Daffodalia [1]
(This fic actually took some inspiration, at least looks and height wise, from @10yrsyart Book Omens character designs. Though they’re not described explicitly so they can be hc in any way you like!)
Summary: Written for Book Omens Week.
Crowley and Aziraphale drink quite a bit, this time for pleasure rather than for the stress, and fall asleep on the sofa in the back room of the bookshop.
They wake up with terrible hangovers. ---
[1] Daffodils, or Narcissus flowers, mean “Egotism, Formality” in the language of flowers, but are also closely related to a Greek word meaning “intoxication” (which is narcotic). Dalia is a name that in Arabic stems from the word for grapevine and in Hebrew from the word for [tip of a] branch, especially that of a grapevine or an olive tree.
Aziraphale smiled, eyes closed, and cuddled up against Crowley on the couch he’d been previously sure was too small for the both of them to comfortably fit on. He was inordinately pleased with the couch for not being so, and the couch was rather chuffed at the silent, but still angelic, praise being thought about it. Crowley had threatened it telepathically and was rather glad it didn’t fight back against any Entirely Reasonable Expectations TM and had, in fact, gathered it’s couch-y wits about it and widened accordingly. That being said, the couch, and their positions, were exceedingly comfortable.
Both the angel and demon had been drinking. It wasn’t for any particular reason so much as they enjoyed being in each other’s company but hadn’t quite gotten into the habit of not needing excuses for it even after being so thoroughly ignored by their respective sides— after hundreds of years, learning not to look over one’s shoulders was quite difficult indeed. So they drank and shared stories about the couple of weeks[2] they’d been apart, taking inventories and passing out miracles of both hellish and heavenly origins now that they no longer had quotas to meet or budgets to stick to.[3]
[2] Since they are rather immortal—not the unkillable kind, of course, just the long-lived kind— they have a somewhat shaky grasp of how much Time is considered long.
For the best comparison, it’s easiest to assume they tend to think of a Standard Human Year in the same way a Human might think of half a week. That is to say, not very long and not entirely unreasonable to not see someone for if you know they’ve been busy, but certainly long enough to start pining again if you’re in love. This, however, also means that Crowley is 100% a flash bastard with a hot new hobby or wardrobe every weekend to all the other immortals in his acquaintance.
[3] Crowley had quite a few quotas to meet that he often found difficult to reach with how humanity rarely needed much of a push in the first place (hence the reasons he took credit for them nonetheless, but the paperwork for the actual Demonic Intervention Miracles, or DIM, was Hellish. [3.1]). His budget for DIMs was approved ad infinitum in part because it was the only thing he’d asked for in recognition for his work Up Top with the Tree Debacle and also because Dagon decided not to bother dealing with requisition forms every 12 days on the dot for miracles to keep him from discorporation. Truly it was more work to give him a new corporation to his specifications than it was to keep him from coming back to Hell whining and complaining.
Aziraphale, on the other hand, was constrained in the other direction. He had quotas to meet and rarely had trouble with them as he was, in fact, a divine being of Love who liked to spread that Love as much as possible. He did, of course, have a bit of a terrible habit of tending towards unnecessary expenditures of Heavenly Ordained Enterprises, or HOE, like an extra marshmallow [3.2] or pulling a street urchin out of the way of a run-away cart without putting himself in self-sacrificing harm’s way.
[3.1] Pun intended, of course, because puns were the lowest form a wit. So low, one might say it was from Be-Low
[3.2] Gabriel had always given him a pass on re-warming his hot chocolate, though not tea or even coffee, as the word ‘hot’ was in the very name, and therefore must be kept that way, per Her will. Even if he didn’t quite know what chocolate was or why Aziraphale seemed to be around it so often to keep it warm.