Work Text:
Of the pair, Crowley has always been more prone to the use of metaphor than Aziraphale. Still, Aziraphale has spent six thousand years searching for some substance to which the demon can be compared.
Every attempted metaphor — fire, stars, even the snake itself — has failed to stand up to scrutiny. Crowley would probably say this is because Aziraphale overthinks things. Most likely, that is because Aziraphale does overthink things.
Still, in the years, decades, or centuries that pass between their meetings, musing on Crowley in metaphor has given Aziraphale something enjoyable to overthink.
His latest conceptualization: Crowley as quicksilver.
Changeable, yet constant; elusive, yet entrancing; marvelous, yet dangerous. Coming close, so close, time and time again — only to roll away at the last moment, displaced by Aziraphale’s fumbling fingers. Liquid mercury, untouchable.
And if they ever do manage to touch, to stay in one place without slipping apart? That impossibility doesn’t bear thinking about.
But eventually, after six thousand years, they do touch, and stay.
And here this metaphor too breaks down, like all the others. But that doesn’t matter, because Aziraphale no longer needs a metaphor. Now, he has the real thing.
There is no toxicity in Crowley’s quicksilver.