#heaven on earth imo | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

cobragardens · 7 months

Text

The Colors of Crowley

Black is the color Crowley uses to cover himself, red is the color that represents Crowley to himself, and yellow is the color that represents Crowley to Aziraphale. What each color symbolizes and how it's used give us important information about Crowley (and to some degree Aziraphale) and about the ineffable relationship.

I feel kind of dumb writing this post because I'm sure it's glaringly obvious to everyone else, but there's this Metro UK article of all things (the Metro is owned by the hardcore rightwing Daily Mail, btw, so please don't link to it) that mentions the red stitching on Crowley's gloves in 1867, and it made conscious some details I had only subconsciously noted, so fwiw to anybody else, here are my notes on the colors associated with Crowley in Good Omens and their significance in the context of the way each one is used.

I don't think we need to cover black-as-evil in Western color symbology. [And yet here's a long-ass paragraph about it anyway! --Ed.] Light:dark::good:evil has been a thing with Christianity since before Christianity was even Judaism. The Israelites picked it up from the Zoroastrians way back before YHWH had subsumed El as 'God,' which may have been before they were Israelites as well; I mean it was a LONG time ago. Good Omens has been using black and white to represent Hell and Heaven, respectively, long before the show. In the UK, the book was published in paperback with a choice of black or white cover with an illustration of the contrasting character in the contrasting color: Crowley illustrated in black, Aziraphale in white. The current hardcover is grey.

Crowley wears black, and the Bentley is black. At the metanarrative or authorial level this is obviously for the purposes of the black/white demon/angel contrast, but on the intra-narrative level, the Watsonian level, it's interesting to note that Crowley doesn't have to wear black. He's obviously not free to choose from the full color palette, but Furfur's shirt and sash are is dark emerald green, Dagon is in ultramarine (as befits a marine Elder God), and Shax has only been on Earth for four years before she's wearing head-to-toe oxblood. When she shows up later in battle dress she's got a lot of oxblood there, too. And yet Crowley wears black.

Authorial reasons aside, black suits Crowley for a couple intra-narrative reasons. For much of history, black was the most expensive color to dye and maintain in clothing, and as a result it has always been fashionable. And for several centuries in Christendom, wearing black was also a sign that you were in mourning, which was a social and religious obligation when someone close to you died. Whether you could wear other colors with it depended on how long ago that death had occurred.

Again: black is what Crowley chooses to cover himself, and as there is a sharp distinction between how Crowley presents himself to fulfill his obligations and who he thinks of himself as being, there is likewise a distinction between the colors that represent those two quantities as well.

Red is the color the show uses to represent Crowley to Crowley. The most obvious reason is his hair. This is another change from Book Omens, where Crowley is described as having hair that is "dark." A lot of fans in the UK hated the change when S1 came out because fans hate change and the British have a thing against gingers, but Crowley's red hair suits him better than dark imo because the Mother of Demons in Jewish religious literature, Lilith, is traditionally depicted with red hair. Red hair has been associated for more than a millenium in the Middle East and England and Wales with sorcery, witchcraft, demonic influence/possession, and satan-worship.

Crowley wishes his mom was this cool with snakes.

A good case can be made that Crowley genuinely likes the color red in addition to considering it demonically appropriate. I say this for three reasons. Firstly, because when he has a (limited) choice of (again, demonically appropriate) colors, he always chooses red. The marble of the desk in his apartment is not green or grey. He can have any color stitching on his gloves or lining of his jacket collar he wants, but it's always red. Secondly, it's not only red he chooses, it's almost always bright red.

We know Crowley's red isn't supposed to represent blood or violence, because we have another demon character whose use of red represents just that, and it's not the same red:

Compare Shax' oxblood and burgundy to

and

Crowley's red isn't just red, it's lipstick, cherry, crimson red. And in case we weren't sure that we should read this red as symbolizing passionate, romantic love:

Romantic symbolism aside, bright red is also the color of passion (romantic or otherwise), optimism, heat, vitality, life, (hell)fire, and warning.

Red and black says don't fuck with Jack.

The third reason I think we can safely say that Crowley actually likes the color red is that he hides it. It's always tiny little touches, some of which you have to look for to see. (I still don't know where they snuck in the red on his Elizabethan habit, e.g.) And we know this color is a risk for him, and that he is right to hide it, because Ligur, who doesn't approve of any of Crowley's less-than-fully-demonic embellishments and may share Hastur's opinion that Crowley has gone native, comments on one of Crowley's more noticeably colorful items.

And I think the red tells us one more thing about Crowley, too.

Bright red is the colorest of colors, you know? When we can choose only one color to represent all colors, to represent colorfulness itself, we choose bright red (even in cultures where red symbolizes other meanings than it does in Western art).

Remember how Aziraphale gives Crowley's jacket a tartan collar when he swaps bodies with Crowley and impersonates him in Hell because Aziraphale feels the need to maintain some small secret token of his identity, some tiny unremarked sign of something he loves and thinks is beautiful, when he is down there alone in the gloom among enemies?

Crowley is down there alone among enemies every second of every day and night, whether he's in Hell or on Earth. And he's already had his identity stripped from him once. If you were someone who said

about this

and then you got recruited by the fash downstairs bc the fash upstairs threw you out for not being fashy enough and you had to start wearing nothing but dark colors and more importantly had to hide everything that made you feel warmth or softness or joy, and that was it, that was the deal for eternity, but you could add one (1) little touch to everything you wore to remind yourself that there is some beautiful part of you left, something you loved once, that no one has yet been able to steal or brutalize out of you...what color would the stitching on your gloves be?

Lastly, Yellow represents Crowley to Aziraphale. I'm going to skip the chain of evidence for this bc I think it's obvious, but the way it's used also lends itself to some inferences supported in other areas in the show.

Here's where I think changing Crowley's hair to red from Book Omens' dark is a good decision in another way. Crowley always has red hair, and if he has any color in his clothes it's going to be red. Red is eye-catching; it always stands out, but it doesn't stand out as demonic. And yet the color Aziraphale associates with Crowley and calls "pretty" isn't red.

I suspect that when Aziraphale says he can make Crowley an angel again, Crowley hears "You're not good enough for me to accept you as you are, let me fix you" because these are words Aziraphale has said to him many times, and has meant some of those times. But

tells the audience differently. The color Aziraphale associates with Crowley, the color he calls "pretty," is the color of Crowley's only overtly demonic feature. Aziraphale doesn't love the angel he knew who isn't Crowley, he loves Crowley, the demon, the person he is now, his yellow demon irises.

Yellow appears in three other places in S2, and they're all symbolically significant, and in fact serve to establish another symbolic significance to the color yellow in addition to that of Yellow Is the Color of My True Love's Eyes.

One of them is a feather duster:

Crowley reacts to a feather duster like a cat confronted by an unfamiliar object

The other three are private conversations between Aziraphale and Crowley:

The walls that surround Crowley and Aziraphale when they speak openly about their situation and how they will handle it are drenched in yellow, and that is super interesting, because in Western color symbolism yellow is the color of fear. The archangel of whom Crowley and Aziraphale are both (rightly) terrified wields a tool the color of fear. The color of fear saturates the backdrop of conversations between Aziraphale and Crowley when they have to discuss their situation and their actions openly.

Remember how Aziraphale's voice shakes here?

Crowley realizes the crows have just handed an angel evidence the angel can take to Hell and use to have Crowley killed

Even the Bentley, that clear sign of Aziraphale's love for Crowley, is also a yellow coffin enclosing him. For Aziraphale, thoughts of Crowley are always entangled with fear, because Crowley is not just Crowley, he is also Crowley's Fall.

And I think fear is what Crowley's eyes themselves represent. For Crowley, fear is now a fundamental part of his perception, his nature, his identity.

The angel Aziraphale once knew is not Crowley, and yet from what we've seen, the chiefest difference in character between this sweetheart and this mischief-maker--

--is that the Starmaker does not know yet that he should be afraid, and the Serpent does. That knowledge and its fear has, shall we say, colored his view of the world.

Aziraphale learns that fear early by observing others rather than Falling himself, and knows enough that by the first time we meet him in the Before, he is already afraid.

Pink was once symbolically equivalent to red; in modern Western color symbology it is a color of innocence, youth, beauty, and first love. Hashtag just sayin'.

The cruellest thing this suggests to me is that, rather than rebellion or his propensity to ask questions, rather than the knowledge of good and evil, the Starmaker's Fall was caused by his innocence. it wasn't the questions that were the problem: it was that he didn't know any better than to speak them out loud.

