Author's Note: Well, I'm on the computer typing an essay for school and I decided I was going to take a break and look online. I thought I'd go ahead and post my only COMPLETE Good Omens story here. (I already have it on severeal different places on lj.)
This is a short little ficlet I did about Aziraphale and Crowley. Crowley has a minor boo-boo (I've always wanted to say that :D) at first, but it's not graphically described. This little story was inspired by my possessed live journal account that screened everyone who commented on me for a few days even though all my settings were set for it not to.
This ficlet is complete--no cliffhangers here--just over 1400 words. This was born from the idea that sometimes one ends up barring people that one doesn't mean to. This is what came out of it.
(Good Omens' Aziraphale and Crowley do not belong to me, they belong to T. Pratchett and N. Gaiman. I'm just writing about them because I like them.)
Blessings
"Hold still," Aziraphale said softly. "It's harder for me to heal you properly when you're wriggling."
"It Sssstings," Crowley hissed, glaring through his shades. "And I do not wriggle," he added in an offended tone, wriggling enthusiastically as the angel finished healing his hand and moved up to his wrist.
"I am sorry," Aziraphale responded contritely.
"You'd better be blasssted 'sorry,'" Crowley murmured. "I sstill can't believe you're ssso sstupid as to Blesss the front door to your ssshop!"
"Do stop hissing at me, Crowley, dear; I'm trying to focus." The angel wrinkled his forehead in concentration and the burns trailing up his counterpart's forearm to his elbow disappeared. "There." Aziraphale turned Crowley's left arm over this way and that, peering at it. "Good as new."
"Bloody well isss—" The demon stopped mid hiss. "Is not. That arm'll be sore for a week. How's about next time you take a ride in the Bentley I have a Satanic Bible waiting for you to sit on."
Aziraphale stifled a sigh and finally released his friend's arm. "I told you, how was I to know that elderly nun—"
"I hope her wimple catches on fire at the next mass," Crowley interjected.
"Put a Blessing on the door when she left the shop the other day. It isn't as if she consulted me!"
"Why'd she do it, anyway?"
Aziraphale managed to look a little guilty, recalling the conversation he'd had with the nun and that little part of it that, until the moment, had not seemed out of place.
000
"You're, er, certain you don't mind me having this, Sister?" Aziraphale was clutching the scroll and fervently reminding himself that being covetous was a Sin.
"It's the least I could do, after you saved Sister Mary's seeing-eye dog," Sister Catherine, the wizened nun, said placidly.
In truth, Aziraphale was embarrassed about the whole thing. He'd been waiting for Crowley in the park, reading a book while he walked to Their Park Bench, and he'd tripped over a duck. Before hand, he hadn't noticed duck, dog, or the two nuns. He soon had noticed all of them as the duck had flown hysterically back to the pond in a flutter of feathers and Sister Mary's seeing-eye dog (1) had barked enthusiastically and taken off into the pond after it. The retriever, although Aziraphale had been certain all dogs could swim (2), had panicked after he got in the middle of the water and had proceeded to sink. Sister Mary had begun screaming and Sister Catherine had taken off her wimple and prepared to jump in (3). Thus Aziraphale had hurriedly plunged into the water, rescued the dog, received a bite on the shoulder for his good deed, and was also pressed into having the women (and Henry) for tea and a drying out before he escorted the two nuns (and Henry) back to the safety of the nunnery.
Thus he found Sister Catherine in his shop bearing a gift of an original scroll of a very ancient monk's very ancient transcriptions. "It really isn't necessary for you to give me this, it's too much, and I never expected a reward…" That was true enough. "I- I simply can't a-accept," he stuttered on, realizing that there was some truth in the whole 'protesting too much' thing.
"We at the Abbey insist." Sister Catherine looked about the shop sharply, much like the way she had done the other day. "Mr. Fell, I have a question."
"Hmm?" Aziraphale was staring at the scroll. If Crowley had been there he would have said the angel was salivating. He wasn't, of course. Not quite.
"Do you…do you ever come in contact with evil?"
At least once a week, Aziraphale thought fondly, and then remembered to answer. "Er," he wasn't good at lying, especially not to a nun—it was almost as hard as him trying to lie to Crowley. He decided to take the same approach that he generally did with the demon—hedge the question. "I expect everyone does, now and then…Why ever would you ask?"
