#i always thought aziraphale would like color! lots of pinks and blues

[bittersweet-mojo]

Remember when people had book interpretations? yeah.

#good omens #good omens novel #good omens bbc #ineffable husbands #azicrow #azcrow #aziracrow #guys we have too many ship names #crowley #anthony j crowley #aziraphale #zira bad mustache rights #tried my best to remember how i thought of them when i first read the novel #which to be fair. i was like 15 so awhile ago. #i always thought aziraphale would like color! lots of pinks and blues #ugly ass patterns #kitschy stuff yknow #and i think crowley likes shiny things let him wear jewelry thank you #this shit took almost 10 hours #its rediculous #also just so you know #the pose came to me in a fit of inspiration at 1 in the morning #i had to get my naked ass out of bed to feverishly sketch the thumbnail #also this is on my shop you can buy it i think its free shipping rn plz

[aethelflaedladyofmercia]

De Amore

My fic for @aceomenszine is finally available on AO3!

Aziraphale has come to Paris to find the answer to an important question: What's it like to be in love? Crowley's not sure why he wants to know, but he's willing to discuss it to make his angel happy. Full text below!

--

“What’s it like to be in love?”

Crowley stumbled to a stop on the Paris street, glaring at the angel beside him. Aziraphale stared straight ahead, walking with his usual expression: calm, poised, slightly arrogant. As if he were talking about the weather.

“Dunno. S’a human thing, isn’t it?” He scowled at a few gawking peasants, hurrying to catch up. “Romance. Lust. Sex. Nothing to do with us.”

“You could say the same of hunger, or exhaustion, or boredom.”

“Yeah, and I’d be right.” Crowley held out an arm to stop Aziraphale from walking directly into a produce cart. “Neither of us gets exhausted. You’re never tired, and I just like a good nap sometimes.”

“Really?” A flicker of that mocking bastard smirk. “How many nights did you sleep this past week?”

“Nrrg. Five or six, but that’s not the point.” They started walking again, Crowley tossing an apple he’d snuck from the cart. “I could stop if I wanted to — I’d miss it, but s’not the same as being tired. Same with you and eating.”

“But if I desire a food, so strongly I can already taste it, surely that’s…if not exactly hunger, a close approximation?”

“Don’t think so.” Crowley offered the apple, but Aziraphale shook his head. “Spend a couple days in the city, you’ll see what hunger looks like. S’not about pleasure or wanting a particular food. It’s need, desperation. And we just don’t experience that.” He tossed the apple towards a group of children, and a girl in a ragged dress caught it. “Boredom I’ll grant you. I’ve definitely been bored.”

“So, we might enjoy things as humans do, but never desire them the same way,” Aziraphale mused, smoothing his hands down the front of his stolen jacket. “But is love the longing for a connection with another, or the pleasure of that connection?”

“Doesn’t really make a difference to us, does it?”

He waited for Aziraphale to respond, but the angel simply continued walking, hands folded behind his back, eyes more distant than usual.

“So?” Crowley prodded after nearly a block in silence. “What brought this on?” Aziraphale shrugged. “Let me guess. Reading novels again? Sappy poetry? Getting…ideas?” He stepped ahead of Aziraphale and walked backwards, to ensure the angel saw his suggestive eyebrow wiggle. No response. Crowley shrugged, falling back into step. “Look, f’you want to try falling in love with a human, s’your business. Let me know how it goes. Just do it back in London, I don’t need that…drama getting back to my bosses.”

“That’s not it,” Aziraphale snapped, wringing his hands. “It’s not — it doesn’t even work that way, Crowley. Humans don’t just decide to fall in love!”

“They don’t cross an ocean and charge through a revolution for a snack, either.”

“Oh, never mind. Clearly you’re the expert here.” Aziraphale froze, glaring at a shop just ahead, and threw his hands up in disgust. “And now they’ve closed my favorite creperie! Why do I even bother? Might as well return to England and feast upon whatever lumpy brown bread the first tavern I pass serves.”

“Stop being dramatic,” Crowley hissed, turning down a side street and gesturing for Aziraphale to follow. “If you get locked up again, I’m not rescuing you a second time.” The angel’s lips twisted sourly. “Look, gourmet crepes aren’t really in demand right now, but I know a place. Might still be open.”

“I suppose that will have to do.”

Crowley rolled his eyes and glared at the sky, thin grey clouds veiling the sun. He should probably just let Aziraphale stew in his own sullen displeasure. Might even give him an advantage — a distracted angel was easier to outsmart.

But Crowley hadn’t been in the business of thwarting Aziraphale for over a thousand years. Why oppose each other, when they could work…not together, but in tandem? Ensuring all their duties were fulfilled, their paperwork properly filed.

It was better this way. Less fuss all around, less inconvenience. Pleasanter conversation. More time for trips to the theater or quiet meals, either of which was a far better way to spend an evening than any sort of elaborate espionage.

He’d been looking forward to griping about his job over a mug of cider while Aziraphale worked his way through a plate of crepes, smiling and wiggling in his seat. Watching Aziraphale get excited over something was, in Crowley’s opinion, one of the best ways to pass the time.

Only the conversation had left Aziraphale annoyed, pouting and…Crowley studied him carefully, dark glasses imperfectly hiding his eyes. More than anything, Aziraphale looked hurt. A sight that always made Crowley’s stomach twist painfully.

He sighed, tossing back his head. “‘Love is an inborn suffering, proceeding from the sight and immoderate thought upon the beauty of another, for which cause above all other things one wishes to embrace the other and, by common assent, in this embrace to fulfil the commandments of love.’”[1]

“I beg your pardon?”

“Look, I don’t know. You asked me—!” Crowley walked faster, face growing hot. “It’s from some old treatise, right? Love, he says, is seeing someone beautiful and wanting sex. Then, when you have your fill…” he waved his hand vaguely.

“I see.” Aziraphale adjusted his sleeves. “I suppose that…makes sense.” But he still looked grim.

Up ahead, not quite along their path, stood one of Paris’s parks, gates now open to the public. Apart from some rubbish cluttering the entrance, it seemed well-maintained. Crowley tipped his head, inviting.

Aziraphale’s eyes lit up and he nodded, the first hint of a smile on his face. It always made Crowley feel light, that smile, however briefly it appeared.

They wandered in silence up the path, lined by trees here, flowerbeds there. Leaves had turned yellow and the grass was edged with brown, but the roses were still in bloom. Crowley paused to pluck a particularly well-formed bud.

As they crossed a bridge over a small watercourse, Aziraphale suddenly said, “Do you think it’s true, though? That — that treatise? Because it rather sounds like he didn’t see any difference between lust and love.”

“Mmh.” Crowley paused, gazing downstream, where a group of ducks swam contentedly. “As a demon? Yeah. Fits the party line. Humans don’t think of anything but their own pleasure, always wanting what they don’t have. Jealous, possessive, until something better comes along. Then it starts all over. If love and lust aren’t the same, well, they’re pretty close, right?”

“I see.” Aziraphale stepped beside him, holding out his red cap, now filled with grains of barley and cracked corn. They each took a handful and tossed it down. The ducks swam over eagerly, bobbing to catch the seeds before they drifted away.

“But as a being who’s been in the world nearly six thousand years?” Crowley threw another handful, then leaned against the railing, crossing his arms. “Not so sure. Humans do too much that can’t be explained by simple pleasure. Besides, I’ve seen what they do when overwhelmed by lust, and what they do when overwhelmed by love and…dunno. S’not the same.”

More handfuls of grains as a second group of ducks approached.

“What d’you think, Angel?” Crowley prodded. “Must be something in all those books you read.”

“Oh, quite a lot,” Aziraphale assured him. “Much of it contradictory. Many poets will only talk about their beloved’s face, or eyes, but if it were simply a matter of beauty, surely everyone would fall in love with the same beauties.”

“Sometimes they do.” Crowley rolled some seeds between his palms. “S’where the jealousy comes in. But yeah. Gotta be more to it than that.”

“I hope you’re not planning to make those poor ducks sink.”

“What? Nk — no. Course not.” He threw the grains down and the ducks quickly swarmed, turning bright shades of pink and blue and violet as they ate.

“Crowley.”

“Oh, it’s not hurting anyone.” He glanced sideways to see Aziraphale pressing his lips together, struggling not to smile. Grinning, Crowley tossed down more enchanted grains. “Go on then.”

“Hmm? Ah, yes. Well, the overall impression is that love is…transformative. Changes the way one thinks and feels at all times. They speak of, oh, the sun shining brighter, foods tasting sweeter, winter blossoming into summer. Metaphors. Others speak of — of attraction, quickened pulse, sudden heat and so on, but that’s a passing thing, part of a — a particular moment of closeness. Surely, no human could maintain such a state for an hour, never mind weeks or years!” Aziraphale offered Crowley the last handful of grain in his cap. “And once that moment passes…”

“Back to the metaphors.” The ducks below were now spotted, striped, every color of the rainbow. One bore pure white wings, beside another with midnight black. Aziraphale chuckled, very softly, which made Crowley feel immensely satisfied. Dusting off his hands, he circled the angel and continued walking.

“Yes,” Aziraphale hurried to catch up, cap twisting in his hands. “I get the sense that the feeling is so obvious, so…universal, they never think to describe it.”

“How inconsiderate.” Crowley thought it over. “So, flash of heat, racing heart, sun gets brighter, then ten pages about the color of their eyes? That about it?”

“I suppose so.” Aziraphale rubbed a finger across his lip. “Not always beauty, though. Some appear drawn by their partner’s clever mind, or acts of kindness. Some praise stories of bravery or great deeds, others fixate on meaningless symbols of wealth. But still, those only tell why one falls in love, not what it feels like.”

“Sounds like a sort of obsession.” Crowley furrowed his brow. “That treatise had a list of…sort of rules of love. Mostly about jealousy, really, don’t think the author thought much of women, but… ‘Every action of a lover ends in the thought of his beloved.’”

“I see…so that, together or apart, one cannot help but think always of the other. That certainly aligns with the evidence.” He started to replace his cap, then paused, looking inside. “Anything else of use?”

“‘Love can deny nothing to love.’” Beside him, Aziraphale turned pink and a brilliant smile broke across his face, like the sun after a storm. He pulled from the cap the bright red rosebud Crowley had hidden within.

Crowley watched as Aziraphale slid the flower into his buttonhole, drinking in the way the delighted shiver ran across his shoulders. Then the angel looked up, hitting Crowley with the full force of his smile.

Stunning. Blinding. It stole Crowley’s breath away, wiped every thought from his mind.

One day, that smile would destroy him, and he wouldn’t mind at all.

“So, this creperie — are we close?”

“Ngh. Smh. Unh. Nearly. Another block or two.” The park’s gate stood just ahead, half shut, the bustling street beyond. Crowley quickly stepped ahead, pulling it open for Aziraphale. “You, ah, find the answer you needed?”

“I…think so, yes.” He rested his fingers on the gate — so close to Crowley’s he could feel their warmth — then quickly pulled away, folding his hands behind his back. “I’ve been trying to work out…well…whether I’m in love with you, Crowley.”

“Oh.” What was he supposed to say to that? “Oh.”

“Indeed.” Aziraphale’s eyes darted nervously and he began to pace. “I-I want you to know, I don’t desire you. I’ve never felt that sort of attraction. And I’m not jealous by any means. I’m not even certain who I’m meant to be jealous of. But…” He turned back, tugging his jacket. “I think of you. Constantly. Every action, every experience reminds me of you. I go to a concert, and I can’t concentrate on the music, only whether you would enjoy it. I hear a joke and I imagine how you would laugh, or roll your eyes, and I can’t know a moment’s peace until I’ve shared it with you. And last month…when I was reprimanded…for days afterward I could think of nothing but how I wished you were there. When I finally found the strength to venture out, it was only from my determination to come here.”

