I suppose I should say here that this story was never meant to see the light of day. I'm usually more of a "serious" writer--that is, I write stories using only my own original characters, suitable for publication without being sued. However, occasionally a story comes along--or a character or two--that grabs my attention, and I indulge myself in a story that isn't enitrely my own creation. Unlike my other works, I usually keep these to myself.
But stories are meant to be read. This one has been nagging at my conscience, and I couldn't keep it locked away anymore. Call me crazy, maybe, but sometimes stories take on a mind of their own.
Please, keep in mind that this is the self-indulgent fantasy of a sixteen-year-old girl. It's got a bit of self-insertion (although, from the authors I know, that's not exactly a rare thing), a bit of Mary-sueishness, and a bit of a random tangency to it; although I swear, there is a plot. I hope that doesn't dissuade you from reading the story itself, because I do think it's pretty good.
Oh, yeah, and disclaimer: I don't own about half the characters in this story. This goes for the whole story, because I don't want to put this at the start of every chapter.
Anyway, once upon a time...
Jen was wet.
She really wondered, for a moment, what in the world had possessed her to come to England. The fact that she hated America so much, perhaps – with its annoying religious bigots and televangelsts and delusions of democracy. Or maybe it was in her longing desire to make something of herself, something minus a cubicle or a happy house with a happy family. Perhaps because her semi-idealistic plan had sounded so good and exciting, to be a freelance writer for several newspapers, get some stories published, and scrape up a living.
Or maybe it was just the promise of rain. England was always rainy, everyone in the USA had said. They were right.
Jen wasn't too fond of the rain at the moment.
Somewhere in Soho, lost, alone, and feeling very dumb, she sat on a sidewalk.
Well, dammit. Things had been going so well for her back at home, too – she'd had a true love (painfully unrequited), and a best friend (who she didn't really want to call), and a family and a home and a warm, dry bed to sleep in nights…
Now all Jen had was an old typewriter – currently safe-ish in a large plastic bag its tartan case– and her Bag O' Books, which she kept on her back at all times. Food wasn't on her priorities list, for some reason, and she was starting to regret it.
True, starving was a great way to lose weight, but Jen would rather live to gain it. Honestly, was looking fabulous a good reason to starve?
No.
But she wasn't trying to look fabulous, now was she? No, she was just a homeless bum in the middle of Soho, wishing – almost praying, even, but Jen was a staunch atheist and refused to ask for the help of a nonexistent superhero in the sky – for a miracle to get her out of the rain.
Jen leaned against the wall of a random building behind her, shivering. What had she been thinking?
A bell chimed.
"Excuse me, dear girl, but are you stuck in the rain?"
A man was looking at her from a shop door—tall and blonde and prim. Small spectacles were perched on his nose precariously.
He was gay, Jen thought. Gay and English and smart and, most likely, safe to accept help from. Gay men weren't supposed to rape women, were they? They found women about as attractive as she did. So Jen would be fine accepting help.
Plus, she didn't have a choice. It was trust this guy or die as a paranoid bitch.
She'd been a paranoid bitch long enough.
"Y-y-yes," Jen stuttered. "Th-th-thank you."
---------------------------------------------
The man was older than she'd thought at first – it was impossible to place his age, actually – and his hair was blonde, and he had angelic eyes.
And he was stunningly good at pulling towels from thin air, because he certainly hadn't had one a second ago. Jen smiled and accepted the fluffy pink thing graciously as he led her into the back room of his shop.
His bookshop.
It was an antique bookshop, of all places – in downtown Soho? Somehow, Jen didn't think that fit the theme of retail and porn. And these books were…
Wow.
Jen stared at the old volumes as she changed into new clothes – they fit her perfectly, even if they were a bit old-fashioned. Skirts. Disgusting.
Only Jen didn't really mind skirts, honestly. Four years of hiding behind a high school mask had trained her to hate the girly side of her persona. Maybe it was time to change that in England. Maybe it was time to switch masks.
Jen wondered, for a moment or two, why he'd have women's clothes back here. She didn't really want to—
Those eyes…
Oh.
Well. She'd been wrong, then. That was that.
The man was making a cup of tea for her when she left the back room, and she smiled. "Two sugars," Jen told him. "No cream or anything, can't stand cream."
The man smiled.
She knew now, and she had to admit that the coincidence was incredible. Finding an angel that owned a bookshop in downtown Soho… Not that she'd ever admit it to herself, but the entire reason she'd been drawn to Soho in the first place was in hopes of this.
He wasn't that angel, of course. Couldn't be. The coincidence would be too much.
"You're an angel, aren't you?" Jen said. It wasn't really a question, for all the punctuation it had.
The man dropped his cup of tea. It smashed on the floor with a satisfying chlink, and hot tea pooled around Jen's now-bare toes. It was warm, but it burned comfortably.
"You knew? How…"
Jen shrugged. "Lucky guess. You just got to be able to look. My name's Jen. Jennifer Stone. I'm an atheist, so if you want to throw me out of here, I understand. Thanks for the dry-off."
The angel smiled and suddenly the cup hadn't smashed at all – couldn't have, seeing as it was nice and safe in his hands, steaming happily, and Jen's toes were still frozen. "Nonsense, Jennifer. Did you want your tea?"
"Thanks. Never heard your name, angel."
"Aziraphale."
There was another satisfying chlink from the ground. A burning sensation crept up through her skirt and onto her legs.
He was that angel.
"You don't know a demon named Crowley, do you?"
"Please stop knowing things," Aziraphale said. "It's rather disconcerting." He blinked, and Jen sipped her tea. For some reason, she wasn't as shocked by this.
"For you? I thought you were a bibliophile! Don't you read, angel?" Jen was grinning madly. "Mea dea, Aziraphale! You're real!"