Y'all, Crowley and Aziraphale do not suffer from communication problems. Despite both being male-coded and British, they don't even seem to lack emotional intelligence. What they do have is a universe of silence and fear they have to communicate within and around. What they lack is the safety to speak and love freely. The true color of Crowley is crimson, but someone gave him those eyes, and Aziraphale either watched that happen or knew about it, and now Crowley covers himself in black--which btw is also the symbolic color for mystery and secrets--and only lets Aziraphale see him as he really is now, because Aziraphale won't judge him for his yellow eyes (or punish and forsake him for his questions). Because Aziraphale carries that fear with him too.

#good omens #good omens 2 #good omens analysis #good omens crowley color analysis #good omens crowley color #crowley #good omens colour analysis good omens crowley colour #good omens colour #good omens meta #angel!crowley #starmaker

1K notes · View notes

dee-morris · 3 months

Text

Aziraphale's Decision

The Resurrectionists is a great minisode that shows us a significant little piece of Aziraphale's character arc, his realization that things on earth are never as black and white as they seem in heaven. But I just want to take another look at this heartbreaking moment here.

This was the turning point here, when he realized the practical need for dead bodies and how they're used. You can almost watch the switches flickering back and forth in his mind as he readjusts his world view.

After staring at this gif for a long time (and only crying a little), I've decided that it's not just a turning point in that specific narrative. It's also foreshadowing.

Check it out.

I don't have a gif unfortunately, but I know you see it too. This is his face after Metatron says, "We call it the second coming."

Once again, click-click-click go the switches. Initially (imo) he was going along with the Metatron to appease him and protect Crowley. This is the moment where his perspective shifts from "Protect Crowley" to "Protect EVERYTHING" and from that point on his path is clear.

He might have thought, just for a moment, that maybe Crowley was right and they really could just be themselves with each other and screw everyone else. But not with the second coming on the horizon. My dude collects books of prophecy, he knows EVERYTHING that's been foretold, and he knows that there will be no Alpha Centauri, no "us," no safety or freedom anywhere in the universe once shit gets real.

Whether or not he made "the right decision" at the end of season two is irrelevant. He made the only decision possible. Running away was never an option; it's not who Aziraphale is.

#good omens #aziraphale #crowley #ineffable husbands #good omens 2 #aziraphale my beloved #good omens season 2 #meta #fuck the metatron #good omens meta #The Resurrectionists

792 notes · View notes

aziraphale-rights · 8 months

Text

I have this line in one of my fics about Aziraphale's 'company-owned human heart' that has been on my mind recently.

Because for me personally this is the number one plot hole at the end of the book/S1, and actually one of the best justifications for why more story was needed: the corporations.

It's established so many times, and is so key to several plot points, that Aziraphale and Crowley need to borrow a body to be on Earth and that Heaven/Hell have control over their access to this resource.

That's why the narrative stakes are still high for them in 'risk to life' situations, even though they're technically immortal. It's why Aziraphale has to possess Madam Tracy to be able to get back to Earth and help stop Armageddon. It's why Crowley gets stuck in Hell for decades (and possibly tortured) after he takes the laudanum. (It's also the reason Heaven feel entitled to keep up a running invasive commentary on what Aziraphale chooses to 'ingest'.)

In the original ending, Aziraphale's 'no body' problem is sorted out by Adam who gives him a new one, and then off they go to their happily ever after at the Ritz. But... this doesn't address the fact that Aziraphale and Crowley are still able to be 'killed', in which case (with Adam now a normal kid) they would be totally dependent on their antagonistic employers to get back to Earth. In a fantasy universe where so many things are handwavey or determined by 'rule of funny', this is one of the few story rules that is actually pretty clear and consistent.

It's also, imo, quietly a tragedy for Aziraphale and Crowley. Not just because of the risk of getting discorporated (which is at least theoretically avoidable). They experience Earth via their corporations; everything about who they are is now defined by the lives they have led in human bodies; and those bodies belong to someone else. This is a problem that touches absolutely everything they care about. Especially now that they have realised they want their relationship to be human in a way that Beelzebub and Gabriel don't. What does it mean to communicate love body to body, express love as a thing of the body, if that body is effectively a bit of equipment on loan to you from the office?

Their happily ever after can't be complete, I don't think, until they have more ownership over themselves on this front. And that can only be achieved by a waaaaaaay more drastic rearrangement of the status quo than what we got in the resolution of the Antichrist plot.

#good omens #good omens meta #takes by me

940 notes · View notes

hattersarts · 9 months

Text

gomens s2 thoughts, all spoilers!

I spent 10 hours talking to my housemate about the season after we binged the whole thing in the morning but here are the highlights and the biggest takeaways from the season.

okay i did love the ending, i love that we get the conformation of love AND going into the divorce arc next season (if they're not properly together by the end of season 3 however, i am rioting) they're slow burn and a whole season of them getting to the final 10mins was tasty.

HOWEVER. it was an extremely clunky season when it comes to writing, lots of either set ups missed OR set ups repeated 4 times that they're drilled into out heads. there was also lots of dialogue that really needed to be tightened up. the lesbians were so poorly written i thought they might have needed to be cut BUT they just needed to have more bearing on the rest of the plot AND say things like real people would say things and LITERALLY SHOW ONE SINGLE REASON WHY THEY WOULD LIKE EACH OTHER WITHIN THE FIRST EPISODE.

gabe/bulz romance was the one that should have been cut, have them do more of a oh-my-god-my-boss-sucks kind of thing, lean into them complaining about having to avert a civil war after armageddon stopped and touch on the "structural problems" the angels mention later. Have gabe/bulz be super punished for working together which puts huge fear into az and crowley about what happens if you try to team up as an angel/demon pair (but an extra reason why az takes the job at the end so he and crowley can be the same)

imo it works more if the only mirror of their romance is the HUMANS which should lean into themes to season 3 of how they need to team up with humans (re:"us vs them" line at the end of season 1) to actually achieve their happy ending.

Nina and maggies best scene was their last one telling crowley he needed to talk to az but i think that was one that needed to be cut, it would have been far more satisfying to have crowely work out it out himself that he loves az and wants to tell him (still via maggie and nina but more subtle rather than them telling him to his face AND via spending more time with az in the season)

flashbacks were all pretty good, loved the jobe one and that final "lonely" scene. the nazi one needed some trimming the most (why did all three come back to earth, it made scenes too crowed, have them fight to be a zombie)

shax was disappointing, she was kind of just incompetent the whole way through which didnt make the stakes very exciting, (that whole scene of her talking to the legion was unfunny and pointless) i wanted crowley to mentor her more like when he gave her advice in the first few meetings we saw (kind of in a very non-demonic way, not expecting anything in return) and her to then meet him on equal footing in the finale. would have been a little accidental taste for Crowley to have his good deeds come back to haunt him while showing he's different to demons.

speaking of the finale fight, that halo had NO set up, it was sick as hell but ??? the fuck did that come from. the fight should have been won by az and crowley performing another HUGE miracle together, discorporating the demons (which then would alert heaven and hell something was up in the bookshop and the final scene can happen)

az taking the job from metatron was very good, its consistent with his character where he still hasn't let go of his faith in good/god, he's only been upset by the angels running heaven and still has faith in the system while crowley has realised none of it works and it's only them together that matters. it was nice to show he still hasn't truly accepted crowley for who he is now (tho imo he knows he loves him, he just hasn't quite unrepressed himself) and him not turning down the job after crowley confesses to him shows he still thinks he can fix it. Crowley on the other hand thinks he's now lost him, az has broken he the trust he had in him, he's going to be in big depression mode

few thoughts of good directions for S3:

finally delivering on what crowley said at the end of S1 I think is the most satisfying. the final showdown should be humans Vs heaven/hell with Crowley and az on the human side, helping them win the conflict. there would be suggestions that this is actually god's ineffable plan, this is a conflict she wants to happen and the things that Crowley and az went through are what make them perfect ambassadors to help the humans.

the set up for az in S3 to finally work out he and Crowley can't work out within the unfair rules of the system and for him to abandon heaven (tho not I think, becoming a demon) is good. a sucky ending imo for season 3 is if az somehow "fixes" heaven and via bureaucracy and not via blowing it all up.

growth moments for Crowley in S3 might be having more contact with humans since he's already abandoned hell and it would put az & crowley on similar footing (as az very much loves humans already) when they decided to side with humans for a humans Vs heaven/hell conflict.

anyway, gay people

#this is all the surface stuff really #im having fun re-plotting the episodes for thr same end but tweaked to be more satisfying

752 notes · View notes

angelsdean · 6 months

Text

any continuation hinges on whether they're taking the "cas helped" at face value as "he's out of the empty and alive". the winchesters not showing cas with bobby and jack was pretty glaring and imo the right choice as it left room for chuck won theories to prevail and suggest that cas really ISN'T in heaven. plus jack dressed in a chuck-coded white blazer and acting a little off gives me hope that they'll lean into the chuck won theory or at the very least that the "god-power" is messing with jack and slowly corrupting him. like a lot of people always bring up "how will they undo the finale? they're dead. sam grew old and lived his whole life, if they bust out of heaven and go back to earth so many yrs will have passed" and well, first of all, this is supernatural. crazy shit happens. they could bust out of heaven and then time-travel, who knows! but, the simplest solution imo is, fake-heaven isn't real. it's a container for chuck!jack to keep his toys so they don't go messing with anything anymore (except, well, that didn't work out so well, dean already busted out once to save the multiverse. likely will happen again). and then sam on earth? another illusion. a pocket universe or a djinn dream-like state. not much time has passed at all, that's why sam looks young when he meets dean in heaven. like, sam presumably cuts ties with everyone he ever knew. marries some blurry wife. his whole life passes in montage, it would be so easy to say none of that was real. just something to keep sam occupied and placated so he doesn't go poking into things and realizing Something's Not Right.

