on immortal beings going in for sins of the flesh. That doesn’t matter. That doesn’t matter at all, because they’ve both waited for far too long for it to be anything other than a good kiss.

“L’homme distrait,” Aziraphale says breathlessly, a little while later. “I always wondered - the man, distracted by what?”

“You shouldn’t need to ask,” Crowley says. And kisses him again, because he can.

[lady-divine-writes]

Snow in the Desert (Rated T)

Summary: His first Christmas away from Warlock, Crowley misses him so much, he makes it snow in the desert. (1007 words)

Notes: For @drawlight's '31 Days of Ineffables' prompt 'snow'. Includes a little tidbit at the end that I found on the Good Omens character wiki.

Read on AO3.

“Is it …? Is it really?”

“If it is, it’s really odd …”

“It can’t be …”

“It … it is! It’s snowing!”

“What? How?”

“I … I don’t know.” Mrs. Dowling turns to her husband, affecting an expression of surprise but careful not to furrow her brow because wrinkles. “But it’s definitely snowing.”

“It can’t be.” Mr. Dowling rises from the breakfast table and shuffles to the window, staring up at the clear blue sky overhead, completely cloudless – which makes the larger than normal snowflakes falling from it certifiably bizarre. “Well I’ll be …”

“Snow day! Snow day! Snow day! Snow day!” Warlock chants, grabbing his jacket off the hook and running for the door.

“Warlock! Darling! A few flakes does not a snow day make!” Mrs. Dowling calls after him, giggling to herself over her clever, albeit unintentional, rhyme. But the moment Warlock opens the front door, the largest mound of snow Mrs. Dowling has ever seen falls atop her son’s head, burying him head to toe.

“Warlock!” she screams, certain her son has been squashed like a roach; that she’ll dig him up and find a flat, frozen Warlock pancake. “Talk to me, sweetie! Tell me you’re okay!”

His father rushes forward to rescue him (after sensibly putting on thick gloves and a wool coat) when, from within the mound, the chant continues – muffled but strong. “Snow day! Snow day! Snow day!” Warlock bursts out of the mound, covered in white but somehow not soaked to the skin, and races for the yard.

What had started off as simple white flurries stick to the ground and clump together with record speed even though the sky above them remains clear and the sun hot. All the children of their secluded, gated neighborhood have gathered with their various security details to build snowmen and start snowball fights as if heralded by an invisible but mutually agreed upon cue.

“How could this happen?” a parent asks.

“The weather service said nothing!” another offers.

“Who could have known?” a third pipes in.

“It’s a conspiracy, that’s what!” a fourth declares. “The liberal media is hiding this from us!”

“Not that I agree with any of your nonsense,” a fifth sniffs as they hop from website to website on their phone – CNN, NBC, ABC, The New York Times, “but I will say it is rather odd that no one’s reporting on this.”

“This valley hasn’t seen snow in close to two decades. Did you know that, darling?” Aziraphale says after a series of deep, concerned sighs. Beside him, both hidden beneath the branches of a lush willow tree, Crowley stands still as stone.

“Hmph,” he returns, his attention fully captured by the beaming boy with straight black hair plowing down snowmen left and right as if on some sort of vendetta. He grins slightly when Warlock clambers to the roof of his house and fearlessly leaps off into his mother’s begonias, landing remarkably safe regardless of the fact that the snow is piled shallow beneath the eaves that shelter her flowers.

“The news will be here soon, dearest, don’t you figure?”

His smile slips and Crowley grunts. “Ngk …”

“Crowley? Crowley, are you listening to me?”

“What, Aziraphale!? What!? What is it?”

Aziraphale looks at his miserable demon and sighs. “I know how you feel, but you can’t go around messing with the weather!”

“Why not?”

“You’ll disrupt ecosystems, confuse wildlife, endanger the humans …”

“They moved him to California, angel,” Crowley mumbles in his defense.

“Adam moved him to California because he thought he’d like it here. And he was right. Warlock does like it here. He has friends here.”

“There’s no snow in California.”

‘It barely snows in England,’ Aziraphale could remind him, but that would just be cruel. He places a comforting hand on the crook of his demon’s elbow, but Crowley keeps his arms folded tight across his chest. “Not here in San Diego, no ...”

“It’s almost Christmas.”

“That it is.”

“And Christmas requires snow.”                    

“Does it now?”

“Yes, it does. It’s one of the rules.”

“Whose rules?”

“My rules.”

“I see. Well why didn’t you miracle him and his family to Big Bear? Or Mammoth Mountain? Some place close by that already has snow?”

Crowley’s lips part but only just, whatever objection he had overruled before it leaves his mouth. “Meh. This was easier.”

“You didn’t think of that before, did you?” Aziraphale teases, unable to help himself.

“Look, if you’re so against this, why aren’t you stopping me? You have the power to reverse it.”

“True. But I love you.” Aziraphale slides his arm through the rigidity of Crowley’s posture and hugs him. He doesn’t force himself on him, simply lends him quiet assurance. Aziraphale could argue the ramifications of making it snow in the desert for days, but it wouldn’t change the fact that, as improbable as it seems, Crowley misses Warlock. After years of grumping and complaining that being a nanny is dull work for a demon and a thankless job in general, he feels a connection to this boy. He can’t be there for Warlock and, heartbreakingly enough, it seems Warlock has forgotten him, which is probably for the best anyway. So Crowley traveled thousands of miles to ensure one little boy (a boy who died because of him but was brought back when Adam changed reality) has a white Christmas. What’s the harm in that really? Aziraphale knows angels who do less over more important matters. And if there are any negative repercussions ecologically, which he doubts there will be, he can fix them in a snap. “And you’re not wrong. Christmas requires snow. So I’ll let it slide this once.”

Crowley watches Warlock nail a guard in the face with a huge, tightly-packed ball of snow and chuckles. He wants to say something to him. Aziraphale can feel it. Give Warlock an Attaboy! at the very least. But he can’t. He sighs, loosens his grip on his defenses, and hugs Aziraphale back. “That’s right generous of you.”

