#soft_october

For the Glory of a Good Pudding by @soft-october-night

Date Completed: 02/18/2025

Size: Folio.  109,100 words, 357 pages.

Copies: 2

9th and 10th books of Binderary

This is one of my favorite Terror fics - a modern AU where everyone is participating in a knock-off baking competition called Barrow’s Baking Boys.  

This was the first story I knew I wanted to bind for Binderary.  I started the typeset way back in early January and decided to switch things up a bit and give formatting in GoogleDocs a try.  The story had a couple different narrative styles - voiceovers and interviews for the show, plus some conversations over text (a first for the stories I’ve bound).  So in addition to learning a new typesetting program I got to find a way to represent those distinctly, and in the process learned that google docs doesn’t maintain its formatting between firefox and chrome.  (That was a lot of misprints/glue sheets…)

Aziraphale has read every book in his shop at least once. He has reread some of his favored volumes dozens of times, has memorized whole great swaths of them. If his own words are insufficient to convince Crowley of his sincerity, then perhaps the words of others can! (He might have the decency to ask the books what they thought of this plan. The books had been watching the two of them for over a hundred years, and certainly had a great deal to say on the matter. But Aziraphale neglects to consult them, and thus will be very unprepared for what happens next.) Back on earth, Aziraphale tries to apologize.

Length: 8,135 words

AO3 Rating: Explicit / Spice Level 🔥🔥🔥

Best for: Pick-me-up, Fluff, Romance

Triggers: None

Read it here, fic by mia_ugly, soft_october

*Minor Spoilers* You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love this fic. Short and sweet, this story follows Aziraphale in his failed attempts to convince Crowley of his love through book and movie quotations. These quick scenes were the perfect blend of romantic silliness. You’ll particularly enjoy the one in the MoMA. I love their dialogue in this, it was very easy to read it in their voices. And I love that we get to just relax here, Aziraphale has left Heaven but we don’t get the details why. We don’t need them here, that’s not what the story is about. A little bit of smut at the end, not overly explicit but I’d love to see what else this specific pair could get up to 👀

Author: mia_ugly, soft_october

Rating: E

Finished: Sep 2022

Tags: AU-Soulmates, Stede/Edward, Angst w/ Happy Ending, Sexual content, Alternating POV

Word Count: 39k

Summary:

Sailors call them watermarks. A gift from the sea, a name or symbol written on your chest, meant to guide you to your own true love.

But Stede Bonnet's mark doesn't look like anything at all. Not really. And it certainly doesn't look like 'Edward' or 'Teach' or 'Blackbeard' or a black beard and that's fine. Completely fine. Ed's absolutely fine with it.

Comments:

A classic soulmate-mark AU with a little twist. I really loved how this story plays with the concept of identity, how it develops throughout your life and what it means to create your own self. A wonderfully written, very in-character story that follows a plotline similar to canon. There's a lengthy sex scene in the later chapters that can be skipped if you feel like it.

I tend to read a lot of aus, so our sense of what tropes are typical might differ, but I hope these do it for you, dear!

i've found a way (a way to make you smile) by curtaincall

Crowley worked in Sales. He had never intended to work in Sales. It had just sort of happened. One moment, there he’d been, a newly minted university graduate off to change the world, exquisitely useless Philosophy degree in hand, and now here he was, having sauntered vaguely downwards into a Hell that consisted mainly of cold-calling new customers and sucking up to existing ones.AU based on The Office.

All's Fair In Love And Serial Killing by WyvernQuill

Detective Inspector Crowley is 99.999 percent sure that Aziraphale Fell is a serial killer.The trouble is only that the remaining 0.001 percent are deeply in love with the man…---In which there is A Murder - rather a lot of them, actually - A Marriage Proposal - just the one - and True Love - whose course runs less not-smooth than it takes a sharp left turn, loops a couple times, and doubles back on itself, before crashing straight into a wall.(Dont mind the metaphor. It still ends well. Promise.)

Help Could Come from an Unexpected Quarter by Pearl09

When Crowley tries to help out his mob by secretly going to the bookshop where other members have been disappearing, he certainly wasn't expecting to lose his usual silver-tongue in front of the owner. He certainly wasn't expecting to go back, either, or slowly develop a crush on him, or have his life turned upside down, running from the other members of the mob instead of helping them.

