First of all, I would like to thank you for feeding my GO addiction and assisting us all in keeping our sanity as we wait for GO3.
It appears Ive gone through your entire bookshop fire tag, and I wonder if youve got any more to add? I especially like the ones where Crowley is anxious to keep Az safe and gets the comfort he needs.
Thanks a bunch!!
Hi! Here are some fics to add to our #bookship fire tag...
cracked open, charred by Fleetling (T)
The bones of things remember. Crowley can tell himself over and over, once for every star in the sky, that it wasn't that bad. But his bones remember.
OR: 5 times Crowley struggles with his memories of the bookshop on fire, +1 time Aziraphale works out how to help.
Flames by flowing_river (T)
Exhausted from nightmares, Crowley visits the bookshop in the middle of the night. Can Aziraphale figure out what's wrong and help him?
lessons in staying by Watch_Out_For_Bears (T)
Crowley covers his ears, forehead pressed to the wheel of the Bentley, and tries to reason with himself. It’s raining, for Somebody’s sake, absolutely pouring outside, and the sirens being here, near where he’s parked the Bentley for the night, obviously means the sirens aren’t there, where Aziraphale is. Which means that Aziraphale’s fine. Of course he’s fine. He has to be - he has to be fine.
(Five weeks after stopping Armageddon, Crowley is forced to reckon with the trauma caused by the fire in Aziraphale’s bookshop. As it turns out, their conversation is more than a little overdue).
at the edge of the water by viperinz (G)
“Hello, dearest. Do you mind miracling a cold pack for me? I’m afraid I can’t focus enough to do it.”
Crowley swallows, his eyes wide. He does what he’s asked to do, because of course he doesn’t mind. He doesn’t mind at all.
He walks to the side Aziraphale is facing, sitting down on the edge of the bed. He hands the cold pack to Aziraphale, who gratefully takes it.
“Thank you,” he whispers, and Crowley watches as he puts the pack on his right thigh. Aziraphale sighs in relief, but his face still conveys how much pain he still feels.
And, Crowley gets it now. The pain that needed a cold pack, the way that Aziraphale was limping. It was an injury, wasn’t it?
Crowley notices that there's something going on with Aziraphale's leg. He realizes the pain lies deeper than he first thought it would.
Ok tell me if I'm wrong but this song (to me) is so Crowley either during the bookshop fire in s1 or after the final 15. (I think its more during the bookshop fire than f15 but that just my opinion).
Like you can't tell me that,
" I feel so unhappy, I feel so sad. I've lost my best friend, that I ever had." Being the opening lines isn't literally Crowley in that seen (or in the bar but thats neither here nor there)
By Monday, they still weren’t speaking. To be perfectly honest, Aziraphale had avoided the teachers’ lounge in the humanities building, refusing even to heat up his leftover casserole, on the off chance that Crowley might be there. Better to eat cold pasta than to face him.
During lunch, Anathema had come to find Aziraphale in his classroom, asking probing questions in that very specific way that always made Aziraphale feel as though she probably knew more than she was letting on, and certainly knew more than she should.
He’d gently shooed the chemistry teacher out the door when she started inquiring whether Crowley had “departed unexpectedly” after an “intense discussion.” He really didn’t need her getting involved in whatever was happening between Crowley and himself, and he was more than a little concerned that speaking about what had transpired the previous Friday would end with him ugly crying onto her shoulder.
And all that begged the question, what was happening between him and Crowley?
Keep reading on ao3...
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
Annnnnddddd......be sure to catch up on @theangelyouknew's wip, Catch a Falling Star. Chapter 14 is now up!
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
Summary: Crowley believes Aziraphale died in the bookshop fire. Now, he's sending the armies of hell to avenge him.
Based loosely on the story of Achilles and Patroclus.
Warning: None for this chapter! (Aside from some foul language)
Word count: 1.5k (this chapter)
All chapters should be available here! (I haven't written on Tumblr in many moons please forgive me)
To read on AO3, check out my work here!
Crowley burned in the hell he imagined he’d always belonged in. Ashes rained from the heavens. Burning paper engulfed his senses. Black smoke burned in his eyes. He breathed in his dead lover. Misery. Misery for the rest of eternity.
“Somebody killed my best friend!” he was somewhere between a yell and a sob. “Bastards!” Between fury and agony.
They spent the last 6,000 years toeing the line between best friends and lovers. Dining at the Ritz, feeding ducks, saving each other from mortal peril, you know, as friends do. Crowley would know him in any lifetime. From the weight of his step, the smell of his hair, the sound of his breath (it would skip and stutter when he had thought of something clever). The air around Aziraphale was always heavy, but not in the manner of suffocation. Rather, his aura was a heavy wool blanket. Warm, grounded, homey. The closest thing Crowley ever really had to a home.
Before the apocalypse, Crowley recalled their drunken ramblings. Amidst the whiffs of red wine, he remembered how he smelled. Like earl grey, oak, and bourbon: something his barber suggested. He also always smelled a bit like paper. It made the burning around Crowley all the more unbearable. Anthony J. Crowley, fallen angel and Duke of Hell, reeling over the doing of a foreigner’s god. Certainly not the one he knew, or maybe exactly the one he knew.
He laid in the flames, thinking through his new reality. This was a rare moment of clarity for the distraught demon. Who killed him: heaven or hell? Either reality had some sense to it. Heaven could, and would, excommunicate him for working with a demon. Permanent discorporation, or banishment to hell. Hell would kill him just for the sake of it. Just to say they did. Racking his brain, he realized Hell was unfortunately, his best chance of finding Aziraphale, or at least what became of him. Crowley slowly creeped up from the ashen ground. He was unsure how much time had passed, but it seemed that the flames had slowed. In mere moments, he stared between the two escalators. He chose downward. As the escalator carried him into the dank, dark corridors, his anguish gnawed at him, clawing its war from the inside out. He allows a single tear, and immediately wipes it away. Only the damned cry in hell.