"Never mind, Mr. Fell," she'd said. "Thank you again for saving Henry and for the tea. I'll pray for you."
"Thank you," he said sincerely, though he felt kind of odd at the assertion—that'd be a change.
1. Who wasn't really a seeing-eye dog as such, but merely a retriever named Henry that the old woman loved dearly and wanted to take with her everywhere.
2. Really, Henry wasn't a very intelligent retriever or a very intelligent dog, but he did love Sister Mary, who overlooked his shortcomings and insisted he really was a seeing eye dog as he had never ran into anything. The sister herself wasn't quite blind, not with the glasses, thus so far the two had gotten on well together.
3. Yes, the Order they belonged to still wore wimples, which was somewhat fitting since the youngest of the nuns was legally a senior citizen. Aziraphale thought perhaps their Order was proof that God had a sense of humor… After all, the patron Saint of their nunnery was St. Andrew Avellino, patron saint of apoplexy (strokes).
000
"Why couldn't you tell the place was Blessed?" Crowley rolled down his sleeve and rubbed his left arm. "Thought it'd be funny if I was discorporated or Blessed out of existence, did you?"
Aziraphale frowned deeply and Crowley, despite his natural inclinations, shut up. He knew that look; he knew it well after 6000+ years. It said that Crowley Had Almost Gone Too Far with Aziraphale. (4)
Even so, the look in the angel's blue eyes was closer to that of one of hurt rather than one of wrath. Oh great, Crowley thought. He'd rather deal with wrath.
"Don't even joke about such matters, Crowley," Aziraphale said, somehow managing to sound wounded, stern, offended, and blameless all at the same time. "You know I'd never—"
"Yeah, yeah," Crowley put in hastily.
"Well," Aziraphale said, almost embarrassed. "We do have the Arrangement. Anyway, I would have been able to sense the Blessing on the door and I would have warned you, only I…" Aziraphale paused and looked decidedly guilty.
"You were reading, weren't you? Lost in a book! Bet you even forgot about dinner." Crowley decided to ignore the fact that his voice sounded almost sulky.
"A scroll, actually, and as for dinner, I knew you'd come fetch me, so I didn't think anything of looking over it, or, as you say, 'getting lost' in it for a time …"
"Well, just make sure it doesn't happen again."
Aziraphale looked horrified.
"I mean the Blessing that almost burnt my arm off, not the getting your nose stuck in a book or a scroll part," Crowley clarified.
Instantly, Aziraphale looked relieved. "Of course. In fact, I'm going to make it so that the bookstore can't be Blessed by anyone other than myself and naturally I won't set up any wards against you; it's safer for you that way...and for the shop."
"How so?"
Aziraphale smiled. "Well, even if I did bar you from entering, you'd barge in anyway and make a mess all over the floor."
Crowley was not amused. His look said so.
"Kidding, my dear. Dinner is on me tonight," the angel continued airily. And then, almost as an afterthought, "Nothing will ever hurt you again while you're here, I promise."
Crowley eyed the angel as they moved out of the shop and to his Bentley—that had sounded awfully soppy, but at least it meant he wasn't likely to open the door to the shop again to discover, to his dismay, that his arm was burning with holy light. "The drinks on you, too?"
The angel had fooled him with that trick once, picking up the tab for dinner but not the drinks, though Crowley had naturally just left without paying. Still, it'd been awfully sneaky on Aziraphale's part, even IF Crowley had let him foot the bill for a year.
"Certainly," Aziraphale replied, smiling. He had been, to be honest, thoroughly shocked when he'd heard Crowley's yelp and then seen his arm smoking… He didn't like to think about how he could have lost his one-time Adversary; instead, he focused on the fact that he had not lost him and that the injury had been easy enough for him to heal. (5) It was so lucky, so lucky that they were still able to exchange banter and head out to the Ritz. Funny, it was; how Blessings came in all guises…even that of a demon. "So long as I choose the wine."
Crowley, somewhat despite himself, nodded and smiled back. He could live with that.
4. Again.
5. Sister Catherine was getting up there in age, after all, and her Blessings could hardly be expected to be as spry as they were in their youth.
