Title: Slow ripening fruit
Fandom: Good Omens
Characters: Aziraphale/Crowley
Rating: Teen
Length: 3,567 words (I think. Bloody footnotes)
Content notes: Contains footnotes. SO MANY FOOTNOTES. Also, mischevious mystical creatures and canon-appropriate demonic threatening
Author notes: I wanted to play with footnotes. I regret... everything.
Summary: Aziraphale is in something of a pickle. Crowley is about to be blindsided.

Crowley has only made it halfway through watering his plants when the telephone rings.

It is, in his not so humble opinion, entirely inappropriate for telephones to ring before eleven o’clock on a Sunday morning, and yet, for some unfathomable reason and despite the fact that a quick glance at the window confirms that it is disgustingly^[1] early, his own telephone is doing exactly that. If he’s honest, he thinks, eyeing the offending device warily, it represents something of an oversight on mankind’s part. Clearly, all telephones should be automatically programmed to reject incoming calls received before an appropriately civilised time of day^[2]

Crowley does not consider that to be an unreasonable request. However, since the universe takes apparently takes great delight in revelling in his discomfort^[3], such a facility is not available and he is now facing the unenviable choice of actual social interaction, or refusing the same, which will inevitably lead to a gnawing, obnoxious curiosity about who had called and why.

“Yes?” He doesn’t remember deciding to do it, but he seems to have answered the telephone nonetheless^[4]. He scowls, pinching the bridge of his nose; it doesn’t help, but the areca palm in his eyeline shivers as though it had caught a particularly stiff breeze, and that does, a little.

“Crowley, dear,” Aziraphale says, because of course it’s Aziraphale. Really, he should have guessed. Who else would interrupt Crowley’s perfectly delightful, quiet Sunday morning with a blasted telephone call? ^[5] “I don’t suppose, by any chance, that you happen to be free this morning, do you?”

There’s an edge to his voice that makes Crowley’s ears prick up. Something is clearly afoot, and while he is, in fact, completely free for the entire day, he has no intention of confirming that for Aziraphale until he knows what, exactly, the angel is about to propose. “Why?”

“Oh,” Aziraphale says, and Crowley can almost see the way he’s wringing his hands, although clearly not literally; he’s not exactly going to send his eyeball down the telephone line to check^[6]. There’s a muffled crash in the background, and Crowley’s eyebrows arch entirely of their own accord. “I may have had a slight… mishap, and it’s left me in a little bit of a jam.”

“A jam?” Crowley, asks, with a creeping suspicion that is only amplified when he hears a distant clatter-bang down the line. “What kind of a jam?”

“Oh, nothing too serious,” Aziraphale is perhaps a little too hasty with his reassurances, and Crowley narrows his eyes. Despite having had a few millennia of practice^[7], Aziraphale still cannot lie for toffee^[8]. “Just a small lapse in concentration, that’s all, but one with some unfortunate consequences.”

“Spit it out, angel.”

“I’d really rather not over the telephone,” Aziraphale says, hurriedly, “But if you could pop by the bookstore, I’d be ever so grateful…”

He trails off with a hopeful lift and Crowley sighs. “Fine, fine. I’ll be there in twenty.”

“Oh, wonderful,” Aziraphale says, delighted relief ringing loud in his tone. “I shall see you then. Do hurry, won’t you, dear?”

He hangs up before Crowley has a chance to reply, but not so quickly that he doesn’t hear the cascading crash-bang that sounds remarkably like the contents of Aziraphale’s kitchen cabinets chose that precise moment to evacuate themselves explosively across the room.

That, Crowley thinks sourly, does not bode well.

“Well,” he says, a little acidly^[9], to the empty room and the dead handset. “This should be delightful.”

Across the room, the areca palm quivers.

*****

The thing about a scene of devastation, is that it really should be devastating. Devastatingly beautiful, perhaps, or beautifully devastated. Aziraphale’s kitchen is neither, although everything which would normally have a home seems to have been strewn deliberately and untidily across any and all available surfaces. Crowley, when he slides his sunglasses down his nose to look around the kitchen unimpeded, is less devasted, and more distracted^[10] by the garish and disturbing flower pattern still visible on the shattered remains of Aziraphale’s crockery. He is, however prepared to concede that he has never seen the kitchen looking so disorganised.

And by disorganised, he largely means ‘reminiscent of the aftermath of a direct hit from a hurricane’.

