Happiest of Holidays, missingrache!

[waxbean.livejournal.com]

Title: The Vices of Man, Abridged
To: missingrache
From: winged_sandels
Pairing: Aziraphale/Crowley
Rating: PG-13
Notes: Happy holidays! Hope just wing kink is ok; I tried history and failed miserably



“You know, I was thinking. Why are there only seven?”

Aziraphale blinked at him from over his embroidery. In a politely interested sort of way.

“Don’t you think there ought to be more than that?” Crowley asked, waving a hand expansively. He was lounging on the sofa across the room, careful that his shoes muffed the armrest.

“I‘m not sure I follow you, old boy.”

“Sins,” said Crowley. “Seven sins. Lust, wrath, gluttony, sloth, greed… and the other two. Only seven. Don’t you think that’s a little restrictive?”

“Pride and envy,” said Aziraphale primly.

“Right, right. But shouldn’t there be more?”

“I don’t see why.” Aziraphale picked at a knot in his cross-stitching. “The less sins the better, I’d say.”

“It’s not a matter of less sins or more sins.” Crowley’s hand-waving was getting impatient.

“Now you just aren’t making any sense.”

“What I mean is, naming sins this or that won’t change how many of them humans decide to practice. They’re just names. But if we’re taking these names so damn seriously--to have them all over our paperwork and everything--there should be an awful more of them.”

Aziraphale brightened. “Oh. I bet you just got back from a Review of The Deadly Vices lecture, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” said Crowley, sitting up. “And it was the stupidest-- Honestly, you’d think they’d modernize by now. Things aren’t so black-and-white and… seven anymore!”

“I don’t see what you’re so upset about. In the end, it all comes down to those seven, doesn’t it?”

“No,” said Crowley. “It doesn’t.”

Aziraphale gave him a long-suffering look. “You think so?”

“What about those kids that go about scraping their keys across your car just for the kicks?” Crowley asked. (This had never happened to Crowley personally because the Bentley had Mechanisms To Prevent Such Things, but he’d witnessed and encouraged it enough in his time.)

“Wrath, maybe?” said Aziraphale to his embroidery. “Certainly pride…”

“What about the kids who do it just to get in favor with the other kids?”

“Envy? Sloth?”

“More like spinelessness, if you ask me,” said Crowley. “Those are two that should be added to the list. Just-For-The-Kicks and Spinelessness.”

“Now, I‘m sure those would fall under pride at sloth, at least…”

Crowley shrugged and lay back down. “I’m only saying there are nuances.”

Aziraphale bit his thread and gave his finished project a light pat. It was a pillowcase with a stitching of a bird on the front (although it might look more like a croquet mallet if you weren‘t told beforehand that it was a bird). He showed it to Crowley.

Crowley determinedly made no comment, but looked at it anyway from behind his sunglasses.

“There’s hardly room for nuance in the work of Good and Evil, old boy,” Aziraphale said, spreading the pillowcase back over the table with a smile. He nicked his finger as he was tidying up and Crowley looked far too innocent.

- - -

“Alleluia!” said Crowley.

It wasn’t a very nice word in a demon’s vocabulary. Aziraphale winced.

“Something the matter, old boy?”

“Why’ssss there a box here?”

“This is my point. The boxes are a hassle, which is why I needed to unload them as soon as possible.”

“But why is there a box right here?” Crowley hissed, glaring at it. It sat right in the doorway he had just recently walked through (or tripped through, to be more precise). He had to glare over his shoulder because he was currently carrying a similar box in his arms and it vivaciously blocked his vision.

“Well, that’s the movers’ fault, I’m afraid…”

“And why,” Crowley grunted out the word as he lowered his box into a corner, “can’t we just will these books onto the shelves? Do tell me that, again?”

“Well, after those boys went to all the trouble of moving them over here for me, it seems painfully ironic to just flick a finger and be done with it when they’d put in so much work…”

“And why why why did you even hire movers in the first place instead of wishing the books here? Again?”

“They were something of delinquents. I thought some old-fashioned hard work would be good for them. Don’t you?”

