A follow-up to my previous post about Aziraphale with OCD and intrusive thoughts, and inspired by @goodm-omen-ts ‘s post here.
Warnings for descriptions of OCD, panic attacks, and intrusive thoughts (I don’t describe the thoughts themselves, but Aziraphale does react negatively to them).
--
“Angel?”
Aziraphale startled, clattering his fork against his plate. “Yes, my dear?” he said hurriedly as he sat up straight in his chair. “I’m so sorry, I must have drifted away for a moment. What was it you were saying?”
He tried to focus on Crowley, sitting at the opposite end of the table across from him. It was more difficult than he expected, like some part of his mind wasn’t yet fully there. He could only process fragments of the whole picture -- Crowley’s thin fingers wrapped around the stem of the wine-glass, his tie slightly loosened, Aziraphale’s own reflection in the glossy surface of Crowley’s sunglasses. He couldn’t see Crowley’s eyes like this, but the way Crowley leaned forward to peer more closely at him had a concerned air.
“Are you alright?” he said. “You seem a bit... out of it.”
Aziraphale smiled weakly. “Just a little too much wine, I think,” he said, hiding his grimace behind his napkin. “Please, do continue.”
Crowley studied him for a moment longer. “If you say so,” he said, a trifle dubiously. He launched back into his retelling of that one time in ancient China, when he’d sidled up to a scholar’s side and pointed out that hey, the number six in Chinese sounded awfully similar to the Chinese word for “flowing”, and wouldn’t it make a nifty pun if you combined three sixes together to mean “everything goes smoothly”?
It really was quite the amusing story, and Aziraphale did try to listen, but it was like there was a faint buzz rising at the back of his mind, melding with the chatter of the diners around them and forming into insidious little voices that whispered vile things into his ears that he did not want to hear. Aziraphale sucked in a breath and discreetly moved his chair closer to the table, trying to zero in on Crowley’s face and voice. It worked, for a moment. For a moment it was all fine, and they were simply Aziraphale and Crowley, dining at the Ritz one lovely summer evening, free from all worries and superiors breathing down their necks. Crowley’s voice became comprehensible again as he enthused about “that fellow Chao who wrote the poem about the lion-eating poet in the stone den, you would’ve loved him, angel --”
Aziraphale’s gaze drifted past the curve of Crowley’s throat, which of course was when his thrice-accursed imagination decided to bombard his mind’s eye with a -- well. A thoroughly unpleasant image that sent a shudder of pure revulsion down Aziraphale’s spine. Stop it, he thought furiously at this intrusion. I would never do such a thing -- but no. There was no use arguing against it; he would only risk getting lost further in his head if he persisted. He stared fixedly at the tablecloth, but the buzzing thoughts in his head only grew louder. Be quiet, he snapped back at his mind before he could stop himself. The next breath he drew caught tight in his chest, and never mind the fact that he didn’t strictly need to breathe, the frustration and disgust and faint panic that it caused seemed to clog his throat and crawl beneath his skin like so many ants. He tugged at his tie, which suddenly felt far too tight around his neck.
“--ziraphale? Hey, Az?”
Aziraphale jumped at the gentle press of fingers against his shoulder. Crowley was somehow standing beside him, bending down to peer anxiously into his face. His dark glasses slipped down, revealing a flash of wide yellow eyes.
“Oh, dear,” Aziraphale muttered, trying not to gulp too audibly. “I’m so sorry, let me just --” He tried to rise, but Crowley stopped him.
“Sorry, hold on. I have to call for the bill, but do you want to go wait in the car or sit here for a while longer?”
Aziraphale blinked, momentarily stunned out of his turmoil. “The bill? But, Crowley, we haven’t even finished our --”
Only, when he looked over at their table and at his own nearly-full plate, the last remnants of his appetite shriveled up and died, leaving a vague queasiness behind. He glanced at the chattering diners all around them, crowded and noisy and bright and everywhere at once. Always moving, never stopping. It was just... too fast. All too fast and all at once, and Aziraphale was dimly aware of Crowley rubbing his shoulders as he hunched over, squeezed his eyes shut, and tried to steady his breathing.
