Happy Holidays, hopeypyrope!
Dec. 1st, 2022 05:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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go_exchangeTitle: But Together We Have It All
Characters: Aziraphale, Crowley, assorted annoying roommates.
Author: Secret!
Summary: College student Aziraphale discovers that it might not be so bad having terrible roommates if he’s got a handsome fellow student offering the use of his couch for the night. Especially if it seems said student has got a crush on Aziraphale. Really especially if it seems he needs rescuing from his own awful roommates.
Rating: T
CW: mention of broken relationships with parents, school angst
Author’s note: hopeypyrope, thank you so much for the lovely prompt! I love the “omg they were roommates/there was only one bed” trope so much. I tried to put a different spin on it than I’ve used before. Title is from the phrase “We may not have it all together, but together we have it all.”
But Together We Have it All
Gabriel Messenger might have been God’s gift to the department of theology (pun definitely not intended), but he was a shite roommate.
Aziraphale had once tried on a set of distortion goggles in a physics lecture. They had lenses that shifted everything you saw to one side. When Aziraphale had tried throwing a ball at a target, everyone had laughed as it went wildly off-course. Gabriel acted like he had a pair of those goggles on, and maddeningly, nobody was laughing. Their fellow college students hung on his every word, even when Aziraphale could swear he wasn’t making sense. They ate up Gabriel’s pretentious ramblings and falsely humble insights. They followed him around. To his flat. At three in the morning. When SOME people were trying to SLEEP.
Aziraphale tried very hard to be a conscientious roommate. He didn’t make messes in common areas, didn’t help himself to food that wasn’t his, and kept quiet during sleeping hours. He’d thought that was the bare minimum standard for roommates, but apparently, Gabriel and their other two roommates, Michael and Sandy, felt that those were ridiculous and unattainable goals.
So now, at three-fifteen a.m., when Aziraphale had a Shakespeare exam looming (which he had mentioned specifically to his roommates), there was some sort of religious movie screening going on in their living room with Gabriel, Michael, Sandy, and who knew how many people crowding in. The lights were all on. Aziraphale could hear popcorn popping and wine bottles being opened. And though the movie was not even in English, they’d turned the volume up all the way, to get over the sound of the popcorn and vapid conversation.
Aziraphale felt a little bit tetchy. In five hours he was going to be expected to craft answers to questions on Hamlet, and now in his room, with his pillow over his head, all he could think about was how many people in the play got murdered and how simple those murders might be to replicate.
Aziraphale was not above a stab at passive aggression, so he made sure that he was seen by everyone in his sweatpants and t-shirt, lugging his pillow with him as he left the flat to find someplace else to sleep, possibly even in the damned hallway.
It failed. Everybody just waved.
The lights were on in the hallway, but with the door to the flat closed, it was quieter. Aziraphale found a corner and propped himself up with his pillow. Maybe he wouldn’t sleep, but at least he wouldn’t murder anyone. And nobody would be in the halls at this hour, right?
Ten minutes later, something ran into his foot, and a voice exclaimed, “Oh, shit!”
Aziraphale’s eyes shot open, and he realized he was looking up at a very attractive red-haired man, someone he’d met briefly, another student—what was his name? Crowley.
“Morning,” Aziraphale said, trying not to sound murderous.
“It’s not, really. Not yet.” Crowley was peering down at Aziraphale with a look of grave concern. “Is the heat out in your flat?”
“I am out,” Aziraphale said, with middle-of-the-night wit. “Because my roommates are in.”
“Ah.” Crowley glanced down the hall, where the noise was still audible. “Gabriel, right? I talked to him once. Well, he talked to me. Talked at me, I suppose. He seemed to find himself quite brilliant.”
“What did he say?”
Crowley shrugged. “Just because an ass brays doesn’t mean you have to listen to it. Look, you can’t stay here.”
“I’m not in your way,” Aziraphale said, a touch defensive. “If you would pick up your feet a bit.”
