Happy Holidays, Hoshi_Ryo!
Title: Oxytocis Ridiculous or Dido’s Cuddling Curse
For: hoshi_ryo
Author: [REDACTED]
Beta: Meganbobness
Rating: Gen (at least, for now :P)
Pairings: Aziraphale/Crowley
Characters: Aziraphale, Crowley
Warnings: None
Summary: Crowley comes down with a mysterious curse that won’t allow him to get more than 100
paces from Aziraphale’s side. No one’s sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but there is hugging and
ducks and a lot of wine involved.
Author's Notes: For the prompt “Aziraphale and the Hazards of Reading Old Magical Books
Aloud. The more the caps are deserved, the better. Aziraphale/Crowley optional, any rating.”
So, this was a challenge. I overthought it and came very close to running out of time. As it
sometimes happens, this got out of hand and I realized about halfway through that there was
no way I could wrap this up in 2000 words or less. SO, consider this a first chapter of a 2-3
chapter fic, Giftee! There will be more, most likely after the names of the writers have been
revealed and I can post this on Ao3. Until then, Happy Holidays and I hope you enjoy!
Small and unassuming, the little red book peeked out between a bundle of disco LPs and an unopened
box of fairy lights. The upper right corner of the cover was sadly bent, but in a way it looked like a little
hand, seductively beckoning Aziraphale closer.
Plucking the book out of its hiding place, Aziraphale flipped to the first page - Yes! It was! Cradling it
carefully, Aziraphale rushed to the harried looking woman guarding the cashbox and purchased his
spectacular find for a grand total of £3.50. He didn’t stop to look at anything else as he practically
skipped away from the estate sale and made a beeline back to his bookshop. If he bent space-time a
little, tiny bit so he got there in half the time, well, he was just eager to get back to work.
And conducting a thorough examination of this, this precious red book, was definitely doing the Lord’s
work. The Prophesies of Dido Logos of Naphlion, probably the rarest book of prophesy to come out of
the 19th century, was completely and utterly wrong on almost all accounts except for the prediction of a
comet. This one correct prediction was enough to gain Dido a small cult following that later disappeared
into obscurity. It would have been completely worthless to Aziraphale if not for one definite fact: He had
met Dido in 1853, just in passing, and she saw him for what he actually was. She pointed right at him
and said “You’re an Angel, aren’t you? Can you get rid of this rash on my tit? It’s been driving me mad
for a week.” Startled, Aziraphale not only healed the rash, but also cured the lifelong allergy that caused
it, and then fled.
Dido’s prophesies were collected by her few remaining followers after her death and published. Only
about 500 copies were ever made and now, now Aziraphale held one of those tomes in his very hands.
Dido may have been a genuinely awful prophet, but she knew an Angel when she saw one, and that
alone was enough for Aziraphale. Perhaps there were clues in her writings as to how she knew what he
was.
So, he made himself some cocoa, dug a notebook and pen out of a very neatly organized pile of random
items, and sat down in the back room with Dido. Hours passed interrupted only by a couple of
inquisitive would-be customers knocking loudly on the door to the shop. Aziraphale shooed them away
as politely as possible (with an oh-so-polite mental nudge to steer clear of his place in the future) and
kept on reading. It wasn’t until about 3 in the morning that something else made him pause.
He grit his teeth and sneered at what he found.
About three-quarters of the way through the book, in the margins of a chapter dedicated to Dido’s
ramblings about flying chariots and clock-work servants, some mendicant had scribbled a string of
words. The ink was a faded dark brown, so it wasn’t recent, and it was written in an antiquated form of
Greek. Aziraphale had to squint and look very closely to read what the scrawl said. He read it first in old
Greek, then in English.
“Never far… as smoke from the fire… rising yet bound. The Almighty strike at thee should the tether be
broken before the Word is spoken for the Lady Dido… my one and only. ” Aziraphale wished his mug of
cocoa full again and huffed. “Well I hope for their sake they took a poetry class or two before they tried
that again. Not exactly Donne, are you?” He erased the chicken-scratch and kept reading, occasionally
flipping back to compare notes.
Around 4 o’ clock, the phone rang. Ten minutes later, it rang again. Three minutes after that it rang yet
again. A few seconds later, it rang and then was knocked to the floor by an unseen force. Aziraphale had
switched to Rooibos and was just considering digging out some Wagon Wheels he knew he had
somewhere when the locked front door of the shop swung open with a crash.
