@harringrovemicrofic

Steve’s face has healed, mostly. Just as Billy’s own face has healed, mostly. He’s still ever the werewolf he felt like that night. The grotesque, ravenous teeth he bared still reflect back in the mirror. Under the tan, the blue eyes, the smile he’s practiced so well… waits the wolf Billy Hargrove is.

But Steve, his face has healed human. His hair is growing longer and his smile comes easier.

Around them the deep Indiana snow has melted out to a brilliant green spring. Steve seems to be thawing out with it. Billy cannot wait to see what gold summer is going to bring into Steve’s cream colored skin.

For Billy, he’s trying to bloom. He’s taking long drives down the backwoods winding roads, driving fast but not fast enough to miss the way wildflowers bloom right on top of last year's rot.

He wants more than anything to let go of his monster, of his rot, but it’s harder than it looks.

Anytime Billy makes an effort it feels unfamiliar to him in a way he can’t stand. In California he was effortlessly golden in summer. It’s just moving, dammit, it shouldn’t have changed him as much as it did!

But it did.

“Hey, Harrington.” He’ll force the words out anytime he passes Steve. He smiles with it, but he’s got a mouth full of fangs.

Steve smiles back at him, a line of sunlight between bare branches that’s magic enough to let the flowers grow.

Billy does the same to every kid who was in that house that night. All the kids he scared and hurt, all the kids who saw the yellow of his eyes. He nods at them in a way that he hopes makes them feel included, that his beast will protect them instead of harm them anymore. That he’s a dog with a collar, for fucks sake.

He doesn’t know if it’s working. His stepsister, Max, hasn’t treated him any differently. The kids… Steve… hasn’t treated him any differently.

It’s his birthday, and there’s flowers growing outside next to the chain link fence of the football field. Billy’s sitting inside listening to his teacher but watching the flowers. The leaves and stems seem so dark green here in the Midwest, Billy thinks the ones back home were lighter. Or maybe not.

The bell rings and he ditches lunch for a smoke break. Slinking under the bleachers to be alone.

“Hey, Hargrove.” The voice is melodic as it interrupts him. Perfect, and horrifying.

Steve stands there, holding out a half crumpled pack of cigarettes that’s colored gold. Billy’s hand shakes as he lifts it to accept one, grinning cruelty as he pulls two and places the second one behind his ear.

Steve clicks his tongue at him for doing it, but still lets him. “Sure, one for later.”

“It’s my birthday, after all,” the words pour out with the smoke after his first puff, he can’t stop them, “so thanks, pretty boy.”

“Fuck, really?” Steve asks. His voice pitching up in a cute way.

Billy pulls another drag, exhaling smoke from his nose as he only grunts in reply.

“Here, you should be the one to take this, then,” Steve’s hand slips the pack back into his pocket and fishes for something. “Since it’s your birthday.”

He holds out a skimpy looking white flower, with short and cute petals only a little roushed. It’s got dark green leaves on a dark brown stem only about as long as a palm. And Steve’s hand looks huge as he offers it to Billy.

“It’s called a salt and pepper, or a harbinger of spring. I’ve been told.” He laughs as he searches over the tiny thing. “El— oh, well, one of the kids gave it to me. But I think she’d be okay with you having it.”

Billy takes it slowly. Worse than how he took the smokes. Shaking and nervous, his fingers bump into Steve’s as he picks the flower. He pulls it close and it smells like rich-boy cologne, it smells like hair spray, it feels like heaven.

He blows more smoke out his nose.

“Do ya wanna skip the rest of the day with me?” He asks the flower. The harbinger of spring, Steve had called it. Billy’s got to remember how his mother pressed flowers so he can keep this for his whole life.

“Hell yes,” Steve answers. And Billy’s smile doesn’t feel forced.

Describing Crowley and Aziraphale's relationship

Bonus: Crowley and Aziraphale describing their relationship

Did you guys know you can use real texts for character stuff. For free

YOUR SOUL !

character: choso x reader

genre: fluffy, sappy shit :p

warnings: just some fluff. and uh, poetic choso? maybe?

a/n: a bit of a rainy day today, so i decided to make something a little softer today. i'm not good with sappy shit but i tried; also the beginning is just.. angsty? kind of? i have no real idea what i was doing here

you found yourself breaking down - why? at the moment, you couldn't fathom a reason.

sniffling, tears ran down your cheeks to be caught by your boyfriends hoodie. your head was throbbing from the constant stress and crying.

your muffled apologies and useless reasonings were hushed by the thick fabric while his larger hands worked to instill comfort into you.

