Conspicuously Happy (Nestvember 2020 Day 2- Proposal)
He’s not sure if this is just what Crowley’s like when he finally feels free, or if there’s something else entirely going on.
The apocalypse came, stalled, then retreated, and now it’s back to usual. Or usual adjacent.
They still have their rendezvous but they’re more... Light. Conspicuous. Happy.
It’s as if there had been a weight (there had been) weighing them down all this time. Something that’s suddenly come untethered from them (cut off from them). Something, that now lost, was not missed (incredibly not missed). Something thats absence seemed to let them float just a bit. Just an inch or so above the ground. Or maybe that was Aziraphale’s celestialness seeping out just a bit.
It was hard to keep it all in, is all. He’d never seen Crowley this relaxed before. He’s more prone to sharp barks of laughter, to mischief, to letting emotions exist instead of shoving them down messily in some cramped metaphorical closet, to not looking away when Aziraphale catches him looking.
And then there’s the food. The little gifts that Crowley presents so unassumingly, so nonchalantly if not for the way he forgets to breathe. If not for the way his eyebrows raise ever so slightly. The way his eyes are trained so fixedly on Aziraphale as he opens it. His head may be angled away, but Aziraphale has had 6000 years to learn all of Crowley’s tells and he knows when he’s looking for something. He’s just not sure what he’s searching for.
At 11 o’ clock on a Tuesday, Crowley had showed up looking so giddy with mischief, happy, and yet as nervous as ever at the same time. Only instead of a dreaded kind of anxiety, it was more of an anticipation kind of nervousness. He wove some words, Aziraphale wasn’t quite sure what words they were, distracted as he was by the sight of Crowley’s growing hair loose with a smattering of braids, and then suddenly he found himself quite caught out in the wilderness with Crowley.
Questions of why they were here were deflected, outright ignored, and often met with a grin as Crowley led them down a winding path to an overreaching cliff-side. It was beautiful, Crowley and the view both, but not an answer as to why Aziraphale had been drug out of his shop on a lovely afternoon to appreciate the scenery. (He did appreciate the scenery, it was different to see Crowley so unguarded. Different, and ever so lovely.)
Crowley rocked on his heels, forwards and back, mouth rambling a mile a minute as he tried to convince Aziraphale to close his eyes and just trust him. It was a familiar back and forth of casual bickering and teasing. But the sight of Crowley’s hands reaching out to tug Aziraphale before suddenly stopping short, faltering, as if Crowley was unsure of his welcome, gave him pause.
He can resist the cajoling, the tempting, but he cannot bear to see Crowley uncertain. Not when it comes to Aziraphale. Never let him be uncertain of his want of Crowley. Not now. Not when they are free to be as they wish, with whom they wish.
So he reaches back. And the smile he gets is so effervescent that he cannot even be truly annoyed it turns into a tug which sends him stumbling off balance and over the edge of the cliff-side. He can feel the precise moment that he looses his balance, the precise moment that falling off the edge of the cliff is the only possible outcome left, and he’d snap himself safe but Crowley is already diving after him with a whooping laugh. Night sky wings spreading and angling, ink streaking by racing him down, down, down, before Aziraphale spreads his own snowy wings.
It’s taunts and teasings, aerial stunts and close calls, absurd rolling, spiraling, corckscrewing acrobatics in the sky. It’s bright laughter, the clouds in his hair, the stars in Crowley’s eyes, and Aziraphale doesn’t think he’s ever been happier.
He’s proven wrong a moment later. A moment later when Crowley, finally it seems finished with showing off, swoops up next to Aziraphale, reaches out and Aziraphale reaches back.
He’s breathless, a bit flushed in the face, his pristine black feathers mussed and ruffled by the wind, by his stunts, and absolutely shimmering in the starlight. Dark and rainbow tinted like an oil slick. Like a splash of a nebula far off. Like Crowley’s true self.
He’s grinning, biting back a half nervous laugh, his glasses gone missing from sometime between noon and night, and he’s breathless, breathless, breathless as he asks “Do I meet your standards?”
And Aziraphale’s heart makes a swooping flight of it’s own straight up into his throat.
The food- the aerial stunts - the - It was a Display! It was a Courtship Ritual! He’s Nesting. He’s Nesting. OH! He’s nesting for him.
Crowley’s crowding closer, their wings brushing feathertips as they beat to keep them aloft. “Make a home with me.” He presses closer yet, eyes bright in the starlight, face earnest and voice hushed and eager, “let’s make a place together, a nest, a home.”
And Aziraphale’s teary eyed and so so happy he feels like light itself. “Oh yes my dear, oh yes, let’s.”
“Together.”
“Together.”