#vic.txt #chuck won theory #spn s16

270 notes · View notes

catsteinbooks · 7 months

Text

The Thin Dark Duke of Hell

Haven't actually written a meta before, but I've been mulling this around in my head, so here's my take on why I think Crowley is likely to be a Duke of Hell in season 3.

Reason 1: it makes narrative sense

From a story-telling perspective, it's the logical starting place for season 3. Especially if we consider how the original idea was developed as a sequel to the book.

There's no body-swap in the book. Neither Aziraphale nor Crowley has heard from "their sides" at the end, so technically they're still connected to Heaven and Hell. They haven't been punished or kicked out. They even speculate that maybe everyone will just pretend it didn't happen.

And now we're approaching the Second Coming. The Big One. "All of us against all of them." Where are our heroes? Well, time has passed, things have happened. It's reasonable to think that maybe they've both been promoted. (Crowley, in particular, is often getting promotions, usually for things he didn't do.) And story-wise, they're set up as opposite numbers, so it makes sense that their positions as the sequel story begins will be of similar status.

Applying this concept to the screen version, we know Aziraphale has been offered the Supreme Archangel position. Therefore, if Crowley is to be his counterpart, he has to have a high rank in Hell. And there's a Duke of Hell opening to be filled. (Sorry, Shax, I think Crowley's going to snatch it out from under you.)

Reason 2: it fits Crowley's character

"What?!" you shout. "Crowley hates Hell! He turned them down! He doesn't want to go back!"

Correct. He doesn't. But he will if he thinks he needs to. Because he and Aziraphale have a huge, defining commonality: they love Earth and Humanity and don't want it to be destroyed.

Yeah, Crowley will probably wallow for a while. He deserves some time to get insanely drunk and cry. Sort of like he did when he thought Aziraphale was dead in season 1. But the thing is, Crowley always comes back. He's always ready to run. He always threatens to run. He hops in his car and drives somewhere. But he never actually leaves. Because there's no point in going away somewhere without Aziraphale. And that hasn't changed. If Crowley ran away now, he'd still be miserable, but without any music or whisky or his Bentley. It would be... pointless.

So what's a heartbroken, grieving, furious demon to do? Vent his pain in the best possible way: thwarting everyone and everything who hurt him and took away the angel he adores. He knows what Heaven is planning, because he saw it in Gabriel's file. He doesn't want Earth destroyed, he doesn't want Heaven or Hell to win. And he has an opportunity to sabotage the whole thing from the inside.

Which leads us to...

Reason 3: Crowley has a way into Hell already

There is a great meta here about Crowley's conversation with Beelzebub in Hell and its potential season 3 impact. The TL;DR version is: Crowley DID technically find Gabriel, and Beelzebub promised him anything he wanted (including being a Duke of Hell) in return.

Is it a somewhat dubious contract? Sure. Would that stop Crowley? *snort laugh* The demon who makes up legal clauses on the spot to save humans is well-equipped to argue his way into Hell's highest position in order to save the entire world. It's probably much easier than driving a flaming Bentley all the way to Tadfield.

So where does this leave us?

Aziraphale is up in Heaven, ready to burn it to the ground. You saw him when the Metatron mentioned the Second Coming. That was not a happy angel ready to do what he's told. And, frankly, Aziraphale is not actually capable of doing what he's told IMO. No matter how much he tries to follow the good/evil dynamic, he ultimately ends up choosing what is Right over what is Good.

Crowley in Hell would be doing the same kind of thing, albeit in a more subtle, sneaky way. After all, he spent 6000 years thwarting Hell all over the place and getting away with it the vast majority of the time. He knows how to mess with them. (And can you just imagine what would happen when demons like Eric asked him questions and he answered them?! He could gather his own little army with one Suggestion Box.)

So when shit hits the fan, as it inevitably will, we'll be left with both our ineffable heroes (gn) poised to do the exact same thing: destroy the machine from the inside.

Even if some of the other fan speculations prove true (memory wipes, for instance), I think it still makes narrative sense to have them both in equal-but-opposite positions. Because no matter how much the enemies are trying to mess with them, if you take a certain angel with an opportunity to fuck up Heaven and a certain demon with an opportunity to fuck up Hell and you bring them together (which, let's be honest, has to happen no matter what the storyline is), it's going to be pretty darn epic.

#good omens 2 #go2 #good omens #good omens speculation #good omens season 3 #good omens 3 #good omens meta #crowley #aziraphale #aziracrow

377 notes · View notes

asratery · 10 months

Text

Miguel O’Hara x Spider-Man!Male Reader

You were a member of the spider society, rising quickly to be part of the small circle of Miguel’s most valued members due to your agility and strength even with your strong, tall stature. You and Miguel had a complicated relationship. At least on his end. The man was curious about your quiet nature and selfless behavior. You were a man of few words, being both a Spider-Man as well as hosting a symbiote from your world. You had a dedication to the cause that could compare with Miguel, even placing it over your physical health. Today, Miguel’s carelessness as well as your lack of self care would hit you like a truck.

Part One | Part Two | Part Three

cw: masturbation (male), hand obsession, size diff (mentioned), sexual tension (?), sexual implications, use of y/n

Please give criticism 🙏 this is my first time writing as a whole so I’m so sorry if the format is weird and/or if the summary is ass. ALSO THIS IS REALLY LONG (imo) SO I APOLOGIZE. 😭 And pls tell me if i should make a part two. (edit: okay, i calculated and its 5.2K words lmao... my bad)

You don’t remember the last time you visited HQ or even your own dimension. You’d been traveling to various earths and hunting down located anomalies per Miguel’s order.

Your physical conditions were never a worry to you while on your expeditions, simply stitching up whatever injuries you endured before carrying on. Miguel would protest to this behavior of yours, requesting that you return back to HQ for proper medical attention, but you’d quickly dismiss his precautions, having Venom keep your injuries wrapped under it’s tar-like material to avoid bursting any stitches when you were busy tackling your objectives.

You rarely fully involved Venom in your missions. It never objected to your request to remain tucked away while you worked, understanding that you preferred to rely on your own strength to take down opponents.

Miguel sent you on a new array of missions about two weeks ago. They were rather easy for someone of your skill, though it did get annoying when one enemy turned into two, then three, and so on in just one mission. These hiccups never stunted your performance, but they didn’t fail to stress Miguel out. You didn’t fully understand why the man was so anxious whenever you’d go on your missions. He never showed the same worry for the other members of the Spider Society, so what was so different about you?

Miguel had been spending most of his days in his office since you left, his earpiece being filled with the sounds of battle as you took down anomalies on the other end. You preferred not to speak, but with Miguel’s insistence, you were forced to make some noise for him every so often to ease his nerves, whether it be a grunt or a hum. Depending on your mood, some days you’d find it to be overbearing and on better ones, you’d find it to be almost comforting.

‘What is wrong with me.’ Miguel thought to himself, rubbing the bridge of his nose. He’d been sitting in his office chair, clicking around on his keyboard as he watched your marker on the map traveling miles in minutes as you moved around a random Earth, searching for a rumored anomaly. Everything had been going well until he’d heard you breathing heavily on the other end as you stopped to rest for a moment, you raspy pants tickling his ear. He’d immediately dismissed Lyla as he felt his pants tighten at the noises you made, resting his hand over the forming tent in his suit. Fuck, he had to hear your voice. He needed to.

“Y/n? You alright?” Miguel spoke through the earpiece, trying to hide the shakiness in his voice. Y/n didn’t reply with words, opting to hum in acknowledgement. No, that wasn’t enough for Miguel. “Y/n?” Y/n groaned in annoyance at his insistence, but the noise was like heaven in Miguel’s ear. Much more than what he was requesting. “I’m fine.” Y/n replied curtly before continuing his search, his stationary marker starting to move on the map again.

