@fred-erick-frankenstein / fred-erick-frankenstein.tumblr.com
“I think I understand a whole lot better than you do”
[ID: a digital drawing of Aziraphale and Crowley from the show "Good Omens". Crowley is hugging Aziraphale from behind, gripping his arms and clasped hands. Both have their eyes closed, seemingly sleeping. While Aziraphale and his light clothes glow with a golden light, Crowley's black clothes seem to merge with the dark background. /end ID].
“I’m leaving London” Said Crowley.
Aziraphale, about to eat a piece of angel cake, froze immediately. He looked at the demon, sitting in front of him, with puzzled expression.
“What?”
Crowley shrugged a bit.
“Yeah… I’ve been thinking about it for a while”
Aziraphale was in shock.
“But… but, you love London!”
“I do…”
“Then, why? Why do you want to leave?”
“I just think it’s time… I’d like to try something different.”
Aziraphale suddenly felt a terrible sense of powerlessness. He kept looking at his friend with stunned expression.
“But… what about your flat?” What about me?
Crowley shrugged again.
“Well, I’ll keep it. I might always want to come back for some reason and a flat in central London can come in handy.”
Aziraphale slowly lowered his fork. He wasn’t hungry anymore.
“And, uhm… where are you going to go?” He did his best not to sound betrayed, abandoned.
“I found a Cottage in South Downs. I just saw it and thought it was perfect. I bought it a couple of weeks ago…”
The angel felt his heart break in his chest.
“Oh…” he forced himself to smile, lowering his gaze a bit “it sounds lovely.”
“It is…” said Crowley nonchalantly.
An uncomfortable silence descended upon them. Then, for the first time since he brought up the subject, Crowley looked nervous.
He cleared his throat.
“It’s pretty big, you know… for one person. I’m sure there would be enough space even for your books.”
Aziraphale immediately looked up at him again.
“Not all of them, of course… it’s not that big. But the most valuable ones, maybe…”
The angel just stared at him, for the second time, in complete shock.
What was he trying to say?
Was he…?
No, he wasn’t.
He couldn’t…
Could he?
Crowley swallowed, stiffening under his gaze.
“I mean, I understand if you don’t want to… It’s not like we’ve ever had this conversation before. I just thought that maybe, uhm… it could be nice. Some peace and quiet. Just you and me…”
Aziraphale felt his heart begin to beat ridiculously fast in his chest.
Oh, Good Lord.
He was.
He was definitely asking him to move in with him!
Although…
Better to double check.
The angel cleared his throat a bit, doing his best to look calm.
“Do you mean like, I don’t know… a holiday? Would you, uhm… like me to come for a weekend, or for a few days?”
The demon looked at him with the same bewildered expression of someone who thought he had been quite obvious.
“No, I mean you could come to live there. With me.”
Aziraphale distinctly felt his self-control crumbling immediately and a wave of excitement and euphoria invade him.
He managed to keep it together by the skin of his teeth.
He cleared his throat again and did his best to maintain his composure.
“Crowley, you… you bought a Cottage in South Downs, and now you are asking me to move there with you?”
Crowley shrugged again, trying to look casual and failing miserably.
“Yeah!” He just said, in a too high-pitched voice to sound convincingly calm.
Aziraphale stared at him for a moment and then gave him his most ridiculously happy smile.
“Oh, Crowley! This is definitely one of the most romantic things you’ve ever done!”
Crowley froze.
“Shut up!”
“I can’t believe how sweet you are!”
Crowley looked at him with all the annoyance he was capable of.
“That’s it. Forget it, you are not coming.”
Aziraphale’s smile widened even more.
“Oh, Crowley! I’ve always said that-”
“I swear, shut up or I’m leaving right now!”
Aziraphale stared at him lovingly, beaming. He couldn’t stay silent for more than two seconds.
“Can I bring my gramophone too?”
“You can’t, because you are not coming. Offer is over.”
“Oh, come on!” Chuckled the angel. “You can’t play this game with me anymore! At this point I’m surprised you don’t already have a copy of the keys for me.”
Crowley stiffened and blushed immediately.
Aziraphale looked at him in pure amazement and his jaw dropped.
“Oh my God!” The angel shouted “You do!”
“Shut up and eat your stupid cake!”
Do you ever think about Aziraphale going out of his way to learn internet lingo just to make Crowley cringe in his own skin? Cause I do. (I’m still not entirely unconvinced that wasn’t why he learned to do sleight of hand magic. “You’r an angel, Angel! You can just summon the right card!” “But wouldn’t that rather be like cheating!” “IT’S HUMAN MAGIC, IT’S ALL CHEATING”)
Like the first time he says “LOL” out loud. “Ell-oh-ell, as the kids say” he says cheerfully and Crowley nearly slams the Bentley into a duck pond cause his brain just tried to escape what his ears just heard and subsequently goes off on a ten minute rant about how no one says it out loud, you’re not supposed to say it out loud, Angel. All the while Aziraphale is feigning politely confused ignorance, and thoroughly enjoying the tangent Crowley has now sneeringly diverted onto, snipping and snarling his way through his syllables, eventually admitting that while he claimed responsibility for the addition of YouTube comments on videos, that was just another thing humans came up with all on their own.
“Fascinating,” is all the angel has to say for himself, and the incident is quite forgotten until he does it again, this time responding to something Crowley says simply with “meirl” and for a split second Crowley thinks it’s some sort of German word he’s actually forgot exists until he realizes Aziraphale just said “me in real life” and whatever last few dregs of his soul that exist shrivel and die.
