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kat_lair***
Title: Purled Protection
Author:kat_lair
Fandom: Good Omens
Pairing: Aziraphale/Crowley
Tags: Spooktober, Autumn, Gift Giving, Pre-Relationship, Crowley is a Mess (Good Omens), Protective Aziraphale (Good Omens), some subtle d/s vibes sn(e)aked in, Post-Canon, Not Season/Series 02 Compliant
Rating: G
Word count: 1,896
Summary: “What’s this?” Crowley is holding the parcel gingerly, at arm’s length, as if afraid it’s going to explode in his hands.
Author notes: Spooktober 2024, Day 14/31. Prompt/theme: Scarf.
Purled Protection on AO3
“What’s this?” Crowley is holding the parcel gingerly, at arm’s length, as if afraid it’s going to explode in his hands. It’s wrapped in brown paper and tied with red string, plain but elegant, if Aziraphale says so himself. He’s even written Crowley’s name on top in quality ink and his best cursive, even though such a flourish is rather redundant.
“It’s a gift,” Aziraphale answers patiently. He takes care to sound a bit distracted and not look at Crowley directly, doing his best to downplay the gesture to minimise Crowley’s deep discomfort of having nice things done to him. “You open it.”
Slowly, Crowley sets the parcel on the kitchen table and sits down to stare at it some more. After a few seconds, he takes off his sunglasses, presumably to scrutinise the gift even more closely. Silently, Aziraphale awards himself a point like he does every time Crowley lets his guard down in his presence, something that has been happening more and more since the recent… events. Not-events.
The kitchen is a recent addition to the back of the bookshop, necessary now that Aziraphale has regular visitors who prefer to witness their tea coming from a kettle rather than miracled up from holy energies. Aziraphale sighs, but inwardly, and starts pulling bakery boxes from the cupboards and rattling the cups and saucers, keeping his back mostly turned to Crowley’s direction to provide an illusion of being unobserved. Over the millennia, however, Aziraphale has quite perfected the art of looking from the corner of his eyes and seeing things from an angle that would be impossible for any eye limited by human physiology. It means that he is quite able to both pour cream into a pretty little porcelain jug and watch Crowley cautiously tug at the strings of the parcel.
“It’s soft,” Crowley observes after having poked at the gift. He sounds puzzled by this, perhaps even more than receiving a gift in the first place, as if he’d expected something hard with sharp edges and unforgiving angles. Maybe a book. That would make sense, to expect Aziraphale’s gift to be paper bound in leather.
“That it is,” Aziraphale agrees. “Tea, dear?” He asks for the sake of misdirection, already pouring it out into his best cups, the amber liquid glinting in the afternoon light warmly.
By the time he sets the tray – heavy with cakes and dainty sandwiches, an ornate teapot, cream and sugar and cups and plates and spoon, all the little signs of his love that are safe to share every day – Crowley has progressed into picking at the thick wax seal keeping the edges of the wrapping paper together.
He accepts the drink and a plateful of food absentmindedly, putting some of it into his mouth out of habit more than an actual choice. Aziraphale sips at his own tea and nibbles at the edge of a rather lovely drizzled lemon cake he’d produced from a nearby bakery this morning. Definitely worth a patronage, that place.
Eventually, Crowley’s tentative efforts – Aziraphale takes no offence, he knows that his snake needs to acclimatise to new situations slowly – result in the sides of the paper coming apart, revealing mounds of soft black wool. Aziraphale is intimately aware of the contents of course, having laboured over them for some considerable time, including abandoning earlier attempts and starting anew several times until he was satisfied with the results. Throughout his long years on Earth, he had delighted in the ingenuity and diversity of human art forms countless times, but with the exception of writing and the periodic obsessions with the latest dance trends, Aziraphale’s own attempts had been rather limited. Fibre arts, he’d discovered, were not what one would call a natural talent for him. And yet, he’d persisted.
Crowley’s current scarf, whilst undoubtedly stylish, is no match for the autumn weather in London. Aziraphale can see the way the skin of his neck gets wet and pebbled with goosebumps, practically unprotected against the wind and the rain. And while this year is hardly the first time Aziraphale has noticed such a thing or worried about it, it is the first time he feels able to do something about it. And, apparently, that something involves learning the arcane art of knitting.