“Did you restart the apocalypse in your kitchen?” he asks mildly, and at that Aziraphale does wring his hands, looking almost exactly as Crowley had imagined it, from the flush in his cheeks, down to the twisting tap of his shoe on the kitchen linoleum^[11].

“Not… exactly,” he says.

In lieu of a viable alternative, Crowley leans back against the kitchen door frame^[12], and quirks one eyebrow questioningly. “Do explain. Please. What did you do?”

“It was a book, you see,” Aziraphale starts, and Crowley lets his head fall back against the doorframe with an exaggerated sigh. “No, no, my dear, hear me out. I was planning to bake some brownies for afternoon tea from that delightful little cookbook I picked up in the Americas, do you remember?”

“America,” Crowley says, impatiently^[13].

“Absolutely,” Aziraphale agrees. There’s an ominous clatter from within one of the kitchen cupboards, and he gives a pained wince, before hurriedly adding. “Unfortunately, it seems that I, well, I may have picked the wrong book from the shelf.”

There’s a book lying open in the middle of the kitchen floor, spine cracked and paper down. It’s old enough that Crowley can smell the leather of its binding and he angles his head, tipping to the side until he can see what is written across the cover. “Harmonious helpers of the happy home,” he reads.

“Do be careful,” Aziraphale says, as Crowley snakes out a leg to tip the book over onto its cover. The book falls open with a rustle of paper, back on the page it had clearly landed on to start with, and Crowley reads the header of the page. And then reads it again, because he’s sure it can’t possibly say what he thinks it does.

Then he just stares for a while. Beside him, Aziraphale has started to wring his hands again.

“Oh, angel,” he says, eventually. “You summoned a brownie?”

When he says it aloud, it’s actually quite a relief.

Aziraphale’s face is a picture of helplessness. “In my defence,” he says, “I was merely trying to remind myself of the recipe, but I was perhaps reading a little quickly^[14], and I was halfway through before I realised what I was reading.”

Crowley casts a critical eye over the kitchen again. It remains stubbornly devastated. “I thought brownies were supposed to be helpful. You don’t look… helped.”

“Oh no, my dear, they are,” Aziraphale says quickly. “Utterly delightful, usually. It’s just… I might have offended this one, a little.”

“How?”

Aziraphale’s face takes an a vaguely guilty expression. “It was helping me with the washing up and I may have suggested – politely, I might add - that the dishes were perhaps not quite as clean as they could be.”

Crowley let his head fall back against the doorframe with a satisfying thump. “So, let me get this clear. You summoned a brownie into your kitchen because you wanted to bake, immediately insulted it, and now it’s rampaging through in a fit of pique, hellbent on destruction?”

“It smashed my Riedel wine glasses,” Aziraphale agrees, glumly, and Crowley glances at him out of the corner of his eye.

“I don’t see why you needed me, though,” he says, “Why don’t you just… miracle it away?”

“I would,” Aziraphale says, “But those upstairs have become such dreadful bores about that^[15], and they do have a tendency to summon me for any minor variations, which would be an awful waste of such a beautiful day. I was thinking that perhaps you could…” He trails off hopefully.

Crowley is not a fan of things like expectations and obligations, especially at ungodly^[16] hours on a Sunday morning, and he’s quite certain he should feel outraged, or at least, a little peeved to have been summoned just to play the role of miracles-on-demand. He’s not quite sure what to make of the gooey warm feeling that swells out from his very middle and makes him feel like he’s been wrapped in a particularly soft and snuggly blanket.

It’s… disconcerting, to say the least.

“You want me to… get rid of it?” he asks, just to be certain, and Aziraphale beams; a wide, bright smile that makes Crowley’s fingers twitch.

“If you could,” he says, before he hurriedly adds, “But don’t hurt it, will you?”

As though Crowley would ever consider such a thing^[17].

“Fine,” he says, shortly, tugging his sunglasses off and tossing them to one side, even as he pulls his power more tightly around himself. Crowley likes his demonic power usually; it’s sharp and abrasive and dirty, and it gets the job done. It turns out, however, that it does not feel comfortable combined with whatever it is that Aziraphale’s kitchen has made him feel, and he convulses in his own skin, before he wrestles control over it.

“Brownie,” he says, once he’s feeling suitably demonic, and the word slithers out to resonate through the kitchen. “Show yourself.”

The kitchen darkens, tendrils of shadow spiralling out from where Crowley is standing to creep across every surface and worm into every corner, and Crowley just waits. It’s not long before his patience is rewarded and one of the upper kitchen cabinet doors flies open to reveal an ugly little goblinesque creature that glares out into the kitchen, muttering something that Crowley doesn’t need to speak Brownie to know is utterly obscene^[18].

