DISCLAIMER: All the wondrous characters, foibles and happenstances of Good Omens do not belong to me. I have but the privilege of being able to borrow them a short while.
A/N: Thank you as always to everyone who is reading, following and favouriting. You guys are absolutely wonderful.
Your random Good Omens-ervation of the day: Sometimes I wonder if the real reason Crowley struggled with saying the word 'boullibouise' was to trick Aziraphale into making kissy faces at him. If you think about it like that, the whole context of the scene changes. For the better really ;)
Hope that you enjoy the 'update', my dears!
~X~
~Sunday, April 7th, 2019~
The Grange Estate Nursing Home
Nine months or so until the Apex...
"You seem sad, Anthony, dear."
Crowley quietly cursed himself. He'd let his thoughts carry him away again. Work was supposed to have made this all easier; not giving him an excess of time in which to stint on things what might otherwise have occupied his busy mind.
Not the past.
Certainly not Aziraphale.
He had never blamed Aziraphale for his... not quite part in the act of his damnation. He was as much a victim of the circumstances as had been the rest of them. Crowley had no expectations of the angel having ever needed to do something outlandish and courageous. It would likely have seen him just tossed right on into the Ring of Fire himself and what a perfectly wonderful waste of an angel that would have been.
They hadn't known one another then. Not truly. But Crowley had cherished the other angel's kindness and had obviously never forgotten it; had sought in some minor means to repay it all those many years. But he had not been expecting grandiose gestures on behalf of someone with whom he had had the most menial of personal contact back in the days of Heaven.
They knew one another now.
That was the difference.
"I'm a little sad. Nothing for you to worry about."
"I'll worry if I want." Gretchen said. She puffed out smoke. They were out in the garden once again, sharing a sneaky cigarette. They were going to play canasta later, but nicotine imbuement always had to come first. "Got nothing else to worry my head over, so I might as well fuss over you."
"I'm a staff member. You're not allowed to fuss over me. Boundaries." Crowley blew out his own puff of smoke. He had been smoking quite a bit more lately; even when he hadn't been at work. He'd taken to doing so on the patio of his flat. He felt bad still. Even though he and Aziraphale were spending time apart, it still struck him as being demonstrably disrespectful somehow.
But it helped a little. It helped with the stress.
He was quite a bit more stressed than usual these days.
Wasn't getting nearly enough hugs, for one.
"You and your Alex still not talking, pet?"
"Still not talking."
"Life's short-"
"- I know."
"- shouldn't ever let the sun set on an argument, that's what Alfred and I always used to say. Sort out your shit before you sleep."
"Classy as ever, Gretch." Crowley flicked ash out somehow indiscriminately into the pine bark framing the surrounding rose bushes. Bushes that were in such vibrant bloom you might never have suspected that their roots were currently trembling with enough force to incite a tremor in a small subset of islands just off of the Greater Antilles. Not that you would ordinarily suspect such a thing, though you might get to wondering just what magic it was that the gardener might have weaved so as to encourage the plants to profligate so vivaciously. Some special blend of fertilizer, perhaps. "This is just a little... just a little too complicated."
"No such thing. You're just stubborn."
"Not stubborn." Crowley said. Sucked back so hard from his cigarette that the smoke became lodged in the lump that had formed in his throat. His glasses were just as good as the fact that Gretchen was blind where such moments were concerned. He could hide the pinprick of tears, the shine of his eyes. The pain tucked into every damn near line of his ageless face. "Just too fast."
~X~
Café Phillies, Kensington High Street...
She had been known from the very earliest of times as Luxuria. Most modern humans however know her by another name:
Lust.
A Capital Vice. More colloquially known as one of the Seven Deadly Sins.
She'd kept busy in her retirement; atypically enough. The passions of humankind never slept. Not when there were so many willing bodies with which to sleep.
And lust was a busy lady.
Humans lusted voraciously and for quite a bit more than just the flesh. They lusted for most anything of which they wished to obtain. Power, money, popularity, respect, property... It was a drive as variant as it was universally intoxicating. And one which had never dimmed, not so much as a jot in all the thousands of years she had resided upon the earth; underpinning the undercurrents of transgressive human nature.