The results are now laid out over Crowley’s arms, long black coils of the softest cashmere wool, knitted into careful rows of stitches, mostly neat but wavering here and there like letters in a love note, the writer sure of his message but still overcome by the emotion every now and then. Woven within the midnight black wool there are small, silver stars, almost invisible from afar except for the shimmer they lend to the garment.
“Oh.” Crowley says. There are whole volumes of meaning in that one word. He strokes a hand along the scarf, a smooth, gentle caress that makes them both shudder from the sensory pleasure of it. “It’s…” He doesn’t seem to know how to finish the sentence, but his fingers are curling into the yarn, tightly, possessively, as if he’s afraid someone will take the gift away from him.
Aziraphale’s heart feels like it breaks and is mended a million times in a span of a nanosecond. There is absolutely no stopping the way his hands shake, just a little, as he puts his drink down and reaches over. They are sitting kitty-corner from each other so it’s an easy distance to cross, though not something Aziraphale takes for granted when it has been insurmountable, incomprehensible for so long. But now his hands cover Crowley’s, fingers curling in, gently pulling the scarf free from his grip.
“Let me, dear,” he says before the question in Crowley’s eyes has a chance to morph into anything like disappointment.
It’s clear he doesn’t realise what Aziraphale is going to do until the moment he starts unwinding Crowley’s old scarf, carefully folding it as he goes. Aziraphale is so focused on his task, trying so hard not to stroke the pale, cool skin of Crowley’s neck, that he doesn’t look up until the back of his knuckle drags over the hollow of Crowley’s throat, mostly on accident but perhaps not entirely, and Crowley draws in a quick, hissing breath. Aziraphale’s gaze snaps up. The look on Crowley’s face is the most sacred, the most beautiful thing he has ever seen, and Aziraphale has seen galaxies made and unmade, seen the earth when it was young and unspoiled. And yet this, Crowley’s expression completely open and vulnerable, his mouth slack, flush high on his cheeks, his usually sharp eyes grown hazy, surpasses all of that.
“Let’s see how this new scarf fits,” Aziraphale says, nonsensically, just to keep the moment and two of them tethered. Taking his hands off Crowley entirely seems both impossible and like something he shouldn’t do right now, so Aziraphale opens his palm, fits it over the curve of Crowley’s neck, until he’s cupping the back of it gently but firmly.
Crowley’s pupils widen. His mouth opens like he’s going to say something, but no words come out. Aziraphale wants to lean in and kiss him, to see if he could coax some out anyway. Maybe not words but sounds.
Instead, he picks up the new scarf, the wool butter soft and smooth against his skin, and starts winding it around Crowley’s neck. Aziraphale had knitted this one quite long as well, knowing that Crowley quite liked the dramatic flair of the ends flapping behind him in the wind as he sauntered about. It was wider though, and of course thicker, more seasonally appropriate than the old scarf, and as Aziraphale loops it around, every inch of Crowley’s throat and the most distracting triangle of bare skin at the top of his chest where he’s neglected to do up the buttons is properly covered. Aziraphale tamps down on the disappointment, instead focusing on the glow of satisfaction knowing that his demon will be warm and cosy, and the second, brighter glow of anticipation, because perhaps he will get a chance to help Crowley out of the new scarf as well, at the end of the day.
“There,” he says, arranging the ends of the scarf just so, for maximum aesthetic and drama. “How does it feel?”
Crowley blinks a few times, seeming to shake himself awake. “It’s…” Tentatively his hands come up and he feels around the scarf, now snugly wrapped around him, fingers trailing over the edges, tips touching down on each little star, lightly, like a blessing he’s no longer capable of. “It’s warm,” Crowley murmurs. “Feels like…” His gaze flits up to Aziraphale’s and then drops down again.
Suddenly, Aziraphale is desperate to hear the end of that sentence. “What does it feel like, darling?” He really needs to start watching the endearments, but ever since he and Crowley abandoned all sides except their own, they just keep falling off his lips like spring rain, gentle and insistent.