It took a few tense moments, but eventually he was composed enough to look back up at Crowley, who had taken Aziraphale’s hand in his. Crowley tentatively wound their fingers together, tawny against warm brown, and it was an anchor amidst the churning storm of Aziraphale’s thoughts.
“We can stay, if you want to,” Crowley said quietly, “but I don’t want to force you to do anything you don’t want to do.”
Aziraphale took another shuddering breath and nodded. “I can wait here while you get the bill,” he managed. “Thank you, my dear.”
Crowley pressed a kiss to Aziraphale’s fingers, then turned to wave for a waiter. Aziraphale focused on pulling his suddenly-refilled teacup over, letting the heated ceramic settle his nerves and recognizing Crowley’s particular touch in the faint whiff of peppermint that rose from the tea’s surface. Soon Crowley was draping Aziraphale’s camelhair coat over his shoulders and wrapping a protective arm around him, leading them both towards the door while Aziraphale stared down at the tiles and blinked away the horrifying images that flickered behind his eyelids.
The Bentley was parked illegally on the curb outside, though it had been sitting all the way down the street only a minute before. Once out in the cool night air, away from the crowds, Aziraphale’s hands flew back to his collar, and Crowley helped him gently tug his tie loose until he breathed more easily. Then they were driving sedately down Piccadilly under the watery yellow glow of the street-lamps, and if the roads seemed unusually empty of people for this time of night, neither of them mentioned it.
Aziraphale pressed his cheek against the Bentley’s window. The glass was cold against his skin, and a relief after the crowded warmth of the restaurant. The radio hummed softly with the refrain of Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy, a welcome distraction from his muddled brain.
“Your place or mine?” Crowley asked softly.
After an evening like this, all he longed for were the comforting walls of his shop. “The bookshop, if it isn’t too much trouble,” he mumbled, eyes closed.
Cloth rustled, and Crowley’s hand stole back into his. “You’re never a trouble, angel. We’ll be home soon.”
Crowley stopped short at the threshold of the bookshop and stared. He blinked. The baffling tableau before him did not change. Aziraphale was sitting in his armchair absorbed in a book, which was usual for him. What was unusual was the grey tabby cat curled up on Aziraphale’s legs, purring to its heart's content.
“There’s a cat in your lap,” Crowley said.
Aziraphale looked up, a smile already spreading over his face. “Hello, my dear,” he said, beaming. “I wasn’t expecting you until six—”
“There is a cat,” Crowley repeated, stepping forward, “in your lap.”
Aziraphale looked down at the cat, as though he himself had forgotten it was there. “Oh, yes,” he said, stroking a hand down the cat’s spine. “Crowley, meet Dorian. He’s a dear little fellow, aren’t you, darling?” The cat purred louder and arched its back, and Crowley tried not to feel envious. Then he remembered he was a demon, meant to encourage the spread of deadly sins among the populace, and he stopped trying to hold it in.
"Why is there a cat in your lap?”
“It’s rather a funny story, actually,” Aziraphale said absently, scratching the cat under the chin. “I have this customer, you see, who’s been coming to the shop for years now, ever since 1981—”
Crowley sighed. “The short version, please, angel.”
He extracted the story from Aziraphale eventually. Said customer[1] had an old relative who had passed away recently. The passing itself hadn’t been all that tragic, as the old relative had apparently been “a bigoted fool who’s surely among your coworkers Down There by now”, as Aziraphale put it. However, the relative had owned a cat who was nothing like his owner, and who had quite suddenly found himself without a home after his master’s timely death.
[1: Evidently, no person who actually bought books would ever be allowed to step foot in the shop again. However, Aziraphale had a small group of dedicated “customers” who were permitted to leaf through his books to their heart’s content, so long as they handled the manuscripts carefully and didn’t try to purchase anything.]
“...and so I told Xiuying that I could certainly help find a home for him, and that home was with me,” Aziraphale finished. He rubbed Dorian’s furry ears, to the cat’s delight.
“So you’re keeping him,” Crowley said slowly, still wrestling with the concept of a cat sitting in Aziraphale’s lap where there hadn’t been one before. “Forever.”