Most any creature under God's fair creation was subject to desire. None was exempt. And so her work would never be done. Not truly.
Her work took her many places. Corporate businesses. Real estate. Drug dens. Love dens. The highest rises of the highest buildings, to the lowest conflagrate of the shallowest underbelly in the seedier aspects of inner city dwellings. She had overseen the filming of any thousand of pornographic films; some of which had been directly responsible for Crowley's long standing fear of being seduced by provocative service people. She had also been responsible for corporate takeovers, for student teacher affairs, for any far reaching number of extroverted and sometimes deeply disturbing perversions of which the mind might have sort to indulge so as to scratch some particular itch.
Such things never sat at all well with Castitas. Theirs was a drive which had substantially diminished in comparison to the explosion that had been Luxuria's over the passing of the years. So few individuals truly wished to abstain from those things which wrought them pleasure, it would seem. The twenty first century had proved particularly challenging.
Castitas, or Chastity as she might better be known, might have been Luxuria's sister. They were both of dark skin, dark hair and brown eyes. Where Luxuria's body was curvier, more buxom, more... Falstaffian, Castitas was smaller, toned and trimmed. She often went about her business in designer brand exercise gear and in that not so ironic fashion most women adhere to now in a sad handed reference to 'athleisure wear'. Where Luxuria's hair was big, tall and unapologetically permed, Castitas's hair was sleek and straight and often slicked back into a high ponytail. Their eyes, though similar in colour, sparkled differently. Luxuria's vampish and knowing. Castitas's bright and wide and all too vaguely 'morning-person-ish'.
They met at the café with much the same hug they had always greeted one another with. Counter parts, of course, were never immune to the intrinsic pull they felt whence their other half was concerned. That feeling of undiluted love, of duty, of balance, was always ever so much present.
They were joined by Temperantia and Gula; Temperance and Gluttony, respectively. Gula was every bit a terrible American stereotype; represented in form as a large bellied man in a plaid shirt, khaki pants and a cowboy hat. If there had been a chicken bone on which to suck, he would most certainly have been gnawing his slightly crooked front teeth down into the bare marrow of it. Cafe's were typically scant of such offerings however and so he made do with a spattering of assorted pastries; each more rich and decadent and injected thickly with custard than the last.
Temperantia could be most readily described in but one word and safely set to rest as this being substantial enough: Grey. She wore a grey suit, charcoal grey shoes and had tightly pinned back hair that was streaked with strands of silver, which aspired to be grey when they had tired of voraciously beaming their worth to the world. She bore a look of placated, eternal patience and emitted ever so soft, tittering sighs at Gula as he wolfed down an indecent and inordinate amount of food; demonstrably less than the cup of lavender tea from which she had taken only two menial sips, thus far.
It had been two months since they had sat down with the representatives of Heaven and Hell and signed their contracts. Two months, quintessentially, in which they were intended to be conducting some work. But still, they waited.
They waited on the others. Spread far and thin, as they so often were. They would be difficult to find, for it was not their habitual scheduled meeting up time.
And some were spread much further apart than others.
"Have you heard word from the rest?" Luxuria asked, scooping a small spoonful of whipped cream from the decadent curl which rested atop her drink. Gula eyed it obstinately, considered perhaps helping himself and deciding, quite wisely, that appropriating from Lust was never likely to end well. Lust had immeasurable passion and such passion could be ever so easily integrated into the likes of rampant and ever the more indulgent violence.
"Humanitas messaged earlier. His contract arrived the day before yesterday, only just signed it. Should be touching down this morning." Castitas smiled, slapping her fingers ever so lightly to the backs of Luxuria's hand, who was doing her utmost to be seductive with the blob of cream which had purposefully affixed itself to the tip of her nose. "Off again in the jungle somewhere. Aid work, you know. Invidia can't be far behind."
"We can only hope!" The four gathered members of the Contingency plan sat up straight in their seats and smiled, to see none other than the bubbly, moustached and joyous Humanitas alight to the side of their table. He kissed each upon the cheek, for this was nothing if not Kindness given form and made the effort then of crossing to the far side of the room, so as to fetch for himself a chair that was not going to have inconvenienced anyone by his appropriating it. "Been an age and a half! I do so miss that darling creature. And you know they would be ever so worried as to what I have been getting up to. Dear thing."
