That Moment Between

so confused

so lost

“I don’t know what’s going to happen if they begin to let women in baseball. Of course, they will never make good. Why? Because they are too delicate. It would kill them to play ball every day.”

Next up was the Iron Horse Lou Gehrig, who swung through the first three pitches to strike out. Jackie Mitchell became famous for striking out two of the greatest baseball players in history.

A few days after Mitchell struck out Ruth and Gehrig, baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis voided her contract and declared women unfit to play baseball as the game was “too strenuous.”[5][10] Mitchell continued to play professionally,barnstorming with the House of David, a men’s team famous for their very long hair and long beards.[11] While travelling with the House of David team, she would sometimes wear a fake beard for publicity.”

They gave up.

They couldn’t handle it.

Losers. 

Practicing his mean face

“Of course it’s angry, you bloody scalded it!” Crowley said, clutching a meat tenderizer and speaking with a good deal of nervous sibilance.

“Well how was I supposed to know it had been hexed?”

“Oh I dunno, pattern with the snakes eating each other wasn’t a bit of a tip-off?”

Aziraphale pouted.

“I just thought it would be a good day to use some of the nice china. It’s a gorgeous day for a picnic–”

Just then the teacup scuttled out from behind the dustbin, its china claws raised and snapping.

“Get it!”

“There it goes!”

There was a misaimed miracle and the clang of meat tenderizer on tile. Aziraphale attempted to kick the teacup into a kind of jerry-rigged trap made of three egg cartons, a saucepan, and a length of bubble wrap. It dodged all of these assaults and scampered towards the hallway on its many, many legs.

“No, no, don’t let it get away!”

“It’s getting away, angel!”

Crowley snapped at it viciously, missed, and Aziraphale’s ancient refrigerator began oozing blood.

“Oh look what you’ve done, now I’ll have to throw out the baklava.” 

Another snap and the refrigerator was healed, the baklava crumbled into the bin.

“Sorry, angel.”

“Why did you even bring that dreadful thing here?”

“Well it’s too chintzy for my place, and I thought it might just be gaudy and ridiculous enough for yours–”

“Oh very funny–and you’re the one who has snakes on every conceivable surface–”

“–not eating each other! That’s messed up.”

“Is that terrible teacup the sort of thing they sell in the Hell gift shop?” Aziraphale asked, exasperated.

“Nah, it’s mostly postcards. That’s my employee of the month gift, for NFTs.”

Aziraphale did not ask what enefftees were.

“Now it’s loose in the shop! How am I supposed to do any business?”

“Don’t suppose you can,” Crowley said, and watched Aziraphale’s face brighten.

There was a noise like the rapping of far too many knuckles. Aziraphale and Crowley both yelped shrilly.

“Where was it?”

“I don’t know, I thought it had gone into the stacks!”

“Great, just great,” Crowley groaned. “We’ll never find it and it will breed in there until your bookshop is crawling with deadly ceramic larvae.”

“There’s only one of them, Crowley.”

Crowley gave a dark look.

“I’m sure it’ll find a way.”

They crept from the kitchen tentatively, neither one letting go of their improvised weapons.

“Let’s think about this logically,” Aziraphale said. “What would attract an infernal entity?”

Crowley snorted.

“I dunno, rotting flesh? Gloomy old castles? Tax havens?”

Aziraphale said nothing. 

“Angel, why’ve you got that funny look on your face?”

“Well I–I don’t think that’s quite right, is it? Isn’t it more accurate to say demons are more attracted to corruptible things? Attracted to good things?”

“What, you’re going to draw it out with the force of good? That’ll never work.”

Fifteen minutes later they were crouched behind a shelf of papyrus scrolls watching the teacup take tiny, dazed steps towards the halo floating in the middle of the shop.

“Can’t believe this is working,” Crowley growled. “It’s like a moth with a lamp, the stupid thing. What kind of self-respecting demonic entity walks right up to an angelic artifact and just stares at it?”

“Mmm,” Aziraphale said, casting a sidelong look at Crowley, who was nestled rather close to his side.

The teacup stopped in front of the halo and tipped itself backwards, as if dazzled by the light.

“NOW!”

They both lunged forward. Crowley took the longer leap, and brought one-twentieth of the Oxford English Dictionary down onto the teacup with a brutal smash.

Aziraphale snapped and the halo disappeared, as Crowley continued savaging the shards with Q through Sh.

“Stupid teacup, trotting up to its doom just to peek at a bloody halo…”

“You never see unicorns anymore,” Crawly grumbles, watching another collection of dusty donkeys trudge into town.

“Well, obviously not,” Aziraphale replies, rolling his eyes.

Crawly directs a frown at him.

“Obviously?” he repeats, eyebrows raised in a question.

“You were there, Crawly, you know perfectly well why not.”

Crawly blinks, which doesn’t happen very often.

“You’ve lost me.”

“The Ark?” Aziraphale tries, hoping to jog Crawly’s memory. “You remember, one of Noah’s ran off, they didn’t have time to find another before the rain started…”

Crawly frowns.

“What does that have to do with anything?”

Aziraphale peers at his face, looking for the trick, the joke, the setup. All he sees is honest confusion. It’s his turn to blink.

“Crawly,” he says, somewhere between disbelief and a rather unangelic delight, “you do know why he had two of everything, don’t you?”

Crawly shifts defensively in his seat.

“Assumed it was one of those daft instructions sent down from on high, you know, one Ark, two of each animal, three of each kind of fruit, whatever—”

Aziraphale starts to laugh. He can’t help himself. Crawly scowls at him and hunches his shoulders.

“What? What’s so funny, angel?”

