aj_crawley | (no subject)

(no subject)

It's Christmas morning, and the darkness provided by the blinds isn't quite complete. It's dark outside, too, but the faint orange glow of streetlights bounces off the thin rime of not-quite-snow crusting over London and filters in around the edges of Crowley's bedroom window. It's not completely quiet, either - every so often a brighter flare of light outside heralds the low swish of car tyres as one poor unfortunate or another makes their way to wherever it is they have to be. There aren't many though; it's still very early.

And after all, it's Christmas morning.

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Crowley - just stands there, arms still crossed protectively across his chest.

To his credit, though, his shoulders aren't quite as hunched; he's managing to stand a little straighter.

(The height advantage helps.)

It isn't terribly useful at the moment; Aziraphael is staring stubbornly at his feet and at the warm, familiar wood spreading out from them in all directions.

"Well. This is a fine place for us to be this morning," he mumbles at last.

Crowley looks away again.

Figures, he thinks.

"I'm. I wasn't making fun of the way you look," he mutters, low and indistinct. There's a mulish jut to his jaw, the shape of his bones clear beneath the skin. Quickly: "I was talking about something else. I'm ssorry."

At that he does look up, blinking at Crowley in shock. He runs a dry tongue across his lips but it doesn't help to relieve the suddenly parched feeling in his mouth.

"Oh," he says finally. "It's, er. It's all right."

After another few moments, Crowley turns away, finally winching his arms from around his ribs so as to scoop up the long-forgotten, lonely mugs on the coffee table.

They're gone cold.

Carefully stepping over a discarded blanket, Crowley starts towards the kitchen.

An empty feeling settles over him when Crowley moves away. The tension might be lessened now, but nothing has rushed in to take its place and the vacuum is almost as bad.

He brings his hands together, squeezes, and looks down again. Breathe in, breathe out.

The mugs chatter loudly against the draining board, when Crowley empties their contents into the sink and sets them down.

Silence.

Then the tinny thunder of running water.

The little domestic noises echoing in the silence somehow make things worse. Feeling useless and drained, he wanders quietly in the direction of the kitchen, where Crowley had disappeared.

Crowley's movements are quick and sharp, the sort of focused, abbreviated twitchiness that's a clear tell of frustration directed elsewhere. Aziraphael's mug doesn't need much more than a quick rinse, but there's a rime of coffee on the inside of his own, thin strata on the black enamel marking out the progress of the morning; the last and lowest when they'd stopped to talk, and the first, the highest, when they'd stopped to -
     (He looks like a colour study, half-done)
Well.
     (pale skin, white sheets, and the two black inkstains seeping from his back)
To not talk.
     (where Aziraphael keeps dipping and sifting and stroking his fingers)
The squidgy yellow washcloth squeaks against the enamel, comes away stained, squeaks against the mug again.
     (which he leans down to kiss, again and again, and comes away clean every time)

Familiar scene:

Crowley leans slowly forward, and rests his forehead against the cupboard above the sink.

His -

Aziraphael hasn't ever thought he was very good at lying to himself. Still, he managed to believe - to the exclusion of observed facts - that Crowley was perfectly all right. Most likely, Aziraphael had reasoned, he hadn't even noticed that anything was different, and all the leavetaking and the long absences that Aziraphael explains away, the short nights and the endless shallow concerns that he faced, affected only himself.

He looks into the kitchen and realises that he's much better at believing his own lies than he'd thought. There's still chipped china in Crowley's motionless, soapy hands, forgotten under the weight of this misery that bows him over like a bent sapling. He looks broken, and the angel can see that it's by his own fault. He stares, stricken, and a silent inhale takes him with sudden force.

Crowley's nose wrinkles, and so do the corners of his eyes.

Aziraphael's lips move for a few seconds before he can manage a sound.

Let your conversation be without covetousness," he finally mutters to himself, "and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee."

The wet washcloth slaps into the doorjamb by Aziraphael's head.

"You have five sseconds to explain why you're quoting the Bible at me."

Crowley's voice is a poisonous rasp, and for the first time since they started to snipe at each other, there's a dull red heat in his face.

The mug in his other hand is shaking, dripping suds on the kitchen floor, and on Crowley's bare feet.

"Now. Now, of all times."

When all along, it's been -

He trips backward, stunned by the force of Crowley's reaction.

"I - I was quoting it at myself, not at you," he stutters. "There are things I need to explain--"

"You know where you can shove your explanations," he hisses. "I understand the lines. I will not be condescended to, I will not be condescended to by you, and I will not be condescended to in my own flat - in my flat, Aziraphael. You just swan in here, and you - "

Crowley slams the mug down on the counter-top so hard that it's a miracle (or something like) that it doesn't shatter, and storms back out past Aziraphael.