Miguel’s mind was already wandering when he heard y/n groan, but hearing your voice after radio silence for days? He already had a fantasy forming in his head now. There were too many days where you’d hover over him as he briefed you on an upcoming mission, his mind muddled with ideas of you bending him over the table, ripping his suit open and just fucking him over the surface. “Y/n.” Miguel unintentionally groaned out as he pulled his pants down just enough to release his cock from its confines.

“Hm?” Y/n responded in an undertone, oblivious to the intentions behind Miguel’s voice. Miguel pressed a hand over his mouth. He didn’t mean to call your name aloud. “Y-You’re approaching the signal.” Miguel spoke quickly, his heart fluttering at his slip up. You hummed in acknowledgment, a bit confused on why he had to announce it since he equipped your wristwatch with a mini map, but you dismissed it. Miguel quickly muted his mic on the earpiece to avoid making the same mistake. He looked down at his semi, the cool air making it all the more sensitive.

He dipped one of his hands down, sliding his thumb over the slit of his cock as the other turned the volume up on his earpiece, listening to your heavy breathing as you swung through an abandoned city. “Fuck, please.” Miguel murmured under his breath, his eyes fluttering shut as he slid his hand down his length, imagining your larger, calloused hands in its place.

He had to lower the volume of his earpiece to near silence, the sound of the wind hitting your side of the mic disrupting his thoughts. Miguel lightly gripped his cock, sliding his hand back up to the tip, a bead of pre forming at the motion. Gods, he needed to just tell you, but he knew it wasn’t that simple. You were nearly ten years younger than him, being only 23 years old compared to his 30 years of age. You wouldn’t want someone as old as him, much less a man. You probably had women clinging to your arms in your world, and the thought evoked a flare of jealousy in his chest.

Fuck, what would you think of him if you saw him like this? Thrusting into his hand at just the sound of your voice and faraway fantasies.

You’d been making rounds around this damned city. The place was desolate but somehow a fellow spider managed to spot an anomaly when they accidentally entered in the wrong number in an attempt to portal to their own world. Your wristwatch was picking up on a thermal presence, yet you just couldn’t find it. ‘I swear, if it’s underground, I’m dragging Miguel here to take care of this, multiverse be damned.’ You thought to yourself as you swung between rusting skyscrapers.

Your thoughts were cut off by your watch beeping, detecting a thermal signal in close range. That’s weird. You’d already scoured this area. It must’ve moved in the time that you were on the other side of the city. Your eyes were focused on the watch too closely to notice another presence approaching your side. Another anomaly. Wonderful.

Your senses kicked off but it wasn’t as quick as this creature. You were already airborne before you were launched through the window of a skyscraper you were passing, a rib cracking under the pressure your left side endured. ‘Light work.’ You thought to yourself as you kicked up off the floor of the office level you landed in, planting your feet down before launching out the side you were thrown into. You swung your way up to the roof of the high rise, your eyes scanning the surrounding area for the anomaly.

A figure darted across the street below, prompting you to jump off. You never voiced it, but you always loved the adrenaline rush that came with hunting down anomalies. You were a bit surprised at the lack of noise on Miguel’s side of the earpiece, but the thought was quickly brushed aside as you broke your fall with your webs before running into the building the figure was seen entering, your watch leading the way. You ran down multiple sets of stairs, the rapping of the creatures claws along the tiled floor guiding you along.

You shot a web at the side of the creature from the top of the stairway before it could round a corner. You yanked it towards you, disregarding the fact that your feet lost contact with the floor as the two of you met in the middle, tumbling down the stairwell with your bulky arms wrapped around the damned thing. You were able to land a few punches against the hybrid’s feathered body before you were forced to focus on its talons sinking into the muscles of your thigh. You hissed in pain, forming claws on your own hands with Venom’s help before gripping its ankle with one hand and stabbing your claws into the scaled skin above it.

The fucking thing screeched and gods was it loud, nearly forcing Venom to recede back into you before it used its other clawed foot to hit your chest, slamming your back into the stairwell. You gritted your teeth in pain, a drip of blood dripping down your mask from the cut on your brow due to the previous fall. The creature rounded the corner immediately, disappearing from your sight. ‘Of course it’s smart.’ You thought to yourself begrudgingly, your muscles a bit tense from the mission you just pursued prior to entering this world. “Miguel.” You spoke into your mic. No response. No time to wait.

You quickly got to your feet before darting around the corner, suddenly realizing the setting. Of course it lured you to a fucking subway. You were quick on your feet, jumping down to the railway platform before darting down the tunnel, your sharp ears picking up on the sound of the creature’s claws scratching against the metal of the railing as it ran from you. You’d ran so far that you made it to another underground subway stop, spotting a new creature lingering in the area.

‘Here’s the second fucker.’ You thought to yourself as Venom reformed claws around your fingers. You jumped from the railway up to the tiled floor of the platform. The creature spotted you, quickly leaping at you as you returned the gesture. You noted the difference in strength in this one compared to the first anomaly you came across, easily overpowering this one. Just when you were about to sink your claws into its neck, you were launched off to the side, slamming into a solid wall behind you. Another rib cracked at the impact. Wonderful.

The first bastard was back. The two creatures stood side by side as you used the wall as support to rise to your feet. The two freaks of nature stalked around you before launching forward.

“Venom.” You growled out. It didn’t hesitate, enveloping your body in its black tar-like body. You immediately threw the stronger one back, sending it over the platform and onto the railway as you focused your attention on the weaker anomaly.

You were able to land a multitude of hits on this one, weakening it. Just when you were about to stab your claws into its chest, the stronger one recuperated, releasing a deafening scream that incapacitated you, forcing Venom to recede back inside you. The ground shook from the scream, the beams at the subway shaking as dust fell from the ceiling.

‘Fuck, I need to focus on that one or this rusty building is going down on all three of us.’

You were alone now, the scream forcing Venom to retreat. You made circles with the creature, the weaker of the two still recovering on the floor. You made the first move, webbing the feet of the anomaly to the floor before landing a kick straight in its chest.

The creature slammed against another beam. Fuck. Bad move. The ceiling shook again, an unsettling sound of creaking above them. The building was going to collapse at this rate. You needed to keep these two down here while getting back to ground level so you wouldn’t get stuck or worse, killed under the rubble.

“Miguel.” Silence. What the fuck was he doing right now? Just when you were about to approach the now weakened anomaly, you felt the muscle in your thigh tense. You dropped one knee, accidentally slamming it against the tiled floor. You gritted your teeth, the muscle cramping from overworking yourself. Miguel had warned you, and now you were experiencing the outcome. In the midst of Venom attempting to reform around you, you were tackled from behind. The second one was back up.

You swung your now clawed fingers back, moving to plunge your hand into the chest of this anomaly. You were cut short as the other let out another ear-piercing screech, forcing Venom to retreat yet again. The entire bottom level shook now. ‘This building’s going down.’ You thought to yourself. “Miguel,” you shouted into the earpiece, “I need backup, I’m under the apartment buildi—,” your words were cut short as the infrastructure gave out, sending you into darkness.

Miguel was in the midst of cleaning himself up when he heard the low sound of a rumble on the other side of his earpiece. He immediately raised the volume on his earpiece. ‘Shit, shit shit,’ he though to himself, ‘I wasn’t paying attention.’ “Y/n, what’s your status?” Miguel quickly spoke into the mic, turning Lyla back on. Lyla’s hologram reappeared, about to crack a joke before noticing Miguel’s panicked expression as he looked at his monitors, rapidly typing on the keyboard. “Shit—Lyla, call Jess and Hobie to HQ now,” he said quickly before shouting into the earpiece, “Y/n, give me a status update!” Silence. A deadly silence that was interrupted a few minutes later by the sound of a weak wheeze. Y/n.

“Fuck, y/n, what’s your status?” Miguel spoke quickly into his earpiece as he connected the audio to a walkie-talkie. Jessica entered Miguel’s office, Hobie following a few feet behind her. You couldn’t get a word out, a piece of rubble pressing against your torso, cutting your breaths short. Another weak wheeze, this time coming from the walkie. Jessica froze at the noise before quickly swinging up to Miguel’s platform. “Who is that? Is that—Don’t tell me that’s y/n.” She said quickly. Hobie was already analyzing the holographic map on Miguel’s desk, typing the coordinates for your marker into his wristwatch before creating a portal. “Let’s go.”

You let out another weak wheeze, groaning in pain when the rubble shifted. Your right ankle was stinging, likely sprained, and your knee cap fractured from it hitting the tiled floor prior to the collapse. Your side felt wet and the rebar poking out of a chunk of concrete next to you easily explained why. The screech from the anomaly must’ve ruptured an eardrum, since you could feel the ticklish trickle of blood leaking out of your ear. Your earpiece was knocked out, hidden somewhere in the rubble that pinned you down as you heard the distant sound of Miguel’s panicked voice coming from it. ‘Wonderful timing, boss.’ You thought to yourself as you let out a pained coughed, your throat coated in dust. Your vision started to fade in the midst of you trying to count how many fractures your ribs incurred.

