#yes yes yes #our bookshop #our car #our fragile peaceful life #precious demon #precious angel
I think we're all missing the fact Crowley spent the night in the bookshop while Aziraphale was in Edinburgh. (Aziraphale leaves during the day, picks up Shax at night, and it's clearly morning when he gets Crowley's plants in his face. Also, it's a 6-7 hour drive, so even with some small miracles, that's a looong way.)
"Goodnight!" JimGabriel waves from the top of the stairs, guileless grin plastered on his stupid archangel face.
Crowley realizes the idiot is waiting for a response. Fine. "G'niiiighT."
The door clicks closed upstairs and Crowley is alone, standing in the middle of the bookshop. Aziraphale's bookshop. He can feel the Bentley is still, and wonders where his angel is right now. "Hmph, our car," he sneers, but there is a note of affection mixed with his growl.
He turns slowly, feeling Aziraphale's absence with a pang, then saunters far too casually over to the desk, almost as if he is performing for his absent angel, wondering if Aziraphale can feel the bookshop the way he feels the Bentley. He lingers there, and his hand moves as if of its own accord, touching the papers, caressing the heavy paperweight, the angel's spectacles. The clock ticks softly in the corner. The old building creaks and settles. He murmurs the words, tastes how they feel in his mouth - "Our bookshop."
A moment later Aziraphale's chair is miracled into the hallway upstairs, opposite the door to JimGabriel's room. Crowley sits, whisky tumbler in hand, watching the door. His angel is not the only one who can guard, he thinks, settling in.
words of affirmation
acts of service
gift-giving
quality time
physical touch
+ bonus
@moonyinpisces and I proudly present Chapter 1 of “Sleight Of Hand”: The Pledge!
Read on Ao3 (with extra Comic pages!)
Early release of comic pages as well as sketches and uncensored Versions on my Patreon.
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“It’s our last night on Earth,” Crowley says, voice wrung together in chapped, rusted parts. “Six thousand years of this. Of never– of not getting to– *eurgh!”* Uncaring of the styling, Crowley runs frantic hands through his hair, mussing it up in tight, torturous fists. “Six thousand years. And it’s a bloody *photograph* that does us in.”
His eyes are golden, molten in the warm, ambient light. The pulse at his long, taut neck is fluttering like a trapped bird, the skin there thin, delicate. “Hm,” Aziraphale says distractedly, without thinking too much of it. “I’d always thought it would’ve been what we’d got up to at Job’s.”
Crowley zeroes in on Aziraphale, at that point. All of this has been musings to himself, of attacks towards nobody in particular. Perhaps God. Most likely God. But now he’s not looking at God, and he’s looking at Aziraphale instead. It sets Aziraphale on edge, prickles the angelic sense at the back of his neck. It quickens his pulse, settles the heat of his body decidedly southward. But more than that, perhaps most of all; it makes Aziraphale be as reminded of Crowley’s human body as he is of his own, at this exact moment.
The demon takes a step forward. Aziraphale, a stuttered step back. His fingers are curled into the top of his opposite sleeve, tips brushing the edge of the polaroid he’d nearly grabbed.
“Calm down, Crowley,” he says waveringly.
“Calm *down?*” Crowley repeats quietly, dangerously. He’s looking Aziraphale in the eye, now. He’s looking nowhere else.
Another step. Forward, back. Aziraphale licks his lips.
“It’s all going to be alright, my dear boy,” he tries. He clears his throat, shifts his fingers further into his sleeve. “You see–”
He’s cut off. Quick as a flash, Crowley’s gripping him around the shoulders, shoves him back so his arse is pressed to the lip of the vanity, the lit-up mirror alighting him from behind. Aziraphale’s arms draw up around the demon’s shoulders in surprise. There’s nowhere else to go, no more steps to take. The look in Crowley’s eye speaks of a hunger all-too-familiar to Aziraphale. Reminiscent of meat, of basements, of languishing drunkenly at the end of another man’s Earth. Behind Crowley’s head, Aziraphale has the photograph clenched in one hand.
“Crowley,” Aziraphale whispers.
“Don’t–” Crowley’s expression is fierce, desperate. “Don’t say *anything–*”
Aziraphale opens his mouth to say something else.
*“Angel.”* Crowley makes a desperate sort of sound, and then their lips are pressed together, and Aziraphale freezes altogether.
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Okay I know I've only watched the first season and there's a lot I don't know about season two But. I have a lot of feelings about Crowley and I'm trying to figure out why and this is what I've got. I'm sure at least some of you relate to some of these. I'm using he/him for him this post.
