#thank you for bringing Aziraphale and Crowley to the physical realm

[ineffableaddiction]

Today (and every day) is Michael Sheen and David Tennant Appreciation Day.

[wanderingalicewrites]

So Much Discounted - Chapter 11

Genesis - IV

(Read the full chapter on AO3)

“Well. That was…” Aziraphale shook his head, running a hand along the smooth back of the creature draped across his shoulders. Already he was starting to feel a bit used up and wrung out, and he still had six more empty circles to fill.

The creature buzzed under his ear comfortingly, curling around his shoulders and squeezing gently like it was giving him a hug.

“Thank you, dear,” he told it, scratching a patch of darkness, and was rewarded by its purr-like hum. “I do hope your other aspects aren’t quite so… intense.” Rage had left him shaken, his guilt weighing heavily on his heart. He had gotten things so very wrong, for so very long. And while Crowley could, and should have said something, that Aziraphale didn’t notice was on the angel and the angel alone.

“Well, no help for it now,” he said, shaking himself out of that line of thought. He could wallow in his own guilt later, when Crowley was safe and whole once more. “Let’s get going, hmm?”

There were three paths out of the clearing. The first, Aziraphale had taken from the wall. He knew what lay in that direction. Another, he had taken with Compassion. And while he had not followed it to its end, it didn’t feel quite right to return down it. So instead, he took the third path, which led in the opposite direction. It was nearly identical to the other two, though this one had a small stream running along its length.

As he walked, Aziraphale glanced up to check the position of the sun. As he had suspected, it still hadn’t moved. This place, wherever it was, existed in a point outside of time. Back in the physical realm, years could be passing with each blink. Or it could be that no time at all had passed, and he and Crowley would return just as Adam finished closing the door to the cell. Aziraphale worried about the boy, but he supposed Adam was probably in a better position than he himself would have been, being the former son of Satan.

“I do hope he’ll be alright,” he told the creature. “I worry if we take too long, Anathema and Newton might decide not to wait and come in to get us, though I don’t believe they can withstand the infernal nature of Hell for very long. And poor Adam, bless the lad. All alone out there, with only that demon for company. What if someone discovers him down there, without me around to protect him?” He stuck his hand in his pocket, turning the ring around and around in his fingers as he started to worry. “I should never have let him come with me. What was I thinking, bringing a child into Hell of all places? I- ouch!” His hand flew up to his ear, which stung. His fingers came away with a few drops of blood.

On his shoulder the creature hissed, baring a mouth full of needle-sharp fangs

“You bit me! What was that for?” Aziraphale demanded. The creature hissed again and jabbed a tendril of darkness up at the sun.

[hellfireandbookshops]

This blog has crossed 1k followers, I am so overwhelmed! Thank you all so much!

As a way of celebrating I have decided to break my 4-year hiatus on publishing fanfiction! I’ve posted chapter one of my short stories/drabble collection which you can read on AO3 here. A preview is available below the cut! 

My plan is to update as often as I can with short stories and drabbles exploring the lives of the ineffable husbands after the apocalypse. All the drabbles will exist in the same universe and be in chronological order. So far there are 30 chapters planned, and I am open to prompting too!  

Thank you guys so much for sticking around for my descent into Good Omens obsession and keeping me creating content, I appreciate and love you all <3

~O~

You can stay at my place if you like.

Boarding the bus to Oxford (the bus that would drive to London anyway) was a silent affair. Crowley got on first, a brief gesture with his left hand ensuring that they would make it home tonight. Home being the demons residence, of course, no matter that Aziraphale hadn’t actually agreed to go there yet. If he was certain of anything right now it was that the angel shouldn’t be exposed to the ruin of his bookshop. Not tonight.

It had been horrific enough for Crowley. The aged rafters had crumbled to ash, the scent of burning paper surrounded the demon and choked in his lungs. All that uncomfortable heat licking at his skin, a dangerous reminder that whatever once stood there was now nothing more than dust in the wind. Fuel for a vicious flame. He’d called for Aziraphale but he had known the second he parked outside the angel was gone.

For the last six thousand years, Aziraphale has always been on his mental radar. An energy output ever-present in the back of his mind no matter where he went; it was how he managed to follow him across the globe al these years. It burned in him like the north star; leading him home.

There was nothing amidst the fire, though. Just an absence the likes of which he hadn’t felt since rising through the earth in the garden of Eden. An indicator that his best friend wasn’t in this realm anymore; discorporated or destroyed completely, he had no way of being certain. Oh, he’d hoped it was the former. That way he could just pop back down again with another body, surely. But who was to say the archangels hadn’t intervened and put a stop to whatever relationship they had? Crowley had been openly pleading with him in the street just an hour beforehand and hellfire would do a slap up job of eradicating an angel and his shop.

