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Starry Night
Disclaimer: Good Omens does not belong to me. In a way, it belongs to all of us. In a more legal sense, it belongs to Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.
A/N: I wrote this all in one night, combining my favorite painting, my favorite artist, and my favorite ineffable couple…
Content Warning: I’ve been writing fanfictions/original books for years and this is one of the few that reduced me to genuine tears. Please understand that this fanfiction will discuss the topics of anxiety, depression, rejection, and suicide. With that said, I promise that it does have an ending that’s (almost) as beautiful as The Starry Night.
“You can’t see the stars, anymore,” Crowley mused. “Have you noticed that?”
Aziraphale, who was much more concerned with how to cross the road without being struck by one of the many golden cabs, asked, “Pardon?”
Stepping up onto the curb, Crowley said, “The stars. You can’t seem ‘em, can you?”
Aziraphale glanced upwards, a gesture he had been doing less and less. “No, I suppose I can’t. Well, we are in the city, and it is in the middle of the day.”
“Oh, the stars are still there, angel.” Crowley shoved his hands in his pockets as he peered at the sky through his shades. “They’re always there.”
“Yes, well—”
Aziraphale had enough strangeness to deal with. He had only ever been to Manhattan a handful of times in the past few centuries. Each time he went, it became more crowded, more chaotic, more confusing. Crowley walked the streets with ease, though he was slowly forming that telling glower, a clear sign that he was becoming displeased about something.
Aziraphale forced a smile for the both of them, even as a pamphlet-wielding man leapt into their path. The angel stumbled into the fallen, Crowley steadying him once more.
With a snap of the demon’s fingers, the man’s pamphlets flew into the air.
“Oh, now, really,” Aziraphale whispered.
“What?” Crowley asked, an innocent tone pushing through curved lips.
“You’ve been using a lot of—” He leaned forward and whispered: “—‘demonic miracles’ as of late, haven’t you? That poor woman in Lincoln Square will have nightmares for weeks.”
“She wanted me to come to her church,” Crowley said, the glower of displeasure returning. “And, anyway, it’s not like anyone’s keeping track of these ‘miracles’, are they?”
Aziraphale swallowed, silently conceding the point. It had been several months since The First Day Of The Rest Of Their Lives. Confusing lives, indeed, without any bureaucracy to breathe down their necks, no one to question every snap of their fingers, no one to question why he was spending so much time with Crowley. No one but him.
Evidently, Crowley was a bit confused as well, for he asked, “Why are we here?”
“You wanted to come with me,” Aziraphale reminded him, a bit hastily.
“Right, but why are we here, specifically?”
“I am here to get cheesecake,” he said. “You are here because you wanted to come with me.”
“Cheesecake?”
“There is a scrumptious place, right down here,” Aziraphale said, smiling at the mere thought of the taste. “Or, perhaps it’s over there. I—em—ah yes, it’s—no—”
“Lost your way, have you?” Crowley smirked down at him.
“We—just seem to be a little—”
Aziraphale was growing more flustered by the minute. Crowley chuckled and said, “It’s all right, angel, I’ve been lost for six thousand years.”
“Oh, now, really, don’t be—”
Crowley’s grin slipped away, his mouth slowly falling, like the stars, like the demons…He lifted shaking hands, pulling his glasses away from his eyes.
“—dramatic,” Aziraphale finished, his own heart beating faster. “Crowley? My dear, whatever is the matter? Crowley ?”
The glasses struck the ground. Crowley’s words, shaking as much as his hands, struck Aziraphale’s heart: “What—what is that ?”
Aziraphale whirled around, half-expecting to see a sign that the old apocalypse was merely a test, that the new one was about to begin. No. Instead, all he saw was—
“That’s a museum, Crowley.”
For a moment, whatever was upsetting the demon so, was washed away. He threw Aziraphale a very common annoyed look. “I know it’s a museum, angel, but what’s—what’s—?”
He charged forward until he had nearly crashed into the side of the wall, stopping just short of the large poster: MUSEUM OF MODERN ART. COME SEE THE: STARRY NIGHT .
There was a picture of the painting in question. Briefly glancing at it, Aziraphale thought that it looked rather nice. He was far more concerned with the fact that Crowley was resting his hand against it, as if hoping to fall right through.
