Praise/Degradation - Kinktober 2024 #26
(Prompt fills for Quefish's Ineffable Kinktober list.)
Crowley has his own brand of perfectionism.
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That did it. Aziraphale slammed shut his book with a loud report, lips pressed together in a determined line; snapped off his reading glasses, and strode out the door into the garden, where Crowley, sure enough, could be found leaning on a spade, a bandana tied sweatband-style around his head, berating the foxgloves.
“Should be ashamed!” he spat. “Think you’re something special? Medicinal plant? Is that an excuse for half-arsed blooming? And you, you’re hardly more than seedpods. I’ve half a mind to dig you up here and how – do better or you’re going on the compost heap aaaanh!”
“Stop that this minute!” barked Aziraphale in his best platoon-sergeant voice, hand clamped onto Crowley’s shoulder.
“Stop addressing these lovely creatures this way. I won’t have it.”
Crowley collected himself, shaking his head (it made his long russet locks – he’d been growing it out since he moved in – catch the sunlight.
“Angel, it’s how I’ve always kept ’em in line, and I haven’t got plans to stop, just ‘cos we live in the country. Yeah, they look pretty to you now, but I’m not takin’ the chance on ’em slackin’ off. Minute they think they can get away with somethin’, they’ll try.”
“I can feel them quaking from the parlour. Angels can sense these things, you know.”
“That’s the point. They need the fear put in ’em, can’t let em think that anything but the best is good enough. With luck, you keep ’em terrorised, maybe you’ll get an eight out of ten. Can’t let ’em think too well’ve themselves –”
“Because it worked so well on you?” Aziraphale snapped.
More softly, a moment later: “Dear, close your mouth, you’re catching flies.”
Crowley flung the spade to the ground and walked over to the bed, looking out past the hedge.
“You don’t understand, angel. They start thinkin’ good enough’s good enough, they –”
“I understand perfectly well,” said Aziraphale in the same quiet voice. “I understand what it’s like to be spoken to like that. So do you.”
A loud huff of breath, but still no answer.
“I remember a time when you looked at what you’d made, and said Aren’t you gorgeous! Don’t you? Before things changed.”
“Yeah,” Crowley said, a little mulishly, still not turning round.
“And it wasn't for the better, was it? Century after century, heaven shamed, and Hell threatened. And all it accomplished? All it did, Crowley, was bend us out of shape, through all those years of trying to be what we weren’t, or cover it up when we couldn’t. All that time when we could have been together – if only we’d been allowed. Instead of play-acting artificial versions of ourselves.”
Crowley’s shoulders were shaking. “Fuck, angel, don’t.”
“No, Crowley, you don’t. Please. Don’t keep repeating the past. It hurt dreadfully, being afraid of what might be done to us. Knowing someone would always find fault, when all we did was our best. Maybe not in Hell's opinion, or Heaven’s. But where it counted.”
Crowley tried to pretend he was only wiping off sweat, but Aziraphale saw him hold his bandana to his eyes, heard him sniff deeply and wetly.
“We cared for them. We protected them. I blessed where I wasn’t meant to, and you only pretended to be evil, and we're no small part of the reason it's all still here. I think we can both really be quite proud of that.”
A pause, and then: “I am certainly proud of you.”
Aziraphale wasn’t quite sure how Crowley ended up in his arms, or what he was saying through hitching sobs, except the word angel again and again.
Finally: “So fucking afraid. For so long.”
“I know, darling. But it’s over. It left a mark on both of us, but because of you, I see things differently than I used to, and so ought you.”
He pressed a kiss to Crowley’s hand. “Your plants are perfectly lovely,” he said. “There’ll be droughts and deluges and all the caprices of existence, and they won't always be perfect, but they’re doing the best they can. Just as you’ve done, no matter how afraid you were of Hell, or how angry you were at Heaven. You can put it all down now. And I won’t have you visiting it on them. Look.”
Sunlight slanted through the plane tree near the rockery, dappling the turf with a fractal, shifting pattern of light. Bees hummed a muted harmonia mundi in the scarlet trumpets of the penstemons; there were cushiony clouds of phlox, nebulas of climbing rose, galaxies of Queen Anne’s Lace, each floret a little star. Big hollyhocks, purple and fuchsia and white with crimson throats, nodded against the back wall of the cottage, and as they watched, a stonechat perched on the sundial.
“This is ours. You made it, and I won’t have you blackguarding any part of it.”
The stonechat took flight.
“There, now. Let’s go round, and tell then all how splendid they are. I’m sure it’ll do them nothing but good.”
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