“Do shut up,” he says, absently, and the creature’s mouth snaps shut with an audible click. “Good, now listen closely. Aziraphale here is an idiot,” - Aziraphale makes a hurt noise of protest at that, which Crowley pointedly ignores – “and thinks you need to be given a second chance. Out of respect for the fact that this is his kitchen, I’m prepared to acquiesce to that, so this is it. Your one chance to leave, quietly, and not come back.”

The creature tips it’s head to one side, and chitters something questioningly, before adding, in halting English. “What if I refuse?”

Crowley smiles. It’s a special smile, one he’s spent a millennium perfecting, and it is nothing but teeth and torment and terrifying promise^[19]. “Then I’m going to be Very Unhappy with you,” he says, and, behind him, the window rattles in its frame. “Believe me, you won’t like me when I’m Very Unhappy.”

The brownie swallows, visibly, audibly.

And vanishes.

Crowley allows himself a smirk, which he knows is heavy with satisfaction, and sets Aziraphale’s kitchen back to rights with a quick dismissive wave of his hand ^[20]. “There you are,” he says. “Problem solved.”

“Oh, that’s marvellous!” Aziraphale says, with a delighted clap of his hands. “I knew I could rely on you, Crowley, thank you so much.”

Aziraphale’s joy is bright enough to flood the kitchen, sweeping away the last of Crowley’s dark tendrils. The back of Crowley’s neck feels oddly hot in the aftermath, and he twists round to stare over his shoulder and direct a pointed glare at the window ^[21]. “Right,” he says, “Well. If that’s all, I should probably be… going?”

“Oh,” Aziraphale looks positively crestfallen at the suggestion, and the heat on the back of Crowley’s neck intensifies. “I suppose… yes, of course, you must be busy.”

“No,” Crowley says, before he thinks about it and immediately tries to rectify his mistake. “I mean, yes, of course, terribly busy. But, not with anything that can’t be postponed, if you needed…”

He can’t quite bring himself to finish the sentence; he’s not entirely sure why he started it in the first place.

“I was just thinking,” Aziraphale says, “that since the brownies I was planning to make for you were a bit of a disaster, then perhaps I could tempt you-“

(That’s my line, Crowley thinks, a little dizzily, but it doesn’t ring entirely true, even in his head. His head is mostly still caught on Aziraphale’s other words).

“-to a spot of lunch at the Ritz?” Aziraphale finishes with a smile, warm and hopeful now, as he opens a drawer to the right of the kitchen sink. Crowley just blinks, long and slow.

“The brownies were for me?” he asks, stupidly, a beat too late. Thankfully, Aziraphale doesn’t seem to notice; he’s turned away and is too busy rummaging around his freshly tidied kitchen in search, Crowley thinks, of whatever it was that should have been living in that errant drawer.

“Of course,” Aziraphale says, distractedly, as he tugs open another cupboard. “Who else would I make brownies for?”

“Of course,” Crowley echoes. The back of his neck is scorching and he rubs at it, a little self-conciously.

“Aha!” Aziraphale straightens up from the cupboard under the sink, brandishing a clean handkerchief like it’s a weapon. He tucks it carefully into his top pocket, and then looks up at Crowley with an expectant smile.

“So, my dear,” he says, “Can I tempt you? I’m awfully partial to good company while I eat.”

Crowley swallows against the sudden, inexplicable ^[22] dryness in his throat. “Anytime, angel,” he says.

He’s almost surprised to find he means it. Almost.

Footnotes:

