There is a music to watching Crowley build a garden that feels like an echo of the music of Creation. Sometimes he talks as he works, encouraging the plants or commenting on their growth. Sometimes he’s silent, and the expressions on his face are their own symphony, rolling from confusion to approval to sympathy to pride. Aziraphale could watch him for hours: when Crowley isn’t muttering his thoughts aloud, the demon easily loses himself in imagining what his angel must be seeing in every leaf and petal.
He’s lighter and easier when he talks to Aziraphale as well. Mostly they just discuss what they’re each doing as far as improvements to the house go, though Aziraphale also fills Crowley in on some of the other books he’s read while they were apart, and occasionally one or the other of them will remark on something they might like to do when they eventually make their way into the city.
The circumstances of their meeting no longer feel like a terrible shared tension. There’s no place for the horrors of Heaven’s crusade here, not in the softly breathing quiet where the air smells like grass and sunlight and wet earth.
On the day things truly change, it seems like a day like the short measure of those that have come before, except for how heavy the sky is. They’re sitting in the garden, Aziraphale picking at his vihuela and Crowley busy over a patch of earth.
The wind stirs; rain spatters against the backs of Aziraphale’s fingers on the strings. He looks over just in time to see Crowley glance up, to hear the wondering laugh break free of his lips.
Aziraphale’s heart swoops with a tender free-falling feeling. He’s loved that laugh from the very beginning of time, loved the hope and happiness it gives voice to and makes possible. And even after so much suffering, so many human disasters and tragedies and horrors and so much callousness by both their respective offices, Crowley can still laugh at an innocent thing like rain.
A searing wave of love rushes through Aziraphale’s whole being, body and soul. No matter what else may have changed, no matter what else still needs to heal, the shining capacity for happiness in Crowley’s heart hasn’t been fully broken by the Inquisition. It’s always been the single most beautiful thing about him, suffusing every other part of him with its light and rendering the world around him more fascinating for his presence.
Helpless, as struck with tender awe as any human discovering a beautiful and unexpected sight, he watches his angel laughing.
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timeasmymeasure
Loved this too much to let it go so how about some rainy healing
Date: 2025-01-22 04:42 pm (UTC)He’s lighter and easier when he talks to Aziraphale as well. Mostly they just discuss what they’re each doing as far as improvements to the house go, though Aziraphale also fills Crowley in on some of the other books he’s read while they were apart, and occasionally one or the other of them will remark on something they might like to do when they eventually make their way into the city.
The circumstances of their meeting no longer feel like a terrible shared tension. There’s no place for the horrors of Heaven’s crusade here, not in the softly breathing quiet where the air smells like grass and sunlight and wet earth.
On the day things truly change, it seems like a day like the short measure of those that have come before, except for how heavy the sky is. They’re sitting in the garden, Aziraphale picking at his vihuela and Crowley busy over a patch of earth.
The wind stirs; rain spatters against the backs of Aziraphale’s fingers on the strings. He looks over just in time to see Crowley glance up, to hear the wondering laugh break free of his lips.
Aziraphale’s heart swoops with a tender free-falling feeling. He’s loved that laugh from the very beginning of time, loved the hope and happiness it gives voice to and makes possible. And even after so much suffering, so many human disasters and tragedies and horrors and so much callousness by both their respective offices, Crowley can still laugh at an innocent thing like rain.
A searing wave of love rushes through Aziraphale’s whole being, body and soul. No matter what else may have changed, no matter what else still needs to heal, the shining capacity for happiness in Crowley’s heart hasn’t been fully broken by the Inquisition. It’s always been the single most beautiful thing about him, suffusing every other part of him with its light and rendering the world around him more fascinating for his presence.
Helpless, as struck with tender awe as any human discovering a beautiful and unexpected sight, he watches his angel laughing.