Then again, maybe he needs to use more of them. Crowley sways closer, both of them leaning toward each other, tea things quite forgotten between them. “It, uh…” His fingers start twining themselves into the fringed ends of the scarf and Aziraphale grasps them in his own, shorter, softer, thicker ones. Somehow, the fit is just right. “Feels like this,” Crowly says, almost too low to hear. “Feels like you’re holding me.” He doesn’t look Aziraphale in the eye, but his grip is tight, tight, and so, so dear.
Aziraphale has done all manner of miracles in his long years but holding himself back and not kissing Crowley right now surely qualifies as his biggest feat. He wants to, and he thinks that Crowley would welcome it, but the moment is too fragile and this – Crowley accepting the gift in the first place, admitting how it makes him feel out loud – is already a lot, far more than Aziraphale ever thought possible for so long.
So instead he simply says, “That’s perfect then,” and makes a fuss of adjusting Crowley’s scarf just so, segueing into a rambling monologue about everything he learned about yarn weight and quality, the variety of stitches he mastered (small) and those he didn’t (a move diverse sample for sure), all the while tugging Crowley up and into what was a stylish, if thin, black blazer and is now a heavy peacoat, still black of course but sporting antique silver buttons. Crowley huffs about it but doesn’t comment otherwise.
“A brisk autumn day like this,” Aziraphale babbles, pulling on his own outer garments, “mustn’t waste it inside. Besides,” he adds, glancing behind himself to check that Crowley is following him to the door, “we need to test how well that scarf holds against the weather.”
Crowley flashes him a grin and puts his sunglasses back on onehanded, the other flipping the end of the scarf over his shoulder with a flourish. “Lead the way, Angel,” he says.
Aziraphale intends to. They’ve got many steps to still travel together and if Crowley needs him to take some of them first, then Aziraphale can and will.
The October sun that greets them as they exit the bookshop is a pale, hazy thing, the wind biting, and the sheer sensory cacophony of Soho on a Monday afternoon almost overwhelming.
Aziraphale has never experienced a more beautiful day.
***
Title: Purled Protection
Author:
kat_lair Fandom: Good Omens
Pairing: Aziraphale/Crowley
Tags: Spooktober, Autumn, Gift Giving, Pre-Relationship, Crowley is a Mess (Good Omens), Protective Aziraphale (Good Omens), some subtle d/s vibes sn(e)aked in, Post-Canon, Not Season/Series 02 Compliant
Rating: G
Word count: 1,896
Summary: “What’s this?” Crowley is holding the parcel gingerly, at arm’s length, as if afraid it’s going to explode in his hands.
Author notes: Spooktober 2024, Day 14/31. Prompt/theme: Scarf.
Purled Protection on AO3
“What’s this?” Crowley is holding the parcel gingerly, at arm’s length, as if afraid it’s going to explode in his hands. It’s wrapped in brown paper and tied with red string, plain but elegant, if Aziraphale says so himself. He’s even written Crowley’s name on top in quality ink and his best cursive, even though such a flourish is rather redundant.
“It’s a gift,” Aziraphale answers patiently. He takes care to sound a bit distracted and not look at Crowley directly, doing his best to downplay the gesture to minimise Crowley’s deep discomfort of having nice things done to him. “You open it.”
Slowly, Crowley sets the parcel on the kitchen table and sits down to stare at it some more. After a few seconds, he takes off his sunglasses, presumably to scrutinise the gift even more closely. Silently, Aziraphale awards himself a point like he does every time Crowley lets his guard down in his presence, something that has been happening more and more since the recent… events. Not-events.
The kitchen is a recent addition to the back of the bookshop, necessary now that Aziraphale has regular visitors who prefer to witness their tea coming from a kettle rather than miracled up from holy energies. Aziraphale sighs, but inwardly, and starts pulling bakery boxes from the cupboards and rattling the cups and saucers, keeping his back mostly turned to Crowley’s direction to provide an illusion of being unobserved. Over the millennia, however, Aziraphale has quite perfected the art of looking from the corner of his eyes and seeing things from an angle that would be impossible for any eye limited by human physiology. It means that he is quite able to both pour cream into a pretty little porcelain jug and watch Crowley cautiously tug at the strings of the parcel.
