Ficlet: Feathers and Speech Impediments
Title: Feathers and Speech Impediments
Pairing: A/C
Rating: PG-13
Length: 603 words
Notes: Domestic fluff. You know how you sometimes get hair or something stuck to the roof of your mouth and can't get it out and it's really annoying? You know how practically every wingkink fic involving these two features Crowley licking wings at some point? Yeah.
A quality associated with wordy, trivial conversation
Fourteen letters, Aziraphale thought furiously, rubbing the butt of the pen against his temple. Right on the tip of his tongue, he was sure of it...
For a well-read person, he tended to meet his match in newspaper crosswords. The trouble with words was that humans tended to change the spelling as the whim struck them every few years or so. Keeping up with all that made for a difficult and irritating endeavour, but on the upside it did present a challenge.
He slowly became aware of a scuffling from the stairway. Without lifting his eyes from the crossword, he rose from the armchair, wandered over into the kitchenette and turned the kettle on.
“Bffffl. Mrf. Pfffft,” came from upstairs, and he raised a silent eyebrow.
He did discard the crossword a minute later, when the kettle boiled, and after another minute he was making his way up the steps, tray with scones and two cups of tea held in a careful grip.
“You're up early,” he observed, as he entered the little bedroom with the formerly-seldom-used bed.
Crowley looked up at him in bewilderment. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, quite pleasantly naked save for the endearing drapery of paisley-and-tartan blankets he'd cocooned himself in.
“Blfffff,” Crowley said, sticking out his tongue, and then “Mffffft. Pfffftt. Blargh. Bleh. Mffpffft.”
Aziraphale carefully set the tray on the end table and sat down beside him.
“Speech impediment, my dear?” he asked mildly.
“Very funny,” Crowley glowered at him, then coughed and gagged like a cat struggling with a hairball. He stuck out his tongue and raised a finger to pick at it with surgical precision. Then he held it out for Aziraphale to see.
Pinched between the tips of his thumb and index fingers was a very fine downy feather roughly the length of a fingernail.
“See?” Crowley said furiously, then made another dry hacking sound.
Aziraphale silently handed him the teacup.
“Thanksss,” Crowley gulped and downed half the steaming cup in one go, then sipped on the rest and swished it around in his mouth for a bit. He swallowed. “Great,” he sighed. “Feathers for breakfast.” He turned to look at Aziraphale accusingly. “'Sss your fault, you know. You keep sticking them in my mouth during all the...” he made vague, haphazard gestures, reddening a little.
“There's scones,” Aziraphale pointed out, reaching for the tray.
Crowley caught his wrist, then flushed with embarrassment. “Don't want ssscones,” he whined and pulled Aziraphale down flat onto the bed, draping himself over him. “You're bloody well right it'sss too early,” he mumbled, tucking his chin against Aziraphale's shoulder, his breath warm and soft against his ear.
Crowley wrapped himself around him, arms and legs and all, then stilled.
A minute later, he started making soft little hissing sounds.
Aziraphale looked down to the demon curled around him and considered slipping away. He did have things to do, after all. In theory.
He thought on the number of times he'd politely shooed the demon out of his shop (and how he had, on at least one occasion, caught him lingering outside a full hour later, in the rain, no less), and felt a brief pang of guilt.
He pressed a gentle kiss into the demon's hair, then held out his hand. The pen and crossword found themselves on an impromptu trip through space-time.
Aziraphale maneuvered his arms to rest comfortably on the mass of blankets across Crowley's back and looked sternly at the unfilled row.
Aha! Loquaciousness, he thought and smiled.