Jul 28, 2020
Always a good time when you write yourself to tears.
seen from China
seen from Venezuela
seen from Malaysia
seen from Australia
seen from Netherlands
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Japan
seen from Peru
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from Netherlands
seen from United States
seen from Norway
seen from United States
seen from Denmark
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from United States
Always a good time when you write yourself to tears.
A Work of Art
The artist had seen right through Crowley. She painted not the man he seemed to be, nor the demon he was, but the angel he had been. He stared at himself wreathed in holy light. His name, not A.J. Crowley, not the name given to him by Hell, but his real name was written in the swirl of the clouds. The artist didn’t know, she couldn’t know, but there it was.
“This piece,” he said, “how much?”
“Oh, sorry sir, it’s not for sale,” she replied and beamed at the painting. “It’s a commission. Came out perfectly, though. Almost like God was guiding my hand.”
Crowley spent the next few hours there, trying to tempt her into giving up the piece, but the artist was resolute. She had a patron, despite the fact that she was a woman, and she would not disappoint him.
It would be hundreds of years before he saw it again. Days after the world should have ended he burst into Aziraphale’s study, wine in hand. The angel typically met him down in the shop so it was the first time he’d entered the study and he froze in the doorway. High above Aziraphale’s desk was the portrait he’d nearly forgotten.
“That’s... that’s me.”
Aziraphale startled and looked like he’d been caught with his trousers around his ankles. “Oh um... yes. I commissioned it back in...” He furrowed his brow.
“1389.”
“Yes! 1389, from this wonderful artist... though I was not fond of my own portrait I loved yours.” He glanced fondly up at it. “I kept it to remember that you and I really are of the same stuff.”
“It’s beautiful,” Crowley breathed.
Aziraphale looked over at him as the fondest smile curled across his face. “Yes,” he said, “you are.”
Lost and Found
Aziraphale gently hung up the phone and worried his hands. He’d been trying all afternoon and still couldn’t get ahold of Crowley. Fear gnawed at his gut as images of Heaven or Hell finding his demon alone ran through his head. One particularly chilling image involving Michel had him grabbing his jacket and speeding out of his bookshop. He had to find Crowley.
Only, how did he find Crowley? He’d done it before of course back in... no wait Crowley found him before the flood. Well, there was... nope, he was in Rome first they just happened into the same shop. He’d found Crowley in Wessex of course but that had taken three months!
Aziraphale paused at a particularly busy intersection. As cars sped by he realized that, throughout their history, it was mostly Crowley finding him, not the other way around. About to get his head cut off? Poof, there’s Crowley. About to be shot by Nazis? Crowley skips into the church. If he was in danger Crowley simply appeared.
Danger, the word flashed in his mind. It was always danger that made Crowley appear. If he was right, this would solve everything. If he was wrong, well how bad could heaven be, he passed their trial. Aziraphale took a deep breath and stepped off the curb.
Across town, a tall, lanky man dropped the exceedingly expensive plant he’d just bought. Oddly enough no one looked in his direction as the pot shattered and soil poured out across the pavement. Nor did they look up when that same man sprouted black wings and shot into the sky.
Flying was not easy for Crowley. In fact, it wasn’t easy for any demon. Well, not the ascension bit at least. He was, however, very good at falling. Which is exactly what he did when he spotted an idiotic bookseller walking headlong into oncoming traffic. He fell with precision and speed.
As far as the London bus driver was concerned, he’d done his civic duty swerving out of the way of the massive raven that landed in the middle of the road. The driver of the supped up mustang he’d totaled, disagreed entirely. Both were too busy arguing to notice the men who emerged from a pile of feathers, one gripping the other’s arm in a death grip as he dragged him home.
Crowley was furious. Furious at Heaven who had obviously done something to upset Aziraphale, furious at Aziraphale for whatever he’d just tried to do, and doubly furious at the angel now beaming behind him like everything had gone according to plan.
