logsinthenight | We Are the Champions, My Friend || Closed

Entry tags:

We Are the Champions, My Friend || Closed

characters: Crowley and Aziraphale
location: The Village, Miner's Castle #3
date/time: Evening after the arrival of new people
content: An angel and a demon make excellent use of their time and several bottles of alcohol.
warnings: None

Crowley doesn't have any need of money. Money has never been something that's ever been a necessary point in his life. If he's wanted something, he's just made it available to himself. He has had a credit card with an unlimited balance that he's never had to pay off at any point, and that was useful when Amazon came around, but other than that, he's just never needed it. Therefore, no need for a wallet. He didn't have one on him when he woke up on that ship, either.

He can just miracle money, but he's a bit worried about being too flip with his miracles here. After all, he doesn't know how much he is allowed to do while he's here. He creates just enough money to buy supplies, but no more, just in case it's too much of a miracle. How much is too much? What are his limits? He certainly can't create more light, which is really, really disconcerting.

What's also disconcerting is hunger. Crowley has never been hungry before, and suddenly, that's all he feels. A gnawing ache in his stomach that he is hyperfocused on while they're in the general store, and focused on as he picks out a few supplies to eat back at their new residence. He also has purchased some alcohol, because that is what he definitely needs right now.

After all, he and his best friend just died today.

He holds up one of the canned peaches he's purchased and looks at it through the lantern light. The cabin is sparse, but it isn't dusty anymore, at least.

"So, what? You just eat it and you stop feeling this way?" he asks Aziraphale. Crowley has eaten many times in the past, but it was never out of hunger. It was because he was going somewhere with Aziraphale and the angel wanted to share a meal with him. He ate, and it was pleasant enough, but it never really meant anything either way to him. Now, he stares at the peach on the fork and can feel himself salivate. He takes a drink of the cheap wine purchased from the general store. No body, not a great year, and definitely not something he'd have picked for himself. But it'll do in a pinch.

"Is this how we're going to have to live? Eating?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Crowley bobs his head a bit, looking at Aziraphale, so frustrated as he sits next to him. He hadn't meant to upset him, it was just an idle statement of fact. Nah, he probably shouldn't have gone into the church. Yeah, he would do it all over again if the choice was presented to him.

"I didn't tell you," he says, stuffing a finger in Aziraphale's chest. "It wasn't what was important. You got out of there alive, that was what mattered."

He considers the angel's words. Should they go out into the open water with lanterns if they need to keep them alight? If they're the only way to stay alive?

"It's our best chance of getting back out of here," he says. "Go back out the door we came in."

"I know, but. Crowley, I don't want you to get hurt doing something rash, and." Well, he's always doing something rash.

He crosses his arms over his chest and feels rather sober, so he pulls all of the remaining alcohol out of his system and back into the bottle.

It leaves a horrible taste in his mouth, but not nearly as horrible as how he feels in the moment.

"Never mind. You do what you want." He slides down into the bed and thinks he might try to do that dreaming thing.

Crowley looks down at the half-full bottle with a sudden, dejected look on his face. Weren't they having fun? Weren't they reminiscing? Wasn't this better than just thinking about being dead? What did Crowley say so wrong?

He concentrates, and sobers up immediately. The bottle fills up, and he makes a face. God, he hates that, the sudden sobriety. It feels like being kicked in the gut. Strange, though, the feeling in his gut has nothing to do with the sobriety, it has to do with Aziraphale's sudden change in demeanor.

"Do you want me to go?" he asks, putting the full bottle of wine on the floor.

"No," he says, softening. "Of course not, Crowley." He's lied about that so many times in the last several thousand years that he doesn't know if Crowley might think he actually does ever want him to be gone from his side.

And it wasn't like this was the first time that Crowley had ever done dangerous things on Aziraphale's behalf. No, there was the time he'd been rescued from beheading. There were several other times besides. He could hardly understand why Crowley ever went through all the trouble.

