A/N: Random Good Omens-ervation of the day: You remember that scene in episode one, where Crowley pretty much got Aziraphale drunk on the pretext of talking him around to saving the world together (try his luck at getting into Aziraphale's pants)? Pretty iconic scene, really. Remember too, that wine bottle Aziraphale was having such a difficult time trying to decant into his glass; given the aforementioned drunkness? Did anyone else notice that the top of the bottle was broken?
What in the name of God did those two dunder heads do to that bottle? How much resistance did a simple cork put up, if smashing the top of the bottle clear off was the preferred solution? Why wasn't magic-ing the cork out of the neck of the bottle a viable option? How did they not get glass in their wine?
I mean, I'll be the first to admit (as a self-confessed soak) that there have been times I have been incredibly tempted to smash the head off of a bottle just to get to the self-medicinal nectar within. But I haven't. And those few times I have dropped a bag with a wine bottle in it and managed to save what wine I could, I always put that sunovabitch through a sieve first. (Nods sagely) Aziraphale? No fucks given. Just pours the wine straight into his glass, out of the shattered, broken neck and slurps drunkenly and yet seemingly, contentedly away. Shards of glass more the likely just swirling around in his belly, stomach lining being punitively shredded and resulting in a very painful, possibly life threatening 'evacuation' some hours down the track. (Shudders at the very thought of pissing out glass)
I think about that scene way more than I really ought to. Wondering what exactly happened, what conversation was had, which culminated in the neck of that bottle being smashed. Wishing desperately to have seen it actually played out. Maybe I'll write it one day; who knows?
Okay, enough of my wankery for now. The next update, gentle readers! I hope that you enjoy, and I shall see you on the flip side!
~X~
~Tuesday, April 9th - 2019~
The Grange Estate Nursing home - London Suburbia
Neither of them had been quick enough. Neither of them had cared to be quick enough. The kiss was much too intense, much too needed. The world around them continued to move at the same pace as it had always done, but for Crowley, time had altogether ceased to exist. An ability he himself was capable of doling out where required, but it was not by his hands that the wheels beyond the veil ceased to churn the grinding sands forward.
It was the kiss. Aziraphale's kiss.
No, ...their kiss.
The kiss that Aziraphale had initiated. The angel what hadn't contented himself with the simple taking of that first decisive step but rather plunged himself headlong into a full-blown triathlon. Had imparted upon Crowley a kiss such as the demon could only ever have dared to imagine; had cocked his head to the curious side in having been witness to such exchanges on television, on street corners under lambent, golden lights, at train stations, blanketed by tender fingers of bathetic fog. Had pondered, considered at depth, set a finger to the centre of his tongue as some minor means of replicating the physical sensation what might be experienced in a kiss so utterly transcendent with feeling.
Aziraphale seemed every bit as lost to the moment as Crowley. And far the more... ravenous than the demon had ever supposed him capable. The hand he had fixed to the sway of Crowley's back applied a possessive pressure, the thumb and fingers of his other hand sliding over and between the demons with ever the more intensifying need.
To say nothing of the claim he had made concerns Crowley's lips and tongue. There was hunger there. Hunger what sent Crowley's flesh to shivering in the bonds of his immalleable work uniform, rendered his knees weaker than they already were and made him physically ache with desire.
They were in fact pressed so tightly to one another, he could hardly imagine that Aziraphale would not be made aware of his 'desire'. He desperately wished to move his hips forward, an instinct for which the body cried out, but the door clicking open shot all that to spectacular shit.
"Whoa, okay boys."
The last thing Crowley wanted in all of known creation was to break that kiss. If he was being honest (a trait not considered the least bit demonic but one with which he was ever so invariably acquainted) Crowley would much prefer in fact for the kiss to continue; with one minor adjustment of his in fact being hoisted onto the bench so that Aziraphale could move to stand between his legs.
His imagination gave a soft moan at the conjured image and Crowley near followed suit. But Aziraphale, being himself, of course, had more than the prescient desire to which he could capably attend, and one of these was his not wanting Crowley to get into trouble in his workplace. At the sound of the voice from the doorway, he turned his face away; leaving Crowley's own puckered lips suspended preposterously in mid-air.
"Don't get me wrong," Came the sound of Alice's (thank whoever) voice from behind the now partially closed door. "It's not that I'm not thrilled to see that the two of you have either made up or about to have some really mega intense hate sex, but Rita catches you doing that in work hours and it'll be both your arses off to PR. Plus... you know. I make coffee on that bench, Cumquat. Prefer that your arse wasn't rubbing up against it, yeah?"
