Sequel to 'Celestial Red Cross' (GO/SPN)

[icarus_chained]

Quick, cracky-type thing that demanded to be written.

Title:  Exercises in Patience
Rating:  PG
Fandoms:  Good Omens, Supernatural
Continuity:  Sequel to Celestial Red Cross
Characters/Pairings:  Crowley, Castiel, Gabriel, Aziraphale. Crowley/Aziraphale. Dean/Cas sort of mentioned
Summary:  Angels make the worst patients, even when they aren't trying to kill each other, and a poor beleagured demon only has so much patience. At least Someone seems to be amused!
Wordcount:  1855 
Warnings/Spoilers:  SPN up through 5x19. Language. Crack.
Disclaimer:  Oh, I wish.

Exercises in Patience

It was enough to drive a demon to drink.

Not that that was any special achievement, admittedly, but anything that could induce an infernal agent of Crowley's caliber and experience to sink a cruise-liner worth of booze in one sitting probably deserved some credit. Or it would, if he'd actually managed to get to the drink before the racket started up again.

It turned out, you see, that convalescing angels were quite simply the worst possible patients in existence. One was bad enough. He'd put Aziraphale back together enough times to sort of expect it. But three, one of whom was a thrice-blasted, trickstering archangel ... Booze. It was the only solution. Lots and lots of booze.

If the bloody bastards would ever stop long enough to let him have some.

Gabriel had not woken up in a good mood. Apparently being slaughtered by your brother would do that to you, and since the archangel didn't actually remember the whole God-bringing-him-back part, he'd gone from comatose to pissed off in two seconds flat, and hadn't come out since. Which was fine with the little stab-happy bastard, Castiel, who'd seemingly be itching for an argument with the archangel since TV Land, whatever that was. It turned out no-one could do quietly, viciously acidic comments like that angel, and he seemed to delight in the fact. He and Gabriel had been systematically driving each other -and everyone else- up the wall since Gabriel woke up, and only Aziraphale's presence stopped it from escalating into actual violence.

Aziraphale, for his part, half-dozing in his armchair nursing a stomach-wound, seemed to think it would be better to let them get it all out in the open, or something, and had point-blank refused to try and stop them. Instead, he seemed content to quietly reproach the pair of them at regular intervals, and glare pointedly whenever Gabriel raised a hand to miracle Castiel somewhere unpleasant. Which inevitably resulted in this sublimely smug expression appearing on Castiel's face, and the whole bloody mess starting all over again.

Crowley was this close, this close, to wishing himself back to Hell, homicidal Devil and all, just to get a break. Just for five minutes of peace. Or simply killing the lot of them and taking his bloody chances with the Almighty. I mean, sure, he'd been all but pissing himself opening the door, and he'd promised to look after the angels, and he'd given his word, but at no point had the Big Guy actually mentioned putting up with the unrelenting, unremitting, unprecedented agony that was listening to the three of them. That hadn't been part of the mandate.

No. Almighty or no Almighty, he was going to have to do something drastic, and soon. Or there would be angel brains decorating the walls, and he wouldn't notice on account of being terminally pissed out of his skull and/or a rapidly spreading cloud of component atoms, whichever happened first.

Across the hall, they were still going at it:

"Listen you little twerp! I made my choice, I paid for it, and you can take your holier-than-thou attitude and shove it up ..."

"Gabriel!"

"And what, Gabriel? I don't believe I've heard that expression before."

"Oh, like I'm going to believe that! You spend that long with Dean Winchester, and you expect me to believe you haven't heard that one? Or maybe you two are too busy doing it to talk much?"

"Gabriel!"

"You don't talk about Dean. Not like that. Not you, Gabriel."

"Not me what, Cas? I only saved his life, after all. Hey, you think maybe he pays all the angels that way ...?"

"Gabriel!! Castiel, no, lie back, stop! Stop, the pair of you! Gabriel, don't you dare ..."

"ENOUGH!" Crowley slammed the door open, not even bothering to check if there was anyone behind it (there wasn't, but that was more a disappointment than a relief), striding into the room with a bottle of vodka in one hand and his favourite terrify-the-mortals expression on his face. He considered going for maggots again, but decided the company wasn't right for it.

Three angels froze in the act, staring at him. Gabriel was leaning heavily on the end of Castiel's bed, one hand raised to snap. Castiel was half-fallen over one side of the same bed, hanging onto the bedpost with grim determination as he readied himself to leap at the archangel. There was blood seeping through the bandages around his chest, but Crowley was so not inclined to be sympathetic at the minute. Aziraphale, who'd actually fallen to his knees getting up out of the chair, was poised between the two, hands outstretched and residual anger lingering on his features. He was bleeding too, rather spectacularly, but for once Crowley officially did not care.

"Crowley ...?" his angel asked, brow wrinkling in concern. Crowley glared at him.

"Shut up, angel. The lot of you. Shut up. The first one of you to open their mouth in the next five minutes is going to get terminally brained with a bottle, and I don't care if I get smited for it, so shut. Up. Understood?"

They stared at him. Nobody moved. Which, given that two of them were only upright by the skin of their teeth, was probably going to come back to bite them in a minute, but Crowley didn't care about that either.

"I have been listening to you lot for the past three hours," he said, low and deadly. "After having to heal the lot of you, after having to open the door to the Almighty Himself, after sssspending most of the day in a ssstate of extreme terror. After all that. I have been lissstening to you, and trying, repeatedly, to get very, very drunk, and every time I get the bloody bottle tipped the lot of you try to kill each other. And then I have to move, to check on you, to make ssssure you haven't burned my houssse down, or turned each other into ducks, or smited each other into oblivion, or any number of other unpleasssant things, and as a result, I am still fucking sssober! Because of you. And that ... that doessss not make me a happy demon. That doesss not make me happy at all. So you lisssten up, yesss? You listen to me."

He stalked forward, taking a certain dark, demonic delight in the flicker of genuine fear that crossed three angelic faces, taking a vicious pleasure in the worry there. He grinned savagely, and pointed to them one by one, watching them flinch.

"You," he said, to Castiel. "You are a guesssst in my house, and alive because of me, and since you do, presssumably, have some atrophied remnant of a conscience knocking around that damaged chessst of yours, you will ssstop taunting the archangel, yesss? Because if you don't, I will take great pleasure in plonking you right back down in that field Aziraphale found you in, and leaving you to take your chancesss! Clear?"

Castiel said nothing, showed absolutely no fear, but nodded. Crowley grinned at him, shark-like, and moved on.

"You," he said, to Gabriel. "You may have gotten here by expressss divine delivery, and I may have promissssed to look out for you, but I will remind you that your firssst few moments back in thisss world were spent wrapped in my arms like a little archangel baby, and unlesss you want every ssssupernatural creature this side of the Atlantic to know about it by noon tomorrow, you'll calm the bloody hell down and sssstop picking on the other angelssss! Alright?"

Gabriel's face moved through a lot of expressions in very quick succession, most of them on the fear-outrage-disgust end of the spectrum, but he nodded too.

Which left only one angel, and while that particular angel was one Crowley genuinely cared for, and possibly even loved, and never wanted to see hurt again ... the last few hours had really been too much. Even for demonic patience.

"And you," he said, very quietly, glaring at the innocent, concerned expression on his angel's face. "I expected better of you, angel." There was genuine disappointment in his voice, genuine hurt, and Aziraphale flinched. "You know how badly ssshaken I am. I had hoped ... I thought that you ... Doesssn't matter. Jussst ... Just stop letting them fight, okay? Ssssit back, let your ssstomach heal, and ssstop letting them kill each other. I'll just be ... I'm just going to get drunk, get over the ssshock a bit. You ... you keep an eye on them for me, yessss? I can trussst you for that, can't I?"

Which was all blatant emotional blackmail, and after six thousand years the angel should have realised that and growled at him accordingly, because Crowley was a grown-up demon and more than capable of patching up his own wounds, but maybe a little more genuine emotion had slipped in than he'd thought, because Aziraphale's face crumpled in pain, one soft hand reaching out towards Crowley in mute apology. And if Crowley had been half the bastard he pretended to be, he'd have knocked that hand aside and left the angel to stew in his guilt.

Look, it wasn't his bloody fault that Aziraphale made him a little soft. It wasn't. The angel had made Crowley bloody love him, had pulled the caring whammy on him as surely as he'd pulled the guilt one on the angel, and there was nothing he could do about it now. So he caught the hand, accepted the apology silently, and went right back to glaring at the lot of them.

"Now," he growled. "I'm going to go into the next room to drown my sorrows and yell at the Almighty for being a sadistic bastard for a bit. To do that I'm going to be leaving you children alone. Think you can summon up maturity enough to not kill each other while I'm gone?"

The three of them looked like something had been very badly sprained in the effort, most likely their dignity, but they nodded at him again. All three of them. Silently, grudgingly, with matched expressions of sulky guilt, but they nodded. So Crowley, to whom the bottle in his hand was already singing its siren song once more, decided to trust them for the moment, and stalked the hell back out again.

And, because he'd said he would, he raised the first glass he poured to the heavens, grimaced, and toasted. "You're the biggest bloody bastard I've ever sssseen, You know that? The absolute bloody biggest, and I hate You, and if thossse basstards don't settle bloody down I will not be responsible for my actions. You hear?" He grinned, a little. "Now quit bloody laughing at me and get back to running the universe, will You?"

And it might have been his imagination, but he could have sworn Someone did gently laugh at him, and leave him to drink in peace. And he could also have sworn that the bottle of very, very fine cognac at his wrist hadn't been there when he went in to berate the angels.

Alright. So maybe he didn't actually hate the bastard.

Much, anyway.