"That's Envy for you." Temperantia took the ever so slightest touch of a taste from her cup before setting it back down into the saucer whence it came. Not so much as a stray drop had tarnished its surface. "What do you make of all this then? Quite honestly, we're all a little flummoxed."
"I'll tell you what's flummoxing. The way that our powers are exuding." Luxuria stated, stretching out some of the kinks in her back and resulting in a number of humans sitting nearby going home to conduct some very indecent dealings with one another after they had finished their vanilla slice. "Every since we signed those contracts, our preternatural pheromones have just been expunging like crazy. I could control it before; send out small bursts where wanted but this! I feel like I'm walking around with the most terrible hormonal body odour ever concocted! A couple started to actually take their clothes off in the park when I crossed through the other morning! Police were called, I think. Saw the blue lights. I might have felt rather the embarrassed if I wasn't... well, me."
"The Apocalypse." Castitas remarked, directing some of her own energy towards the hormonal couples in the hopes that it might drain out some of that unintentional spill over that her counterpart had imparted. "The Anti-Christ denounced their responsibilities and negated the ending of the world. The Four Horseman failed. And so we have been charged with picking up the pieces."
"Did they really suppose that the shadows of the human condition were truly substantial enough to see it through? The culmination of it all?" Gula grunted, spooning in another forkful of food. A great deal of it had taken refuge in the borders of his moustache, twitching out of range of his tongue with the propensity of a threatened weasel. "Never send a horseman to do the job of fighter pilot, that's what I say."
"It was understood that humanity would, through force of free will, instigate the means by which it would ultimately destroy itself, dear Gula." Humanitas said, waiting until the serving lady had noticed his arrival and approaching before making an order for himself. Never one to inconvenience others. "One supposes they were hardly in need of an Anti-Christ really. They're ever so clever at destroying themselves. What does one child of Satan really amount to, at days end? Lubrication by which to ease the inevitable transition ever downward?"
"You remember the Ark?" Temperantia poked a finger differentially towards the sky. An ironically clear and near cloud free blue sky; pock marked only by a pair of birds twirling idly in some afterthought of a seasonally inappropriate mating dance. "Suppose it to be a bit like this? You think She's... ticked off again?"
"She always was a bit... temperamental." Gula grunted, fishing the nail of his index finger about between his teeth. He pulled a face as Temperantia swatted him for what was, given who he was, a typically indulgent statement. "Oh, come on, love! You know that's a fair assessment! She's the equivalent of a drunken great aunt sitting on a stairwell with a glass of straight gin after a party in which no one complimented her shoes. Taking a lash at anyone what ticked her off and then pretending later that there was some deeper meaning behind it."
"This is the Almighty about whom we are speaking." Luxuria reminded. She was not altogether in disagreement of this assessment (goodness knows she had known the Lord just as long as any of them) but this was still the One whom had substantially more power over any of them. She may very well have been the only one, but that power wielded was quite enough to keep them all ticking along congenially enough. "She has her reasons for doing what requires doing. We know better than most anyone why."
"Not entirely why." Said Castitas. She was a Virtue, not an angel. Questioning was well within her capabilities. "But never mind the intricacies of it. The pondering is pointless. The how and the why intrigues me more."
"Ira." Humanitas said and the word was enough to close down whatever energy had been driving the conversation. It was as near as taboo a topic as the Vices and the Virtues might ever broach. He did in fact, broach it all the same. "Have any of you been in touch with Patientia?"
Luxuria replied. "She felt him. He arrived. Almighty only knows how. But he arrived." Her eyes, those eyes the colour of the sweet, purple lily, spanned the group. The column of her beautiful throat observably rose and fell. "He's on his way."
"Well... God only help the poor bastard what sent him there, that's all I can say."
Temperantia glanced at Gula, who was slogging back what had to have been about his tenth full fat latte with whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles.
"It was God Herself what sent him there, love."