because for the moment, that's all he knew how to do.

other than the occasional-

"baby?" choso's soft, smooth voice beat against the walls of your skull, trying to pull you back from your constant sobbing. "baby, did something happen?"

though, he got no response.

he felt about as powerless as a puppy in the moment. it wasn't like he could read your mind, and he was sure you didn't expect him to.

but damn, nothing?

resorting to what felt like his last resort, he began humming. humming, and using his larger frame to rock you side to side with him.

perhaps he had to treat you like a baby to get you to calm down? you did like being spoiled.

and after about five minutes passed, you began to hush. your sobs got quieter and quieter, apologies lessoned and random words seized.

he got you to stop.

it almost bought a smile to his face - but he wasn't exactly finished yet.

"l'me hear you, baby. what's the matter?" he asks softly, lifting your face from his now snot-covered hoodie.

your eyes were red and puffy, lips pouty and face wet. you looked ruined.

"m' sorry-"

"stop; stop apologizing, baby. tell me what's wrong." he says gently, minding his tone as to not stress you again. "what caused you to cry so much, hm?"

and at his question, you felt your eyes tear up once again.

"no, it's okay." he drew his thumb up to wipe them away. "no more tears, talk to me baby."

you blink, vision blurry. "jus' love you so much, but-" you swallow harshly.

"but?" he waits, embracing the silence with patience as you gather your response the best you could.

"jus feel like m' not enough for you sometimes, y'know?" you say through a choked tone, trying to force out a laugh. a mere chuckle, to try and make the conversation more lighthearted. lessening it to something minuscule.

choso's eyes widen, only for a moment, only for a millisecond before you decide to put your head back down. to find comfort in his heartbeat, to hopefully block out both the negative thoughts and the wretched migraine you've given yourself.

"oh.." was all you heard, and you could swear you felt something in your chest break, only for a moment. and the silence that follows is like the last straw for the dam trying to keep your tears from leaving your eyes. the waterworks were on again, and you felt even worse.

a hand comes from your back and instead to your jawline, lifting your face to make eye contact with him. silently, choso runs his thumb under your puffy eyes, hushing you quietly and wiping your tears. his digits run over your features.

making their way from under your eyes, to the sides and bridge of your nose. the cupids bow of your lip, and the cheeks he always loves to see smile. and in doing that itself makes himself smile.

his fingers explore from your cheeks to your eyes once again, adorning their shape and your eyebrows above them, and finally, he speaks. he speaks in which to you, felt like he hasn't spoken for decades, and says,

"not enough?" he kisses your forehead, hands cupping your face gently. "baby, you're all i could've wished for."

and in gazing at your eyes, he can tell there's doubt. which almost makes him frown. "i love all of you, not just your physical features but your emotional and mental features, too. i adore the way you think, the way you interact with things and the way you interact with me. i feel weak in the knees when i hear your voice, and every, little, touch," he touches the tip of your nose playfully. "warms my body with joy. joy i haven't felt in a very long while."

a soft look of admiration crosses him when he sees you're still pouting, but he adores it nonetheless.

he kisses the perimeter of your face, a smile tracing across his lips when he hears your small protest mixed with a playful giggle. "i love you with my mind, heart, body, and soul. i love you with all i've been given. and with every bit of adoration you give to me i try my hardest to pour back into you." he then places his forehead on yours, eyes meeting yours once again.

and for the time he's there, it feels like he doesn't blink, nor move a muscle for the time he's holding you there. just gazing at you, into you.

"if they say the eyes are the window to the soul, i'd gaze into yours for a lifetime. almost like a deer in headlights. you, and your soul, amaze me."

i swear this is the LAST thing i post about the ao3 fun fact but in the tags @cerealmonster15 mentioned that normal would DEFINITELY argue over obvious bait and i love that idea sm. Also, since scary definitely writes fanfic, i feel like she would write fanfic about the school burning down and hell being unleashed and "cool goth music no one understands" like greenday or smthn.

here, have a quick lil fem!crowley sketch (w/ ichor tears bc i adore angst, apparently)

sunflower picking🌻

Something something about how Etho wanted to die at home, in comfort, knowing he left his friends and allies in the best place possible, he knew he would die alone without them, but still wanted their comfort so made his way home

And something something about how Scar had to be told by a dead Grian that he won, he was so shocked that him being a villain (again) caused him to win (and become 2nd the first time around). It shocked him so much to realise he was only ever going to be successful when being the villain that he let a normal zombie bring him down to half a heart

To be fair, I behave the same way when people are nice to me.

