(no subject)

[ineffable-angel.livejournal.com]

Date: August 26th, 1999
Setting: Tadfield Infirmary
Status: Public - Aziraphale & Co, Snape
Summary: Long-term, they didn't know what to feed him. They decide to call in the chef.


Aziraphale resisted the urge to stick out his bottom lip.

"I don't want any more holy water, Crowley. I don't want anymore of this broth." He gestured weakly at the steaming bowl near him. "None of this miso business. Why can't I have some proper food, like sushi or shrimp paella? Something with substance?"

He was, admittedly, cranky. His bandage had just been changed, which was still painful, and a residual headache made him wish his angelic aura was back to full-strength. He thought even half-strength might do.

"I want proper food. I want a full course meal." He knew he sounded like he was whining, but he was too tired - and hungry - to care. "Please," he added, as an afterthought.

Comments

[anthony-crowley.livejournal.com]

Crowley looked pointedly at the bandages on his hands and at his clothing, or lack thereof.

"Certainly, Aziraphale. Why don't I just stroll down to the restaurant in this fetching attire and speak with the maitre d'?

Aziraphale looked more than a little affronted and Crowley quickly realized that sarcasm wasn't going to be the best approach to this situation. He hurried to speak again before the angel could point this out.

"Look, I sympathize with you, but I can't leave you here by yourself with him," he began, glaring at Gabriel who had settled in a far corner, "and I don't think he'd leave you here alone with me. And you're assuming that I'm ready to get dressed and go wandering around in a place swarming with angels, which I'm not. I gave you some ice cream yesterday. Didn't that tide you over for a while?"

Aziraphale's face fell. Apparently not.

"All right. When Draco gets back, I'll send him out for you. Can you wait just a little while longer? It's the best I can do..."

[average-adam.livejournal.com]

Standing in the doorway with a parcel, Adam watched as the two entities bickered. Amused, he stepped forward to announce his presence.

"Hey there! I thought you might be gettin' tired of hospital food, so I had Wensley make up some sandwiches." He looked at Aziraphale. "I didn't know if angels were allowed to eat meat or anythin' so yours are watercress an' I've got roast beef for Crowley."

Adam handed out the wax-paper wrapped packages and had to suppress a grin when Aziraphale stared longingly at Crowley's sandwiches and Crowley handed them over with a sigh. As they began to eat, he walked to where Gabriel was sitting and pulled a couple more watercress sandwiches out of his parcel for the archangel.

"Thought you might like some too." He watched Gabriel's gaze flicker towards where Aziraphale was happily munching. "I know you don't think he's ready for solid foods yet, but it won't hurt him. Mind if I join you?"

He pulled the last two sandwiches out and crumpled up the wrapper. Adam smiled at Gabriel, contentedly, and bit into his peanut butter and jelly.

[ineffable-angel.livejournal.com]

Aziraphale ate the sandwiches delicately, even if his hands trembled still.

"Thank you, Adam," Aziraphale said, when he'd finished. He was very full, having stolen Crowley's sandwiches as well, although he could only eat one of Crowley's and one of his own. He offered the rest back to Crowley. "Are you certain...? I could feed them to you, my dear, if your hands are still hurting."

He wished, suddenly, that he could walk and bring Crowley whatever treats he wanted, not just these sandwiches.*


*The sandwiches were good. It was just the lack of shrimp paella, red wine, and several forms of expertly cooked salmon that bothered him. The Ritz dinners had spoiled them both, as had immortal life.

[anthony-crowley.livejournal.com]

"Feed them to me?"

Crowley's eyes widened slightly and he looked nervously at the angel. As much as he would enjoy being hand fed by Aziraphale, he didn't think that it would really be a good idea. He tried to respond casually.

"Nah, that's okay. I think I can manage. It'd be a big help if you'd take the wrappers off for me though. You sure you don't want this last roast beef one? You could probably use the protein..."

[ineffable-angel.livejournal.com]

Aziraphale unwrapped the nearest.

"I'm certain. Are you, though, certain about working your poor hands? Honestly, it would be so much simpler for me to just feed you by hand."

[anthony-crowley.livejournal.com]

Crowley squeezed his eyes shut and wondered where Aziraphale had learned to tempt like that. He rubbed his eyes to indicate that he had closed them out of exhaustion rather than an excess of feeling, and opened them again, glancing towards Adam and Gabriel. Seeing them helped him pull together whatever shreds of willpower he had left. He daren't get fed in front of them.

"No," he ground out, heavily. "Really, I'm fine."

He took the roast beef sandwich gingerly, holding it between his massive, bandaged hands and bit into it. It wasn't bad, he decided as he chewed, but Crowley was sure that it would have tasted better if he'd had it hand fed to him.

[dontcallmegabby.livejournal.com]

Glancing up to meet Adam’s eyes, he shivered inwardly with a sense of... something. It was not evil, he knew; Gabriel didn’t quite understand how the son of the Adversary could feel so neutral, but he plainly did. Evil did not taint that unassuming face or reside in those clear blue eyes.