Crowley flushed. “No, I mean—I’ve got a couch in my flat, come sleep there.” His eyes widened. “Uh—you do remember me, right? We’ve talked. I’m Crowley, you’re Aziraphale—of course you know your own name—I just mean, I’m not some creepy stranger. I hope. Maybe I am strange—”
“That’s awfully nice of you,” Aziraphale said.
Crowley frowned severely. “Oh, shut it. Any enemy of Gabriel’s is a friend of mine.”
Crowley’s flat was extremely neat. Crowley cringed on seeing it, though. “Sorry about the mess. I’m the only one who does any cleaning around here.” He took a couple of dishes off of the counter and put them into the sink. “The couch is clean though, I just ran all the blankets through the washer.”
It did look like a comfortable couch, with brown cushions and two bright crocheted afghans thrown over the back.
“It’s a million times better than the hallway,” Aziraphale said. “I promise I’ll be out of here early, I have an exam.”
Crowley shook his head rapidly. “Oh, don’t worry. My roommates sleep a lot. Like a lot. You may not even see them. I hope. What’s your exam?”
“Shakespeare. I’m an English and business double major. My uncle has a bookshop, and I hope to take it over.”
Crowley perched on the arm of the couch. He was quite thin and fit easily. In fact, Aziraphale noted sleepily, there was probably plenty of room for both of them to lie on the couch if they curled up—
Aziraphale felt himself flush red. Fortunately, Crowley didn’t seem to notice. The light was dim in the living room, with only one lamp on.
“I’m a botany major,” Crowley was saying. “Was thinking maybe I’d have a flower shop someday.”
“Sounds lovely,” Aziraphale said, stifling a yawn.
Crowley leaped up. “Right, sorry, you’re exhausted. I’ll just—” he made some vague gesture “—uh, go to bed. So see you in the morning.”
“Thank you again,” Aziraphale said, already wrapping himself up in one of the blankets.
“Yeah,” Crowley said, in a softer voice. Aziraphale couldn’t see him now, but he sounded rather fond. “Don’t mention it.”
oOo
Aziraphale’s exam went very well. He’d slipped out of Crowley’s flat as quietly as possible that morning, before anyone there got up. Back in his own flat, there were only a few strangers left, draped about the furniture like the blankets Aziraphale had carefully folded on Crowley’s couch. After a little sleep, Aziraphale was more inclined to be quiet and not wake them. He’d made it to his test feeling more rested than he should have after such an unsettled night.
After his exam, Aziraphale picked up a box of donuts and made his way back to his building. But he didn’t go to his flat. He went to Crowley’s.
Crowley opened the door and his expression went on a journey from surprised to pleased to nervous to what seemed to be an attempt to have no expression in particular, only he didn’t quite pull it off.
“I brought donuts,” Aziraphale said. “As a thank you.”
“Oh. That’s really nice. You didn’t need to.” Crowley glanced behind him. “My uh, roommates are up now, so we should probably—”
Crowley was interrupted by a short person who appeared at his elbow and reached under him to take the donuts from Aziraphale. “Snacks!” they exclaimed. “Look, guys!”
“Those aren’t for you,” Crowley snapped, but he already looked defeated. “We share here,” he said, in a mocking voice. The door swung open a bit wider and Aziraphale saw three people digging through the box of donuts, trying them out and putting them back with bite marks in them.
“Ah,” Aziraphale said quietly. “It appears you understand about roommates.”
“Yeah.”
“So sorry, my dear.”
Crowley blinked at him—he really did have lovely hazel eyes, Aziraphale noted helplessly—and flushed pink. “Spose you might as well come in.” He gestured to his roommates. “Bee, Hastur, Ligur. This is Aziraphale. English lit and business. They’re all pre-med.”
Bee narrowed their eyes at Aziraphale before grinning. “Oho! So this is the angel.”
Aziraphale was probably making the same face he always made when someone recognized his name as some obscure celestial personage. “Right,” he said. “Yes. Don’t know what my parents were thinking.”