You’re to sweet (read: straight) for me!

just saying since everything is intentional WHAT was marvel’s intent in doing this? “yeah let’s just put a rainbow lighting filter over mobius haha this doesn’t mean anything” YEAH RIGHT

Is it just me, or does he look a bit like a cat playing with a toy here?

Like, this is a pose a cat does when they're curious about something so they nudge it to test it out.

I get that the ending of GO2 hurts worse than sticking your unmentionables in a blender, but those of you saying it doesn't make sense or is OOC, or god forbid, PROPOSING AZIRAPHALE WAS MIND CONTROLLED, do not seem to understand how good characterization works.

Firstly, if Aziraphale was drugged/mind controlled into accepting the offer in the finale, that makes everything he said and did afterwards meaningless. Neil Gaiman is a very successful writer. I really believe he would not, under any sane circumstances, undo such a pivotal moment for a character with "LOL JK he was drugged 😂," because good writers don't write in a fundamental character flaw only to nuke it later with a twist that destroys all of their previous characterization. Aziraphale's crippling dependence on/devotion to heaven as a "force for good" has been there (practically screaming at the audience) since S1, and WAS NEVER RESOLVED, despite him being barred from heaven throughout S2. The only thing that he realized in S1 was that GABRIEL and the ARCHANGELS were flawed, and that they were orchestrating Armageddon without divine input. The S2 finale very clearly shows that Aziraphale did not pin that on the system of heaven and hell itself, as Crowley has.

I am going to attempt to explain why I believe that.

This season had a lot less emphasis on "Crowley's got a good side, Aziraphale's a bit of a bastard," than S1. In fact, there was almost none of that going on here, at least not explicitly. Instead, it focused on showing that Crowley and Aziraphale 1) both fundamentally didn't align with their head offices' MOs pre-armageddon and 2) that this was because they were both too good/kind to assimilate fully. Go watch the arc with Job again. Crowley can't bring himself to kill goats, let alone kids, and neither can Aziraphale, despite the fact that he knows it's good in theory because God and heaven want it. And yet, he doesn't go along with killing Job's kids because he knows it's wrong, and goes so far as to lie to his superiors (again) and, in his mind, damn himself for the sake of those kids. In the end though, Crowley helps him come to the conclusion that he is "an angel who goes along with heaven as far as he can," just as Crowley is "a demon who goes along with hell as far as he can," which apparently lets Aziraphale cope with the dissonance between his morals and heaven's orders.

So, if they have functionally the same mindset on paper, why don't they agree on what to do in the finale?

I think a lot of it is because they're both good, but that goodness is received very differently in their different roles and circumstances. Crowley is a demon who is crafty and mischievous, but ultimately, harm in the name of mischief is all that he's ever willing and able to do. He can't stoop to killing livestock, much less people. In S1 his goodness is set up to support his and Aziraphale's unique and ironic dynamic, with the plausible excuse that humans can do evil more creatively than he can, so he doesn't have to be genuinely evil. However, this season shows us another, much more relevant aspect of this goodness: it's just who he is. He was good in heaven, absorbed in making the universe beautiful and ensuring it would grow and develop nicely as it aged, and aside from questioning heaven's plans, he seemed like a model angel. Even when he is explicitly ordered to kill by hell, he doesn't kill people. In contrast, we see Hastur literally eat like 20 telemarketers for no other reason than because he felt like it in S1.

The reason Crowley sees through heaven is because he has been fully rejected by it, and he thus has experience not fitting in as both an angel and a demon. He was thrown out of heaven, the supposed embodiment of goodness as an organization, for asking to preserve the beauty and life of the universe: not just for asking questions, but for asking to do something objectively GOOD. Once he's kicked out of the "good" place for trying to do good and prevent needless destruction, then it's easy for him to realize that heaven is not actually a force for good, it just says it is. He falls for asking questions as an angel, and refusing to go along with doing true evil, which he continues to do in hell. After he spends a lot of time in hell, which is transparently evil, he finds out that they frequently AGREE with heaven on issues like Armageddon and torturing Job, and sees firsthand that the system itself, and the idea of heaven and hell, is rigged and contrived. If heaven and hell were opposites and were each truly good and evil, then they could never agree with each other on anything by design, yet they both want to end the world more than seemingly anything else. He has seen angels act just as violently and vindictively as demons (at levels of malice he, a demon, has never and would never sink to himself) so he also knows that, of course, the whole "angels good, demons bad" thing is bullshit, especially because he himself is GOOD, as Aziraphale and other characters reminded him all the time in S2.