Crowley wasn’t entirely certain even he’d be able to stomach looking at the carcass of his friend’s home right now, not after grief like that.

So they’d go to the flat.

He took the seat beside the window, staring out at the quaint little village lit up in the night. It looked sickeningly nice. The kind of thing you’d put on a postcard to your nan. To think the world almost ended here today, in picturesque rural England. Oh the hidden dangers of a beautiful thing, much like an angel brandishing a flaming sword he supposed.

So busy waxing poetry about some scenery, and wasn’t that embarrassing for a being from hell, he hadn’t noticed the angel slide comfortably into the seat next to him. It was a little surprising, to say the least. Throughout the millennia, sitting together involved a fair amount of space between them. Crowley used to joke about leaving room for the holy ghost, but close quarters had simply never been worth the risk to them. Being caught talking was one thing, being caught cuddled together like illicit lovers was something else entirely. So park benches found the demon sprawled on one side and Aziraphale propped stiffly on the other. Any time they met at alternative Rendezvous point number 2; the number nineteen bus, Crowley would sit in the always conveniently absent seats directly behind his friend. Inconspicuous may not be their middle name, but at least they made something of an effort.

Pressed side by side with their shoulders brushing was different.

Though if either of them were being perfectly honest; everything was different now. Reality as they knew it was rewritten; or at least… He thought. Even Crowley couldn't be entirely certain what had happened on that airfield today with little Adam Young.

The bus pulls away and Crowley resolves to leave that train of thought behind. It’s going to take more than their journey’s length home to properly wrap their heads around it. Instead, he takes a large mouthful from their open bottle and wordlessly offers it to his companion.

“I don’t think we should really drink here.” The angel uttered in hushed tones, ever wary of the opinions of onlookers. Despite his protests, though, he does take the bottle into his own hand.

There was barely any passengers at this hour, Crowley knew, having cast a glance around the vehicle as soon as he’d boarded. A young woman near the front, headphones firmly in place and eyes drooping shut. A couple of seats behind them, there sat two young men both absorbed with their phones, uncaring of the world around them. Finally, at the back, a rather run down looking businessman skimming a broadsheet newspaper. Unlikely any of them would give the two eccentric gentlemen at the front a second glance. “I don’t think anyone cares, angel.”

Regardless, Aziraphale insisted, “I do.”

He was clinging to the bottle like an infant might cling to a safety blanket, but he was making no move to actually drink from it. The demon sighed deeply. “Suit yourself.”

Neither of them spoke for some time following that. Many people might assume that being friends for roughly six thousand years would leave very little to talk about, these people would be wrong. Crowley had long since mastered reading Aziraphale like one of his books, and he wouldn’t be dim enough to imagine the angel couldn’t do the same. They understood each other almost frighteningly well. Thus, the silence itself was practically a conversation.

The press of Aziraphale’s shoulder against his own was an act of showing comfort as much as it was the other seeking it for himself. Actual physical contact between them, at least in Crowley's opinion, was always a signifier of something consequential. Whether that be a handshake declaring an arrangement, or the brush of their fingers when they exchanged items (an incident involving Nazi spies and a church sprang to mind). This felt like it was much the same.

Rather than just innocently brushing, Aziraphale was gradually letting his weight come to rest against the demons side; and though he was loathed to admit it, Crowley was doing the same. Very soon they’d be propping each other up in a display of mutual reassurance. It enveloped him in something rather soothing.

Flashes of love, he remembered Aziraphale describing once on the drive back from Tadfield.

At the time Crowley had brushed him off, declared the notion ridiculous. That was more because of his irritation at having found no leads than it was the lack of understanding. He was not a being of love, but he certainly knew what it felt like. That energy on his radar was what it felt like. Like sinking into a hot bath. The waves of it washing over him in a cascade of warmth, circling his bones and settling in the pit of his stomach. Filling him up until he felt like he was glowing with it. That love he understood; he’d been feeling it since Eden, and it was only identifiable to him as Aziraphale.

“Did you mean what you said earlier?”

It took an embarrassingly long moment for Crowley to bring himself out of his thought process and register the angel's words. Luckily for him, staring off into the distance in broody silence was something of a signature behaviour, and as such raised no query from the other when it took several seconds of just staring at him to form a response.

“That depends entirely on what you’re referring to. I said a lot of things.” Was what he settled on.

Amused but unwilling to admit as such, Aziraphale narrowed his eyes just briefly; a fleeting smile gracing his features before it was gone again. “You said I could stay with you tonight.”