[itsclydebitches]

Bribe - There’s one demon in particular who’s interested to know how Crowley survived that bath.

Read on AO3 or below! 

***

“He sent a letter.”

“A letter?”

“Well yes. However else is he meant to contact us? It’s not as if we’ve been very free with our telephone numbers—”

“Speak for yourself.”

“—your lot are perpetually behind in technology—”

“Good of you to notice, Black Pot.”

“—and meeting in person without some warning would be... well.” Aziraphale smoothed down his vest. Then did it a second time, the worn fabric soft against his hands. “I'm grateful for it, is all. Strange as it may be. I say, will you at least pretend to take this seriously?”

With a roll of his eyes Crowley ceased terrorizing a starling, finally releasing the poor bird from his hypnotic gaze. It shot off across St. Jame’s park, off to tell the other birds all about the snake who was not a snake, who very much looked as if he’d eat her, but hadn’t. Within an hour it would be the talk of the nesting grounds.

“I am taking this seriously,” Crowley said. He rolled his neck and set back off down the path, leaving Aziraphale with no choice but to follow. “Course I’m taking it seriously! Demon contacts you out of the blue, wanting to meet all secret like, what’s not serious? It’s just...” he snatched the letter, holding it up to the sun. “I just didn’t know that Ligur could write.”

Aziraphale stumbled. “I’m sorry, dear. Did you just say one of your colleagues can’t read?”

“No, I said write. Keep up, angel.” Aziraphale once again made an attempt, both literally and figuratively. “He obviously can. Just surprised me is all. Why are you surprised? You know I don’t read.”

“Poppycock. You’ve read since humans started carving on stone slabs, you simply claim otherwise in an effort to annoy me.”

Crowley fiddled with his glasses, hiding his smile. “Huh. Is it working?”

“I will chuck you into the pond, dear boy. Don’t think that I won’t.”

“But this skirt is new!”

“Precisely my point.”

With grumbling on both sides the walk continued, the letter passed back and forth as if reading it again and again might change their circumstances. Crowley was well prepared to deal with any push-back from Beelzebub, curses laid around the bookshop and a new thermos of holy water locked up tight in his safe. Aziraphale, in turn, had mustered up the emotional energy needed to plot against his brethren—although he steadfastly avoided words as damning as “plot.” Too close to the original Rebellion for his nerves, thank you. The point, however, was that he had begun praying directly to God once again and found time among his reading for light sparing with a human-made blade, two activities that he hoped he never had to draw on under more dire circumstances. That was the fear though, wasn’t it? That hope alone would only carry them so far.

Thus, they had prepared for hoards and hosts; a veritable army of creatures set to take out the angel who wasn’t quite an angel anymore and the demon who, arguably, had never been much of a demon to begin with.

A surprisingly polite letter slipped beneath the door was... not on the list of expected threats.

Aziraphale shook the paper a bit. Or parchment, rather. He hadn't the slightest idea where Ligur had gotten it. “Didn’t you kill him?”

“Didn’t your bookshop burn?” Crowley mimicked and then immediately looked contrite. He bumped shoulders in apology as they walked. “Yeah. I did. Holy water right over the head. It’s gotta be the antichrist then, right? Brought him back along with everything else? Satan, but ten-year-olds are stupid.”

“That stupid eleven-year-old has a name,” Aziraphale said. “And I’d like to see you reset reality without a few, unfortunate consequences. We’re not going to blame Adam for what we did.”

“What we had to do,” Crowley corrected. Then he sighed. “Yeah. No argument from me. Over and done with, all that. Only question is...”

He trailed off. They’d come to the end of the path, with it a long line of benches. Their benches. Crowley’s hands curled into fists as he spotted a bedraggled figure seated in his usual spot, hunched slightly against all the sunshine and happy park goers that surrounded him. Ligur’s eyes shifted their way and Crowley took an instinctive step in front of Aziraphale.

“What does the bastard want?”

A hand landed on his arm, trailed downward, stopped just short of taking his hand. Aziraphale gave Crowley's wrist a squeeze.

“Only one way to find out. Together then?” and he tugged them forward.

***

Meetings in public spots. It was all very spy-ish. Clandestine. It occurred to Aziraphale that he might have enjoyed this immensely under other circumstances. Problem was, meeting publicly meant actually getting the public involved. Living, breathing, entirely ignorant human beings flitting here and there, the perfect hostages should Ligur take it upon himself to secure one. It made his otherwise lovely lunch sit rather heavily in his stomach, but Aziraphale stood firm before the demon, still slouched as he was over the bench. Crowley had taken up position behind Ligur, pacing and chewing a strip of gum he’d gotten from Heaven only knew where.

Hmm. Not that there was much chance Heaven actually knew. Or Hell. The only person who might have any idea was Aziraphale himself, and he didn’t, so he supposed Crowley’s gum was simply one mystery he’d never solve. Unless God herself decided to descend and tell him—

Crowley caught his eyes across the bench. There were no words. But then, after 6,000 years you didn’t really need any. The message was clear: Stop panicking!

I am not panicking.

I know your panicking look, angel, thoughts all over the place.

Then stop staring at me!

Crowley did, settling for staring down at Ligur instead. He poked him hard in the shoulder. “You wanted something?”

“Yes—”

“Well too bad. Whatever it is you’re not getting it.”

Ligur shot off a glare, but it was halfhearted at best. With the exception of Crowley, all demons were a bit of a mess. Aziraphale didn’t know how they could stand it, wandering around in filthy clothes reeking of all sorts of unmentionables. Hair unkempt. Those nails. Yet despite this all being quite normal for his lot, Aziraphale had the distinct impression that Ligur was more ruffled than usual. He appeared not just sloppy, but run down. The sort of look Aziraphale might have been tempted to adopt had his bookshop been well and truly gone.

All of which was made clear when he turned fully towards Crowley and said. “You killed me.”