Aziraphale visibly drooped a bit. “Not forever, I suppose, in the strictest sense of the word. He still has another good twenty years in him, if we care for him well, but…”
“Never mind that,” Crowley said hastily, heart dropping at Aziraphale’s expression. He went up to the angel’s side and pressed a kiss into the halo of thick black curls. “Just — Dorian, really? I thought you said his former owner was a bigot.”
Aziraphale relaxed and twined their fingers together. “He had a different name before he came here, of course. But it just seemed terribly unfitting, and, well. I reckoned it was about time for a change.”
From the way Dorian looked up expectantly at the sound of his new name, he seemed to agree. Crowley studied the rotund ball of grey fluff, and thought he could understand where Dorian was coming from.
“I think it’s a great name,” Crowley said, perching on the arm of the armchair. He flinched a bit when Dorian craned his neck over to sniff his hand, but Aziraphale only chuckled.
“He doesn’t bite, my dear. You have nothing to fear. Now, Dorian,” he said sternly to the feline, “I trust you will conduct yourself in a manner befitting your station. Crowley here is my dearest friend and I love him very much, so I expect you to treat him just as well as you have treated me.”
Whether or not Dorian heeded the gentle scolding didn’t seem to matter. He bumped his nose against Crowley’s curled fingers, and then, apparently deciding that this new man-shaped creature was a satisfactory addition to the bookshop, pressed his furry head hard against Crowley’s hand, purring up a storm. Crowley had turned into a puddle of befuddled-but-warm mush at Aziraphale calling him “my dearest friend”, but he collected himself enough to reciprocate Dorian’s affections, tentatively scratching the cat’s ears and then more boldly stroking through his soft fur. Dorian melted into fourteen pounds of fuzz and feline bliss.
Eventually the three of them found themselves in the back room of the bookshop. Logically the settee shouldn’t have been able to hold two fully-grown adults and one large cat all curled up together, but a discreet miracle ensured that they could all fit without anyone rolling off.
Crowley buried his face in Aziraphale’s sweater and breathed in the comforting smell of old books and starlight. Then he wrinkled his nose and withdrew.
“You’re covered in cat hair,” he complained.
Aziraphale was already half asleep, but the corners of his lips quirked faintly upwards. “I could say the same of you, too, my dear,” he murmured.
Crowley thought of his nice black suit all covered in clinging light grey cat hairs, and groaned. “I’ll never get them off my clothes at this rate,” he muttered. “Furry little devil.”
The furry little devil in question was curled around the region of Crowley’s back, rumbling away like a particularly contented mini-lawnmower. Crowley had to grudgingly admire his air of smug feline satisfaction.
Aziraphale hummed. “He’s only a cat, my dear. Not hellish nor heavenly in the least.”
He opened his eyes to meet Crowley’s, and smiled.
“After all,” he whispered, with a sly glance, “There is only one demon in the universe whom I love.”
Crowley caught Aziraphale’s lips in a kiss. They continued along this vein for quite some time, and would’ve gone on for much longer, had Dorian not grown tired of the proceedings and eventually yowled for his dinner.
(And if, in years to come, Dorian survived long past the possible lifespan for a mortal cat, no one else was around to notice.)
Warnings for descriptions of OCD, intrusive thoughts, panic attacks.
[ part one ] [ ao3 ]
- - -
As he usually got after such episodes, Aziraphale felt muzzy and slow when they pulled up at the bookshop door. Crowley was a reassuringly solid presence as he helped Aziraphale out of the Bentley, and when they finally made it to the sofa in the bookshop’s back room, he knelt down in front of Aziraphale and took the angel’s hand.
“All right?” he asked eventually, searching Aziraphale’s gaze. His sunglasses had long since been discarded on the coffee table.
Aziraphale catalogued himself. He felt steadier but still shaky, and had the beginnings of a headache pounding at his temples. He tried to miracle the pain away, but it stubbornly persisted. “Not really,” he said, looking away.
Crowley ran his thumb over the back of Aziraphale’s hand. “Anything I can do to help?”
Aziraphale sighed. “Not really. One simply has to wait it out.”