Crowley collapsed onto the sofa and rubbed his forehead. “And most importantly,” he said. “Why am I the one doing all the work?” He didn't add "after I went through the trouble of coming over" because demons never go through the trouble of coming over; they just happen to appear sometimes when their enemy-friends coincidentally need a hand or two.

Aziraphale smiled amicably. “The same reason.”

“I am not the same as a delinquent, angel,” said Crowley.

“Now, now, old boy. As a demon I understand it’s hard for you to grasp the joys of helping others, but I assure you you’re doing excellent work.”

The effort Crowley put into looking sour was rather wasted due to the sunglasses.

- - -

“What about those people who are just too thick to understand it when they’re being an arse?”

Aziraphale was drawn from his apple pastry not without irritability. “What about them?”

“That should be a sin, shouldn’t it?” Crowley’s breakfast consisted of very bitter tea. Some might even say it was unnaturally bitter. It was something of a home recipe.

“That again? Ignorance is hardly a sin…”

“Why not? It certainly isn’t an excuse.” Crowley was reaching his stride now. He was smiling. “And wouldn’t you just like to thwart the ever-loving out of some of those people?”

“Thwarting isn’t about wanting to,” said Aziraphale with dignity. “It’s rather an angel’s job not to want to. Not to want anything, for that matter.”

“And what about those people who always prance about acting like they’re the portrait of saintly righteousness and throwing stones at the baser serfs?"

Aziraphale shot him a very sanctified glare. “What, pray, is the point you’re trying to make here, Crowley?”

Crowley sipped his tea. “We’re up to eleven now,” he said. “That’s all.”

- - -

There was a row of morning doves perched on a telephone wire. Five plump, unkempt, gray ones. And one plump, unkempt, white one.

Crowley was scowling at the white one like it owed him money.

Across the way, a young man was being ushered into the backseat of a police car, his hands restrained behind his back. He had a bruise on his cheek and an officer’s hand shoving at the back of his head.

The police car drove off, and Crowley’s scowl didn't budge.

“Didn’t I tell you to lay off of that one?” Crowley snapped.

“Don’t blame me,” said the white dove. “He brought it unto himself. You know how these things go.”

“That’s not what I--” Crowley stamped his foot. “Look. Would you just get down here?”

The dove detached itself from the wire with a fluttering, chubby sort of grace and fell into a bush. The bush shook and Aziraphale plucked a feather from his now-existent sweater.

“As I said, it was his own doing.”

“That’s not the point,” said Crowley. “The point is I told you to lay off of that one!”

Aziraphale inspected him, eyebrows raised. “You’re really angry, aren’t you?”

“Of course I am!” said Crowley. “You went against our Arrangement. And Hel- Chri- hang it all, you didn’t even know the kid!” Crowley’s cheeks were blotted pink along the cheekbones.

Aziraphale fidgeted. “It isn’t against our Arrangement,” he said. “You can’t just claim an area of noninterference unless I claim one also. An equal exchange, you know. That’s what we agreed on, isn’t it?”

“No--Yes, but. But that isn’t the point!”

“Then what is the point?”

Crowley abruptly turned away from him, then back again. “The point is, you could do me a favor every once in a while, couldn’t you?” There was something strange about the way he said it.

Before Aziraphale got a chance to reply, Crowley was halfway down the street.

- - -

It was chilly so Aziraphale was wearing an overcoat and a lumpy thing that might have been a home-knit scarf. His fingers were pink as they pinched off bread for the ducks (and a piece for himself every now and then).

Crowley also wore a lumpy thing, but he made his look stylish.

“Telemarketing,” Crowley said.

“Greed. Definitely greed,” said Aziraphale.

“Don’t be so sure,” said Crowley. “There’s a lot more to it than that. Telemarketing takes a certain skill. Dastardly skill. There’s nuance to it.”

“Again with the nuance…” Aziraphale threw a nice crusty bit to a mallard.

“And television. At the very least television should get its own sin.”

“No, no. It still all goes back to the seven.”

“Nighttime news?”

Aziraphale sighed. “Would you please give this up? You’re getting less and less creative with it.”

Crowley snorted.

It was just starting to get dark. An airplane was inching across the navy strip of blue just over the horizon, leaving a pink-orange tail in its wake. One of the ducks quacked a colleague out of the way before snuffling a bread piece.