“For…crepes?” Crowley offered stupidly.

“No, you silly creature, for you.” He stepped forward, reaching up as if to straighten Crowley’s lapels, but once again his hands dropped. “I hear your voice and no matter how dark my situation — no matter how absurd you look in the current fashion — I just…feel happy again.”

Aziraphale took a deep breath and lifted his eyes — hopeful, fearful, vulnerable — to meet Crowley’s.

“Oh.” Something more was probably needed. “Yeah.”

That was, apparently, the wrong thing to say.

“Well.” Aziraphale’s eyes dropped and he turned, trying to hide his expression. “Yes. I thought you should know.” He ducked his head and hurried through the gate. “Where — where is this creperie? We should try to arrive—”

“Me too.”

Crowley hadn’t meant to say anything. His mind was still ten minutes behind, struggling to catch up, but the pain on Aziraphale’s face hurt him like a blow to the chest.

The two words stopped Aziraphale in his tracks.

“I…I think about you, too.” Crowley stepped halfway through the gate, gripping the bar so tight it began to bend. “When I wake up, or fall asleep and…and away from you, here, I just…I miss you…but you — you idiot, with your crepes and your — your execution and…and then you smile and I just…” Blast! How could Aziraphale be so eloquent? Crowley swallowed and started over. “Look, m’trying to say…don’t think I can deny you anything. And. If that’s love…yeah. Me too.”

All this time, Aziraphale stood perfectly still, his back to Crowley. But now he turned, blue eyes furiously blinking. “That’s…ah…thank you. I know y-you hate being thanked but…” Aziraphale took one step closer, then another, until only inches separated them. “Thank you.”

“Nh.” He could so easily reach across that last bit of distance. Crowley didn’t know what that would accomplish, what he’d even do, but he wanted it more than he’d ever wanted anything. “Now what?”

“I don’t know.” Aziraphale’s gaze fell. “It…doesn’t change anything, does it? You’re still a demon, and I’m—”

“I don’t care,” Crowley hissed, shocked at the fervor in his own voice. “We don’t need to play by their rules. We could — run off, or—”

“We can’t. Crowley, both our sides would — they’d find us, they’d destroy you.”

“I’m willing to risk it.” He reached for Aziraphale’s hand.

“I’m not.” The angel jerked back, putting more distance between them, eyes wide. “Crowley that’s — that’s not a chance I’m willing to take. I’m sorry, but no.”

“Fine,” Crowley growled, pulling away. “What do you want?”

“I want…” Aziraphale shut his eyes, taking a shuddering breath. “I want a shop in London, where I can surround myself with books and foods and everything I enjoy. I want my superiors to trust me, let me bring good into the world my own way, without sending me all over Creation at a moment’s notice and — and punishing me for a few miracles to make my life easier. I want us to go to plays and gardens and balls together, not for clandestine meetings but because we enjoy them. To be openly in each other’s company, without fear of reprisal. And…I’d like you to visit my shop and bring me flowers or sweets. I’d serve my very best wine and…we’d talk all night about…everything and nothing. And laugh together.” His eyes fluttered open and for the first time Aziraphale looked sure of himself. “I want what we already have. Only I want more of it.”

This time he didn’t move as Crowley reached out. Long fingers carefully adjusted the rosebud, standing it straighter in its buttonhole. “Yeah. I…I’d like that, too.”

“And you don’t want anything…physical?”

Crowley snorted. “M’not a human.” But he wondered if Aziraphale’s cheek was as soft as the rosebud’s petals. “I’d like to touch you. Your hand, your face. Your wings. Hear your voice as I fall asleep. Feel your fingers in my hair. Is that…too much?”

“No.” Aziraphale smiled gently. “That sounds perfect.”

“Maybe…” Crowley fidgeted with his glasses, shuffled his feet, but refused to step away. “If we’re careful…”

“The Arrangement is already dangerous enough. You must understand…”

Crowley closed his eyes. “I do. Nothing changes.” Except there were words now, to the feeling he had when he thought of his angel. And that changed everything. When he looked again, Aziraphale nodded, as if he felt the same.

“Right then.” Crowley circled around Aziraphale, sauntering back to the main road. “Let’s see if these crepes are worth risking the guillotine.”

“My dear fellow,” Aziraphale easily kept pace. “One bite of true Breton crepes will silence your doubts forever.”

“Breton, huh?”

“Oh, yes, far superior to any others.”

“If that’s so,” Crowley smirked, remembering Aziraphale in his cell, “s’a wonder you came to Paris. Particularly in such a…controversial outfit.”

“The city has…certain other attractions.”

Something warm and heavy wrapped across Crowley’s shoulders, invisible to his eyes, though he could feel the individual feathers tickle his neck. Aziraphale strolled beside him, hands clasped behind his back, eyes forward, as if nothing were amiss.

Carefully, trying to look natural, Crowley scratched his shoulder, brushing his knuckles down a long flight feather, softer than any mortal bird’s.

Aziraphale smiled ever so slightly and flexed his wing, holding Crowley a little more tightly. An embrace that no one could see, no one could know about, except them.

“Dunno,” Crowley said. “Still seems pretty risky.”

“Yes. But I’m an incorrigible old fool. Sometimes I can’t help myself.”

“Suppose I can understand,” Crowley said as he extended his own wing, wrapping it around Aziraphale’s waist. The angel’s composure broke as he wiggled, burying himself in invisible feathers. Crowley smiled, heat running through him, a warm spring day after a long cold winter. “After all, we’re not so different, you and I.”

[1] De Amore, Andreas Capellanus, c. 1190

So happy to finally share this!

#good omens #good omens fanfiction #ace omens #ineffable husbands #asexual ineffable husbands #ace omens zine #aziraphale #crowley #love confessions #feeding the ducks #aziraphale loves crowley #crowley loves his angel #what even is love #ace fanfiction #qpp #banter #my writing #ao3 link

[holycatsandrabbits]

“I think I’m falling in love with my best friend.”

Lloyd hadn’t expected that it would be easy to talk about this, but Mr. Fell had a very peaceful, somewhat knowing look on his face, and the story just flowed out. “We’ve been friends a long time, but I think it’s starting to be more for me. And I want to ask him to prom, so I thought I’d write him a note, because, you know, we’re in high school, we write notes like third-graders.” He gestured to his computer, which showed nothing but a blank page.

They were alone in the bookshop now, as it was nearly closing time and already dark outside. But Mr. Fell didn’t seem anxious to chase Lloyd away. Instead he settled into a chair and handed Lloyd a cup of hot cocoa that (as usual) seemed to have materialized from nowhere.

“You know,” said Mr. Fell, “writing a letter to one’s beloved is a time-honored act of love. And Crowley, if you are making fun of me right now I will never write you another letter.”

Behind Mr. Fell, Mr. Crowley stilled whatever sarcastic gesture he’d been making and cleared his throat. “Please continue, Lloyd.”

“But I can’t,” Lloyd said softly. “Jason is handsome and funny and sweet and smart and I—I am a mess. I don’t even know how to talk to him about this, so I thought the note—but I can’t write. Sometimes I think I can’t do anything.” He clutched his empty hands together. “I feel like I’d be so bad for him. He’s such a wonderful person. And he’s been weird the last couple of days, and I don’t know if he even wants to be my friend anymore. What if it’s because he thinks I’ve been acting weird and he knows I like him but he doesn’t want me to? I could ruin our whole friendship. Geez, listen to me, I’m sorry.” He rubbed at his cheek in case the tear in his eye fell onto it.

“Angel,” Mr. Crowley said quietly, “it might be time for one of your parlor tricks.”

Mr. Fell made a face at his husband. “Will you stop calling ethereal miracles parlor tricks?”

Mr. Crowley made a show of considering it. “Ah...no, that’s not likely.”

“Why do I even keep you around?” Mr. Fell asked.

“I believe you’ve said that I’m Temptation Incarnate.”

“Yes, well, that’s a job description, not a personal quality.”

Mr. Crowley’s eyebrows rose above his sunglasses, and there was the ghost of a smile on his mouth. “Really?”

Mr. Fell rolled his eyes, but he also blushed. To Lloyd he said, “I feel I should warn you that the handsome ones are trouble.”

Lloyd laughed a little, and Mr. Fell gave him a gentle smile. “My dear, may I show you what my favorite thing about you is?”

“Uh—sure?”

Mr. Fell pointed to Lloyd’s reflection in the darkened shop windows. The image blurred and then changed, and instead of Lloyd sitting there, there seemed to be a person made of colored lights that sparkled like jewels.

“You might see yourself as a mess,” Mr. Fell said, “but this is how I see you. All the beautiful parts of you that make up your soul. The blue gem in your left shoulder, that’s the part of you that gave your coat and scarf to that homeless man last winter. The pink just under your heart is the part of you that spent an entire Saturday helping your cousin find his lost cat, right before that awful storm we had.”

Mr. Crowley spoke up. “What’s the big gold part?”

Mr. Fell smiled. “Oh, that is one of my favorites. That is the part of you, Lloyd, that opens your bedroom window every day to yell to your six-year-old neighbor that his violin playing sounds wonderful. Even though, of course, it doesn’t. You have no idea, my dear, what a difference a simple act of kindness like that can make. He’s going to be a musician someday, make music for the whole world, and that gold part you see there is your contribution to it, because that music won’t come only from his talent but also from your encouragement when he needed it.” Mr. Fell laid a gentle hand on Lloyd’s shoulder. “You are stunning, my dear. And this is what people truly care about and want in a partner. How do you think I ended up with him?” Mr. Fell tilted his head toward his husband. “His soul rather looks like yours.”

Mr. Crowley made some sort of exasperated growling noise and another sarcastic gesture, but Mr. Fell just smiled. “You are worth loving, Lloyd. If Jason is your friend, then he already knows this about you. People who are friends first often make the best romantic partners for that reason.”

Mr. Crowley was still frowning at his husband. “And sometimes it’s the case that both friends want it to be more and for whatever stupid reason don’t tell each other.”

“It is a risk,” Mr. Fell agreed. “But if you feel this strongly about him, it might be a risk worth taking.”

Lloyd watched the window reflection turn back to reality—well, whatever passed for reality in the bookshop, anyway. “Can you—” His voice wavered a little. “Can you help me write the note?”

“Of course!” Mr. Fell exclaimed.

“Oh, no,” Mr. Crowley objected, “Aziraphale, you’re just going to put in a lot of flowery language. These are modern kids—”

“Hush, I am not,” Mr. Fell said. “Lloyd, just say this: Jason, I have been by your side for so long that I know there is nowhere I would rather be. We have walked together past my fears, and now, I would like to ask you to follow me somewhere new, somewhere we might be even closer.”

Mr. Crowley spoke up, very softly. “You memorized that?”

Mr. Fell raised his eyebrows in surprise. “People do like to remember their proposals, my dear.”

At school the next day, Lloyd found his hand was shaking as he held out the piece of paper to Jason. “I wrote you a letter.” He’d even printed the damn thing, somehow feeling like Mr. Fell would have wanted him to.

Jason didn’t take it. He was looking everywhere but Lloyd’s face. “That’s great,” he said absently. “Sorry I've been weird the last couple of days. I've been trying to figure out how to...sod it. Look. Lloyd, you are the best thing that ever—you’re so amazing. And I don’t want to make things weird, but—do you want to go to prom with me?”

********

Bonus: the whole proposal (which Crowley also still has memorized, of course, it took him long enough to write the damn thing):

Aziraphale, I have been by your side for so long that I know there is nowhere I would rather be, because when the two of us are together, what is too dark becomes light, and what is too bright becomes shaded. We have walked together past my fears, and now, I would like to ask you to follow me somewhere new, somewhere we might be even closer. For you I would ignore all the voices in my head that tell me that I'm not good enough and it's not right to ask someone like you to be with me. For you I would struggle away from my past and stake my whole heart on hope. I would jump and trust you to catch me. For you I would believe again. Will you marry me, Principality Aziraphale, Guard of the Eastern Gate?

And the reply (which Aziraphale had also written beforehand, because he figured a proposal was coming, but which he sternly insists that he made up on the spot):

Oh, my darling, you know my answer already. But let me make sure that you know this: Crowley, you are the reason I never gave up on love even when it was so often denied me by the people who said they loved me. You, who couldn't say it, but gave it so freely, the way true love is always given, without knowing if it would or could be returned. My dear Serpent, for you I would Fall. But I don't have to, because loving you is not wrong. It is the best thing I have ever done.

*********

Mr. Fell’s Bookshop ficlet master post (ficlets 1-5)

(meet Lloyd for the first time in ficlet #4)

Find me on Ao3: HolyCatsAndRabbits (Dannye Chase)

#Dannye writes #Good Omens #outsider POV #Mr. Fell's bookshop ficlets #flustered Crowley #marriage proposals #love letters

[aziraphalesrarebooks]

First kisses in the snow, what could be more romantic? Adam decides it’s finally time to let Warlock know how much he means to him. 

Read here, or on AO3.

Winter had come to London in the blink of an eye. The leaves had only just turned and fallen when the first snow of the season arrived mid-November, chilling the city with a blanket of white.

The city had already begun decorating for the holidays and the world seemed a little better because of it. While not particularly religious in the traditional sense; Adam adored the tradition of it all. As a child, he’d celebrated both Christmas and Hanukkah with his parents.  

Adam stepped out into the dark evening, the sun had set already leaving just the light of the streetlamps to light his way across campus. He had just finished his last lecture and was heading over to meet Warlock. He pulled his coat tighter around him, he hadn’t expected it to start snowing again but welcomed it all the same. There was something to be said about the quietness of freshly fallen snow, the way the flakes seemed to quiet the world and make it feel new.

The pair were due in Soho shortly and Adam would prefer to drive over together. He glanced around the empty parking lot outside his building and snapped his fingers. Across town, a blue Civic was surprised to find itself parked in its normal spot without ever having to make the effort to get there.

Adam smiled warmly, he’d been looking forward to this all week when the angel had suggested it. Since moving to London he’d spent quite a bit of time with his uncle Crowley and his partner, Aziraphale. While Adam’s relationship with them had always been a bit odd, he appreciated it all the same. Aziraphale, he’d been surprised to learn, shared a number of similarities to himself and Adam appreciated the friend he’d found in the angel.

Aziraphale had heard about a new restaurant that was gaining rave reviews from critics. It was nearly impossible to get a table. Their weekly dinner had been postponed to Friday, even with a miracle it had taken a few days for their reservation to be ready.  Their instructions had been strict, “You are to meet us at the shop, not later than 7. Dress sharply.”

Adam couldn’t help but notice how lovely the campus looked, romantic almost.  When he arrived at the building where Warlock’s office was located, he saw the other man walking out the door. Adam was slowly coming to terms with the fact he’d very much fallen for his friend. It was a feeling unlike anything he’d ever experienced, it burned through him like hellfire, his thoughts were consumed by how much he loved his friend. Warlock was such an unexpected surprise and even now, as he watched the man from afar, he felt a churning ache form under his ribs.

Adam watched in awe as Warlock grinned up at the sky, his heart flipped at the dark-haired boy stuck his pink tongue out to catch the white flakes falling rapidly around him.

Adam swallowed.

Large flakes were gathering in his jet-black hair and on his dark eyelashes. Adam pursed his lips when he realized he wasn’t even wearing a hat or scarf. Warlock’s lips were red with the cold and his cheeks already turning a handsome rose. He was wearing a dark suit tonight, his long wool coat wrapped loosely around him and it was at that moment Adam knew that he’d regret it for the rest of his days if he didn’t kiss him.

He yearned for it in a way he’d never wanted anything else.

He’d never been good at love or sex, but all he wanted at that moment was to feel Warlock Dowling’s warm lips against his own, to sleep snugly against him, to hold him and be held by him.

Falling in love with Warlock Dowling was so easy but it came as unexpectedly as the first snow tonight. His decision was made.       With bravery he didn’t feel, Adam jogged towards the other man, sliding to a halt in front of him. Adam grinned his boyish smile, “Hullo Warlock.”

Warlock grinned back at him, “Hello Adam. Can you believe it’s snowing already?”

Adam stayed silent, and took a step forward, his eyes searching Warlock’s for an indication his advances weren’t welcome.

Adam licked his lips, suddenly dry. His nerves were playing up, he opened his mouth to say something, anything. But he couldn’t, how could he tell one of his closest friends he was so in love with him it hurt? That the thought of losing him terrified him?

He swallowed. Time slowed around them, Adam felt as if they were in their own little world. Uncaring of anything and anyone but the disaster human in front of him.

Adam dropped his bag, placing his right hand over the other man’s heart, slightly bunching the fabric that lay between them. He could almost feel the blood pumping, thrumming under his fingertips. He braved another glance into Warlock’s blue eyes; satisfied he wasn’t going to run away, he softly curled his left hand around the nape of his neck. Adam took a steadying breath, the nerves leaving him as he made his choice.

No turning back, he couldn’t.

Never again.

Adam leaned forward, pressing his mouth to Warlock’s. His lips were soft, plump and he could taste the tea still lingering on them as they kissed. Finally reacting, Warlock dropped his bag into the snow as he reached for Adam. Warlock’s long, slim fingers came up to hold the lapels of Adam’s coat, pulling him deeper into the kiss.

Their warm breath tickling the other’s face as their noses bumped and lips caressed. Adam smiled into the kiss, his world spinning happily as the peaceful snow fell around them.

When the kiss broke, Adam rested his head against Warlock’s, his cheeks turning a dark red as he realized what he’d just done. He kept his eyes closed before pulling away shyly.

“Hullo, Warlock.”

He smiled wide, then pulled him towards him, kissing him again, softly, then giggled. A sound so pure it made Adam’s fall just a bit more in love with him. “Hello, Adam. Wonderful weather we’re having,” He grinned.

Warlock reached for his hand, sliding their palms together while placing his other arm around the other man. Adam followed suit, placing his arm over Warlock’s broad shoulders. It took him a moment to realize what Warlock was doing as he began to gently pull him into a waltz of their very own.

Adam was a little shorter than Warlock and allowed himself to be pulled tight against his chest, Warlock’s head resting on his as they swayed in the cold night. It was everything he’d ever hoped for, it felt right and warm and his heart was pounding, and his skin was aflame with his affection.

“I think I might love you Warlock, and it’s new and scary. I… that is, I don’t want to lose your friendship.” Adam finally whispered.

“I’ve been gone for you the moment I walked out that door and saw you standing there.” He said honestly.

Adam groaned, “Crowley is going to be obnoxious about this, isn’t he?”

Warlock laughed, “He’ll likely tease a bit but I don’t think he’d be unkind.”

“You’re right, it’s just...”

“What, Adam?”

“He sussed it out I had feelings for you a while ago, Aziraphale said he’d made a bet with Dad about it.”

Warlock opened his mouth, then blinked. “As in…” he glanced down.

Adam grinned sheepishly, “Yeah, he’s living top side now though. Aziraphale said they are working on their relationship. According to him, Gabriel and Michael have tagged along a few times.”

“The angels?”

“Yes,” he laughed.

“Sometimes I forget.”

“I wonder who will win?”

“Hah, no clue.” He reached up to kiss him again, then suddenly pulled away. “Shit! We’re going to be late.”

Warlock groaned, “Aziraphale is going to kill us.”

Adam’s eyes lit up, “You trust me right?”

“Of course, why?”

“Kiss me.”

Warlock rolled his eyes then bent down, their lips meeting. When he pulled away, they were standing in the alley beside the bookshop and he felt a bit nauseous. “Oh,” he said.

Adam tugged his hand and pulled him into the shop, their clothes drying as they did.

“Boys! You’re late!” said Aziraphale, dressed in a surprisingly modern cream-colored suit.

Crowley was silent, the narrowed his uncovered eyes before breaking into a wide grin. “I knew it!” he said as he took out his phone, quickly sending a text to the other side of the world.

Adam felt his cheeks heat, sheepishly glancing at Warlock who seemed to share his sentiments. 

Aziraphale looked between the three men, then happily shouted, “Oh! How wonderful!” he then glanced at Crowley, “I win. I told you it would be by the end of the week!”

The demon rolled his eyes, “Angel, It’s cheating when you can feel love.”

“Is it, really?” Aziraphale asked, raising an eyebrow at the demon. 

“Wait,” interrupted Adam, “You were in on it as well?”

“Well, not at first my dear, but really. We all thought it would have been ages ago and I had a rather good feeling,” He said poignantly. He glanced at his watch, “Now, we really must be going, else we will miss dinner.”

Adam glanced at the man standing next to him, their fingers still entwined and squeezed.

As the pair walked out into the snow once more, Adam was glad for the turn this evening had taken. 

   And when they left the restaurant that night, they parted with a shy kiss. A promise of more, with plans to meet for brunch in the morning.  

#First kisses #Good Omens fic #Aziraphale #Crowley #Warlock Dowling #Adam Young #Warlock/Adam #Adam Young/Warlock Dowling #Ineffable antichrists #I have no idea what the actual ship name is for this #Snowy kisses #Because I want snow #wahoo #Ineffable husbands #more towards the end really #mainly about adam and warlock

[taizi]

grace requires nothing of me

good omens pairing: aziraphale/crowley word count: 3604 title borrowed from one by sleeping at last part 2 of the is there a better bet than love? series read on ao3

x

Crowley is doing a good job of dithering without looking like he’s dithering, slouched in the doorway as though he isn’t sure of his welcome, or he isn’t sure Aziraphale has thought this through.

Which is silly. Aziraphale has thought this through more than once.

“Don’t fuss,” the angel chides lightly. “Come here.”

Which is all it takes to coax the demon the rest of the way inside, though he crosses the room to the bed with a grumble. Aziraphale helps him out of his jacket, and then his silk shirt, and then the undershirt beneath that, and then a tanktop. He has to bite on the edge of an amused smile, or else Crowley will sulk, but he thinks its rather cute of his snake to seek that extra bit of warmth in every nook and corner he might find it.

“It is not,” Crowley gripes aloud, reading his mind with the ease of someone who has known and loved Aziraphale for more than six thousand years. He’s faced resolutely away and his bare shoulders are hunched, the skin there and on the tips of his ears turning a telling pink. “I’m cold-blooded, angel. Cute has nothing to do with it.”

“Of course not, dear,” Aziraphale capitulates easily. He can afford to surrender these little victories when he’s already won the greater prize. It’s an effort to keep his hands to himself in his eagerness. “May I see them now?”

Plucking anxiously at his trousers, Crowley ducks his head in what could have been a nod, except he doesn’t lift it again. And then he brings out his wings, filling the room like a dark rush of water.

(Crowley’s wings are black, yes, but that’s no way to judge a fellow’s character. Not all angel wings are white, the way humans tend to depict them in their art and literature; Gabriel’s are dove gray, and Uriel’s are shining gold. The Morningstar, before he Fell, had wings of every color. Aziraphale’s pale feathers, against the iridescent black and blues of Crowley’s, feel rather plain.

But--

Look at you, Crowley will say, awed. He will touch the faun brown and off-white cream with a reverence he keeps a secret all the rest of the time, with hands that are much too generous to belong to a proper demon. His eyes will linger on Aziraphale’s face, as though they can’t help themselves.

And Aziraphale will feel, for a welcome change, beautiful.)

But along with the familiar wings, as was their agreement, Crowley manifested the ruined skin that Aziraphale has never seen, the mark of a fallen angel that he has kept carefully hidden for all these years.

They cut across the long lines of his back, the raised burns eating from the smooth skin of his shoulder blades with jagged teeth.

Aziraphale wants to touch, to soothe them, but he doesn’t quite dare.

His dearest is tense and still; he hasn’t taken a breath since he bared his back. He is braced for something, it seems, something that he expects will hurt.

He hides his scars like he hides his eyes, and Aziraphale’s heart is so full it aches, fragile human thing that it is. He can’t bear to think of Crowley carrying this wound for so long, this angry, ancient, anguished thing.

And so he leans forward and presses his lips to Crowley’s shoulder, kisses the ruins of him so there can be no mistake. Crowley’s feathers are soft in Aziraphale’s hands, and beneath them, so are the scars.

“Look at you,” Aziraphale tells him, returning an old favor. “You’re perfect, you know. Just as you are. All that you are.”

He could stand to say it more, it seems. Crowley gropes blindly behind him until he finds one of Aziraphale’s hands and then he holds on as though he’s terrified he might fall again, fingers trembling, grip tight enough to bruise. Aziraphale hushes him, and draws him back until he’s safe in the circle of Aziraphale’s arms, the safest creature to be found on the whole of the earth with how far and how fiercely Aziraphale would go to protect him.

Aziraphale thinks the world could end around them, and his own wings could burn, and all else could be lost, and still he would be right here, holding his love.

“Perfect,” he presses against Crowley’s hair. “You’re perfect.”

#

It’s another intimate evening, another warm night in the bedroom above the bookshop, when Aziraphale asks, “Did it hurt?”

Crowley is pliant against his side, dozing with his eyes half-open because he sometimes forgets his eyelids when he’s sleepy. He hums at the feel of Aziraphale’s fingers brushing against the side of his face, tilting his head to chase the warmth.

“Did what hurt?”

“The Fall.”

As soon as the question is out, Aziraphale wishes he could take it back. He’s not sure he can bear the answer. He doesn’t want Crowley to have hurt back then, and doesn’t want him to hurt now, and isn’t sure where he found such thoughtless daring to broach the subject they’ve both avoided for millennia.

But after a brief pause, Crowley’s frozen surprise thaws, and his stiff, guarded lines smooth out. The slight weight of him goes boneless again as Aziraphale cards rueful fingers into his hair.  

“Must have done,” he murmurs. “Don’t really remember.”

Aziraphale loses his breath in a rush, relieved.

“What a mercy,” he says, and gathers Crowley up for a kiss. The demon whines, but resettles quickly enough atop Aziraphale’s chest-- always an opportunist, Aziraphale thinks wryly-- and then they are eager to distract one another from maudlin thoughts.

(He is right about the mercy, though he doesn’t know it yet.)

#

Nanael slices their hand open with a letter opener, somehow, bleeding from the meat of their palm. They stand there looking at the alarming swell of blood with an expression of mild surprise.

Aziraphale isn’t proud that his knee-jerk reaction is to snatch the rest of his mail out of the way of the drip. He assumes the younger angel is going to miracle the hurt away, and forgets how foreign life on earth is to them at large.

Thankfully, Crowley remembers.

“Nice one, Feathers,” he snaps, rounding the counter. He shoves his glasses up to his forehead, eyes absurdly yellow in the low light of the shop. “You trying to get yourself discorporated? Let me see.”

Nanael’s corporeal form is that of a young man in his early twenties, but the way they waffle beneath Crowley’s disapproval puts Aziraphale in mind of a scolded child. And really, they’re not even a whole millennia old.

Crowley takes them by the wrist and glares at the offending slice in their hand. With a gentle prod of his thumb, he miracles the hurt away.

Aziraphale intervenes then, to save his estranged little sibling what is probably shaping up to be a lengthy lecture, since Crowley’s caring tends to manifest that way; as though coughing up enough sharp edges will be enough to hide his soft heart. Aziraphale sets his mail aside and pats Crowley on the elbow, taking the wind out of his sails with a disarming smile.

“Well done, my dear, as always. Now what do you say about pulling the car around, hm? It’s well past time for lunch, and I’m rather in the mood for Greek.”

When the demon has gone, slouching out of the store with a surly expression that doesn’t fool Aziraphale in the slightest and hasn’t done since that first day in the garden, he gives Nanael a firm look.

“You must be more careful. Heaven isn’t in the business of handing out corporations freely, and especially not after clumsy mishaps. You’re doing yourself no favors, hanging around here as much as you do, so you really should strive to take caution.”

He doesn’t add anything about all the many clumsy mishaps of his own. He was only spared them, like Nanael was, by Crowley’s timely arrival and flagrant disregard for company policy, and he would prefer Nanael to abide by a better precedent. They can’t always count on Crowley to bail them out of trouble, even if he always has before.

But Nanael is staring at him, their hand still open and outstretched in front of them. They haven’t moved since Crowley was beside them. Their dark eyes are mystified.

“How did he do that?” they ask. “Demons can’t do that.”

Aziraphale frowns. “Nanael, whatever rot they’ve been feeding you Upstairs about the Fallen, I can assure you-- “

“No, not-- I didn’t mean it like that. I don’t mean he wouldn’t, I mean he can’t.” The angel touches their healed palm, folding careful fingers around where the cut sat moments ago, as though it’s a secret they should hide. “You need Grace to perform miracles. The Fallen are cut off from the Host, they can’t access that anymore. Demon’s powers are anti-miracles, really. They can’t do purely good.” They squint at Aziraphale, suspicion taking the place of confusion. “How don’t you know all this? You’ve been down here forever.”

Aziraphale doesn’t say there is a lot to learn down here, and I am still learning. He doesn’t say how much of that can you believe to be true, when your side and theirs won’t take the time to understand each other? He doesn’t say I have only known one demon, and he has always been good.

He looks at his young friend and listens to the sound of a Bentley honking impatiently outside the shop and doesn’t say anything at all. He’s thinking, instead.

About the Arrangement, about the years of trading an unwanted workload back and forth to make it more bearable, about the countless miracles under Aziraphale’s name that could actually be credited to a demon who shouldn’t have been capable of them.

About their charade after Armageddon, when they chose their faces wisely. He has walked in Crowley’s shape, he has known him down to the bone and sinew and soul. He thinks, surely, he would have felt the sudden absence of the Host as keenly as a puppet with its strings cut during every second of their charade. He thinks, surely, he would have recognized an emptiness where that light should have been, having lived with it since God breathed life into him eons ago.

But he didn’t notice anything missing at all.

#

(Who is there to compare Crowley to? What source is there for Aziraphale to draw understanding from? There has never been anyone like his love, not in all the turns of the earth.

Someone who Fell, not out of spite or malice, but hungry curiosity and countless unanswered questions; who spent whole afternoons with those humans in that garden he loved, who was fond of Eve and gave her the tool she needed to make her own choices because he saw himself in her endless, fearless wondering; who played the hand he was dealt without ever giving into bitterness or cruelty the way of the other angels in Hell, looking instead upon the humans with the amused affection and secondhand delight of an estranged uncle or a displaced step-sibling.

Aziraphale remembers a winter afternoon in 1783, all but forgotten after that close call during the Reign of Terror a decade later, when Crowley burst into his flat with shining eyes and mussed hair and clothes still rumpled from travel.

“They’re flying, angel!” he’d said, buoyed by his own disbelief and wonder and ecstatic, aching pride. “Two brothers in Annonay, they’ve built a balloon! They were only up for a few minutes, but they really flew!”

And how, Aziraphale thought back then, has thought a hundred times since, how could he have Fallen? This bright and beautiful thing? As close to blasphemy as he dared venture in those days, Aziraphale would look at Crowley with love a vast and painful secret in his heart and wonder how.)

#

Aziraphale has never been one to spring into action, tending instead towards study and reflection, and in that vein he might have sat on these new and alarming questions for years if left to his own devices.

But interference came in the form of a gaggle of angels, following Nanael back to Soho to see what they were getting up to in all these days spent on earth. They were stricken to find themselves cornered in the bookstore, as though they had betrayed the beloved place somehow. When they look around for help, they look to Crowley first.

He doesn’t disappoint.

“This isn’t a daycare center,” he says blithely. He’s still lounging, propped up on his elbows behind Aziraphale’s counter, but the lanky, lazy lines of his body are deceptive. “We’ve got all the holy feather dusters around here that I can stand, so you lot can see yourselves out now.”

Aziraphale taps his fingers against the table, hot ire rising like a tide inside him. It has barely been three years since the apocalypse that wasn’t, three years since their respective former bosses agreed to leave them be, and they can’t even begin to enjoy retirement.

The angels aren’t sense-blind, and seem wary to encroach any further into Aziraphale’s territory. But they are so like Nanael was those years ago when they first stood inside the door and glared at Crowley with an eternity of borrowed hatred they didn’t even understand, carried like a mantle or an inheritance they never learned how to leave behind.

It rankles, to have Crowley looked at like that. Here, of all places, in this corner of the world that belongs to them, where they have plotted and promised and argued and loved, always together.

Aziraphale says, with an edge of anger, “The three of you should leave.”

Three, not four. Nanael looks hopelessly gratified not to be included in that number, and slinks a little closer to the counter. One of Nanael’s sisters follows, her hand clenched in the pocket of a sensible sweater with nonsensical pom-poms hanging from the drawstrings.

“If the company of a demon did this to you, it can do it anyone,” she says. “I won’t allow anyone else to Fall.”

Her heart is in the right place, Aziraphale will grudgingly allow, much, much later. But her hand, fisted around a small bottle of enough holy water to do all the damage it needs to, is not.

She yanks Nanael to one side, and tosses the contents of the bottle over the counter, and Aziraphale is

one

second

too

slow.

He is too horrified to beg mercy, to spare even a word of prayer. The water falls, and lands, a damning splash against his dear love's skin.

The promise of the world ending, the Antichrist’s arrival, Lucifer himself clawing up from the pit, none of it, absolutely none of it was as frightening as that one second he was too slow.

Aziraphale is lightheaded with fear, nauseous with it, colliding with Crowley and grabbing him up in hands that shake and beginning to miracle away all of the damp that he can before it sets into the fetching leather of his jacket more than it already has.

Crowley blinks, the water dripping harmlessly from his damp fringe and the sharp jut of his chin, beading in his eyelashes like tiny pearls. There is no steam, no visible pain, no destruction. Crowley is befuddled but whole in his hands, alive, that stubborn heart racing furiously away inside him.

“Angel,” he says, and it comes out sounding afraid.

Aziraphale says, "Shh, I've got you," and there is a long, long moment after that where absolutely no one else moves or speaks or even breathes.

And then Aziraphale, to put it politely, loses his temper.

#

“Must have been a bluff,” Crowley says much later, when the unwanted angels have been run off with a fury that would have done Hell proud, and the welcome angel is sleeping away their distress on the lumpy sofa in the back room, and it is just the two of them alone in the flat upstairs.

