#or i guess instead of more like an h more like a proper spanish j?

[ranger-kellyn]

i like to think that nemona often pronounces juliana's name with the j more as an h, when they're being goofy or she's teasing her

[thesaltofcarthage]

I dreamed a Good Omens fic last night

For various reasons I slept badly last night, and this was the fic which unfurled in my head over three hours as I drifted in and out of sleeping and waking.

What if they aren’t being monitored? There is no Ineffable Plan; God just turns everyone loose and sees what happens. Crowley still Saunters Vaguely Downwards, because that happened before she created humans. There are still angels and demons, and what they are Supposed To Do, but the “sides” are not quite so fiercely drawn.

So Aziraphale and Crowley get to know one another over the years, but they can become friends openly because no one is watching them and there’s no one to report to. The Flood is the only time God intervenes with humanity. The scene outside the Ark still happens but then Aziraphale and Crowley end up on the Ark because there’s nowhere else for their corporeal bodies to go.

And Crowley grieves all the children, terribly. After a few nights he ends up curled up in Aziraphale’s arms weeping, and they continue to bed down together because who else are they going to stay with? 

A week or two later, after becoming accustomed to waking up next to a friendly, familiar face, Crowley wakes up alone. He flatlines mentally and just sits in their blankets hugging his knees and rocking back and forth for hours. Aziraphale finally returns, chilled to the bone, and Crowley clings to him. “I thought you left me,” he says, crying.

Aziraphale doesn’t quite look all there. “I’m sorry, my dear. I was up on the deck.” 

“For six hours?”

“I just needed to clear my lungs out a bit; it’s a little musty down here with the goats.” Crowley realizes Aziraphale is a mess, inside and out. The angel was also deeply affected by the death of every living thing on the planet not on this boat. He pulls himself together.

“You’re soaking wet, Angel,” Crowley tells him softly, running his fingers through Aziraphale’s dripping wings. He miracles the water away, but Aziraphale still looks dazed with shock and depression. They lie down together again and eventually end up kissing. Both of them realize they want more. Aziraphale says “I can’t allow you to tempt me to lust!” and Crowley says “No, Angel, you’re comforting the afflicted. I’m miserable and having horrible nightmares. You’re winning a demon over to love.” 

“Oh, well, if you put it that way, my dear.”

They end up making love pretty much every night, sometimes twice a day, because the rain doesn’t stop and they’re on a lower deck with the big animals, and it’s pretty grim on that boat, honestly. By the end of the soggy forty days they admit they’ve fallen in love. Crowley begs Aziraphale to stay with him, and he says he will.

And they do. They stay together more or less openly for the next millennium and a half. As long as they aren’t macking on each other in public, they won’t get into trouble. They take turns visiting each other once a week to be together.

Christ is born. Aziraphale doesn’t know what happened, but he knows something did, and things shift inside him. When Crowley next comes to visit, sneaking up on his angel from behind and wrapping his arms around him, full of smooches, Aziraphale kisses him back gently but says he’s not really in the mood. Crowley is surprised but respects that. They have dinner and cuddle and kiss a bit, and sleep chastely holding each other.

This happens on the next visit, and the next, and the next. Crowley is hurt, but Aziraphale continues to say that he loves Crowley and is always happy to see him, and seeks him out eagerly, and visits when it’s his turn. Conversation is always easy. There are lots of forehead kisses and tender face touches, but that’s it.

Two years pass. It’s a lovely summer night, and they’re lying together on a lounge on a city rooftop somewhere looking at the stars. Aziraphale is holding Crowley, who’s curled up with his head on his angel’s chest. Crowley finally can’t bear it any more and looks up at him. “Angel, may I ask you something?”

“Of course, my dear, anything.”

“All right — and please know that I��d never ask you to do anything you don’t want to do, or share anything you don’t want to share, but — ” and here his voice trembles a little and gets very small, “Angel, why don’t you want to have sex with me any more? On the ark it was every night, and then it used to be a few times a week, but you haven’t wanted to touch me in two years.” Aziraphale gasps. Crowley is in tears. “Just — tell me, please, did I do something wrong? I would never, ever force myself on you or demand anything of you, I just — I just want to know what happened.”  

“It’s been that long?” he says, horrified. “Oh, Crowley, my love, forgive me, I didn’t mean — I never meant to hurt you!”

“Then what did you mean?” Crowley says, wretched.

Aziraphale explains: “Something changed — I can’t put my finger on it, but something happened. It took all the desire out of me. I thought it happened to you too — you’re still an angel, even if you’re a fallen one. Something… I just get the sense that something is going to happen, soon, or soon-ish. There’s definitely an end date to this. And we have to — prepare for it, I guess.”