Crowley settled on the sofa beside him and slipped an arm over Aziraphale’s shoulders. Aziraphale accepted this invitation to curl into Crowley’s side and press his face into Crowley’s neck. He was suddenly exhausted, which likely contributed to the sudden hot flush of tears down his cheeks. Crowley’s pulse sped up, but he didn’t show it outwardly, only rubbing Aziraphale’s back and occasionally nuzzling into his dark curls to press comforting kisses upon his head.
Aziraphale soon cried himself out, and found himself resting against Crowley’s chest as the demon lay back on the settee. Some part of him thought he ought to be embarrassed after such an emotional display, but the rest of him was too tired to care.
Crowley stirred beneath him. “Angel?”
Aziraphale lifted his head, and saw Crowley watching him with immeasurable fondness and a hint of worry in his yellow eyes.
“D’you mind if I try something?”
Aziraphale frowned. “Try what?”
“I want to make you feel better. Thought this might help.”
Crowley sat up, and Aziraphale let himself be gently pushed to one end of the settee. One moment they were sitting there side by side, and the next, Crowley was shaking out a pair of massive white wings that stirred up the dust of the bookshop, gleaming faintly in the gloom. Aziraphale’s mouth went dry, but he managed a faint, “Oh.”
Carefully, moving slowly enough so Aziraphale could stop him if he wanted to, Crowley stretched out one wing to encircle Aziraphale’s shoulders in a cloak of sleek feathers. It was a bit of a tight squeeze, all crowded together on the sofa as they were, but closeness was what Aziraphale needed right now. He leaned into Crowley’s side with a gusty sigh and allowed himself to be enfolded in white.
“I feel so — so foolish,” he admitted into Crowley’s neck. “The Apocalypse didn’t happen. Heaven and Hell are off our backs. We no longer have anything to fear, so why in heaven’s name am I still…” He groped for words, and, finding none, could only gesture helplessly at himself, at all he was and all he wasn’t.
Crowley only tucked his wing in closer, brushing at the dried tears on Aziraphale’s cheeks with one primary feather. “Even a good change can be a lot to deal with. And sometimes these sorts of things don’t need reasons to act up. Kind of just… happens. They’re nasty little buggers like that. Brain gremlins, I call ‘em.”
The absurdity of the phrase made Aziraphale snort a bit, and he felt more than saw Crowley smile into his hair when he succeeded in making Aziraphale laugh. Aziraphale clasped their hands together and held on tight.
“You know I’m not going to judge you, right?” Crowley said into the silence that followed. “Nothing you do could drive me away, unless you asked me to leave you alone.”
Aziraphale clutched him tighter. “I don’t want you to leave.”
“I won’t,” Crowley said hastily. “Figure of speech. Just. I’m here to stay, Aziraphale. I chose to stay here, with you, six thousand years ago, and I’m not going to change my mind anytime soon. Or at all, for that matter.”
Despite himself, bitterness rose like bile in Aziraphale’s throat. Would you still stay if you knew my mind, truly? he thought with a sudden self-loathing, deep and cold. Knew all my doubts and fears and sins, all the terrible things I’ve seen and done, all the terrible things I wanted to do—
“Aziraphale.” Crowley shook him, gently but insistently. From his worried tone, this wasn’t the first time he’d called Aziraphale’s name. Aziraphale blinked and shuddered, returning to himself in a dizzying rush. He hadn’t even noticed his focus turning inward, blocking out all awareness of the world around him.
“How long...”
“Only a few seconds,” Crowley said, brow furrowing. Aziraphale could practically hear his unasked question: Does this happen often? The answer was, of course, too often for his liking, but before he could dwell any longer than that, Crowley was moving, turning to face Aziraphale fully and taking hold of both his hands in a tight grip.
“I know you,” Crowley said, with sudden fierceness. “You’re a good person, Aziraphale. No, it’s true,” he insisted when Aziraphale scoffed and looked away, tears once more threatening to fall. “I know you, I’ve known you for centuries, and I promise, unequivocally, that you’re a good person. I don’t care what your brain tells you. Whatever you’re thinking, they don’t represent who you are or what you believe. ‘S why they’re intrusive thoughts in the first place. Brain gremlins, remember?” Aziraphale let out a watery laugh at that, and Crowley squeezed his hands more tightly.
