#lilpy

Happy Birthday to @lilpy ! I made this for them, featuring their Reverse Omens characters, Forneus and Lucidrien.

Inspired by this gorgeous art (click for full image) by Lilpy.

You can also read and comment on AO3

The last whooshes of tyres across wet tarmac, the last high voices of Human children have faded into the distance. The airfield’s whole again, showing no sign of the heaped and fissured crater where Satan himself heaved his hideous, horned bulk into the light of day. The terror only survives in their hearts, in the distant look of Crowley’s blown-amber eyes and the tremor in his hand.

“Your poor automobile,” says Aziraphale. “There’s not even the bits left. I suppose we’ll have to –”

Crowley snaps. The cool kiss of misting rain, the smell of fried carbon and petrichor, are once more replaced by a plain of cloud, by light coming from all directions and none. Whatever’s solid beneath them doesn’t betray its nature. It’s cloud, that’s all, but it bears their weight.

“Not yet,” says Crowley. “Just need – a moment. Just –”

He stumbles with fatigue then, drops to his knees. It’s too much: his throat’s still raw from screaming Aziraphale’s name in the burning bookshop; he’s shattered from holding the Bentley together through force of will; the terrible, gravitational pull of Lucifer (the Morningstar, the most beautiful of Her children, he thinks grimly) has briefly left his limbs weak as water.

There’s a shy touch at the back of his bowed head.

“Crowley.”

He finds he can’t speak; there’s a sob in his throat and he’s damned if he’ll let it out (well, all right, he is, but still). He’s already wept all the tears, right sorry show for a demon, got to scrape together a little Pride. One of the Deadlies, isn’t it? Get back in the saddle (he’s never applied that maxim to actual riding, of course).

“Crowley. I’ve never seen anyone so brave.”

He finds a laugh then. “Shit, angel. Not me. Brave’s what you do when you’ve got a choice.”

There’s a little shift in the light beyond his closed lids, and Aziraphale’s dropped to the – whatever holds them up in this space outside of Time. He becomes vaguely aware his wings are out, feels the movement of air, so there’s air here, as Aziraphale’s own pinions overlap his.

“I know you think this isn’t over,” says Aziraphale. “I – don’t suppose they’ll let it go. So while we’ve a moment  – I only want to say –”

His voice is oddly light. There’s a quaver. He’s heard Aziraphale laughing, and angry, and all atwitter over a chased snuffbox or a first edition, but he’s never heard his words come out wobbly, like they don’t know where to set themselves down.

“I haven’t been much of a friend, Crowley. I – well, it’s hard, when you’ve tried to be a good angel, and do the right thing, and then you realise what you thought was right was the wrong thing, and – I’m afraid I’m making a muck of this – anyhow, I hardly deserve to be called your friend at all, but I’m honoured that we could –”

“Shut it, angel,” says Crowley, and wraps him in arms as unyielding as a serpent’s embrace. “Who’d’ye think I meant, when I said I’d lost my best friend?”

Aziraphale’s silent for a startled moment, before relaxing into the tight clasp.

“You never said,” he all but whispers.

“Your shop burned down. Always known where you were on Earth, always, and you weren’t anywhere.” One palm rises to the angel’s plump cheek, snugging his head against Crowley’s shoulder. “Thought they’d done for you.”

Is Aziraphale chuckling? “Dear. All they did was accost me in the street like bravos and hooligans, and bully me about. I’m coming to see that they’re dreadful cowards. Do you know what they called you?”

“Cursed above all the beasts of the field?” says Crowley, finding a small smile. “Never saw what She was getting at, there, mind. Don’t remember Her cursin’ any cows or sheep, far’s I know.”

“Uriel called you my boyfriend in the dark glasses. I wanted to tell her I’d be honoured.”

Crowley finds a long breath, lets it out again. “That who I am, then?”

“If you’ll have me.”

Aziraphale lifts his head part way, and Crowley presses a kiss to his temple. His hair smells of that pomade he gets at the barber’s and ozone from the lightning that Gabriel rode to Earth’s surface and sweat and the ghost of burnt Bentley that had blown toward them across the airfield.

“You’re my best friend,” says Aziraphale. “Like in that bebop song the Bentley pl – played. You always have been. I ought to’ve said so a long time ago, too. I’ll try to correct the error in future.” He cups Crowley’s bony elbow, braces the hand cradling his face, don’t leave.

“Dunno how long that’ll be,” says Crowley against his skin.

“I think it might be quite a long time indeed,” says Aziraphale. “I’ve got an idea. I’ll tell you.”

“Not just yet,” says Crowley. “Stay like this a bit.” The angel’s warm, and solid, as he’s always imagined, and he’s more home than he ever was in his long-faded memories of Heaven, and he just needs it to last a little longer.

“Best friend,” he repeats. “Gonna say it every day after this. Forever.”

