Bloop

#alexandria48bc EPILOGUE 6 (All parts available to read under the tag #alexandria48bc!) Support this comic by becoming a patron and get to read a CHAPTER AHEAD!! Link in Bio!

Voice of God: .... *sigh*

this is my first maplekeen fic! it took me like 7 hours, so if you like it, consider reblogging! its probably not the best but im proud and thats all that matters. please excuse any typos, i proofread like 6 times but still.

_______________________________________________________Argo crept into the dorm, thinking about his meeting with the Unbroken Chain. The group still needs much more information on Fitzroy. Argo hates going around his friends back but he’s sworn to his “hobby”. 

Argo tried his best to “tip toe” into his and the firbolg’s’ side of the quarters, not noticing the half-elf staring at him. Fitzroy cleared his throat, making Argo look towards him on the couch in the common area. Panicking a bit, Argo started rambling. 

“Er.. hello Fitzroy! How are you, my dear friend?”

“I’m fine, Argo. Couldn’t sleep.”

Fitzroy tried his best to play it off like that, atleast. In reality he had been waiting here ever since Argo left, being practically torn apart by the anxiety of where his coworker could be. 

Keep on stimming!

nothing says I love you like accidentally manifesting your stand to protect bae’s hair

Let’s go home, big guy

His body is slumped against a stone cross and there’s more blood than there is wreckage in the room. There’s more blood than he thinks is in the human body to fucking begin with.

“He’s injured.”

“I can fucking see that,” he snaps at Lisa Lisa but she’s not looking at Caesar. She’s looking at the blood trail on the stairs and fuck. Fuck.

The cigarette she takes out is backwards when she puts it in her mouth.

“We can’t let him get away with this,” she says fiercely and Joseph agrees, he agrees but.

Caesar is still warm under his fingertips. So, he takes a breath.

“Joseph, we have to go. It’s too late,” Lisa Lisa whispers, but he refuses.

He breathes life into Caesar, he knows that’s what Hamon is. It’s life, it’s strength, and he’ll use it to save Caesar long enough to get help.

The taste of blood is hard to take but he focuses. The weight on his chest, the way it hurts to breathe – this is what his training was all for. What fucking use was it if he can’t save a life?

If he can’t save Caesar’s life?!

He loves him, he loves him, he fucking loves him so fucking Goddamn much and the last thing he said to him was fuck you.

If he dies here–

No. No.

He feels Lisa Lisa hands on his shoulders, feels her own Hamon flow through his body. He uses it, he knows together they can resurrect a dead man.

Please, Caesar. Please.

He can’t stop himself from sobbing when he feels Caesar move against him. He moves away quickly, watching Hamon ripple through Caesar’s body, to his fingertips, to the toes of his boots. Caesar gasps harshly. His eyes don’t open but his fists clench and Joseph knows he’s goddamn alive.

“Forgive me, Master,” he says, rising up with Caesar in his arms. There’s so much blood and Caesar should be too heavy but it’ll be a cold day in hell if he fails now. “I have to save him.”

He can’t read the expression on Lisa Lisa’s face, but she doesn’t refuse. She doesn’t tell him no.

She wouldn’t be able to stop him if she tried.

Finally: “Go.”

Joseph turns and sprints. He can get to the hotel fast, he knows he can. “Don’t fucking die,” he says and he hopes Caesar’s cough is a laugh.  "I love you,“ he says and he swears to Caesar he’ll say it when he’s conscious and healthy and okay, too. He won’t be a coward anymore.

"M'too,” Caesar mumbles and Joseph runs even faster. It burns and it burns but he doesn’t waste his breath on words anymore.

He runs and runs and runs and–

Joseph leans forward, takes in the sight of Caesar’s battered face and body. Takes in the bandages covering more of his body than the hospital blanket. Takes a steadying breath.

He feels so relieved.

“You’ve looked worse,” he says and Caesar laughs. It’s broken sounding, probably rattling a broken rib or two or three. He doesn’t say anything when Caesar has to cough harshly.

“When was that?” Caesar asks when he can.

“Day after the oil pillar.” His voice cracks and Caesar really looks at him. He forces himself to try – to really try to keep a light tone. “You think I didn’t notice all those zits you had after? It was so gross. Are you sure you aren’t still a teenager?”

Caesar huffs at him and he can see him trying to lift his hand. Probably to swat at him. What an ass. Guy has two broken hands and still doesn’t take it easy. Guess he’ll let him have one, since he’s injured and all. Maybe he’ll stop feeling so anxious after a good hit. He leans forward more.

There’s a gentle touch on his face, a thumb resting on his cheekbone. Not a swat or a slap or a punch. He flushes.

“Master was really worried, y'know?” he bites out. Caesar looks amused and how can anyone look amused lying in a hospital with broken bones and a punctured lung? “You have to apologize.”

