Demon in the Bookshop

It was just a bad dream after all

Have you heard about that terrible story in the Good Omens finale? Ugh, I know, right? Scary.

anyway i wanted a memento of my first pride, you know, and this one vendor was selling keyrings, and i liked it, so i bought one. do you remember those italian charm bracelets that were all the rage like 10-15 years ago? it was a keychain like that, and it had a rainbow rooster, a rainbow cat, and then just a rainbow, and so I bought it.

i run into my mom a couple of vendors over and she goes oh you bought something? what’d you get? so i showed her, and i was like, “I’m not sure why it’s a rooster and a cat. Seems kind of random. But I liked the rainbows.”

and my mom, who was some form of minister’s wife for most of my childhood and teenagerhood, stares at me like she thinks i’m joking.

“What?” i say.

Dedicated to my dear friend @contritecactite, for Yell “Fudge” at the Cobras in North America Day — something that does not happen in this fic, but which one must imagine does happen occasionally while on holiday.

“Fast-Breaking”

Aziraphale says "you must have had records" and Nina, hypnotized, responds "yes, we were very good at keeping records". Keeping. What does Maggie's record shop notoriously not do? Sell records. She is the record-keeper.

The nuns' records at Tadfield were destroyed in a (hell-made) fire. When the world is remade to Adam's preference at the end of S1, he restores the records and puts them back. He just puts them back .. slightly differently. It's an 11 yo child's understanding of records, tucked back into reality safely, placed right back into a space that had been destroyed by a fire.

Aziraphale's bookshop.

Nina not having a job at the nunnery except to provide refreshments-- carries over too.

Anyway.

Don’t ever hug a lobster when you see one on the street,

For decorum is essential when a lobster you must greet.

You may comment on the weather, compliment his choice of hat,

But crustaceans like their space if one should stop them for a chat.

Don’t ever hug a lobster when you’re strolling down the coast,

Simply nod and give a greeting, or a handshake at the most,

For a lobster’s first priority is formal social graces,

And one seemes over-familiar if a lobster one embraces.

Don’t ever hug a lobster when you meet one in the sea,

For a lobster’s spines and chitin make it difficult, you see,

And he might become self-conscious if you bring that fact to light,

it forgets that the christian cosmology was the setting, told through corporate satire, not the villain. even God wasn’t an active tyrant; she was an absent CEO, leaving individual contributors like Aziraphale and Crowley to realize their job descriptions were irrelevant to the company's bottom line anyway, so they coasted by on minimum effort

AU in which they're rival bards (and literally everyone knows they're in love but them)