“Crowley—?”
This got the demon to move, though not in the way Aziraphale had expected. A sharp shoe ground the glasses into the sidewalk. With a snap, the doors to the museum flew open, and Crowley raced inside. A startled Aziraphale hurried after him. Another snap had the workers freezing in place. Aziraphale blustered as Crowley leapt right across the frozen turnstile. The angel was forced to climb over, using a quick miracle to leave the proper change in the nearby attendant’s hands.
“Crowley!”
Another snap and the museum attendees, who had looked over with some fascination, had also frozen in place. Snap. The lift doors were opening. Crowley stepped inside and the doors shut in Aziraphale’s face.
“ Crowley !”
He was forced to run up the stairs, briefly lamenting that it would be easier for him to conjure his wings. No, no, just because one of them was being dramatic, that didn’t mean they both should. He stopped at the floor above, hurrying past the statues of various workers and attendees. He could feel the pull towards Crowley’s direction, the one that he always felt when the demon was in trouble. He had always meant to ask Crowley about that. Had the demon felt that pull as well? Was that why he had always shown up? The French Revolution? The church?
Aziraphale was torn from his thoughts as he finally spotted Crowley.
The slim body was a silhouette against a brightly lit wall. There in the center of that wall was—well, honestly, Aziraphale had thought the painting would be much bigger than that . It was a tiny little thing. Quite pretty, of course, but he couldn’t understand why Crowley had bent the laws of physics, just to race inside and see something like this.
“Crowley, what on earth— ?”
“It’s not earth, is it?”
His voice. It was a well-known fact that angels didn’t actually play harps, no matter what the legends might say. Yet, in that moment, Aziraphale’s heart was a harp, being played by his emotions, as he tried to figure out just what was wrong with his friend.
“It’s the stars .”
Crowley didn’t mean to fall, but his knees hit the ground nonetheless. He reached up, his fingers delicately brushing the brushstrokes.
“Crowley, don’t touch it!” Aziraphale was aghast.
Crowley didn’t answer, tracing the swirls of the stars. Oh, yes, those swirls were quite beautiful. But he still shouldn’t have been touching them! Aziraphale grabbed his hand, with every intention of pulling it back, only for their fingers to instinctively tighten. In that moment, Aziraphale felt the sheer spark of something, something exploding in the depths of the universe, he could practically see something swirling together, a light , oh, warmth, joy, l—
And then, Crowley looked at him.
All of those feelings washed away. They didn’t matter. The only things that mattered were the tears that were sliding from underneath the newly-replaced shades.
“Cr—”
Aziraphale felt weak, dizzy, unsure of what to do. Oh, why did they ever think he was suitable to be an angel, to guard someone, to guide them, to heal them? He couldn’t stand the sight of a few tears. His hand went limp and Crowley pulled away.
The demon staggered to his feet, whispering: “I never knew he actually painted them. I had always hoped but—I got busy—well, Hell, you know, they wanted me to focus on the Industrial Revolution—all the accidents and the smog—that was right up our alley—and there wasn’t much more I could do—there was nothing I could do—”
For the umpteenth time, Aziraphale said his name. The name became a shout as Crowley abruptly seized the edges of the frame.
“What are you doing?” Aziraphale shrieked. “I don’t care if you’re a demon, you can’t just—you can’t—you can’t take things that don’t belong to you!”
“They do belong to me!”
“Look, look here!” Aziraphale desperately pointed to the plaque. “I don’t exactly see your name, my dear! This was made by one Vincent van Gogh.”
“Vincent van Gogh .” Crowley said it correctly. “Van Gogh , angel.”
“Put it down!” Aziraphale commanded. “This has to be worth millions of dollars, tens of millions, hundreds of millions, even!”
Crowley’s hands fell away from the frame, only because he had gone limp. His gait seemed particularly inhuman as he whirled around to face Aziraphale. His cheeks were still soaked, and when he spoke, there was a wetness behind each bitter syllable: “Oh, it’s worth more than that. They’re worth more than that. He was worth more than that. I—”
He fell silent and—Aziraphale genuinely thought he was about to discorporate from a malfunctioning heart—Crowley covered his face with a hand.
“My dear, I don’t understand.”
“No, you don’t.” The voice was muffled but it still struck its target. “You don’t even see them, do you?”