"Sorry." Crowley stammered, placing a hand across his brow as some means of shielding his eyes and skittered his fingers along the benchtop in a bid to locate his glasses. "He, uh... well, I um..."
Whatever supposed cool was thought to be in possession by Anthony J. Crowley had seemingly taken a long saunter off of a very short pier. He couldn't seem to get the words out. His tongue felt numb, more from the shock of what had occurred rather than it having been blistered into a state of non-compliance by the insistence of Aziraphale's kiss. Aziraphale, who was attempting to assist Crowley in returning to some semblance of status quo by slipping his hand from the small of his waist and disentangling their sweaty fingers from about one another's. Crowley wanted none of that. He wanted, in fact, to be anywhere but on the clock.
Alice gave an indulgent chuckle from her door side garrison. "Don't worry, mate. I don't see a kiss and tell. Just between us pigeons." Her hand edged around the peeling jam and she flicked her fingers in a sort of shooing gesture. "But seriously, wind it up before Rita comes a knocking."
"Yes. Of course." Aziraphale cleared his throat, casting a smile towards the young woman just out of sight in the hallway. "Ever so sorry."
The hand gave a carefree wave before retreating out of sight like an eel stealing itself into a gap between rocks. Alice's footsteps receded off into the middle distance and Crowley and Aziraphale took a much needed moment in which to pull themselves together.
Aziraphale cast his hands through his hair in a forwards motion, attempting to tame the curled locks which Crowley's fingers had hungrily caressed to every which way. Crowley had a brief, thirty second internal conversation with his nether regions; the context of which consisted predominantly of 'cease and desist.' Being a penis, it was of course in possession of selective hearing and wasn't much in the mood to adhere to its Generals commands.
"So..." Crowley eventually drawled, sliding his glasses back onto his substantially flushed face. He didn't bother with carrying the thought forward much further than this, but set it adrift in a silence what the angel could then shape in whatever fashion he saw fit.
"Yes. Rather." Aziraphale gave a nervous chuckle before reaching up to glance his warm palm over the curve of Crowley's ever the warmer cheek. "Your face is very red."
Crowley's as so described 'red face' scrunched together in embarrassed annoyance and he cuffed his fingers to the back of Aziraphale's wrist, not knocking so much as guiding the affectionate hand away.
"Shut up." He grumbled, doing an altogether far too terrible a job of looking nonchalant. There was a treacherous smile attempting to sneak on into the corners of his mouth, much the way a hungry child might endeavour to slink on out of their bedroom in the middle of the night to raid the cookie jar. His gaze dropped to survey the shiny linoleum between his paper wreathed shoes; a strange act for one such as him. To avoid rather than demand that eye contact. "And here's me thinking you were the one needed protecting from me. Seems I had you pegged all wrong." He paused, glancing briefly at Aziraphale's contrarily contented expression. He had half expected to have seen the angel morph drastically into wide-eyed, gawping apoplectic remorse, now that the moment had passed. "You... really meant it though... eh?"
Aziraphale's eyes flecked briefly to the sides; though his smile did not falter. He was pondering the nature of the question, rather than sinking into a miasma of celestial based regret. Though given the fact that he was an angel, Crowley would hardly have been surprised if Aziraphale did in fact permit himself to founder beneath emotional quicksand with the same level of decorum a member of the Royal family demonstrates when greeting a political representative from a country of which they retained only limited vestiges of respect and civility. This was how in fact Crowley had played him when they had switched bodies. Composed, courageous, incontrovertibly classy. What the humans might have referred to as a 'gentleman's gentleman.' If he had been a man, that is.
"The, um... the words or the..." Aziraphale bounced a moment on his heels before returning his gaze to the demons. There was a softness in the bow of his brows; a dusting of vulnerability speckled through the lines of his forehead like arrow root crumbs. "-the kiss?"
"Both." Said Crowley, somewhat nonplussed that a distinction was required. Aziraphale gave a light chuckle, straightening up and placing his arms behind his back. Shoulders set square in their sockets, such that you could see his historic military training glint beneath the surface like the belly of a pertinent fish.
"I did."