The trio wasn't enough to get you out of the rubble, having to call over a dozen other spider people to aid in the search for you. The only thing keeping Miguel’s hopes up was the presence of a pulse that your wristwatch was picking up, Lyla closely monitoring it for any changes as per Miguel’s orders. He could feel his heart cracking at the edges at the sight of a few spider people gently pulling your unconscious body from under the rubble. They immediately applied pressure to your side due to a large gash from a piece of rebar as Miguel quickly opened a portal back to HQ, rushing you to the medical wing of the building.

Your eyes were hazy when you opened them, taking a few moments to adjust to the bright hospital lights, though the dizziness stayed. You reached a hand up to the nasal cannula, taking note of the tug from the IV in your arm. An IV. A cannula. Bright lights. You hated hospitals with a passion. You shot up in the bed, your body wracked with pain from both a terrible concussion as well as the broken ribs. Strong hands firmly gripped your shoulders, gently guiding you to lay back down on the bed as a soothing voice murmured to you, though you couldn't make out the words. You complied, reluctantly, though majorly because you didn't have the strength to protest.

Your eyes fluttered shut as you focused on a breathing technique to try and ease some of the pain from your array of broken and fractured ribs, though the pain was still agonizing even when you inhaled. Thank god for your pain tolerance, or this could be a lot more unbearable than it already is. You could faintly hear Miguel's unintelligible voice, but he kept a low tone to accomodate your ruptured eardrum. You felt soft fingers stroking the top of your left hand. Jess. She was on your left, Miguel on your right. You could feel a weight on your left leg. Pavitr. Gods, the boy looked up to you like you were an older brother to him. You couldn't imagine how stressed he must be to see you in this state.

You opened your eyes again after about ten minutes, slowly blinking as you let your eyes adjust to the harsh lighting above you. After you finally gained a good enough level of clarity, your sharp eyes began darting around the room, grabbing every little detail you could pick up without tilting your concussed head. You made eye contact with Jessica, who was tracing soft patterns into your forearm as she looked at you, a soft look in her eyes. She was like an older sister to you in a way, and even though you never acknowledged this, she knew.

Your eyes shifted over to Pavitr, who was sat in a chair closer to the end of the bed, practically hugging the lower half of your left leg. You had a brace around your right ankle and could feel the tight gauze wrapped around your thigh, hidden under the blankets. Your abdomen felt very snug, being tightly wrapped in gauze as well due to what you assumed was that wet feeling on your side from when you were under the rubble. The cut on your brow had a stitch and your lip was busted.

You could feel the tickle of Miguels breath against your upper arm, but you never looked over at him. His left hand was gripping your thick tricep like a lifeline while his right remained intertwined with yours. You refused to look at the man, and rightfully so. Had he been paying attention instead of getting distracted by god knows what, you wouldn't be in this uncomfortable situation. "Summary?" You asked Jessica in a raspy voice, your eyes were half-lidded as they focused on Pavitr's sleeping figure.

Miguel answered for Jessica. It ticked you off. You didn't want to hear his voice right now. "Sprained ankle, laceration in your right side, two fractured ribs, three broken, grade three concussion, gash in your right thigh, fractured knee cap, and a few cuts and bruises," Miguel replied quickly, "your lung collapsed, so you had a chest tube in but it was removed yesterday morning." You had a question on the tip of your tongue, but you knew Miguel would answer it before Jess could. "You've been out for six days." Miguel murmured, unknowingly answering said question. "We were worried sick." Bullshit. You had to resist the urge to say it aloud. This wouldn't have happened had he been paying attention and heard at least one of your three call outs.

Jess could see the anger flickering in your narrowed eyes as you focused on Pavitr again in an attempt to calm your nerves. She could feel your fingers twitching against her hand as you took quiet breaths. She was sure Miguel could feel the motions in your fingers too, since the man had his hand tightly threaded with yours. You didn’t have energy to be angry right now. You could feel a wave of exhaustion coming over you, making your eyelids heavier than they already were. You succumbed to the feeling, your eyes slowly shutting.

‘He didn’t even look at me.’ Was a repetitive thought in Miguel’s head over the next few weeks. He took notice in that behavior. How could he not? He didn’t blame you, but it didn’t stop him from feeling a flicker of jealousy when he saw you and your goddamn face on the cameras and how you looked at all the spider people who visited you with kindness. You even gave little smiles to a few with that pretty face of yours—Fuck, he needed to talk about that.

Miguel didn’t get too many chances to visit you throughout the weeks and when he did manage to, you were already asleep by the time he got there. He’d pull a chair next to your bed, staring at you in ways he didn’t could only dream of compared to when you were awake. He'd spend a few hours every other night just… analyzing you. Counting every vein that traveled up your forearm, staring at the thick lashes on your lower waterline, the broad chest that peeked out of your hospital shirt—Gods, how could you be equal parts pretty and handsome?

Tonight was the same routine, Miguel had snuck into the medical wing way past visiting hours, slinking into your hospital room. He stood in the doorway, listening to the quiet whistling sound your nose made when you inhaled as confirmation that you were asleep. He stepped in, sliding the door shut behind him before grabbing a chair at the entry, picking it up and gently setting it on the floor at your bedside.

He took a seat before pulling a small metal object from his pocket. A nail clipper. Miguel had noticed that your nails had gained a bit of length, not much, but enough for him to notice. Definitely not because he wanted a reason to touch your hands. He carefully sat himself on the edge of your hospital bed before gently lifting your hand that still had an IV in it.

The horny bastard nearly moaned at how heavy your hand felt in his. How were you so strong? You barely had free time to work out with how often you were hunting anomalies and there was no way chasing those guys alone would be enough, right? He carefully set your hand on his thigh, the warmth emitting from you causing a smile to spread across his face. Gods, this felt wrong.

The room was silent besides the occasional clicking noise of the nail clipper as he worked through your first hand, making sure to carefully round the edges of your nails. Your hands were so nice, saliva pooling in Miguel’s mouth that he had to swallow down as he ran the pads of his fingers over every vein that traveled up the top of your hand. His mind was wandering and god your fingers were thick. The thoughts came before he could stop them, imagining you sliding your heavy digits into his mouth, coating them in his saliva before sliding them inside him one by one—

Miguel leaned over you, gently lifting your untreated hand to rest in his before he began repeating the same ministrations he gave to the first. The closer proximity made the scent of you in his nose even stronger. Your musk was a bit of everything: comforting, arousing, warm, familiar. If he could have it as a cologne, he would. ‘Fuck, is something wrong with me?’ Miguel thought to himself as he leaned towards you, his nose inching closer to the pulse in your neck.

He couldn’t help himself, gently laying your hand back in its original position before dipping down, pressing his nose against the delicate skin of your neck. ‘Something’s wrong with me.’ He inhaled deeply, having to suppress a moan in his throat at the smell of you. He planted his hands next to your hips. Oh my god, speaking of which, your hips just seemed to move so fluidly with you when you walked. It wasn’t like you were just blatantly swaying them, but Miguel noticed the way they seemed to rise and lower in sync with your bulky thighs as you moved around his office.

‘You’re tempting me on purpose, you have to be.’ Miguel thought to himself as he indulged further, letting the tip of his cold nose press against the side of your throat as he breathed you in. ‘I’ve never acted like this about anyone in my life before. Why’re you so easy to obsess over?’ Miguel found himself watching the medical wing’s security cameras in his time, watching as you walked in the hall with Jess, using the wall as a slight support. You looked like a leviathan in the hallway, your tall, broad stature taking up a large portion of the hall and dwarfing Jessica. You had no idea how arousing just the sight of you was.

Miguel’s thoughts were cut off by the feeling of your firm, calloused hands wrapping around his waist, spreading your warmth to those areas. Miguel nearly choked on his breath, absolutely refusing to meet your gaze right now. He couldn’t look you in the eyes. God no. You just caught him in the fucking act.

Miguel kept his head tucked under your chin, a warm feeling coiling in his gut at the realization that your hands wrapped nearly entirely around his waist. How the hell was that even possible? The man was 6’9 yet you managed to make him feel small. How were you even possible? Oh my god, he couldn’t even imagine the view you’d get if you were to wrap those hands around his waist, keeping him in place as you pounded into hi—

“Miguel.”