And yet, he guesses, before knowing this, he just assumed it hadn't been that much trouble.

"Unless you'd like to," he says, flicking eyes up at him. He doesn't mean for them to be pleading, but he doesn't really have another choice in the matter.

It's nice, actually, being told that Aziraphale doesn't want him gone. They've played that game often, of Crowley trying to stay, of tempting Aziraphale into another glass of wine or another few minutes up and away from their duties, but always there was this line between them. The lines of what sides they were truly on. Now, it appears, the only side they're on is their own.

He slides down in the bed, resting himself next to the angel. He should probably go, he thinks. Probably go, go back to his own bed and actually try to rest. Crowley could sleep for years, but it was never like how humans slept, he imagines this will be different no matter what he does. Then he looks at Aziraphale's eyes, at the slightly pleading look.

He's never been one who could turn down Aziraphale.

"I'll stay," he says.

Yes, he could never turn Aziraphale down and it's something the angel took advantage of again and again. It's shameless, but effective. He smiles, and then, in the quiet, he says: "I'm not mad at you."

"I'm-- I'm mad I didn't know how much of a pain I caused you. Sometimes, I wonder, if I don't make it well-enough known to you, but you are my best friend too, you know." He'd said those things, he'd lied, in a bid to keep Crowley out of it. Perhaps if Heaven came for him, they would leave Crowley alone.

They were more unscrupulous than he had thought, but that's what happens when you place your faith in people you shouldn't have trusted.

He can only hope Crowley believes him now.

"It was only three years, angel," he says. "Practically a drop in the bucket in comparison to the look on those Nazis faces, eh?"

But that wasn't why Crowley had done it. He worked with a lot of Nazis---it was his job---and while he got enjoyment out of watching them get what they had coming to them, he was really there for Aziraphale. There to protect the angel. After all, it wasn't as if the angel was going to protect himself very well, now, was he?

"We're in the first place we've ever been able to be best friends in public," he says. "I'll miss that about this place, when we've gone. Gotten you back to your bookshop."

"Yes," he responds, though he's still angry about how easily he brushes off a three-year burn, but it doesn't seem like the time to argue with him about it. He just worries that Crowley might do something equally as stupid in the future.

"But we... we'll work something out. They'll have to leave us alone eventually, maybe all of Earth. And then... we could be like this all the time." He finds his voice breaking as he says it, and he can't even blame it on the alcohol.

Crowley wants to just tell Aziraphale that he's right. That of course they'll figure it out. That they'll be able to go dine at the Ritz and have picnics at St. James, and walk hand-in-hand down the street like they've always wanted. One day, he wants to say, they'll be able to do something ridiculous like get a retirement cottage out of London together and just tell the whole world to bugger off and take care of itself.

But that would be lying. And Crowley doesn't lie to Aziraphale.

"They'll always come after us, angel," he says. "We just have to stop them before they destroy the Earth again. We have to make sure they never do this again."

"You mean like fight all of Heaven and Hell? Together?" He looks at Crowley as if he's gone mad, but knows in his heart that they won't let them rest. "If you think we could, I suppose... there's no other choice." He hates making a choice when he doesn't have another one, but he does want to go back to the shop. It's where he belongs. And Crowley, with his car. He loves that car.

And yet, looking over, he wonders if it's so bad at all, being here. "But we won't do any of it before we have our picnic. Yes?"

Crowley tilts his head a bit more into the pillow, looking at Aziraphale's face. His best friend. He's never cared for anything or anyone like he's cared for Aziraphale, and he's pretty sure he never will. He thinks about reaching out and touching Aziraphale's face----but decides against it. No, they're going through far too much here for him to start stomping all over the lines that they've drawn for themselves.

"Definitely have to have a picnic," he says. "Before we steal the ferry. Which, by the way, you can't tell anyone about. I don't want the forest spirits hearing about our plans."

"Fine. Who was I going to tell anyway?" Yes, now would probably not be a good moment for face holding now that they've gone back to bickering a bit at each other.