The confirmation set quite a lot of feelings to swirling inside of Crowley. A great deal of these he would very much have liked to have acted on; in ways which would most definitely have seen the both of them marched off to PR and his work uniform all but ripped from his body (and not in the good way). But Crowley had not gotten as far as he had in this unpredictable world by being a fool.
Well... the jury was still out as to whether Crowley may in fact be considered a fool or not, but if he was indeed the Joker to have been slotted into the universal pack by some preternatural slight of hand, he was not a fool what acted without first exercising some avenue of caution.
Aziraphale had proven himself to be easily spooked by much less and far the more subtle declarations in the past. And he was still an angel, in spite of his secularization from Heaven's smudge free porcelain beset corridors. Angels could be a tricksy bunch and never the more idiotic then when it came to themselves.
"You're not just... saying and doing what you think you need to do? To make me happy?"
Aziraphale had somewhat expected the question, for it had been precisely what Crowley had said only mere minutes earlier. It was a little frustrating for that reason, for how much reassurance was needed, given what they had just shared?
"Crowley. You really rather put far too much emphasis on my apparently needing to sacrifice my worth and values and body for your happiness." He chuckled lightly, raising his hands so that the palms were directed towards the ceiling. "Frankly my dear, I'm not that invested."
Some of the tension left Crowley's body at this and he loosed an involuntary chuckle in conjunction of it. "Well ain't that a blessed relief." He eased slightly about Aziraphale, glancing towards the door and taking a few sharp sniffs in. Satisfied that a supplementary breach was not on the cards, he moved closer then to the angel. His eyes, insecure yet still and pining, peeked above the lenses of his glasses. "Mind if I... do it again? You know, just to uh... lock it in." He shrugged, wanting to make something in which he placed so much obvious stock, sound offhand. "So to speak?"
"I won't be getting you in trouble?"
"Oh, you got me into trouble a long time ago, angel." Crowley said, his smile as knowing as his words were truthful. "This would hardly be the first or the last time, I wager."
Aziraphale, smiling gently, reached up to cup his hand once more to the side of Crowley's face. Crowley put his arms about him, a tenderness of embrace what left any of those they shared in days past, well and truly in the dust. The kiss was softer, more temperate. More permanent. Crowley was slightly taller than Aziraphale, but he appeared to be getting shorter by the moment; sinking down into his knees, all but melting into the protective slips of his shoes. He sighed softly between the parting of their lips, all the tension he had been holding onto draining out of his muscles so that Aziraphale served much the purpose of a construction frame; keeping him standing in spite of all efforts to dissolve into nothingness.
It had been a long few months without talk, without touch, without contact. The saturation of it served as something of an overdose to the perishing senses. Aziraphale might have laughed at the punch drunk look on Crowley's face when they parted; a giddy smile he was attempting to quash out of existence by pulling his lips in tight. He surrendered however to the overwhelming draw of the angel's warmth and pressed his head to the side of Aziraphale's; who held him quite as tightly as he so desired in what time they'd spent apart. Crowley inhaled deeply of the scent of the angels neck, pressed his face in there and sheathing his eyes a moment. There was time for this. He would make time, if need be.
"I missed you."
"As did I, my dear." Aziraphale caressed the line of Crowley's back with loving indifference to the damp patch of sweat what had formed on his work shirt. "You were well rather cruel, all things considered."
"I was confused." Crowley's words made a soft vibration against the side of his neck. "I was... scared I was about to lose you forever and I... I couldn't deal with hearing an answer I didn't want. It was easier to run."
"Is that why you stayed away?"
"One of the reason's. Mainly, I was trying to figure out if I would be able to go on living without you." Crowley laughed humourlessly. "Apparently, I was doing a shithouse job of it."
"Well don't you feel awful silly now." Aziraphale turned and lent his lips to the side of Crowley's face. Felt the demon just about purr at the point of contact. "All this much to do about nothing."
Crowley pushed back from Aziraphale, just hard enough to make a point of it. The embrace had been blissful, but the angels words had managed to annoy him some. A sort of a playing down as to, what he felt were, very sensible reasons for his having done what he had done.
"Hardly nothing, angel. Quite a bit more than nothing. And hey, it's not like you were handling things well. You were still trying to convince yourself that we were cut and dry friendsss."
"Yes, well, if it helps to set your mind at ease." Aziraphale slipped his hand into the pocket of his coat and took out his rather old, trusty and ever more tattered wallet. With a flick of his wrist, he separated the leather halves to expose the plastic panel in which he had, until previously, stored his Frequent Diners Club card. He held it out to Crowley, indicating that he should take it. "There."