“What the hell were you thinking? You’d have been discorporated and back under the knife without me to withstand the fires of hell for you!” he finally spat out.
“I was looking for you,” Aziraphale said. His smug smile only grew wider.
“And you’d thought you’d find me under a bus?”
“I thought I’d find you if I was in danger.” Aziraphale managed to wiggle free of his grip and took Crowley’s hand in his. “I was right.”
Everything Goes Pear Shaped
This was it, the end. Heaven and Hell had their war and they were reveling in it. Age old grudges bubble to the surface. Both sides were monstrous in their single-minded determination to destroy everything. Aziraphale had been issued a new body, one without all the softness of his old form, and he’d been given a new sword and an entire regime of lesser angels to command through the streets of what once was London.
He killed his first, and only, demon when Big Ben chimed his last. The holy flame of his blade devoured the fallen angel. First, their damedness burned away, leaving Aziraphale to watch the being they had once been cry as they burned into nothingness. There was nothing in the stomach of this new body, so all he could do was retch air and flee his post.
It wasn’t until he got there, that Aziraphale even knew where he was going. Through the constant battle, he’d meandered all the way to the burnt out shell of his bookshop. His home, his personal heaven, looked like an open sore. He knew it was stupid, but the pressing need to find just one book, just one, that hadn’t burnt to a crisp, overwhelmed him. If he could have just one piece of Earth, maybe eternity would be okay. He got across the threshold just as someone leaped from the shadows to pin him against the remnants of the wall. Their hand coiled around his throat tighter than a boa.
“You lot don’t get to come in here,” Crowley growled with all the uncontained menace of a man who’d lost the only thing he’d ever truly loved. He wasn’t fighting for Hell or against it. He was fighting for himself and this one last piece of Aziraphale he could protect. Crowley was quite determined to go down with the Earth fighting in his own little spot of the world. He’d killed the first demon to find him, who’d tried to defile the remnants of the angel’s shop. Then the first angel who’d broken the only remaining window to get to him. Then the next, and the next. He defended his territory like a wild beast, refusing to move an inch.
It was the squeak that gave Crowley pause. As his fangs descended, baring a poison that not even the holiest of angels could survive, the man he held squeaked like a startled child. Aziraphale mouthed his name, unable to speak, but Crowley already knew. He could see it in his eyes now that he’d bothered to look. Aziraphale had come home. He released the angel only to pull him into an equally crushing embrace as if he could pull Aziraphale into him and protect him from ever being hurt again.
Aziraphale absently pet his friends head as he sobbed. “What are we going to do now?” he whispered.
“Still loads of planets out there,” Crowley said. This time Aziraphale agreed. There was a flash of light so bright it blinded both armies and temporarily stalled the end of the world.
The old friends found themselves once more within a garden on a far-flung planet. One of God’s many petri dishes of life. Crowley burned the apple tree.
God Writes Fanfiction
It wasn’t clear who found it, but once it was found it spread through heaven. It had been centuries since the last Word of God had been written. No one could quite figure out what it meant, though. They would read it over and over to each other and try to piece it out. It read as such:
And lo, he will gaze upon him, King of Snakes, bared of Earthly vestiges, and fall to temptation. From beneath him the demon will rise and call forth his name in blissed prayer. And he will be blessed. The end will come at last, and its glory shall be well worth the wait. They will be bound in the most sacred of unions; neither damned nor divine, these guardians of The Garden.
“It’s about a battle.” Gabriel finally decided and felt he was the smartest of the angels. “During the actual end times.”
Not to be outdone, Micheal snatched the scroll from his hands. “Obviously it’s about a demon tempting an angel to fall.” And again the fighting began in earnest. Strangely enough, as the Word passed from angel to angel, it never reached its intended target on Earth, who was very much not prepared to gaze upon his best friend and find himself, at last, falling to temptation.
Why Aziraphale no longer has a cell phone.
Aziraphale: Crowley I just had sex and it was divine.
Crowley: Excuse me?!
