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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"Well, if you were interested enough, yes! Some very good things happen out of spending very little time together."

He is feeling rather silly about thinking he was playing second fiddle and Crowley was choosing to spend time with him solely because he didn't want to bother given the short timeframe, and not because he'd prefer Aziraphale's company.

Because he did enjoy being the one Crowley liked to spend his time with best.

"--Do you mean to tell me you've never been involved with a human?"

"What do you mean?" Crowley asks, taking another drink of his wine. "Involved with a human?"

He knows exactly what Aziraphale means.

"You know, had a relationship. A serious-- well I suppose not serious for you, but you know. Courted. Took to bed more than a handful of times," he says, because he imagines Crowley had plenty of temptations and flings and those didn't count.

"Courted," Crowley mouths, as though the word is so utterly absurd he can't even possibly consider it. "Do I seem like the courting type? Or even the...I don't know...dating type?"

And yet, here he is, on a date with Aziraphale.

"Listen, angel, sex with humans has always been about work for me. It's what you do---you tempt them, you get them where you need them, and then it's off back to the better sins. Sloth being a personal favorite."

"Yes," he says, trying to hold back a laugh. "So I've noticed."

But that's-- well, of course, Crowley didn't enjoy eating, which Aziraphale did immensely. He didn't enjoy reading, which Aziraphale would do all the time if he could. And he didn't enjoy sex, which Aziraphale did like on occasion, but only when he was very much in love. And he had been, more than a handful of times, with various humans over the years.

"But I suppose you're right. You are a demon after all. Though I had mistaken you for the dating type."

"Nah, angel. Idle flings, me." He says this so casually, so off-handedly, that it is absolutely the farthest thing from the truth.

It isn't that Crowley doesn't enjoy sex. It is fine as a pasttime and all that, but it isn't something that absolutely delights him. After all, why would it? It is all messy and thrusting and the like. And he's never been in love (he thinks fiercely to himself with an extreme fierce devotion to the thought) because love isn't something demons do (another very fierce and intense thought that is held up weakly on very weak thoughts).

"You've courted, though," he says. "Humans, in the past. Had your...paramours and all."

This is a very strange conversation to be having on a date. Crowley idly wonders, at the same time, why they haven't had it before.

"Ah, of course!" Aziraphale responds. "But I don't know what else I am supposed to do but love them, when I'm sent to go bring them joy, and inspire them, and hold them through their darkest times and show them hope." Crowley had done some of his blessings; perhaps it was a mistake to believe any of the work had rubbed off on him.

And then, he looks up, suddenly very curious, edge of sadness on his tongue. "Do you think that you can?" he asks. "Love, I mean. Being a demon. And all. Do you remember it?"

He had never asked before, because it fell under the category of things about Crowley's past that he didn't want to ask over.

Crowley turns his gaze over to Aziraphale. Perfect, stupid Aziraphale. The Aziraphale who, by giving away his flaming sword back in Eden, had forever burned himself into Crowley's black heart. He followed around the angel helplessly, indulging in his whims and doing anything to ensure he was safe and pleased. It is actually downright embarrassing, if he thinks about it, the things he would do for Aziraphale.

Crowley likes to tell himself over and over again that he is incapable of love, but deep down in his core, he knows the truth. That angel and his two brain cells had done a number on him.

He looks away from the angel. "Demons don't love," he says, and it's not a lie, not really. Most demons can't love anything.

"Oh," Aziraphale answers, and recoils as if having been burnt, looking stricken.

All this love then, that exists around himself, that magnifies whenever Crowley walks into a room, and had lingered around him for centuries, had grown more entangled and lush like wild undergrowth of a forest-- it had been Aziraphale's and Aziraphale's alone all this time.

"If you're sure," he says with strained voice, picking up his glass only to find that it's already empty. He puts it back down. "Just. I couldn't imagine it, that's all," he adds, as if to explain away the sudden upset.

Crowley wants to reach out, to grasp the angel's hand, and tell him the truth. To tell him he loves him and it is all right, as long as they're together.

But that's a lie, isn't it? They're both dead. They're dead because they cared for each other. Love would only destroy them when they got back to Earth.

"This isn't about that woman again, is it?" Crowley says, letting out an annoyed sigh through his nose. "Because I don't love her, if I have to tell you that again---"

"No, this isn't about-- Goodness. Can't I just think it's unfair, that you can't feel love?" he asks, because he has so much of it to foist onto Crowley's shoulders, if he's being really honest with himself.

And, even though that is the truth, it does feel a little like a lie to omit what he's already been omitting for so long. "Because, I think, it would make you quite happy."

He looks up at the stars, and makes another wish.

Has love made Crowley happy?

He looks at Aziraphale. He supposes it has, in its own way. He's loved every moment he's been with the angel. Loved treating him, surprising him, saving him. Being by his side. The pain he feels at being always arm's length away can't compare to being his companion all of the time.