Pouring out glasses of scotch and passing one across the table, the angel says, with the air of someone making polite conversation, “It was Holy. I could feel it from where I was standing.”

Crowley goes still, drink halfway suspended. After a beat, he lowers it.

“What does that mean?”

“It means-- I don’t know what it means. I don’t know what you are.”

He says it with reverence, but Crowley flinches, as though it landed with a blow. He’s curling in on himself, this snake without a hole to hide in, and Aziraphale rounds the table before he can go away entirely.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he says. “Really, my dear, have I ever hurt you?”

The split-second after he asks feels like an eternity, and his stomach turns. He looks down at his own hands, then away at some far corner of the room. He thinks of you go too fast for me and there is no our side and the look on Crowley’s face both times.

Sickly, he adds, “Intentionally, that is. Of course.”

A groan, and Crowley shoves his sunglasses up his forehead so he can dig the heels of his palms into his eyes.

“Don’t be daft, angel,” he bites without heat. “You’ve never hurt me.”

Almost forgiveness, but an aimless sort; Crowley is offering it freely, just as he offers everything else, but as far as he’s concerned, there is nothing to forgive. Aziraphale tugs his hands down by the wrists and kisses first one palm, then the other, and by then Crowley is recovered enough to look back at him.

“A demon immune to holy water,” he hedges.

“An angel immune to hellfire,” Aziraphale counters neatly. “There’s also your Grace, my dear.”

Crowley frowns. “What’s wrong with it?”

Aziraphale realizes that Crowley probably has little more idea than he does about how demons get on. He spends the majority of his time on earth, and the majority of his company with an angel, and the rest he makes up as he goes along.

“It shouldn’t be there,” Aziraphale explains gently. “You should have been cut off. I hadn’t even thought about it until Nanael brought it up, clever thing.”

“Shouldn’t have-- “ Crowley’s expression shifts rapidly, through offense and hurt and indignation, to settle squarely on bemusement. “I have been cut off, Angel. I haven’t heard Her voice in-- “

It’s a painful thing, this demon and his faith. It wouldn’t hurt so much if he didn’t still love Her. Aziraphale holds him closer, before he gets any ideas about running away to that empty flat in Mayfair to heal from these wounds in private.

There is proof of something here. Proof in the holy water and the hellfire and the miracles. Proof in how much Crowley has been allowed to get away with, consorting with the adversary, skating by with little mischiefs and frustrations over any true evil deeds, as though some higher power was safeguarding him from his employers’ suspicions. He has never truly caused any harm, has never truly cost any human their faith, and his temptations are only that: temptations.

Just like in the garden, he only presents the choice, good or bad, and Aziraphale has seen the light go on in his eyes when a person chooses rightly.

There is proof. Here, in this. In choices, and choosing rightly. As though it’s all been--

"Ineffable,” they say together, Aziraphale inspired, Crowley dull.

“Oh, it must have been a part of the Plan, Crowley,” Aziraphale goes on, all but scooping him up. “There must have been a reason. She must have needed you here.”

It isn’t always good or bad, right or wrong, black or white. Sometimes there is a gray area, a middle ground, and not everyone can see that. Not everyone can find it. It would take a soul like the one wrapped up in Aziraphale’s arms-- the one who created both stars and original sin, who glues fivepence to the sidewalk and brings dead birds back to life, who has been a soldier on both sides of the same war and when the time came to declare loyalty he chose door number three.

He chose humanity.

“You didn’t fail,” Aziraphale whispers. So glad his faith survived intact up to this moment, because there were times when he questioned, when he wondered. “Oh, my darling. You did exactly right.”

He Fell, but without the pain or memory. Relegated to Hell, but only for a short time before he slithered right out again. Retained his Grace, and roamed the earth alongside the humans he threw his lot in with. Not evil, and not righteous, but good.

Crowley is blinking rapidly, yielding when Aziraphale brings their foreheads together, hooking fingers into the pocket of Aziraphale’s waistcoat for something to hold onto.

"Then why was I punished?" he asks in the tone of someone trying to understand a puzzle they've been stuck with for six thousand years. "Why did She leave me alone?"

"But She didn't," Aziraphale says. "You were never alone. And neither was I."

#

"Angel," Crowley says slowly some days later, a pretty picture in the morning sunlight beaming across the kitchen. He's frowning, but his hand in Aziraphale's is warm. "If I'm not one or the other, what am I?"

"Haven't I told you enough by now?" Aziraphale says in playful dismay, leaning over the table to meet him with a kiss. "You're perfect, my dear."

The best thing She ever did, really.

#good omens #ineffable husbands #aziracrow #aziraphale #crowley #anthony j crowley #my writing #gomens fic #bringing back nanael bcus i actually love them a lot #is there a better bet than love

[scintillating-galaxias]

to hold the stars in our arms

“Will you tell me about the stars?”

A kiss.

“Alpha Centauri was one of mine, you know...” Crowley tells Aziraphale what it was like to hang the stars.

(read it here on ao3!)

“Tell me a story, darling.”

“Well whaddya’ wanna hear, angel?”

“Will you—Will you tell me about before?”

“Before what?”

“No, Before-before. Before you Fell, if you can remember.”

Silence.

“I—That was insensitive of me, I didn’t mean—”

“No, no, ‘s not that, Zira. You’re fine. Just… There’s just a lot. We’d be here for years.”

“...You know I love your stories.”

“I know you do.”

“Will you tell me about the stars?”

A kiss.

“Alpha Centauri was one of mine, you know…”

-

Thousands of strands of stars were glittered between his lithe fingertips. More lay dormant as tiny spots all up and down his arms, glowing bold and bright. Still many more were tucked into the feathers of his fantastical wings, fast asleep amongst the plumes. Every single one knew tenderness and devotion the minute they were cradled ever so sweetly in those gentle hands and given their first, Hello, I love you, welcome to this wonderful place.

They knew they would be cherished forever, before, during, and after their deaths, by the way the being those hands belonged to held them up before sun-bright eyes shining with pure love. There was so much love, in fact, that it overflowed in pale wisps around his face and transformed the gorgeous gold irises into soft, infinite glowing pools. It was here that the stars loved to twirl and dance about, soaking up as much as they could before Raphael gently went about collecting them in total reverence.

As a goodbye, he breathed a little portion of his soul into every single one of those brilliant gifts until they glowed and lit up the pitch void of night. Then he whispered to them to be good, and sent them out, and let them spin away until they settled amongst each other, creating scintillating nebulae and mesmerizing galaxies. 

“Aren’t they wonderful,” Raphael murmured aloud. His companion made a non-commital noise. This bothered Raphael, and he turned, cupping a dripping handful of stars. “Do you think they’ll like them?” he asked anxiously. “The humans, I mean, do you think they’ll like the stars? Will they be afraid of them?”

Gabriel hummed again and dragged a finger through a cloud of gold dust. It stuck and clung there closely, prompting him to attempt to wipe it indiscreetly off on his stunning white robe even as they squeaked and protested.

“They must,” he said, still rubbing with no success. “You made them, after all.”

“Yes, but they’re not made by Her hand,” Raphael said. “And I am definitely nothing like Her.” His voice was distant; he was gazing off into the eternal lengths of the sky, watching a young star, still blue in its youth, collide into one of its blazing yellow sisters. They exploded and a shower of shimmering emerald and rose pink and sunset purple scattered in a gorgeous explosion of color. The stardust murmured to itself, surprised by the turn of events, before it fell in love with its existence all over again. It would do this again, and again, and again, as a beetle, a flower, a river stone, a human being. The stars would love themselves in any form, and Raphael would love them, too.

“Was that supposed to happen?” Gabriel asked, mildly disdained. He had been watching, too.

“It was bound to at some point.” Raphael fluttered his hand, and the new star nursery amicably moved itself aside so he could scoop up the gold dust from Gabriel’s finger. “Nothing I could do would be anything close to being like Her’s,” he continued, pressing his lips to his finger and gesturing the new stars off of his palm. “You’ll love it out there, just be yourself, don’t be shy,” he told them. That one would become the stretching white expanse that was the Andromeda galaxy, but not for a long, long time. 

Raphael would not get to see it grow up.

-

“Oh, stop with the face. I really did talk like that.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt that, my dear. It’s that you spoke to Gabriel on a regular basis.”

“I know, I don’t get it either. Dunno how I could stand it. Anyway, he says…”

-

Gabriel chuckled in the mocking well, obviously sort of way. “They’re not meant to,” he said lightly, as though this were the first time Raphael had ever heard this sentiment. “Nothing we angels create is meant to an imitation of Her. It is blasphemy.”

“They’re not,” he agreed. “That means humans can dislike them. I hope they don’t.” Raphael sighed and pulled hydrogen from his pinky and helium from his breath. They gently stirred together in the wrinkles of his palm, glowing brightly under Raphael’s gentle yellow gaze.

“What are you hoping for, then?”

“I hope humans will love the stars as much as I do. I made all of this”—Raphael pushed the clingy galaxy gauzing his arms in gold out and away, holding his arms out for a beat as it sailed away—“for them.”

“They must,” Gabriel repeated. A slightly frostbitten note chilled his words.

“No,” sighed Raphael, “they don’t.”

The pair went quiet. Around they, the low thrum of a breathing universe washed through them.

“Why,” began Raphael, and that was a treacherous beginning of a thought. Why was a question, a question doubted reality, a reality She made that was everything Good and Pure and Perfect. Questions dared to say it was not. “Why have me make these, when She could do it herself and have them all be perfect? Why ask me and make them imperfect? Her’s wouldn’t explode like that.”

They wouldn’t, and can you imagine what a tragedy that would be?

He felt Gabriel’s heavy purple stare shoot through the back of his skull. “Because She made this your purpose,” he said incredulously, as though Raphael had shouted for rebellion against Heaven instead of asking a question—though, in these times, those could be considered one and the same. “She could have, but she blessed you to do it instead. Do you regret what She bestowed upon you?”

“No!” Raphael exclaimed. “No, not at all! I love these skies, I love every single bit of gas and dust, I love these galaxies and stars, and I will love what creatures She creates next—Did you know She let me make one animal, too?” he abruptly said, overcome in his excitement. “It will be called a ‘snake’ and they’ll crawl on their belly to see all of the wonders of Earth hidden beneath one’s foot.”

-

“Crowley…”

“Don’t say it.”

“I really must, though. You are absolutely incredible and I am grateful to be able to love you . ”

“I—You—A—I’m not done yet! Don’t make me want to kiss you in the middle of a story!”

“Oh, my sincerest apologies my dear. I suppose I’ll have to make it up to you later.”

-

“Hm.” Gabriel went silent. Raphael returned his full attention to the little stars clamoring for him. It was a while before Gabriel spoke again, and when he did, the stars hushed each other in fear of their whispers being overheard.

“You shouldn’t doubt yourself,” he said, oddly grave. “The Almighty gave you your purpose. It wouldn’t do you well you to question it, because She made it. It’s foolish to think imperfections are possible and done on accident .”

“‘Course,” said Raphael absently. One star that would later become the Sun huddled close to him, trying its best to escape the creeping frostiness coming off of Gabriel in blusters. “Thank you for your, ah, reassurance. You can, erm. Go, if you want.”

