logsinthenight | you're a sky full of stars

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you're a sky full of stars | closed

characters: Aziraphale and Crowley
location: At the park
date/time: 9/18 for lunch
content: A long overdue picnic, with a surprise meteor shower
warnings: Y'all it's gonna be cute. Hiss hiss fall in love.

Aziraphale had spent the last two days off and on making a spread for the picnic that he'd promised he'd take Crowley on before their little boat hijacking plot, so the fact that there were falling stars everywhere was just a nice little bonus. "Ah," he had said, as they headed out, straw basket full of goodies with a gingham blanket covering it tucked under one arm. "I wonder what that's all about."

Now, on the dark green lawn of the park, somewhere by the pagoda with the ice cream cart in plain view, Aziraphale throws the blanket open and places a rock on one corner and a bottle of wine on the other to weigh it down. He pulls out a few wrapped cheeses, some crackers, dried apricots, walnuts he'd cracked himself that morning, extremely terribly made pork pies, and eton mess that had, at one point, aspirations as a pavlova.

And, of course, some awful red table wine that would taste better once poured, as long as Aziraphale got to touch it first. "It is beautiful," he remarks, looking up at the sky. "Were you in the Americas for the Leonid storm in 1833? I was. It's a bit like that."

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"1833? No, I missed that. Japan. Cleaning up a bit of old business there."

This is actually pretty nice, and nothing like what Crowley had expected when Aziraphale had first suggested a picnic to him back in the 1960's. Back when Aziraphale told him he moved too fast, that maybe one day they'd dine at the Ritz, have a picnic, all of that. They never managed to get there, but wouldn't it be nice if that was possible, one day?

Maybe when they get back.

"What were you doing in America?" he asks, looking skeptically into the picnic basket. Aziraphale has been trying, and he's been trying so hard. There is no way Crowley is going to tell the angel if anything doesn't taste spectacular, of course, but he just wants to get a general idea of what he's going to have to lie about.

Well, maybe Crowley could help the proceedings along by miracling the food a little better until Aziraphale finally got the hang of things. Which, despite his aptitude and general knowledge, might take a few years to get the knack of it. "Ah, trying to help those along the frontier, I suppose. And to mediate with the locals. It hadn't gone quite as planned," he remarks, sadly.

It wasn't even demonic doing, just. Humans being humans.

He unpacks a pork pie and takes a bite. It's. Quite awful, but he continues eating it anyway. "What were you doing in Japan? Sowing seeds to fell Edo, no doubt."

"You know, I don't remember," Crowley says, taking his own small pie. He can immediately tell that the crust is going to be a bit rubbery, and he doesn't imagine they had the right ingredients for the inside, but part of him----a rather large part, if he's totally honest with himself (which he rarely is)---is so pleased that Aziraphale has put this much effort into the picnic that he refuses to miracle the food any different. He'll be damned (again) if he changes it, it's something special.

He takes a bite of the pie. Oh, this is terrible. In a way, it makes it better, because Aziraphale tried, which Crowley rarely does. Also, Crowley is an excellent liar, so he puts on his best smile, like the whole thing is a wonderful meal.

"When was the last time you were in Japan, angel? Bit different over there, now. All technology and bubblegum pink and animal faces---right up next to their traditional buildings. It's odd."

"Oh, can't've been more than--" then his eyes go wide. "Well, must be thirty years ago now, how fast time goes. Feels like just yesterday." He tucks into the pork pie but the look on his face is like he's been made to suffer some sort of punishment. He has no idea how Crowley is eating these, or why he's bothering to pretend.

"You're right, it's hardly recognizable, but. It has charm, and there are still nice old bits. All the temples are standing!"

But he remembers, he'd taken a pop over to go eat, naturally. New ramen restaurant. It had been alright. "Mm. Oh, I do wish we had any good quality raw fish. All I can tell from the water here is it contains dead bodies."

"We'll make it somewhere we'll go," Crowley says, delicately placing the pie on his lap. "To Japan for fresh fish and...I don't know. Sake and wasabi or whatever it is you eat there. We'll make a holiday of it."

He'd always wanted to go on a proper holiday with Aziraphale. They never could, of course. They always had to stay just apart, just enough that their superiors wouldn't notice that they were friends, wouldn't notice that they cared for each other. A month away would be a bit much.