Ah.

“Yeeeaaah,” Crowley said. One hand snuck to the back of his neck. “But you deserved it! You tried to kill me first! Is that it then? Out for revenge and all that?” He frowned, looking around at the sunny day. Not a trap or another demon in sight. “You’re not very good at it...”

Ligur snorted. “If I wanted you dead, Crowley, you’d be dead.”

“What? Like last time?”

Aziraphale valiantly tried to turn his laugh into a cough—and failed rather miserably. He wilted under the look Ligur shot him. “Sorry.”

“Revenge,” he sniffed. “Who exactly do you take me for? We’re demons, Crowley. I’ve never trusted one of my own and I never will. Of course we’re out to kill one another! No sense getting worked up about it. What? Are you going to get mad at feathers here for shooting rainbows out his ass?” Aziraphale blinked under the onslaught of that image while Crowley’s mouth slowly unhinged. “No. It’s in our nature. I’ve got no problem with that. Besides, bucket of holy water over the door frame? Spark of genius that. Even if the rest of your work lacks craftsmanship.” Ligur shot up a boil-laden hand when Crowley moved to protest. Aziraphale could see a hissed what? already forming on his lips. “I died. Our Lord’s son brought me back. Pretty straight forward, far as I’m concerned. All I care about now is how you did it.”

A young jogger shouted out a “Left!” and Aziraphale stepped aside, instinctively moving to join Crowley on the other side of the bench. He wanted to take his hand this time, but settled for turning the letter over and over again instead. “I’m afraid I don’t understand. You just said it. Young Adam was responsible for your resurrection. I’m afraid such miracles are beyond our power. I couldn’t begin to tell you how he accomplished it. Nor, would I guess, could he.”

“What? I’m not talking to some snot-nosed mortal boy. Even if he is the Deceiver’s child.” Ligur sat on his knees, arms now folded across the bench’s top. He rested his chin on his hands and the chameleon atop his head blinked, oh so slowly. Both sets of eyes remained trained on Crowley. “I’m talking about what came after. What everyone’s been whispering about downstairs. How’d you do it, Crowley? As someone who has had one very nasty encounter with holy water and is not eager to repeat it: How’d you survive that bath?”

Aziraphale’s gasp was, luckily, drowned out by a shout from afar. A group of children playing, their joy unexpectedly saving him from what might have become quite the predicament. Crowley risked a glance his way, but had a better poker face than expected. Then again, hadn’t they been preparing for this? The day when Heaven and Hell finally figured out what they’d done.

Except it wasn’t Heaven. Or even Hell. Just a single demon, now gripping the sleeves of his jacket with a desperate intensity that nagged at Aziraphale. Tempted him to reconsider things that, to be frank, were best left not considered. Because if he—Heaven forbid—ever started feeling sorry for any demon other than Crowley... well. It didn’t bear thinking about. Not when their neat and ordered world was already so topsy-turvey.

And yet, that had been his holy water. His blessing that had driven Ligur off of this plane. Funny how Aziraphale could feel so much regarding an indirect killing than he had when he’d leveled a gun at a child.

Luckily, Crowley wasn’t the sympathetic type. Not when it came to his fellows, anyway.

“Now why would I give up a secret as big as that?” Crowley asked, leaning right in Ligur’s face.

The demon gave as good as he got, rising up until they were nearly nose-to-nose. “Because I dropped that letter off at your angel’s precious bookshop. Because I chose this spot knowing you two come here every Thursday. I know you, Crowley, and if you don’t tell me I will dedicate every free moment I have to making the both of you as miserable as possible.”

Crowley paused. “Got a lot of free time then?”

“Since I technically got off the roster thanks to your murder? Oodles.”

A stare. A smile. A full minute of silence that dragged in the worst way. Then Crowley clapped his hands.

“Right! C’mon then,” and to Aziraphale’s quiet shock Crowley turned on his heel and began marching across the grass. Once again someone was watching out for them—Her, fate, just a hefty dose of luck—because Ligur was vaulting the bench, too immersed in keeping pace with Crowley to take note of Aziraphale’s stunned expression. After a moment he shook himself and began to follow.

What a trio they made: Crowley in flowing skirt and lace top, a skimpy middle finger to the heat; Aziraphale in linen and a lighter vest than usual, but otherwise buttoned up; Ligur trailing a coat so dirty and infested it seemed to squirm around his shoulders. If anyone thought their manner of dress odd, a quick miracle took care of that. Crowley led them through throngs of mortals enjoying the day, each giving them a fond glance that Aziraphale took strength from.

What was even better for the nerves than love though was food. Perhaps blasphemous to say so, but true nonetheless. When Crowley stopped at their favorite ice cream cart Aziraphale had already bustled his way to the front. He suddenly needed a cone and flake like nothing else, all but throwing himself into Toby’s line of sight with a miracled fiver in hand.

“Usual, Mr. Fell?” Toby said, already scooping up an extra-large serving. “‘Ello, Anthony. Can I tempt you to one of my strawberry pops?”

“Grape today,” he said, earning a pleased smile. “And my friend here will have a vanilla cone. Best you’ve got in stock.”

Toby chuckled. “Righty then. Best cone, best scoop, best jimmies. Coming right up.” He was entirely oblivious to the sarcastic tilt of Crowley’s ‘friend,’ or the near panicked look that shot across Ligur’s face, followed quickly by disgust. Over his own mouthful (Toby was mercifully quick) Aziraphale couldn’t help but compare the expression to another, similar one he’d seen not too long past: Gabriel’s horror over him eating sushi.

Too many commonalities. Too many implications. Aziraphale stuffed his mouth full of ice cream and decided to let sleeping reforms lie. Best to let Crowley do whatever it was he was doing. Or thought he was doing. Hopefully they amounted to one and the same.

Things became a little clearer when he gestured to the cart with a vaguely reverent air. “This is it, Ligur. You wanted my secret, you’ve got it. The jig is up,” and Crowley accepted his grape popsicle with exaggerated gratitude.