Gabriel nodded one time and left in a brilliant flash of lilac light. Raphael brought the star to his face and sternly told it, “You’ll shine brighter than anything else in this solar system. I swear it. Don’t be afraid of Gabriel, either, he loves you too. Yes, he does. We all do. ”

The Sun, if it had a mouth, would have smiled. As it was, it merely winked once, before Crowley hung it up to rest in the center of a Solar System that would be placed near the edge of the Sagittarius arm. A little ways away from the Sun, Alpha Centauri quietly began to shine. It was something new Raphael had been tinkering with for centuries now. He had dubbed a binary system. Two stars who depended on each other to stay alive. Criticize it too closely, and it’s obvious there are two stars at work. You’ll miss the intensity, the beauty of the starlight, when they appear to be unified. Gaze upon it from further away to fully wonder in its blazing glory. 

These were some of Crowley’s favorite because so much depended on each other the stars. Too far, and they would be flung off into the void. Too close, and they’ll demolish each other. If they maintained their perfect orbit, they would always skate around each other perfectly, pushing and pulling the other with them in an endless dance in which they never touched. But the two always reached out for the other, annihilation be damned.

-

“A bit like us, I suppose.”

“...You’re right. God dammit, you’re right! ‘S like with the Apple too—”

“How so?”

“I dunno, remember how I asked why not just put it on a mountain or something? If humans weren’t supposed to eat it? Why not just not send you to Earth if I’m not supposed to be in love with you? Could’ve just kept you up in Heaven, but She had to put you in the Garden.”

“My goodness. It really all boils down to free will, doesn’t it? Is it that simple?”

“Aziraphale.”

“Yes, my love?”

“I would choose you over everything else in all of Creation any day. All you have to do is ask.”

#ineffable husbands #good omens #crowley as raphael #aziraphale #crowley #gabriel (good omens) #gomens fanfic #fanfiction #my writing #fluff

[jack-fruit]

Paint the Stars

Hey gamers this fic is apart of my personal swap au which I also wrote this for. You really don't need to read that one to understand this one, but its short lol. All you need to know that's mentioned there is Aziraphale is a bat demon so like

-----

When the starmaker first learned to paint, he was going by Anthony. He had no reason to go by an alias, but he had grown rather fond of it after providing it to a rather polite demon. His decision to dip his fingers into what was the original sorry excuse for paint, however, had nothing to do with his name, but everything to do with his title.

He had hoped after the fiasco with Adam and Eve, She would allow him back into the expanse of space to make stars once again. She told him he had more to do on Earth, much to Anthony's chagrin. So he walked among man bitter and with hands itching to create.

They'd only been a few generations into humanity when a girl first found that mixing together egg yolk and red soil would make a substance that would trail bright and stick to the rock. She used it to make crude drawings, which Anthony watched, impressed.

It wasn't until there was a suitable array of colors avaliable that Anthony felt the tug of longing hard enough that he sheepishly approached a group painting across an expanse of cave walls and scooped up some of the yellow paint.

He created starbursts across stone and nebules across rock. He didn't have all the colors he wanted to work with, but the thrill of a challenge only spurred him on. He may have also been there to nudge the Egyptians in the right direction of finding blue paint, okay? Sue him- blue was one of his favorites.

-

It wasn't until around 300 BC that Anthony picked up a paintbrush. There had been other attempts at something similar before, but all the crude sticks and leaves could not capture the fine detail a brush of a fingertip could.

Anthony was perfectly content using his hands and fingers, just as he always had, but the man selling the brushes assured him they were intended for caligraphy. The angel picked up the thin bamboo with animal hair attatched to one end, and decided that perhaps a certain demon would get a kick out of it. After all, Az loved the written word, perhaps he would like a tool to help create it.

He had originally only meant to try it out. To make sure it worked as advertised, but as he dipped it into the ink that he'd purchased alongside it, he slowly realized things were not going to go as planned.

The gentle sweep of the brush across parchment was a sensation he liked almost as much as fingerpainting. And it kept his hands blessedly clean. He created a void in the paper, a sinkhole from which there was no return. He then got up, grabbed his paints, and wove a galaxy around it. He tucked the concept into the back of his mind, deciding to ask Her to let him abandon post for just a while to play around again.

-

He was going by Raphael when he realized that he could paint more than just space. He had been out in the cosmos for a few decades, having gotten the okay to return to where he belonged. He had ended up quite liking the brush idea, which is where the staff came from.

His staff was a long piece of carefully maintained bamboo that he was able to miracle from brush to staff with minimal effort. The staff worked a bit different from an actual paint brush, it didn't even have a proper brush end, really, but the angel would push his power through it in arcs and waves in ways he hadn't really been capable of before.

But he missed Earth, much as that fact irked him. He missed the browns and the greens and the greys. He missed the food and the wind and the sounds. Above all, he missed the sparkling darkness of a certain demon's gaze, which he would certainly never admit.

So he returned to earth and decided to give a new name a whirl. Raphael. When he told Az about it, he laughed, but did start calling him by the new name. It put something at ease in his chest, that approval.

Raphael had known that people painted things other than space, of course he did, but he never thought to do it himself until he saw a man painting a landscape.

"Mind if I join you?" Raphael had asked without thinking. The man looked at him, curious, but nodded his consent and offered Raphael the paints he was using. All earth tones, nothing like the angel liked to work with.

Withholding a sigh, Raphael decided to paint the same landscape. It was more challenging then the colorful and shapeless bursts he was used to, but it was easy enough to get. Sharp bursts of brown-green, yellow spikes of grass, grey-brown bark. It was the same concept, the pallete was just different, the angles a bit sharper.

"What are you doing?" Raphael jumped and whirled to face the fanged grin of his adversary. The original painter and his canvas had vanished.

"Why are you here?" The angel tried very hard not to sound pleased.

"I asked first, Starmaker," Az said, taking his brush from him and narrowing his eyes at the carvings on it. "Are these snakes?"

"Snakes are cool," Raphael hissed, turning back to his painting. "And I'm painting, now you."

"Oh just spreading some chaos here, michief there."

"Which I will inevitably thwart," Raphael noted. "You know, maybe-"

"No! No we are not..." Az's voice dropped to a harsh whisper, "we are not teaming up Ant- Raphael."

"Antraphael?" The angel teased momentarily, before his expression turned thoughtful. "That sounds like an angel I knew- a principality. Wonder what happened to him...haven't heard from him in ages."

"Doesn't matter," Az snapped, aggrivated. "I know what heaven is like. They find out you're helping the enemy and you know what they'll do? They'll toss you out, and thats if you're lucky!"

Raphael's brushstroke shot up, ruining the entire painting.

"Let's go get drinks," he grumbled, waving the project away. It would be years before he would finally rediscover, fix, and finish the damn piece.

-

The name didn't last, of course it didn't. Anthony knew Az was really quite uncomfortable with the name Raphael, despite his insistance of it being fine. The closest the angel got to an answer was 'reminds me too much of someone else. Not you.'

So he was Anthony again when he realized how truly and utterly fucked he was. It was the 19th century, and realism- true realism- was coming into style. The more detailed and real looking a painting looked, the better. And for the first time since paint had been invented, Anthony couldn't master a style of art.

Of course, he would eventually, but at the present everything he painted looked cheap and fake. The concept of shading was new to him, nothing cast shadows in space and his landscapes were more stylized than anything. Along with that, still life was a bit drab to him- lots of looking and staring at inanimate objects doing nothing and feeling nothing for hours.

In contrast, portraits had the opposite issue. The subject was too squirmy, and the constant annoyance and boredom that flared up would effect his brushwork.

Plants were a good compromise, just alive enough to entertain him, but not squirmy enough to distract him. He spent hours trailing greenery across his canvases, adding bursts of color where flowers decided to plant themselves.

He ended up surrounding himself with plants, expresing his annoyance if they began to wilt, which would quickly make them perk up once more. He accidently scared the plants, he thought, what with all his frustrated yelling and the torn canvases strewn across the floor, but it did lead to them looking exquisite. He'd be lying if said he hadn't been hamming up the dramaticness that came with destroying his less than perfect works.

Az had come over once, sitting properly in a plain, stiff wooden chair he summoned while Anthony sprawled out across his own sofa. Az was looking at a half finished painting of a plant.

"Do you ever paint anything other than plants?" Az asked suddenly. Anthony sat up and followed his gaze.

"Space."

"Other than space and plants."

"Like what?"

"People?"

Anthony snorted and fell back against the cushions, "nah, people move too much."

"Oh," Az said. The two fell quiet for a few minutes before Az spoke again. "Well if you like, I could...you know, model for you. If it would help."

"I- you- what?" Anthony sputtered. The demon scowled at him.

"Mind out of the gutter, Anthony. It's simply that...look I can hold much more still than any human could, I would be an easy model to start with to get the human-esque form down."

Anthony was quiet in his consideration. Much as he loathe to admit it, it did make sense. And as much as he loved painting plants and stars, he did want to branch out, if only to prove he could. He was a stubborn bastard that way.

"Fine," he grumbled. "Just...stay there, then," he launched himself off the couch and collected his paints.

"Now?" Az asked, and when Anthony turned to face him, his dark eyes were curious and wide and just...beautiful.

"I- er- that okay?" Anthony asked, taking his brush and twirling it in his fingers. Az nodded; Anthony nodded back in reply. The angel turned his easel towards the demon and, with a slow breath, began to paint.

He had always found Az remarkable- with his intelligent eyes, his soft, slightly singed curls, the curve of his delicate pink lips...

He was practically in a trance, looking more at Az then his canvas. It felt like no time at all before he had finished enough for Az to move if he wished. The demon cracked his neck at an inhuman angle, then stood to look over Anthony's shoulder.

"Oh...Anthony," his breath ghosted across his ear and he had to surpress a shiver, "this is perfect, how have you been having trouble?"

Slowly, Anthony tipped his head back. He let his curls brush against Az's shoulder as he did so, and when he looked to the left he could see how close the demon really was. With his eyes that reminded him so much of his night sky that it hurt.

Oh.

Oh fuck.

"S'not done, still time to mess up," he said over his mounting panic. Az laughed that soft laugh of his and grinned, revealing those delicate little fangs perfect for-

Anthony's entire brain ripped like a canvas in a desprate attempt to get that image out of his head. In the meantime, Az had pulled away and offered him an apologetic farewell. Anthony was still sewing his brain back together when the door closed firmly behind him. He was still stitching his sanity back into place as he found himself setting up a new canvas. He was still lost in a daze as he found himself wondering how many years it would take to draw Az perfectly from memory.

-

The first time he wrote out the name "Anthony J. Crowley" had been on the deed to his studio. A studio he had not planned on getting at all, but when a giddy bat demon bounced up to him only about 60 or so years after the whole gay crisis thing Anthony had no choice but to follow. He wasn't sure if the blindfold made him more or less eager, if he was being honest.

"Watch your step!"

"I can't see, idiot, there's a blindfold over my face."

"Stop sassing me or I'll gag you, starmaker."

"Kinky."

"No!"

Anthony laughed, feeling a warm flutter in his chest as Az very firm stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. Then, he removed the blindfold.

"Tada!"

"A...building?" Anthony raised an incredulous eyebrow at the demon.

"It's for your studio!" Az enthused.

"My-?"

"I originally bought it thinking about making a bookshop out of it, but then I realized thst would require me to, um, you know, sell my books? And so I thought instead I'd give it to you. I've already found a quaint little cottage for my books And I to stay, so I have no need for it, obviously-"

"Azzy..."

"No need to thank me, you're just taking it off my hands," the demon pushed on, shoving a deed into Anthony's hands and then bolting like the devil himself was after him. Anthony looked at the deed, then at the building.

It could use some paint...

-

1967, he'd been going by Crowley for 25 years as far as close friends were concerned. Well, close friend. After tonight, though...

