logsinthenight | [Closed] Don't drink and fly!

Entry tags:

[Closed] Don't drink and fly!

characters: Xayah and Crowley
location: The Docks, at the start then wherever there's place to practice flying!
date/time: After hallucinations event, but before end of month, 25th?
content: Crowley is teaching Xayah to fly
warnings: Foul language, drinking, talking smack? General warnings for Beacon

She was nervous.

And who wouldn't be? More than ten years Xayah didn't shapeshift her cloak back into her wings, giving her best to blend into the surroundings and with humans she encountered. It never occurred to her that she should just try and fly- until Crowley suggested that.

She doesn't remember flying at all. What she remembers was being mocked for tall ears, tattoos on her face, her feet and her wings. Wings that she shapeshifted into a feathery cloak.

And now, she shifted it back to what they are. A pair of pretty purple wings, that have a soft blend to maroon red on the edges, the same color of her hair. They are as big as her body and she feels a bit odd wearing them after such a long time. But she's determined to learn. Flying will just give her a huge advantage in everything.

After not being able to find Crowley at the Invincible, she heads to the docks. It was one other place he told her she can find him once she's ready. And she's ready. Uh... she hopes?

She sneaks up to the docks and waits for people to clear out a bit before stepping up to where she spotted Crowley working on some planks and crates and whatnot.

"I see you can walk," her lips twitch as she jumps on one of the crates behind Crowley, her wings making a soft swishing sound. Man, she needs to get used to this now, huh? She tries to have a serious expression, but there's a twinkle in her eye and twitch in her lips that's telling so much how excited she actually is about all of this.

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"They won't," he promises. "Your muscles just need work, need practice lifting you up."

He holds out a hand.

"Here, lean on me a bit, let's go up again. I'll take some of the weight."

Clarification is in order here. Crowley is not a nice person. He is gruff, he is a bit cruel, and he's a bastard. But in this exact moment, he has absolutely no desire to see Xayah frightened of her own wings. He is, deep down, soft and he's going to help her, which is mostly annoying because it would be far more demonic just to let her falter.

She wouldn't be surprised even if he did, honestly. She'd smack him for it, but she wouldn't be surprised. Xayah's used to humans not treating her well, so he wouldn't be an exception.

Even though he was one of the extremely rare humans that did end up treating her nicely overall. He blew up the ferry, yes, but he didn't let her sink with it either. It will take a bit more to change her opinion of people overall, but he's... he's fine. For now.

"If I break into pieces, I'll haunt you," she warns as she takes his hand. Spreading her wings, she readies herself to fly by herself once Crowley gets them up in the air. But no matter of readying is helping with the jitters she's having. "Let's do this-" before she chickens out.

"You won't," Crowley says. "Stop being dramatic."

He gives his wings a flap, getting them about a foot in the air. He grips her hands tightly, holding onto her weight. He's stronger than he looks----not as strong as Aziraphale, but demons were never as strong as angels---and he can hold her up without any issue.

"Give them a flap, feel them hold you up," he says. He adjusts his wings again, flapping them to maintain the height of about a foot up.

"I'm not dramatic I-" 'didn't move my wings properly in over ten years!' dies off when they get up in the skies.

She's not that heavy to begin with- she's short and light on her feet. And she does, indeed, follow his instructions. Her wings flap around, making her own weight not depend on Crowley as much. She can feel the wind coursing around her and holding her up, and she gives her best to ignore the burning feeling in her shoulder blades. Just a thing that happens when you don't fly in over a decade

Her eyes glance down and she almost loses her breath and slips, but catches herself in the last moment, with the firm movement of her wings.

He goes higher, and higher. He doesn't have to hold her up as much as he expected, her wings are quite strong. He imagines it'll be not long at all for her until she's doing this on her own. What would it have been like if Crowley forgot how to fly? How humiliating? How frightening? He can't help but sympathize with the girl, at least a little bit.

"We're going to go for a soar, now," he says. "Ten feet back for me, ten feet forward for you. I want you to feel the way the wind moves through your wings and adjust to keep balanced."

He shifts his body to prepare to move backwards. "I've got your hands, you're not going to fall."

