Fic: 499 Years Later
So, I haven't posted fic in any fandom in, oh dear, years. I do not have a beta, so feel free to point out (nicely, mind you :-) any horrendous mistakes.
1800 words or thereabouts.
Aziraphale knew the demon was a sound sleeper, but still. One should really be more careful, what with all the dreadful things one could read in the newspapers these days. After all, even the bookshop had an anti-burglary system. Not one from the mainstream companies, certainly, but any potential light-fingered sinner tended to end up face to face with the devout cat-lady who walked past Aziraphale's bookshop on her way to her shop, the Holey Pussy Emporium. If the demon insisted on spending so much time unconscious, he ought to rely on something other than greenery to distract the curious and enterprising. Anyone could come and sit here, on the large white bed.
He should tell him.
Instead, he watched him sleep : one hand lay half-curled in front of his face, the other clutched a soft blanket. For once, he could see the smooth face without the sunglasses. He looked younger. Sweet, almost. But the demon wasn't sweet, was he ? He was a demon.
Well. And he was an angel. He had a mission. Divine and, of course, part of the Plan. Ineffable, certainly. Certainly.
He ran his fingers through the dark fringe, let them whisper a sound against a cheek.
The demon stirred then, stretched, and he reached for the sunglasses on the bedside table. Aziraphale caught his hand on the way.
“Mf ? 'ng'l ? ”
“Don't, dear.” He looked into those eyes he would have so rarely seen, after all. A glimpse from under a hat, from behind hair ; hardly visible during night-time - which by necessity he had long favoured - and in daylight dilated with belladonna and coloured with whatever tincture the demon could find - often blood-red. Often blood. It was all things considered both satisfyingly demonic and believably human-like - lack of sleep, eye disease, a fight... so many possibilities ; and no one looks too long at people who've hurt their eyes, do they ?
And now, he wouldn't have any other opportunities to see them. He found he wanted to, right now.
Those eyes blinked up at him once, slid down to the angel's hands clutching a flaming dagger, and then slid back up to the angel's face. He sat up in the bed, and the sheets puddled in his lap.
“Why did you wake me, then, angel ? ”
“Crowley, I - ” What could he say ? His eyes wandered around the bed, around the room. Then widened. “You, too ? ” The axe was lying under the window, darker than dark, as if it absorbed more than the daylight but the night too.
“Yes. I. Um.”
Next to the axe, there was a suitcase. Someone had thrown half-in, half-out, a leather jacket, plant seeds, a pair of sunglasses. It looked like unfinished business.
“Angel, I. I tried to, but I didn't want to. I thought, if mine told me to off you, then yours must have told you to off me. And I thought, better you than anyone else.” He looked intently at his hands, fisted in his lap.
“Crowley, my dear, why don't you fight me ? ”
The demon didn't seem to have any answer to that, so he shrugged and took Aziraphale's hand and placed the blade near his neck. “One less demon, one more chance for Liszt, right ? ”
“But I don't like - I mean, I do, of course, but.”
“Look, if I kill you, then I'll get recalled Downstairs and I really, really don't want to. Hastur's still after me and just, I don't want to, all right ? But if you kill me, then you get a commendation and they'll forgive you all these little things you're worried about and at least one of us is alive and happy, right ? Right ? ”
“No, my dear. No.” He flung the dagger on top of the axe, and they sizzled and melted. “I can't.”
“If you don't, you'll Fall. And, and you don't want that. And we would both be recalled Downstairs.”
“Things were simpler when Adam was still around, weren't they.”
“Yeah.”
“They're going to come for us.”
“Yeah.” Crowley stood up and rolled his shoulders. “Wanna get smashed waiting for them ? ”
“Well. I do have a nice case of Pomerol back at the bookshop. I'm sure they'll find us there as easily as here, but I'm afraid you'll have to get dressed first, though, dear boy.”
Aziraphale looked primly at the wall and therefore didn't see Crowley slither on the bed, hovering behind him for a minute. He startled when he felt cool hands settle on his shoulders, gripping and kneading and quite undecided on whether they wanted him to turn left, or right, or not. He decided for them, got to his feet and grabbed the demon ; stumbling and awkward they ended up breathing into each other's necks, a hand clutching a tweed jacket, another stroking fine black hair on a pale nape.
They didn't see the two beings appear in the room, one in a flashy fluffy golden cloud, the other from a flashy bubble of dark smoke. They stared at the angel and the demon, one in tweed and one in nothing but a pair of wings, shifting gently as if in the wind, feathers sighing and surrounding them. They were hardly moving, forehead to forehead, eyes half-closed and mouths half-opened, breathing each other's breath, hands sometimes touching, sometimes not.
Then, the two beings stared at the melted weapons.
Then, they stared at each other.
Then, they tried to touch them.
Then, they called their superiors.