Ligur hissed with displeasure. “Do you take me for a fool?”

“Yes. But that’s not the issue here. Why would I lie?”

“Because you wish to keep such a significant advantage for yourself.”

Crowley shrugged. Beneath Toby’s nose he unhinged his jaw and swallowed the popsicle whole. Gum too. It went unnoticed. “I mean sure. Makes sense. Except you just promised to make our lives a living heaven and I believe it. Not worth the risk. Besides, me giving up the secret doesn’t mean you can use it.” Crowley tossed the stick over his shoulder. Aziraphale waved his hand, sending that and the bit of paper stuck to his cone into the ether.

“I see.” Ligur’s eyes narrowed as Toby handed him his treat, decked out in as many jimmies as the ice cream could hold. “You say eating this will make me immune to holy water? You think I wouldn't suffer through this for such a reward?”

Under the sun, Aziraphale began to sweat.

“No. Ice cream won't make you immune.”

He began to sweat harder.

Crowley just managed to catch Ligur’s wrist before he chucked the cone at his face. With his other hand he wagged his finger back and forth like a disappointed parent. “Patience. You’re going to need a lot of it if you really want that reward. Because ice cream is just step one.”

“Explain.”

Crowley spread his arms, this time encompassing not just the ice cream, but the entirety of the park. The world, as Aziraphale soon understood. “You’ve gotta be human, Ligur. Or as close as we can manage. That right there is your ticket.” He nudged the demon in his chest… then frowned at whatever sticky substance had adhered to his finger. Toby kindly handed him a napkin. “Thank you. As I was saying, you’ve gotta blur the lines a little bit. I mean, you’ve seen humans. Those righteous ones flicking holy water at each other every Sunday.”

Ligur shivered. “Repulsive.”

“Right? But the corrupt ones do it too! Take the nastiest, awfulest, most foulest, meaniness—”

“Those are not words, dear.”

“Shut it, angel. You picture that lot, the ones we’ve helped turn, and you think about whether they really function any differently.” Crowley made a shushing noise as Ligur tried to speak. “No, no, no, don’t actually think. I know it’s hard for you. Luckily, I’ve got the answer: they don’t! the most sin-ridden human on the planet can still waltz into a church un-burnt; dump a whole vat of holy water over their head if they want without anything going all melty. Why? I mean, we could get into Her favoritism and all, but really the ‘why’ doesn’t matter. The point is they can. So if you want my advantage...” Crowley tilted his head, grinning. “You’ve got to become just a little bit human.”

Ligur was still. Not in any way that a person would have been able to achieve—and wasn’t that just the point? Azirphale found that he was holding his breath, trying to stay just as still, until slowly, agonizingly, Ligur dropped his gaze back to the melting cone in his hand.

The distaste was apparent. Yet he licked it once, like a cat indulging in a wary taste. Aziraphale found himself impressed.

“There you go!” Crowley cheered. He made to thump him on the back, remembered sticky fingers, and awkwardly dropped his hand.

Ligur took a bite this time, leaving ice cream smeared over his lips. It was impossible to tell whether he liked it or not. “And how long until I’m more... human?” His teeth chattered over the word.

Crowley shrugged, but Aziraphale’s eyes were sharp. There was nothing casual in that gesture. “Hard to say. I mean, we’ve been here since the beginning, so...”

Beginnings. Ligur had to start somewhere and Crowley pointed him towards a patch of grass where a group of teens were playing Frisbee, encouraging him to join in. Aziraphale was both horrified and curious as to how that would go over. Would he finish the ice cream first? Drop it? Catch a Frisbee one handed? Use it to decapitate one of the teens? He flexed his fingers and resisted the urge to give them all invulnerable necks.

“Do you think that will work?” he hissed to Crowley, both of them watching Ligur approach and say something to a young woman that, astoundingly, brought a smile to her face. “I mean, how long before he picks up on the ruse?”

“Is it?” Crowley murmured. “A ruse? I mean... when was the last time you encountered any hell fire?” At Aziraphale’s startled look he laughed, tilting his head upwards. “I don’t know, angel. I really don’t. But I figure at the very least I've bought us a six thousand year buffer.”

Aziraphale considered. Huffed. Returned to watching Ligur examine the Frisbee (still with ice cream in hand) and ignored that awful tug around his chest, encouraging him to consider impossible things.

“I suppose,” he said. Aziraphale finally took Crowley’s hand like he’d wanted to, safe in Ligur’s distraction. It was warm and tight in his. A solid, reliable weight.

“And think, all for just the price of an ice cream.”

[thepensmight]

Reflections- A Good Omens Fic

This is madness… In a certain bookshop in Soho, a certain angel sat across from a demon sipping wine.1 None of this was unusual. In fact, it had been going on for as many decades as the bookshop had been established. Decades had come and gone, automobiles clogged the once quieter streets, and bebop continued its attempt to permeate the windows of A.Z. Fell & Co. to no avail.2 And A.Z. Fell and Anthony J. Crowley or as they were more occultly and ethereally known, Aziraphale and Crowley, had spared a few hours for each others’ company. More often, in recent years, given their mutual investment in the boy, Warlock Dowling. Warlock, for his part, had had a rather unusual childhood of influences, including an imposing nanny, a gardener, and two tutors. 

Aziraphale reflected on those days as he stared at his wine, swirling it to slow his consumption. Back then, they had had to spend more time together. Even the Arrangement had been more cooperative from a distance. Though of course, they had always offered each other help when needed. Or rather, Crowley had. Aziraphale certainly wouldn’t help with any sort of temptation that would require the aid of two metaphysical beings. He simply couldn’t. The Arrangement was simply a matter of convenience.