He takes the cup of wine to wash down Aziraphale's cooking. "That is, if you want."

"A holiday? My dear, we have the second coming of Armageddon to stop, perhaps it will just have to wait." He looks over and frowns, opening his mouth as he might have been about to tell Crowley not to be disappointed, that they could sup at the Ritz or have a picnic one day.

And he realizes that this is their picnic, the one he'd promised from 1967. This horrible thing, the only thing saving his meal the company and the stars overhead.

He owes Crowley more than this.

He owes himself more than this.

"--A short holiday," he corrects. "We'll go on a short holiday, and be back before anyone knows we're not even dead."

"No more than a year," Crowley agrees immediately. "Just something to break ourselves back into Earth. See the things we haven't seen in a while."

He could take Aziraphale to India, or Disneyland, or the moon. They could walk down the street and no one would know they had been hiding as friends for so long. They could just...be.

But then again, weren't they just being friends here? Eating this horrific food and drinking this mediocre wine and looking up into a beautiful sky?

He was thinking no more than a month, but a year was fine. They had time, and he could secretly make calls and do some work for when Crowley decided to sleep. He was assuming Crowley would keep doing that, and he would keep doing the eating.

"I would like to take a grand tour of the world now, there must be so much new for us." He smiles, recollecting all the places he hadn't been for -- oh, a hundred years. Maybe a thousand. "I'll have to update my medieval Chinese," he plans. "And research new restaurants to eat at and hotels to stay at."

He looks positively giddy at the thought, and takes another bite of his pie as if it were something much nicer.

"Oh, yeah," Crowley agrees. "Go about taking a look at what they're doing in Canada. No demons have been up there in decades."

It could be something to plan. They've got the next few weeks before they take the ferry and hopefully get away from this place. Then a year-long holiday, and then save the world again. Then...freedom again? Would Heaven and Hell ever leave them alone?

He leans back, looking up at the sky. At the dots of light streaking through the darkness. For a place with so much darkness, the little lights seem especially bright.

"Do you think we'll have earned it, then?" he asks. "The ability to just be left alone?"

Aziraphale moves to lie down with him, on the blanket, placing the pie down and wiping his fingers before crossing his arms over his stomach and looking up at the meteor shower.

"No," he replies, truthfully, turning his head to face Crowley. "I don't think they'll ever really leave us alone."

Then he looks back at the sky. "But... they already know about you and me, I think. So it's not like we could just sneak around like we used to. We'll just have to... be ready."

Crowley turns his head to look at Aziraphale and continues to watch the angel's face even after he has resumed looking at the sky. Crowley built galaxies when he was an angel. Whole star systems, he forged them, watched them grow under divine light. He never really noticed what things looked like under starlight, not back then. Now, here is Aziraphale, only the stars and a little lantern light illuminating him.

"They might be afraid of us, coming back from obliteration," he suggests. "We could make them afraid of us. Frighten them into leaving us alone."

"Strike fear into the hearts of God and Satan?" He asks, eyes wide. "I would really like to know how you plan on going about that," he says, though he's not ruling it out.

No, he thinks better than to underestimate Crowley's creativity. But, being the nervous and very careful angel he is, he is still apprehensive.

It's pretty impossible to think of Aziraphale striking fear into the hearts of anyone, really. But he remembers him wielding that flaming sword, ready to fight everyone to protect the Earth and Adam. Crowley was glad he was on the angel's side, then.

"Make them think we came back different," Crowley says. "Changed. Dangerous. They don't know, they've never experienced it before, someone like us coming back."

He had been ready to stand up and fight because there hadn't been anything else to do. It would've been die with his head held high or be dragged into the war kicking and screaming, and possibly have to fight against Crowley. He would've died a coward, and with his heart full of hatred and resentment.

No, he chose the former. He's glad he had, because they still had a chance. They could get their lives back. "No, they haven't. But neither have we." Still, he gives Crowley a reassuring smile, and then reaches for his hand. "Alright. Let's try it your way."

Crowley still watches Aziraphale, still keeps his eyes on the angel's face, on his features. He's spent many long hours watching the angel, watching the way he moves, the way he talks and eats and exists. It's hard to think that there's a world somewhere that he isn't in.