“Aziraphale,” said Crowley. “You know those kids with the football? The group that’s always scampering about at night these days and breaking windows?”

“Do I ever.” Aziraphale sniffed.

Crowley turned to him. “Lay off of them will you?” he asked. “Just for a little bit.”

Aziraphale’s face couldn’t seem to decide whether it should frown or look guilty. “They’ve been causing a lot of trouble, you know…”

“They’re not as bad as you‘d think.”

“Are you really in a position to judge that?”

The silence then was a little too silent.

Crowley watched the ducks as they bobbed and ate and indignantly awaited more bread. “You know,” he said, “by feeding these ducks every now and again, we’re keeping them here more than they‘d stay otherwise. Normal ducks migrate sooner, don’t they? But not these fellows.”

“No, I suppose not,” said Aziraphale, vaguely relieved.

“And staying here in this exact same place year-round… That causes a build-up doesn’t it? Of waste. Duck waste. And does that sink or float?”

Aziraphale’s nose wrinkled. “I really don’t know, old boy, and I don’t care to find out.”

“I imagine it does a bit of both, don’t you think?”

“I rather don’t think about it at all, really.”

“The sinking bits are all well and good for bottom-feeders. But the floating bits. If there are enough floating bits, that’ll change the surface of the lake entirely, won’t it? It’ll be harder for sunlight to get through. And you know what? No sunlight, no plants. All of the algae and whatnot will die, and you know what else? No algae or plants, no fish, no anything. All the native species here will die because the whole system’s been mucked up and this lake will deteriorate into nothing more than a barren cesspool of uninhabitable floating bits. All because of those ducks. And our bread.”

Aziraphale paled. His bread loaf slipped from his fingers.

“That’s twelve then,” said Crowley. He threw the rest of his slices into the water, turned up his collar, and stomped off.

- - -

They were rather grubby-faced children but usually they were grinning wide enough that you couldn’t notice it. They were the sort of children who grinned in a way that could clean anything.

They weren’t grinning now.

The police officer just about towered over them and frowned like a man well-versed in the art of frowning. “You three are out late,” he said.

The kids glanced at one another, faces lowered.

“Where are your parents?”

No answer.

“Do you three know the sort of trouble you’ve been causing?”

Shuffle.

“Do you three know the sort of trouble you’re in?”

One of them had started crying.

The officer continued to frown. He shifted their football under his arm. “Into the car,” he said. “I’m taking you to the station, unless one of you wants to own up to where you live. You can be sure I’ll be talking to your parents either way.”

The crying kid was flat-out bawling. “Not my dad! Please don’t tell my dad!” he said. But one of his friends shushed him with an elbow to the rib.

Crowley was sitting on a stoop a ways down the street. Fuming. He tapped his feet jerkily and glowered at the ground, grinding his teeth.

A white dove sat on the windowsill above him.

“I’m getting a bit sick of this Arrangement,” said Crowley.

The dove bristled worriedly. “Now, dear boy, I’m not at fault here,” it said.

“Right. Because neither of us is entirely sure that angels can be at fault.”

“That’s inconsequential,” said the dove. “Those three got into this trouble themselves. It's their own doing. You know how these things happen.”

Crowley had an affinity for moving quickly and fluidly in any of his forms, be it somewhat-snake, or somewhat-maggot, or somewhat-man. In one motion he picked up a stone from near his shoe, stood, spun around, and hurled it at the bird with all the considerable might a supernatural being can muster. It wasn’t quite a demonic smiting. But there was a rather sickening crunching sound.

Too quickly and too fluidly he turned back to the children and the officer, raising his hand again to interfere. But he stopped.

The children were all giggling. They sat in the back of the police car, but they grinned the usual grins that took up half of their faces. The officer’s frown was gone, mostly because he was too busy looking bewildered. He was checking under the hood of his car. After a moment, he reached in and pulled something pink out from where the engine should have been.

It was a rather inadequately embroidered pillowcase.

The children were laughing almost too hard to move, but they somehow managed to stumble their way out of the car. The officer jerked out of his reverie long enough to run after them, still too confused to shout.

Crowley waved a hand numbly and made him trip over a suddenly-untied shoelace. The children were around a corner and out of sight only a second later. The boy that had been crying earlier was clutching their football to his skinny, t-shirted chest.

