Work Text:
Aziraphale stopped mid-sentence, slightly perturbed by what could have possibly interrupted his very important monologue about what they should do next.
Was that? Snoring?
Aziraphale glanced over toward the chair where his previously hard-headed turned mush-brained ex boss now sat, draped in one of Aziraphale’s tartan blankets with his head propped in his hand, drool dribbling down his wrist.
“Oh,” Aziraphale said, brow crinkling at the sight. “I suppose, if he’s human, that was bound to happen.”
“Could’ve picked a better century to nap, this one’s rather complicated at the moment,” Crowley drawled, taking an exasperated sip from his wine glass.
Aziraphale tutted his tongue at the demon, and stood to rearrange the blanket over Gabriel’s shoulders. “You know humans don’t choose when to sleep, that’s a luxury only you afford yourself. Come on dear, let’s allow him to rest, we can carry on in the kitchen.”
Crowley seemed more than happy to oblige leaving the former Archangel alone.
The two celestials poured several generous glasses of wine as they fussed over what to do. Aziraphale was trying to provide helpful suggestions, while Crowley seemed hell-bent (pardon the pun) on kicking the idiot back to the curb sans clothing.
“Really, Crowley, I don’t like him being here any more than you do but I can’t just kick him out…”
“Why not?”
“Well because that wouldn’t be very angelic of me, now would it?”
“Bygone loyalties still won’t scrub clean will they?”
“It has nothing to do with loyalty, Crowley, you know I was never very fond of Gabriel either. But we can’t just… just…”
“We can. You won’t.”
“Don’t take that tone with me, I’m trying to…”
Aziraphale paused and set his wine glass down carefully, unsure of the sound he swore he’d just heard from out in the bookshop.
“What?” Crowley asked, and Aziraphale held up a finger. The sound happened again, clearer this time. It was Gabriel. He seemed to be… whimpering?
Aziraphale stood and hurried back to the chair where he’d left Gabriel, and found him curled up, clutching the blanket and shivering.
“No please… you can’t do this to me…” Gabriel muttered in his sleep, his arms and neck twitching from the strain of whatever dream had seized him. Aziraphale felt Crowley approach at his elbow, his uncovered golden eyes watching Gabriel with a snakelike intensity.
“I’ll do anything… stop, please…” Gabriel cried, his shivering intensifying to erratic jerks and his breathing becoming frantic.
“Gabriel,” Aziraphale said urgently, stepping forward and placing a hand on Gabriel’s shoulder. When he didn’t wake, Aziraphale shook him slightly. “Gabriel!”
Gabriel jumped awake, his chest heaving and his strangely muted eyes darting around the bookshop before settling on Aziraphale’s soft blues.
“Easy, you’re awake now,” Aziraphale soothed, though it seemed of little use.
“Where am I? What… where was I? Who were those people? Why were they… hurting me?” Gabriel asked, his voice cracking weakly.
Aziraphale glanced back at Crowley, who shrugged. Could Gabriel’s unconscious mind possibly hold a clue to what was happening? Somewhere he couldn’t access when awake?
“What did they look like, Gabriel? The people who were hurting you?”
“I don’t… I can’t…” Gabriel stuttered, blinking quickly and rubbing his temple. “They… they were…” he winced and groaned, suddenly clutching his head. “I don’t know, I don’t know and it hurts to think about. It… hurts…” he whined, suddenly gagging as if he might be sick.
“Easy, easy,” Aziraphale cooed, pulling Gabriel’s hand away from his head and soothing him with just enough angelic energy to keep him from hurling his earlier cocoa all over the lovely vintage rugs. “Never mind all that. You should rest, somewhere other than a chair. There’s a bedroom upstairs, why don’t we…”
“Angel,” Crowley growled, and Aziraphale glanced back at him apologetically. That bedroom had only ever been shared by them, and them alone. Of course it felt an insult to allow anyone, let alone a bell end like Gabriel use that room, but what choice did he have?
“Crowley,” Aziraphale implored, trying desperately to ease his lover’s quarrel but the demon simply hissed and threw his hands up in the air, trudging away to presumably drown his sorrows in more wine.
Fine. Aziraphale could do this without him. He would just have to make reparations later.
Aziraphale wrapped Gabriel in the blanket and helped hoist him to his feet, which was no easy task given that the ex-Archangel was fairly wobbly in the aftermath of his first sleep, and likely first nightmare.
“Come with me, I’ll help you get some rest, alright?” Aziraphale said, and Gabriel froze for a moment. He simply blinked at Aziraphale, before nodding nervously and taking a few shaky steps.
Aziraphale helped haul him up the flight of stairs to the bookshop’s sole bedroom, which was seldom used but held enough poignant memories that even allowing Gabriel to step foot in it felt like betrayal.
But this wasn’t Gabriel, not exactly, Aziraphale reminded himself. This was a human, lost and alone and in need of help.
“There we are,” Aziraphale said as he deposited Gabriel onto the bed and tucked the sheets up over him. “You rest now. No more thoughts of where you came from, only where you are now,” Aziraphale said, waving a hand and performing a quick miracle to banish any potential nightmares. “You’re safe here.”
Gabriel’s eyes grew heavy, and Aziraphale sputtered at the sudden lurch in his own chest. If something like this could happen to Heaven’s most holy Archangel, it could happen to any angel. Aziraphale swallowed hard against the idea of so many millenniums of cherished memories, here on Earth with Crowley, just gone.
“Thank you,” Gabriel said earnestly, pulling Aziraphale from his thoughts. Aziraphale smiled genuinely for the first time that evening, and patted Gabriel’s shoulder.
“You’re welcome,” he said softly, clicking off the bedside lamp and departing the bedroom, the door latching quietly behind him.
Unsurprisingly, Crowley stood leaning against the wall in the hallway, swirling red wine in a glass that he didn’t appear to be drinking.
“Be a bit on-the-nose, don’t you think? If you did the good thing?” Crowley asked with an apologetic smirk.
“We’ll change the sheets,” Aziraphale teased as he followed Crowley toward the stairs.
“Burn ‘em, more like,” Crowley mumbled, and Aziraphale chuckled.
“You’d better not have drank all the wine, I’m going to need to be well-sloshed after all this.”
“Way ahead of you,” Crowley said as he sauntered into the kitchen, where several bottles had apparently been miracled from his own private reserve at his apartment. Crowley poured a hefty glass from a bottle he’d already uncorked and allowed to breathe.
“Bless you dear,” Aziraphale blushed, taking the glass Crowley offered.
“To the… world?” Crowley asked with a grimace, holding his glass up toward the angel.
Aziraphale considered the world he’d found himself in just this morning - content in his bookshop, his demon safe from hell, both of them just living their lives. Now it had all gone tits-up, and he couldn’t help the sneaking suspicion that he was about to be sucked right back in to whatever insipid games above and below had conjured up.
Only one thing to be said about it.
“Fuck.”