“Aziraphale!” Crowley shrieked, barreling through the front room and skidding to a halt in front of
Aziraphale’s chair. He was breathing fast and his voice had a reedy tone to it. He was soaked with sweat.
Carefully placing Dido aside, Aziraphale started to get up but Crowley suddenly collapsed into his lap.
They both stayed like that for a minute, Crowley panting face-down into Aziraphale’s knees, half-way on
the floor; Aziraphale, stunned, his arms raised in a sort ‘don’t shoot!’ position. It was very
uncomfortable and definitely not the least bit enjoyable for Aziraphale. At all. Definitely.
“Uh,” said Aziraphale. Crowley didn’t respond until a few minutes later.
“Oooh, my fuck,” he groaned. He woozily lifted his head and removed his sunglasses so he could rub his
eyes. “Thanks for the help, Angel. You’re a real pal.”
“What? Oh, that was you calling?”
Crowley gave him a scalding look.
“Well, I’m sorry, I was just looking over a spectacular find -“ Aziraphale started sourly, but Crowley cut
him off with a Tsk! And unsteadily got to his feet.
“I called four times! How is that not obviously an emergency?” he demanded.
“Sorry, I was just caught up - what kind of emergency?”
“One that’s passed, I guess. About an hour ago I got a splitting headache and… burning all over. I
thought I was being attacked! It just started to go away when I ran over here.”
“Oh,” Aziraphale said. He cleared his throat and got up. Crowley was still standing so close that it was
difficult to slide past him and into the kitchenette.
“Has that ever happened before?” he asked, getting down a couple of clean glasses.
“No, never!” Crowley said. “It felt like Holy Water, but as soon as I got here it just… stopped. I swear I
could feel my body starting to disintegrate - oh. Sorry.”
Aziraphale gave a weak smile. Crowley was standing very, very close again, practically backing the Angel
up against the bench.
“Dear boy, do you-“
“Oh, pardon…” Crowley dithered around the kitchen a bit, leaning against a countertop but then pacing
back and forth as Aziraphale selected a wine. “I don’t get it! Downstairs hasn’t contacted me directly in
years, not since the - the you know. Most I’ve gotten is the regular paperwork. It doesn’t even smoke
anymore when I open it! Have you…?”
“The same,” Aziraphale said, pouring two glasses of red. “Radio silence, just the usual forms. If they
were planning some kind of attack… no, that’s not really their style.”
“Oh really?” said Crowley, taking a proffered glass. His hands trembled very slightly, but Aziraphale
pretended not to notice.
“Really,” Aziraphale said. “If they were going to go after you there would have been miles of paperwork
about it and you would have got a visitation. Probably from me, actually. They’d have sent orders and I
would have had to, oh, I don’t know, appear before you in a great ostentatious pillar of fire and tell you
to ‘Piss off, or else’.”
While they were talking, they wandered into the back room, and Aziraphale took his seat again. He was
about to take a pull of wine when he was suddenly being sat on.
“Crowley?” he said after what had to be the longest and most awkward silence between them since the
whole Inquisition thing.
Crowley sprang up, sloshing wine out of his glass. It actually made it all the way to the floor, and a few
drops even splashed Crowley’s white shirt, which was the most startling thing.
“I - I don’t know why I did that,” Crowley said, backing away from Aziraphale.
“You’re… stressed. Sit down,” Aziraphale said. It wasn’t the best effort at avoiding the elephant, but it
would have to do. Crowley sat on him, for Someone’s sake.
Crowley sat bird-like on the edge of the worn armchair opposite Aziraphale’s. He passed his glass back
and forth between his hands and took a bracing drink.
“How sure are you that it’s not your people?” he said, squinting at the Angel over his sunglasses. His
eyes were a bit on the reddish side rather than the usual bright yellow. Aziraphale sniffed and took a
delicate sip.
“Positive. As positive as you are that it’s not your lot, in any case.”
Crowley made a noise like a he was grinding metal between his teeth. He shot the last of his wine and
then stood up, brushing off his sleek sports coat and adjusting his glasses.
