A piece of fiction that was my first reply on the Good Omens kink meme
Off-balance
Prompt: Mind control kink: Aziraphale is slowly being "reclaimed" by Heaven, possibly as punishment for canoodling with a certain demon, and is losing his humanity, personality and memories. Someone has to snap him out of it, maybe Crowley, but anyone will do, really. Go with what feels right to you. Preferably, he's really far gone before he gets better.
First signs. Gula. - Absence of sin does not mean presence of virtue. -
It may have started earlier, Crowley wouldn't know. The angel had always had his moments of absentmindedness and insensitivity. But the first time he noticed anything out of the ordinary was when he cam to take Aziraphale out for dinner.
"Why would I?" said the angel. "It’s not like I need to eat, neither of us do."
Crowley's face fell. "But..." he started, "we always, I mean, you make a point of... uhm, appreciating peoples hard work at making good things, including food, don’t you? And, and... aren't you supposed to keep, well, not exactly a promise, I suppose, but at least appointments and the like? Aziraphale?"
Aziraphale blinked. "Where was... Oh, hello Crowley, didn’t notice you there. Ah, dinner, yes? Let me get my coat, I’ll be with you in a minute."
Crowley blinked. "Didn’t notice..."
He shook his head and put it out of his mind. And things did go as they normally did, with Aziraphale complaining about Crowley's driving, and Crowley pretending to be vaguely evil but never really acting on his threats (or at least not on the greater part of them), and both of them ordering a good meal and drinking even better wine and all was well until dessert. Crowley didn't even notice until he was about to take the first bite hazelnut cake. "Angel?"
"What is it?"
"Don't you want to eat my cake too?"
"It's your dessert; it's on your plate."
"And?"
"Well, it'd be a bit impolite to eat the food off of your plate, wouldn't you say?"
"Oh." said Crowley. "I suppose."
And he ate his cake. Of course he did. No sense in ordering something he didn't like, was there? It was just, without well, it just tasted sort of ashy and heavy. Too light and sweet. Too intense. Flavourless. Something.
Anyway, what was the point of ordering a dessert for yourself if the angel didn't eat it, really?
The ride back to the shop was oddly quiet. Crowley didn't even feel like breaking the speed limit. When he was back in his own flat, he snarled half-heartedly at his houseplants and then went straight to bed. Tomorrow would be better, he told himself. He didn't bother to ask himself what would make tomorrow better (or worse).
And another sign the end is near. Ira, Avaritia and massive OOC-ness.
The next day was decidedly not better. Crowley gaped open-mouthed while the customers walked past him. The angel was selling books? Cheaply? This was, this was… a travesty, an abomination before, well, not the Lord, obviously, but an abomination before something, at least, possibly before Aziraphale, except that it was the angel selling books. Lots of them. He could tell there were at least eight missing, and he hadn’t even looked properly yet.
“Aziraphale?” he said weakly.
But he had to wait, because Aziraphale was busy helping a customer. In a friendly way. He didn’t even glare or frown, not even, not even when he handed over the very obviously ancient and very valuable book to the young woman, for, for… twenty pounds? That thing looked precious enough to once have been a noblewoman’s dowry!
The door slammed shut behind the happily humming young lady, which woke Crowley from his shock induced state of immobility.
“Right.” he said, and he walked, still not entirely at ease, towards the angel. “What the Milton Keynes do you think you’re doing?” he growled, leaning over the counter.
Aziraphale saw him, and for a moment, his visage darkened. “De…” Then his eyes brightened again. “Hello Crowley. Fancy seeing you here. What is the matter?”
Crowley was mentally even further out of balance. Surely the angel hadn’t just nearly…
“Uhm… Well, I… What’s wrong with you, angel?”
Aziraphale’s brow furrowed “Wrong? What do you mean?”
“Well, for starters, you’re selling books. You act weird about dinner, you don’t even recognize me half of the time, and to top it all off, you’re selling books! Everything is wrong.”
“I’m selling… but I do have a bookshop, dear boy. What else should I do with it?”