Aziraphale desperately turned back to the painting in question. “Well, yes, of course, I see it. It’s beautiful, Crowley, but why are you—?”
He turned back and found that Crowley was no longer there. A rude tourist jostled him as another leapt in front of him, to take a photo of the painting. Time moved forward.
Eventually, Aziraphale found his way to the restaurant. It was only an avenue over. He hadn’t been as lost as he had thought. Or had he?
Aziraphale had been looking forward to this outing for weeks, but now, the flickering lights in the restaurant were too bright, the people too loud, the smiles on the waiters—they reminded him rather too much of Gabriel. Charming. Fake. Not like Crowley’s smile—
Aziraphale tucked that thought away, mustering up a real smile, as the waiter placed the cheesecake in front of him. The smile slipped as he realized that he wasn’t as hungry as he had thought. And the people were loud. And the lights were bright. Aziraphale glared up at them. The annoying little golden orbs. The golden—the golden orbs—
He thought back to that painting. The Starry Night. Yes, well, it was absolutely beautiful. Of course, it was. He would have rather enjoyed staring at it for awhile, had Crowley not been trying to rip it from the wall. He didn’t understand why—it was lovely, it really was, but there were better paintings of the stars, surely. The stars themselves hadn’t even been all that realistic. They weren’t like the scattered dots that he usually saw. (Crowley thought he didn’t know what they looked like?!) The stars in the painting were—golden orbs—
But Crowley had been absolutely besides himself. Aziraphale genuinely thought that the demon might have been more upset in the museum than he was in the near-apocalypse. He shivered as he remembered the tears, which had fallen beneath the shades. The shades that covered—
Golden orbs .
“Oh!”
The cheesecake went flying as Aziraphale leapt to his feet. Another quick miracle filled the register with the proper sums. He raced from the shop, back onto the crowded street. The lights were blinding, the noises deafening, but he pushed through the pain. Crowley was experiencing worse.
Aziraphale didn’t pause time, which led to a rather irritated number of workers and attendees, as he barged back into the MOMA. Up the stairs. Through the wings. There .
Golden orbs. Delicately placed in the night sky, above the swirls of sapphire, navy, cobalt, and other flecks of honey and amber and gold and—oh— there —
Crowley’s eyes were in the stars. The stars were in Crowley’s eyes.
They were connected, somehow. Of course they were. Aziraphale realized that he should have known—although he didn’t still yet know—he should have pieced together that Crowley was somehow connected to these stars. The golden orbs were his eyes and his eyes were the golden orbs. The stars—his eyes—perhaps they had been created, together—perhaps, he would never know. What he did know was that he needed to find his friend, his best friend, his—
Aziraphale looked at the plaque, again. Saint Remy de Provence. He felt that familiar tug and rushed to a secluded part of the museum. Summoning every bit of strength, every belief in the existence of miracles and the miraculous, he snapped.
It took several hours, several miracles, several bribes, and several bouts of patience, but he finally found the demon. He was sitting, of all things, on the rooftop of an abandoned asylum in the countryside of France. Aziraphale gasped and wheezed as he climbed up. He froze, his hands pressing into the uncomfortable roof. Though a great deal of him was made from pointy limbs, Crowley was nonetheless curled into himself, his unobstructed eyes in his hands.
“Crowley—”
Crowley’s head flew up, his eyes filled with such emotion that Aziraphale leaned backwards. This proved to be a momentus mistake as gravity lured him towards the ground.
Fortunately, a hand caught his, pulling him back to safety. And in that moment, Aziraphale was sure that he could feel, he could see , those swirls, oh, those golden, sapphire swirls that surpassed any known beauty of the universe, that warmth, that l—
“Only one of us should fall, angel.”
Crowley had let go, hugging his knees to his chest. Aziraphale came back to himself, his cheeks as warm as that sensation had been. He rather clumsily adjusted himself so that he was sitting next to his friend, his friend who was softly crying. Aziraphale looked around, because any other sight would have been less painful. He finally spotted several bottles.
“My dear, please sober up,” he said. “I want to talk to you.”
“I am sober!” Crowley wept. “Those are from before—I know I shouldn’t have littered but I wanted to make sure he got back down to his room, and then I forgot about them, and anyway, I’ve done worse than litter. I’m a demon, right?”
