Work Text:
Aziraphale strutted into his technically open library, expecting it to be fully empty. After all, he’s taken so many precautions to keep it that way! Instead, he quickly stopped soon after entering, hearing the clickity clack of a keyboard and quiet grumbling. For a moment, the principality debated bringing his wings and sword out in an attempt to scare the loiterer, but ultimately thought better of it. Instead, he quietly snuck up behind them and whisper-said, “Would you like some tea, dearie?”
Immediately, the being jumped out of their seat and nearly fell to the ground, turning around in the process to reveal their face…
“Crowley!”
“Angel, for Someone’s sake! You nearly discorporated me!” Crowley retorted back.
“I’m sorry dear,” Aziraphale replied, gesturing to himself and Crowley. “I thought you were a customer that I don’t want to sell books to. In my defense, you said you were going to nap for a week in your apartment. I would have sneak-hugged you had I known.”
After a pause in which Crowley wiped off their black leggings, they replied, “It’s… a’ight, I suppose. I just woke up a few hours ago so I suppose I’m a bit jumpy.” They then went up to Aziraphale and gave him a nice, tight hug.
The angel reciprocated, before whispering “oh,” and then whispering to Crowley, “Do you have any pronoun preferences today, dear? I’m so sorry I forgot to ask before.”
Crowley chuckled and then replied, “She/her mostly, but I’m okay with anything usually. Thanks for asking, though. It feels nice to say.”
“Of course dear,” Aziraphale commented. The pair remained in the hug for some more time that could have ranged from a few seconds to an hour, before Crowley pecked Aziraphale on the nose and broke away from the hug. She then returned to her seat as Aziraphale watched, noticing her frown.
“Is there something wrong, Crowley?”
Crowley took a few seconds to respond. “I just… don’t know what to say today. I want to make a twitter post about trans day of visibility, and I just don’t know what to say.”
“Oh, there’s a trans day of visibility?” Aziraphale said in shock and happiness. “Is that new? It must be new, otherwise I would have known about it by now.”
Crowley shook her head. “It started when we were taking care of Warlock, and then lockdown had just started the first go around we had our hands free for, so of course we wouldn’t have heard about it. Hence why I need my post about it to be perfect,” she added under her breath.
“Well, I still wish I had heard about it sooner,” Aziraphale affirmed. “Also dear,” he added. “It’s okay if it’s not perfect. How long have you been working at this for?”
“Mayyybe a few hours?” Crowley guiltily replied.
Aziraphale looked down at his partner with a sad smile on his face. He grabbed a chair to sit in to be level with Crowley, took a deep breath, and said, “I know you want everything to be perfect. I do too. It’s something that’s ingrained in us by Heaven and Hell, a mindset we need to get out of.
“I know you want to write something perfect because you probably have a lot of followers, but also because you care a lot about trans people. We both do. We’ve both had to go through time here and see the highs and lows of this community. I think it’s reasonable to assume you want to support them as best as you can with this message, but it’s clearly eating at you. I haven’t seen you this…flustered since… I guess the not-pocalypse but before that when you requested the holy water.”
“I guess, but can you really blame me, Aziraphale?” Crowley replied as she stood up and began pacing the room. “I’ve spent a lot of time on the internet recently and as good as it can be it is also something I would’ve gladly taken credit for back when I worked for Hell. Everything you type has potential to be viewed by millions and one wrong phrase can cause an uproar. If I don’t make this perfect I could cause at best confusion and at worst I could steer people away from trying to be accepting towards us! Not to mention that this will be so many people’s first trans day of visibility realizing who they really are and - and - I wouldn’t want to make them doubt themselves. One message can cause so much good and so much harm, angel, and I don’t know what I’ll do if I cause harm!”
After her speech was finished, Crowley sat back down in her chair, and took off her glasses to wipe her eyes as Aziraphale absorbed her message and tried to piece together a response. Finally, he gently said, “If you don’t post it, dear, you’ll never have a chance to do good. I’ve noticed a lot of good acts over the years have some risk involved in them, but so many of them were worth it, like giving you the holy water. If you don’t want to make a twitter post anymore that’s alright, but I’m going to go make some tea and I want to spend some time with you after that, so if you want to post you’ll have a few minutes. I’m sure your audience will love whatever you have to say. I know I will.”
Aziraphale gave Crowley a kiss before walking away to make tea.
15 minutes later, Crowley had tweeted a thread and was enjoying some time with Aziraphale. It read:
I honestly wasn’t sure what to say about today, International Trans Day of Visibility. There’s so much to say. I could delve into a history of trans people, how we’ve always existed in a cis world. I could explain how few rights we have, how we are still fighting for equality.(1)
I can talk about how incredibly lucky I am to be able to be out and visible, and how so many others cannot or are afraid to be, and how the fight goes beyond legal recognition. I can even talk about how being trans isn’t all sad like media may make it out to be, how something(2)
as simple as being able to state your pronouns brings so much happiness. There’s so much to get through that picking just one thing is exhausting, because trans issues and being trans are so complex and overlapping. (I may or may not have spent hours working on this because (3)
I couldn’t choose what to talk about or how to talk about it. I suppose twitter makes you overthink things, huh?😅) What I know I can say, as repetitive as it is: the trans community has made so much progress, and we still have so much more to do. If you can, please advocate for(4)
trans rights, even if it’s something as simple as signing a petition or retweeting a thread. To any trans person reading this, your identity is real and amazing and you are loved. I hope that one day you can be who you are, as visible as you want to be. (5)
There has been so much progress even though there have been steps backwards, and hopefully we can keep moving forward. 💙💗🤍💗💙 (6/6)
By the end of the day, it had 200 comments, 5,000 retweets, 4,000 likes, and Crowley was proud of taking a risk. At the very least, it allowed her to spend some time baking and watching tv with Aziraphale. By the end of the day, she was happy.