Bee titled their head to the side and stared without blinking, which was unnerving. “Parents?” they asked. “Don’t know about that. It’s just Crowley calls you—”
The sharp sound of a textbook slamming shut cut off the end of the sentence. “Okay,” Crowley said, bright red. “Got to study. So. We’re leaving now.”
“What, for the organic chem midterm?” Ligur spoke up. “Thought we told you. We’ve got the answers to that one.”
Bee’s mouth was full of donut, and crumbs fell out as they spoke. “Dude, don’t waste your time. None of us will ever pass it. You know that. The A students are getting C’s. Us C students don’t have a chance.”
“Excuse me?” Aziraphale said sharply. He hadn’t even meant to speak, but now everyone fell silent, looking at him. “You could get expelled for that. All your hard work and tuition for nothing!” Aziraphale looked at Crowley, who was looking at the floor.
“So what should we do?” Bee asked grumpily. “Just fail it?”
Aziraphale was surprised to be asked to explain this fundamental aspect of education. “Well, you study, and talk to your professor. And then yes, fail the exam, if that’s the best you can do. Then you work with the professor some more, retake the test or the class if you need. Don’t you want to actually learn the material?”
“Oh, I see why he calls you angel,”Bee said with a sneer. “Aren’t you just perfect?”
“That’s not—” This was more than Aziraphale usually talked to strangers and his hands were getting shaky. “I don’t mean it that way. I just meant, cheating is giving up. You don’t have to.”
Hastur was sneering at him now. “Thanks for the donuts, angel. Now why don’t you get the fuck out of here?”
“This is my flat too,” Crowley said, but he was gathering up his textbook and laptop.
“I’m sorry,” Aziraphale said in the stairwell, at the same time that Crowley said it. They laughed, but the pained expression stayed on Crowley’s face.
“Please tell me you’re not actually going to cheat on your exam,” Aziraphale said. They left the building, apparently on a path toward the library.
Crowley looked down at the textbook in his hands. “I wasn’t always a C student. But some stuff happened. My mom—well, she’s a lot. And we always argued, but last Christmas was really hard. We said some stuff. She told me not to come home. Now my grades are shite and I might lose my scholarship—”
Aziraphale stopped walking, and Crowley stuttered to a halt beside him, his long legs twisting around. “I’m so sorry,” Aziraphale said. “With my mom—I was the one who decided not to go home again. Last spring.”
“Oh, shit, angel—”Crowley flushed bright red in the late morning sun. “Aziraphale. That’s awful. I’m sorry.”
“What kind of scholarship are you on?”
Crowley blinked a bit, like he might be getting tears in his eyes. “Academic. I used to—I used to be good at everything. I don’t know what happened. Like I did something wrong and the world dropped out from under me.”
“Oh, my dear,” Aziraphale said. “That sounds terrifying. Listen, I don’t know if I can help, but I’d be happy to study with you.”
“You know anything about organic chemistry?” Crowley asked.
“Not a thing.” Aziraphale laid a hand on Crowley’s arm, feeling the heat of him through his sweatshirt. “Maybe you could try teaching me.”
oOo
Aziraphale spent the next two weeks studying organic chemistry, and by the end of it, he was becoming an expert on one thing—Anthony Crowley. He knew the man’s first name, knew that his laugh was different in the bright morning than in the sleepy stretch of afternoon, and different still after midnight, when all the stupidest things were funny. Aziraphale knew the man was actually brilliant, at chemistry and quite a few other things, and knew that when he told Crowley that, Crowley’s ears would turn red as his hair.
They stayed away from their flats as much as possible. Gabriel continued to hold court in whatever absurdist world he inhabited. (The other students loved him, but Aziraphale wondered if Gabriel’s professors saw him as a golden child or a nuisance.) Meanwhile in Crowley’s flat, Bee and their friends made messes they didn’t clean up and complained loudly about work they had no intention of doing.
As a return favor, Crowley helped Aziraphale with math. He had a way of explaining calculus like it was not some sort of demonic incantation designed to produce numbers at random.
