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?"

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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.

Crowley snoring in Aziraphale's ear should be alarming, but it's quite comforting to know it's just his friend wrapped up next to him. It'd be a shame to wake him, he supposes, but he does pull up his device to check the time and -- blinds himself, momentarily-- blinking wearily, he places his device back onto the nightstand and then thinks he is in a very odd predicament.

He couldn't possibly get up and wake Crowley while he's sleeping so soundly, so peacefully. Plus, he would never usually allow himself to get so physically close to Crowley, not just because he thinks Heaven is constantly watching, but, deep down, if he is very honest with himself, it's because his heart is rabbit-fast and so are his hopes.

Very carefully, he sets about disentangling himself before his thoughts can get away from him.

Crowley can sleep. He can sleep through a lot of things. He slept through a great deal of the boring 14th century, and part of World War 1 and 2. Bombs and evacuations couldn't stop him from sleeping. But, that was then. He was sleeping for fun, not necessity. This, now, means that he can rouse for reality. Rouse to wake, to eat, and to be, well, alive.

He feels Aziraphale move him, and his eyes flutter open.

"Angel?" he asks, decidedly not moving his limbs to make unentangling easier.

Oh, drats. "Crowley," he answers. "Don't worry, dear, go back to sleep. It's early yet. I just thought I'd... wake up and get a head start on breakfast. What would you like?" He decides to stay a little longer, and turns over to face Crowley.

On second thought, this was possibly a bad idea. He fights not to smile looking at Crowley's soft and well-slept state of bedhead and sleepy features.

"Thank you for-- last night, for staying with me. Yes. Thank you."

"Any time, angel," he says. He considers keeping himself tangled up with the angel. This sort of intimacy, this sort of closeness, it's something he's wanted but----well, Aziraphale said he moved too fast back in the 60's, that wasn't that long ago. There's no way he's changed his mind any time soon. Crowley isn't about to stomp all over the lines they've drawn for each other. No matter how comfortable and warm the angel is.

He moves his leg and shifts a little in the bed, giving the angel room. He looks up at the angel's hair, at his little nightcap. He could get used to this, he thinks. Having a friend to wake up with. Crowley spent so much of his time on Earth alone.

"Breakfast," he says. "Do we have to eat breakfast, too? I thought that was just something you liked in the morning."

"You don't have to, if you're not hungry. But I am." Probably due to the fact that all they really had for dinner was tinned peaches.

"I'll make you a tea at least. You can drink tea, right?" Maybe it'll whet his appetite. Aziraphale is thinking of breaking into the peas next. He could mash them with potatoes and make bubble and squeak.

Except, he hasn't got a pan. Actually, he doesn't really know how to cook. Even Crowley had done shopping once pretending he needed all those things, maybe he'd know.

But Aziraphale is definitely going to put the proverbial fork in the microwave. Just give him a morning.

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