“‘I’m a good person.’ Here, you can say it, because it’s true.”
Somehow the laughter, slight as it was, had turned to weeping without his knowledge or consent. Breathing was getting difficult again, but Crowley stroked a hand down Aziraphale’s arm, up and down again, and the touch was grounding.
“Can’t.” Aziraphale felt choked up. “‘M sorry. I can’t say it yet.” Just the thought of it was enough to make his chest tighten.
“Hey, no, it’s okay. Don’t apologize. It’s not your fault.” Crowley wrapped his arms around Aziraphale and held him tight, rocking him slowly. “I can say it for you until you’re ready.”
When the latest bout of emotion had died down, Crowley brushed his lips over Aziraphale’s brow. Aziraphale stayed pressed against Crowley’s chest, breathing in the scent of greenery and the Bentley’s leather seats.
“I’m sorry that it’s such a hard thing for you to accept,” Crowley said quietly. “But I’ll be here with you, always, and I’ll remind you if you forget.”
“I can’t help but feel weak,” Aziraphale mumbled. “Can’t even have a nice dinner without falling to pieces.”
Crowley tapped him on the nose, a painless yet unexpected gesture that made Aziraphale look up, mildly startled. Crowley leaned in, and Aziraphale closed the distance, meeting soft lips with his own.
“It’s not a weakness,” Crowley said when they drew apart. “It’s not your fault, and it’s not a flaw or a moral failing or anything like that. It’s just human.”
“Just human,” Aziraphale echoed. He turned the words over in his head. It wasn’t an unpleasant notion.
Crowley pressed their foreheads together with infinite tenderness. “You don’t have to go through this alone, angel. Not anymore.”
“Thank you,” was the whispered response. It was a breathless phrase, shakily delivered but sincerely meant. Somewhere at the back of his mind, the thoughts still hovered like swarms of buzzing, biting mosquitoes, but while he couldn’t be rid of them completely, somehow they were a little easier to ignore.
One of these days I’ll actually finish these fics instead of just posting excerpts from them. I hope to be finished by the end of this week, and I’ll be sure to post them when I’m done.
(This is a continuation of my fic After the End, btw)
hhh okay I need a few moments to yell about This Scene:
What strikes me the most about this particular exchange is just how much Aziraphale’s response reads like my own dysfunctional, OCD-driven thoughts when I’m having an episode. It’s actually so scarily similar to how my OCD manifests that the first time I read Good Omens -- several months before I was diagnosed and in therapy -- I nearly put it down again because that particular description was so triggering.
I’ll elaborate. Obviously OCD appears in a variety of different forms and symptoms, and it’s not the same for everyone. But one symptom that can appear in OCD is all-or-nothing thinking. Basically it becomes impossible to look at the “in-betweens” of a subject -- there are Only Two Sides of Right and Wrong and Nothing Else (sound familiar?) Maybe the one logical part of you can recognize that this kind of thinking is not quite right, but that part is drowned out by the brain gremlins yelling that it can only be one or the other and you’re evil and wrong for ever daring to think outside that box.
Now, as to how this applies to Good Omens, and this scene in particular. Aziraphale has his world divided neatly into Good and Evil. If something is said to be Good, then it is Good, and anything that is not considered Good must therefore be Evil, with no room for exceptions or error.
Crowley here is the voice of logic, the one that some part of Aziraphale secretly knows has a solid point. But Aziraphale is unable to accept it. One part of him wishes to, but another part of him so deathly fears that he would be sympathizing with “Evil” if he agrees that he immediately retreats into denial as a safety net. It must be bad. Even if he doesn’t understand why it’s bad precisely, this is what he knows to be true, so he shouldn’t argue against it because otherwise that means he’s Evil too, and God knows he doesn’t want to be Evil.
When it comes to OCD subtypes like scrupulosity (c’est moi), this kind of thinking can be so overwhelming that you basically get caught up in a perpetual moral argument with yourself, trying to find one “right” answer or condition that doesn’t exist. Eventually you retreat to the “safety” of extremes; if you just stick to the Good side, then you won’t be Evil. Of course, that also means that any questioning of the Good side whatsoever automatically = evil, and the fear that that causes makes it difficult to break out of these harmful patterns of thinking (and that fear is very strong, and the guilt of thinking you have done “evil” is even stronger).