"I can feel a lot of things, angel," he says, noncomittally. "More than most demons."

He looks up, as if Crowley has just reminded him that they don't have sides, with hope and wonder and daring in his eyes.

But this isn't the time to press. No, not when they've had too much to drink and they're sitting underneath a canopy of endless falling stars. Each one contains a dream but somehow Aziraphale is still too scared to take them all up at once.

"Well, I. Don't talk to other demons," he replies.

"No, and you shouldn't. They're all disgusting and rubbish and they threw me into a bathtub of holy water," Crowley says. He waves a hand over the empty bottle of wine, which promptly fills up with Chardonnay. He pours it into his glass and offers it to the angel.

"All these human loves you've had, any of them lasted?" he asks, trying not to sound immensely interested.

He blushes into his chardonnay, made all the more apparent next to the white wine. Good thing it's dark. "None, I... try to find them suitable humans they would find happiness with and... slowly try to fizzle out of their lives. It's not as cruel as it sounds, I promise."

And of course, he does make sure that he makes them happy all the while they're together. But even the most forgiving or oblivious of humans would start to wonder why he was so very ethereal. "And I do check up. From time to time." Sometimes even after they die, he'll still be leaving flowers at their graves.

"Nah," Crowley says, leaning a bit back and taking a drink from his wine. Oh, it's so bland. Hell is so cruel. "But I bet you had some of the best poetry and stories written about you. Mysterious and angelic, popping in and creating a whole malestrom of love and then disappearing right as they find their soulmate."

Crowley is certainly not jealous.

"Hardly," he answers, drinking the chardonnay happily because he can barely taste how awful it is on his palate. "Though I had suspected several works might be, but it's hard to tell. Writers, you know, always the romantic type."

And then he prods Crowley in the ribs. "As if you think the humans wouldn't have written anything about you. Handsome stranger with the dark glasses and flaming red hair. Please."

"I don't think I connected with enough humans to have that happen," Crowley says, looking into his wine glass. "Besides, they'd all just remember me as the one who tempted and left. I was never meant to make art or beauty, angel, that's not what demons do."

He's perhaps had too much wine for this conversation. Or perhaps not enough.

"You did, once," he says, quietly. "You made beautiful things, once, I know." He hadn't asked which stars were Crowley's, because he didn't even know what his name had been. He doesn't even think Crowley could tell him what his name had been, once upon a time.

But there's still a lasting testament to the beauty he brought into this world, even if they couldn't see it from here.

"That was a long time ago, angel," he says, with a tone that is just on the edge of warning. His life as an angel is not up for discussion.

He takes another drink of the white wine and looks up at the stars. Where are his stars now? Where could they be that they're so far away from them?

Maybe not, but he doesn't understand how Crowley doesn't see it, that he's just as worthy of love and poetry in this form as he was in any other.

Still, he doesn't want to talk about it. Maybe he never will.

Aziraphale touches his glass, and their chardonnay becomes a merlot.

Crowley looks down to his glass and then to the angel with a small smile on his face. Even if this is only a table red, it's got to be better than what Crowley created.

"Thanks," he says.

Aziraphale looks at him and smiles back, and his smile is more wobbly, more lopsided than usual.

He'd once said, in 1967, that Crowley had just been too fast and too much. He'd loved Crowley for a long time but he'd only known it in 1941, only been certain. And they'd gone separate ways, became busy, and he hadn't had time to think it over. But as time went by, as he spent more and more time around Crowley, the more sure he was. And then, the more came back to him: that he had loved Crowley, he thinks, when he'd asked over the holy water. And maybe, perhaps, just a little at least, when he'd come to find him locked up in chains in the Bastille. And now, though he's logically certain that there had been a time he hadn't loved Crowley, it colors all his memories of him until he can't recall a time that was true.

And so, he thinks, he's finally arrived.

What a horrendous and marvelous thing, to love a demon. He looks away, but moves his hand until the edges of their palms bump together.

Crowley goes very still. He feels Aziraphale pressing their palms together. Touching. He and Aziraphale rarely touched before this town, and now he finds himself touching the angel so much, so regularly. There are so many ways he wants to touch Aziraphale.

But there are boundaries. There are rules that the angel set up when he told him that he was moving too fast, and Crowley has been strict in adhering to them. Not too fast, not moving without Aziraphale's express permission.

But what does this mean, this touch?

Of course, Aziraphale has noticed that ever since their little conversation, Crowley has cooled off a bit, so to speak. But, in true fashion of being oblivious to his own actions, he'd only started to wonder around the late 90s if perhaps Crowley had gotten just a little gunshy.

He moves his hand just enough to link their pinkies together, to let Crowley know he means this deliberately.

Perhaps they could stand to communicate a little more transparently, but this was enough for Aziraphale. If they were to be destroyed right now, he thinks, it would be enough.

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