 They had grown familiar, so that by the time they had elected themselves for the upbringing of the Warlock, their time together felt almost natural. Certainly more natural than his time Above. He shivered slightly. It contrasted every written record, but Aziraphale found heaven cold, almost sterile in the never ceasing white walls and windows. And then there were his comrades-in-arms. Aziraphale’s gaze lowered further. He knew he wasn’t a proper angel. Not given his preferred company, the joy he took in human indulgences like food and books and wine. To him, the bookshop seemed a more enjoyable world than heaven had ever seemed. And now the clock was ticking. He had declared a side. Or rather refused what should have been his side. Aziraphale had been glancing above for some sign of Divine Wrath for the past twelve hours. If I’m already on Earth, where would I Fall? He had wondered where Crowley had Fallen. Had he simply landed on Earth? Or had Hell swallowed him once the sulphur had done its work. He glanced back woefully where he knew his wings lay hidden. I really do prefer white to black.  “It would work...” Crowley’s voice jolted him back to the present. It had a way of doing that. In fact, sometime between the Blitz and discovering the actual antichrist child, Crowley’s presence had started something he was pointedly ignoring. Or trying to. I’m an angel. He argued to himself, there is no difference in my feeling for him than any of Her other creatures. Aziraphale sighed, he’d never been good at lying to himself for very long. Centuries at most. “What Dear?” Crowley hissed softly by way of reproach, leaning closer, “Look, Above and Below will be looking for blood, a whole vat of it in my case, and that’s just a start.” Aziraphale had been more focused on the Fall 3, he hadn’t given much thought to an execution.”It’ll be Holy Water for me...” HIs oldest friend shrugged, “Oozing about in the Underworld for Eternity.” Crowley took an unceremonious gulp of wine, “Hellfire.” Aziraphale replied glumly, “That’sss my point!” Crowley always did hiss a little more when he was stressed or drunk… or drunk because he was stressed. Aziraphale found the tone slightly comforting. He then dismissed the thought. “They can throw me in a vat of the stuff, won’t do anything. I’m already burning.” “Yes but they wouldn’t do that to you.” Aziraphale said tartly, “You’ll get Holy Water,” Crowley leaned even closer, and it was all the angel could do to not look at his lips. Dear Lor- On second thought, probably best not to call the attention of the Divine. He failed miserably as Crowley pulled that sinful smirk of the Serpent thinking of something terribly clever, “My body will.” Crowley’s eyes roved his body and he felt his decided to beat pulse quicken. Aziraphale frowned, What was he- His eyes widened as he realized what Crowley intended, the precise way the snake was looking at him. Not as a meal, as an assessment. Like deciding on a suit. “You mean...” The color rose on angelic cheeks, he stood abruptly, “No.” Crowley stood to follow him, “You’ve possessed people before-” “That was an emergency and she willingly shared-” “So’s this. And it won’t even be body sharing. More like body swapping.” “No.” Oh the thought of what Crowley would could do, what he would see of himself, well his given body. “There must be another-” “Can you think of a better idea?” He couldn’t, “You don’t even know if it will work.” “But it might. Besides,” Again, that smirk crossed his lips and Aziraphale failed miserably at ignoring his lips, his gaze drifting lower to a long lean neck. “You must’ve wanted to take this for a drive,” Crowley was simply teasing,  but his thoughts were too flustered of late. “I-I-” “We’ll get to stay on earth...” There it was, that softer tone he’d always worked so hard to ignore. “We’ll get more time. More bookshops. More music. More everything.” Everything. It reminded him of when the demon had said they could go off together, and how much it had taken to say no. He’d never felt worse. He swallowed harshly. “I-I- suppose it’s worth a try...”

The first thing he noticed was the silence. Aziraphale was so used to the continuous drone of God’s Love and Divine Will, it was simply the background noise of his existence. The constant hum telling him what to do, what his purpose was at all times. It was still there, but Aziraphale realized for the second time in as many days, how much his body had become an echo chamber for the pressures of the Divine.4 With Madame Tracy, it was quieter. This was near silence. He had to focus to even register the drone. He sighed in relief, or rather he would have, had his clothes not constricted his breathing. Just how tight are these jans?5 Black nail polish coated the tips of slender, almost feminine hands. He touched them carefully, He has such lovely hands. A throat cleared, “Right, see you tomorrow,” Crowley was nodding him out of his own bookshop. The nerve! Though the wink tempered the gall of it quickly, “Tickety Boo,”

Shaky breath, he’d tried to go to his private rooms quickly. Longer legs provided a faster stride as he reached the cold stark reality of his counterpart’s quarters. He froze as he passed a full length mirror. Something he avoided as a general rule. He liked his clothes, he made sure they were straight and rather ignored what was underneath. He claimed out of avoidance of vanity. That wasn’t entirely true. The echoes of a thousand ethereally voices sniping at the state of his form, rang in his ears. He’d rather thought there was no harm in making his appearance more comforting. Humans made such lovely food, and his rounder shape had made people more comfortable than the harsh angels that existed in most angels… and demons… and most of the occult and ethereal universe. Over time, the voices had been added to the echo chamber of his form, noise he chose to try to ignore. But today… hands that weren’t his own, ran over thighs that weren’t his own nervously.... Today his reflection would show his spirit. But above it was something more, something beautiful. Urgently stripping off demonically summoned garments. He drank in every inch of his not his own body. Long lithe muscle, a flat abdomen, and fiery hair. Aziraphale shakily ran a hand along not his lips. Touching the mirror pensively, “I love you,” His soul shivered at the voice that formed the words. Wiping tears as he realized he had caused Crowley’s form to cry. Mortified, “No no, this won’t do.” It was overwhelming, the amount of love he felt surging through his veins. Selfish love. Love without borders, love without end. Not a service to the Purpose or the Plan. A love that was his, alone.