However, Aziraphale attributes the systemic issues in heaven to individual angels, rather than the structure of heaven and hell themselves, because he still believes in the system and is privileged within it compared to Crowley. He sees evils endorsed by heaven as exceptions to the rule rather than signs of a core, systemic problem with heaven itself, and he sees the evils and contradictions of hell as the natural order of things because hell is supposed to be bad. He sees Crowley as an exception to the rule of "demons bad" and sees the archangels as exceptions to the rule of "angels good," rather than realizing that these rules aren't really true to begin with. Unlike Crowley, he has never been explicitly victimized or punished by heaven as an institution, only really bullied and belittled by other angels. He attributes the problems in heaven to said angels being in power, rather than heaven itself, both because he is too afraid to question heaven and potentially face the same consequences as Crowley has, and because he doesn't have the same perspective or insight Crowley does as a demon. Aziraphale probably believes that he has remained an angel by doing good and being good like he assumes heaven wants, rather than recognizing the real reason: he hasn't tried to undermine or question the system of heaven itself, and constantly makes excuses for it. The finale of S1 seemingly assured him that the archangels, who he no longer trusted/believed in at that point, had taken armageddon into their own hands. This made it safe for him to conclude armageddon wasn't a problem with heaven as an institution, it was a problem with the archangels. He thinks heaven isn't fundamentally corrupt, and that it was just a few bad apples responsible for trying to end the world, especially because he didn't have any administrative power then. Heaven does presumably reward good humans in the afterlife, and his job assignments mostly consist of doing good on Earth in general, at least on paper, so in his mind, of course heaven is good. I also think Aziraphale believes that his own goodness isn't just innate to who he is, but is a result/requirement of him being an angel. His perception of himself aligns with his perception of heaven in large part, so he isn't motivated to question either of those things.

However, heaven clearly exists not to spread goodness, but to pursue its own interests, primarily the end of the world and ultimate power after their ideal victory over hell. Both heaven and hell want to start the apocalypse in hopes of gaining a monopoly over the universe after finally beating the other. Notice that the Mettatron talks about his big plans for the second coming with Aziraphale right after he accepts the job, rather than plans for spreading goodness as Aziraphale had assumed would be his job: now that he's in a position of power, heaven has dropped its mask because he is complicit as an authority figure, and they could easily unseat him if he becomes a problem, just like they did to Gabriel. Heaven's goodness is a facade, a means to an end, and ultimately, a PR strategy that serves to brainwash the angels/employees who aren't responsible for calling the shots so that they don't question the power structure. Under this paradigm, if angels question heaven, and heaven is the ultimate good, it must mean that the angel's question comes from some flaw in them rather than a legitimate problem with heaven, which is why none of the angels seem willing to do it.

Aziraphale was lured into believing he was being asked back into the system to finally do the kind of good he wanted to by what he thought was a legitimate sign of kindness within heaven, an apparently purely altruistic gift (the cup of coffee) from the Metatron. He viewed it as a sign that there was still good in heaven after all. Significantly, Aziraphale, unlike Crowley, did not see the videos in Heaven and does not have the full context for Gabriel's amnesia, and is missing some of that crucial evidence of heaven's goal to hasten the apocalypse. The reason there was such an emphasis on the coffee is not that it was drugged or miracled to force him to accept, but because it was a very overt manipulation tactic that builds on the core themes of the show. It was the Metatron pretending to do something out of goodness, just as heaven has done for all this time, even though its actual goal is to destroy the world. The coffee was a deliberate bait and switch by the Metatron, and it is a very potent symbol: a false promise of altruism made to lure good people into working for an evil/corrupt system. I think that Aziraphale, in the credits, is (aside from reeling from his fallout with Crowley) trying his best to rationalize his decision to try to change heaven from the inside, and chalking the Metatron's behavior up as one more bad apple/angel.

We'll see if he finally realizes that the system itself is unfixable in S3.

TLDR: the characterization that led to the finale has been there the whole time. It might be surprising or upsetting, but it is very much not out of character or unprecedented.

TLOVM season 2 my absolute beloved, nothing else compares. Like, the found family is back. They’re fucking back and they’re better than ever, and ready to fight literal dragons which is so so sexy of them. New outfits, new weapons, new romances, new characters? Um, yes please, sign me up. Season 1 and the Whitestone arc was phenomenal and now we get to explore even more backstories? Hell yeah! Everyone’s gonna get their time to shine (experience life altering trauma)! Animated fuck-around-and-find-out found family fantasy show of all time fr