The mantra of 'this is terrifying' is not stopping from going in circles in her head as they go higher and higher in the skies. Her wings are supporting her decently, but she's honestly like a kid that sat on the two-wheeled bicycle for the first time. It is embarrassing that she doesn't know something so basic like this, something that she inherited.

But Crowley doesn't seem to give a fuck about it so Xayah tries not to think about it. Her eyes snap from the ground and to him and she nods tentatively. It feels like she will forget what to do the moment she lets go of his hands. Because she will have to- eventually- if she wants to learn.

"R-Right-!" She's not ready at all, but at this pace, she'll never be. She spreads her wings as far as she can, the chill seeping through the feathers. "Let's do it."

He starts to flap his wings, moving himself backwards. "Keep your wings straight, let the wind guide you forward. You should just float forward, wind catching in the flight feathers."

Apart from his brief stint as a Nanny and the time he opened a for-profit driving school in Newark, New Jersey, Crowley has never really taught anyone anything, now that he thinks about it. He's greedy, as a rule, and keeps his knowledge mostly to himself because he can't figure out why he'd ever want to share with anyone.

This is sort of---not nice because nothing Crowley does is nice---well, it's not a terrible thing, he supposes. Helping out.

"Yeah, yeah, got it-!"

She didn't say it as a reprimand for his instructions, she just has heart up in her throat from excitement because- she's actually flying. True, Crowley is holding her hands, but she's doing her damnedest best to not rely on him completely. After all, she'll have to let go eventually, she'll have to fly by herself.

But for now, this feels amazing- sans the burn on her back where her wings are sprouting from. But there's just too much adrenaline in her to pay mind to it right now.

"This feels great..." she's not sure if he can hear her breath out that because of the wind, but she's getting into this. It's like a drug- once you taste it, you just can't stop.

Crowley isn't much of a smiler, but that does make him smile.

"Yeah, it does, doesn't it?" he says. One day she'll do this on her own, he thinks. She'll soar the way all humans soar about their lives. It'll be a good thing to see when he walks out on the town, her purple wings out as she takes off. Ugh, he sounds incredibly sentimental and he can't be having any of that, now.

"All right, we're going to try to turn. Lift your left wing, give it a flap, and turn your body, we're going right."

He can be as sentimental as he wants- right now she doesn't care. And probably won't in the future either because he helped her. Actually taught her how to fly again. Sure, she's rusty as all hell and her back will hurt like a bitch in the morning, but it's worth it.

All of this is so worth it.

She nods and follows the instructions to a t- she can't risk being tardy. And there's a happy, short laugh as they switch the direction.

"I'll race you one day!" Xayah grins at him.

"Learning at this rate, you might beat me." She won't. He's an excellent flier.

Maybe this is what it's like for Aziraphale. All the times he helps people, all the times he goes out of his way to do what's right. Most of the time, Crowley just thinks it's completely stupid, but in this moment, he sort of gets it. Seeing Xayah grinning madly at him at her accomplishments.

He gestures to their right. "Okay, other direction. Ready?"

"I'll challenge you one day!"

One day, when there's Sun, and skies are clear and there's nothing and no one threatening to dispatch them with a snap of their fingers, just because they feel like it. And if not, well, she'll at least have this as her last memory before disappearing.

She turns right, again, with a soft 'whoop', and she's getting the hang of this. Slowly, very slowly. It doesn't feel like her wings are going to snap anymore, or as if she's going to take a nosedive the moment something doesn't feel right.

Sadly, all amazing things have to come to an end as the pain in her shoulders actually becomes a problem now, "C-Crowley, I need to land-" before her wings give out.

Crowley isn't an angel. He can't sense things like pain and suffering in the way that an angel could. He has no idea that Xayah is about to fall from pain, all he knows is that she's having fun and he's enjoying teaching her and he has absolutely no desire to stop that.

"Hang on, we'll get to landing in a minute, do you want to try flying backwards?" he offers up. He already starts flying forward, telling her how to flap her wings to get the best backward momentum.

Her eyebrows narrow in thought- one more thing won't hurt, right? She's already this high up in the air, might as well try it. She flaps her wings and tries to mimic the movement Crowley makes as well, and she's actually half-way there, managing to remain afloat-

-for all of five seconds.