“Well then,” he said. “Well, I’m off. It’s gone away for now and if there’s some kind of -“
“Exorcist?” Aziraphale suggested, setting his wine aside and standing up, hands outstretched to… pat
Crowley? Keep him from leaving? He put his hands in his pockets.
“I was thinking some idiot with too much time and a lucky find in incantations, but that’s close enough.
I’ll be back when I’ve taken care of it.”
He fairly flounced out.
Aziraphale listened to Crowley’s brisk footsteps and the slam of the front door. He picked up his wine
and took a considering sip. Then he slugged the rest of it and slumped back into his chair. There was no
point in trying to read more of Dido now. What had that been about? Crowley came and went as he
pleased, visiting regardless of the hour or whatever Aziraphale was doing.
However, he had never, not once in the entire history of their acquaintance, thrown himself at
Aziraphale’s feet or sat in his lap. Well, at least ever during the sober parts of their acquaintance. They
both silently agreed to ignore and forget any embarrassing drunken episodes that may have occurred
during the 6000+ years they’d known each other.
Aziraphale, for lack of anything better to do, started to wash the glasses and his tea mug by hand when,
yet again, Crowley came crashing through the front door. Unbraced by the chair, this time Aziraphale
toppled over when Crowley leapt at him in a full-body tackle. His head cracked against the wood floor
and he lay there, dazed, being… cuddled. No, clutched. Slowly absorbed into Crowley’s physical being by
sheer force. He was still feeling woozy when Crowley jumped up and then suddenly blinked out of
existence, only to reappear seconds later to spend a few minutes hugging Aziraphale’s prostrate form.
By the time Aziraphale had gotten his head together enough to heal his minor concussion and get up off
the floor, Crowley had left again, this time by foot.
“Crowley! What in the fu-“ Aziraphale yelled, but Crowley was out the door, walking slowly and counting
each pace out loud.
He came slouching back in again about five minutes later. He looked squinty and sour, like he was
hungover. He shuffled up to Aziraphale, who at this point was just standing in the middle of the
kitchenette, resigned to watching whatever nonsense this was play out, and caught him in a very
awkward side-hug before continuing into the back room to slump into one of the armchairs.
“100 paces,” he said. “I can get 100 paces from you before it starts up again.”
Aziraphale wordlessly drooped into an armchair. “That’s barely down to the end of the road,” he said.
“Just short of it,” Crowley corrected.
“And you have to… grab me,” Aziraphale said.
“Apparently. It helps.
Aziraphale did a quick mental calculation. Crowley ranged all over London in his day-to-day goings on
while he himself was far more sedentary. His Mayfair apartment alone was over 8000 paces away.
“I don’t suppose you’d mind me accompanying you to your business meetings or whatever it is that you
do?”
Crowley gave him a horrified look. Rather than being offended, Aziraphale silently concurred. Going
everywhere with Crowley would require leaving the shop and being out in public for hours. And not
even in a restaurant where at the very least you didn’t have to talk to more than the one person sharing
your table. Dear Lord, it was like a nightmare. The alternative, Crowley hanging around the shop while
they figured this out wasn’t all bad, but Aziraphale wasn’t keen on having a sulking Demon languishing
all over his armchairs while he was trying to have some alone time with his books.
“We can’t just wait for this to wear off. Anything powerful enough to affect me,” said Crowley haughtily, “Isn’t some pansy spell that’ll go away on its own.”
“Do you have any idea what it might be?” Aziraphale said, raking a hand through his hair.
“Not a clue. I usually don’t bother with that kind of stuff. Spellwork is disgusting. There’s always some
kind of rodent or planetary alignment bollocks involved. Why go through all the trouble of cursing
someone when you can just post a bad photo of them on Twitter?”
“Well, I don’t have any books on it,” Aziraphale said helplessly.
“You don’t?” said Crowley, bewildered.
“No! Prophesy and spells are completely different, unless you count scrying, which is wooly at best and
went out of style in- Oh, never mind. I don’t have any of that kind of dancing-naked-in-the-woods,
crystal-swinging nonsense here.”
They sat in silence for a minute, apparently lost in how much they disliked fooling around in human
magic.
“Right then,” Crowley announced finally. “Get some bread, we need to feed some ducks.”
Happy Holidays, hoshi_ryo, from your Secret Writer!