"As opposed to what? How do you know who I am?"
Jen grinned. "Let me get my bag, Zira. I gotta show you something."
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"A book? I suppose it's fitting."
"I guess." Jen grinned. "A good book, too. One of my favourites."
"You've read it, then?"
"Yeah." Jen nodded. She looked tentatively at the book in her hands, rumpled and worn. A dog bite adorned the upper right corner on the back cover. There were odd stains and random scribbles As Made By Jen on nearly every page. Page sixty-three to ninety-three were held in solely by sticky tape and glue
The book was well-loved.
"Do you know these guys, then?"
"No," said Aziraphale. "Perhaps Crowley does, but I'd bet…" He paused.
"Yeah?"
"Ineffable," said Aziraphale softly. "How am I going to tell Crowley about this?"
Soft silence crept into the conversation. Jen fiddled with the tape that held the cover of Good Omens onto the piece of literature itself. It was Aziraphale on the cover, but the picture looked nothing like the angel. His hair was wilder in reality, for one, and he was older. Chubbier.
The clothes looked about right, though.
"Oh, forgive me. You mush be exhausted, Jennifer. I can… Er. I don't have a bed, I'm afraid, but I can miracle up a cot in the back room, if you want…"
"I'm not all that tired, actually." Her stomach growled like Richard Parker from The Life of Pi. "I'm half-starved, though. You wouldn't happen to have anything to eat, would you?"
"There's an excellent pizza place not far from here. Do you mind a short walk?"
"If it ends in food? Not at all."
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"This isn't real pizza," Jen said, staring at the little chequered napkins. "You don't eat real pizza with a knife and fork. Unless it's, like, school pizza. Then you have to, or it'll dissolve your hands."
"Really?"
"No, not really," Jen said. "But it looks like it can." She took another bite, devouring the not-pizza hungrily.
"Doesn't seem to be effecting your appetite," Aziraphale said jokingly. Jen shook her head and gulped.
"I haven't eaten in… I don't even know. Few days."
"Poor dear."
"There are people who have it worse," Jen said. "There are kids who can't go to sleep at night without wondering if they'll still be there in the morning, or if they'll be in the army. There are people who can't help but wonder if they'll live another day, or if it'll be the day that the Janjaweed finally hit their village. There are people…"
"Yes, yes, I'm an angel, remember?"
"I wondered about that," Jen said, and realized that her words made absolutely no sense. "Er. I mean, I wondered why you live in England, instead of Darfur or Russia or something. You know, where you're really needed."
Aziraphale sighed. "I… I was assigned here."
"Assigned here?"
"Because of my relationship with Crowley."
"You love him," Jen said. It wasn't a question, it was a statement.
Aziraphale blushed gracefully. "I wouldn't say—"
"I've read the book, remember. And the movie script. You two have some serious sexual tension built up, you know."
"Er."
"I know, I know, you're an angel. Continue on with your story, Aziraphale."
"Er, yes. I was assigned to England because… They felt I wasn't… Because of Crowley, I was…"
"Coherent sentences, angel."
"Upstairs felt that I wasn't qualified for big miracles," Azirapahle said. "I'm too easily… tempted."
"What'd Crowley say to that?"
"He doesn't know. I have no intention of telling him."
"Wait, so they assigned you here with Crowley?"
"I was assigned here shortly after the French Revolution," the angel said. "Crowley went over to America for a bit, and then showed up on my doorstep one day ranting about how they didn't even need his help."
Jen laughed. "He's got that right."
"I'm sorry, that's your homeland, isn't it?"
"Yeah, but I hate it there."
"I haven't been since the Revolution," said Aziraphale.
"Thought you said you were in France?"
"Left the States shortly after they won freedom," said Aziraphale. "I felt I was needed elsewhere."
"You dislike the States, then?"
Aziraphale paused. "Well," he admitted, "Yes. It reminds me of…"
He stopped.
"Of Heaven?"
"The illusion of freedom," said Aziraphale. "It's a little too… disconcerting."
"No matter what they say, they never mess up."
"Even when things don't work out…"
"…It always feels like everything's going according to plan. Like it's all justified."
"Like it's all ineffable," Aziraphale whispered. "Exactly."
There was a silence.
"I'm a bibliophile, too," Jen said suddenly. "Shakespeare, Bradbury, Verne, Adams, and Gaiman and Pratchett, of course."
"Really? That's refreshing to see in young people nowadays."
"Yeah, I like to think so."
Silence.
"Shakespeare's my favourite."
More silence.
"I like old books, too."
Aziraphale smiled like an angel. "Do you want to move into the bookshop, Jennifer?"
Jen grinned. "Never even crossed my mind. Can I?"
"Of course. You'll have to work, of course. Earn your living."
Jen raised an eyebrow. "Love to, but depends on the work. By doing what, exactly?"
Aziraphale's face turned roughly the colour of a tomato. "I'm an angel, Jennifer. I meant by doing some work around the shop – dusting, book repair, general upkeep."
"Oh."
"I mean, really."
"Sorry. What can I say, 'Zira? I'm an American." Jen smiled innocently. "These are the places my mind's been trained to go."
-------------------------------------------
A second Arrangement was made. It said:
Jen would stay at the bookshop with Zira, taking any needed sleep on a cot in the back room. He would provide her with any necessities she needed. In return, Jen would take general care of his books—dusting, re-binding covers, fixing the pages that got eaten by bookworms, etc. She would also—and Aziraphale was especially stern about this one—continue writing, and preferably show him what she wrote.
Jen agreed to this on the condition that he would never attempt to convert her and let her handle Crowley's temptations on her own.
"Agreed," said Aziraphale, and then they shook on it.