He leaned heavily against the door to his studio, against the painted grasses and flowers that stretched across its surface, growing towards glow and the dark stars. Against his chest, Crowley clutched a jar containing a single, wild spark of hellfire. Uncontrollable, untamable, and all Az's.

'What, not going to offer me a lift?" Crowley had quietly asked, sitting behind Az on his motorbike.

Crowley moved as if he were walking through the thickest of oil paints. He entered his room, set the jar on his desk, then returned to the studio itself. Half finished projects were littered everywhere. Crowley looked at them and felt empty.

A soft, pained laugh. 'I know I go too slow for you, Crowley...' Then, the most heatbroken admission, 'I am... quite unsure if I will ever be capable of catching up with you.'

Crowley's whole body began to shake. Hands balled into fists, and then he screamed. He grabbed a wooden stool that Az could often be caught sitting on and threw it right into one of his paintings. It splintered and ripped and Crowley felt good.

He tore paintings from the wall, shattered frames against the floor. He ripped apart each brushstroke, each secret hope. He only stopped when he tore his paintbrush off the chain around his throat and tried to snap it. Lucky for him, past Crowley had enchanted it to be basically invincible, so his efforts simply drained him. He let it expand into his staff so he could lean heavily on it as sobs wracked him. He was angry, he was heartbroken, and he had never felt less holy.

-

In the years leading up to the apocalypse, Crowley hadn't been painting much. Any attempts to bring his brush to the canvas were hindered by the fact that the world was ending, and that in less than eleven years all these things he was making would be destroyed. Again.

He thought maybe after everything, after escaping heaven and hell, he would be able to paint avain. Yet, as he sat with a sketchbook in his lap in Az's livingroom he felt no spark, no drive.

Well, that wasn't true. He felt something, but it wasn't the need to create. He took a swig of wine and looked up to where Az was quietly contemplating his own glass.

"I-"

"It's Aziraphale."

"...what?" Anthony sat up straight for the first time possibly ever. Az flinched.

"My- my name...my angel name. I never," he bit his lip, "all the other demons were changing their names, but I never meant to fall. I liked the name the Almighty gave me, even if She...so, so perhaps you can call me Aziraphale from noe on? Since I guess I'm technically not a demob anymore..."

The name was familiar. It brought Crowley the memory of a flash of white wings and blue eyes watching him work. However, that image very comfortably faded to fit the face of the demon he so loved.

Aziraphale.

"Aziraphale," he spoke it in a way that made one think of blasphamy. He caught the demon's shiver. Slowly, Crowley set aside his sketchbook and his wine and he prowled forward.

"Crowley?"

"Yes, Aziraphale?" He breathed, close enough to count the lashes framing Aziraphale's dark eyes. They fluttered closed.

Lips pressed against lips, soft and full of longing and hope. It took Crowley a moment to realize he hadn't been the one to close the gap. He framed Aziraphale's face in his hands, like the work of art it was, and kissed back.

A gasp and then hands fluttered against his back, gripping at his jacket as the angel pushed him back in his chair, thoughts scattered so only one thing remained.

Aziraphale, Aziraphale, Aziraphale.

-

They laid in a bed conjured earlier that evening. Aziraphale didn't own one, since he was used to hanging upsidedown from the rafters when he slept at all. He made an exception tonight, though, and was now curled up fast asleep in Crowley's arms. He traced the blue-purple-red bruises scattered across his lover's skin and smiled fondly as Azirphale wrinkled his nose and turned in his arms. Slowly, Crowley untangled himself and moved towards the easel he'd put in the room back when Aziraphale was sleeping for a century. He had wanted to be around the demon, even if he was fast asleep with no plans to become concious again until he thought his books were in danger.

He brushed the dust off a blank canvas and set it on the easel. It was facing out the small window, revealing the expanses of space for Crowley to record again and again. He hesitated a moment before changing the angle of the easel, pointing it towards the bed where Azirphale was still curled up.

He looked over at where his brush had been reverently placed on the nightstand at contrast with everything else he'd been wearing previously. He looked at it and then shook his head. He opened a pot of red paint and dipped his fingers into it. The excess dripped from the tips before Crowley set then to the canvas, and he began to paint.

#good omens #good omens swap au #ineffable husbands #ineffable partners #crowley #aziraphale #good omens crowley #good omens fic

[i-llbedammned]

So I may have gotten a little bit out of control with the idea of time travel and written up some Good Omens fluff and smut because of it.

Title: August 1984

Word Count: 4034

Summary:Set in the year 1984, Crowley and Aziraphale meet in a bar. Aziraphale has a long seated idea that he has in his head and he wants to try and explain Oscar Wilde to his dear friend Crowley. However how is one supposed to focus when there are several millennia of tension between you?Inspired by the album Purple Rain by Prince.

Ao3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19972843 Fic below

August 1984

Crowley slunk about the back of a bar dressed in a black leather coat and trousers, his usual bar the one with the dark wood and the windows out front that overlooked the most lovely garden. It was a hot summer with the flowers, gardenias on the window sill, giving off the most satisfying smell. He was greatly enjoying the smell of them, particularly because he thought that he would never be able to smell anything ever again after the incident last week. That nosy bastard Beezlebub had been asking after him and his business, poking and prodding around. He swore that they were going to flay him on the spot, which would be most inconvenient and require a whole lot of paperwork and pain that he was not in the mood for. Luckily for him, he had a quick mind and had told Beezlebub that he was in a most delicate situation and needed to fan the flames of cocaine addiction in America without supervision. He didn’t of course, the humans sought it out enough on their own, but it got him out of trouble and that was the important part.

The whole world was feeling wonderful and warm right now, just enough to where he wished he could stretch out on a rock and relax for a bit in the sun. It was perhaps a bit reptilian, but considering how much humans liked going to the beach he hardly thought that he was alone in that desire. His gangly legs splayed out on to another chair as he watched bugs crawl over the leaves and idlly heard some married man spill sweet nothings to a man who was not his wife at the bar. He likely shouldn’t be drunk at 3 in the afternoon, but there was going to be footy game later and he didn’t want to miss the fights then by being drunk.

“Ah! Crowley! What are you doing here?” came a soft voice from the doorway. His teased out hair bobbed over his eyes as he turned to face one angel Aziraphale, who was dressed most unsuitably for this bar in a pastel blue striped linen suit with a light pink shirt underneath. His white-blonde hair was very tall and slicked back. The various rough and tumbles in black leather and torn jeans looked at him with suspicion but didn’t question it as he took a seat at Crowley’s table.

“Yes, what would I be doing in my favorite bar?” Crowley drawled, pouring Aziraphale a glass of whiskey and pushing it towards him, “The real question is what are you doing here, angel?”

The other man, for today he certainly was presenting as a man, grinned a small grin, his eyes flicking to the side at Crowley as he spoke, “Well, I just so happen to be in the area doing a small bit of business helping a poor family find their faith again by getting jobs in the arts like they always wanted and I thought I would stop by and have a small drink to whet my whistle.”

  With a gulp he drank the whiskey and without asking Crowley poured him a double noting, “Well if you want to whet your whistle with me you better catch up. I have a bit of a head start and don’t intend on slowing down once I get a second glass.”

Aziraphale gladly drank the whiskey, breathing it out with a sharp sigh and a wince. He placed a hand upon Crowley’s fishnet gloved one before the demon could pour another shot, “As kind as your offer is of free alcohol, I was wondering if you would rather drink something a bit more gentle back at the bookshop for a bit. There is a lovely volume of Oscar Wilde I would love to discuss with you.”

“Oscar Wilde? Come on, angel, you know I don’t like to read. It’s boring and,” he began and then he stopped himself. Aziraphale’s hand was still on his and there was a look in his eyes that shone like all the hope in the world rested upon his shoulders.

“I could, maybe read to you then? Explain the parts that seem too tedious?” Aziraphale’s voice was low, as if the very nature of being asked to read Wilde to his friend was scandalous.

“You got a record player?” Crowley asked, his shaded eyes not looking at his friend and instead looking at the bar, trying to challenge any onlookers to try and start something with him and this prep.

“Yes, I do.” The blonde haired man looked confused, but eager as he put his hands back on his lap. Whatever Crowley was up to, he was game. “I’ll let you explain Wilde to me if you do me two favors.”

“One, you have to let me show you Queen on the record player, and two,” Crowley poured another double for his friend, “Drink up. We have to be even-stevens going into this.”

Aziraphale grimaced at the whiskey, but then drank it quickly before giggling, “It’s a date then.”

They walked alongside each other, both shining brightly in the sun though Crowley couldn’t tell if that was Aziraphale’s natural glow or just an effect of him always wearing bright colors in the sun. The angel always looked so utterly at peace with the world around him that it made the demon a bit envious at times. The only moments of peace were the small ones he could steal when the higher ups weren’t paying any attention to him and certainly he wasn’t ever able to seem like he enjoyed his life. Who could imagine the scandal of a demon actually enjoying something without trying to torment anyone over it?

Aziraphale was grinning up at the birds and Crowley allowed himself a small smile upon seeing the joy on the other man’s face. In that moment he was truly alive, watching the birds flit about the rooftops and merrily chatting about a book he really enjoyed recently. The red headed man knew he would be banished to a deep, dark level of Hell if they ever caught him associating with an angel- so deep and dark that the light of Heaven and of Aziraphale himself would never be able to find him. And that was merely for associating, never mind the dirty thoughts that sometimes danced through his mind where he imagined himself making love to the great angel gently and passionately.

Love! Why the very idea didn’t suit a demon in the slightest! He would be fine if they just thought he was fucking an angel, that sort of thing was perfect for corrupting a pure soul, but he would certainly never be allowed to have feelings or to treat him gently. Why such a thing would be sacrilege – if such a concept even still existed in Hell.

“….And so he has been truly underrated in the modern age where people feel like his language is too old fashioned. Wilde is loved for his wit but the depth of his plays can still be appreciated even today even aside from the pithy quotes.” Continued Aziraphale as he opened up the glass doors of his shop. He looked embarrassedly down as Crowley strode in, “Sorry for the ramble. I just find Wilde to be a very intriguing author.”

Throwing himself upon the brown leather couch near the record player Crowley raised his eyebrows, “No need to apologize. It’s good to listen to you ramble, I suppose, in a kind of nerdy way.” He grinned in a cheeky way and his compatriot continued on as if everything was fine.

“One moment, I will return.” The soft voiced angel flitted into the other room, his footsteps slowly fading from earshot.

Removing his glasses, Crowley let his slitted eyes scan the shelves, finally locating the record player shoved away in the corner. With a grumbling effort, he got up and looked at the record in the player. To his surprise it was not anything classical, but instead Prince’s Purple Rain record. That was indeed interesting. Aziraphale hardly seemed like he was a Prince sort of being, what with the soul of the music being something that Heaven most definitely would not approve of. Perhaps years of being on Earth had finally given him taste.

He flicked the switch on and dropped the needle into place and “Let’s Go Crazy” started playing. With a dramatic flair he once more began lounging on the couch with his legs splayed open. The sounds of Prince sounded through the air and Crowley sang along,

“All excited but we don't know why Maybe it's 'cause we're all gonna die And when we do, what's it all for Better live now before the grim reaper Come knocking on your door”

Go crazy, he only wished he could. Not actually crazy mind you. He didn’t want to be someone shoving heads on pikes or pulling out their own hair. No, the fun kind of crazy where you got drunk and banged your best friend without hesitation. Normally he was a bit more controlled with these thoughts, but the whiskey was running nicely through his system and right now all he wanted to do was pry himself out of these leather pants and beg Aziraphale to have his way with him. Wouldn’t that be a sight? Aziraphale running off to get a book at then coming back to find Crowley naked on his couch. He wondered what the supposedly pure angel would do, would he be repulsed or would he enjoy it.

