Work Text:
Crowley does not want Aziraphale to come to the gardening centre with him. Does not. It is very much a personal, private thing, and...
“But I let you come with me to the antique books roadshow.”
“You made me.”
“You said you didn’t want to be left alone all week!”
“So instead of staying back with me, or letting me stay in the hotel with room service, you dragged me around all those musty old tomes!”
But what Aziraphale wanted, Aziraphale usually got.
Which is why he’s got his glasses pushed as close to his face as he can, to prevent any stray glance behind them to his eyes. He’s left the angel admiring the fruit trees and rose bushes, skulking like the alpha predator he is through bamboos and tall grasses to find his preferred prey.
(In the distance, cooed and aahed appreciations that make his ears prick, but he must ignore them.)
The varieties you found in these places were commercial. Bastard hybrids. The scrappy mongrels of the plant world, or the over-pruned family tree branches that lead to over-specialised and genetically non-diverse sharp ends of wedges.
Crowley knew enough to know when things had been splinched, grafted, crossed. He knew from leaf-patterns, variegation, genus and species on tiny plastic spikes, written in capital letters by hand.
(Once in a while, a heirloom might sneak in, misidentified, snapped up greedily, taken back to be cultivated by someone who could truly appreciate the find...)
But mostly, it was the former, not the latter.
He runs his eyes over the plants, which have yet to understand the importance of presentation. Battered around in uniform planters and squabbling for light.
It doesn’t matter which they are. If they’re a cultivar with a planned growth, or a happy accident of bee or broom. What matters more... it’s the innate drive. The one ready to push above the next one. To reach beyond. The leaves don’t need to be perfect at the start, just the drive to thrive and excel. Right now, it’s resources. Later - if he picks them - he will channel that energy where he wants it.
One catches his eye. It’s deeper in colour, like a flush of chlorophyll. It wants. He can feel it. It wants.
“Oh, have you decided?” his angel asks, his little shopping basket full of nonsense and ephemera.
“Yes.”
It has to want to live. Whatever it is, it has to want to excel. And then he can help it find its true potential.