#we see this more clearly when aziraphale is driving it and it willingly lets him change its colour; the music; and the speed

[worthlessandembarrasing]

[cheeseanonioncrisps]

Honestly, controversial opinion, but Crowley arguably does move pretty fast, if you look at it from a celestial perspective.

“But they were friends for 6000 years!” No they weren't.

I mean, headcanons can vary, but if we're going purely by the text then they don't appear to have met up at all in the 1000 years between Eden and Noah's Ark (Crowley has to ask about the aftermath of the Flaming Sword Incident) and it's not clear how many times they encountered each other in the 3000 years between that and the crucifixion.

They don't go out for lunch together (that we see) until eight years after that. Once again, I've seen lots of excellent headcanons and fics about how they might have spent that intervening time together, but from a strictly canon perspective, Crowley and Aziraphale being basically just friendly colleagues for the first 4000 years of their relationship is a totally valid interpretation.

And then, of course, Crowley probably has to leave (he's “just popped in for a quick temptation”, remember) and the next time we see them is 500 years later. Which is a super long time for a human— and I'm not going to argue that they didn't meet up at all in the intervening time, since at this point I don't think it's implied one way or another— but for an angel or a demon?

They've both been on Earth for well over 4000 years by this point. How long is 500 years relative to them? Fifty years? Fifteen? Five?

Anyway, it's at this point— 500 years after what was quite possibly their first lunch together— that Crowley turns to Aziraphale and is like “hey? Want to commit literal treason?”

And make no mistake, that is what he is asking. These two are enemy agents, and Crowley is asking to exchange information about the secret plans of their respective sides. This would require Aziraphale to

a) trust Crowley not to take advantage of this information for the benefit of Evil

b) consciously choose not to take advantage himself of the information Crowley gives him, for the benefit of Good

c) accept (even just a little bit) the idea that the activities he's just spend the past >4000 years on don't make any difference at all in the grand scheme of things, and Heaven doesn't really give a shit about him.

… And he does it. He rejects the idea initially, but just over a thousand years later we see them together at the Globe, and the Arrangement is not only established, but clearly has been so for some time.

Long enough for Crowley to decide it's time to bend the rules. Not only are they arranging secret meetings and tactically keeping out of each other's way, but they've already done the 'taking care of each other's blessings and temptations' trick “dozens of times”. Aziraphale is still nervous and shocked when Crowley suggests it, so he's probably used to only doing it as a last resort in emergencies, but he knows exactly what Crowley is suggesting the moment he comments on what a shame it is that they both have to go to Edinburgh. This is not a new thing.

Aziraphale at this point still believes that angels and demons are fundamentally different. For all he knew, the first time he performed a temptation he would fall instantly and the first time Crowley performed a blessing he would… explode, or something. But still, at some point during the last thousand years, Crowley persuaded him to do it.

And then, just over 200 years after that (and how long even is that? It's ~4% of the time they've spent on Earth so far) Crowley asks for holy water, Aziraphale thinks he's going to kill himself, freaks out about how much he cares and brings out the Heaven Party Line to cover up his real feelings. Crowley takes it as a personal insult and they fall out for a century— according to the script, Aziraphale is convinced that they're not friends anymore.

100 years after that, and Crowley's back again, and he's just saved Aziraphale from discorporation (… by threatening him with worse discorporation, but still) and thought to rescue his books. Aziraphale has his big moment of 'this demon is the only being who truly cares about me, and I truly care about him' and then literally like 20 years later (which would be what on the celestial timescale? Two weeks?) Crowley's after the holy water again, and Aziraphale has to choose between letting his friend almost certainly die through inaction, or making him slightly less likely to die right away but ensuring that if/when he does die later down the line, it will be All. Aziraphale's. Fault.

He chooses option 2 and in the process has to admit— maybe not out loud, but definitely through implication— that the initial refusal to hand it over was never about Heaven, because Aziraphale couldn't give a toss about what Heaven thinks compared to what will ensure the safety of one incredibly irritating demon. Probably crossing his fingers that he's not going to Fall the whole way through, because that is a bloody extreme thing to admit given the circumstances.

And Crowley's response? “Cool, so we're now going to go off together and start hanging out like normal people who don't have the threat of each other's horrific destruction hanging over their heads every minute of the day? We're going to drive off in my car and just be openly BFFs forever now?” No Crowley.

