He met Crowley's golden eyes with a small, sad smile, a silent look of gratitude for the way he tried to lighten the suddenly dour mood with his familiar brand of playful arguing. He knew that his friend didn't let himself get attached as easily as he did, and even Aziraphale kept a fair emotional distance, most of the time. When you were responsible for blessing and guarding over billions of lives that would end in the blink of your eye, it made it hard to get close. But sometimes, over the years, one or two would find a way of worming their way into his affections. Nowhere near as deeply as Crowley, of course. They never could, not with the time the two of them had known one another, or the things they'd been through with each other. But they still left their mark, in their own small ways.
"It's alright. I don't blame you, really. To be honest with you, in a way, I'm just glad...I'm just glad that you hadn't been forced to be the cause of it." Not that he would have felt Crowley capable of inciting such blind, violent hatred on his own, anyway. He remembered the way he had reacted to the Spanish Inquisition all those centuries ago.
Though at the same time, the fact that the humans were capable of it all on their own was little better. Everything about it had been absolutely heartbreaking. He shrugged gently, shaking his head and giving a small smile in an attempt to lighten the mood on his own.
"Besides. If you'd been there, I'm sure you would have just gotten yourself into trouble somehow, at my expense. I know how they see me. Even then, they suspected me of being a...'deviant.' A bachelor, who looks the age we do? Never showing any interest in courting the eligible young women, and did you hear? Why, he was even spotted leaving one of those gentleman's clubs just last evening!" His voice lilted in a soft imitation of those old, gossiping spinsters as he spoke, the ones who had stood on the opposite corner from his bookshop the day the investigators had come to speak with him, around the time of Oscar's trial. Aziraphale wasn't dumb, and though he may have been a little out of touch, he still knew enough to know exactly what people thought of him. He wasn't ashamed of who he was, but the humans' understanding of those matters for their own kind was rocky at best. He hardly expected them to understand the way it was for them. It was just the nature of their creation.
"Regardless, it's water under the bridge, my dear. Things are better now then they were back then. And you woke up in time to save me from my own foolishness during the Blitz, so I'd say you more then made up for it, in time."
He chuckled softly at the indignant huff Crowley gave him when he rubbed his hands on his feathers, making a note to himself to clean them off for him, later. The black wings may not have shown the stains, but he knew how particular Crowley was about them, and how he would fuss over the sticky juice once he was finished futzing with Aziraphale's.
The feeling of his fingers running through his own feathers made him sigh, his eyes sliding closed in contentment as he felt the subtle ache of them sliding into their proper places, allowing the skin that held them to relax for the first time in a good, long while. He hummed a wordless reply at the confusion in Crowley's voice, glancing back when those hands stilled with just enough time to see the pinch coming but not enough time to pull away, and though it didn't really hurt, he still gave a startled, indignant yelp as his wing flinched and he reached up to rub his arm, giving the demon an offended look.
"What was that for???"
He stared at him as he rambled on, and something in Aziraphale's mind seemed to grind to a halt behind his eyes as the dawning realization of the possibility finally occurred to him. And if he hadn't been blushing moments before, he most certainly was now, the expression shifting to a mixture of slight horror and denial.
"B-...but that's preposterous! You can't share dreams...! And-...a-a-and besides, a dream wouldn't know it wasn't real, anyway! That's just what you would say!
Right?"
The fact that the thought hadn't even occurred to him yet was probably more then enough evidence to show that he hadn't been there for very long at all, and in fact he had only woken up in the small house he'd been assigned that very morning. He had, of course, been completely bewildered and more then a little suspicious of the fact that he'd been seemingly knocked unconscious and carted off somewhere without once knowing, but the friendly - and somewhat foreboding - letter in the welcome basket in the kitchen had only made perfect sense. Of course, he was only dreaming! It certainly seemed real enough, but he had read books the humans had written regarding a form of dream in which the sleeping individual could, under the right conditions, induce a dream state that was so vivid and alive that it felt real at the time. It had seemed a perfectly reasonable explanation, this morning.
He carefully avoided the question about why he would even want to dream about Crowley of all people, but the blush on his face reached right up to his ears, now. Why, indeed? He couldn't think up an answer quickly enough that the pause wouldn't raise even more questions, so he ignored it and hoped he wouldn't notice.