You felt your hand twitch at the feeling of something cold brushing against your neck. A nurse? Or maybe just a nip of the cold breeze that carried throughout the wing? Nope. ‘Y/n.’ You weren’t thinking that. Why would you repeat your own name? Oh right, you aren’t alone in your body. ‘Venom?’ There was a moment of silence in your conscious. ‘That… man is here again. The human. The weird one.’ ‘Miguel?’ A beat of silence yet again. Venom didn’t like saying the man’s name, preferring to lightheartedly insult him when describing him. You’d always brushed off Venom’s insistence that Miguel had a thing for you. ‘He’s touching you. Again.’ It’s voice was a hiss. ‘What?’

You woke up before you could get a response, your eyes quickly adjusting to the dark room, Miguel’s sturdy figure illuminated by the moonlight peeking into the room. You could feel him twitch and his breath catch when you wrapped your hands around his noticeably narrow waist. Why you chose his waist, you didn’t know, the motion being almost instinctual. You could tell he didn’t want to look at you. How could he, when you just caught him practically burying his face into your neck? You had to break the silence, as much as you hated speaking.

“Miguel.”

Silence in response to your husky voice. You slid your hands up his waist, gripping the sides of his chest before pulling him away, taking note of how your thumbs pressed into the plump edges of his pecs. Miguel’s eyes were trained on your neck as his hands rested against the large muscle of your shoulders. His face was red. So red. This wasn’t Miguel. This didn’t look like the man who so easily scolded others and had a resting bitch face for hours on end. Or at least it didn’t look like it.

“Miguel.”

Your voice was a lot firmer this time, catching Miguel’s full attention as he slowly looked up at you, an innocent look in his eyes. Who was this? Surely this wasn’t the leader of the Spider Society in your hospital room. Who was this little minx that slinked into your room while you were unconscious? “Explain yourself.” You wanted to say more, but the soreness of your throat said otherwise. “I-I was cutting your nails.” Miguel’s voice was shaky. You never heard the man like this before. “And?” You asked inquisitively. He was silent, his eyes darting between each of your sharper ones. “And I was… checking your pulse…?” Miguel’s voice was nearly silent now, an obvious hesitation in his voice.

“You’re a wonderful liar, boss.” You stared him down, your piercing gaze practically demanding an answer. “I was smelling you.” He whispered it so quietly, you almost didn’t pick it up with your still recovering eardrum. “Why?” “Because… because I missed you.” Miguel’s voice was a murmur. Missed you? Why the hell did he miss you? “You wouldn’t miss me if you had been paying attention.” You had to address the elephant in the room.

“Y/n—” “No. Explain to me. Because I called out to you thrice and I got zero response.” Not now, not yet. Miguel wanted this conversation to wait till you were fully recovered. His eyes darted to the door he came in through, but you quickly caught on, sliding your hands down to his waist again and tightening your grip. Oh fuck, Miguel had to suppress a whimper at the feeling. “I-I was busy with Lyla and—” “It’s an earpiece. You would’ve heard me. Meaning you either removed it or muted it. Explain why.” “Y/n, please, you should really just—” “What were you doing that was so important?”

Miguel’s mind was reeling. A part of him wanted to run from this conversation but the other was loving the sound of your voice and the feel of your firm grip on his waist. “Y-You should just go back to be—” “Shut up.” Gods, you had an authority in your voice that silenced him immediately. The feeling of your firm finger wrapped around his waist had him tensing his arms, pleading with his body to send the rushing heat elsewhere.

“Miguel. I will tell Lyla to pull up the cameras in your office myself. Or I’ll send Venom to.”

There was no running from this. No way in hell. “I-I was touching myself.” There. It was out now. He said it. Were you happy? Who knows, cause Miguel screwed his eyes shut the moment he said it. “Touching yourself…” Your voice was lower, and had a hint of anger and confusion in it. “Yes.” Miguel practically gasped out the word, his face flaming in his embarrassment. He’d rather just tell the man then have him watch it himself on the cameras. “You expect me to believe that? That you were touching yourself? We were talking and then suddenly you went radio si—…Miguel.” Fuck, fuck, fuck. You connected the dots. Miguel wanted to crawl into a hole.

“Explain it. Now.” Miguel was quick in his response. “Y-You were breathing, and every fucking piece of audio was picked up, and-and I felt this heat in me. And then you groaned and I just—I just…” Your grip tightened around his waist again and Miguel couldn’t help it, letting out a soft whimper at your touch. “You couldn’t help yourself.” You murmured. Miguel nodded his head in shame, opening his eyes again, though they remain focused on your neck again.

“Miguel.” His eyes snapped up to yours, an unmistakable heat in your husky voice. “Go lock the door.”

Miguel stood so quickly that the chair next to your bed nearly got knocked over.

So… are we feeling a part two? 😏 or was this ass? Cause I’ll stop rn. Lmao.

#miguel ohara x reader #miguel o’hara x reader #miguel x reader #miguel o'hara x reader #miguel o'hara #atsv miguel #male reader #miguel o’hara #miguel o’hara x male reader #x male reader #miguel o'hara x male reader #sub miguel o'hara #dom male reader

443 notes · View notes

vidavalor · 6 months

Note

hi there 👋 i love reading your good omens metas. i'm wondering if you have any thoughts on aziraphale's line to crowley in 1967: "i can't have you risking your life, not even for something dangerous". this always sticks out as odd to me. obviously he doesn't want crowley risking his life for any reason, so why this weird qualifier?

Hi @mybelovedismine Thank you so much. :) I am so sorry it took me awhile to get back to you. Love me some 1967 Crowley & Aziraphale and this question is great. Cheers.

1967/Holy Water Era/some S2 Aziraphale meta under the cut.

If you go back-- and I mean way back-- to the very opening bit of GO 1.01, it opens with what seems at first like it's just a quirky, funny scene introducing God and her sense of humor and the show's sense of humor. It is all of that but it also contains what I think is a really important piece of information-- especially with relation to the 1967 scene-- which is the date that Earth began in the GO universe. Crowley and Aziraphale don't know exactly when the end of the world will come but they know "about" when-- and that is a ticking clock running in the background for them for millennia.

The date that God gives us for the creation of Earth at the opening of S1 means that 6,000 years exactly would math out to October 21, 2004... but we also know that they don't know if it's going to be *exactly* 6,000 years. It could have been 5,900. It could have been 6,500 or anything in between. It winds up the super-cruel 6,004 years, beginning in 2008 in S1. What is clear to Crowley & Aziraphale is that their experience is closer to that of humans in a way because even though 6,000 years would be a very long time to humans, it's "nothing", as Angel!Crowley put it in Before the Beginning, to Crowley & Aziraphale... and there has always been a very good chance that it's all they will ever have together.

Their relationship is like someone turned over an hourglass on the wall at Eden and it's been dripping sand steadily in the background this whole time. It's partially why their relationship accelerates a little faster over the last few centuries, imo. There is a chance they're running out of time together. Armageddon means the Great War between Heaven and Hell and they are an angel and a demon. Whatever side wins the war is the one who will live on for all of eternity. The other one won't survive it-- or, even if they did, they won't be able to be with each other. Not to mention that Armageddon means that, regardless of who wins the Heaven and Hell war, Earth will be destroyed and their life on it together will be over.

Aziraphale always thinks Heaven will win. He always thinks it's him who will have to spend eternity alone. Part of this is because he has to tell himself that Heaven is still the side of good, even if it's flawed, because he can barely deal with the guilt over being part of the machine that's caused Crowley so much pain. Aziraphale also thinks, though, that maybe when the time comes, they can find a way out of it all, somehow.

In close to 6,000 years, the best plan they've got for dealing with this is Crowley's plan to just run away to Alpha Centauri and hope that no one notices that they're deserters. (So, not a great plan, but also they're up against the will of God here so kind of hard to try to work out a way around that.) In S2, Aziraphale is so desperate-- SO desperate-- for a way to not have to lose Crowley that he is willing to entertain the idea that he can trust The Metatron's word and beg Crowley to come to Heaven with him and be an angel again just so that they can be together forever. Aziraphale doesn't need Crowley to be an angel to know he's good and to love him-- he already knows and feels those things. He loves him so much that he can't bear the thought that he could lose him. He's never been able to bear that thought.

In 1967, they were running out of time and it's something that became increasingly intense for them the closer the years got to 2004 and the day they would hit 6,000 years since the Earth's creation.

In 1967, they were down to 37 years until 6,000 years were up, so the end of the world was, to them, a moment away.

It's not hard to see how Crowley wants to carpe diem and go for broke, in case it's all they'll ever have. He wants to be a little less careful. To try for the things they haven't been able to give each other while they've had to be a secret for so long. 'Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all', right? And they have loved, do love, are loving in 1967... but Crowley feels the time slipping away and his anxiety is dialed up to eleven under that cool exterior and Aziraphale knows him like he knows the back of his hand and he can see where this is all going... and it's not where either of them want it to go.

Think of this from Aziraphale's point of view...