"I really do hope it works, Crowley. I'd like to go back, I just... we don't know the first thing about seafaring."

He squints.

"There was a long time I didn't see you. You wouldn't happen to have been involved in any piracy during the 1600s, had you?"

"I did spent a lot of time in Tortuga," he admits with a wicked smile. "But it wasn't on a boat. I don't have the legs for it. The sea-legs."

He sits up and stretches, and tugs off his jacket, giving it a toss across the room. He quickly lays back down, facing Aziraphale.

"I suppose we'll have to learn how to do laundry now," he says. "What do we do? Wash them in the river?"

"Wash them in the river. Heavens. Couldn't we just miracle them clean?" He tries so with his clothes and the sheets, and it still works. Tickety boo.

"That isn't broken. I might have to get some pajamas, though. Wonder if I have to request a pair. Do you think they'll get my size right? Oh, actually..."

He tries that as well, because naturally he has one brain cell to rub together with itself and forgot that if he has the power to miracle his clothes clean, he must have the miracle to change them too. He finds himself in a long night-shirt with a wee nightcap.

Crowley looks up at the nightcap and smirks. He really shouldn't have expected anything less of Aziraphale. He waves a hand over himself and produces a set of black, silk pajamas identical to the ones he has in his flat.

"We'll need to request wine," he says. "Better wine. From the ferry. In case it doesn't work, or in case we're traveling a long while, it'll be worth it to have on board."

He doesn't know if they can get better wine. He doesn't know if they'll eat anything that isn't in a can in this place, and ever. As it is, he thinks about going home and that just feels better and better. Then, he looks around the room, where he's lying next to Aziraphale and Heaven and Hell aren't smiting him down, and it almost feels wrong to want to leave.

"Pity we'll have to settle for created-by-you for our picnic."

"Oh, that's alright. I'll come up with something nice," he says. It's not like Crowley's going to be eating much of it anyway, he never really did. It'd honestly probably just be wine and maybe some tinned cheese. Not the best picnic, but it'd have to do here.

He does reach out to touch the silk, and finding that they're monogrammed. He smiles warmly. "These are nice."

He shifts to pillow his head better, and looks up at the ceiling. He tries to close his eyes and clear his thoughts, he hears that's what you're supposed to do. It's just, he has so many of them.

Crowley stares at the place Aziraphale touches, even after he's moved away from his clothes. They barely touched back on Earth. Almost never. Handshakes occasionally. And then, that night after the apocalypse, where they held hands. Now, little touches here and there. An allowance of some sort of....well, it felt like intimacy between them.

He lays a little on his side, then turns to face the ceiling, the way the angel is. Finding the position dreadfully uncomfortable, he turns back onto his side.

"You have to just let it come to you," he says. "If you try to force sleep, you'll be awake all night."

It was quite nice, the intimacy, the touching. They could be just as they wanted to at home, without reservation. He thinks he might've gotten carried away if he'd grown so bold back on Earth, to even sit next to Crowley on the bus. He doesn't know that Heaven already had photos of the two of them; he'd rather thought they had been clever. All that sitting on opposite sides of a bench, proverbially passing envelopes, never being too close to each other. All for nothing.

"Oh, I don't think I'm getting the hang of this," he says, turning back on his side to face Crowley. "But you can't expect me to get it right the first time. What was it that you used to do to get Warlock to go to sleep?"

Crowley considers the question. "Mostly sang him lullabies about how he would grow up and destroy the Earth one day," he says. "I was pretty good at it, too, do you want to hear one?"

Crowley tries to remember the first time he decided to sleep, and it felt so natural at the time. A lot of gluttony followed by a lot of sloth. It was easy to just tumble from one into the other like he was rolling down a hill. They don't have that, now. Both of them are deliriously sober, and there isn't enough food in this town to need to sleep it off.

"Sometimes I'd rock him to sleep if he couldn't quite fall asleep when he was younger," he adds. "Could try that if you'd like. Might get you out of the stiff-backed look you've got right now."

"I'm not a baby, you don't have to rock me to sleep," he says, sounding offended. "But a lullaby might be nice." Yes sure, he isn't a baby.

But he sure sleeps like one.

He links his fingers together, which is not a very comfortable position to sleep in on his side. He does, eventually, figure out that lying down like normal (because he did lie down, sometimes) is much more comfortable.

Oh, great. Crowley wasn't actually expecting Aziraphale to take him up on the offer of a lullaby. All of the lullabies he sung to Warlock would be utterly inappropriate here, of course. Though hilarious, and maybe something for them both to laugh over in the morning.

Instead, he decides to go for a classic. And Crowley hasn't got Freddie Mercury's voice, but he sings the song in the same quiet, relaxing voice he'd sing to Warlock.

"These are the days of our lives
They’ve flown in the swiftness of time
These days are all gone now but some things remain
When I look and I find, no change
Those were the days of our lives, yeah
The bad things in life were so few
Those days are all gone now but one thing’s still true..."

Crowley thinks about the rest of the lyrics quietly. When I look and I find, I still love you
I still love you.

Aziraphale has his eyes closed and he's smiling the entire song, it's such a nice tune that he can almost hear the instruments play behind him.

It does help him to drift off, since he imagines that he's told Crowley that it's lovely and he's got a lovely voice, but he isn't sure he's actually opened his mouth to say anything at all.

And then, like that, he succumbs to sleep.

As it turns out, Aziraphale sleeping on his side has a little, lilting snore. Faint, like a gentle rolling wave.

Crowley watches Aziraphale sleep for a while. It's relaxing, seeing the angel so quiet, so peaceful. Almost impossible to think of him so still without a book mesmerizing him.

They could have this, he thinks, taking a glance around the dark room, only illuminated by the lanterns. It's not much, but they have it together. It's something they can't have on Earth. The freedom to just be friends. The freedom to have each other.

Is the spite Crowley feels towards Heaven and Hell stronger than his desire to just be with Aziraphale?

He thinks about it a while, and then curls up next to the angel, letting his snore lull him into his own sleep.

Aziraphale dreams. He hadn't realized he could, but it's a nice one. He's back at home in the shop, and he's forgotten that it's gone to him now, probably taken over by the government, ungloved hands all over his books. But no, in this dream he's sitting by the fire on a lovely winter's day, no customers at all. Perfect.

There's a knock at his door and he goes to get it only to find Crowley there with a thermos of cocoa (now that he no longer needed it to house holy water) and suddenly he's being serenaded by the demon. He had been expecting a lullaby, for some reason, but the song he's selected is La Vie En Rose. For some reason, Crowley forgets all the same words that Aziraphale forgets.

Afterwards, they share the hot chocolate, and Aziraphale pulls out an old box containing a board game. It's dreadful fun, but he can't recall anything about it....

It must be very early morning, he thinks, when he wakes up. But then he remembers that it's always night. Somehow, he seems to not be in the position he was in when he fell asleep, and there is something very warm on his back.

Crowley can dream. Sometimes, he has absolutely intense, intricate dreams. Sometimes he has lovely little daydreams that can last decades. Tonight, he dreams of his trial. He dreams of the panic at watching Aziraphale be pulled away from him in the park, at his complete helplessness. At being walked into the room with the bathtub and knowing, without any shadow of a doubt, that he wasn't walking out of it.

Crowley didn't die gracefully. He panicked, he kicked and screamed and was dragged to his death in a fairly undignified manner. He likes to pretend he was so cool about it, so completely full of the energy he usually gives out when he's sauntering about the Earth----but it wasn't there. He was just afraid.

And then he was here.

Snakes are cold blooded. Crowley usually sleeps curled up, under several layers of warmth. There's no warm pashmina afghan here, but there is a warm body next to him, and he curls up tight next to it, throwing a leg over the angel's body and snoring quietly against him, with an exhale that sounds a bit like a hiss.

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