"Yes, but via having granted the instructions to that poor angel what was charged with clipping his wings and installing his prison. Wrath does not discriminate. He will apply his rage to that whom he feels slighted him. And God is out of the reach of one even so profligate as rage."
They sat a few moments in silence; allowing the swirl of customers to bustle about their business, plainly agitated by the presence of some many conflagrating emotions all but battering at the borders of their spirits.
"Do we know if there are any interlopers?" Castitas asked, tucking one foot behind her ankle in that ever so prim way what seemed proper with the women of the upper class in any such ages past. Temperantia glanced up ever so briefly, taking stock of the entirety of the world in that one seemingly innocuous gesture alone, before delicately plucking up her cup and sipping from the still nearly full contents.
"Just the usual. The two earthbound agents."
"We expect any trouble whence they're concerned?"
"I shouldn't think so. They're charming sorts, but not the brightest. The Angel would be the one to worry about most, I should think. He's the combative. The demon has nothing in the chambers." Humanitas, having only taken a quick sip from his coffee, exclaimed softly, bringing an appropriately bronzed and patched satchel around to perch in his lap. He petted the palm of his hand against the bulges permeating the aged sides. "Which reminds me. I have a book what needs returning."
They all sat in quiet repose a while longer. Sipped from their drinks. Watched the world as it was passing by.
A storm would soon be coming. They should enjoy the peace while it lasted.
~Las Vegas Arcade, Soho~
In a gaming arcade, not so far removed from the café in which the spattering of Virtues and Vices were enjoying their drinks, three demons and four angels, shielded from the Vices spells by very complex magic, were doing their utmost to look as though they weren't in fact attempting to have a clandestine meeting.
It was proving difficult. The young humans gathered within the complex seemed to be staring at them an awful lot. And that was even before Hastur had near discorporated himself in an attempt to thrash the living Heaven out of one of the pimply little pricks at Dance, Dance Revolution. It had, in hindsight, been a poor choice of location, Gabriel conceded. Anywhere that dancing might inevitably occur proved far too tantalising a distraction for demons.
At least Lord Beelzebub seemed focused, which was par for the course. Perhaps a little too focused. They were currently taking out their intense irritation on a game of Whack-a-mole, to the point in which the angel had started to feel genuine empathy for the inanimate plastic beasts.
"Well, that's going to be an awkward one." Hastur remarked between deep, wheezing gasps; barely holding himself up over the frame of the machine Beelzebub was currently so engaged with. His legs had all but given up the pretence of being in any way shape or form capable of supporting a human body and draped along the floor behind him like so much bedraggled river kelp.
"It's the only loophole we can glean from the contracts." Michael remarked, visibly wincing and closing their eyes in response to one of Beelzebub's more vicious bommy knocker applied assaults. "They're no longer affiliate agents. They have been discharged."
"Why should that make any difference if angels that have been damned from Heaven are still subject to the contract?" Dagon asked, contentedly toying with the yo-yo she had purchased by having exchanged the tickets she had won from the Dunk-a-shot machine nearby. She was quite proficient at some of the tricks already, Gabriel begrudgingly acknowledged. Especially the walking the dog one, which she seemed to be taking some strange esoteric delight in executing over and over and over again.
"Damnation was not considered, by the letter to be actual discharge from active duties. It was... project reassignment, if anything." Uriel said, hands set routinely behind her back and trying to pretend as though she hadn't yet been on the receiving end of any number of knocks from the enthusiastically wielded plastic yo-yo. Her shins in particular, were staring to feel particularly bruised. "An altering of a set standard of responsibilities. The demon Crowley and the angel Aziraphale have been struck from active duty. They are free agents."
"Freelancers. As are the Contingency Team." Beelzebub smacked a protruding mole head with the broaching of such genuine gleeful vehemence that they left a concave mark in the creatures plastic head. It seemed to retreat back into its hole just that enth degree faster than those which came before it.
"We looked over our original contracts. There is a loophole." Sandalphon contributed, nose wrinkled as was becoming something of the norm for when he was forced into the same relative confines as the demon Hastur. All that sweat that the lousy bastard had oozed out during his unnecessary dancing fit was so much an assault on the senses it ought truly be considered an executable offense.