Aziraphale: Its the best I've ever had.
Crowley: I'm coming over.
Aziraphale: Wonderful! I'll give you some too!
Newton: Uh, Mr. Fell? You do realize this is a group chat?
Anathema: Newt! It was just getting good!
Aziraphale: Wonderful, you can all come over and get some.
Anathema: Yeah, that's a no from me.
Crowley: I'm here. Its cake guys. He meant to type better-than-sex cake.
Anathema: Can't prove that until you try, eh Aziraphale?
Crowley: He melted his phone out of embarrassment. But do come over this is good cake.
A Very Brief Discussion
It was the sort of lazy Wednesday morning that only people who didn’t have to work for a living got to enjoy. Crowley spread out along a couch in Aziraphale’s shop, reading the morning paper as the angel across the room sorted his mail. The shop received all sorts of stranges fliers, pamphlets and magazines due to a very annoyed Crowley playing a prank some fifty years ago. He was always pleasantly surprised to see that Aziraphale's address was still passed around in certain circles.
“Now that’s just insulting,” Aziraphale said as he paused over the cover of a catalog. Crowley should have fallen off the couch with how far he had to lean to see it, but gravity kindly ignored him. Lisa’s Leggy Lingerie was advertising their new Heaven and Hell collection.
Aziraphale jabbed his finger at the image of a woman dressed in the tiniest amount of white lace with a pair of fake wings flourishing from her back. “Is this honestly what humans think we look like?” he asked. Crowley opened his mouth to explain but Aziraphale plowed on in his annoyance. “Honestly, could you imagine me wearing such a thing?”
Any reply Crowley even considered instantly died in his mind. It was replaced with a very clear image of Aziraphale in thin white lace. He wouldn’t have some cheap fake wings but his own impressive wingspan spread out behind him. Crowley couldn’t help thinking how gorgeously those white wings would contrast the black bedspread in his flat.
“Or Gabriel for that matter.” Aziraphale continued on while Crowley’s poor brain tried to wrench itself free of his imagination. That helped a little. The image of a scantily clad Gabrial instantly cooled the warmth settling through his body. He tried to focus on that, on the image he didn’t want to see, but his mind kept switching back to Aziraphale.
Crowley had to think about something else, anything else. His mind grabbed a topic and his mouth spat it out before it could be fully assessed. “Well what sort of pants do you wear?” he said. Okay, anything else wasn’t as helpful as he’d hoped.
Aziraphale, much to the demon’s sock and embarrassment, answered. “Well, I don’t.”
“You... don’t?”
“No, of course not. I live for thousands of years quite free and comfortable and suddenly people want me stuffing my bits into pants. Trousers were a pain enough to get used to so I don’t see the point in using a second, smaller pair underneath.” Aziraphale paused and glanced down. “Why, do you?”
“Oh, um...” Crowley’s eyes shot up from where they’d settled. “Yeah, I do.”
“What sort?”
This was not the conversation he wanted to have. Not even close. “Just pants I guess. None of that tight stuff it's soft. Expensive sort, you know?” He tried to be as vague as possible, hoping Aziraphale would get bored and move on.
Aziraphale seemed to consider it for a moment. “Could you lend me a pair?”
“Lend you... my pants?”
“If they’re expensive I’d hardly want to buy a pack myself to just try them. I’d return it.”
Crowley’s mind turned slowly. Aziraphale obviously considered pants no different from trousers or a jacket that you’d lend to a friend in need. Crowley wasn’t sure he was up to the task of explaining to the angel just how different and more intimate such an exchange would be. Then there was that pesky imaginary Aziraphale who’d changed from thin lace to Crowley’s own boxers. Luckily, he didn’t have to respond.
“Oh, but they wouldn’t fit would they? You’re so much smaller than me.” He looked disappointed.
