31 Days of Kisses: A Good Omen Advent Calendar

This Bibliophilic Greed

Summary:

Four times Crowley attempts to buy a book.

Notes:

The Advent Calendar prompt for today, "Gift", just happens to be on the same day as my very dear friend's birthday. Happy birthday, Deamonia--I have written radio!fic for you.

1.

Eleven years really wasn't all that long for an immortal being. They had been a rather full eleven years. Really, it wasn't all that surprising that Crowley, slouched on the couch drinking Scotch and listening to Aziraphale grumble tediously on about aggressive book acquisitions, remembered something and decided to be annoyed about it after more than a decade.

"Demons do buy books, you know," he'd said, and Aziraphale had ignored it. As if it wasn't even worthy of a response.

A charitable mindset would have interpreted this as Aziraphale noticing Crowley was stressed and shocked and going straight to affectionate concern. Luckily, Crowley was a demon, and prided himself on his uncharitable mindset, which he considered a lot more fun. So he chose to decide that Aziraphale felt that books were his special angelic territory, that an uncultured demon who listened to pop music wouldn't possibly understand.

Wars, Crowley felt, had been declared for far more trivial reasons. Starting right with the First War and "Hey, why do these two ape creatures get a whole planet of their own?"

Besides, he was bored, and he always did enjoy provoking Aziraphale. It made Aziraphale's eyes sparkle, and his lips press together, and his eyebrows draw together in the most unangelic irritation, which Crowley definitely did not store in his mental filing cabinet brain labelled "A for Adorable"--he didn't even a mental file like that, and it definitely didn't have kittens or Warlock in it, let alone Aziraphale--but if he had, it might have been there.

He unfolded himself from the couch. Aziraphale was too caught up in his complaints to notice. Sometimes Crowley felt he would be as satisfied with a parrot who said "Awful humans, I know," every now and then as with a demon as a best friend, except parrots wouldn't pick up the tab at the Ritz. Crowley carefully fanned the small flame of his annoyance until it was satisfyingly big enough to goad him to battle.

Crowley drifted into the back back room and inspected the climate controlled cabinets. The Bibles were no good, he wasn't about to burn his hands off. He was right off prophecy books for a while.

Something caught his eye.

Crowley dumped a leather bound folio in front of Aziraphale, interrupting him mid sentence.

"Why on earth do you have that? It should be in its cabinet. Its locked cabinet."

"Locks mean nothing to me, you know that," Crowley purred. "I want to buy it."

"Certainly not. It's not for sale."

"This is a book shop. How much is it priced at?"

"Three million pounds, and I'm not selling it to you. Now put it back, there's a good fellow."

Crowley pursed his lips, but he knew Aziraphale wasn't exaggerating. There were officially only 234 first edition copies of Shakespeare's First Folio known to be in existence. Between them lay the 353rd, with the glowing inscription to Myne Angele, from his Will. Crowley had always thoroughly hated that inscription, although he knew perfectly well Aziraphale considered himself to have had just a benign business relationship with a married playwright. It never did seem to occur to Aziraphale that anyone considered him carnally attractive. Still, Crowley disliked the inscription. He would rip it out once he owned the book.