Only Love (Can Bring the Rain) by soft_october

There were all these little hopes and musings Crowley buried so deep in his heart it ached to bring them out into the light to catalogue their faults and flaws, and each time Aziraphale sought him out, or asked his opinion on some weighty manner that was hanging on him, or even just smiled, those little wishings grew bigger and bigger, pressing in on him until he felt as if he was being crushed.

“Princes do not fall in love with gardener boys,” he told himself one night, staring into the shard of looking glass he kept on a shelf, hoping it would help, hoping that hearing it out loud would make him believe it, would help him put all these ridiculous notions behind him.

It didn't work.

Crowley and Aziraphale, the gardener's boy and the prince, meet as children and develop an unlikely friendship.

By the time they're twenty, everything has changed.

Heaven (Is a Place on Earth)

By soft_october ( @soft-october-night )

Summary:

“I’m just sneaking a break from the festivities, as it were.” Crowley twists his hand in a gesture meant to sum up the circumstances which led him here. “I haven’t taken up residency in the back of a bookshop in the middle of paradise.”

“Ah, well, we clearly disagree over what, precisely, paradise might mean.” Aziraphale's eyes are sharp, and through that initial mask of annoyance, a small smile is curling.

Crowley came to Lower Tadfield, the UKs version of San Junipero, to have a good time, try out the software, step out of his old and failing body into the magic of a virtual world with no consequences. At least that's what he had planned, until one night he stumbles into a bookshop and meets a buttoned up, blue eyed wonder with pale curls and a perfect smile.

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Wow, this was really good! Just read it this morning, it made me cry! I’m not a big crier, but it was so soft. This was so different from your typical good omens story. And I’m always hesitant to read remakes of other stories, it’s boring when it’s the exact same story just with small differences. I should have had more faith, I know soft_october is a better writer than that!

There are spoilers for the Netflix show Black Mirror, the San Junipero episode. But you don’t have to watch that first

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Ok, so this takes place in Tadfield and therefore my cover doesn’t really fit. But I was browsing photos and still had San Junipero in mind when I started this. I liked the solitary figure on the beach, too. I just wasn’t feeling the bookshop cover. But I made it, so here it is for anyone that’s interested!

Which one do you like better? Which one fits the story better? Let me know!

Cover images created by me, adapted from stock photo from unsplash.com / tv show stock footage.

Words: 18581 Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, Good Omens (TV) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens) Characters: Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley (Good Omens), Gabriel (Good Omens) Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Royalty, Alternate Universe - Human, Crowley is a gardener, Aziraphale is a prince, Fluff and Humor, Romantic Comedy, Fairy Tale Elements, gardening tournaments, intrustive narrator, Light Angst, Growing Up Together Summary:

There were all these little hopes and musings Crowley buried so deep in his heart it ached to bring them out into the light to catalogue their faults and flaws, and each time Aziraphale sought him out, or asked his opinion on some weighty manner that was hanging on him, or even just smiled, those little wishings grew bigger and bigger, pressing in on him until he felt as if he was being crushed.

“Princes do not fall in love with gardener boys,” he told himself one night, staring into the shard of looking glass he kept on a shelf, hoping it would help, hoping that hearing it out loud would make him believe it, would help him put all these ridiculous notions behind him.

It didn’t work.

Crowley and Aziraphale, the gardener’s boy and the prince, meet as children and develop an unlikely friendship.

& thank you - I hit the character limit in my submission. I appreciate all the work that you do and I avidly love the recs. Happy holidays!

I found it!! Thank you: archiveofourown. org/ works/ 18279791

I’m glad you found it!! Also, nice way of tricking the ask box to let you send in a link!

You Might Think I'm Crazy (All I Want is You) by soft_october

'“Look I understand, you’ve got to check up on the new occupants, make sure I’m a proper ‘fit’ for the neighborhood or whatever euphemism you’re going to use this time, 'the greater good,' I saw the film, I get it. But I peeked in at the place next door the agent mentioned and if you aren’t bothering him I really don't think you should be-”

“I’m your neighbor,” Aziraphale interrupted. “I own that place next door?”

“Oh.”'

Since the next shop over closed down, Aziraphale's had a peaceful few months, barring those unpleasant interactions with the men in cheap suits who keep trying to persuade him to sell his shop. But now a (handsome) new owner has taken up residence beside him and, horror of horrors, he wants to open up a coffee shop.