I always felt that Aziraphale’s struggles with Heaven and the ineffable plan throughout the book mirrored OCD’s distorted lines of thinking in a way that was painfully familiar. He makes mistakes based off these thoughts -- making excuses for Heaven’s conduct (because questioning it otherwise must mean he is allowing Evil to happen, or else committing Evil himself), retreating behind the safety net of extremes when his firmly drawn lines are threatened.
But at the same time, let’s consider incidents like the flaming sword. For all of Aziraphale’s internal debate over whether the banishment of Adam and Eve was the right thing to do, he still gives them the sword to keep them safe, then lies to God about it afterwards. Then, of course, we come to the Apocalypse-that-wasn’t, in which Aziraphale finally shakes himself free of the tangled web of all-or-nothing, good-or-unforgiveable ‘logic’ that has kept him trapped for millennia, steps forward, and dares to say, “This Great Plan... this would be the ineffable plan, would it?”
There’s a lot more I can say here, and I’m not even sure if what I wrote makes sense or not. I’m just... emotional at how he manages to break himself free of that futile cyclical way of thinking and forge his own path. At a time when so much seemed hopeless with my own mental health and no help was forthcoming, and I was breaking down over believing I was a fundamentally unforgivable person, Good Omens was such an anchoring story.
Many thanks to @goodm-omen-ts for their wonderful post here that finally motivated me to write this meta.
Now for some miscellaneous Aziraphale with OCD headcanons:
Intrusive thoughts. Just lots of images and urges and thoughts that are so horrifying and contrary to Aziraphale’s morals pop into his head all the time and no amount of trying will make them go away. When it gets really bad, anything that reminds him even distantly of these thoughts can be a trigger, and if he isn’t careful he can get lost in his head struggling to get rid of these thoughts for hours at a time. But what helps with this are mindful activities that keep his hands occupied and his mind focused on the present, which I feel is how he got into doing stage magic. He gets so focused on executing the tricks and being in the moment that it allows him to forget (or at least sufficiently ignore) the intrusive thoughts until they subside on their own.
Also consider Aziraphale getting involved with other mindful crafts, like knitting.
I feel like at some point Aziraphale would also have distressing intrusive thoughts about Crowley. Cruel whispering thoughts and urges implanted into his mind, saying this is a demon, you must smite harm hurt, along with old prejudices popping into his head that he knows are untrue but somehow he’s thinking them anyway -- the thought of harming Crowley in any way shape or form is simply sickening, and Aziraphale argues against the thoughts constantly, presents all the evidence he has at his disposal (over six thousand years of it) that Crowley isn’t evil, that those are all lies, but of course OCD refuses to listen to logic. The guilt of thinking such terrible things about his friend is crushing, so Aziraphale starts avoiding Crowley out of fear that he will succumb to those awful thoughts and hurt him. Of course that just makes him even more miserable, but the shame prevents him from telling Crowley what’s wrong. Eventually Crowley knocks on the bookshop door himself, and when Aziraphale, teary-eyed and shaking, finally confesses, Crowley holds him and says I’m not angry, angel. I know you never actually believed those things, and I know that you would never hurt me or anyone. Those thoughts don’t represent who you are or what you believe.
Compulsions. okay but also Aziraphale fearing that his relationship with Crowley will get Crowley punished by either Hell or Heaven and dealing with the crushing guilt that comes with that, and the rituals he sets up in an attempt to avoid such a thing from ever happening. Spending hours brooding over short notes from Gabriel trying to determine if the wording of that particular sentence means Gabriel knows something he shouldn’t, or combing repeatedly through his memories of the Arrangement to see if he’d ever somehow accidentally betrayed to the Powers That Be that it was he, Aziraphale, who had carried out that particular temptation in France instead of Crowley who was in China at the time... just lots of questions of what if, what if, what if. Through this, he also tends to blame and beat himself up over any small thing that goes wrong.