Across town, in a bookshop more familiar than the Gardens of Eden, an occult filled body was currently in a state of shock. Love. Divine love. And Purpose. The ultimate torture of Falling was experiencing the hole left from God ripping Her Love from your soul. The fire and brimstone bit was nothing compared to the void. Most demons forgot it to cope. Unfortunately for Crowley, he’d orbited the only ethereal being on earth for millennia. Aziraphale simply oozed with Love, he reeked of it. The angel truly adored all God’s creatures, excepting, of course, for the Evils he had to thwart and occasionally keep as company, given their arrangement.  Angel had given the poor serpent such emotional whiplash over the centuries. A thousand nos, twice as many yeses. Each played in his mind like a broken record, each given with no regard or reason for the methods of the last answer. And yet, simply being near Aziraphale had forced his Falling to remain fresh. A wound constantly reopened by virtue of accompanying the virtuous. And now, a gambit that neither side would approve of. A plot that was both so Heavenly and Hellish it could only be described as Human. Crowley had anticipated some slight discomfort, missing his familiar body and so on, but what he hadn’t counted on was the residual traces of Love as he walked across a rug in the bookshop. It hit him like a ton of bricks and he dropped to the floor as though Falling again. It ate at his being 6, but for a moment, he felt it again. The Divine Purpose. The desire to create and give… the feeling of the stars at his fingertips. A portrait for all to see, but all in Service. All according to Divine Will and Power. Will... Free Will.  Crowley sat up, remembering precisely why his wings no longer glowed a pearlescent sheen as he stared in the mirror. “Bastards.” The word sounded less guttural in Aziraphale’s soft posh voice, but the tone reminded him of his purpose. None so Divine, but perhaps focused a bit on the ethereal. Or specifically, one part of it. He pushed himself off the floor. “I only ever asked why.” Dusting off Aziraphale’s coat, because he knew he’d want it so, he busied himself around the shop. Not moving so much as a page to a different position, because he knew he’d have Hell to pay from a certain angel.  1. Not so much sipping, as “drinking as fast as was angelically and demonically possible to do”. 2. Not for any practical reason. Aziraphale simply believed his bookshop should be quiet, unless he chose to play music. Therefore, it was. 3.And the things he’d prefer to do beforehand. 4.The first time had been with Madame Tracy, which had felt rather like the volume getting turned down to a tolerable level after constant shouting. 5. Or jeans as the rest of the universe would have told him. 6.What Crowley didn’t know was the feeling he was currently suffering through would have killed nearly any other demon.

[thearvariblues]

The Demon’s Dilemma

Also on AO3. ;)

Crowley knew that something wasn’t right the moment he opened the door to his flat. It wasn’t the fact that it was unlocked. He never bothered to lock it in the first place. No one would ever try to rob him – and if they did, well, Crowley wouldn’t be the one to suffer the consequences, right?

No, the problem was the… the overwhelming feeling of love he felt in the air. Contrary to Aziraphale’s belief, Crowley was able to feel it. Sometimes. He was able to feel Aziraphale’s love, at least. That was how he knew the angel was in his flat, doing things he definitely shouldn’t be doing.

Crowley closed the door behind himself silently and sneaked his way through his own flat. He didn’t want the angel to hear him. Not before he was sure what was going on.

(He was sure, but he needed to catch the angel red-handed. Or green-handed. Whatever.)

Then he finally heard Aziraphale’s voice. He didn’t bother wondering why the angel was in his flat in the first place. After the Apocalypse-that-wasn’t, Aziraphale had started to come to Crowley’s place whenever he pleased. Crowley didn’t complain. It was nice to have his angel around. But he never suspected the angel might betray him like this.

“Oh, look at you, you beauty,” he heard Aziraphale say. “So gorgeous. Would you like more water?”

More water?! Crowley gritted his teeth. Seriously? It was even worse than he’d thought!

“You like it, don’t you?” Aziraphale’s voice continued. “And you? You are lovely, all of you. Oh, my darling, is that a spot? No, no, don’t be scared. We’ll sort it out in a second...”

And that was all that Crowley needed to hear.

He pushed open the only door that separated him from Aziraphale (and the plants the angel was currently spoiling rotten). He tried to look scary and dangerous, but he had a feeling he was failing spectacularly.

“Hello, angel,” he growled, because that was probably the only thing he could do to keep at least a little bit of respect. “Care to explain what in S...omebody’s name are you doing with my plants?”

No matter how edgy Crowley wanted to look, the angel still positively beamed when he saw him. Crowley fought really hard not to smile back at him, no matter how much he wanted to.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said. “My dear boy, I’m so sorry. I thought you would be at home, but you weren’t, and then I saw these poor darlings and I thought I’d take care of them for you… They were incredibly thirsty, did you know? You really should water them more often, Crowley, I mean-”

“Yeah, well, thanks for your opinion, Aziraphale,” Crowley growled (once again, still hell-bent on keeping his cool facade). “But they’re thirsty for a reason, you see? Limited water rations make them appreciate the water they do get, and that in turn makes them grow better. Is that right, guys?” he said, addressing his plants.

They started to shake immediately.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said, his voice full of disapproval. “Are you making them scared of you on purpose?”

“Maybe?” Crowley shrugged, taking a plant mister from Aziraphale’s surprised hand. “So what? It works.”

“Of course that it does. But kindness and water would work even better.”

“Sorry, angel, but I disagree,” Crowley growled and glowered at the smallest plant in the room, the one that was pretty new and still didn’t understand all the rules properly. “They must know that when they don’t behave like good plants should, they’ll end up in the garbage disposal.”

“Garbage disposal?” Aziraphale smirked. He had the audacity to sound amused. “My dear boy. You’ve been bringing the plants that don’t behave like good plants should to me for years.”

Crowley was very thankful for his sunglasses. That way the plants (and the angel) couldn’t see that his eyes nearly popped out of his head.

“And you’re killing them off. He’s killing them off, you hear me?” he said, addressing the plants, but their trembling was already starting to lessen. “He kills them even more brutally than the garbage disposal ever could!”

It didn’t look like the plants believed him.

Especially when Aziraphale gave him a mischievous smile, the bastard.

“Oh, no, my dear. I’m giving them to the lovely old lady next door. She is very kind to them. Waters them whenever they want to. Tells them how beautiful they are. She has a special room dedicated to the plants, would you believe that?”