Aziraphale is an angel. His soul is saved. He is meant to survive Armageddon. That, to him, is actually something of a curse at this point because it means that he'll live for eternity. For *all* of time. An absolutely incomprehensible amount of time. Neverending time. The kind of amount of time that would make 6,000 years feel like less time than it took you to blink while reading this sentence. And if everything goes according to what they know of God's Ineffable Plan or Great Plan or Whatever The Fuck It Is lol, he's going to live through all of this time alone.

Without Crowley.

Forget even the end of Earth and humanity (and that's hard to forget lol), Aziraphale is slated for a post-apocalyptic return to Heaven and a celestial cubicle and spending all of time with Michael and Uriel and Sandalphon and no food and no books and no music and even all of that, he could stand, if only he could just have Crowley with him and he can't.

Because Crowley's a demon. He's fallen. He's eternally damned. Heaven has socialized angels to believe that the war between Heaven and Hell that Armageddon triggers will be the big triumph of Heaven over Hell. Aziraphale tells himself he believes it but he's honestly more *terrified* of it than devoted to the idea. Heaven triumphing over Hell could kill Crowley. It's what Aziraphale is *supposed* to want as an angel but it's actually *the exact opposite* of what he wants. He adores Crowley. He will never-- in all of the infinite time to come-- ever get over Crowley and he knows it.

Even if Crowley somehow survives The Great War 2.0, Earth will still be gone and Crowley's fate is eternity in dark, cramped, literally painful damnation in Hell. There is no way for them to be together without thwarting the will of God and Aziraphale is an angel-- his entire purpose as a being is to serve God. It's what he was made *by God* to do, as far as he's been taught, and he mostly believes it... it's just that he also thinks he was made for Crowley.

This isn't just what Crowley thinks. Crowley isn't wrong that this is a mutual feeling:

Aziraphale felt that then, too, and he's never stopped feeling it. It blends sometimes with his faith in God-- something that, ironically, he sometimes thinks Crowley somehow has more of than he does. If God made him and God made Crowley and if God made them for each other, then it can't really be just to take them away from each other after such a short time, can it? Maybe they're meant for some other purpose in all of it?

But this is the same God that Aziraphale knows can be cruel...

Aziraphale has gone up against the will of God countless times over the years now and he is, for reasons he doesn't understand, somehow still an angel.

It seems unjust and honestly pretty profane to him that *he* is the holy one when Crowley's been through--quite literally-- Hell, for thousands of years, and his biggest sin is being curious. It is very hard to be told that you were created for the purpose of representing the side of good in a war against good and evil but to then, over and over and over, find yourself believing that the good guys are maybe not so good... all the while falling deeper in love by the day with a being your side calls 'demonic' and 'evil' but whom you know to be a sweet, romantic, smart, gentle, funny, kind cinnamon roll. Crowley is a demon and he's the best angel Aziraphale knows.

Now imagine you've all those conflicts and you're running out of time and staring down the end game of all of this and when you've got maybe, if you're lucky, a century and a half left or so worth of sand is still in the top half of the hourglass (mid-1800s), Crowley starts to pull away from you.

He's honestly never done it to this extent before. He trusts you with a surprising amount of himself and has since early days and, in recent centuries, you were happy together-- as happy as your situation would allow and that was more than you ever thought you'd have. This is the same being whose willingness to push through his fear of being vulnerable to have something honest and intimate with you has had you in awe of his bravery since you met. He taught you how to do that and now he's putting up walls you can't scale and slamming shut every open door.

You were happy together and then, you went on a date in Edinburgh in 1827 and suddenly, the centuries of peace and of getting away with it all ended in a literal second when Crowley got dragged to Hell two feet away from you. Hell didn't find out about the two of you or about Elspeth-- they were pissed about the human grave guards that Crowley accidentally sent to Hell for shooting Wee Morag-- but Crowley comes back a couple of weeks later and it's like it's all over already.

He's badly shaken. They hurt him. He spent time in Hell not sure if they had found out about you or if you were still alive. The anxiety, depression, and PTSD he has from being cast out of Heaven and a lifetime of trying to survive being a demon of Hell goes into overdrive and you don't know what to do. You've always been good at helping him. Nothing works. The bookshop-- your home but his, too, in your mind, the safest space he can go to to get away from Hell and get some rest-- isn't enough. He's not coming around the way he used to. He doesn't want to talk about any of it. The connection between the two of you-- emotionally, sexually-- feels like it's eroding. It hurts more than you want to admit. Your relationship de-evolves for almost 35 years as you watch the spark seem to go out of him. You don't know how to fix it and you try everything you can think of. You can understand how the ticking clock makes it all hurt more and you don't want him to be in any pain-- ever-- and you'd go away entirely if it was what he really wanted but neither of you know how to say goodbye because you both know that neither of you actually want to.

He's your best friend. He's the only one like you in the universe. You're both miserable and lonely without each other and it seems stupid to spend the last years you might ever get together apart but it also seems impossible to ever get back to where you were. Then, one day, after *years* of this, he asks you for the one thing that can *kill him*...

In the moment, all you can think about is that he wants to die because he's seemed like he does for decades now. All you can think of is that he is in so much pain and he wants nothing from you but the means by which to end it.

He's your lover. Imagine being told by the being with whom you've spent countless pleasurable hours in bed that all he wants from you now is a suicide pill.

He used to laugh. He used to be silly and hilariously dry-humored. He used to flirt with you and gaze at you from the couch on the bookshop, all pretty yellow eyes and lounging limbs, and now he's spine-straight stiff, like the pain is what's holding up. He arranges meetings in the park instead of coming over. He wears his glasses, all the time. You can't remember when the last time you saw his eyes was.

All of it says to you that you aren't enough and then he asks you to give him a suicide pill and you're broken-hearted-- you're just broken, period at the thought of him in so much pain-- and you're angry. You're furious. How dare he do this to you? You've been in love for millennia. He is your best friend. How dare he shut you out and leave you alone when you are going to be alone without him for the rest of bloody time?!

You're so in your feelings about him shutting you out that you know you have been failing at caring for him and not really helping the situation for awhile now. Your defenses have been up for awhile. Years, probably. You're caustic and, frankly, pretty bitchy in your bitterness. It's a little twisted but you've tried everything else and maybe if you could even just make him angry, it'd at least be something. He's barely spoken above a whisper in thirty years and sometimes you think about him off his head on laudanum in Edinburgh, drawing you to him magically by your bow tie to look at you over his glasses, inches away, and how you didn't know that was going to be the last time he ever really flirted with you.

So, when he asks you for holy water in 1862, you do your best to piss him off, since he won't accept anything else from you lately. You used to be wildly compatible and now you're broken and you're angry because God was always going to break your heart by taking him from you but he was never supposed to. He was supposed to love you-- those things neither of you say-- to the end.

You did get him angry. You both got angry. So angry that it felt over.

It wasn't. You saw each other again in the interim and it didn't just magically heal itself, like you wished it would, because you regretted how you reacted to the request for holy water but somehow talking about it felt too much.

Because you thought you might have understood it more afterwards.

Because you began to understand that he felt vulnerable. That he needed to feel like he could defend himself and, if it came to it, you. That maybe he didn't want to die-- maybe he wanted to live. That this was him asking you to help him figure out how to feel safe again-- something you've actually always been good at-- and you were so afraid, too, that you handled it badly.

Maybe one of the things you were afraid of in the moment was the way he talked about it going wrong, going pear-shaped, about him wanting insurance... about how there wasn't a way to reframe that in your mind to not mean that he meant he was willing to kill a demon in your defense or his-- which could kill him. It could send a legion after him and destroy him. There was so much that could go wrong. No matter what Crowley wanted holy water for, his death felt like it was the end game. You would throw yourself into Hellfire before you did anything that could cause him harm.

He had been pulling away for years but there he was saying I would kill for you. I would die for you. and that was the closest either of you had ever come to saying I'm in love with you. and you weren't sure what was more dangerous: saying those truths you both knew and felt or holy water.

Crowley didn't bring it up again and neither did you. You're useless without one another so you saw each other again within the next couple of decades. The Old West in America. Back in London in the 1920s and times in between. Neither of you ever discussed the Holy Water fight or what it meant. You secretly learned to drive, for the future, just in case, when he turned up stupidly in love with a car in 1928. You would die for that dumb car if only because of how Crowley smiled when he turned up to take you for a ride.

Over time, Crowley seemed to get a bit better and your heart burst just looking at him, even if it also ached with the knowledge that you had made it harder and hadn't known that time how to help when he needed it.

Then, 1941. The Blitz. Bombs raining down over London and the world on the brink of nuclear annihilation and maybe, just like the humans, you both thought this might be it. Time slowed to surviving each night and every moment felt like it could be the last and maybe that's why you both wanted a different ending.