@stellasapiente @mossyorchid @tybalttrouble @kanna-ophelia @twilightcitysky @hasturswig @bowser14456 @siriosa @totallysilvergirl @brokenanddancing @scrapbramble @mirkwood-spider-express @echosilverwolf @ngkiscool @amberly333 @sgam76 @thundercrackfic @ao3cassandraic @ashfae @princess-spock @has-the-moon-lost-her-memory @chubsthehamster @sarahthecoat @mother-entropy @cumaeansibyl @valquainton @joyandotherstories @karl-loves-olivia @cassandralie @kookaburra-laugh @naefelldaurk @feraltuxedo @calaisreno @maggiehoneybite @laurashapiro-noreally  @lady-sam1345 @juliette-tango @tyrograph  @it-aint-my-darkest-day @pyracantha14 @dragonnan @flantasticclaude @noodlefrog-omens @thistaletasty @8angelofyournightmare8 @ultrafuchsia @hootwonder @andromeda4004

Concluding chapter now on AO3 !

 Inspired by this art by Lilpy.

Read and comment on AO3, if you prefer

He knows he needs to burn it. All it takes is a snap; it hurts, pulling that Hellfire out of his fingertips, like the ignition of a Hand Of Glory, but it’s the one way to assure that even an angel’s words can’t be resurrected by a miracle.

He can’t. Not quite yet.

I dream of a time when we might ignore the summons of our superiors, the imperatives of our respective sides, the clamour of the world itself. When we might cease to play a game within another game, as it’s come to seem to me. Who would we be if those strings were cut? If we were nothing more than two gentlemen, taking the air in St. James’ Park, or sharing a box at the Royal Opera? We would walk arm in arm, or place our feet up on the fender on a damp night while we warmed ourselves with a good claret.

How many years has he slept? When he drifts toward waking, he’ll sense that weeks have passed, then months. He’s felt the hair brush his jawline as he shifts in the enormous bed; the next time the clouds of sleep part briefly, it’s reached his shoulders. But the letter’s still in his hand.

He should burn it, before Hell decides to pay a call.

He can’t.

I cannot say when my regard for you grew into a bond of true affection. Attachments arise from custom, yet no such communion has ever grown from associations with my own kind; common ends make comrades, yet all we have in common arises from our charge to thwart one another. I know only that there came to be a time when the sound of your voice was more cherished than any music; when I came to know the turn of your foot, the tilt of your head, out of a multitude of thousands.

When did you become dear, so dear, to me?

When did the letter arrive? Fifty years ago? Sixty? Not long after Paris. He told himself then that he’d wait a day, a week; later, that it was safe to hide it at the bottom of a chest, or tucked between the pages of a book. Kept it as things became more dangerous, the angel’s manner more brusque and fretful.

Needless to say, we shall not speak of this when we meet again. We dare not. I only need to know that I have spoken, the once, before courage fails me.

When did things change?

The sun’s coming in at an autumn angle. There’s the sound of early traffic in the street below: here a costermonger’s wagon, there one of the new Hansom “safety cabriolets.” He’d imagined sharing one with the angel -- a brief space of privacy, two gentlemen going to adjacent destinations. In safety, with no one to see a quick handclasp.

Their hands had all but touched in the park. He’d burnt that note.

Words are poor things. I say this from within an edifice of words. I walk between aisles of words, like the aisles of trees in an old forest; I dwell in the house of words. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with Her. Words are the currency of my existence. And yet they fail when I need them most.

Do you remember how Plato compared the knowledge of ourselves to the image reflected in another’s eye? I only feel I truly exist when I see myself in your perfect eyes, the pupilla reflected in that rarely-revealed darkness, that must exist to define the light.

It’s been a long time since he’s risked setting aside the smoked glasses, even for a moment. He tries to avoid seeing his own reflection without them. Your perfect eyes.

It is madness to write this, I know, and greater madness to send it, and you must destroy it once read, but I have spent the evening in writing sterile dispatches – a soul turned to charity here, Her grace accepted there. And all I can feel is the slow ebb of grace in my own soul, the dissolution of faith in a Plan, until I cross your path again and am reminded that is is your -- I can hear you scoff, but --  your grace which I crave.

He should burn it.

What if we had our own Plan? What if everything we did, we did on our own? Needing nothing and no one but each other? If we came to rest, would you rest beside me?

I know it for folly, but I dream of a garden – nothing so grand as Hers, with nothing like so high a wall – and a tree in it, and we should eat of the fruit together. It would be the tree, not of knowledge, but of forgetfulness, where we would set aside the old rules and make our own. We could lie side by side beneath it, and watch the sun through the branches.

I don’t know where, or how, that could happen. But before you reduce this letter to ash, dream of it with me.

He’s dreamed of nothing else, since he fell into sleep. He hears other words when he drifts towards wakefulness. You are Fallen. Fraternising.

The sun’s hot on his face now. He holds the sheet of foolscap to the bare skin of his chest, as if the words could enter into his heart by some alchemical diffusion. The page would be left blank, but the message would remain.

It’s all he has. If I lay here, would you lie with me?

As long as the letter exists, they’re together. The words aren’t spoken. They haven’t parted.

He knows he should burn it.

He can’t. Not quite yet.