Nice: A Good Omens Fanfic

Thrones and jungles

Angels, Crowley decided, were less nice than reputed. Certainly less nice than his admittedly fuzzy memories of hell, and rather more clear memories over the last millennium of one particular angel in particular.

He glared at the phone. He was not going to call again. Just because the world would end in a few days was no reason to be clingy. He could spend it... thinking. Yes. That would be productive. Thinking about how to thwart the Antichrist. Thinking about how not to end up in a fire pit, being tortured and bored out of his bloody brain.

Sod it, he was almost ready to turn on the stereo and have a chat with Satan, just to have someone call him "darling" and "love" as if he was important. He'd always been a bit of a pet of Satan's, back from the old unfallen days when they'd worked on Venus together.

Great idea that was. Hi, lord, yes, things are going well up here. I misplaced your only son, and I'm currently hunting him down and vaguely planning to kill him, why do you ask? Do let me know if the Angel of the Bottomless Pit turns up actually in his personal Pit, lord. Wouldn't want to waste our time looking.

Besides, there was always the danger that He would speak in Kylie Minogue's voice again, and that wasn't to be contemplated.

When had he become lonely so easily? He had spent thousands of years mostly alone. It wasn't really how it had been supposed to be. They were all in it together, the Prince of Heaven and his gang. They were going to form their own heavenly host, make their own heaven, overthrow Her and establish a rational community in which the word ineffable had been banned and more fun than singing hymns was allowed.

It hadn't really worked out to plan.

Crowley slouched in his throne and was immediately embarrassed at himself. Why the hell did he have this monstrosity, anyway? It hardly went with the industrial chic of his flat. It had been sitting in Harrods. He loved Harrods. It was carefully designed to foster snobbery, acquisitiveness and vanity. One of his best.

He'd popped in on a slow day to spread some extra greed and envy around, and the throne had caught his eye. Like much of Harrods furniture, it wasn't something a reasonable person would eat their supper on. It had obviously designed to encourage the vainglory and self-idolatry of pop stars and soccer players. It was the tackiest thing he'd ever seen.

It went straight home with him.

Did he need to remind himself that he had been a Seraph on a far more impressive throne, back in the day? To distinguish himself from the life a used book dealer lived? Or was it because Crowley, for all his attempts to be some definition of cool for whatever era he was in, had no taste?

It wasn't even comfortable, for Satan's sake. And he was... pining in it. Pining.

Not pining for evil glory. Not pining for power. Not even pining for lost Heaven—after all, he'd been lonely and bored and slightly irritated most of the time there, too.

Pining for *attention.* From an angel.

When had that happened, again? When had Aziraphale stopped being an occasional indulgence and become a necessary part of life? They'd spent the last eleven year barely apart, of course, raising a kid together even, and Crowley was secretly very proud of what a delightfully disrepectful and rebellious child Warlock had turned out to be. Chip off the old —of someone else's old block.

But sometime before that, Aziraphale had ended up on speed dial on Crowley's phone.

Phone. That was it. Modern technology. Humans had nailed the whole never apart thing. No flying across the continents for a chat, hoping no one spotted the wings. It was too temptingly easy to pick up a phone and—