After a while, most of the denizens of Heaven and Hell were, if not shattering space and time by dancing together on the head of a single pin, at least seriously bending them dangerously close to the breaking point by piling up in the bedroom.
The two factions were facing each other and glaring viciously on each side of the bed, clearly hungry, starving for blood ; and Dagon and Gabriel were having a heated conversation. Aziraphale and Crowley only got bits such as, “really want to invol- ” and “ -ose two useless - ” and “in a bedroom ? ” and “delayed Arm- ” and “ -loody AntiCh- ”, and those bits combined with the hordes of demons and angels waving flaming swords and other assorted weapons that their commanders were barely holding in check made them a little bit twitchy. Their hands were still entwined, though, even if Crowley hissed at Michael, who was polishing his blade with murderous intent, and Aziraphale was smiling beatifically at Hastur, who looked like the only thing preventing him from attacking was not knowing who to jump first.
Dagon and Gabriel eventually went back to their respective groups, shrugged and looked either up or down, depending.
When Beelzebub and the Metatron appeared, the demons and angels stopped shifting and whispering.
“Oh dear”, Aziraphale sighed “Do you think we, er, caused something we shouldn't ?
Crowley was grinning like a maniacal Hannibal Lecter on the electric chair. “I always thought Adam meant for Armageddon to be man-made if it ever had to happen, but, um. I'm sorry ? ”
“Don't mind us”, said the Metatron.
“Pretend we're not here”, said Beelzebub.
Everyone blinked and twitched and thought : “ O_O ”.
The Metatron said : “We are taking notes. New ways of neutralizing the adversary are always welcome.”
Beelzebub said : “We do not want to neutralize.”
Adam said : “I told you, no more messin' about, didn't I ? I said, no Armageddon, no Apocalypse, right ? ”
Everyone stared. And stared some more.
“See, I go away for a while an' then you all go crazy. You can't all fight in a bedroom, can you ? It's not what bedrooms are for ! It's for, er, other stuff. If I'm not here, how can you end the world ? So I go away, and you want to do it anyway. You're not playing by the rules, are you ? ”
“But they're, we're not people.” (Un)surprisingly, Beelzebub and the Metatron seemed to agree.
“Aren't you ? Why ? ”
“Excuse me, but aren't you, er, dead ? Sort of ? ” Crowley was clearly determined to die with answers rather than without, it seemed.
“Well, no. I can't, really. I went away for a while, but away is not dead, is it ? ” Adam shrugged. “Anyway, you're all people too. If you want to. They want to.”
"We do?"
"Yes, we do."
"Right."
“They have stayed too long on Earth and have forgotten their true nature. Their calling. They've been, ah, polluted but mankind's habits.”
“Have they ? See, you're agreeing right now. Aren't you supposed not to ? ”
Beelzebub and the Metatron looked sort of sheepish. As sheepish as two flaming beings can.
“If you can find common ground, then you're a bit the same, right ? You can't want to destroy someone like you, that's not what you're supposed to do, right? ”
There were a strained few minutes. “We will... report back.” Beelzebub and the Metatron looked warily at each other, shook hands, glared at their armies, and disappeared.
Adam looked pointedly at said armies, and said said armies started to go back from whence they came. Soon, there were only a few demons and angels left, but each side was staring at the other with a different sort of hunger from before. One could hear, “Is that, is that really you ? ” Or, “it's been so long, I thought - ” and “You're - you're alive ! ” And “I missed you so much, my friend” and “it wasn't half as fun without you.” They mingled, clasped shoulders, brushed wings.
It was 1989 all over again.
Adam was beaming, like a proud doting father at his prodigal son come back at last. “I always thought the world should have had dinosaurs for real.” At Aziraphale's somewhat puzzled look, he added, “well, 6500 year is not enough for all the really cool stuff like pyramids AND dinosaurs AND Atlantis AND everything. So now it's all real. And we're all people, just diff'rent kinds, but still people, you know ? All sharing the same place, but not enemies by nature, just by stupidity.”
When all the remaining demons and angels had left, Crowley unstuck his tongue from his palate and croaked, “thank you.” Then he added, “I'm sorry for your friends.”
“I didn't see you at the funerals, that's right. I know you don't like them, so it's okay. But now it'll be different, see ? Never doesn't mean never ever anymore. If demons and angels and good and evil are not absolute enemies anymore, then nothing is absolute. Not even Death.”
And Adam winked at them and winked out, and Aziraphale and Crowley were left standing at the foot of a white bed, in a white bedroom that didn't look like the End of the world and everything had just come to pass (again) within its walls.
And arm in (clothed) arm, they went to the Bentley, drove to the bookshop and celebrated the dawn a new era by getting spectacularly sloshed on excellent wine and beautifully drunk with love.
or on AO3
thank you!