And it just keeps happening until one day Crowley catches the flutter of amusement behind Aziraphale’s benign and guileless expression and realizes the smug git has been trolling him this whole time, and he’s simultaneously torn between being hopping mad about it (because that’s his job dammit) but also weirdly proud.
“You bastard,” he says, unable to keep the serpentine smile from spreading over his face, “how long were you going to keep that up?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, my dear,” the angel replies placidly, taking a sip from his teacup and pulling a face, “this tea however is absolutely scorching. I do hope I don’t spill any. That would be quite the mood.”
Oh my god, Joy your tags
But can you imagine though, can you just imagine Crowley finding out the Them think he’s the tame hipster uncle and Aziraphale is the actual cool one.
“Him? What? No, I’m the cool one!” Crowley all but howls, waving a hand toward his angelic counterpart who is sitting at the kitchen table in the cottage sipping a cup of tea. “He hasn’t even changed his waistcoat since the 1890s!”
“So what you’re saying is he doesn’t ascribe to the model of unethical consumerism encouraged by late stage capitalism that keeps people shackled to their corporate overlords?” Pepper asks, giving him a bored look.
“What?!”
“Or that his sense of self isn’t tied to an arbitrary set of standards set by an industry hell bent on destroying values of self worth and happiness in pursuit of profit extolled at the cost of human dignity and life in sweat shops around the globe?”
“…What?!”
“My word Mrs Young,” Aziraphale says in the background, “this Victoria sponge is simply divine. You must tell me your secret. Another cup of tea? Oh well don’t mind if I do…”
Also while I’m careering high on this stream of thought, I can’t help but feel like the show missed a treat by not including Pepper’s little sister (I mean I get why they didn’t) but for those of you unaware Pepper has a little adorable sister who is absolutely fearless and wants to be a witch, and can you just imagine a little 6 year old girl described as being “a gold haired football” looking up at Aziraphale and Crowley with her thumb in her mouth (which Pepper hates because she only does it to look cute when people are looking) and all the adults are making polite chit chat like “sorry where was it you said you were from again…“ (because you can’t tell me either Az or Crowley wouldn’t check in on Adam from time to time by supplanting themselves into village as “friends of so and so, oh you know, Tish from bridge night, or was it Steven…anyway…”, you just plain can’t) and Pepper’s little sister with the wide eyed and loud innocence of little children everywhere under the age of ten just pipes up, “Are you married?”
And there’s a bit of an awkward pause cause well, everyone’s wondering but you’re not just supposed to blurt it out and assume so all the adults are doing that high nervous laugh adults do when Kids Say Things and Aziraphale who likes to think he’s good with children looks down at this little inquisitive cherub face, bending at the waist to lean on his knees and says cheerfully, “And what’s your name little one?”
“Éowyn.”
“Éowyn, what a pretty name.”
“No it’s not.”
“Oh, er…”
“Are you?”
“Am I what?”
“Are you married?” which is the moment when the girls mother can be heard hissing Wynnie in a soft fierce whisper and Aziraphale finds himself compelled to answer honeslty under the scrutiny of her six year old stare.
“Er, no.”
“Why not?”
Which is when Crowley, who is actually good with kids crouches down and says “Just haven’t had the time for it yet,” which would be so laughable if it wasn’t also so soul rendingly true. And then because he knows how children work adds, “There were some people who didn’t like us being friends very much, but that’s over with now.”
“Hear hear,” Mr. Young interjects, cause he feels like someone ought to, and well Adam’s sitting right there and you never know. He’d hate for his boy to every worry…
“Quite right,” Mrs. Young echoes, passing round another plate of jammy dodgers, two of which Crowley manages to snaffle without anyone seeing, one for him and one for Wynnie, who rips the biscuit apart with practiced efficiency and eats the jam filling first. The same way Crowley likes to.
“Dunno,” Crowley admits honestly, giving the angel a sideways glance as he stands up, forced to drag Wynnie with him, the six year old having decided to adopt the tall leggy man, and wrap her sticky arms around his neck. It’s disgusting but he’s dealt with worse. “Haven’t really thought about it, perhaps we should.”
“Well…” Aziraphale flushes, not sure why they’re having this discussion in public but suspecting somehow that Crowley orchestrated it. “I don’t think we need to be hasty…”
And Crowley can’t help but laugh at that.
It’s only later, after the events of the day have settled and he’s had time to think about it, that Aziraphale brings it up again while they’re sitting at the bus stop. In hindsight, they should have brought the Bentley, but really they’re just enjoying sitting beside each other out in the open. They’ve spent so long hiding, it’s nice to simply be.
“Did you really mean that…”
“Mean what?”
“Back there, with all the humans…about…getting married.” He says it in a whisper, as though he’s afraid who will hear.
“Dunno really,” Crowley says after a while, carefully nonchalant. “Seems like the human thing to do.”
“But we’re not human.”
“No, but we like human things. Perhaps we’d like that too.”
They’re silent again for a time, long enough for the first few stars to come out from behind the clouds, and then Aziraphale brightens, “We could have a cake.”
“We could have a cake,” Crowley agrees levelly, a small smile tugging at his mouth. “We could even eat it too.”
thank you i love it
They could dance the GAVOTTE!
I love this!
I am in love with all ⬆️ This 💕💕💕
It's so beautiful ❤️❤️
