Good Omens 'one shots' 2

Penance

TW: Graphic Description of Violence and Torture

Blurb: Months after Armageddon, Aziraphale falls asleep in his bookshop and slips into a familiar nightmare: heaven finding out his particular romantic feelings for a particular demon. Their methods of punishment have never been kind and Aziraphale is forced to feel it all.

Meanwhile, Crowley doesn't know Aziraphale sleeps, or even dreams. Until now.

Or: Aziraphale has a nightmare and Crowley comforts him

Penance

Crowley smirked at himself as he slipped unnoticed into the vacant looking bookshop.

Silly Aziraphale letting just any wily old demon in without hardly a ward in his defense. He would have to bring it up in case some guy who actually had malicious intent tried to enter. Not that the angel couldn't defend himself. The serpent had seen him wield a sword before and knew he didn't want to be on the other end of that blade.

Still, no sound in the shop.

Dust and cobwebs littered the entranceway, not that that was unusual, Aziraphale tended to prefer a bit of dust. Just that, paired with the silence, was eery. Aziraphale liked music and to put on records or hum to himself especially when he thought he was alone - Crowley had come to realize in the months after armageddon.

So where was he?

Finding everything unnerving, Crowley started to whistle to himself. Picking up random books to settle his nerves as he made his way throughout the shop in search of the angel. Perhaps he was caught up in a book? Lost in his thoughts? Crowley had seen the angel in a state like that before.

What he wasn't expecting was to see the angel passed out on the sofa in the backroom, a look of pain clearly etched into his usually cherubic face.

"Angel?" Crowley approached quickly, kneeling down beside him, placing a hand on his forehead. He didn't know what he was looking for exactly since beings like him and the angel didn't get human sickness, but it seemed like the thing to do.

There was a soft whimper as Crowley held his hand to Aziraphale's forehead. His skin was warm to the touch, but it was supposed to, wasn't it? Corporations were meant to be warm.

"Shit," Crowley frowned and withdrew his hand, trying to find some other way to see what was wrong with the angel. Humans had invented thermometers hadn't they? Supposed to say if a person was sick. Stick a metal thing-a-ma-bob in his mouth and it would glow or something.

In his sleep, Aziraphale tucked his chin slightly, mumbling what sounded like an apology. He still looked to be in a tremendous amount of discomfort and Crowley was growing panicked.

Maybe it was just a nightmare? He knew the angel didn't sleep, or at least had never seen him sleep. But hey, first time for everything.

He took Aziraphale by the shoulders and shook him as gently as possible, "Angel wake up!"

Aziraphale blinked down at the cement floor, feeling a bit like a strung up chicken with his wrists tied high above him, keeping his toes an inch off the ground. He'd long since stopped crying, the pain in his shoulders a dull reminder of this increasingly awful dream he was having with no escape.

At least he knew it was a dream now. Back when he first started getting these, he'd thought these illusions were reality, thought these tortures were happening to his true form.