Angel. Crawly called him that in Eden, before Aziraphale thought to give him his name. He doesn’t know why he’s doing it now. Perhaps it’s supposed to be an insult. It doesn’t really have a lot of bite to it, if so.

“You’ve really never— all right, all right, don’t look so cross, I’ll tell you, I’m just— surprised, that’s all.” Aziraphale takes a sip of the fermented beverage the humans in this village have invented. It’s got potential, he thinks. “It takes two of them to breed, Crawly. Male and female.”

Crawly stares at him so blankly that Aziraphale has to bite his lip against more laughter.

“Please tell me you’ve at least noticed the physiological differences between the sexes—”

“Yes, yes, I know about that,” Crawly interrupts. “And what they get up to with those bits. You mean they’re not just for leisure activities?”

“No, they’re rather fundamental to the whole reproduction thing, in fact. The, ah, recreational applications are just a side-effect.”

“What, really?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“But humans are always—”

“Well, that’s why there’s so many of them these days.”

Crawly looks absolutely dumbfounded by this revelation, and more than a little outraged.

“What about birds?” he demands. “They just lay eggs whenever they want to, don’t they?”

“I believe mating is still required beforehand.”

“What about fish?”

“I’m fairly certain that the same rule applies.”

Crawly stares into his clay cup, lips moving slightly as he tries to come to terms with this whole concept. His expression tilts suddenly into something that unexpectedly yanks on Aziraphale’s heartstrings.

“Oh,” he says quietly. “So no more unicorns, then.”

“No,” Aziraphale replies, no longer laughing.

“I’d have got it back for them, if I’d known,” Crawly mumbles.

When kindness met gratitude 

Thank you! Please feel free to send me any prompts. More of my fics here.

Warnings for treatment of wounds described here.

‘Ouch!’

‘Stop moving then!’

Aziraphale glares at Crowley, though it’s a weak look. Not even a five on the scale of scary Aziraphale glares, and Crowley’s seen a lot. Tens are usually reserved for customers who can’t take hints but Aziraphale did just use a ten recently. 

It’s a part of why he’s bleeding over Crowley now. 

‘It hurts!’

Crowley’s chest squeezes tight, his unneeded breath hard to catch for a moment. ‘I know,’ he says gently and Aziraphale sags. 

Neither of them have any great experience with pain. Comes from having the ability to miracle most of it away at a heart beat - Crowley’s not sure if this cursed cut on Aziraphale’s forearm is his first experience with a major wound or not.

‘How would you rate your pain?’ he asks the angel absently as he starts to cover the wound, fishing around with his free hand for something to stick the bandage down.

‘Zero stars,’ Aziraphale snaps, though he keeps his arm still. ‘Would NOT recommend.’

Crowley blinks. ‘That’s... not what I meant,’ he says. ‘Where did you even pick that up?’

‘Warlock showed me ‘Yulp’ the other day.’ Aziraphale wriggles away, grabbing the bottle of holy water for the other arm. Crowley carefully changes his gloves, dumping the used ones in a bin well away from where he is sitting. Holy water might be needed to make sure the wound heals but Aziraphale is already shaky enough about using it in the same room as him without Crowley running any extra risks.

‘Yelp angel. Yelp.’

Aziraphale shrugs, hissing as the holiness burns the curses out. ‘He wanted to show me my store. I have a whole star on it! One whole star Crowley!’

‘That’s... not a good rating angel.’ Crowley watches as Aziraphale drops the water in the same bin as his used gloves before running the wound under regular water. ‘And you’re trying to distract me. How’s your pain?’

‘Zero stars my dear, do not recommend.’

Crowley rolls his eyes as Aziraphale sits down in front of him and offers the other arm. ‘Scale of one to ten, how much does it hurt?’

‘Zero!’

‘One being no pain.’

A long pause. ‘Is infinity an option?’

Sighing, Crowley leans over and kisses Aziraphale on the forehead. ‘I’ll be done soon my angel, and then there are painkillers and chocolate.’ He leans back. ‘And maybe this will teach you not to get in front of a blade meant for me.’

Aziraphale just smiles at him. ‘Oh no dear, this isn’t nearly enough pain to stop me doing that.’

We are not rabid animals living off of pure instinct

We are capable of rational thinking and understanding. 

Just because someone is cooking food doesn’t mean you’re entitled to eat it. 

Just because a banker is counting money doesn’t mean you’re being given free money.

Just because a person is naked doesn’t mean you’re entitled to fuck them. 

You are not entitled to someone else’s body just because it’s exposed. 

saying the book came to you like that when clearly your dog chewed on it

trying to reshelve books on your own

yelling at us to get our attention

talking on your phone when we’re trying to assist you

yelling at non-management staff for policies they have no power over

asking for more time on the computer when the session has already logged you off, you needed to ask for that time 5 minutes ago

asking us to look something up for you by the call number. the call number tells you where it is. please just give me the title.

getting upset with us for anything COVID related

things librarians do NOT judge you for (unless they’re bad at librarianing):

reading erotica

using the copier incorrectly

not speaking english as a first language

being an adult and not reading grown up books

owing fines

liking romance novels

finding out your child’s card is blocked because they’ve been billed for books they’ve secretly been hiding behind their dresser

having books overdue

you liking graphic novels and comics

your CHILD liking graphic novels and comics. seriously. we just want them to read.

taking books off of a display

asking us to check and make sure we don’t have a book you returned (with COVID and quarantining books, more things are getting missed, so asking a librarian to do a shelf check is okay! but be nice. we are So Tired and Busy. if you say something like “if you’re busy feel free to check when you have time and get back to me” we will love you. we will probably be like “you’ve been nice so i’ll go right now”)

things librarians judge, but don’t judge YOU for: