As It Should Be

Prompt #26

(Character A) meets (Character B) at the Area 51 raid. (Character B) freaks out because they work there (albeit not voluntarily, it was a family thing to work for the government), and pretends they’re an alien because they’re a pathological liar.

Fortunately(?), (Character A) is stupid and believes them, so now (Character B) has to keep up with the charade after (Character A) takes them home to rescue them from the facility.

Prompt #0.5

(Character A), a celebrity, is a big fan of (Character B), a Tumblr stan account dedicated to (Character A).

Because they suck at communication, (Character A) decides to comission fanfiction of themselves through (Character B) to talk to them.

Prompt #16

(Character A) is a rebellious teen, and when they get together with the goody-two-shoes (Character C), everyone warns (Character C) to be wary.

In the end, it’s (Character A) who gets their heart broken, and nobody knows how...

Except maybe (Character B), who’s been with (Character C) before and knows exactly what they’re like. As an empathetic person, they become friends with (Character A) to try and mend their heart, and fall in love a bit in the process.

As (Character A) has just gotten out of a bad relationship, (Character B) doesn’t want to rush anything, but little do they know that (Character A) is just as enamoured.

Cue the ‘I don’t want them to be a rebound’ and ‘I’m not gonna rush anything’ and let the story begin.

She thinks that maybe it’s the bone structure.

Her face was odd, and it was odd in the way that it didn’t seem normal to anyone else. It was something different, and she didn’t like it.

Once, she waxed her eyebrows off entirely. All the way gone. The clock on the bathroom wall showed that it was late, a bit too late to be up. Good. Eye bags would diminish exceptional beauty.

She never got eye bags.

She had panted in front of the mirror, eyes tearing up, but smiling all the same. Finally, she wasn’t perfect. Finally, she felt she could match how pretty she was on the outside with herself on the inside. After so long....

She felt like she was crying happy tears, despite the constant twinges of pain, and it was glorious to feel individuality, as if she could choose what happened! Like she belonged in her body, after trying so long.

And then it grew back in the morning.

Flawlessly shaped and full.

And nothing she ever did changed anything.

God, it was so depressing to think about.

Nothing she did changed anything. Nobody took her seriously, nobody ever looked at her and wanted to see her any less beautiful. The best thing she could be was pretty.

And she didn’t really feel like she matched it, really.

Her body was different from her brain, her face didn’t match her heart - and she didn’t feel like her heart was even that great! She wasn’t super brave or smart or nice or anything, she was just pretty.

She wished she was ugly.

People whispered about her behind her back, and it wasn’t the kind that usually hurt feelings. Normally, nobody would be offended by being called gorgeous or beautiful or hot or cute or whatever adjective English could produce! Normally it would be accepted, craved, even!

But she wanted nothing more than to be wanted for being less than perfect, less than desirable. She was starving for genuine affection, and was getting superficial attention. She didn’t know if unconditional love was real. Isn’t that what a mother should feel?

Does her mother feel that, if she let this thing be her daughter?

It was like a drowning man being showered with money and being told to buy his way out. It would be helpful in any situation other than the one she was in.

Just once, she wished to shave her whole head and wear the ugliest jumper in the history of mankind. Sing like a tone-deaf monkey and break a glass, and have people act horrified and scandalized. She wanted to walk down the street and not hear anything but the cars roll by, and go to a coffee shop without getting five different numbers, maybe enjoy her black coffee for a change.

Anything but perfection.

She wore the loosest hoodies and sweatpants, littered with holes and frayed edges. Her hair was long and smooth. She kept it in a low ponytail, under her hood and away from sight. Nothing she did changed how people saw her. It was like she didn’t matter.

And then she had a brilliant idea; the kind of idea that deserved a light-bulb above her head and sparks behind her eyes. Something new and unexpected, something that could help her be her and not pretty -

A mask.

A mask! What a genius invention, the mask! Something not made to hide beauty, but to disguise an unwelcome face, perhaps. No matter. She wasn’t one to be proper.

She would wear a mask, and maybe people would listen to her words and not her bone structure, or whatever it was that everyone was fascinated with. It could also be her eyelashes or something.

And she got a mask. And went to school.

“Hi,” said her teachers.

“Hi!” said the boys, hoping to get a date.

“Hi!” said the girls, hoping to get a date.

“Hello,” said her friends, who whispered behind her back every time she turned around as if she was deaf.

“Hello!” said everyone passing by her in the hall.

It didn’t change anything.

Dear god, it didn’t change anything-

Nothing she did mattered, did it? She could scream to the high heavens that she’d had enough, and they’d smile and say hello. The holiest demons in Hell had blessed her with ugly beauty, and it was so terribly evil. She wasn’t sure if anyone ever saw her real face. Could she see her real face? Was she being tricked?

She was hiding in the bathroom. Sitting on the floor with her knees curled into her chest and her arms hugging her knees too tight and restricting her lungs so that they screamed louder than the thoughts in her head. It was smelly, and weirdly sticky, but she didn’t care. She was tearing out her hair, or was that even her hair?

The air was being stubborn and hiding from her nose, so she sucked in deep breaths through her mouth, but it wasn’t enough. It was never enough. It was so hot in the room but she was so cold, and her throat was so dry and parched that her tongue felt like rubber on sandpaper.

Breathe.

Breathe. Was this even her nose?

Breathe.

It didn’t matter, she didn’t think.

Was this even her brain?

She didn’t care.

She smiled up deliriously at the ceiling. “Hello,” she said, and she knew it sounded like honey in December, but all it felt like was February rain.

It was too cold for her here.

Way too cold........

She wanted to just fall asleep.

...

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the world would let her not wake up?

She hated that fairy that had given her mother the boon of the most beautiful child.

She wished she could be ugly. She wished that when she cried people didn’t whisper about how beautiful she was. She wished that her anger was horrifying. She wished her ill manners were repulsive. 

She wished she could be ugly.

Prompt #14

Take your OTP. Imagine them as an angel and a demon, based on personality.

Switch them.

Prompt #15

(Character A), who is a peasant, accidentally saves (Character B), who is royalty, from an assasination attempt. However, (Character B) thinks it was purposeful, and thinks they are indebted to (Character A).

(Character A) is unaware of this, and wonders why the heir to the throne is so interested in them all of a sudden.

Tfw you’re trying to watch movies illegally online and get sent to NSFW sites

hopeless

It goes like this.

A snake meets an angel in a garden of peace and figures that knowledge was more important than that peace. The angel believes they were not destined to be. He gives a sword to the first two humans, and does not fall.

The snake is decidedly not jealous.

He will never be jealous of not falling, because it was what he was always meant to do anyways, wasn’t he?

He was always meant to go down in a blaze of searing flesh and bone and fire, fire, flames that burnt him and swirled around him as he screamed and screamed but it wouldn’t stop, it would never ever stop because all his tears were evaporating and it’s like they never existed and it’s been so long now, is this his new forever? Is this what he is meant to be? Merely an angel for an instant, a plaything to be thrown away for simply asking the wrong questions at the wrong time?

Is this his fault?

(If all the tears he cried wouldn’t have gone up in smoke, maybe they would have been the water to fill the ocean).

It’s fine.

It’s what he was made for, to be tested. The angel wasn’t.

He was fine.

Anyways, he may have gone and fallen in love with said angel.

He was just so wonderful and sweet and genuine, and he was everything the demonic snake would never be. In fact, the demon hadn’t even known that he could love anything until now.

He wasn’t supposed to love anything at all, but here he was, stupidly pining for someone who could never love him.

Hopeless.

—

It goes like this.

Holy water is passed from an angel to a demon, no longer in the form of a snake, and it doesn’t burn the demon. It doesn’t even touch his skin. Not for a second did he even think it would.

They have changed a whole lot since they met, but they have sown trust, and they have sown a bond. A new bond.

Never before has there been a pair of genuine friends that consisted of a demon and an angel, never before has there been a pair that has come close to even fraternization. Not even after the six thousand years they had known each other.

And yet...

He is still going too fast for the angel.

And he doesn’t know how.

“Too fast?!” He throws a plate to the floor, and it shatters. The shards scatter all around the room, and it almost desperately trying to get away from him, hiding under the sofa and under the space between the counters and the floor. His plants are shaking like they never have before, terrified of his unheavenly wrath.

“It’s been so long,” and he sharply pulls on his hair and now he’s crying and tear tracks are running down his face. He doesn’t care. “I’ve waited so long. I’ve tried my best. I’ve-“

He chokes on nothing but his own despair.

He’s kneeling in the shards and they’re digging into his knees. He couldn’t care less.

“What do I need to do?” He was asking someone, anyone, whoever could give him any semblance of an answer, but nobody did. He didn’t know if anyone could.

“How do I be enough? How long do I have to wait until I’m worth more to somebody?” The unknowing of what comes next cut his heart out with a butcher knife made of his own desperation. The only sound to answer his pleas, his prayers, was his own shaky breathing and his plants shuddering.

“Can he even love me?”

And that was the question, wasn’t it? He clenched his eyes shut and put his hands over his ears, alone but surrounded by so much noise, a ringing in his ears that wouldn’t go away. He could hear his decorative heart beating, pounding away, like a symbol crashing with crescendo of a whole orchestra his ears.

He was making up noises at this point, wasn’t he? Trying to deafen the silence with his own imagination. As if it could take away everything that there wasn’t. His plants had stopped cowering. They knew the only thing he wanted to yell at right now was himself.

How had God made him this way? Why did he have to exist like this, confused and incapable of accepting the simple fact that he was unlovable? How had he been cursed with a heart that cared about everything?

How had he been cursed to love when he couldn’t be loved himself?

And as he was breaking down for the thousandth time exactly in his lifetime, the angel was fixing himself a cup of tea and humming a simple melody, settling down to read one of his more recently acquired books, completely and utterly unaware of any of it. And he was still alone.

Utterly hopeless.

—

It goes like this.

The Armageddon’t was averted, and the angel and demon have saved the world. Neither of them were expected to, and neither of them were supposed to, but they did. They exist just the same as they did before.

They still drink too much together and dine at the Ritz and talk about dolphins and whales and ducks and live quite normally.

(Well, as normal as you can expect it to get.)

The demon still has yellow snake eyes and listens to Queen almost obsessively and drives too fast, and the angel still loves fancy restaurants and reads old books and barely sells any of them to his customers.

And the demon still loves.

And he still hates that he does.

“I hate caring,” he says one evening, half-way into his third bottle of fine wine. There’s no way he’s sober at this point. He had been drinking since he had arrived at Aziraphale’s bookshop, despite Aziraphale himself declining to partake in it. “I just hate it so much.”

“I know, dear,” Aziraphale raises an eyebrow and turns a page of the book he’s reading. Crowley’s pretty sure it’s one of Jane Austen’s earlier novels. “You’ve told me many times.”

“I know, I know, I know,” Crowley waves him off, but just a bit too enthusiastically, and leans forward on his knees. “But I just hate it. Too much.”

“Too much what?” He asks. He turns the page, but is almost certainly not reading it. He seems more focused on the conversation now.

“There’s too much. I feel too much. Not s’posed to.” Crowley pulls a disgusted look. “Demons ‘r not s’posed to love ‘n stuff.”

Aziraphale frowns and it looks almost like he’s trying to figure out a puzzle in his head. “You can love?”

Crowley chokes like he did so long ago, and there’s something trapped in the back of his throat, a lump that’s suffocating him, and he almost hopes that he could really die instead of just discorporate.

“I-“ he swallows deep, “I wish I couldn’t. God- Satan- Somebody,” he doesn’t know who somebody even is.

“I wish I couldn’t, so bad. So bad.” He wishes he weren’t so drunk, too, but he doesn’t want to sober up, and the love thing precedes the drunkenness by a large portion.

“Why would you not want to be able to love?” Aziraphale questions, a concerned look in his eyes. “Why would you ever want that? That would be horrible!”

“No it wouldn’t.” Crowley is completely serious, and it’s clear that Aziraphale doesn’t understand at all.

“How could not loving ever be a good thing?!”

“How could it ever be a good thing?”

Aziraphale pinches his nose and sighs. “I’m really arguing with a drunk Crowley right now,” he mutters under his breath. “Sober up.”

“But-“ Crowley whines, and Aziraphale shushes him with a finger. He huffs. “‘Kay...”

He sobers up in less than a minute, and opens his eyes to see Aziraphale with his arms crossed in front of him.

“Explain your argument.” He asks politely, and Crowley is so ready to destroy him with his debate skills.

“I love a lot, unfortunately, and people can’t love me.” He lays it plainly out in front of them, and can’t understand for the life of him why Aziraphale looks so pained.

“... Are you okay?” asks Crowley, and is completely surprised and overtaken by Aziraphale squeezing the living daylights out of him. He makes a noise that is not a squeak (it totally is, but he will never admit it) as his rib cage is practically ground to dust.

“What-“ he lets out a breath as Aziraphale hugs him closer. “What’s this for and also I can’t breathe please let me go what are you doing-“

“I’m hugging you,” says Aziraphale simply, and only lets Crowley have a bit of breathing room.

“But why?” Crowley asks with a furrowed brow.

“Because you need one, clearly,” and that’s the explanation he gives.

Crowley is still not following. “Why would I need a hug?”

“You can be loved,” and Crowley’s lungs are screaming for another reason as all his air is stolen, along with his words.

“You can be loved so much, Crowley, you can be loved, you can be loved, I love you and you don’t even know how much, I promise you I’ll never hide it ever again, I promise, you go so fast but I think I’ve caught up, Crowley, oh dear...” There’s tears dripping and soaking his shirt, but he doesn’t care, because he’s ruining Aziraphale’s coat too.

“I-“ How does one say that they have loved another for thousands of years? Since the garden of Eden? Since they knew each other?

“I love you so much I can’t think anymore,” is what he goes with. “I just never thought that anyone could love a demon.”

The angel, his angel, was still holding him in his arms. “I’m not sure if being a demon suits you, darling. I think you may be the only exception.”

And so they live as exceptions.

Mutual exceptions, a demon who didn’t quite suit being a demon or an angel, and an angel who didn’t quite suit being an angel or a demon.

In the end, they were quite human.

And they were quite happy with that.

Maybe they weren’t quite hopeless.

Prompt #4

(Character A) is a superhero who keeps getting sued. (Character B) is their lawyer.

it hurts

“It hurts,” says the ice to the sun, “It hurts me to be with you.”

“But it hurts me too,” says the sun. “Have you ever thought about how your dripping water sizzles on my skin?”

The ice was confused. “Your pain comes from my destruction, yet you invalidate my pain from my own destruction with it?”

“But my pain is important too!” The sun screams their pain louder than the ice ever could.

“Okay,” says the ice, and caters to the sun’s sizzling blisters, not acknowledging their own mutilation.

The blisters do look rather serious, of course.

And so the ice suffers in silence.