Falling Heavenward: A Good Omens Crowley/Aziraphale Fanfic

Floating Islands

Crowley couldn't help feeling a bit like a puppy slinking back in after his mistress had found her chewed up shoe, as he pushed into the shop. Or a chewed up book? No, he wasn't actually that scared. He was pretty sure Aziraphale wouldn't quite discorporate him. He still felt guilty and, because of that, bristling and defiant.

Aziraphale greeted him with a quiet, assessing look. No waspish remark, no blazing anger. The mild contemplation and the lack of comment on his dark glasses and demonic state was worse than being scolded, especially when the clear gaze fell on his chest, where the invisible chains lay again, as if he could see them.

"Well, dear, let's be off," Aziraphale said at last.

Crowley managed to sway semi-arrogantly rather than lurch to the Bentley. He paused before he started the engine. "Angel," he said, and stopped.

"It's quite all right," Aziraphale said. "I talked to Sandalphon. We'll talk over lunch."

The Bentley might have been a bit out of sorts, because it played Queen for the short drive back to Mayfair. Crowley tried three CDs and was hit with You Take My Breath Away, One Year of Love and Love Me Like There's No Tomorrow in quick succession. Aziraphale stopped him trying to shove on a William Walton CD in a desperate attempt to escape too-apposite lyrics.

"Please not that, or more bebop," he said wearily. "Just drive."

They didn't talk much until they were seated in the Reading Room at Claridge's, had disposed of the canapés and first course, and Crowley was picking moodily at his lobster risotto in truffle sauce. "Why do I keep ordering things with truffles? You'd think I'd learn from my mistakes the first seven hundred times or so. I always think I fancy truffles, and then they taste like licking the walls in Hell."

"I'm not going to ask how you know that." Aziraphale pushed over his plate of lamb, which Crowley was startled to notice was untouched. "Fortunately, I love truffles, I know your moods, and I remember how to order for you." He daintily picked up the rejected risotto and brought it to his place.

Crowley stared at him, stunned, and Aziraphale gleamed back at him, radiant as a small sun, and took a forkful of risotto. "Angel. You remember.Everything."

"I had a productive little chat with Asmodeus." Aziraphale twinkled at him.

"You what?" Crowley hadn't been so deliciously taken aback since the garden of Eden.

Aziraphale told him, glowing and practically tittering, and Crowley had no trouble responding with proper amazement and admiration and laughter and ego-stroking. It was only afterwards that he said, quieting down, "I suppose you think I let you down terribly by choosing to Fall again."

"No," said Aziraphale unexpectedly. "I was upset at first. But I had time to think on your way over, and in the car. It was very noble of you to want to Rise for my sake, but it was also, I think, wrong. You had no genuine repentance or desire to return to Her in your heart, and Gabriel knew that. That's why the contract could only work through deceit on his part, and you would have Fallen again." He smiled faintly. "You like being bad, even though sometimes you can't help being a bit good. I need to accept that about you."

"And you like being good, even though sometimes you can't help being a bit bad." Crowley said heavily. "I need to accept that about you. Always on opposite sides. I just—I just wanted to be what you wanted, be on the same side for real so we could spend time together and both stop hurting each other so blessedly much." He gulped down a glass of Le Grande Anne, which would have gone better with the lobster. At least Bollinger was always pretty acceptable. And why was his cowardly mind skittering off into wine matching? "I always wanted to be on our own side more than anything."