Demons never much liked to be caught in a moment of weakness. Crowley was hardly an exception. He might have been appreciably softer than the bulk of his kind, but emotional apertures offered far too much of a glimpse of an otherwise vulnerably underbelly. Exploitation was a readily accepted means of getting things done in Hell. One learned, as a result, to girder their steel at a moments notice. And steel came in many forms.
With Crowley it was a smile, a shrug, a clever turn of phrase, a motley of progressively convoluted bullshit what left the receiver of said excrement blinking and uncertain as to whether their queries had been answered at all.
In that moment, Crowley had barely strength with which to half heartedly muster his shields. What little he clung to was all but obliterated by the thing he held now in his trembling hands.
Aziraphale's wallet, the Frequent Diners Club card banished from the plastic photo sheathe and in its place, the picture Crowley himself had taken of the two of them together at the Ritz. Their very first meal of what was that; the first day of the rest of their lives.
"You've been stalking my social media, haven't you?" He said, not sounding nearly as cool as he had been intending. He was choking up some; shields well and truly dragging along the ground beside his hypothetical feet.
"Yes. I have." Aziraphale said, without a hint of shame concerns the matter. Something which warmed Crowley's heart for hearing it. "And... if such a thing should please you, I would be happy, with your assistance on the matter, to create a..." He lifted one brow enquiringly. "- the Facebook account?"
"Facebook, not the Facebook." Crowley said, still holding onto the wallet and staring contentedly at the photograph within the plastic window. Aziraphale could ever so lightly flap the tip of one of his manky wings and it would have knocked him clean off his feet, nothing surer. "Why do you want an account? Didn't think social media was really your thing."
"It's not." Aziraphale confessed, internally shuddering at the prospect of engaging with all that puerile twenty-first century folderol. Desperate times. "But I can see from what you put into those posts that you are... you're proud of me. You're proud of us." He set his hand to the underside of Crowley's wrist; passed the pad of his thumb over the vein lines there. "I... I don't want you to ever have to feel that things are... complicated between us." He witnessed Crowley's brows lifting meaningfully at this. Threading the connection. "I would be proud to share in that with you, my dear. To share what we have. Photographs... certain memories." They both tittered at this one. "Times shared. To perhaps brag a little. Flaunt, as you might say."
"I really am good at flaunting." Crowley said, somewhat pointlessly. They both knew he could pull of a flaunt with such proficiency it would send a Victoria Secrets Runway model to shamefully binge eat three orange juice soaked cotton balls in her dressing room.
Crowley passed the wallet back, mustered his convictions somewhat and then leant in to plant a quick kiss to Aziraphale's lips. "Thanks. You know." He shrugged his shoulders articulately. The angel just smiled to see it. He was accustomed to the awkwardness.
"Just... out of curiosity," He did ask, tickled somewhat by the way in which Crowley was thrumming his fingertips against his bottom lip as though he might have been playing the flute. Obviously preoccupied by the still very new sensation of sharing a kiss. "What on earth did the young lady at the front desk mean when she said that someone might steal you out from under me?"
Crowley pushed the lenses of his glasses down, flashing Aziraphale a look what comprised equal parts amusement and what he could only hope, might pass for flirtatious. If history had taught him one thing, it was that he was notoriously stunted so far as successfully conveying romantic intentions were concerned.
"What do you suppose it means?" He asked, smirking to see the penny literally drop in Aziraphale's innoxious little mind.
"Oh." The angel opined with an ever so embarrassed smile. Crowley indulged himself by stroking his thumb and fingers down either side of that wonderfully charming expression. It was a strange thing. His heart was still pounding in his chest but he felt more at ease and at peace then he could ever remember being.
The door was open.
He might have spent longer still just standing there, awash with the near debilitating feelings of happiness coursing through him. But there would be time for that later. Time in all the world, in fact. Right now, there was work to be done.
"Come on. Let me finish showing you around." He slid his fingers down off of Aziraphale's chin and stepped around him to make his way back towards the door. He chuckled to see the somewhat confused look the angel directed at him. "Oh yeah. Don't go thinking just because we made up and you lay a wet one on me means you're home free. You're still signed up for the day, sweetheart."