Eager to change the conversation once more Crowly slapped his hand on the catalog, making Aziraphale jump. “Point is everyone’s like a different sort. No one’s expecting you to wear this. You wouldn’t expect me to wear the other set would you?” Crowley hadn’t really looked at the other model but figured the little red number was meant to be the hellish one. Aziraphale, however, did look. He looked at the leather, at Crowley, and his face reddened.
Crowley had just enough time to wonder what was running through the angel’s head before the catalog spontaneously combusted under his hand. Aziraphale quickly brushed the ash from his desk and returned to sorting his mail. “That’s enough of that I think,” he stated without ever looking back in Crowley’s direction. Neither would speak of it ever again, but that certainly didn’t mean they never thought about it.
Hellena didn’t look up from her latest issue of Erotic Enchantments as Xavier bound down the stairs with a poster under his arm and a jacket that made him look three sizes bigger.
“How do I get to the Elder Realm?” he asked.
Hellena turned a page and didn’t bother looking up. “Portal in the left linen closet. Take a turn at the rock that looks like a fox. If you see the sun you’ve gone too far.”
“Thanks!” He rushed for the door but paused when she called after him.
“Remember to wear a hat or your ears will freeze off.”
“Gloves too?”
“Yep, gloves too.”
“BYE!” He waved as warmer accessories knit themselves over him and vanished into the closet.
“Where’s he going?” Bishop asked. He walked in from the kitchen just in time to watch the snow drift in from the open portal.
“The Elder Realm.” She tsked at an ad in her magazine. “Oh, that’s just a bad rash waiting to happen.”
“Why is he going to the Elder Realm?!” Bishop hurried across the hall. Hellena shrugged and turned the page. “Hellena he’s fourteen. You can’t just let a fourteen-year-old boy run off to the Elder Realm alone.” A jacket was already forming over him in colors that would have burned Hellena’s eyes if she bothered to look.
“I was ten when I caught my first dragon. You’ve got to let the boy explore more, Bishop. If he wants to see a dragon let him see a dragon.”
“I’m going after him to make sure he’s ok.”
“Bring back some frost root,” she said as he vanished.
The Elder Realm was a frozen, sunless land. Xavier carefully picked his way over the torch-lit path to a village at the base of a mountain. A small group had already gathered, orbs of light floating over their signs and a chant of “protect the dragons,” echoed through the valley. Erras was already there, fiercely protecting a spot for their friend. They perked up the second they spotted Xavier.
“You look like an icicle,” Xavier said as he pulled a spare hat from his pocket and handed it over.
“I didn’t know it could get this cold.” Erras huddled close.
“Here, I brought this to help. My newest creation. I call it Summer in a Bottle.”
Erras turned the bottle over in their hands, frowning at how oddly warm it felt. “This is an Xavier special huh? Which means there’s a ten percent chance it works and one hundred percent chance I blow up.”
“That’s not how math works.”
“It’s how your experiments work.”
Xavier pouted. “I worked really hard on this one.”
“Yeah, and you’ll be working really hard to put my guts back in if it fails.” They passed the bottle back and chose instead to cuddle for warmth. By the time Bishop found them the pair, they were shivering in sync. He thought it would be easier to coax them home, but the cold wasn’t the only thing that kept them frozen in place.
“Did you know that we have fewer than a dozen elder dragons?” Xavier asked his mentor. “They used to be so plentiful they blanketed the sky. Their fires warmed this realm and the ash allowed all kinds of extinct plants to grow here.” There was a chorus of cheers from the other protesters.
“It’s freezing out here. Surely there’s another way to protect the dragons that doesn’t involve frostbite,” Bishop said. He was dreaming about his warm, plush chair back home. The children smirked at each other and he knew he’d just lost something.
“There is a way,” Erras began.
“But we’d need someone on the council,” Xavier replied with mock shock.
“But your mentor is on the council,” Erras said, “so he could do it.”
“Theoretically, but no one on the council listens to him.”
“People listen to me!” Bishop looked offended then groaned when he realized he’d been played. “Fine. I’ll put a motion through at the next meeting. Can we go home now?”