Crowley stared for a good minute trough his sunglasses at Aziraphale. Then he blinked. Then he barged past Aziraphale into the backroom where Aziraphale’s most treasured books were kept. He snapped his fingers. Several dozens of antique books, as well as a handful of scrolls old enough to make half-mad archaeologist cry with joy, suddenly found themselves in a pristine flat in Mayfair.
“There.” said Crowley. “And you’re not getting them back until you’re acting normal again.”
Aziraphale just looked faintly surprised. It chilled Crowley more than the threat of being smote ever had. Just to test the faint suspicion that started to form (you know, the faint suspicion with the 8000 Megahertz of air-raid alarms of trouble and wrongness on) he summoned a size large glass can of water and a size small living duck. He dunked the duck in the can of water. The bird tried to get back to the surface, but noticed it couldn’t.
“Well?” said Crowley. “Aren’t you going to tell me not to?”
Even annoyance, he thought. Even if it’s just annoyance.
Aziraphale, however, still just looked faintly puzzled. “Well, I don’t think its very kind to do that, but it’s just a duck, right? No point in getting upset or anything.”
The duck, released, bobbed to the surface of the water, flew up, landed on Crowley’s head and started to glare admonishingly downwards. Crowley didn’t notice.
“You’re supposed to care.” he said hoarsely. “You always care. Since when did you stop caring?”
“I’m not quite sure what you mean.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow.” said Crowley. “And I hope you’re better by then. Alright?”
He stalked out of the bookshop without waiting for an answer.
Outside, he bumped into a man who stared at his head. “You’ve, uhm, got a duck on…”
“Sod off, go fall in a ditch and get used as a sheep’s toilet!” Crowley snarled with sudden fury.
He got into his Bentley and raced off.
Air. He needed some fresh air to clear his head.
“Ah, erm, sorry?” said the still confused man who still stood on the sidewalk to the empty space where the Bentley had been.
The duck eventually joined its fellow ducks in St James Park, with some interesting stories to tell about driving in a vintage car.
Crowley had gotten utterly drunk in an attempt to forget he was worried and that worrying for someone other that oneself was severely un-demonic. It was an unhealthy tendency, encouraged by hell, and his mind of angelic origin would remember the important bits when he woke up, so that was alright.
Confrontation and ramblings.
The next day, like a man picking at a particularly itchy scab, Crowley returned to the bookshop.
It was empty. Of angelic presence, at least.
So he started to wander, trusting his instincts to bring him where he wanted to be. It wasn’t long before he started to notice the effect of angelic works. It took a lot longer to get to the source of it. Aziraphale had been busy. And rather a lot of the angel’s work lacked his usual subtl… discretion.
Crowley was the serpent. Crowley was the subtle one. The angel was discreet, devious, effective or unassuming instead.
“Aziraphale?” he asked tentatively.
The angel turned around and his face was empty. “Demon.” he acknowledged coldly.
“Aziraphale? That is you, isn’t it?”
Don’t panic said a cool clear thought inside Crowley. Once you panic, you won’t be able to stop, and then you’ll lose any and all control that you have, and then you’ll be lost.
“I don’t see why that should concern you, demon.”
“Aziraphale, please. Don’t…” he reached out towards Aziraphale, in his fear and concern in a gesture far more tender and caring than fitted with what was supposed to be his nature.
The angel, hardly Aziraphale anymore, slapped his hand away sharply.
“Don’t touch me, demon!” he said furiously.
“What happened to you?” Crowley asked. “This isn’t right.”
“And what makes you the judge of that, you fallen piece of filth?”
Crowley stiffened at that.
“What makes me the judge of that? Six thousand years, angel, six thousand years on this blessed earth, and bearing witness to more right and wrong than heaven and hell could ever hold. As you very well know. As you should know, angel.”
He had started speaking with sharp rage, but ended almost pleading.
“I’m glad to say I don’t.” the not-Aziraphale said primly.
“Care to elaborate?” Crowley said neutrally.
“Why certainly. You see, it appears that so much time cut off from heaven, and subject to all the evils of humanity and the insidious temptations of the Serpent himself had rendered me regrettably less than pure. So my direct superiors gracefully decided that I should be rid of the impurities that had taken root within my very being, as also of the memories and needless complexity that they rooted in.”
The corners of Crowley’s mouth went down in distaste. “I see. And this is irreversible, is it?”
Don’t let it be, don’t let it be, don’t let it be, I need it not to be
“It will be, in time. And before you get any ideas about my newfound lack of experience, demon, I assure you that my superiors gave me plenty of zeal and righteous wrath to make up for such things. And I think I shall erase you from existence now.” said not-Aziraphale, and he attacked. It was klutzy. Even worse than the first times they had fought and Aziraphale had only had training in how to swing a sword in an impressive looking way and Crowley had only had experiences in avoiding claws, disturbingly unformed appendages, torture implements or any combination thereof. And madness, naturally, but that hadn’t helped in physical fights.
Crowley simply stepped aside and the angel stumbled.
Not much of a challenge, Crowley thought as he folded his sunglasses away. Is he, like this, even halfway capable of cancelling me out when I actually try to be really evil for a change?
Crowley’s eye fell on a group of pierced young people in black, handing out flowers with fixed, waxy grins on their faces, and eyes that weren’t really there.
He barked out a short, bitter laugh.
With friends like these, who needs enemies, that was how the saying went, was it? This was more like, with zealous angels on the enemy’s side, who needs demons actually working?
Not-Aziraphale had gotten his balance back and attacked again, with alien fire and none of Aziraphale’s skill. He tried to knock Crowley down, but Crowley grabbed his wrists and pushed them upwards while moving his leg behind Aziraphale’s in such a way that the angel lost his balance when Crowley pulled his leg back and straightened his knee a bit. The angel fell backwards, with Crowley on top of him. The real Aziraphale would have kneed him between the legs before they even landed.
“You’re better than this.” Crowley said. “Even in the Garden. Snap out of it, Aziraphale, you’re making a fool of yourself. You’re a better fighter, a better angel and an all-round better person than this.”
“Let go of me.” said the angel, trying to free its, his wrists from Crowley’s grip, who held them pinned to the ground.
Crowley faintly wondered whether Aziraphale’s superiors had wanted to get rid of the angel by way of the first enemy it’d, he’d come across, or if they were really that stupid, thinking that this angel would be even halfway capable of anything much.
“This you isn’t remotely as intelligent and able as the real Aziraphale, so give him back.” Crowley said.
“You will die for this insolence, demon.”
“Just. Give. Him. Back.” Crowley snarled, and he emphasized every word by mentally lashing out, banishing or destroying every bit that wasn’t Aziraphale. It should perhaps have been difficult, but he was angry, he wasn’t the target of the changes, and he, better than anyone but perhaps Aziraphale and the Ineffable One, knew what Aziraphale was and what he wasn’t. And the purely unearthly additions might not have caught on quite as well as they could have to an uncomplicated, unearthly angel.
He tried to reach out to the pieces he could almost feel, just there, just beyond his reach, and failing, failing to release them of the separations that shouldn’t be there and oh, the face of the angel was truly empty now, even without that artificial rage, but what should be there instead was equally lacking. And he couldn’t pass trough what it was that they had done to his… to the angel, not without getting himself utterly destroyed.
“Aziraphale.” Crowley’s eyes searched Aziraphale’s face, trying to find anything, anything at all, finding nothing.
The angel was alive in the technical sense, but hardly as more than a shell.
“Please.” Crowley whimpered. “Don’t be gone, not now. I need you.”
Had Crowley been in a normal state of mind, he would have been horrified at his own words, and even now a small part of him thought them overly sappy. That part was overscreamed by the parts that kept going “This should not be, this isn’t right, it wasn’t supposed to go like this.”
So Crowley let go of Aziraphale’s wrists, kissed him gently on the lips, closed the eyes, the terribly empty eyes of the angel with two fingers in a far to familiar gesture and then did what every self-respecting and sane person that just doesn’t cry does in an extremely stressful and depressing situation.
He made it that no-one saw him, curled up in a fetal position, with his hand twisted in Aziraphale’s shirt, and gasped for air while tears and snot tried to escape from his face, while he couldn’t wail because his throat and chest and every part of his body, including his head, felt as if it was being strangled.
What he didn’t expect was the arms.
They just… came up, held him and tried to comfort him.