"Oh. Yes. Of course." Flustered, Aziraphale scooped up the armful of clothes he had left on the kitchen table and trailed Crowley out of the room. He found his eyes drifting to follow the sway of the demons hips as he walked.
The uniform wasn't exactly what you would call aesthetically pleasing, but Crowley still somehow managed to make it look good. Which wasn't saying much. This was a creature what could make a wet hessian sack look good. In fact, if his memory was serving correctly, Crowley had once been forced to wear a hessian sack for... oh, who the Hell really knew when it came to someone like Crowley? He had just as likely done it for his own amusement as for any other more meaningful reason.
One hardly needs a clever turn of phrase, Aziraphale thought, when they've got legs up to their face, the mind of an Aristotelian genius and cheekbones what could very well carve a sculpture of themselves.
A tight little bottom hardly hurts matters either, he mused, taking note of the way in which Crowley's was swishing back and forth in front of him and getting a good solid jab from the celestial failsafe's as a result. Oh, this hardly seems fair. The sooner I can flex out these mental muscles, all the better. One shouldn't expect a slap to the back of the wrist every time one takes notice of a backside such as Crowley's. I'll be brain damaged, if that's the way it's going to play out.
Unaware of Aziraphale's internal struggle, Crowley wove his way towards the laundry room, stopping off at certain points along the way to point out things of particular interest and to introduce "Alex" to some of the other workers and residents.
He seemed in a particularly buoyant mood, Aziraphale observed, which was an emotion he did not often affiliate with what was a customarily curmudgeony demon. He had a smile on his face the whole time, even when just passing quietly through unoccupied spaces. Every so often he would flick a glance Aziraphale's way, do something particularly endearing such as bite the corner of his lip, before looking away again. A gesture ever so uniquely self-conscious and vulnerable.
Crowley was a creature who, in all the long time Aziraphale had known him, appeared to be quite as certain of his place in the world as a tree is aware of its place in the ground. To see him rendered so completely self-aware and nervous was both endearing and... empowering. It was a suitable turn about play, really; for all the times Crowley had unnerved him in the past. Aziraphale could hardly help but enjoy the unfamiliar position of being the one who was in control. The one with the power to sway.
"Oh, I've got to introduce you to Sylvia." Crowley was saying, breaking Aziraphale out of his thoughts as they rounded up on a nondescript door in the equally as nondescript hallway. "Lovely old dear."
"Oh, yes?"
"Yeah. Got a cute nickname for me and everything." Crowley rapped a knuckle against the door before easing it open a bare inch. He aligned his suspiciously smirking face with the gap he had made and called out: "Hey Sylvs! How ya doing today?"
The response was so prompt Aziraphale might have supposed that the unseen resident had been expecting the knock. There was a shrill scream of, "FUCK OFF, FAGGOTTS!" rounded off by what was incontestably a bedpan, thankfully empty, being pitched against the far side of the door. The door which Crowley slid neatly shut, unperturbed by a greeting what might have sent a more sensitive person quivering into group therapy and swanned off back down the hall, chuckling happily to himself as he went.
"Ahh... she's a lamb, that one."
Aziraphale, eyelids pinned back tightly in his skull, pondered as to whether his ears might have been due a syringing.
"Did-did she just call us...?"
"Yeah. It's an endearment. Great gal. The other day she actually hauled off and pitched her wet napkin at me. Missed by about that much." Crowley used his thumb and index finger to indicate a space in which even a malnourished nat might have difficulty navigating. "She'd be a heck of a bowler if Hell ever got round to putting together that cricket team they've been banging on about. Oh. Just a minute."
He paused, setting his hands out front of himself and smiling in what Aziraphale thought to be a somewhat creepily munificent manner as an elderly woman in a paisley dress was guided down the hall in their direction. Crowley waited until she was about five or so feet away before speaking.
"Hey there Josie. How you doing today, pet?"
Pet? Aziraphale thought, pulling a face at Crowley who did not pay it the slightest lick of attention. Just when did he go and get all smarmy and saccharine? Outside of addressing one of his Hellish superiors, that is?
The elderly woman smiled in a way which even an angel could attest to as being predatory. She didn't seem to pick up on anything being out of sorts concerns Crowley's tone, so Aziraphale surmised that it was his having known the demon as long as he had what rendered his suddenly affable poise as unnerving.