The officer swore, but he couldn’t seem to muster the cognition to resume his chase.

Crowley was feeling rather similar.

He turned very, very slowly back to the windowsill, but the dove had already gone.

- - -

The bell above the door in Aziraphale's bookshop screeched like rusted nails only half-heartedly as Crowley entered. The shop was dark and filled to the brim with a clotting sort of silence, but there was a sliver of light under the door to the backroom.

Aziraphale was sitting at the backroom's table, grimacing. He was in his true form, his shirt folded in his lap and a thin layer of light hovering over his skin. He sat with his wings spread wide on either side of him. Or at least one of them. His left wing was bent in a way that wings are most certainly not supposed to bend, angelic or otherwise, and he was haltingly attempting to set it back in place over his shoulder. The feathers were blotted red.

Crowley cleared his throat.

Aziraphale looked miserable. "This smarts, you know. Really, a rock of all things…"

"How long had that been there?"

"What?"

"That… thing," Crowley finished lamely.

"My project? Since the officer parked--ah!" Aziraphale winced and jerked his hands away from his wing.

Crowley's face was hard to read and somewhat pinched. "But you said…"

"I said I wasn't the one who did it! They got themselves into trouble; I had no hand in it. I would have gone on to explain what I'd done with the pillowcase, but you had to go and throw things at me…" Aziraphale stopped, the annoyance in his voice dying before his sentence did. It had been weak to begin with. He looked even more miserable.

Crowley, meanwhile, looked more and more pinched. "Huh," he said stiffly. He strode to Aziraphale's side.

"I mean… Well, I did have a hand with that other fellow getting caught, but… This time I thought… Oh, I don't know," Aziraphale mumbled. "You didn't have to throw things, though..."

Crowley ran a hand over the injured wing, trailing from rumpled coverts to broken primaries and grazing a mat of blood. Aziraphale shivered.

"Sorry," Crowley said, stroking a snapped feather. As his fingers traveled along its veins, the feather straightened and shed the dark stain that had crimped its side.

Aziraphale didn't respond.

Crowley pressed his lips to the bloodiest spot on the wing and exhaled. The feathers quivered. Aziraphale gasped just slightly as the wing unfurled of its own accord, perfectly white again, every feather back in place, the blood and mess gone all at once. If you had an eye for it, you might even say it was cleaner and neater than the wing that hadn't been injured.

Aziraphale sighed. "Me too," he said, rolling his shoulders. "Sorry, I mean."

"Hm," said Crowley. He rubbed his thumb absently through the downy fluff that brushed the angel's back.

"Thank you," said Aziraphale. "It feels much better now."

"Hm," said Crowley.

Aziraphale jumped. He jumped because Crowley's lips were now pressed to his shoulder blade, just under the wing junction. "Er. Crowley?"

"Mmm?" said Crowley.

"I, er. Think I'm back in tip-top shape, thank you."

"Mmhmm." Crowley's lips shuffled down Aziraphale's spine.

"Do you want something to, er, to, er--" All at once the word drink became very difficult to say. "Crowley, what in heaven's name are you--?"

"Lust," said Crowley. "With nuance." When Aziraphale turned to look at him he was grinning.

"You really are incorrigible sometimes…" But Aziraphale smiled also, if a bit lopsidedly.

- - -

They did have drinks a few hours later, when they were both considerably warmer and sleepier. They sat side by side on the sofa, rather closer than necessary.

"You know what," said Crowley, swirling his wineglass, "I've changed my mind."

Aziraphale blinked at him, slowly because his eyelids were nicely difficult to lift at the moment. "Oh?"

"There don't need to be any more sins."

"Finally! Seen the light have you?"

Crowley nodded, his head nudging the angel's shoulder. "There should be fewer."

"Really, now?" Aziraphale massaged his temple. "And how do you figure that?"

"There should be only one deadly sin. That's all we need, I think."

"And what sin is that?"

Crowley gave a flourish. "Being A Bastard," he said, and grinned. "Although, as always, there's room for interpretation."

He clacked his glass against Aziraphale's, and both of them refilled with wine.

Surprisingly enough, Aziraphale didn't argue the matter.