But no, he didn’t want to alienate the poor dear. He certainly thought that surprise stripping would be a one-way ticket to banishment and considering the fact that he had barely managed to get back in his good graces a loss of Aziraphale was not something he wanted to live through again. The fall didn’t hurt half so much as being unable to speak to him even though he kept seeing him everywhere he went. 

Book in hand and a bottle of wine in the other, Aziraphale returned and blushed deeply upon hearing the record player and seeing Crowley splayed out. That got a wicked grin from the demon as he relished the way that the angel’s blue eyes lingered upon him,

“You have better taste than I gave you credit for,” he said casually, though of course he didn't mean it casually. He was genuinely surprised.

“That- oh that is just a new record. I thought I would give it a shot since it is so popular.” Hurriedly the preppy angel turned off the record player and took a seat next to Crowley, leaning up against him so that their shoulders touched.

“And what do you think of it?” Crowley asked, taking the bottle of wine, popping it open with a twist of his talons in the cork, and snagging two glasses off the shelves where they had left them a previous week.

“I think in the right company it must be lovely,” Aziraphale took the glass of wine and clinked his lightly against Crowley’s, “Cheers then. To good stories.”

The red wine tasted of vanilla and had notes of almond in it, giving it a sweet taste as it slid over Crowley’s tongue. “Now what I enjoy about Lady Windermere’s Fan is that it discusses morality in an interesting way. Take this quote for example, it says “I think life too complex a thing to be settled by these hard and fast rules”. In the context they are talking about the dynamics between men and women, but I feel like the concept of a complicated world is one that we can carry into all of our lives.”

“You mean like a demon and an angel being friends?” Crowley stared at the nape of Aziraphale’s neck, wondering just how fast he could undo that thin blue tie and unbutton the shirt. If he kept drinking like this, he just might give it a shot even if he would regret it later. Another sip of wine went down his throat.

“A bit like that, yes.” Aziraphale shifted in his seat, taking in a deep breath to steady himself. Nervously he licked his lips. “But I always took it to mean that perhaps our concepts of good and evil aren’t quite what you think they are. That perhaps angels can be a bit wicked and perhaps demons can be a bit good. Like the yin-yang concept, but taken in a very literal sense” “Demons are never good,” grumbled Crowley, his eyes looking away as he remembered the years of pain and of being told how corrupt he was by everyone but Aziraphale, “Especially not at resisting temptations.” “Ah!” The angel’s blue eyes lit up with hope, ““I can resist everything but temptation!” I see you have read this one before.”

The wicked grin returned to Crowley’s face, “Not quite, but I do know temptations well.”

“Oh I know exactly what you mean!” The angel’s face was animated, leaning in closer to Crowley as he gripped the book tightly to his chest, not even bothering to open it, “It is just like Lord Darlington and Lady Windermere is it not?”

“Yeah, sure. Just like them,” Though honestly Crowley had no idea. He had never read this book before in his life and honestly he was wishing he had left the Prince album on rather than being roped into a literary discussion. “Do you think she should have run away with him? Left behind her stuffy husband for an exciting new man?” Aziraphale’s face was inches away from Crowley’s and he indulgently breathed in the scent of Cool Water and wine.

“Well it’s probably not the safest idea, but it certainly would be more fun for her and it’s not like her husband would immediately know unless she told him.” Mostly unconsciously, Crowley moved closer, experimentally bumping his crooked nose against Aziraphale’s.

“I was so hoping you would say that,” whispered the other breathlessly as he leaned forward and crossed the remaining space, pressing his lip gently to the other’s.

The feeling was immediate and overwhelming. Thousands of years of pent up emotions all wanted to surface at once. His heart felt like it would burst out of his chest merely from that chaste kiss. Crowley responded back in kind, pressing himself more urgently to the other, moving a hand up to cradle his jaw.

Aziraphale parted lips and gently placed the book on the side table next to the couch, reaching past Crowley who nipped at his ear and bit him down the sides of his neck, earning him a soft laugh. With a giggle Aziraphale responded in kind, snapping his fingers. In an instant both of them were suddenly gendered, both male for this time around, and the windows of the shop were blessedly closed.

“Wait, angel, aren’t you worried about me corrupting you?” Crowley asked in a daze, wondering if this was really happening or it was instead a wonderful dream, feeling his new found manhood twitch to life as the angel’s hands ran over his crotch and he suppressed a moan as teeth bit lightly at his neck.

“Let me worry about that, my dear.” The blond crooned, into his ear, gently digging his nails into the back of his head, “For now, just let me give you this moment. We’ll worry about what will happen later when it is later. I do not think that the world will begrudge us this one moment.”

“All it takes is a moment to fall, angel.” It pained him greatly to stop this close to what he had wanted for thousands of years, but the last thing he wanted on his conscience was to have the grace snuffed out from the light of his life due to his careless desires.

A petulant sigh and a look of annoyance crossed on the angel’s face as he was once more interrupted, “A moment of perfect love and perfect trust will not be begrudged by Heaven. I have checked with several scholars who seem to be of this mind and since the Almighty is keeping mum, I think discretion falls to me. Unless of course, you object?” His heart looked as if it would break through his gaze if the answer was no.

“Angel, I have not objected to this for a couple thousand years,” Crowley answered, kissing him again and again, letting his tongue run over the other man’s lips. The angel responded by stripping out of his suit jacket and tossing it to the side.

Lips met lips and Crowley melted into it, pulling Aziraphale onto his lap, wrapping his legs around the other man. Now that the go ahead was given he didn’t hesitate, rolling his hips gently and feeling the sharp tug of the leather pushing against his cock as he rocked back and forth. Deft hands undid Aziraphale’s tie and unbuttoned his shirt slowly. With each inch of flesh exposed he moved his lips down to kiss the soft flesh, relishing the sheen of hair on the angel’s body.

Blood pulsed through him and his whole body felt like it was on fire as his friend, ran his hand underneath the black shirt to stroke his stomach. Well that would never do with the jacket in the way, so Crowley tossed off his leather jacket flinging it somewhere else. Seeing more flesh exposed, Aziraphale began to run kisses up his arms, starting at his hands and ending with licks at the base of his neck.

Angelic hands unbuttoned Crowley’s trousers and the little self-restraint he had was gone as Aziraphale wrapped a hand firmly around his shaft, gently squeezing it under the trousers as . A low, deep moan came from his mouth as he reached down to try and free the angel from the restraint of his own trousers.

“No,” Aziraphale moved his hands away, making Crowley hiss with annoyance. “Let me service you first. Then I will claim you.”

“Service, what-“ Crowley began, but Aziraphale was already pulling the black T-shirt over his head and was slowly moving downward with his kisses raining down upon his chest and abs. Oh, that’s what he meant. The angel knelt upon the ground and moved Crowley’s legs to accommodate him. Strong hands pulled his trousers down and Crowley was glad he didn’t wear smallclothes that day. It at first had been merely to uphold his look, but this was so much more pleasant.

His cock, now unrestrained, grew to its full length under the angel’s ministrations. He licked up and down the shaft, causing Crowley to hiss softly with every new contact, closing his eyes because if he had to look at that sight he just might pop off that second. It was all soft, wet, and hot as Aziraphale placed the cock into his mouth.

There it was, that lovely blonde head bobbing up and down on his cock. He leaned back into the couch, bucking his hips experimentally. A soft moan issued from the angel so he did it again. And again. He kept thrusting, digging his taloned hands into Aziraphale’s hair. A passion coiled up in his stomach, in his balls as he moved his hips gratefully against the tongue and eager mouth. His breath echoed raggedly as he cried out Fuck with every thrust, fucking the angel’s face until he came rough and hard with a loud cry. God, he hoped God and Satan heard him cry as well as any of those toughs down at the bar. Hot cum spilled into the angel’s mouth and the sight alone was almost enough to make Crowley cum all over again. 

As his cock wilted and he gasped for air that he didn’t even really need to breathe, Aziraphale spat the whole mess into a bin. Quickly rinsing his mouth with wine, he returned to give Crowley kisses that tasted of cum, grapes, and almonds. Softly he groaned and as Crowley regained a semblance of composure, he moved his hands to unbutton the blue striped trousers that Aziraphale was wearing as the angel shrugged off the unbuttoned shirt he had been wearing.

Aziraphale had given himself a girthier length than Crowley, but not as long. A halo of soft hair surrounded his manhood and under the smallclothes Crowley ran a hand through the curls that were there. “Now it’s your turn, yeah?” The demon raised an eyebrow.

“In a moment,” panted Aziraphale, parting once more and stepping out of his small clothes. He went over to the record player and flipped over the record, letting the sounds of Prince singing “I Would Die 4 U” rain over the bookshop. He returned back the couch, kissing Crowley deeply as they explored each other’s bodies fully. Every inch of skin had to be touched with gently hands and the soft scraping of talons and nails. Gently, the rounder man pushed the thinner one back til the demon lay flat against the couch.

“Think you have the right company for this album now?” Crowley moaned as Aziraphale plunged a finger into his bum.

“None better for it. I might actually enjoy the music now,” quipped the angel. Soft hands guided his hips over, gently teasing the hole til it was properly warmed up. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt Crowley and even though Crowley had taken it much rougher from others the last thing he wanted was to have his first time with Aziraphale be over too quickly. Hell’s preferences for what he should do in bed be damned.

As his best friend entered into him, the demon found himself getting strangely emotional. It wasn’t rough lust or anger, that would be understandable. No it was something, soft, delicate even. The kisses that the angel gave him were gentle, twisting things that made him want to cry with how slowly he dragged his lips over the other’s. It was almost as if he was worshipping, like the whole act was an act of ascension that the other was doing. Crowley arched his head back, groaning with pleasure as each thrust brought him closer to a second orgasm. “Crowley,” the angel whispered softly, caressing his shoulders, his arms, his neck, “Why you beautiful creature you.”

“I’m not beautiful, angel. You’re just in a sex-induced haze.” Crowley sniped, trying to get that delicate feeling that made him want to cry to leave him.

A lazy smile crossed Aziraphale’s face as he thrust deeply into Crowley, sending a shudder through the demon’s body, “You just think you aren’t because you can’t see yourself now. Sprawled out on my couch, mouth agape, hair splayed out like a halo around you. You are just so good.” His breath came out in ragged gasps, “So kind. So selfless, like a work of art.”

“Art? Like a Michalangelo?” Given their past history, it only seemed fitting even though it was perhaps a bit tacky to bring up an ex in the middle of making love.

“Like a Wilde.” Moaned the book keeper, a devious smile also on his face and undeterred, “Oh sweet Crowley, I love you.”

There it was, the magic phrase that send him shaking and soaring to another orgasm as Aziraphale followed shortly after. Love. A verbal acknowledgment of that which he had felt for so long, moaned in the throes of an act that both had ached to do for ages. Tears, unbidden, not of pain but of beauty sprang to his golden eyes. It was like being forgiven, even if only for a moment.

“Oh. Oh no.” Soft hands touched his angular face, “Crowley are you upset? You are crying.”

“I’m not. Just got a bit of sweat in my eye.” He responded, with a grin surprisingly genuine as he wiped away any traces. Together they lay out on the couch, positively glowing despite the fact that no sunlight could reach them buried as they were in the bookshop. There would be Hell to pay come tomorrow, but today he could grab this small piece of Heaven. This small piece of Heaven who loved him.

#good omens #ineffable husbands #aziraphale #crowley #fanfic #ALL THE FEELS