"Better for seeing you, dear." Said Josie, who looked to Crowley as a hungry dog might eye the fridge in which it knew that its food was kept, right before lending their unclipped paw to the side of the stainless steel. Aziraphale experienced a strange and sudden urge to unhitch his wings and wrap them about Crowley in a protective cacoon; being far too readily acquainted with this woman's manner of expression and knowing it entirely to match that which he himself wore when about to dig his fork into a wedge of cheese cake.
"Josie, Miranda, (Aziraphale surmised this to be the name of the worker who was supporting the aforementioned resident) this is Alex." Crowley, patently unconcerned with his near acquaintance with metaphorical devouring, gestured to the angel, who managed as always to bring a smile into what he felt was an otherwise strained expression. "He's going to be working in the kitchen today."
"Hello Miranda. Josie. Lovely to meet you." Aziraphale said in way of greeting. Josie pinched her eyes yet tighter still; inviting ever the more murders of crows feet into the corners and stared at Aziraphale as though he were perched on a distant foggy moar, as opposed to the six or so feet away that he actually was.
"Oh... well don't you have the most beautiful eyes." She remarked, to which Aziraphale immediately softened.
"Oh, isn't that kind." He murmured, exchanging a glance with Crowley who flattered him all the further with an approving nod. Perhaps this Josie was not quite so rapacious as he had earlier assumed. "Thank you, my dear lady."
"And so fat!"
Aziraphale did his utmost to affect poise which he might have marshalled all the more effectively if not for Crowley's barely smothered snickers off somewhere to the left. "Oh. Yes, thank you."
"And your nose... it's very big, isn't it?"
"Please, my dear. You may stop with the compliments whenever you like."
"Come on now Josie." Said Miranda, who looked every bit as amused as Crowley but going to much greater strains to stifle it. "Alex needs to be getting to work."
"Watch your arse with this one." Crowley hissed from the side of his mouth. Aziraphale glimpsed movement from the corner of his eyes and saw the demon swish his hands back in behind himself, fanning them out to cover his bottom.
"Cover my-?" He had not been quick enough and as such had rendered himself the recipient of a prize in the form of Josie laying her palsied hand sharply to the curve of his right buttock. Aziraphale's eyes bulged for the second most time in five minutes, his mouth dropping open so that it was quite as wide and as round as the bottom of a tea cup. Crowley glanced back over his shoulder, smiling like a snake.
"Didn't even try for me today. She must like you."
"Yes. In spite of my being fat and having a big nose." Aziraphale permitted himself the slightest of grouches whilst rubbing at the stinging patch on his bottom. He had supposed geriatrics to lack a certain strength, giving the natural degradation of their bones and muscles. Why then did so many of them in the Grange Estate have a wrist strength what might have rivalled a single male university student in the prime of video game preoccupation, telephone device texting and chronic masturbatory practices?
"Don't let it worry you." Crowley, chuckling still as he continued his cheerful saunter up alone the senescent hallway. "She just talks a lot of faff, that one. Told me, first time we met, that I had a 'mean mouth'. Can you believe it?" He lowered his glasses just enough to throw a wink back over his shoulder. "Right about you having pretty eyes though."
"Oh, hush." Aziraphale said, though the look they passed between them now was predicated by the understanding that he had been not so secretly pleased to hear it. The moment stretched a little and Crowley was visited once more by the urge to press himself into Aziraphale's arms. Seek his kiss, let their passions potentially catapult them through the thin, plaster rendering bordering the halls with much the same tenacity as Papier Mache clings to the outside of an economy brand balloon. He felt very professional for resisting it. Less happy, mind. But professional.
There was a lot to be said for being professional. He could not quite recall at that moment why it was in fact a good thing. (Good things actually mattering. How was that for a turn about of the books?)
A suitable distraction came in the form of a door number he was genuinely pleased to wander up on. He tapped his knuckles smartly to the festy, swamp green painted wood; a colour that some frontal lobe impaired interior designer must have convinced themselves, and equally itinerate others, was a soothing colour when viewed by the oft deteriating eyes of England's aging population.
"Gotta introduce you to Gretchen. Gretchen's the best. You remember Gretchen?"
Aziraphale felt the unfamiliar strain creep on up into his otherwise warm and genuine smile again. "Yes. I recall." He said, remembering Gretchen all too keenly as the charge who Crowley had whisked off to the Ritz, had danced with at said Ritz. The Gretchen who spoke French; Aziraphale's incontestably least favourite language. (Not out of any anachronous feelings of distaste so far as France was concerned, of course. But for the simple fact that it was the language he did, for whatever the reason, find the very most difficult to wrap his tongue around).