"Agents discharged from active duty will no longer be subject to the stipulations, expectations and contractual obligations as are so set forth in these divine agreements." Gabriel quoted from memory. He was good at that; remembering things. Par for the course of being God's direct messenger. "They shall henceforth be permitted to act upon and do so forthwith as they do wish, with neither fear nor expectation of reprisal or consequence, exempting those which are exacted by the individually acting agents of either realm from which set individual hails."
"They're the exception." Beelzebub said, bomber knocker at the ready as the plastic moles now quivered with some recently acquired somatic fear in the confines of their acrylic burrows. "We discharged them. They're no longer bound by the contracts."
"Exactly. Take into account their inexplicable immunity to Holy water and to Hell Fire respectively-"
"-they're perfectly geared, so to speak."
Hastur groaned, smacking his forehead into the side of the console so hard that it rousted each of the moles out from their holes in squealing unison. "This is going to be a bloody nightmare. As if the flash bastard wasn't smug enough already."
Beelzebub didn't say anything, though they were ever so much in agreement. Instead, they continued to quietly take out their frustration on the innocent heads of the plastic moles, which served as ever so much a poor replacement for the head that they would be much prefer to be caving in.
~A.Z Fell & Co - London Soho~
With the exception of a spattering of red wine stains and the oft errant chest hair, Crowley never left much behind in Aziraphale's bookshop.
There were times he had crashed there, true. But he had always, without fail, scooped up his accumulative belongings before swanning on out the door the following day. It was important, that. Especially given that Aziraphale's once Heavenly affiliated work colleagues had made a habit of just showing up unannounced to check in on the progress of their earth bound angel. It wouldn't do for them to stumble across a jacket, or a sock or indeed a set of boxer briefs emanating the manner of odour most celestial agents would register as being of 'evil origins'.
Crowley had always been considerate so as to never land Aziraphale in this manner of predicament.
He hadn't been so careful following the Apocalypse.
He had left a singlet.
Aziraphale might not have even noticed it was there. It would seem that the demon had perhaps kicked it with the heel of his foot when showering one morning and had sent it skirting up under the piping of the sink. It had likely been there the better part of three to four months. There was a spattering of filmy cob webs adhered to it.
Aziraphale had taken to smelling it.
It had shocked him at first, because the singlet had been sitting there, stewing in its own juices for all those months. He had expected, upon unearthing it, that it would smell positively atrocious. He was surprised to find the odour quite subtle, in fact. Hardly what you might even call an odour.
If you were to ask Crowley what it was that Aziraphale smelt like, he would likely reply: "Sugar and spice and all things tooth corrodingly nice" and then perhaps follow it up with "Lavender, talc, fancy cologne and pious restitution". His was a scent Crowley knew all too well, for his sense of smell was in fact much stronger than most any other being on the planet. Most demons were like that, in fact. Once they had grown accustomed to a particular scent, they would be able to ferret out whatever was associated with said scent in fairly short order.
Crowley had known Aziraphale's scent long before Lavender, talc, fancy cologne and sugar and spice had been invented. Back then, he might have best described it as a sort of warm, clean smell. Similar to that of a newborn baby, if one must draw comparisons. It had helped, the addiction he had developed concerning Aziraphale's particular scent.
If in a direct crosswind, Crowley could tell precisely and from what direction Aziraphale was travelling. If the angel were not in the immediate vicinity, a good whiff of the air would inform Crowley as to what direction he was in. He could not always sense just where exactly Aziraphale was, but he could rightly tell whether or not the angel was in fact present and to which direction his presence was situated. Such as that very special time in France, when Crowley had all but (unbeknownst to Aziraphale) furiously doggy paddled across the English channel sensing that the angel had gone far astray of where Crowley had last left him. What you get really, for leaving an angel unattended for the better part of fifty years.
Angels, though ever so adept at sensing love (not so keenly when it came to the natural divergent borders encapsulated within a demon's earthly body, however) had a rather much poorer sense of smell. Not very different, one would say, to that which belonged to a human.