And then, all while his wing continued to press and angle itself into the grooming with unconscious thought, he found himself gaping at him in mildly suspicious confusion.
"What do you mean 'ideas?' What on Earth could she have heard in one of our conversations that would give her ideas that have gotten you this out of sorts?"
Anthony J. Crowley, what have you been up to while he was gone?
no subject
"It's alright. I don't blame you, really. To be honest with you, in a way, I'm just glad...I'm just glad that you hadn't been forced to be the cause of it." Not that he would have felt Crowley capable of inciting such blind, violent hatred on his own, anyway. He remembered the way he had reacted to the Spanish Inquisition all those centuries ago.
Though at the same time, the fact that the humans were capable of it all on their own was little better. Everything about it had been absolutely heartbreaking. He shrugged gently, shaking his head and giving a small smile in an attempt to lighten the mood on his own.
"Besides. If you'd been there, I'm sure you would have just gotten yourself into trouble somehow, at my expense. I know how they see me. Even then, they suspected me of being a...'deviant.' A bachelor, who looks the age we do? Never showing any interest in courting the eligible young women, and did you hear? Why, he was even spotted leaving one of those gentleman's clubs just last evening!" His voice lilted in a soft imitation of those old, gossiping spinsters as he spoke, the ones who had stood on the opposite corner from his bookshop the day the investigators had come to speak with him, around the time of Oscar's trial. Aziraphale wasn't dumb, and though he may have been a little out of touch, he still knew enough to know exactly what people thought of him. He wasn't ashamed of who he was, but the humans' understanding of those matters for their own kind was rocky at best. He hardly expected them to understand the way it was for them. It was just the nature of their creation.
"Regardless, it's water under the bridge, my dear. Things are better now then they were back then. And you woke up in time to save me from my own foolishness during the Blitz, so I'd say you more then made up for it, in time."
He chuckled softly at the indignant huff Crowley gave him when he rubbed his hands on his feathers, making a note to himself to clean them off for him, later. The black wings may not have shown the stains, but he knew how particular Crowley was about them, and how he would fuss over the sticky juice once he was finished futzing with Aziraphale's.
The feeling of his fingers running through his own feathers made him sigh, his eyes sliding closed in contentment as he felt the subtle ache of them sliding into their proper places, allowing the skin that held them to relax for the first time in a good, long while. He hummed a wordless reply at the confusion in Crowley's voice, glancing back when those hands stilled with just enough time to see the pinch coming but not enough time to pull away, and though it didn't really hurt, he still gave a startled, indignant yelp as his wing flinched and he reached up to rub his arm, giving the demon an offended look.
"What was that for???"
He stared at him as he rambled on, and something in Aziraphale's mind seemed to grind to a halt behind his eyes as the dawning realization of the possibility finally occurred to him. And if he hadn't been blushing moments before, he most certainly was now, the expression shifting to a mixture of slight horror and denial.
"B-...but that's preposterous! You can't share dreams...! And-...a-a-and besides, a dream wouldn't know it wasn't real, anyway! That's just what you would say!
Right?"
The fact that the thought hadn't even occurred to him yet was probably more then enough evidence to show that he hadn't been there for very long at all, and in fact he had only woken up in the small house he'd been assigned that very morning. He had, of course, been completely bewildered and more then a little suspicious of the fact that he'd been seemingly knocked unconscious and carted off somewhere without once knowing, but the friendly - and somewhat foreboding - letter in the welcome basket in the kitchen had only made perfect sense. Of course, he was only dreaming! It certainly seemed real enough, but he had read books the humans had written regarding a form of dream in which the sleeping individual could, under the right conditions, induce a dream state that was so vivid and alive that it felt real at the time. It had seemed a perfectly reasonable explanation, this morning.
He carefully avoided the question about why he would even want to dream about Crowley of all people, but the blush on his face reached right up to his ears, now. Why, indeed? He couldn't think up an answer quickly enough that the pause wouldn't raise even more questions, so he ignored it and hoped he wouldn't notice.
And then, all while his wing continued to press and angle itself into the grooming with unconscious thought, he found himself gaping at him in mildly suspicious confusion.
"What do you mean 'ideas?' What on Earth could she have heard in one of our conversations that would give her ideas that have gotten you this out of sorts?"
Anthony J. Crowley, what have you been up to while he was gone?