Aziraphale (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bibliophale) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
bigapplesauce2016-04-03 10:28 pm
bibliophale) wrote in bigapplesauce2016-04-03 10:28 pm
Entry tags:
Disaster Man and his Disaster Plan
It's been a long time. Right? Hasn't it? It's been a long time.
Passage of days is nothing to Aziraphale. He did without Crowley in a very real, very cosmic sense for a whole entire month, or was it two, he'll be buggered if he's going to be specific about these things - for that whole time, and he was, well, he was miserable, but he made it, right? Only because the Rift in all its bloody capitalized capitalization saw fit to reunite them, but details, details. Here's the point. The point is this. Aziraphale is drunk.
He's been drunk every day for several weeks now. He spends the bookshop's various erratic hours at the back, drinking, while Spike handles the absent business in his champion-like way. Every evening he sobers himself up, returns home to the room Crowley is no longer allowed to enter, and spends a wonderful bunch of hours with Melanie, having tea, cakes, and raw meat, reading books, letting her stroke his wings. That sort of thing. It's lovely and it exists in its own bubble, where no other thoughts are allowed to intrude.
This, though, the rest of it, is awful. He could spend more time with Melanie. It's not like his presence is required at the shop. But he goes there all the same. Sometimes to fawn over the modest collection he's acquired, mostly to wish Crowley would appear. Just slither in like he does. Hissing. Skulking. Lounging.
It's not that Aziraphale misses him, well no, all right, it's exactly that, it's that and a handful of change, he misses Crowley ridiculously, painfully, infuriatingly. What is he to do? Lucifer is still very much a Thing, as the kids are saying, and Aziraphale's not going home to Melanie with freeze burns on his face.
But Crowley is so very dear to him, a truth he evades as often and aggressively as possible, and yet, this itch is still there, this itch to do something impulsive and bloody stupid, something because something is, after weeks of nothing, better than another week of nothing.
This is how, somewhere in there, he winds up inside Crowley's flat with a half-emptied bottle of wine (his fifteenth) in his hand, fixing the demon with an abnormally pleasant smile and thrusting an index finger toward him in a specifically non-accusatory fashion.
"Oh, hullo!" he says as though he has absolutely no idea how he got here. "How's things?"
Passage of days is nothing to Aziraphale. He did without Crowley in a very real, very cosmic sense for a whole entire month, or was it two, he'll be buggered if he's going to be specific about these things - for that whole time, and he was, well, he was miserable, but he made it, right? Only because the Rift in all its bloody capitalized capitalization saw fit to reunite them, but details, details. Here's the point. The point is this. Aziraphale is drunk.
He's been drunk every day for several weeks now. He spends the bookshop's various erratic hours at the back, drinking, while Spike handles the absent business in his champion-like way. Every evening he sobers himself up, returns home to the room Crowley is no longer allowed to enter, and spends a wonderful bunch of hours with Melanie, having tea, cakes, and raw meat, reading books, letting her stroke his wings. That sort of thing. It's lovely and it exists in its own bubble, where no other thoughts are allowed to intrude.
This, though, the rest of it, is awful. He could spend more time with Melanie. It's not like his presence is required at the shop. But he goes there all the same. Sometimes to fawn over the modest collection he's acquired, mostly to wish Crowley would appear. Just slither in like he does. Hissing. Skulking. Lounging.
It's not that Aziraphale misses him, well no, all right, it's exactly that, it's that and a handful of change, he misses Crowley ridiculously, painfully, infuriatingly. What is he to do? Lucifer is still very much a Thing, as the kids are saying, and Aziraphale's not going home to Melanie with freeze burns on his face.
But Crowley is so very dear to him, a truth he evades as often and aggressively as possible, and yet, this itch is still there, this itch to do something impulsive and bloody stupid, something because something is, after weeks of nothing, better than another week of nothing.
This is how, somewhere in there, he winds up inside Crowley's flat with a half-emptied bottle of wine (his fifteenth) in his hand, fixing the demon with an abnormally pleasant smile and thrusting an index finger toward him in a specifically non-accusatory fashion.
"Oh, hullo!" he says as though he has absolutely no idea how he got here. "How's things?"
no subject
But Crowley knows. And the angel, blessedly oblivious as he can be, knows too. And worst of all, Crowley's found that he doesn't want to bring the wrath of Satan down on him, nor the fungus monster kid. So he's been... avoiding Aziraphale. A bit. He tells himself that it's not avoidance1, just that he's busy. And he is, by certain definitions. He'd got used, being in New York, to not having any Hellish assignments to complete, no infernal superiors to report to; now, suddenly, he very much has.
But they've been... surprisingly mundane assignments. Fetching and carrying, acquiring the occasional occult volume2; like demonic busy-work given out by a professor too lazy to do any real grading. And while Crowley hasn't forgotten his utterly undemonic moral panic at the appearance of of this other universe's Lucifer, he's slid snakily into an easy sort of ignorance of it. Errands to run for the Devil, and desperately taking sanctuary in holding up queues and inciting fights in bars and ruining mobile service the city over and certainly, absolutely not missing the angel. Not at all.
Even though months and years and decades spent without his company were one thing altogether when they'd been in separate countries-- even continents-- and both on their own business. Knowing Aziraphale is scant miles away and that Crowley shouldn't, shouldn't (he's never been very good at shouldn't)-- is another thing altogether.
Still, he's not expecting Aziraphale to simply pop into existence in the middle of his flat on an otherwise uneventful afternoon. He flails up from the couch from where he was slouched watching one of those Netflix original shows, goggling at the angel. He's not wearing his sunglasses.
'Wha-- angel?'
Aziraphale's drunk. This is unimportant, and Crowley dismisses the information with a mental wave of his hand in favour of crowding up into his space, hands pinwheeling before settling for a grip on his lapels, shoving him away.
'My flat's not warded, you bloody idiot, what the-- the Somewhere are you doing?'
1 Lying is an important demonic skill set; in the absence of anyone else to lie to, Crowley has long been in the habit of practising on himself. With varying degrees of success
2 Crowley had raided Aziraphale's bookshop in the night, and told himself it was ironic. Lucifer had presented him with mildly judgemental eyebrows upon receipt of the books, but no more
no subject
"I missed you!" he blurts, as though it is a great revelation, and furthermore as though they are two old friends who used to lunch once in a while1, rather than cohorts of a much more complex nature2. It's almost as if their recent history hasn't involved near-death experiences, torture, and difficult conversations about the feasibility of continuing their association.
Enough of that rot, Aziraphale has decided, and why isn't Crowley on that same page? Why can't they just be on the same page about things. Be so much easier. "What, I can't come visit? You can't visit me at home, you don't visit me at the shop, so... so..." He shrugs. It all seems very cut and dried to him. "S'rubbish. Wanted to see you. Thass all."
1 Startlingly accurate, actually.
2 Nuh-uh.