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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"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.

Crowley could do to say something in this moment. Hell, there are probably sonnets and poems and ballads he could say in this moment and it wouldn't cover the full extent of what he could do to say. After all, this is him and Aziraphale, and they're on a date and now they are touching again and and and---

He often considers himself a coward, but in many ways he can be brave. He can walk right into churches and Heaven and anywhere else when he needs to. But when it comes to emotions, he's definitely a coward through and through.

He curls his pinky just a little, to move it closer to Aziraphale's. Just a very, very tiny gesture.

Aziraphale could fluff up his chest feathers if he had any, he's so very chuffed with this minuscule movement. He does think about being bolder, considers resting his head on Crowley's shoulder, or lying down next to him and curling up under his arm.

But they're to be headed home soon, and it would be a terrible thing to indulge in any of this now only to have to put a pause on it for the next decade, at least, until they fix everything a second time.

And yet, there's a thought in the back of his mind clawing for the spotlight, asking him: if not now, when?

Certainly not now, he responds to himself in a louder voice, covering his face with wine glass. "Not terrible," he remarks, though his taste buds are slightly compromised.

"It's actually not bad," Crowley agrees, taking a sip himself. "Far better than the Chardonnay."

It would be so easy, to just curl his hand the rest of the way around Aziraphale's, or to slip a hand over his shoulder. Or to press his lips to the angel's head, or to---But no. No, he can already imagine the angel's careful protest, the look of discomfort, or worse, pity.

This, this little touch, it's enough. It has to be enough.

It's enough because they're about to embark on a dangerous journey leading to another dangerous journey.

And they might-- they might not come back from either of them, Aziraphale thinks, so why not?

But they might come back from both, he also thinks, so now is a terrible time.

"Not as good as real wine, but as we can't have any. That'll be the first thing we do when we get back," he says. Yes, they could celebrate.

"Dinner at the Ritz?" he offers. He remembers Aziraphale saying, once, that they should go. "Get you those little cakes they make?"

This has to work. Stealing the ferry has to work. They have to get away. He has to get Aziraphale back where he belongs.

"Dinner at the Ritz would be lovely, dear. I'll have one of every cake they're serving the night we return." And then he'll go back to Crowley's apartment, and they can continue on the celebrations the way they always had.

"You'll have to have some with me, now that you eat."

"Do you think I still will, when we get back?" he asks, turning to look at the angel. "Do you think we'll still need to sleep and eat and...all the things we do here?"

Will Aziraphale still let him occasionally sleep next to him? That wouldn't make any sense back in their home world, would it? They don't even live anywhere near each other.

"No, I don't think so. Depends on the bodies we end up in, I suppose. Since I hardly think they'll let us keep these ones! But I suppose we might still have to, like this. Oh, you'll get used to it. And I'll get used to sleeping."

He would discover that it was much harder without Crowley being next to him, if that were the case.

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