He buried his face in the crook of his arm, his sobs shaking Aziraphale to his core.
“I-I still don’t understand!” The angel took a few deep breaths, trying to steady himself, trying to steady his friend, trying to steady the universe. “But, oh, I’ll try.”
The sobs quieted and a very pinched face turned to stare at him.
“Well, of course I’ll try to understand,” Aziraphale whispered. “I want to understand, Crowley. Please, help me understand.”
He could see pain in those golden orbs, grief, anguish, anger, despair—but also hope and warmth and trust and—
“He lived here for awhile,” Crowley croaked.
Aziraphale began to understand. He let his head dip into a nod as he asked, “Vincent?”
“Yeah, we met downstairs.” Crowley swallowed and licked his lips, an action that Aziraphale acutely noticed. “I didn’t even mean to be here. I was just passing through on my way to Paris. I wanted to go see the Moulin Rouge. Dressed appropriately for the trip into Paris, I might add. And I stopped here. There were so many people who—who were like—” Another swallow, another lick of the lips. “Vincent was the best of all of them, the best of all of us. I could tell that he didn’t have much longer to—well, he wasn’t going to be around, to—and I knew he was an artist—so, I was like, ‘Yeah, well, I’m an artist, too.’—and he got all excited—he wanted to see what I had created. So, I showed him.”
“You showed him the stars,” Aziraphale whispered.
The jealousy that surged was so sudden, so strong, so strange, that he had no choice but to let it all out in one embittered facial expression. He tried to smother it but Crowley noticed, letting out a wet bark of laughter. “Don’t be jealous, angel. The stars are for everyone; everyone who can see them, anyway.”
“Right, yes, of course.” He swallowed and said, “So, you showed him the stars.”
“ I showed him an entire nova! ”
Crowley burst into fresh tears, which did little to hide the swirls of yellow in his eyes. His hands found his red hair, which had been growing out, again, making him look—less human, less demonic, more— more . “I had created it, long ago, before it all went wrong. It was one of my favorites, I was especially proud of it. So, I showed him. I don’t know why. Don’t ask me why he, of all people, got to me. Six thousand years, we’ve been looking after them. Since the very first ones but he—he understood, angel. He understood .”
“He understood the stars,” Aziraphale said, nodding.
“He understood the rejection!”
Crowley leapt to his feet and began to feverishly pace. Aziraphale stood up, slightly wobbly, but willing to stand there for as long as it took.
“All he did was create beauty!” Crowley shrieked. “His whole life, that was all he strived to do, was to create beautiful things! To pick up his brush and just create . Not for the sake of any bureaucracy or any ineffable plan! For the sake of beauty! For the sake of transforming his anguish, his doubts, his anxieties, his sadness—his pain —he transformed that pain into beauty, angel! And what did the rest of his lot do? What did they do for all of that beauty? They dismissed him! They couldn’t see the beautiful things that he had created! They couldn’t see the things that he had brought into existence, the wonders that would have never existed without him! And the more they rejected him, the worse he became, and the worse he became, the more they rejected him! His lot rejected him and then your lot—my lot—your lot was fascinated by the mad, weren’t they? Your lot loved hating the madness. And they decided, hey, why not make up another game? God had nothing else to do that day, I suppose. So She looked at all the mad, all the feeble, all the struggling, and She made them play a game every day, She made them struggle , that was the game, and then She decided that if they want out of the games, if it all becomes too much for them, then they’ll lose, they’ll be committing a sin , they’ll fall . They’ll fall like the stars.”
“My dear —”
Crowley crumpled, sitting on the edge of the roof, the sobs so loud and grievous that nobody in France slept properly that night, too plagued by the reminders of their own battles.
Aziraphale sat next to him and pulled him close. The swirls were there but he was more interested in the swirls of tears in Crowley’s eyes. He gingerly reached up and used his thumbs to wipe them away. Crowley let out a small gasp, that did not do well for the thoughts in the pit of Aziraphale’s heart, the ones he usually tried to push down. Well, there were more important things. He wiped Crowley’s tears, each and every time they rose up.
