We Don’t Have to Be Perfect
Sneaking in just before the deadline, this is the first of my three submissions for @itsthearoway‘s Aro Way Challenge, which highlights Good Omens fanworks with an aromantic light. I love how versatile the bonds in Good Omens are, and how they lend themselves so well to a number of a/sexual and a/romantic and a/gender identities. As an aro person myself, it’s nice to see some representation in a fandom that I love.
We Don’t Have to Be Perfect
Prompt 34: At a woodworking class
Characters: Aziraphale+Crowley
Summary: Aziraphale takes up a new hobby and tries to make something meaningful with it. It doesn’t quite go as planned, but maybe that’s okay.
“So this is where you've been disappearing to.”
Aziraphale held open the door he'd just walked out of so a young woman could exit the woodworking studio after him, barely sparing a glance toward the gangly form of the demon on the sidewalk. “I haven't been disappearing anywhere. I told you the dates and times of this class and even gave you the address.”
“Looking for a new hobby, are you?”
“One can always learn new skills. Now that I'm not reporting to Heaven anymore, there's no reason I can't try something new when the whim takes me.”
“Not that that's ever stopped you before,” Crowley grinned, falling into step beside the angel as he started the walk back to the bookshop. “Well let's see it then.”
“See what?” Aziraphale fidgeted, fooling exactly nobody.
“Last I checked, when somebody signs up for an art-based class they usually make some sort of art-based thingy to take home. Let's see it, come on.”
“I, ah...” Aziraphale glanced everywhere but at Crowley, looking rather embarrassed. “It's not up to standards.”
“Yours. Mine. Anybody's, really.”
“I think I can be the judge of my own standards, angel.”
“Oh very well.” And from a bag at his side he pulled a wooden oval, roughly eight inches at its widest point, and the demon plucked it from his hands to study it before he could protest.
It looked, quite frankly, like a child's drawing rendered into wood: a very rudimentary snake wiggling around the outside of the frame with two pairs of feathered wings inside. Bumps and gouges dotted the surface and it seemed not even the final sanding could take care of them. The width of the snake was hilariously inconsistent and the wings were missing more than a few feathers each where Aziraphale had clearly misjudged the carving process and accidentally chipped them off.
Crowley snorted before he could stop himself. “Is that me? And wait, the bit inside, is that supposed to be the two of us?”
Aziraphale grabbed it back, his expression somewhere between a scowl and a pout, and he refused to meet Crowley's eyes. “As far as I can tell, we have the longest-running friendship on the planet, you and I. It seems to me that that's worth commemorating, and for something of that magnitude it really ought to be magnificent. Perfect. But it isn't. I intended to hang it in the bookshop, now that I don't have to worry about anyone connecting us or not. But...well look at it.”
Beside him, Crowley began to laugh. Aziraphale glared at him in affront. “Let me get this straight. You wanted something utterly perfect to celebrate sixty centuries of knowing each other, and your first go-to was woodcarving?”
“I wanted something more durable than paper, and I have no desire to put the time into metalworking.”
“So you went with woodcarving.”
“I went with something I thought I could learn and enjoy, yes!”
“How long have you spent in that class?”
“Nine sessions. It's more difficult than it looks!”
“Clearly.” The demon shook his head in amusement. “I wouldn't be surprised by an illuminated manuscript, I think, but I never expected something like this from you.”
Aziraphale's eyes flashed. “Well, if it's such a ridiculous notion, perhaps I should just forget the whole thing.”
But he'd already slammed the piece down into the metal rubbish bin next to a bus stop.
Crowley rounded on him. “What the heaven did you do that for?!”
“I tried very hard for that poor result, I'll have you know!”
“And? Looks like a snake, looks like wings. Seems like you succeeded.”
“Does that look like succeeding to you, Crowley? Because if that is your idea of success, it certainly puts your failures in a whole new light!”
A wall slammed down over Crowley's expression. He spun without a word and marched away down the street. Aziraphale regretted the words the instant they were out of his mouth but it was already too late.
“Crowley, wait! Crowley- Oh...” His fists clenched. “Drat everything!”
Aziraphale plopped himself down on the bus stop bench and glared out into the traffic.
It was several minutes later that the demon sat down beside him.
There was a feeling between them like tension releasing. Crowley melted into a slouch across the back of the bench. “I can respect a clever insult when I hear one, angel. Well done. That one was quite good.”
“You'll be disappointed to hear that I'd like to retract it, then.”
The silence between them grew more comfortable as the seconds passed, rather than awkward.
Aziraphale sighed. “I was hoping to make something worthy of what we have. It ought to be intricate and lovely and grand. Something worth six thousand years. I don't have nearly the skills to make it how it deserves to be.”
Crowley nodded just a bit. “Wasn't telling you to stop, by the way. I just never pegged you as the woodcarving type.”
“Well...I suppose I'm not.”
Crowley held a hand over the bin and the remains of the woodworking project leapt dutifully up to his fingers. Being slammed into metal had snapped it into several bits. He tried to fit the pieces back together again to get another look at the picture. “It's...good,” he tried.
“No it isn't.” Crowley turned it upside down. “We were never really perfect, though, were we?”
Aziraphale sighed. “No, we weren't. I do wish I could reach back into the past and fix things. All those times I said no. All those times I insinuated we weren't friends, or that I didn't like you, or that you were somehow less than I. It wasn't fair to you and...we could have had so much more, Crowley. More time. More drinks and dinners and conversations, seen more plays together, gone to more concerts together.”
Dark sunglasses watched the traffic. “And yet it worked.”
“I'm still here. You're still here. Somehow we muddled through it all, that's my point. It was never perfect. It started with bad small-talk and veiled insults, and only went downhill from there for a few thousand years. It was rocky and awkward and suspicious. It took time to become worthwhile.” Crowley turned the pieces over in his hands. “And it broke. And we had to put it back together again. Yet it's still going. If I had the choice to do it all over again, I would in a heartbeat. Because...” He trailed off and covered his mouth with a hand. “Oh shit, you've got me doing the mushy stuff.”
Aziraphale glanced at him curiously. “No, go on. Because...?”
“Because...it was worth it. Because...I appreciate it more, I think. I know what it's like to not have anybody. And to have your only connection to somebody be built on mutual distrust. And...I don't take any part of this friendship for granted now because of that. It means more because we had to work for it, you get me?”
“Yes,” Aziraphale said softly. “Yes, I think I understand.”
Crowley offered the broken pieces back to his friend. “A little wood glue ought to put it right. Maybe one of those little picture hangers on the back, could hang it from a nail.”
The angel looked at him skeptically. “You'd really want this hanging in the bookshop?”
Crowley shrugged, a hint of red colouring his cheeks below his glasses. “I mean...I've never had a picture of me on someone's wall before. Thought it might be nice, you know?” Nice to be wanted, said the spaces between his words. Nice to be able to say, aloud or through symbols, that we do have a friendship, that it doesn't need to be a guarded secret. “What I'm saying is, maybe it's fine that it's not perfect. Because neither were we.”
Aziraphale regarded the pieces of the project with the same warm look he usually reserved for Crowley. “I'll patch it up and hang it in the shop,” he said decisively. “Over the till. And when I get a little better at the whole woodworking thing, I'll make another one. And another. And each time it'll get a little better. Stronger. Hopefully more detailed.”
The demon was trying to maintain his casual facade but Aziraphale still caught the pleased smile fighting for purchase on his lips. “I’d quite like to see that, angel. I really would.”