His head snapped up and he looked straight into Aziraphale’s eyes and Aziraphale’s wavery smile.
“Aziraphale?” he asked.
Aziraphale nodded.
Crowley breathed in deeply. “Don’t you ever, ever do that to me again. What were you thinking! And your direct superiors? Don’t they know you’re ten times bet… more capable than anything they could come up with? And needless complexity? You’re fine the way you are! And more angelic than most of the Seraphim tied together with a blessed silk ribbon!” he snarled as he rolled off the angel, got up and helped Aziraphale to stand. “What’s the idea behind all this? Really? Because murdering who you are doesn’t make a lick of sense.”
Aziraphale looked away. “It was punishment.”
“Punishment? For what? I thought we got away with not ending the world and such?”
“Well, yes, it wasn’t for that.”
“Then what? It’s not like you were doing anything different than in the last few centuries, did you? Except… it wasn’t for hanging out with me a bit more than previously, no, that makes no sense, it wasn’t, was it?”
“No…” Aziraphale’s voice got very small.
Crowley sighed. “Forget it. You can tell me later. Let’s just go back to the bookshop to get smashed. Or my flat first, to get you your books back, and then we can work something out to prevent this from ever happening again, and then I can go and forget I was whimpering like a girl at the thought of losing you.”
“Uhm…” The angel grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him close in a sudden, crushing kiss. Crowley felt a small, quick tongue on his lips for a moment, but before he could respond or even part his lips, Aziraphale had let go.
“That was…” the angel swallowed. “That was part of the reason why I was punished. Those kind of quite a bit too intense feelings, I mean. Towards you. Uhm… I didn’t tell them at first, but, ah, you know, I think they sort of did caught on anyway, and they were insulting you, very probably to get a rise out of me, I suspect now, and, well, it did, and I got rather vocal, and you know how it is, once you speak your mind about the things most on your mind, the rest just sort of follows, and I may have, well, sort of insulted, well, rather a lot, really. Most of the bureaucratic management of heaven, for starters. And their intelligence. More or less.” He coughed a polite little cough.
“It was all rather a bit too much, I expect.”
“Ah.” Crowley said weakly.
“And don’t you worry about it happening again.” Aziraphale continued brightly. “Once they do it to you once, it takes quite a bit more for them to be able to do it again, you know. And the original personality does shine trough in the cases, well, sorry, bad example, those ended up a bit cracked in the head, as you call it, anyway, I won’t bother you with me being sweet on you, so don’t worry, alright? It doesn’t have to influence our friendship or anything. And of course I’ll undo the damage I’ve caused here, seeing, oh, those poor people, and, well, I don’t think…”
Crowley shut the rambling angel up by pulling him into a kiss of his own, and it was softer, but also a lot less chaste, with the angel bending backwards and nearly being carried by Crowley’s arms because of Crowley bending forwards quite eagerly and him practically devouring the angel. It lasted a lot longer too.
“You’re an idiot.” Crowley said, panting, when they broke apart. “A complete and utter moron. Really. Insulting heaven. You’re out of your bloody mind, that’s what you are. And I agree with very nearly everything you said. Except that it will have to influence our friendship, mostly by me not being bothered by it at all. Oh, and a bit of a warning, I’m a possessive bastard, so I’ll be wanting you all for myself. Understood?”
The angel looked up with him with eyes that were strangely wide and bright. Then he grinned most un-angel-like, but very Aziraphale.
“Naturally.” he purred. “But that will, of course, have to go both ways.”
Crowley smiled.
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Notes:
I’ll have you know that I’ve blown my fanfic virginity on this. And I’d like to claim the duck as a possible self-insert character, despite me not being a duck at all. Oh, and the Latin words in the title are some deadly sins in pretentious Latin, which I sort of started with, but since Aziraphale doesn’t have the full range of them (unless you guide the story more in that direction) and the full description of them is a bit more complicated than their simple names suggest, I sort of diverted from that idea. After all, it was supposed to be in the direction of mind control.
Truth be told, I have no idea how to work with LJ yet. Let's hope it doesn't blow up in my face, shall we? And I'm not entirely certain about how I should rate things either. Or how LJ cuts work.