Crowley had stopped fighting for hell decades ago. In the presence of his angel, he saw no reason for it. He saw no reason to fill the world with more violence. The humans were better at that anyway. After his bout in Edinborough, he was promptly tortured for the next several decades. Crowley never saw the face of Satan, but he would give it an ethereal, firm uppercut the second he had the chance. He lost faith in his leadership, in the art of mass scale temptation. He preferred the gentle temptation of his beloved. Of asking him out to breakfast, bringing him wine, planting seeds of heavenly doubt in his mind. He thought often about the Greek myth of the origin of love. They were alone together at the edge of the universe, a body of eight limbs, four eyes, and a flutter of feathers. Whoever Crowley was, it was a product of the angel. Whoever Aziraphale was, it was Crowley’s collateral. And beautifully so, their symbiosis carried on through the centuries. The demon had the fight pulled out of him the way the angel unshelved his books. Carefully and with gentle hands.
But now that he was gone, this was war. If he had nothing, he would still have Aziraphale, but if he didn’t have his angel, he had nothing. His fury craved battle, to make them hurt the same way he did. His wrath could summon the very same fire that had surrounded him in the hours prior. If his beloved really was gone, then he would destroy the heaven that took him.
Crowley barely managed his way through the crowds of demons slowly but surely trudging their way through the crowded corridors of hell. After passing the rest of the high offices he comes to the door of the one and only Beelzebub. For a moment, he questions if he should even knock, let alone open the door. He wonders if any of this is worth it in the first place. What if his Angel didn't care whatsoever about him? What if he didn’t need saving, or worse, he was already long gone? But in reality, he knew that wasn't the case. He’d be damned, more than he is already, if he let Aziraphale die knowing that he could have prevented it. Crowley gulps and burst open the door of Beelzebub's office. Demons were typically not known for their politeness. Inside, he sees Beelzebub sitting upon their throne, legs crossed fancifully, almost as if they were expecting him. Crowley's stomach turns at this realization.
“How's it going up there?” Beelzebub asks. Crowley puts on his best front and looks Beelzebub dead in the eyes and lies:
“Fantastic,” he says. “The Antichrist is mere moments from inciting the Apocalypse.”
Beelzebub smirks. “Wonderful. Great job.”
Crowley shudders ever so slightly. Not enough for anyone else to notice, but enough for him to feel a profound discomfort. He again looks to Beelzebub, “did you capture the angel? Is he here?”
Beelzebub looks confused. “What do you mean capture the angel?”
“Aziraphale,” Crowley starts. “The other angel that has worked in my same jurisdiction for six thousand years. Did you capture him?”
Beelzebub purses their lips, seemingly scanning their memory. Alas, still confused. “No… Why would you assume that? Why would we let him in here?” They began to look vaguely suspicious of their colleague.
Crowley pulled something out of his ass. “I saw that the Bookshop was on fire,” he blurted out. “I could have only imagined that it was demonic intervention.” Beelzebub chuckled.
“It's not always hellfire,” Crowley stifles a laugh, just enough for Beelzebub to think it's genuine. Beelzebub speaks up once more. “Yeah, I don't know about the angel. We don't have ‘im here.” Crowley takes a moment and a step back. He decides to tell the best lie that he's ever told, aside from the fact that he was not madly, disgustingly in love with a forbidden fruit.
“I want that slimy bastard gone forever,” Crowley spits. “I want that fussy dumbarse to not be anywhere near God's green Earth.”
“Well, I know that much… What are you suggesting?”
Crowley laughs disingenuously, but trying desperately to seem genuine. “I think we need to raid heaven.”
Beelzebub looks puzzled. “But why do we need to raid the heavens if we have already conquered the Earth, Crowley?” they said. “Why would we postpone destroying Earth to fight this war first?”
“That’s exactly it… they’ll never see it coming,” Crowley says. “We can start with the archangels: Gabriel, Michael, Uriel… There will be no one left to lead their army in such short order. Then we let the Earth burn, and winning their holy war will be easier than dropping the antichrist at the convent.”
His voice grows raspy. Crowley takes a deep breath. “It'll let them know once and for all that their God means nothing.” Crowley sits down in front of Beelzebub. They seem a bit more intrigued. Crowley describes a plot more ambitious than any of his plans to date: to invade the heavens. To crusade his lover’s workplace by summoning a demonic army, comprised of hundreds of damned souls. He plans to force them through the Gates of Heaven to slaughter any angels in their sight. Beelzebub loved this concept, and was almost surprised Crowley came up with it. But, he did dream up the Spanish Inquisition, after all (or so they thought).
“Honestly, why not?” Beelzebub smirks. “If we're all going to be separated for the rest of time anyway, this would be a fun way to go out. If they want us to fight this war, we ought to do it our way. Hell fights dirty.” As the flies buzzed among their crown, they grinned the way a child would when they had come up with the perfect prank. Except this wasn’t a prank. It was the end of the world. Of Crowley’s, at least.
Beelzebub grimaced. Crowley laughed. “Well, I'll go talk about it with head office, and we'll get it sorted. I want it done by the end of the day today. That sound alright?” Beelzebub nodded in excitement. Crowley seems giddy with anticipation but not in the way that you would imagine. The anxiety pulsed through his veins. He was setting into motion the divine war days earlier than was planned, all for a fussy angel he drank wine with one too many times. But at the same time, he knew this was his reality. Crowley couldn’t pretend he didn’t love him anymore. Not when he could be dead. If heaven wanted a war, they were going to get it, god dammit.