The sudden drop in her gut mimics her sudden drop from the sky- her back and wings couldn't support her anymore as she pushed herself to the limits. In fact- she crossed that limit since they started taking turns left and right.

She can't even scream out for him to catch her as all the air had left her lungs, eyes wide in panic.

"Fuck!"

Crowley dives. He's always been a great flier, and he's always been fast. Not a fighter, Crowley, always a fleer. He knows how to flee, and he knows how to do it fast. In this case, he's grateful for it, as he dives to catch Xayah, to grip her as fast as he can and flap his wings up to prevent the fall.

"I've got you!" he calls out. "Hang on!"

The panic isn't gone- it won't be gone until her feet hit the ground safely. So her nails dig into his shoulder when he catches her, the same way a panicked, drowning person would grip on the lifeguard. Her chest burns as she gets air back in her lungs, and she can only his out a "...land us..."

There's a single prayer in her head that she doesn't faint because that will be way too embarrassing. She's supposed to be tough, not 'faint at her first flying lesson' type of person.

"Yeah---I'm heading down now---"

He doesn't even hesitate to go down. He takes them on a careful downward movement, dropping them carefully back on the ground so he's balanced on his good leg with Xayah still in his arms. He moves to put her back on her feet.

"What happened?" he demands, though not truly unkindly. "Did you----I don't know, lose the wind in your wings?"

She's a bit wobbly when her feet hit the ground and she holds onto his arm so she doesn't topple over. She may have lost feeling in her legs from the fright. Her shoulders are killing her and she can't help a soft hiss as she tries to move them to relax.

"N-No. I- don't think so. My back is not used to this. Everything went numb all of a sudden and I just couldn't move them anymore." She doesn't even register whether his tone is kind or no, she's still trying to get her panic from falling from the skies under check.

"Does it hurt?"

He glances at her back, where her wings sprout. She hasn't used them in a long time, she's said. It's a muscle, of course. Working how the muscles work, making them work together over time. She might've pulled something. She might've torn something.

He could fix that, his mind tells him.

Not that Crowley has done a lot of healing. Healing is for angels, not demons. But Crowley has done it before. He thinks of it as all part and partial to being around Aziraphale. He's picked up a bit of his goodness, it's made doing blessings and healings part of his lifestyle.

"Can't lie- hurts like a bitch," she sighs. "I suppose it's the soreness from not flying for such a long time."

She was almost on the verge of thanking him for catching her but- she did tell him to land with her. And he didn't listen. So he doesn't get thanks for that. But-

"...that was fun though."

Extremely fun. And this little hiccup is not making her afraid to do it again a bit later, when the soreness goes away.

"Hang on," he says, and he moves a hand over to her back. "Just---let me try something."

He pauses, not actually touching her, and looks to her for permission. That's what Aziraphale would do, right? He'd make sure people he was healing had consent first? Crowley isn't about to do this wrong if he actually wants to help.

"Huh? Oh- sure?"

She shifts a bit to let him take a look at- whatever he's trying to do. She almost warns him not to pluck feathers out (!) but she dimly remembers him being very angry that others tried to do it in the past so- she lets him look without complaining too much.

Crowley spreads his hand out and concentrates. Tries to remember how to heal. How to mend muscle and nerves and fix bruises and pain. Tries to reach down into her injury and pull it out of her, to push in light and healing. It's an action no demon should be able to do, and he definitely isn't sure he can do here, in this place.

He takes a breath and feels light coming from his fingertips, moving into her shoulder. It's dim, not as strong as it might've been on Earth, but it's there all the same.

He pulls back his hand.

"How do you feel?"

At first, it was nothing. And then it was like a pull on her sore muscles and it makes her take in a sharp breath. Then slowly, very slowly, something very soothing spreads through her back, easing the soreness and strained muscles. It almost feels like-

-no. Xayah, get it together. She shakes her head to chase away those thoughts and rubs her eye. Stop getting sentimental over stuff like that.

"A bit better," she mumbles. The clears her throat, "I mean, it's still a bit sore, but not like before."

"Good," he says. He flexes his fingers. It takes a bit out of him, healing. It's not like Aziraphale, who was literally made to heal. But it's good to know that he still can, that he can do some of the---well, the strange things he could do before.

"I used to be better at it back on Earth, but----it's not a demon's specialty," he adds.

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