Crowley always did prefer the funny ones.

In the middle of it, Crowley joked about holy water-- the first time either of you had mentioned it in 80 years-- and you heard it there, woven into his quiet, coded but undisputable, confessions of love. It was for you, it was about you, it was to keep you safe... it was because you were two feet away from me when they took me and I want to be with you to the end and it's the only thing that can help me keep you safe from them.

He doesn't ask you for it again. You know why. Things are good. He doesn't want to fight. He doesn't want you to reject him again. He doesn't want to admit again that he feels unsafe. You think about giving him some after 1941 more than once but you are now afraid of what it might say to him if you do.

Because you could both be almost out of time, if everything goes pear-shaped when the clock runs out on about 6,000 years, and Crowley wants to try for more.

You both want forever. You both aren't sure that you'll even get tomorrow. The world is speeding up in 1967-- has been for decades now-- and you think Crowley is caught up in it. You both live in London, in SoHo, you'd be as safe as you could be. You'd blend in enough. It's too dangerous, though. It's not the humans you're afraid of, really-- not that the human world has ever been safe for your and Crowley's kind of love and you aren't sure that it will get there before it's all over. What you're afraid of is that you'll get caught by Heaven and Hell and you'll lose him before the about 6,000 years is up-- and then you will have no chance at all, whatsoever, of forever.

Crowley doesn't think he'll make it. He doesn't say so but his actions say so and his situation suggests it. He wants to go faster. He doesn't demand it, doesn't pressure you, but he periodically gently asks and you have to let him down somehow, you have to get him to slow down. It's not that you don't want him. If there were no risk to him, you'd never try to put up a speed bump. It's just that you are hopeful.

Ironically, you're hopefulness-- your optimism-- it comes from him.

He's brilliant. He's clever. Maybe, somehow, the two of you will find a way out of this.

You don't want to watch the world burn. You don't want to watch billions of humans and a whole planet and a whole solar system-- Crowley's nebulae-- destroyed for no reason and as much as you should be willing to go along with the Almighty's will, it's fucking ineffable and you secretly aren't sure if you believe in a God that would do this. You struggled during The Flood. You struggled over Job and Sitis' kids...

...if you are honest with yourself (and you are more than you care to admit), you struggle to be faithful to a God who has caused Crowley so much pain.

You think that, somehow, when the time comes, you and Crowley might find a way around it. How? You have no idea. None. But you think there is a chance that you could figure it out and so long as there is a chance-- even one, single, tiny, chance-- that somehow you and Crowley could survive it all and be together forever, you are not going to let him do something stupid and get himself killed trying to be together now.

You are not letting your far-sighted lover trip over his snake legs and go head-first into a faunt of stolen holy water that you could have given him safely 105 years ago, when he asked for it, and you fucked it all up...

You make him some. You use your powers and your essence and your body and turn water into a weapon for him. The real thing. The holiest.

You understand what it is to him now. It's not death; it's life. He doesn't want either of you to be in pain. He doesn't want to be left alone. He wants to feel safer. To be able to protect you from what Hell put him through and worse. He doesn't want to leave you. He wants a chance in Hell at surviving what's to come and an out for if it all goes pear-shaped and you want him to live and not to suffer and only you can give that to him.

You understand that now. It was never that you didn't trust him. It was that you didn't trust yourself.

You put it in a tartan thermos that silently says your anxious, emotional ass best thing of me before you ever decide to use this.

It also says this is for you to keep and it is of me and I know that's a risk if you ever get caught with it. I trust you to keep it hidden, like you do us, and protect me. This is for you and it looks like me and you know when the tartan started and why... you know it was because of our night in Edinburgh in 1827... you know it was the night they took you and I didn't know if I'd ever see you again and you know I've been wearing this pattern of us for 140 years and that I always will.

It's just that you also can't let him think that giving it to him is an assent of sorts. If Heaven or Hell ever found out you did this, they'd destroy you both.

So you rushed over with holy water, your tie undone, catching him before he can go any further with his scheme to pay humans to steal him some and you waited for him in the safety of The Bentley, one of the only places the two of you can actually talk with some expectation of privacy, and when he asks, you have to talk him out of it. You have to break his heart a bit. You have to disappoint him. You have to try to protect him from himself a bit or you'll lose him.

You tell him that you're giving him the holy water because you can't let him risk his life "not even for something dangerous." Dangerous is trying for more between you than there already is. You aren't rejecting him outright and he knows that. You never have, really. You see each other in secret. You have been for more years than either of you can count. You rely on each other to help each other to the right speed.

You need him to tempt you into giving yourself permission to do what you want and need but aren't sure you can or should. He needs you to help him keep from spiralling from anxiety.

He gets you to go a little faster-- not too much, at a pace you feel comfortable with. You get him to slow down-- gently, tenderly. You are both able to trust each other with your vulnerabilities and that's why it works.

He's blinded by the world changing in ways both exhilarating and also terrifying, by it breaking apart at the seams increasing his fear of running out of time.

You've been together for thousands of years.

You don't stay the night; you've never had breakfast together. You've never risked taking each other's hands in public. You've never directly said I love you.

If you can get him to see how dangerous it all still is-- because it is-- then maybe you can keep him alive long enough to have a shot of neither of you ever having to worry about losing each other again.

Somehow, it's not much different now than it was before the beginning. He's always been like this. Optimistic, progressive, free-thinking. Innovative. It might get you both out of all of it yet but it won't in 1967. He is caught up in the emerging new, human world and it's a heady cocktail when mixed with his existential terror. He's going to get himself fucking killed. You know better, just as you knew better before The Beginning. You know that too many questions, too much risk, will draw a metaphorical sniper's bead to his head. And you know that, on some level, he knows he needs you to rein him.

It's an era of freer sex and free love and wild, progressive music and art but... it's also an era of war and violence and assassinations... and Heaven and Hell are so far removed from Earth that it would take another 6,000 years to get them anywhere near close to this.

Crowley knows this, intellectually. You know he knows. He just feels the sand trickling faster and faster and there's hardly any of it left now.

You know how that feels-- you feel it, too. Every time you look at him. Everytime he slips away out the backdoor of the bookshop with a soft kiss and an even softer g'night, angel and you wonder if that was the last time.

Tick, tick, tick, tick...

Crowley sees All You Need is Love but you can see December 8, 1980 coming at some point down the road. You've both been on this planet long enough to know what they do to the first ones who break away, to the ones who go against the grain, and the humans are no different from Heaven and Hell in that way. You cannot tell him yes or you will be killing you both.

You put it on yourself a bit. He goes too fast for you, you tell him. It's not untrue. He does. It's just that if it all were different, you'd never refuse him anything. You hope he hears it as your issue, not his, though you doubt he will. It is so hard to look at him and tell him no when all he is saying he wants is the chance to love you more.

God, there are days when you think he might kill you if he were to love you any more than he does. You don't know what you ever did to deserve his love. You don't know how you survived before you met him or how you are supposed to if you lose him.

"You go too fast for me" is what you say and you know he understands that it means:

You'll burn us fast and bright and it will be amazing but it will *end*. They will catch us. They will kill us. I can't lose you. If I thought all we could ever have would be just a short, few years, then I wouldn't deny you but I think we could find a way to have forever. Somehow. I have hope for that. I get that hope *from you.* I need you to slow down because I can't watch you get yourself killed. I'm not strong enough to lose you. I need you to let me pace this for awhile...

You want him to know you understand, that you feel it all, too. So, you tell him of the things you'd like to do, if it was safer, not knowing if it ever will be. The things you choose are of all of these holy water years. A picnic-- one implied to be in the daylight, in this future you're both imagining, this world you hope to one day see emerge. He had tried to take you on a graveyard one at midnight in 1827. You know that had been what that would have been had you not ran into Elspeth. The two of you sneaking around in the dark, as always, but together. Alive. Maybe, you tell him now, you could one day have that picnic together under the sun. You think you can see that world. You have no idea how it arrives but he's not wrong. You can see some things changing here and there's always hope that things could change with Heaven and Hell. He has taught you to keep the faith in how he's survived the worst and remains optimistic.

Maybe, one day, you could be angels dining at The Ritz. It is intentional that you reference World War II. It is a way-- the only way you can right now-- to tell him you love him, as you both did in your own ways during The Blitz. It is saying:

I love you. I would love that life with you. I won't give up on the idea of it-- of having more than a short burst of it. That is why I need you to slow down and stay safe. It's too dangerous for more right now. Take the holy water and take a breath. You're okay. You have me. We keep *each other* safe, remember? Slow down. I need you with me forever.

#ineffable husbands #good omens #good omens meta #crowley #aziraphale #aziracrow #you go too fast for me #good omens 1967

220 notes · View notes