The plants had stopped shaking completely and now just stood there, listening to the conversation. It wasn’t as if they could just get up and leave.

“Aziraphale,” Crowley growled, taking off his sunglasses. “You’re gonna pay for thisss.”

The angel, completely undisturbed by Crowley’s snake eyes, raised his hand and gently stroked a leaf of the small plant Crowley really should have got rid of weeks ago.

“For what, my dear?”

He had the audacity to look almost innocent. Almost.

“You...” Crowley said, his voice quiet and menacing. “You come to my houssse. You ssspoil my poor plantsss rotten. And then you tell them my biggessst sssecret?!”

“Well, I’m sorry, Crowley,” the angel smirked (smirked!). “I just wanted to help, because your poor plants looked miserable. I had no idea they are supposed to be that way.”

“And why did you think I was bringing you the onesss that didn’t grow properly or… or weren’t green enough, or...”

“To… help them get better?” Aziraphale said, starting to look a little broken-hearted. “I honestly had no idea that it’s your way of threatening the ones you didn’t bring.”

“That’s jussst lovely, angel.”

“But now that I know,” Aziraphale muttered, straightening his back, “I shall not endorse it.”

“Meaning?” Crowley asked, lifting his eyebrows.

“That until you stop being so horrible to them, I shall not visit your flat. And it would probably be for the best if you didn’t come to my bookshop, either.”

“You’re bluffing. You wouldn’t.”

“What is it that humans say these days? Watch me, my dear.”

With that, the angel turned on his heel and left.

Crowley let him. He was sure the angel would come back. It might take a week. Maybe two. But he would come back.

Except that he didn’t.

Not a week later, not two weeks later, not a month later.

And Crowley, who’d got used to having the angel around almost every day, had to admit he was starting to go mad. Countless times, he wanted to call Aziraphale, invite him for a lunch or just tell him about his new evil demonic deed he thought of, so the angel could find a way to thwart him. (To be completely honest, he’d had about two new evil ideas during the whole month – not very good. More like terrible. He was lucky Hell wasn’t keeping an eye on him any more. He would be in big trouble if it did.)

Mostly, he just wanted to talk to Aziraphale.

Precisely thirty-five days (right, it was thirty-four days, sixteen hours and fifty-eight minutes, but he absolutely didn’t count every single one of them, nope) after Aziraphale left, Crowley found himself drunk nearly to oblivion on the floor by his plants, sniffling quietly.

The plants didn’t take Aziraphale’s absence any better than their master. During the past month, they kept withering, slowly but constantly, despite all of Crowley’s attempts to stop them from doing so. He’d tried everything – threats, withholding water completely, threats, regular watering, threats, all kinds of fertilizers, more threats… Nothing worked. It was almost as if the plants reflected his own mood. They looked exceptionally terrible today.

Crowley drunkenly kicked aside an empty whisky bottle and growled at the one miserable little plant that looked like it was almost beyond saving.

“Ssso what dyouwanmetodo?” he hissed. “I’m trying, you know. I’m doing my bessst!”

There was no reaction whatsoever.

“Ssss not like I’m the worst, is it? You could do much worse. You could be his plants. Trust me, he’s not like he seems. I’ve witnessed him nearly murder a whole garden full of flowers. A garden. Yeah, he’s kind and sweet and he means good and he’ll tell you how much he loves you, but he knows nothing about… about...”

Nitrogen levels in soil, he wanted to say. Fertilizers. Proper watering techniques.

Instead, he just sniffled again and gazed at the poor, probably dying plant.

“You miss him too, don’t you?” he asked. “Do you miss him like I do? No, you don’t, you can’t.”

Shockingly, the plants didn’t reply. Crowley licked his lips and sighed.

“You wanmeto go to him?” he muttered. “Say I’m sssorry? Will you get better if I do? Will you be okay again?”

The plants straightened their leaves a little.

“Not fair, guys. Not fair,” Crowley smirked. “I’m a demon, for… I’m a demon. I don’t say I’m sssorry!”

Again, no reply, but Crowley had a strange feeling that the plants weren’t really buying it.

It didn’t matter. He’d already made up his mind.

“Fine. Fine. You win. But remember, it’s because of you, not because I can’t live without him!”

No, they definitely weren’t buying it.

“Right. Right,” he sighed. “But I think I’m gonna have to… sober up first…”

Eighteen minutes later, Crowley walked into Aziraphale’s bookshop. He desperately tried to look cool and collected to hide the fact that he was very nearly trembling with nervousness.

“Aziraphale?” he called. “Angel, are you in here?”

An old lady who was currently inspecting a book glared at him.

Right. Customers. Well, he’d better try and drive her away.

“Angel,” he said again. “Sweetheart, where are you?”

The lady returned the book to its shelf, glaring even harder.

“Sorry, ma’am,” Crowley said with way more politeness than the old hag deserved. “I don’t suppose you’ve seen my partner? As in boyfriend. He’s the owner here and...”

The woman didn’t even let him finish before she stormed off with only a small “tsk!”.

The moment the door closed behind her (with a very loud and meaningful slam), Aziraphale emerged from behind a bookshelf.

“Crowley,” he said.

“Was that the only one or is there more of them?” the demon asked.

“The only one, fortunately,” the angel replied. “Thank you for that, my dear, by the way. The way she looked at the book… As if she wanted to buy it only to burn it. Poor Oscar. He doesn’t deserve that.”

Crowley watched the angel run his finger across the spine of the book the woman was looking at.

“Yeah,” he said. “You’re… welcome, angel. Even though you wouldn’t have sold it to her anyway.”

“Of course not. But it’s nice to see you coming to my rescue once again, so I wouldn’t have to be… unpleasant,” Aziraphale smiled.

“Right. No problem. As always.”

Crowley took a deep breath, biting his lower lip, as he gathered his courage to start talking. Really talking, about what he came to talk about. But he couldn’t. He could just stare at the angel.