Crowley continued to stare, dumbfounded. “Of course I meant it, why wouldn’t I mean it?”

The angel had no particular response to that; a minute shake of his head that Crowley would have missed had he blinked, and choosing to forgo his earlier shame by bringing the bottle they’d been sharing to his mouth. There was a hefty swallow of alcohol.

Worst of all his angel’s usual warmth is buzzing beside him; it almost makes the demon uncomfortable to sit next to. The only reasonable comparison is a live wire. It’s something volatile and dangerous like it wasn’t moments ago, as if the angel was trying to forcibly keep something under control and failing.

Crowley hadn’t the faintest clue how to interpret this.

“Angel, I meant it,” Seemed a good place to start as any. It worked in some small way; Aziraphale turned his head enough to meet his gaze, those impossibly wide eyes making an appearance as he hung on Crowley’s every word. Damn those eyes. “I’m not going to leave you out on your ear, am I?”

Crowley wasn’t going to leave him at all. That much should be painfully evident if the two failed attempts at abandoning earth were anything to go by. Going anywhere without the angel just wasn’t an option for him anymore. Probably hasn’t been for about a thousand years.

Yet Aziraphale still looked so lost. He’d always had such an expressive face; he could tell more stories than his bookshop could hold with the things that face could do. Currently, his eyes were glistening, brow softly furrowed, cheeks dusted pink, lips parted on words that aren't likely to be spoken. Crowley knows that face will be the end of him one day.

“I’ve got a few bottles of 2009 Essence Bordeaux that I’ve been saving for a special occasion,” He offers, gently. “Averting the end of the world seems appropriate, don’t you think.”

The atmosphere around them begins to feel less dangerously electric and more like a mildly concerning fizzle.

“You’ve never offered that before.” The angel says suspiciously.

“I’ve been ageing it.” One shoulder lifts a little in a half shrug. “I’m sure a decade will suffice.”

“You said that about the Roussanne,” The demon groaned and turned his gaze away at the stark reminder of that process gone wrong. “and a decade was in fact far too long.”

“You still drank it.”

“It would have been a shame to waste it, really.” The sigh Aziraphale gives is fonder than he likely intended it to be.

They share a smirk and it feels like something all their own, secretive and special. On Crowley’s mental radar, everything settles back to normal with a wash of warm water over his very being. Whatever was troubling his angel seemed to be on the back burner for now.

“Thank you, Crowley.”

It’s almost completely inaudible. The demon turns his head to catch it and instead finds himself eye to eye with his best friend. The way he’s staring at him with such wonder makes Crowley glad his heart is entirely decoration; otherwise, it would be thumping in his chest like a bass drum. The gratitude clearly wasn’t just about tonight, he could understand that much, it was all-encompassing gratitude.

Not just thank you for letting me stay the night, but rather, thank you for staying by my side all this time.

He wanted to reply that there wasn’t anywhere in any universe he’d rather be, but admitting such things out loud weren’t becoming of a demon. Nor were they becoming of Crowley, honestly, who still flinched when he was called nice. So the only appropriate response seemed to be to demonstrate this point non-verbally. Specifically by slouching in his seat and leaning his weight against his friends side a little more, a slow grin adorning his features.

Aziraphale huffed a delicate laugh and rolled his eyes at the behaviour, likely not expecting a response any other way. The angel didn’t stop there, however, those perfectly manicured fingers reaching across to brush against the back of the hand lain in Crowley’s lap. The confident nature of the action was lost about halfway through, Aziraphale looking as if his limbs had acted of their own accord rather than his instruction and he was unsure where to go from here. Between them, the temperature starts to feel a little humid.

Crowley, not one for half measures, decided to aid his friend in his time of need. He flipped his hand over and entwined their fingers without a second thought.

There was something to be said about his role in this relationship, if it had an official title it would likely be something along the lines of ‘Here to Finish What Aziraphale Starts’. His job description was to pull the other out of near-death situations at the last second, give him a gentle push into beneficial decisions; and as of this moment assist him in instigating the affection he clearly wanted but wasn’t quite ready to ask for. Not that he had ever been anything but glad to hold this particular role. Crowley was, and always had been, unashamedly open about everything. At least in his opinion, he had been.

Aziraphale, on the other hand, had spent six thousand years denouncing their friendship in one breath and then asking him for lunch the next. It only made sense to the demon that the other was a bit skittish about hand holding.

Neither of them said anything about it- Obviously. But it was the most relaxed either of them been since arriving in Tadfield. The air around them settled back into something familiar.

For right now at least, Crowley was content to believe that this could be their eternity.