aj_crawley | (no subject)

"No. Savouring is probably the best way to put it." He's smiling again, eyes still closed, but they open now and focus on Crowley, inches away.

"Are you?"

It's unintentional, but this is perhaps a more loaded question than it seems.

He - shifts a little, unhurriedly, the crisp(ish) sheets rustling beneath them; just enough to settle the arch of his foot against Aziraphael's calf.

"I suppose you could say I'm feeling a little drained."

Incongruously, perhaps, he bites at his bottom lip and looks for all the world like the cat who got the cream.

"After all that, I can't say I'm surprised."

If he thinks about it too much, he'll start blushing.

"Yeah, alright." Crowley's hand delivers a light swat to an unnamed part of Aziraphael's anatomy. "Well done, you. Don't let it go to your head."

He'd - miscalculated. That lingers, a little. But it's hard to feel too dejected about it after such an enthusiastic demonstration of what does work, nowadays.

"Ouch," he says in indignation, though more out of instinct - it doesn't really hurt.

"All right, when you put it like that, I suppose I'm feeling a little drained, too."

"Too kind," he replies, hypocritically smug and smugly hypocritical.

And there it is: the blush. It starts in his face and works its slow way down past his chest. He's obviously been thinking about this for too long.

"Well, I. You're quite, er. Yes." He flails without actually moving anything but his hands. And as long as he's blushing, he thinks, he may as well go for broke.

"I like to think so," Crowley agrees.

(Further down the bed, his toes curl the tiniest bit against Aziraphael's calf.)

"It's good to have a specialty."

"It is," he agrees with a laugh, "especially when one's specialty is 'yes.'"

Crowley's hand stills in the small of Aziraphael's back.

"Well," he says with a snort. "If you want to put it like that."

"I can't think of a better way to put it," he explains. "For all my reading you still defy description, love. Perhaps you should be an adjective."

"For once," (another light swat, though this time it's really more of a squeeze; gentle, but playful enough to be distracting), "I actually think I'd rather not know."

"It would carry the potential for overuse," he says, mock-thoughtful, then adopts the high-pitched tones of imaginary conversations to demonstrate.

"'Ooh, this chocolate is so good; it's absolutely Crowley.' 'I can't put this novel down. It's just Crowley and I never want to do anything else.'" He studies Crowley, eyes twinkling.

"Correct in context, perhaps, but not quite right."

Crowley's shaking his head, nose wrinkled in distaste.

"Nope. Getting colder. Definitely getting colder."

"Only your own, then," he says, satisfied. "It's just as well; you put words like that out into the wild and there's no telling what people will do with them."

"I don't doubt you'd have a hand in it," Crowley retorts, still affecting grumpiness. "You'd be sneaking into printing offices and adding entries to the Oxford English Dictionary, writing in to 'word of the day' columns..."

"Oh, yes," he agrees easily. "No one understands quite how much is involved in something like that. I have to be quite determined."

"Then leaving it be is a win for both of us. I'm glad we've settled that, aren't you?"

"I certainly feel productive. And your name remains unique and self-descriptive. For the better, I think."

"Often copied, never equalled," Crowley says loftily.

"Quite right," he says, equally lofty.

The leg not currently leaning against the arch of a certain foot slides slowly between Crowley's.

Crowley doesn't say a word.

But the look he levels at Aziraphael is... sceptical, perhaps. That'd be one way of putting it.

"...What?" he asks, with calculated innocence. "I'm only getting comfortable."

"If you say so," Crowley says, although his eyebrows don't seem about to come down from his hairline just yet. "Though I thought we'd planned on relocating to the couch, at some point."

"We had, yes," he says, propping himself on an elbow as though he'd forgotten. (He had.)

It's still early, but at least the sun is up. And there seems to be little chance of either of them going back to sleep, at this point.

"Quilts and old films. It's bound to be quite an event."