It took Aziraphale quite a few seconds to realize that the conversation simply wouldn’t move anywhere if he didn’t make the first step – so he made it.

“How… how are the plants, my dear?”

Now, Aziraphale expected several different answers to this question, ranging from “all dead, gotta buy some new ones to torture” to “better than ever, thanks to me doing what you wanted me to”. What he definitely didn’t expect was Crowley to hug him like a boa constrictor and start sobbing into his ancient coat.

“Crowley?” he said quietly. “What’s wrong?”

“Missed you,” Crowley murmured, holding the angel even tighter.

“You or the plants, my dear boy?”

“Both,” Crowley clarified. “Can’t imagine. Dying without you.”

Aziraphale was tempted to ask “you or the plants?” again, but decided against it.

“Crowley,” he said instead. “Are you drunk?”

“Not as much as I was,” came the reply, murmured into the coat so thoroughly that it was hardly intelligible. “Please, angel, I’m sorry, so sorry, just stop being mad at me, I can’t survive you being mad at me.”

“I’m not mad at you,” Aziraphale sighed, wrapping his arms around the demon as much as the situation allowed him. It wasn’t much, but he still felt the demon practically melt against him. “Now, my dear, you should let go a little, if you don’t want to discorporate me. And I sure hope you don’t, because I can’t possibly imagine explaining to Gabriel that I was crushed to death by an overly affectionate serpent.”

“I’d love to see his face if you told him that,” Crowley said, releasing the angel from his deadly grip. He made to take a step back, but Aziraphale’s arm around his waist stopped him. Crowley frowned. “Angel?”

“I said let go a little,” Aziraphale smiled. “Do you know you look absolutely dreadful?”

“I guess. Was a rough month.”

Aziraphale raised his hand and grabbed the rims of Crowley’s sunglasses, but didn’t take them off immediately – he waited for Crowley’s nearly invisible nod before doing it. The demon’s eyes were full of despair, but also hope – and love. A truly incredible amount of love. It made Aziraphale’s heart flutter.

“I’ll tell you what,” he smiled. “I will close the shop and we will get you back home, order a nice meal, have a glass of wine and take care of your lovely plants, what do you say?”

“You hate takeaway.”

“I’ll survive. I hope. That would be even more awkward to explain. Killed by horrible takeaway. Gabriel’s head would probably explode.”

“And it’s not even noon yet.”

“Oh, the shop’s been open for almost an hour now. I think that’s more than enough for one day, don’t you?”

Crowley grinned at that. “Oh, definitely, angel. Let’s go?”

“Just wait a second. I almost forgot I have a little something for you.”

When the couple got to Crowley’s flat, the plants that had been slowly dying an hour ago turned out to be as green and vibrant as ever. And the most vibrant of all was the little one, the one that clearly did understand the rules perfectly, but it just didn’t care. The obvious leader of the revolution.

“I hate you guys,” the demon growled while Aziraphale cooed at every single one of them, telling them how beautiful they looked today. “I really hate you all.”

“What was it, my dear?” Aziraphale asked.

“Nothing, angel. I was just about to introduce him to their new friend.”

(The friend being a brand new tiny potted plant – Aziraphale’s little something for Crowley.

“I expect you to treat it the same way you treat all the others, remember it, Crowley. Exactly. The. Same,” Aziraphale had said.

“Angel,” Crowley had replied. “You know I could never...”

“Yes. I know. Means you are going to have to treat the others better, doesn’t it?”

“Are you absolutely sure you’re not really a demon? Because this is something a demon would do.”

“Not a demon. Just enough of a bastard to be worth knowing.”

“Loving.”

“No, I clearly remember you said knowing.”

“Said, yes. But I meant...”

“I know, Crowley. I know.”)

“Oh. Right. I’ll leave you to it, then. I think you need time to explain the new rules, am I correct?”

“I guess,” Crowley sighed, resigned.

“Good demon,” Aziraphale said, brushing his fingers against Crowley’s as he passed him. “What would you say to some sushi, by the way?”

“Sushi would be great. I’ll be with you in a minute?”

“As long as you need, my love.”

A tremble ran through all the plants in the room – but they weren’t terrified, no. More like very, very excited.

The angel laughed and left. Crowley turned to the plants. He tried to look sinister, but the smile tugging at his lips was completely ruining it all.

“Now you listen to me, you traitorous, spoiled, backstabbing-”

“Crowley!”

Right. The angel could still hear him. Crowley sighed.

“You are beautiful and I love you all?” he tried.

“Much better, my dear. Keep going. You’re doing great.”

Crowley felt a shiver run down his spine. Right. Maybe this praise thing wasn’t really that bad…

A few hours later, a demon was lying on the brand new comfortable couch he’d miracled up, slowly dozing off, and a smiling angel was running his fingers through the demon’s red hair.

The demon was trying to convince himself that he would reinstate his reign of terror over the plants first thing in the morning. Or maybe in a week or so. He just had to wait for the angel to forget about the stupid new rules, and then he would be able to do anything he wanted and…

“Just look at yourself,” the angel murmured. “Six thousands years, and I still cannot believe how beautiful you are, Crowley.”

The demon opened his yellow eyes and smiled.

All right, all right. Maybe, just maybe, the plants didn’t have to be the most terrified in order to be the most luxurious, verdant and beautiful in London. Maybe just a little scared would do.

“Have I ever told you how much I love your eyes?” the angel asked. “Loved them since the garden, really.”

“Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing, angel.”

The angel smiled and scratched the demon’s scalp. And the sound the demon made definitely wasn’t a moan.

“The question is – is it working?”

“Oh, yesss,” the demon hissed. “Don’t you dare ssstop.”

Maybe, just maybe, he was going to let the angel shamelessly manipulate him like this. For a while. A few months. A year, at most.

“I was thinking, my dear… I could spend the night. If you wanted.”

And just then, the demon knew he was going to be shamelessly manipulated for centuries. And the worst part was… he didn’t mind at all.