Aziraphale might, if indeed having been asked as to how Crowley smelt and being recovered enough from the inherent strangeness of being asked such a question, say: "Somewhat the more expensive designer brand of cologne likely ordered from some television catalogue, whatever liquor he might have been drinking and something subtle yet ever so akin to burnt toffee". (This was of course the preternatural imbuement of sulphur which lingered within his ethereal spirit. Perhaps Crowley smelt the slightest bit better, Aziraphale reasoned, because he was ever so slightly sweeter than his demonic bed fellows. Of course he would never suggest such a thing to Crowley. Though the demon hadn't at all minded when Aziraphale had mentioned that he smelt of toffee. He had affected a strut ever so peacock like for the better part of three decades following this particular admission.)
The singlet had smelt of all these things. There was the ever so slight pinch of sweat smell but not much, for Crowley, as he had himself stated, did not perspire heavily. And he was a very fussy, fastidiously clean individual, as a point of personal pride and, predominantly, because he enjoyed taking care of his earthly body, just as much as he did his car and his wings. To wit, the majority of his clothing items smelt very little of anything so much as unappealing as body odour but rather more of the nicer side of things that he contributed to his skin.
Aziraphale had rather shocked himself with the sniffing of the stowaway singlet. He had taken a perfunctory whiff, such as you would (for whatever the reason) before ferrying the clothing off towards its inevitable water boarding in the washing machine and then found himself coming to a stop whence halfway across his shop. He had taken the garment in both hands, given it the ever so slightest, nigh unconscious knead and then brought it back up to his nose. Closed his eyes as he inhaled much harder and deeper than earlier; pulling in as much of the smell as possible. So deeply, he would hardly have been surprised if the scent had shot on right through every channel of his brain and lodged itself firmly in the rear of his skull.
The cologne. The unmistakeable scent of scotch. The burnt toffee.
It was all there.
It was all Crowley.
He didn't even care that there was a curly chest hair sticking up out of the material. Or at least, what he had convinced himself was a chest hair.
It had been two months eight days since Crowley had asked for some time. For some space.
There had been nothing in the means of space between them that scant week earlier, when Aziraphale had miracled himself into the passenger seat of Crowley's Bentley and gotten his lips vigorously kissed for his efforts.
The kiss.
Oh dear Lord. The kiss.
Aziraphale still had his face buried in the singlet. The hair was tickling at his eyebrow. He barely registered it. Crowley's scent brought it all back with all the sharpness and clarity of a tattoo gun. Or so he imagined. He didn't have a tattoo. Not a physical one, anyone.
The width of his eyes. Those big, somehow vulnerable and deeply beautiful eyes, which never looked alarming to him so much as in perpetual, wanting need of validation, of warmth. Of reciprocation.
Eyes which had moved to look down at his lips. Only mere moments before he claimed them with his own.
The set of his jaw, pushed forward, lip jutting at that ever so petulant angle. So much Crowley. So very much Crowley that near piranha like expulsion of the lower jaw.
The arch of his cheekbones beneath Aziraphale's fingers...
Crowley's palm cupped to his cheek; not at all possessive but loving, reverential, of need, of great, irrepressible need.
That the kiss had not been perfect. Which made it ever so uniquely and utterly them. They had never done anything perfectly. Why should their first kiss be any different?
The feel of Crowley's lower lip moving in between his own. How he had pushed ever so slightly downward with it; creating that gap by which to glance his tongue to the space suddenly formed between Aziraphale's teeth...
The angel felt his traitorous human body stir once more at the memories.
Oh, he was no better. He had wanted it to continue. Quite as much as his terrible human body did.
The closeness of it. The abject, incomparable and exquisite closeness.
It was what had been missing. What Crowley had clearly been intimating had been missing all these years. That shift in dynamic, yes. That transmutation into something infinitely... more.
He didn't wash the singlet. Not right away. He missed Crowley, after all. And the smell helped. Quite as much as it hurt.
~X~
A/N: Thank you as always for taking time out of your day to read, my lovelies. If you enjoyed and feel comfortable doing so, please feel free to leave a comment. Even concrit, if you see room for improvement :)
Wishing you all so much happiness in your own lives and, as always, with all my infernal love,
~MadamMortis~ xxx ooo