There was, Gabriel realized quickly, something infinitely more worrisome there: Power.

He’d never had a being so powerful offer him a watercress sandwich before.

It wasn’t strictly necessary, of course, since – despite Aziraphale’s persistent pouting – angels did not need to eat. And yet, he didn’t feel he could turn it down. If he were honest about it, it seemed rather...

Sweet.

He didn’t think the Antichrist was supposed to be sweet.

A smile lit the archangel's eyes as he accepted Adam’s offering. “Thank you,” he said, and found that he meant it. “Please, have a seat.”

[average-adam.livejournal.com]

Adam looked surprised for a moment before pulling up a chair and sitting next to Gabriel.

"Thanks!"

He chewed thoughtfully and watched Crowley and Aziraphale as they bickered, before breaking the comfortable silence.

"They're kinda cute, huh? It's nice to see them look happy for a change."

He turned his eyes back to Gabriel.

"You don't look happy, though. I 'spect you'd rather be any place other than here and no place other than here at the same time."

[dontcallmegabby.livejournal.com]

“Cute?” he asked, sounding more amused than he thought he should. “You – you could say that.”

He’d noticed, of course, that Crowley and Aziraphale's relationship hardly befit that which the agents of Heaven and Hell should have; each was so much the other’s opposite that it was hard to miss how well they fit together. As he watched them, though, he wondered once more what he was ever going to tell Heaven when it came time for his next report.

If Adam’s first comment ruffled Gabriel, the second completely unsettled him. His eyes snapped up to find the Antichrist looking at him innocently, and he found himself wondering just how much those blue eyes could see.

The corner of his lips turned up in a faint smile. “I have a feeling you know more about why I’m here than I do.”

[average-adam.livejournal.com]

"Actually I hafta try real hard not to know stuff. Most of what I know now I learned just from listenin' to people. Everybody's got somethin' interestin' to say, if you just listen."

Adam smiled.

"How about you? You look like you've got lots of interestin' stuff to say. An' not just about those two..."

[dontcallmegabby.livejournal.com]

“Interesting?” Gabriel asked, amusement tugging at his lips. “Dear boy, I could tell you about a time before Time had been Created, when nothing existed until it was imagined, and each thought could become a new star, a new galaxy. I could tell you about the Creation of the Earth you stand on and the air you breathe, about six thousand years of hopes and miseries, Death and new life.”

He let himself laugh, a soft, silvery sound, feeling suddenly infinitely old.

“And yet,” he added softly, his gaze sweeping over the impossibly young face of the Antichrist, “I think you could see these things for yourself. Why do you resist what you were meant to become?”

[average-adam.livejournal.com]

Adam snorted.

"Why do I resist? I woulda thought that you'd have figured that out a long time ago. I like all those things that you were talkin' about: the stars, and the galaxies, the Earth, and the air, thousands of years of life an' hope and people bein' people. Even the sad stuff is good 'cause it reminds people to not take life for granted. If I ever became what I was supposed to be, I'd hafta destroy all of that. Everythin'! Everythin' that God made with your help. And for no good reason."

He sighed as if the weight of the world was on his shoulders. It was.

"Maybe it's selfish of me to want to keep everythin' the way it is. And it's prob'ly hypocritical of me, seein' as I told them two to stop messin' around with stuff," he said, pointing to Crowley and Aziraphale, "but I'm part human too, and we don't always make sense."

He thought for a moment and continued, apropos of nothing, "You know, I saw a movie once. Said you gotta do what's good for the many over what's good for the few. Well, there's an awful lot of people that want to keep livin'..."

Adam spread his hands apart and shrugged. Then he looked, really looked, at Gabriel.

"What about you? Do you want the world to end?"

[dontcallmegabby.livejournal.com]

Gabriel watched, curiosity mingling with a faint sense of awe, as the boy before him seemed to take on an aged weariness that did not look natural on one so young. The archangel thought on their first encounter, the first time his gaze had met those blue eyes and seen in them the depths of Creation.

He watched, yet said nothing.

What could he possibly say? This young man’s burden was one he would not wish on anyone, and yet it was the burden Adam had been destined to bear for all eternity. It was his, and his alone; it was all a part of the Plan.

This time when the eyes fell on him, he was not silenced, but instead spurred into speaking.

"Want?" he repeated solemnly, a mirthless smile on his lips as his gaze wandered idly. "My entire existence has been for one purpose, and that is to fulfill the divine plan. If this plan includes the end of the world, then the world shall end." He then looked at Adam once more, trying to keep all supposition from his gaze. "What I want," he added quietly, "does not matter."

[average-adam.livejournal.com]

Adam's eyes locked with Gabriel's for a long, intense moment.

"I think it will matter very much someday. I'd start thinkin' about it now."