Title: it giveth light unto all in the house (the let's have some wine remix)
Fandom: Good Omens
Characters/Pairing: Aziraphale/Crowley
Rating: G
Length: ~630
Summary: There's loving Crowley the way he loves their waiter at the café and the ducks in St. James Park and linzer tarts and there's-well.
Notes: A remix of
such_heights's awesome
There is a Light. Written for Remix 2011. So many thanks to
metonymy and
Bessiemaemucho for the beta!
Crowley doesn't feel comfortable in his own skin, as of late.
It's an odd expression to use on a creature that can physically change its skin when it gets bored, as irritating as the process may be, but it's the first that comes to Aziraphale's mind. When Crowley gets like this, he shifts and stretches and rolls his shoulders like he's trying to shed. Aziraphale doesn't think the demon even realizes he's doing it, a bit of the serpent he used to be still lingering just beneath the surface.
It's endearing. It shouldn't be, but it is. There are a fair few things about Crowley that Aziraphale finds endearing, these days.
In the aftermath of the aborted apocalypse, the two of them have stuck to their usual routine. They feed the ducks in the afternoons, have dinner out about town, and occasionally meet for an afternoon drink or take a quick business trip to the countryside, where everything is ostensibly the same, save the ducks are more suspicious of strangers.
They're stuck in the past. They've glossed over the meaning behind their part in the whole mess in order to dissect the motives of Heaven and Hell and an eleven-year-old boy. What's that idiom? Can't see the forest for the trees.
No. Won't see the forest for the trees. It's true in his case, at least, and he'll bet it's true for Crowley as well.
He hopes it is, at least. Six thousand years on the Earth, countless more above, and he still can't help but feel this is a basic, intrinsic thing that he's not grasping, not acknowledging, afraid to talk about. Aziraphale knows from love-Aziraphale loves everything on Earth and everything in Heaven. Crowley's on Earth, of course, and though he's a demon, it's always been his opinion that with enough love, maybe demons would choose to return to the fold. But there's loving Crowley the way he loves their waiter at the café and the ducks in St. James Park and linzer tarts and there's-
Well.
It's silly that he can't even think about it in his own mind, in his own bookshop, with the closed sign up and no one to notice or disturb him. Not silly, even, preposterous. These things didn't start with the botched apocalypse, it was just the catalyst to make Aziraphale understand that, after six thousand years, he'd prefer another six thousand on Earth with Crowley than an eternity anywhere else. Aziraphale knows he should embrace it. He's an angel; he was born out of His love to understand that all love is good love. After all, didn't even He love Lucifer, even after his Fall?
He shouldn't hide it. Like the light under a bushel, it does no one any good if its hidden. He needs to speak, to say something. Something needs to give if Crowley's going to stop looking so tense and hunted, if Aziraphale himself is going to stop looking around like someone's going to take this away from him. They need to meet in the middle. He needs to put this on the lampstand, as it were.
As if it were that easy.
He's still trying to map out a good strategy, absently stirring his tea, when the bell over the door to the shop rings. He glances up, absently, though it can only be Crowley.
"Angel," Crowley says. His shoulders carry the stiffness that's a constant these days.
"Yes?" Aziraphale says mildly.
"Let's go for a drive," Crowley says.
Aziraphale nods and puts on his jacket. They get into the Bentley as dusk falls and the streetlights start to turn on. Maybe a drive is exactly what they need to clear the air. Or maybe he'll continue to cower under the bushel, where there's less chance of being hurt.