"We can do it," he says. "It will take a bit more cleverness than both of us have in us, I think, but with some practice we can fake it."

"Oh," he says, frowning. "But I think you're very clever," he protests.

"Though. It would help if we had the book, I think. I really should've given it a more careful read-through. It'd probably have advice about this place."

Crowley preens. "Do you really, now?"

Realistically, he is not very bright and never has been. But at least Aziraphale thinks he's clever.

"A book on what, exactly? Purgatory and how to escape from it?"

"No. The book! You know the book, the one the American girl left in the back of your car. She'd thought we were book thieves!"

And it was the only one that Crowley had saved. Technically, they had all come back, and then some, but they'd probably been repossessed by now, sold off to highest bidder, money given to the government and shop sold to those men who'd come by to threaten him.

Oh. "Do you wonder what's happened to all of our things? Back home?"

"You mean to the bookshop and the Bentley?" he asks.

He looks away from Aziraphale for a moment, up to the stars. His beloved car. There's never been any material object he has ever loved as much as that car. And who knew where it was now. Whose grubby hands were all over its perfect leather interior.

"We'll get it back. We won't be gone long," he says. "Another week and we'll be back home. We just have to wait for the ferry. Then you'll be back and I'll be back. And we'll...we'll be back. Get our things in order."

"A week and a half, Crowley, don't be hasty." But it always was like Crowley to rush things.

"But yes, you know how much my property is worth in Soho, and I know how much your Bentley is worth. I'm sure at least Gabriel would have had it sold by now just out of spite. Oh," he complains.

"Would it inconvenience you?" he asked. "If I stayed with you when we get home?"

Would it inconvenience him? He thought about how much he loved this time with Aziraphale, sharing his home with him. He thought about their nights together, and cooking, and being stupidly domestic, and going shopping and just being with him, and nothing, nothing in the whole universe would have pleased him more than having the angel spend time with him in his flat when he got back. He could miracle him some books, and make sure he had the cocoa he liked, and they could cook in his big, unused kitchen. He could wake up every morning to Aziraphale being there, safe and alive and there.

He gave a shrug. "Yeah, sure. That'd be all right."

Aziraphale thinks about how it might be the wrong thing to do, still, to flagrantly go live in Crowley's apartment when they were trying to work together to stop the forces of Heaven and Hell. But he was so selfish, that he wanted an excuse to know that Crowley was alive and well. No more three years of not knowing he had burnt feet, no more disappearing off to Alpha Centauri.

None of that.

He nods affirmatively. "Thank you. Ah, you know. I think we're supposed to be making wishes."

Crowley tears his eyes away from the angel, looking up at the meteor shower in the unfamiliar sky.

"When did that start?" he asks. "Wishing on falling stars? Wasn't like that when everything began."

He remembers most of what happened when everything began. When it was just the two of them, the two humans, and the whole world for them to explore. They watched it all evolve and grow, and then it was all over. Could their lives just end so quickly? It didn't seem right.

"Ptolemy," he answers, immediately. "Well, not Ptolemy, but he wrote that the Gods were looking down at the Greeks sometimes through shooting stars. He didn't make it up, but it sort of became a recognized thing after that. Never really died."

He smiles sadly. "I don't think She is watching, or willing to grant us any wishes, but it's worth a shot anyway." He wishes that he and Crowley can go save the world. And he wishes that Heaven and Hell will just leave them be. He wishes for the opportunity to live a life like this, back at home.

Crowley isn't one for idle wishes. That's just not like him. He doesn't sit there, filling his head with a bunch of nonsense. Wishes are ridiculous. He doesn't need human fantasies of wishing on stars. They're just bits of the universe breaking up in the atmosphere. He knows that, he built part of it.

All the same, he shuts his eyes, just for a moment, and wishes that Aziraphale could get away from this place. That he could have his bookshop and cocoa and stupid tartan bowties. Crowley can get by here. There are bad people here, like Crowley. He doesn't need the Bentley (he loves the Bentley, but he doesn't need it.) Aziraphale needs to be free.

"Do you think She was watching when they killed us?" he asks, and he can't hide the sadness in his voice.

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