In the past just under 2000 years you've gone from work aquaintances (which was already illegal! Literally every conversation you two have ever had could have resulted in your deaths!), to treason buddies, to Aziraphale fully admitting to himself that his loyalty to you is more than his loyalty to Heaven. That his loyalty to Heaven does not in fact play into it when it comes to your safety. Even though he's an angel, and that sort of thinking is exactly the kind of thing you Fall for.

And like less than thirty seconds after you've both come to that realisation, you're turning round and asking him to give up all plausible deniability and attempts at secrecy and just start openly hanging out together where Heaven and Hell could just stumble upon you at any time.

Like yeah he turns you down, what with finding out you're about to risk killing yourself, and handing you a suicide pill, and finally admitting his ultimate betrayal of Heaven in his heart, this has been a rough past few hours for Aziraphale. He's probably not ready to be making those kinds of decisions.

But he says he's willing to give it a try. Not yet— give him a minute Crowley— but he's willingly acknowledging that there is a Next Step to this relationship and he wants to get there.

And then the next time we see the two of them, in 30-40 years time, Aziraphale has made the step. They're going to the Ritz together and getting wasted in the shop afterwards. They seem to have done this before. Crowley now wants to form an allegiance and deliberately work to circumvent the Great Plan that Aziraphale believes was set out 6000 years ago by God Herself, and it literally takes an afternoon for Crowley to talk him into it.

Like, I see a lot of posts about the holy water scene where people are blaming Aziraphale or joking about how Crowley couldn't possibly go any slower than he is already. And yeah, from a human perspective, they're barely moving. But from the perspective of millennia old beings whose existence predates the Earth itself? And for whom literally every step in their relationship was utterly revolutionary and completely unprecedented?

To Aziraphale, it probably felt a lot faster.

[mostfacinorous]

Whumptober 11th

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]

(I think this one is my favorite so far)

Whumptober 11th: Stitches

“Crowley-- what’s happened to you?” Aziraphale stood quickly, upsetting the book that had been resting in his lap and sending the empty saucer plummeting to the ground. 

“The miracle of modern medicine, or somethin’.” Crowley answered, waving his bandaged hands and working hard to only speak out of the left side of his mouth, as the right side was stitched at the corner-- to match the stitches high on his cheekbone, and the swelling that kept his right eye shut. 

“Well, certainly, I can see that, but what happened before that?” Aziraphale pressed, setting his tea down and coming out from behind the low table to approach the battered demon. 

“Bit of a reprimand from below. Guess they didn’t like my report about failing to escalate things and start a war. Nothing too impressive. But I lost consciousness towards the end of it, and they left me in the gutter, so some good samaritans called an ambulance, and--” he gestured again, to encompass all of it. 

“Oh, I wish I could help, Crowley, but you know how heavenly power hurts at the best of times for you-- I wouldn’t want to make matters worse.” Aziraphale had begun wringing his hands, and Crowley responded with an eyeroll that, oddly, made Aziraphale feel better. Hurt though he was, at least he was feeling like himself.

“I’ll heal up fine, angel. I just need some help with the stitches. My fingers are a bit, ah--” 

Of course-- if he healed with stitches in, the stitches would heal into him, and, vain as he was, the scars would be horrid. And the unfinished sentence, the potential words hung on the air, each worst than the last. ‘Ruined’ ‘destroyed’... Aziraphale firmly refused to think of any more.

“Certainly, my dear. Oh, let’s go into the kitchen, though? The lighting there is much better, and I’d rather see what I’m doing.”

Besides the kitchen, small and cramped as it was, had no rugs to suffer stains if Crowley started bleeding again, which Aziraphale thought he might. 

Crowley was entirely too agreeable, given his usual views on Aziraphale’s kitchen, and he couldn’t help but suspect that Crowley was either in substantial amounts of pain, still under the influence from his hospital stay, or also wanted to preserve the back room, which he definitely found more comfortable than this one. 

Regardless of the reason, when Aziraphale pulled out the chair for him he sat willingly, and only winced slightly at the landing. Aziraphale did his best not to be too obvious as he looked him over, hiding it behind the process of removing his coat and rolling up his shirt sleeves. 

“Is there-- that is, I don’t suppose they limited their attacks to your face and hands.” He gave Crowley a much more open up and down, somewhat afraid to see signs of further damage, but all too aware that it must be there. Demons didn’t tend to be particularly kind-- or restrained. 

Crowley shrugged, though it looked like it cost him.

“It’ll all heal.” 

“Right.” Aziraphale said faintly, wishing he could ask to see, but afraid that it would be overstepping a boundary. And it wasn’t as though he could do anything to help with it, at any rate. Besides, he was sure anything that needed doing, the human doctors had seen to. 