"Don't tell the others, but she's my favourite." Crowley used his fist now to produce a louder knock, before opening the door with what Aziraphale took to be the utmost care and consideration. It did fracture through some of the inconversant feelings of malcontent Aziraphale was nursing; to see the demon acting so courteously. "Gretchen? Better throw your clothes on love, I've got a man with me who's never seen a naked woman before!"
Aziraphale scoffed, possessing no pride in the matter but hardly in the practice of denouncing the truth of it. "You fail to recall a certain garden in which I was partly charged with the watching over of a pair of very much naked humans. Let us say nothing of the years following. 39 AD springs to mind..."
Crowley hissed air sharply from between his teeth. Of course there was none, sans the collective majority of the twentieth and twenty-first century what was as proficient with the oversaturation of the visceral senses as there had been Emperor Caligula. It had been too much, even where Crowley was concerned. There were only so many orgies you could politely decline the invitation of before you rendered yourself a target of political unrest. Though Aziraphale had enjoyed the influx of new exotic eateries and their even more exotic fair. The oysters alone had been almost worth the up skirting.
"Good point." He acquiesced, easing himself in around the door jam and stepping into Gretchen's room. The bed was neatly made and her wheelchair was set still to the right of it. This struck Crowley as odd, because Gretchen was not able to leave the room without the assistance of her wheelchair. He checked the bathroom quickly, because she could hobble on in there without any help (and was often stubborn enough to do so) but this was empty as well.
"Um... look, just need to check something." He said, for the first time that morning properly focused on his workplace duties. He gestured for Aziraphale to follow him and made tracks for the nurses station.
A woman named Rhonda had been put in charge of that particular section of the ward that day and it was she what swept her eyes a little curtly towards Crowley as he rounded up. She was one of the few there who hadn't warmed to him over the past two months; little that he could care sans universal approval. Plenty the more dangerous and more limb rendering capable people what held him in contempt. What was one little human female whose greatest physical offense was in somehow managing to render her coral pink lips into a remarkable effigy of a frightened cats arsehole?
"Rhonda. Hey. Nice lip balm." Crowley's attempts at smarming something other than an erstwhile sigh from the woman bombed with ever the same dedication to insufficiency as 'Peter Max' itself. "Look, just wanted to check in on Gretchen. She wasn't in her room. Do we know if she took morning meds, or not?"
"You weren't told in handover?" Rhonda continued to fetter annoyance into every task she was undertaking with the somewhat more professional proficiency of a sausage maker. Interacting with Crowley appeared to be particularly high today on her list of 'Things I really can't be bolloxed with and wouldn't be bolloxed with, even if it were in my pay cheque to be bolloxed with. "All that fuss with Jeanie's baby and work flies right on out the window." She granted him the somewhat begrudged courtesy of glancing up from her game of 'Farm Life'-something or rather. Crowley hadn't really been meaning to catch it. "Gretchen started experiencing chest pains during the night."
Crowley felt something cold claw at his own chest. Something dimly familiar to what he had experienced when rocketing up to Aziraphale's bookshop only to find it on fire.
"Oh."
"She was taken to emergency and they currently have her in for cardiac observation."
Crowley was aware of Aziraphale having pressed a hand to his arm, just where a bicep might otherwise have been. He wanted to reach up and take his fingers between his own; anchor himself down a little in the wake of the unaccustomed concern he had been feeling. He didn't dare. Not with one of his errant detractors blinking their fake (partway peeling) eyelashes up at him.
"Is she okay?"
Rhonda could not have looked more the exhausted by the line of questioning than if she had been the United States President fielding enquiries about unsolicited political pay rises and personal thoughts of female reproductive rights. "We'll know more shortly. Rita will be ringing in regularly to touch base. The hospital advised they would be in contact themselves if there were any changes for the worse."
"Well, is any one with her?" Crowley himself had started to feel entirely like one of those journalists that simply refused to avow their line of questioning, in spite of the Presidential security teams visual assurances that they really ought to just fuck off. "She doesn't have any next of kin. I could go in?"
"Boundaries, Anthony."
"She might be frightened by herself." Anthony J. Crowley could give a flying rodents hairy left bollock as to whether boundaries might present an issue or otherwise. He had grown fond of Gretchen in the time he had spent in the Grange. She had been kind of like he imagined his own mother might have been; if the Almighty had not been the otherwise closest approximation. He did however fancy his own hypothetical mother to have been far the more mouthy, cheeky and crotchety. Just like Gretchen.