One. He's so disillusioned with almost everything (I say almost on purpose). Heaven? He lost faith in heaven when he fell, maybe before he fell, maybe he fell because he lost faith in it. He's so frustrated with Aziraphale's belief in the goodness of heaven, but he still respects that belief and even admires Aziraphale for it, only really showing how upset he is when Aziraphale lets that blind faith guide decisions. Crowley always says things that imply being an angel is a good trait, but that facade breaks when Aziraphale is fucking up, because he doesn't want Aziraphale to get hurt or this world to end. As for hell? He certainly doesn't have faith in hell, and doesn't belong in it. Mankind? Nope, he frequently points out how flawed and cruel humans are. Himself? Crowley doesn't have faith in himself, really, either.
And I relate to that feeling of... losing faith in all the things that are supposed to be Right and Good, like society and family, parents and friends, lovers and yourself, government and laws.
Two. I said almost, and that's because Aziraphale. He has such relentless faith in the fact that they are friends, they are best friends, they are lovers. 6000 years, and he keeps reading beneath the lines, continues to stand by Azi even when Aziraphale reminds him that he is a demon, that they are on opposing sides, that Aziraphale does not like him, that they are not friends, that Aziraphale couldn't care less about him. Crowley knows Aziraphale doesn't mean it, just like we know. And we're so used to seeing romances where one character says something they don't mean and the rift goes on forever and we get frustrated because idiots, he didn't mean it. But Crowley knows Aziraphale doesn't mean it. He doesn't stop saying they are best friends. That they are more. He calls out Aziraphale on his bullshit and points out that Aziraphale does love him. And he does it without pushing, just lines dropped over millennia, a reminder to Aziraphale that Crowley feels the same, that he knows, he understands. It's such a relentless, powerful optimism from a demon who has lost faith in everything else.
And I know how that feels, to believe in a love so strongly that you can take blow after blow to that belief and have it remain unshattered. To give gentle reminders that you see through the lies, and that you are there and you know they didn't want to hurt you.
Three. Another caveat, though. How much can that belief withstand? Yes, Crowley knows that Aziraphale is his lover and best friend. But how many doubts have crept in over those thousands of years? When Aziraphale said he didn't like Crowley, and the demon replied with you do, how much of it was posturing? When Crowley has been cast out from heaven and persecuted by hell, found no friends in humankind, it must have shattered his sense of self-worth. He calls Aziraphale his only friend, his best friend. Imagine your only friend repeatedly insisting you aren't friends. Yes, you know it is because to be friends is to put both of you in danger, that Aziraphale does not mean it and has shown time and again that he loves Crowley and that's why he's lying to protect him, but still. It must hurt. It must chip away at logic and rationality, bit by bit.
And I know how that feels, too, to begin to doubt that you are loved, because that objective knowledge that yes, you are loved gets broken and eroded by so many instances of being hurt, dismissed, ignored, betrayed.
Four. No one seems to be putting Crowley first. Not heaven, certainly, heaven threw him out millennia ago. As for hell, Satan and the demons only tolerate him, willing to kill him as soon as he betrays the slightest hint of goodness. Humans are too fleeting, gone before you can blink, and they have never paid any regard to the individual over the 'greater good', certainly not to a lonely demon who can't get close to them because they die too soon. And Aziraphale chooses heaven, chooses being good over Crowley every single time. Some of the time, he is right. But imagine being Crowley. Given the choice between salvation and Aziraphale, happiness and Aziraphale, anything and Aziraphale, he would choose Aziraphale. And he has to watch, time and again, as Aziraphale chooses other things over him, finally pulling back from the kiss and choosing the heaven he doesn't even like over what Crowley offers him. Crowley, as far as he can see, is no one's first choice, no one's first priority. It may not be true. But it does feel like that.
And that feeling is so real, to know that the people you would die for would not do the same for you. The people you put first wouldn't put you first. That you are giving knowing that you cannot take. It may be real, or it may not be, but the fact is it often looks that way to me and Crowley and a lot of us, and that hurts.
These aren't all, of course, there's the relentless questioning, the needing to be good, the needing to be bad, the horrible urges and battling them, the kinder impulses and figuring out how to fit them into an awful world, the consequences for being good, whether they are worth it, just everything about Crowley. But the four above I wanted to elaborate on.
I'm fucked, I love a fictional character again. Again, I might be wrong about a lot of things, so there's that. Aren't we all.
Day 148 of posting Good Omens memes Everyday until Season 3
damsel Angel in distress
Golden Tears - part 2
GOOD OMENS "Every Day"
writing is the most insane hobby it's like,
is it easy? no
is it fast? also no
but is it fun? well,