When Aziraphale is overworked or overtired it gets worse, and he finds himself slipping into his head more and more often. That relaxing sit-down with a book becomes three fraught hours of second-guessing his actions from an event that happened two centuries ago, or he’s at the Ritz with Crowley but can’t focus on the conversation because every time he blinks he sees horrifying images behind his eyelids, and the crowds of people at the tables around them aren’t helping to clear his muddled mind. But then he’ll be roused by a touch to the shoulder, worried yellow eyes beneath dark sunglasses and a questioning “Angel?”, and they’ll pay the bill, drive back to the bookshop in the Bentley while Aziraphale presses his flushed face into the cool window and tries to focus on Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy playing softly on the radio instead of the frantic nest of bees in his brain. He can’t stomach any more food that night, but Crowley miracles up a pair of pyjamas for him (tartan, though Crowley would deny it if you asked) and grooms the tension out of Aziraphale’s wings until the angel manages to fall into a sound sleep.
Just... Aziraphale with OCD. It traps him in a snarled web of indecision, terror, and guilt, and the abuse he receives from Heaven only worsens it. And later, when he realizes his past mistakes, the crushing remorse that that causes makes it difficult for him to forgive himself and move forward. But he works at it, and learns to break out of those lines of thinking, and it’s never a quick nor easy process, but he’s getting there. He’s staying afloat.
(I also have lots of thoughts about Crowley dealing with similar symptoms, especially after his Fall. In my mind he’s more accustomed to dealing with it by now than Aziraphale, and has developed good coping mechanisms, but it still gets hard at times. They help each other.)
“Crowley!” Aziraphale called, pushing open the door of the bookshop with a tinkle of the bell. He hefted the paper bags in his arms and set them down on the nearest table.
“My dear, there’s a new bakery that’s just opened up not two streets away,” he said cheerfully, hanging his coat and scarf. “Run by a lovely young couple who just moved here from Sussex, if you would believe it, though they say they’re adjusting to city life wonderfully well. I asked --”
Aziraphale stopped short and looked around. Crowley hadn’t greeted him. Crowley wasn’t even in the room at all. Only a few short hours ago, he’d been sitting on the front counter playing a game of some sort on his mobile, only pausing to give Aziraphale a goodbye kiss before he left. Now the only evidence that Crowley had been there at all was his mug of cocoa on the desk, now cold and congealed.
“Crowley?” Aziraphale called again, a trifle more warily. He probed the area for supernatural traces and found nothing out of the ordinary, but didn’t allow himself to relax just yet. Now that he thought of it, Dorian hadn’t come to the front door to greet him, either; Crowley was still adjusting to the cat’s presence, but he certainly wouldn’t allow Dorian to escape outside or get stuck somewhere in the shop. Aziraphale eyed the hallway that led to both the kitchen and the back room. Worst case scenario, he had a wickedly sharp serrated sandwich knife in the drying rack. Hardly a flaming sword, but it would do for his purposes.
He edged down the hallway in the direction of the kitchen, but a movement from the back room redirected his attention. A shape appeared to be huddled on the settee, and Aziraphale quickly discovered, to his relief, that it was only Crowley, snoozing soundly away beneath a knitted blanket. Headphones covered his ears, which explained why he hadn’t heard Aziraphale return.
Crowley was not alone on the couch, however. Dorian lifted his head and looked over inquisitively as Aziraphale approached, but otherwise didn’t move from his established seat atop Crowley’s stomach. Aziraphale laughed softly and ruffled Dorian’s ears, careful not to awaken the demon.
“Keeping him warm, are we?”
Dorian shook Aziraphale off and sprawled out even more across Crowley’s torso, as if to say yes, and I am taking my job very seriously, so kindly cease from interrupting me.
“‘Just tolerating the beast’, indeed.” Aziraphale shook his head fondly and took out his phone. Crowley had taught him how to take photographs with it shortly after the Apocalypse-that-wasn’t, and Aziraphale put this skill to good use over the next few minutes.
(Later, Crowley would roll his eyes when Aziraphale showed him, muttering about cat hair all over his trouser-legs and paws digging into his ribs. Despite these complaints, Aziraphale, with a knowing smile, didn’t fail to notice that Crowley had a brand new lockscreen wallpaper on his phone the following morning.)