"This is not the first time that this has happened." Rhonda said with the testy tone of one whom was hankering to get their simulated cows back to munching whatever simulated straw they might well have needed to garner the next collection of simulated farmers tokens. "Gretchen is very practiced at it by now, I can assure you. Now, if you want to visit her in your own time, that's your decision, but right now you are on the clock and we need you focused. Plenty more people that still need your help right here and now."
"It's all right, dear." Aziraphale said supportively, rubbing Crowley's arm through the sleeve of his work shirt. The material 'crinkle-crunkled' beneath the pressure. "We can pop in to visit her after you finish your shift, if you like."
"... okay. Yeah, I got it." It was difficult to give someone a pointed look when you were deliberately attempting to keep your eyes hidden, but Crowley attempted to all the same. "Can you let me know as soon as you hear anything?"
"That's what I do." Said Rhonda with a differential grunt, returning her attention to far the more important matters. Crowley left her to her computer generated manure and duck spawning duties (thought not without first a snapping of his fingers what rendered her simulated chickens unable to lay eggs) and turned and marched away from the desk, his thoughts and emotions racing with an array of things he was only used to being affiliated with Aziraphale. Well... not so strong as that, of course. The worry though. The gnawing at the corners of his mind...
"Are you all right?" Aziraphale asked, trapping along in his wake. His tone was as caring and soft as it most usually was and Crowley felt such a resplendent surge of gratitude for the angel that he almost turned on the spot and buried himself right on up in the tattered waistcoat a while.
But because he was Crowley, he shelved the desire with the practice of one whom had long since attained a level of skill aspired to by world class professionals and omitted an ever so refined 'pfft' of the lower lip.
"Yeah. Yeah I'm fine. Besides, she's right, old Rhonda. Still plenty more folks round here needing me fightin' fit. Best be getting you over to the laundry room." He smirked over his shoulder at the angel's tranquil, very soon to be rather rankled, expression. "Whip you out of those duds."
~X~
The phone in Aziraphale's bookshop had been ringing off of the hook much of the morning. Some of these calls were as the result of some rather disgruntled clientele who might have been seeking out and or anticipating the arrival of a certain order. They might have left a message, but Aziraphale had never deigned to purchase an answering machine. His phone itself was far too antiquated to have a voice mail system installed and so, a few select and very much likely pretentious bibliophiles were left wanting. Something any frequent purveyors of A.Z Fell & Co's 's really ought to have anticipated going in. This was a man who all but disappeared in between the tiny spaces of his bookshelves in a bid to avoid having to sell any of the tomes what rested upon them.
The other calls had been from the likes of two increasingly frustrated angel's; who had gone through so many magically conjured coins that the public phone booth into which they had forcibly squeezed themselves, had begun to lean suspiciously to one side.
But of course, Aziraphale was in no position to be answering his phone. He was in an altogether different position. A pants free position.
Well, at least until he had pulled on the pair of which he had been provided, that is.
~X~
A/N: I realized just last night what a truly privileged position I am in when it comes to my husband. He's so wonderfully supportive around my writing fanfiction, even when I turn into an absolute beast whilst writing it.
He never uses it against me, gets stuck into me about it or insist that I ever stop or do something original. He's very chill like that, and apparently, this is not the same treatment that a lot of other people receive from their partners when writing fanfiction. Which genuinely breaks my heart, because yes; fanfiction can be a time and energy consuming hobby. It can also make us sad, tired, frustrated and it can even be demoralizing at times. But we stick at it because we have a story we would like to share. It makes us happy, in our own weird way. And we LOVE writing. We love expanding upon worlds and characters that we feel a passion for. We wanna breathe a bit more life into his world, keep the wheels spinning just that little while longer.
I feel very fortunate for a lot of things. I'm fortunate I have a husband who is relaxed and supportive around my hobbies. I'm fortunate not to be part of a toxic fandom. And I'm very fortunate to have such lovely readers :)
If you enjoyed and feel comfortable letting me know why, have at that comments box. Or groin-kick those Follows and Favourites buttons so you can join the crazy train! Thanks as always for your time, lovely people and I hope to see you in the next update!
All my infernal love,
~MadamMortis~ xxx ooo