“I tried looking for him a few times,” Crowley whispered. “You know, down there. I could never find hm. I’d like to think that maybe She changed her mind, that She realized just how cruel her game was, that She changed the rules, that She let him go with your lot—then again—oh, he would have hated Gabriel, wouldn’t he?”
Aziraphale let out a choked chuckle. “Yes, I suppose he rather would.”
Crowley had stopped sobbing, his body rippling from the after-effect. Aziraphale held him even tighter, hoping that he could somehow hold Crowley in place. Tears were rolling down his own cheeks, only increasing as Crowley whispered, “It’s not fair, angel.”
“No, no, it’s not.”
“Vincent and I—we didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I know, my dear.”
“ Do you?” Crowley gazed down at him, those golden orbs shining as brightly as the stars. “Do you know? Do you understand?”
“Yes, I—now, I think I know—”
The relief on Crowley’s face was so pure that Aziraphale had to lean back, lest the purity become too much for his corporal body.
“But you must know this ,” Aziraphale continued, his voice sounding distant to his own ears. “There were so many people in that wing, Crowley. That painting has inspired so many people, my dear. They might not be able to see the stars as you created them, as you see them, but they can see the stars that Vincent saw.”
Crowley’s head bobbed up and down, his voice hoarse: “I never even knew that he put them into a painting. I didn’t know he had the time. My stars—my beautiful stars.”
“Your beautiful stars,” Aziraphale whispered. “I’ve always wondered why your eyes were golden.”
As if reminded that his eyes existed, Crowley reached into his pocket, pulling out another pair of shades.
“Oh, please, no!” Aziraphale said, grabbing his hand. “If I can’t look at the stars, the way you do, I at least want to look at—”
He let go of a hand that no longer held anything. And he looked. He looked into Crowley’s eyes, and he didn’t chide himself for it, one bit.
“Aziraphale,” Crowley whispered, his eyes suddenly closer than ever.
“I—t—thank you, Crowley!” Aziraphale blurted out. “Thank you for trusting me with—”
“Oh, you shouldn’t thank me yet, angel,” Crowley purred. “I’m still a demon. I still want to steal that painting.” Aziraphale weakly chuckled. “Then again, I suppose it wouldn’t really fit the aesthetic of my house, would it? The throne, the plants, the statue—” Aziraphale’s face was as warm as the stars in that painting. “It would look a bit out of place.”
“Well, I suppose it would,” Aziraphale breathed. “But sometimes, the best things are the ones that are out of place.”
“Like Vincent.”
“Like Vincent,” he agreed, his voice barely audible. “Like you.”
“Oh, I’m not the best of anything.”
“You’re the best of all of us, my dear.” Aziraphale licked his lips again. “And, you know, it might look out of place on your wall but—”
He snapped.
Crowley leaned back, ever so slightly, looking around. From the passion of the snap, he half-expected the universe to be flipped upside-down. It wasn’t upside-down, per say, though a little piece of it had moved.
“—I imagine it would fit right in at a bookshop.”
“Angel—”
“My dear—”
The golden orbs were mere inches away.
“I know it’s not the same as what you see,” Aziraphale admitted, his voice an octave higher than usual. “Could you—could you describe them?”
It was obvious to the entire universe that Crowley would rather be doing something else with his mouth, but he nevertheless complied: “Well, ah, there’s—there’s swirling and light and warmth and—”
“Oh!” And then, Aziraphale was cupping his face. “Oh, Crowley, I have seen them! I see them whenever I’m with you. The swirls, the light, the warmth, the—”
“—love.”
Six thousand years of swirling around one another, they came together in a whirlwind of light, a supernova more beautiful than anything else in the universe.
The beauty of stars is that they don’t need to breathe.
When at last, they did pull apart, still in each other’s orbit, Aziraphale whispered, “You know, Crowley, I’d like to think Vincent isn’t up there or down there. He’s out there .”
There were tears, again, but they did nothing to diminish the lights in the golden orbs.
“We could go there, angel,” Crowley whispered. “When we’re all done, here. You and I could go out there.”
“We could, indeed, but for right now—” Aziraphale pushed him onto the flat of the roof, gazing into those swirling orbs. “I have all the stars I need, right here.”
It’s all about your cries and kisses
Those first steps that I can’t calculate
I need some more of you to take me over
I’ve no idea ‘cause I can’t calculate
How to start again