“It’s soft,” Crowley observes after having poked at the gift. He sounds puzzled by this, perhaps even more than receiving a gift in the first place, as if he’d expected something hard with sharp edges and unforgiving angles. Maybe a book. That would make sense, to expect Aziraphale’s gift to be paper bound in leather.
“That it is,” Aziraphale agrees. “Tea, dear?” He asks for the sake of misdirection, already pouring it out into his best cups, the amber liquid glinting in the afternoon light warmly.
By the time he sets the tray – heavy with cakes and dainty sandwiches, an ornate teapot, cream and sugar and cups and plates and spoon, all the little signs of his love that are safe to share every day – Crowley has progressed into picking at the thick wax seal keeping the edges of the wrapping paper together.
He accepts the drink and a plateful of food absentmindedly, putting some of it into his mouth out of habit more than an actual choice. Aziraphale sips at his own tea and nibbles at the edge of a rather lovely drizzled lemon cake he’d produced from a nearby bakery this morning. Definitely worth a patronage, that place.
Eventually, Crowley’s tentative efforts – Aziraphale takes no offence, he knows that his snake needs to acclimatise to new situations slowly – result in the sides of the paper coming apart, revealing mounds of soft black wool. Aziraphale is intimately aware of the contents of course, having laboured over them for some considerable time, including abandoning earlier attempts and starting anew several times until he was satisfied with the results. Throughout his long years on Earth, he had delighted in the ingenuity and diversity of human art forms countless times, but with the exception of writing and the periodic obsessions with the latest dance trends, Aziraphale’s own attempts had been rather limited. Fibre arts, he’d discovered, were not what one would call a natural talent for him. And yet, he’d persisted.
Crowley’s current scarf, whilst undoubtedly stylish, is no match for the autumn weather in London. Aziraphale can see the way the skin of his neck gets wet and pebbled with goosebumps, practically unprotected against the wind and the rain. And while this year is hardly the first time Aziraphale has noticed such a thing or worried about it, it is the first time he feels able to do something about it. And, apparently, that something involves learning the arcane art of knitting.
The results are now laid out over Crowley’s arms, long black coils of the softest cashmere wool, knitted into careful rows of stitches, mostly neat but wavering here and there like letters in a love note, the writer sure of his message but still overcome by the emotion every now and then. Woven within the midnight black wool there are small, silver stars, almost invisible from afar except for the shimmer they lend to the garment.
“Oh.” Crowley says. There are whole volumes of meaning in that one word. He strokes a hand along the scarf, a smooth, gentle caress that makes them both shudder from the sensory pleasure of it. “It’s…” He doesn’t seem to know how to finish the sentence, but his fingers are curling into the yarn, tightly, possessively, as if he’s afraid someone will take the gift away from him.
Aziraphale’s heart feels like it breaks and is mended a million times in a span of a nanosecond. There is absolutely no stopping the way his hands shake, just a little, as he puts his drink down and reaches over. They are sitting kitty-corner from each other so it’s an easy distance to cross, though not something Aziraphale takes for granted when it has been insurmountable, incomprehensible for so long. But now his hands cover Crowley’s, fingers curling in, gently pulling the scarf free from his grip.
“Let me, dear,” he says before the question in Crowley’s eyes has a chance to morph into anything like disappointment.
It’s clear he doesn’t realise what Aziraphale is going to do until the moment he starts unwinding Crowley’s old scarf, carefully folding it as he goes. Aziraphale is so focused on his task, trying so hard not to stroke the pale, cool skin of Crowley’s neck, that he doesn’t look up until the back of his knuckle drags over the hollow of Crowley’s throat, mostly on accident but perhaps not entirely, and Crowley draws in a quick, hissing breath. Aziraphale’s gaze snaps up. The look on Crowley’s face is the most sacred, the most beautiful thing he has ever seen, and Aziraphale has seen galaxies made and unmade, seen the earth when it was young and unspoiled. And yet this, Crowley’s expression completely open and vulnerable, his mouth slack, flush high on his cheeks, his usually sharp eyes grown hazy, surpasses all of that.