“Sorry,” Caesar says and Joseph holds back the urge to yell. He doesn’t want to be thrown out again by the nurses. It’s just, it’s just that–

“You almost died,” he says and Caesar is still touching his face. He grabs Caesar’s hand, keeping his broken damn hand to his cheek because–

“I was scared,” Joseph whispers. Caesar clutches his hand tighter and he clutches Caesar’s hand back. If he’s careful, only Caesar has to know. “I was, too.”

“Don’t go in alone next time.”

“Run faster next time.”

"You’re a dick.”

"Thanks.”

“Fuck you.”

“Fuck you, too?”

“I hate you, you asshole,” he says, even as he can feel the tears on his cheeks. Can see tears wetting Caesar’s face, too.

“I hate you, too,” is the answer, spoken softly, and God. God.

Anon. Anon. I love you for this. 

***

“See, thing is-”

Crowley’s words elude him- as they have a habit of doing, the sneaky buggers. He watches the white lines in the middle of the road streak by, feels the tarmac roaring beneath the car. It’s a rainy evening and they’re driving home from a restaurant north of Watford that Aziraphale has been banging on about for months. Since the world had ended- and then promptly not ended- the angel’s zest for food hasn’t lessened in the slightest. In fact, it’s only gotten bloody zestier, as if their near-apocalypse experience has made Aziraphale realise that life is too short. Even an immortal life such as his. 

Crowley loses his track of his thought entirely. “Thing is…”

“You were talking about-”

“KINDLES!” Crowley exclaims, taking his hands off the wheel to celebrate this eureka moment. Aziraphale straightens out beside him nervously and grabs a fistful of his corduroy trousers. Crowley slaps the leather of the steering wheel enthusiastically as he continues, “Kindles. Are not. Demonic! We didn’t come up with them- that was all you, I’m certain!”

“Why on earth would I invent the Kindle, dear boy? Do you even know me at all?”

“You-plural, not you-singular. Angels you, Heaven you.”

you go too fast for me, Crowley are you fucking kidding me, not to be dramatic but those 7 words hold 6 millennia of unrequited love and still have room left over to hold the look on Aziraphale’s face when Crowley hands him those books and the devastation of two words scribbled on a piece of paper in a park, and an entire matching-tartan thermos full of Aziraphale’s worst fear for Crowley because he won’t lose Crowley to the getting of it and he knows Crowley won’t use it on himself if Aziraphale is the one who gave it to him, because that would make it Aziraphale’s fault and Crowley wouldn’t do that to him because Crowley loves him and they both know it.

as someone who is both asexual and who lives with severe anxiety, “you go too fast for me, Crowley,” is the best and worst line in existence. It speaks to my very soul.

You can hear the resignation in his voice when he says it. The quiet acceptance of what he thinks is going to happen.

He’s saying, “I know what you’re asking of me, what you’re offering, but I can’t yet.” He’s saying, “Yes, I want it. Yes, I have feelings for you, but they’re still new and frightening for me. I have to get used to them first, before I can do anything about them.” He’s saying, “I know I take too long. I know I’m processing too slowly for you. You want more, but I can’t give it. It’s okay if you don’t want to wait.”

Look me in my fucking eyes and tell me that Aziraphale saying “Perhaps one day we could, I don’t know, go for a picnic. Dine at the Ritz” followed by “you go too fast for me, Crowley” isn’t an EXPRESS timeline laid out for them as a couple because it fucking is. It’s 100% absolutely Aziraphale saying “I’m not ready right now, but someday when I am ready, I would like to do these things with you, if you’ll just wait for me.”

and that’s exactly what we see happen.

That is what KILLS ME.

Aziraphale tells him, in not so many words: “When I’m ready, I would like to dine at the Ritz with you.”

and then we later see them dining repeatedly at the Ritz together.

I just?? How??? does anyone?? It’s the most obvious narrative decision ever made!! And IMPORTANTLY, it’s made BEFORE the end. It’s made BEFORE they have experienced the stresses of the nonpocalypse and it’s shown to us in the first place casually, and they are both comfortable there, which implies that not only have they have done this before, they have done this often. Which means at some point we haven’t been privilege to seeing, there was a first time.

There had to have been, at some point in time between you go too fast for me and well I’ll be damned, a moment where one of them looked at the other and asked if they would like to dine at the Ritz. And either Crowley offered in a moment of bravery and Aziraphale decided that it was no longer too fast, or Aziraphale sorted out his shit and told Crowley he was ready for this by asking if he’d like to dine at the Ritz today, and honestly?? Thanks be, because I’m tired of just being TOLD people are in love, fucking show me it or get out of here, and Good Omens fucking delivered.

crowley: i’m sorry, your what?

aziraphale: my sweetheart. you don’t like it?