Aziraphale told him that once and Crowley snorted a laugh. “Oh, no, it totally is. But I have faith in you to learn the spells, angel.”
They never talked about Crowley calling Aziraphale angel, but Aziraphale tucked that pretty word into his heart for safekeeping.
What Aziraphale wanted to learn most was what it would be like to kiss Crowley. Crowley often wore a little lipstick, red like his hair, or purple. Aziraphale wanted to know what the lipstick tasted like, if it would leave the ghost of itself on his own lips, faded pink or lilac in the shape of Crowley’s mouth.
Aziraphale often watched the way Crowley’s long fingers held a pencil, flipping it around idly, and wanted to learn how those fingers would feel against his own. Were they cold? Would Crowley welcome the heat of Aziraphale’s unfailingly warm hands?
But Aziraphale didn’t know if Crowley wanted to be touched or kissed or asked out for coffee, if he wanted Aziraphale’s head on his shoulder in the library when they shared a bench seat and a fruit salad from the campus cafe.
Aziraphale promised himself he’d ask—after Crowley’s exam.
oOo
The day of the exam, it was cold. Aziraphale met Crowley in the lobby of their building. Bee, Hastur, and Ligur were with him, or at least behind him. Crowley was wearing only jeans and a t-shirt.
“Where’s your coat?” Aziraphale asked, instead of saying hello, then kicked himself for it. Crowley didn’t need criticism first thing on exam day.
But Crowley didn’t look hurt, just frustrated. “Someone in my flat spilled soda on it last night, and someone else took all the quarters I had saved up for the washer and dryer.”
Aziraphale was already shrugging off his white jacket. “Here, wear mine. It’ll be a bit big on you, but maybe it will be good luck. I was wearing this one when we studied alkenes and alkynes, so it might jog your memory.”
Crowley took the jacket in one hand, and then seized Aziraphale by the arms, pulled him in, and kissed him. It lasted only a few seconds, and then Crowley jerked back, his eyes wide and his face red. “Oh. Sorry. I was nervous. You—you said good luck and I just thought—uh—”
“Let me give you some more luck,” Aziraphale said breathlessly, and kissed him back. He caught Crowley’s face in his hands, and the skin beneath his fingers was soft and warm.
When he pulled back, Crowley was smiling. “Oh,” he said. “Oh.”
Bee and the others were making rude noises behind them, but Aziraphale ignored them as he helped Crowley into the jacket. “You can do this,” he said. “Anthony Crowley, I have faith in you.”
oOo
The exam grades came in after a tense two days of waiting. Bee, Hastur, and Ligur got perfect scores.
In the hall outside Crowley’s flat, Aziraphale watched nervously as Crowley opened the grading app on his phone. His jaw was tense, and as he scrolled down, his other hand tapped on his leg. Then he looked up, eyes wide. “B-plus, angel. I passed. B-fucking-plus on the organic chem midterm. Oh, my god.”
Aziraphale squealed and did not care. Crowley threw his arms around him and swung him off of the ground.
“Will you let me take you out?” Crowley asked. “Please. Anywhere you want to go.”
“Ice cream,” Aziraphale said.
Crowley made a face. “Sounds like you think I’m a cheap date.”
“We’re all cheap dates, we’re in college. I’ll get a banana split, will that make you feel better?”
“You make me feel better,” Crowley said. He was still wearing Aziraphale’s white jacket. Aziraphale hoped he never gave it back.
They lingered over their ice cream, then held hands as they walked home. But when they got to the top of the stairs, they were greeted by a very distressing sight: Crowley’s clothes and belongings scattered across the hallway. Crowley’s posters had been ripped off the wall, all of their corners missing. His bedsheets were tangled up with whatever food Crowley had stashed in the fridge, and his precious plants were knocked over, leaking soil.
“He’s back,” Bee called. They stuck their head out of the door to the flat.
“What the fuck?” Crowley exclaimed.
Bee looked livid. “Guess who failed their midterms and got kicked out of the class and put on academic probation? Congratulations, you asshole. You tattled to teacher. Hope you’re happy.”