(Miraculously, or something like, he manages to do it without knocking into him, or shoving him out of the way - or indeed, touching him at all.)

By the time he's recovered enough to get out of the way, Crowley's already past him.

"No - Crowley, wait," he says to the demon's back, and trails behind him, tugging nervously at the already-tight knot on his dressing gown.

"It isn't like that, I didn't mean--"

"You didn't mean, you didn't mean - you don't mean a lot of things."

He whirls, sharp elbows and rigid back, hair wild around his face, and jabs a thin finger at Aziraphael's chest.

"You know, if you keep having these little verbal sslip-ups, maybe you might want to just pay a bit more attention to what you're saying. 'Course, you could apply that principle to anything, really. Transferable fucking skill, paying attention."

He's brought up short by that, as though Crowley has found the right string inside him to pull and yanked on it. But the silhouette from the kitchen is burned into his mind now, underlying every little cruelty, and he doesn't even think to retaliate.

"Yes," he says rather grimly, "there are a lot of them. Crowley, honestly-- you'll want to hear what I have to say."

Crowley's in no mood to be stopped, urgent points or no. His voice, at least, has dropped back to normal levels again - lower, even; almost a murmur.

"You know what one of the greatest things you ever said to me was?"

Not one of the most romantic, but one of the greatest - the hugest, the most important.

He sputters a little, a confession on the tip of his tongue, so to speak, and he hesitates.

"No - what?"

"It was in Vienna. You said."

His voice is quieter still, now - not pointedly so, and not for the sake of any dramatic effect, but simply... smaller.

Lessened.

His finger is leaving a damp patch on the front of Aziraphael's dressing gown. Somehow, Crowley isn't quite meeting his eyes anymore.

"You said to me, Blast it all but I've missed you so dreadfully, Crowley."

Aziraphael -

He doesn't even know how to respond, because that, that is exactly--

"I meant it," he says at last, unhappiness weighing him down so that he feels a good three inches shorter than when he woke up this morning.

"I did. I do."

"I don't doubt it," Crowley replies, hand falling as he steps back; steps away.

And for a moment, with nothing else between them - for just a moment, it looks as though he might -

"But then again," (and then again, there's something hardening in his face once more, hurt and mean and vengeful), "maybe I should've paid more attention to the fact that you said it right after I gave you the blowjob of a lifetime."

The bedroom door is heavy, its slam, when Crowley fires it shut behind him, satisfyingly loud.

He doesn't wince when it does (though Crowley can't see that, of course) only because he's frozen, numb, to the spot.

He doesn't hear Crowley moving around inside the room, though he isn't being quiet about it.

He doesn't realise his mouth is still slightly open.

"That wasn't why I said it," he calls shakily; it's all he can manage at the moment.

When Crowley opens the door, it's with a load balanced on his other hand: Aziraphael's clothes, still folded from last night. Atop them, a sensible pair of brown leather shoes. Atop them, lopsided, a largish box: navy blue, unadorned save for a small logo in one corner, and the sort of discreetness that only comes from holding something offensively dear.

(On the other corner, slightly darker, there are still wet smudges where Crowley picked it up.)

"No?" he says, yellow eyes very bright. At last, there's a matching tremor in his voice. "And I suppose you're not going to do what we did this morning and then tell me my specialty is 'yes' again, either, are you? Go on." He steps forward, pressing the bundle into Aziraphael's hands. Whisper-close: "I dare you."

He stares at him blankly, fingers closing around the bundle out of habit.

"...What? This morning, I." He tries to think back, but it's making his ridiculous blush reflex creep up again. Judging by his comment about Vienna, there's very little that Aziraphael could say now that Crowley would believe, anyhow.

"I wouldn't have said something like that. Not - not like that."

"Perfect recall disappeared, has it?"

Crowley knows every shade that Aziraphael's face can turn; has caused most of them, one way or another. And now he's standing there. It makes Crowley feel like his ribs are being crushed, bone grinding inwards against all the messy bits he doesn't even need, anyway. And now he's standing there, all hurt blue eyes and hair that Crowley can always smell on his pillows, and turning that stupid, delicate pink that Crowley loves to feel the heat of against his mouth.

He always wants Aziraphael.

But Aziraphael turned it into -

(The memory is sudden and strong, prickling over him like a sensory after-image: the heat of Aziraphael's thighs against his sides, the shaky inhale as he'd looked down at Crowley's grin, the plump, too-careful hand buried in his hair - )

And now he's standing there, blushing.

It feels like his ribs are