“Let’s see how this new scarf fits,” Aziraphale says, nonsensically, just to keep the moment and two of them tethered. Taking his hands off Crowley entirely seems both impossible and like something he shouldn’t do right now, so Aziraphale opens his palm, fits it over the curve of Crowley’s neck, until he’s cupping the back of it gently but firmly.
Crowley’s pupils widen. His mouth opens like he’s going to say something, but no words come out. Aziraphale wants to lean in and kiss him, to see if he could coax some out anyway. Maybe not words but sounds.
Instead, he picks up the new scarf, the wool butter soft and smooth against his skin, and starts winding it around Crowley’s neck. Aziraphale had knitted this one quite long as well, knowing that Crowley quite liked the dramatic flair of the ends flapping behind him in the wind as he sauntered about. It was wider though, and of course thicker, more seasonally appropriate than the old scarf, and as Aziraphale loops it around, every inch of Crowley’s throat and the most distracting triangle of bare skin at the top of his chest where he’s neglected to do up the buttons is properly covered. Aziraphale tamps down on the disappointment, instead focusing on the glow of satisfaction knowing that his demon will be warm and cosy, and the second, brighter glow of anticipation, because perhaps he will get a chance to help Crowley out of the new scarf as well, at the end of the day.
“There,” he says, arranging the ends of the scarf just so, for maximum aesthetic and drama. “How does it feel?”
Crowley blinks a few times, seeming to shake himself awake. “It’s…” Tentatively his hands come up and he feels around the scarf, now snugly wrapped around him, fingers trailing over the edges, tips touching down on each little star, lightly, like a blessing he’s no longer capable of. “It’s warm,” Crowley murmurs. “Feels like…” His gaze flits up to Aziraphale’s and then drops down again.
Suddenly, Aziraphale is desperate to hear the end of that sentence. “What does it feel like, darling?” He really needs to start watching the endearments, but ever since he and Crowley abandoned all sides except their own, they just keep falling off his lips like spring rain, gentle and insistent.
Then again, maybe he needs to use more of them. Crowley sways closer, both of them leaning toward each other, tea things quite forgotten between them. “It, uh…” His fingers start twining themselves into the fringed ends of the scarf and Aziraphale grasps them in his own, shorter, softer, thicker ones. Somehow, the fit is just right. “Feels like this,” Crowly says, almost too low to hear. “Feels like you’re holding me.” He doesn’t look Aziraphale in the eye, but his grip is tight, tight, and so, so dear.
Aziraphale has done all manner of miracles in his long years but holding himself back and not kissing Crowley right now surely qualifies as his biggest feat. He wants to, and he thinks that Crowley would welcome it, but the moment is too fragile and this – Crowley accepting the gift in the first place, admitting how it makes him feel out loud – is already a lot, far more than Aziraphale ever thought possible for so long.
So instead he simply says, “That’s perfect then,” and makes a fuss of adjusting Crowley’s scarf just so, segueing into a rambling monologue about everything he learned about yarn weight and quality, the variety of stitches he mastered (small) and those he didn’t (a move diverse sample for sure), all the while tugging Crowley up and into what was a stylish, if thin, black blazer and is now a heavy peacoat, still black of course but sporting antique silver buttons. Crowley huffs about it but doesn’t comment otherwise.
“A brisk autumn day like this,” Aziraphale babbles, pulling on his own outer garments, “mustn’t waste it inside. Besides,” he adds, glancing behind himself to check that Crowley is following him to the door, “we need to test how well that scarf holds against the weather.”
Crowley flashes him a grin and puts his sunglasses back on onehanded, the other flipping the end of the scarf over his shoulder with a flourish. “Lead the way, Angel,” he says.
Aziraphale intends to. They’ve got many steps to still travel together and if Crowley needs him to take some of them first, then Aziraphale can and will.
The October sun that greets them as they exit the bookshop is a pale, hazy thing, the wind biting, and the sheer sensory cacophony of Soho on a Monday afternoon almost overwhelming.
Aziraphale has never experienced a more beautiful day.
***