“I didn’t say a word,” Crowley protested.
Aziraphale gently set a plant upright, patting its soil like he could comfort it. “It didn’t seem to you a little suspicious that three C students would get perfect scores?” he asked. “Nobody had to tell teacher anything.”
“Oh, you shut the fuck up,” Hastur said, leaning out into the hallway. He gave some of Crowley’s clothes a kick. “We know you did it, Crowley. And you’re not staying here. Get us kicked out, we kick you out.”
“I have paid for my room!” Crowley said.
“Sort it out with the university,” Bee told him, and slammed the door.
Aziraphale gave Crowley a helpless look. “I would offer you a place in my flat, but—”
“Yeah, not keen on living with Gabriel.”
“Me, either.”
Crowley looked at him with a pensive expression. “Listen, maybe you and I could—I mean, I don’t know if you’d want to, but maybe we could get a place. Be roommates. Middle of the semester, so I don’t know what we’d find.”
Aziraphale swept soil back into another pot. “Let’s look.”
oOo
There was, above a flower shop near campus, a flat for rent. It was extremely small: a galley kitchen and sitting area barely big enough for a couch and table, a half bath, and one bedroom that couldn’t possibly fit more than one bed.
But it had a flower box outside the kitchen window, pretty blue walls, and a view of an apple tree. And it was vacant, mid-semester.
“It’s on the bus line to campus,” Aziraphale said, standing in the living area. “And it’s affordable, once you get your lease terminated.”
“I’ll take the couch,” Crowley said.
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m perfectly happy to be out here. I have experience sleeping on the couch, you know.”
“Right, so you shouldn’t have to do it again.” Crowley folded his arms over his chest and looked adorably stern.
“Could share,” Aziraphale said, in a faint voice. “It wouldn't have to be—well, anything we’re not ready for, but—I don’t know, a new flat and cuddling with you every night sounds to me like paradise.”
Crowley looked very desperately hopeful. “Well, I guess you’d know. You’re the angel.”
That was lovely
Date: 2022-12-01 07:31 pm (UTC)Just loved this story, it was well paced and I just loved how it made my heart all soft. The characters are all perfect!
Re: That was lovely
Date: 2022-12-02 06:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2022-12-01 07:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2022-12-02 06:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2022-12-02 02:16 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2022-12-02 06:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2022-12-02 04:27 am (UTC)Love Aziraphale’s ‘middle-of-the-night wit’
The demons are PRE-MED that’s terrifying!
“I used to—I used to be good at everything. I don’t know what happened. Like I did something wrong and the world dropped out from under me.”” Oof, this hurts
This is lovely and sweet and cozy and perfect for the start of GOHE, thank you!
(no subject)
Date: 2022-12-02 06:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2022-12-03 04:58 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2022-12-03 06:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2022-12-03 05:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2022-12-03 06:35 pm (UTC)AAA OMGOMGOMGOGMGOMGOGMG
Date: 2022-12-04 07:44 am (UTC)the demons being pre med and cheating on exams made me fear for the future of modern medicine.
very nice very good this will fuel me until finals are over thank you so much
-hopepyrope
Re: AAA OMGOMGOMGOGMGOMGOGMG
Date: 2022-12-04 07:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2022-12-05 10:55 am (UTC)"very desperately hopeful" <3 <3 <3
(no subject)
Date: 2022-12-05 04:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2022-12-05 08:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2022-12-05 11:14 pm (UTC)!!!
Date: 2022-12-06 04:19 am (UTC)'“Let me give you some more luck,”' Aziraphale coming in with the MOVES I loved this part!
Re: !!!
Date: 2022-12-06 04:22 am (UTC)I also thought the detail about Crowley wearing lipstick (and Aziraphale fixating on that) was so charming and fun.
The boys are so cute and I just wish them the very best. This was so lovely to read thank you for sharing!
Re: !!!
Date: 2022-12-06 04:38 pm (UTC)