Having run out of things to distract him or delay with, Aziraphale snapped and summoned his wing care kit onto the little kitchenette table. 

It was probably imposing seeming, the highly polished wooden box decorated with golden inlay. 

It had been a gift, and used to contain a golden vanity set, but it had become home to a host of tweezers and small scissors, specialized combs, soft cloths, and the feathers that came out when he made the effort to straighten them out-- far less frequently than he ought to, he knew. 

He lifted the lid away and moved aside the velvet bag of his molted feathers, glad that they were covered, though he had no doubt that Crowley would guess what they were and say something about it. 

He flushed faintly at the possibility, but Crowley remained polite and quiet-- subdued. 

Almost worrisome, that. 

Though, it was hardly a mystery as to why.

Aziraphale lifted his scissors and carried them to the small sink. 

“I’m just going to wash them-- they’ve been unused for a while, and I don’t want any dust getting in your wounds.”

“‘M not gonna get an infection, angel.” Crowley protested, but it wasn’t a strong argument. 

Aziraphale washed them anyway, and returned, stepping between Crowley’s spread legs to be as close as he could-- the better to see what he was doing, of course. 

“Hold still now- I’m going to take them out of your lips first.” 

He caught Crowley’s jaw, hand wrapping under his chin to steady his head, and made the mistake of looking through his sunglasses and directly into his eyes. 

He swallowed compulsively, and had to turn his attention to the stitching in his lips, though that wasn’t precisely a safer place to be looking. 

Crowley was, after all, made to be a temptation. 

Aziraphale took a steadying breath and brought the scissors to the widest of the stitches. He slid them gently under and snipped-- one down-- and checked in with Crowley’s eyes, looking for any sign of pain. Not, of course, that Crowley made it easy, hiding behind his shades as he did, and averting his eyes.

When he didn’t call a halt, Aziraphale did it again, then again, working his way through all of them. 

Once the loops had all been cut, he sat down the scissors and retrieved the tweezers, beginning the unfortunate process of pulling the threads back through the holes, which were still bright red and inflamed, swollen and painful looking. 

Crowley hissed softly as the first one tugged through, and Aziraphale paused. 

“Forgive me,” He murmured, and reached for the sunglasses. Crowley froze, eyes wide behind the smoky lenses, but he didn’t protest.

“I just want to see when you react-- be certain I’m not hurting you too much.” He spoke gently and, he hoped, convincingly-- though it was only half-lie, and thus only half-selfish, the way he drank up the sight of the burnished gold of Crowley’s pupils, the way he soaked up the proximity, knowing he shouldn’t, and wishing that so many of their circumstances were different. 

“Get on with it.” Crowley sounded cross, and Aziraphale knew that meant he was more uncomfortable than he wanted to let on. 

“Right.” He said, and began pulling the next through, careful to draw the knot side out, lest he tear Crowley’s dear lip. 

Crowley had to work hard not to wince or flinch, and Aziraphale paused again. 

“‘S fine angel. Just-- talk. Say something. Distract me.”

His lips could move more freely now, and Aziraphale turned to summon forth a handkerchief to dab away at the slow trickles of blood that followed. 

“Oh dear me, I wouldn’t know what to say.” He started, fishing around for a suitable topic. 

Which oughtn’t be hard, he knew; he often spent the majority of their dinners nattering away while Crowley watched him with a look that, on anyone else, might be adoration. 

“A pair of women came into the shop yesterday,” He started. 

“Oh no,” came the demon’s sardonic reply, and Aziraphale felt his own lips twitch upwards, absurdly comforted by this bit of normalcy, even as Crowley’s blood dripped down the tweezers and onto Aziraphale’s fingers, stinging lightly where it fell. 

He wiped it off, barely sparing it a thought. It wasn’t the first time he’d had Crowley’s blood on his hands, and while he hoped it would be the last, he knew better than to expect that to be true. 

“Well, they wanted to request that I make a list of the books I had, and list them online. So that more people might come to buy them.” He knew he oughtn’t sound scandalized and horrified at the thought; Crowley had pointed out more often than not that traditional bookstores sold books. 

Crowley’s lips pulled into a smile, and Aziraphale was glad to see that it didn’t hurt him any more. 

Pulling the last bit of thread through the holes in his cheek, though, clearly did, and just like that, the tiny glimmer of a smile disappeared. 

He must’ve looked stricken, because Crowley patted at him with one of his wrapped hands. 

“What did you do to drive them off?” He asked gently, and Aziraphale shook himself, turning back to his task.