“Soon-ish?” Crowley says with some hope. “Does that mean years? decades?”

“A few decades, I think? Less than a century, to be certain.” Now Aziraphale is welling up. “My darling, I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t realize. Do you want me to — well — help you out?”

Crowley laughs through his tears. “No, Angel, it’s all right. Sex isn’t any fun if it’s not both of us. I can wait for you.” He cups Aziraphale’s face. “I can wait for centuries if I have to. I love you.”

“I love you too, my dearest.” They kiss, gently, and then hold each other close. Crowley inhales the smell of Aziraphale’s skin to hold him over.

Crowley spends the next thirty-odd years jerking off once or twice a day, continuing to visit with Aziraphale every week, cuddling, and coping.

They witness the Crucifixion. Crowley is horrified and heartbroken, again. Aziraphale isn’t accepting; he’s inconsolable from Friday to Sunday.

On Monday, however, he wakes up with raging desire. He pulls down the sheets and starts sucking Crowley off. Crowley wakes up startled and very happy. “I see you found your libido again!” he says with a delighted gasp. They don’t leave the bed for two days.

The world keeps turning, and they stay together. Crowley starts wearing the sunglasses after the Crucifixion. Somewhere in the Middle Ages Crowley buys a thousand-acre plot of land in what will eventually be England and starts building an enormous house in the middle of the lot. He hires humans to build it with wood and stone, proper architecture to hold it up, no miracles. “I don’t want this dependent on a miracle, because I don’t want either my side or yours to come by and un-miracle anything,” he explains.

Somewhere along the line on some part of the planet, there’s a municipality which will solemnify non-religious marriages. Aziraphale and Crowley get hitched, because it seems silly otherwise after how many thousands of years.

Now they do live together, albeit discreetly. Civilization rises. Their house is surrounded by woods on all sides. The driveway is a mile long, crushed gravel, and isn’t marked — you can only find it if you’re looking for it. There’s a high wooden fence around the house proper. The house number is 504. Originally they were putting up dueling signs like “Welcome/Go Away,” but Aziraphale noted that it would attract too much attention, so there’s just a small white porcelain oval with the house number in black type.

They save as many people from various wars and plagues as they can, but there’s only so much they can do without getting caught out. Crowley ends up doing the book deal with the Nazis; the prophecy books are of course complete tripe, and additionally the pages are soaked in poison (which was Aziraphale’s idea, because he’s delighted by the thought of books being able to bite back).

At some point in the 1970s or 1980s they are out doing something silly in London (public drunkeness?) and they get arrested. They are in the local hoosegow, which doesn’t have a drunk tank per se, and Aziraphale is outraged to realize there are kids in the cell with them. He hustles right over and hisses “Crowley! There are children here!”

“Children? In a jail? Why are there children in jail?”

“I. don’t. know but I intend to find! out!” And the guards explain they are in for stupid things like graffiti or smoking or truancy or whatever it is, and Aziraphale loses it.

“Oh, you’re in for it now, you’ve gotten my husband good and mad,” Crowley drawls from his corner of the cell. The cops think he’s a weird poofter because obviously two men can’t get married, but then magically all the kids’ bail is getting paid and charges are being dropped left and right. And now Aziraphale has a mission.

They take aliases: Anthony J. Colubra (which means snake, thank you Madeline L’Engle for sticking in my subconscious) and Arthur Z. Fell. Aziraphale closes the bookshop and keeps the building (he owns all of it) as their second home in London. They instead open a community center. There’s a large open room with pews where people can meditate and worship as they choose, but no services and no leaders. Aziraphale is still an angel who wants people to do what’s right, but seriously, after the Flood and the Crucifixion and the Black Plague and Spanish Flu and WWII, he’s not particularly happy with God or Heaven.

There’s a gym, a library, a daycare, and various other rooms as needed (somewhat suspiciously just as they’re needed… there’s some Room of Requirement shenanigans going on). The kids are wary of the two at first because they think they are just there to preach, but one evening Aziraphale is talking to the kids earnestly about doing good and Crowley walks by and ruffles his angel’s hair in a clearly Old Marrieds way, and Aziraphale stops mid-sentence to melt into a puddle of heart eyes and can’t remember his train of thought for ten minutes, and the kids realize these two are on their side.

As the decades pass, more queer kids and outcasts and homeless come to the center because they have a home there, and the non-binary and gender-fluid kids flock to Crowley because they see him as a kindred spirit. 

There is no Antichrist; Adam is a human boy. Adam and Warlock are born at the same hospital and get switched because stupid things happen. Both of them end up going to university in London, and they meet and fall in love at a community center called Wings of Hope.