¹In Crowley’s professional opinion. Crowley’s professional opinion is intimately acquainted with disgusting because it is quite frequently the source of it. ^{[ return to text ]
2}The technology to do this actually was invented in 1985 by a computer programmer called Herbert Winkleman, after he had rushed out of the bath to answer the telephone, only to find himself speaking to a chirpy young woman who was very keen to sell him damp-proofing for his home (which, it transpired, did not include the carpet he was currently dripping all over while talking to her). Whilst standing in his hallway, naked as the day he was born, Winkleman hit upon an idea for suspending incoming telephone calls in a way to suit the recipient and (once he was suitably dried and dressed) immediately went about outlining his proposal and pitching it to the telephone companies. Unfortunately for him, Crowley, who had had a substantial influence on the development of telesales cold calling (and received a commendation from Hell for his hard work around it; although no-one downstairs had really understood it, they hadn’t been able to argue with his results) had intervened, and within a year Winkleman had lost his house and his job and was selling fridge magnets from a corner stall in Camden Market. Crowley doesn’t actually remember this, but karma, as it turns out, is a bitch. ^{[ return to text ]
3}It does. The universe has a quote for torment to keep up, and when choosing between the demon or the angel for its target , it almost always chooses the demon. Mostly because the angel regularly bakes cinnamon buns, and the universe likes smelling of cinnamon. It does not like the things that Crowley makes it smell of. ^{[ return to text ]
4}No-one ever understands why, but a ringing telephone demands to be answered. It’s one of life’s great mysteries, alongside why toast always falls butter side down and where socks disappear to from the washing machine. ^{[ return to text ]
5} It should be acknowledged, to be fair, that no-one other than Aziraphale has Crowley’s telephone number. Other than Hell, of course, but since the infamous bathtub incident, Crowley and Hell are no longer on speaking terms. ^{[ return to text ]
6}That is not a mistake anyone makes more than once. ^{[ return to text ]
7}Give or take a few centuries when he really was appallingly pious. ^{[ return to text ]
8}Or cake, or pastries, or pie. ^{[ return to text ]
9}Literally. On occasion, when irked, Crowley’s more serpentine characteristics tend to manifest themselves in the oddest of ways. The last time this happened, he sneezed at an inopportune moment and almost obliterated the American Declaration of Independence. ^{[ return to text ]
10}And vaguely repulsed, which is saying a lot by demonic standards. ^{[ return to text ]
11}Crowley is disinclined to explore the reasons why he might have imagined Aziraphale like this in such explicit detail. ^{[ return to text ]
1}Currently unavailable viable alternatives might include the kitchen table (currently upside down), the chairs (stacked into a pyramid formation on top of the aforementioned table) or the kitchen counters (currently dripping with a congealed red-white gloop that might be a mixture of clotted cream and strawberry jam but which Crowley is unwilling to get close enough to in order to check). ^{[ return to text ]
13}Aziraphale does not approve of changing the names of things. Crowley is expecting to keep making this correction for some centuries to come, along with Prussia, Constantinople and Opal Fruits. Aziraphale was particularly offended by Opal Fruits. ^{[ return to text ]
14}When angels read aloud and do not have to think of the words themselves, they do it so quickly that the speed of the soundwaves from their voices can blister ears and burst eardrums. This is the source of most of the myths about the overwhelming nature of the voice of God (as it happens, the divine power actually has a perfectly lovely speaking voice and tends to speak with a hint of a Yorkshire accent). When they read really quickly, the friction of their words has been known to set paper on fire. Despite this. Aziraphale has never quite managed to break himself of the habit of reading out loud. ^{[ return to text ]
15}Like Hell, Heaven has been very unsure on what to do about its earthbound agent since the whole Apocalypse-that-wasn’t situation. Unlike Hell, Heaven has opted to take a very bureaucratised approach to the whole situation and Aziraphale now has seventeen different forms to complete every time he uses his divine power. Since Aziraphale is very fond of his divine power, there is now a whole department in Heaven dedicated to processing these forms; it does, after all, take a great deal of time to decide how to classify “It was raining when we left the Ritz and I had entirely forgotten to bring my umbrella” as a rationale for why Russia is now having an unusually warm winter. ^{[ return to text ]
16}This is, of course a misunderstanding. God is naturally a huge fan of early mornings and, in fact, developed the dawn chorus mostly to ensure that as many humans as possible could be roused from their sleep to share in that enjoyment. Angelic observations on the matter do seem to suggest that this strategy may have backfired somewhat. ^{[ return to text ]
17}He would, he has, and he did. ^{[ return to text ]
18}Crowley recognises obscenities in every language he hears. It’s one of his more fun demonic traits. ^{[ return to text ]
19}He’s really quite proud of it. ^{[ return to text ]
20} Almost. He does replace that terrible crockery with a new set in a contemporary pale grey design. Partly because he knows it will drive Aziraphale wild when he realises and partly because, although the pattern on those particular floral monstrosities is actually quite demonically influenced, even Crowley thinks they’re appalling, and Aziraphale does invite him round for lunch occasionally. ^{[ return to text ]
21}The fact that it is cloudy outside appears to completely escape his notice. ^{[ return to text ]
22}For anyone who is choosing to ignore the obvious, that is. ^{[ return to text ]}