“Ah, I explained to them that neither computers nor the internet are allowed in the shop. And do you know what they said?”

He goaded for a response while he began snipping at the next set of strings, these somewhat harder to get to due to the relative firmness of the skin over his cheekbone. 

“Mm?” Crowley asked, his eyes drifting closed. 

“Apparently there is something called a Yell Page, with reviews of my shop, and they intend to leave a bad one. Can you imagine! A website to tell people not  to come to my store. Modern technology is wonderful.” 

A warm chuckle rolled through Crowley’s chest. And standing close as he was, Aziraphale could feel it. 

“Yelp. One of mine. Invented specifically for me to leave scathing reviews on this place.” 

Like the rumble of his laughter, his words vibrated through Aziraphale’s core, followed by an unrestrained surge of fondness that he was sure even a demon could feel. 

“How very dastardly of you.” He said, though without any accusation or bite. 

“I’m going to cut this last batch as well, and then we can pull all of these and have done with it.” 

“No rush.” Crowley mumbled, and Aziraphale wasn’t certain whether he was meant to have been able to hear it or not. 

Regardless, he elected to ignore it and focus instead on the work at hand. 

For all that they had been harder to cut, the stitches slid out of this skin more easily, though Aziraphale was careful to hold the skin steady with his other hand, so that it didn’t pull or twist in the process. 

Once all of them were removed, Aziraphale lifted Crowley’s left hand. 

“This next, and then you can heal up, hm?”

“Aziraphale, I should warn you-- it’s not-- it isn’t pretty.” Crowley was looking away, refusing to meet Aziraphale’s eyes, and he had to swallow around a lump of worry that formed in his throat. 

“That’s alright-- your hands will be lovely and whole again soon enough. This too shall pass.” He promised him, resolving to hide any reaction he might feel as he unclipped the outermost edge of the bandages and began drawing them away. 

It wasn’t pretty. Whatever they’d done-- and Aziraphale’s mind was providing entirely too many options-- they’d twisted, broken, and shattered his fingers until they barely resembled hands any longer. The doctors had set them as best as they could, and there were clearly places where they’d put screws in-- and that would be trouble later, if Crowley healed them that way. 

“Will you be able to snap at all?” He wondered aloud.  

Crowley grimaced.

“It’ll hurt.” He admitted. “But better than the alternatives.”

“Can I-- I can’t heal you but I think, I could remove the metal with a miracle, if you can snap it better after.”

Crowley tilted his head. 

“Would you?” He asked, almost as if he were surprised, and for some reason that made guilt swell in Aziraphale. What had he ever done to make Crowley think otherwise? 

Whatever it was, he would have to be sure to remedy it from here on out. 

He got both hands unwrapped, and sat them gently on Crowley’s thighs.

 “Alright. As you said, this will hurt--” He cautioned. Crowley nodded, and Aziraphale snapped, the screws joining the bits of suture string on the table at his elbow. 

Crowley groaned and swayed, looking for all the world as though he might pass out and slump out of the chair. 

“Alright?” Aziraphale asked, grabbing hold of his shoulder to keep him upright, and then pulling his hand away like it had been burned, when it appeared his touch had hurt Crowley. 

But maybe the pain was the grounding force he needed. Crowley squeezed his eyes shut and lifted his mangled hand.

The snap looked like it hurt, but its effects were instantaneous. 

And, no doubt, costly. 

Crowley swayed in his chair again, but this time he lifted his hands to steady himself with a grip on Aziraphale’s hips. Crowley leaned in, and rested his face against his stomach-- usually Aziraphale considered it too plush, too soft, but for the job of being a temporary pillow, he found himself incredibly well suited for it.

“Would you like to stay here and rest for a bit?” Aziraphale asked softly, loathe to end the contact, but well aware that sleeping might be better for Crowley right now, and he had some mess to see to in the form of surgical debris. 

“Mhf.” Crowley answered, or didn’t, but Aziraphale knew what he meant. 

“Come along then,” He said, shifting and pulling Crowley gently to his feet, then up off of them. He carried his demon friend into the back room and laid him out on the soft couch. 

“Don’t you worry. I’ll watch over your sleep.” He assured him. Crowley seemed already to be drifting off, but he smiled gently at the words, and Aziraphale couldn’t help himself. He leaned down and brushed his lips against Crowley’s forehead in an affectionate and blessedly-- damnably?-- chaste kiss.

Crowley would wake with his glasses and a good whiskey beside him, and Aziraphale in the chair across the way, reading and sipping cocoa. And everything would be perfectly normal again, hurts and temptation alike banished.

For now.