Author's Notes: I don't own anything in this, except for perhaps the idea. Good Omens and the characters herein are © gNeil and pTerry. No offense is meant, so if you are the authors (or their lawyers), please don't sue. Also, I attempted to mimic the writing style in GO, hence the use of footnotes.
Crowley felt a sudden pang of guilt. "Angel…" he winced visibly at the fear in Aziraphale's eyes. "All right, all right, I'm getting out…" he turned around, and in a blink of an eye, was gone. The angel let out a single sob, burying his face in his knees.
I'm falling…I have to be….Because…I wanted to kiss him back…
Fine Lines: Chapter 2
As a rule,
Angels loved mostly everything and everyone. Humans, beasts,
birds 1, everything. The only thing angels didn't love were demons. Aziraphale knew this,
and knew this well. Demons were nothing but tempters and hell raisers
2...Except Crowley.
That was his problem. He tried as hard as he could to hate Crowley, but he just couldn't. For a while,
he chalked it up to knowing him so long that hatred was no longer an option.
After all, how could he hate Crowley
and expect the Arrangement to work? As of late, it was worrying him to no end.
He began to wonder, what was it about Crowley
that he didn't hate? That sent him down the path that got him into his current
state. What was it about Crowley
that he didn't like? He would sink the occasional duck,
cause the occasional mild fender bender, combust the occasional traffic officer
3, but that made life 4 more interesting. Ever since the drunken demon had
kissed him, a cold dread had taken over. He had closed down the bookshop and
confined himself to a tiny corner in the back, hugging his knees and
whimpering. He was utterly convinced that he had fallen, and that it would be
only a matter of time that he was kicked out to the Downstairs.
Meanwhile, across town, a certain demon was finding that he was missing
something. He couldn't put his finger on it, but it was definitely something.
Sighing, Crowley
flipped on the TV A commercial was on, advertising angel food cake. Angel food
cake…angel! He groaned inwardly. So that's what he had been missing. The
angel he so foolishly hit on a week before. He closed his eyes, the events that
led to his current banishment from the bookshop replaying in his head.
He had practically molested Aziraphale. He had purposely tried to become male, kissed him (quite deeply), he had tried to tempt an angel. This led to Aziraphale screaming at him, forcing him out. He had caused the angel to cry.
Crowley gave an involuntary shudder, remembering with almost painful clarity the tears that had pricked in his angel's eyes.
His?He scolded himself. Aziraphale was perfectly capable of taking care of himself. Besides, tempting is what demons do. Not to mention pissing off angels.
Perhaps I should make up with him… He stopped, dropping the remote and yelped as it landed on his foot. Make up? Demons were supposed to mess with angels and piss them off and all that, a voice reminded him. Not go over to their odd bookshops and apologize. But this was Aziraphaleanother voice argued. Yes, this was Aziraphale, the only one from either Side to ever really want anything to do with him anyway. He sighed 5 and pushed his sunglasses up his nose, deciding to pay his friend 6 a visit. He grabbed his keys 7, trotted out to the Bentley, and drove over to the infamous 8 bookshop. Ignoring the closed sign, the demon knocked loudly on the door. "Aziraphale! It's me! Open the door!" he shouted and turned the knob, but as he figured, it was locked. "Azi…!" he frowned, realizing he almost sounded desperate. "Angel, please open the door!" All he got was the sound of something glass falling. He sighed and went around back, knowing no one would see him mysteriously vanish. He appeared in front of the angel, who was sitting in the chair, his head in his hands.
"Oh, angel…" he frowned, trying not to stare at the red and puffiness of Aziraphale's eyes.
Aziraphale jumped and stared wide-eyed up at Crowley. "Get out!" he said shakily. "Get out!"
"Aziraphale, I'm so sorry…"
He was regarded with a blank, hurt look.
"Please, Angel, let me explain…"
"I'm not an angel anymore…" came the faint and slightly muffled reply.
"What?!" Crowley had a sudden rush of guilt. "Oh, Go-Sa-whatever…you can't be serious!"
"It's true…it just has to be…" Aziraphale mumbled.
"You mean…er…you don't know for sure…?" Well there was some hope…
"I…well…I just have to have fallen!!" He sounded close to hysterics.
"Why's that? You didn't kiss me back or anything, you pushed me away and sent me out!"
"Well…ah…" the angel trailed off, mumbling, his face now bright red.
"What's that?" Crowley tilted his head, looking curious.
"I said that Iwantedtokissyouback," he said so fast that Crowley almost didn't catch it.
Crowley stared, dumbstruck. "You….what?" he said finally.
"I said I wanted to kiss you back!" Aziraphale's voice cracked and he dissolved into tears again.
By this point, the demon looked positively speechless. He opened his mouth, shut it again, opened, shut it…he stopped when he realized he looked like a fish out of water. "Angel…" he said softly, crouching down next to him. "Can I see your wings?"
"Why? So you can marvel at your handiwork?" he sniffed bitterly.
Crowley looked almost hurt, but shrugged it off. "No…Aziraphale, please…"
Sighing dejectedly, he opened his wings, not even bothering to shake them out. Crowley smiled faintly, running his hand just above the wingtips of Aziraphale's messy wings. "Angel…you're still an angel…"
"You can't be serious, you're just saying that!!" the now confirmed angel snapped.
"Come here," the demon offered his hand, looking sincere. 9
Aziraphale shook his head stubbornly.
"Please?" Crowley was the master of persuasion, and Azi was falling hard for the puppy dog eyes he was receiving. He took Crowley's hand, looking like he really did want to, but was faking like he didn't, and let Crowley lead him to a mirror in the front room.
"See, angel? You still have your wings, messy as ever."
Aziraphale stared at his wings in the mirror, flexed them, turned his head to stare at Crowley, then stared back at himself, a small smile forming on his face. "But…I…I…"
Crowley put his hand on Aziraphale's shoulder. "You can only love, angel…"
He turned to face the demon. "But….I can't love a demon!" he faltered. Can I?
Crowley quickly stepped back, feeling hurt for a brief moment. I must be going soft. Too much time on Earth.
Azi hugged himself, looking both pleased and bemused. "I…ah…thank you, Crowley…I needed that…" he smiled.
Crowley nodded and decided that he needed to do some serious thinking concerning Aziraphale and himself and his feelings towards the said angel. "Well…I think I left the stove on…" he said stupidly.
"All right, Crowley, see you around," Aziraphale was thinking along the same lines as Crowley in terms of figuring out how he really felt about the demon.
"Yeah…and Angel?"
"Hm?"
"Wanna have lunch tomorrow?"
"Of course, dear. Around 12:30?"
"That's fine. Bye, Angel."
"Bye, Crowley." Aziraphale groaned when Crowley disappeared into thin air. He hated it when the demon did that.
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1: even the annoying songbirds that wake you up at 6am on the only day you have off/are able to sleep in.2: but that was their job anyway.
3: neither one still had quite figured out what Side had created them.
4: not that angels were alive, but it made life around the angel more interesting.
5: it wasn't exactly a sigh, since he didn't have breathe, more like something that could be considered a sigh, if in fact he actually had to breathe.
6: or as much of one as could be defined by the demon.
7: he really didn't need the keys, he just had them for show.
8: though it was impossible for anything run by an angel to be infamous really.
9: which of course ended up looking slimy and devious, since demons weren't supposed to look sincere.
