logsinthenight | you're a sky full of stars

Entry tags:

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."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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.

Aziraphale grows quiet and pensive for a moment. "I hadn't... considered it," he says. He doesn't know what's worse, the idea that God had watched him die like this or the idea that God had just abandoned him entirely.

He feels tears stinging his eyes, because he really thought he'd been doing the right thing. He hadn't expected a reward, but neither had he expected to be so dishonorably extinguished in his entirety.

And then he supposes this is how Crowley must have felt for six thousand years, that God didn't care for him anymore, that She didn't love him. He tries to blink the tears away, but has to sit up as they blur his vision and slide down his cheeks, fat and salty.

Crowley turns his gaze away from the sky and to the angel. Crowley has often spoken all sorts of things about God during their friendship. Questioned all kinds of things. Brought up the problems with the Plan, brought up all of the stupid ideas the angels have had over the years. But he's never wanted to hurt Aziraphale. That's never been Crowley's plan. Never.

He sits up and reaches out a hand, but stops it before it reaches the angel.

"Angel, I'm---"

He doesn't say he's sorry, not often. Only once, in recent memory.

"She probably didn't know," he lies.

Aziraphale tries to pull himself together, but it doesn't work, not really. He'd stopped himself from mourning during the events of Armageddon, all the days leading up to it: the shop, his own discorporation, coming back to find Crowley had stopped everything and was crying over him. Over him, good Lord. He knew if he'd stopped to unpack everything, that it'd all fall apart, and they'd be sat at the pub watching the whole world burn down.

And then, again, when they'd both died, when he'd gotten here, when they'd settled in: things needed doing and so, Aziraphale bucked up and did.

He hadn't meant to cry, but he was just. Exhausted. "How could She not have known? How could this not be in the Plan?"

Crowley's hand hovers between them and eventually settles on Aziraphale's shoulder.

They don't touch, not often. Just their hands, occasionally. Shaking hands, passing wine glasses to each other, or holding hands when they were on that bus back to London. But since coming here, there have been more times that they've touched. More times they've allowed themselves to be close. But Crowley knows there are lines, careful lines that Must Not Be Crossed under any circumstances. He doesn't know where those lines are, but he'll avoid them if he sees them.

"We're still alive," he says. "Whatever happened there, we made it through. We survived it. If she knew that would happen, She would've known we'd have made it out. She'd have known we'd make it here, that we'd go back and stop them again."

Is that a lie? He can't even tell anymore.

Edited 2019-09-24 02:37 (UTC)

Aziraphale reaches up for Crowley's hand, to keep it on his shoulder. He doesn't want for it to be touch and go, one of those things they only have once every thousand years. "Do you think She can see us here, then? And She wants us to go back?"

He looks into Crowley's eyes, eyes wide and shining and full of hope. It was how he looked at Crowley that day they went to go see Hamlet, and then Crowley had responded by accidentally making Hamlet the most popular and produced play in history.

Oh, those eyes. Crowley can't say no to those eyes. He's often thought about saying no to those eyes, but he's never been able to. Aziraphale's beautiful, perfect, fucking wholesome as fuck eyes. It breaks Crowley's heart. It would be so much easier if Crowley believed that God hadn't abandoned them. If he believed in a merciful, loving God.

He certainly can't tell him the truth.

It's a good thing that Crowley is an excellent liar.

"She hasn't abandoned you here, angel," he lies. "She knows you're going to go back. That we're going to go back, and we're going to fix this."

Deep down, he thinks he probably knows Crowley enough to know that he doesn't mean it, not really. But he also knows that Crowley is making his best attempt, and he brushes away his tears and tries to smile.

"You must-- must think me silly," he says, because it's true, God had abandoned him for, what, a month and he was already falling to pieces.

"But you're right. We're here. Together. That's all I could want."

"No," he says, and it isn't a lie coming out of his mouth. He's spent more than six thousand years coming apart at the seams in private over the Almighty abandoning him, and he probably deserved it. Aziraphale didn't. Aziraphale didn't do a damn thing wrong, at least not in Crowley's eyes. Heaven should have been giving him a fucking commendation for saving the world, but they wouldn't. Of course they wouldn't. They killed him instead.

"Can't tear us apart now," he says, and he turns his hand a little so he can curl his fingers around the angel's. "Besides, who else is going to make me a picnic, eh? Can barely get the people in this town to feed themselves."

"No," he agrees. "It's been six thousand years, might as well make a go at forever, I suppose." The last of his tears have fallen, even if his cheeks are still wet, but his smile is genuine.

"And you're right. No one else to properly show you how to eat, as I've been trying to do for the last few thousand years. Honestly." He gives Crowley's hand a little squeeze, and then, looking at him, catching his gaze for just a long, pregnant second, he then decides to lean back a little, and rest his head on Crowley's shoulder.

Crowley tenses, just a little, at Aziraphale's head on his shoulder. The intimacy of the gesture, the sheer closeness of it. It's something Crowley has longed for, has craved for so long, that suddenly having it is actually quite startling. Handling expeditions or planning escape or the human soldier person's nightmares, those are all things that Crowley is equipped to handle. Closeness? Nah, well out of his wheelhouse.

He relaxes, and drapes a hand across Aziraphale's shoulder, creating an almost embrace as he's resting there.

"I do know how to eat," he mumbles, looking back up to the sky. "Just never quite saw the interest you had in it until I needed to."

He almost moves away, when Crowley tenses. Could he have been wrong, then, this entire time? But no, how could he be, with Crowley's arm around him and their fingers tangled together and--

--Well, he can still feel it, of course, bright and shining as it had always been. Love.

"I must admit too, sleeping's not quite so bad after all."

"That I could've told you about ages ago," Crowley says. "Only way I made it through the fourteenth century, sleeping through half of it."

The sky is brilliant right now, all the stars falling. It might not have been as impressive if it weren't so utterly dark around them. He wonders where the meteors come from, what has broken up in the atmosphere to cause this. Where the atmosphere is, exactly.

Could it give them some idea where they are?

"Bit easier to sleep next to someone," he admits, with a feigned sort of casualness that means he is verymuch not casual about this statement.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject