Open To Anyone For Anything RP Post 2

[questionablewit]

Want to tag someone? Tag someone. Put the character you want in the subject line.
Leave a starter, or leave a prompt and I'll start.
Brilliant ideas and clueless flailing all welcome.
AUs and cross-canon, drama and comedy and shipping.
Just throw stuff at me. It's all good.

Comments

I know that feeling. I owe you some, I think!

[confoundthemighty]

She reaches for his hand, brushes her fingertips over a patch of skin that hasn’t been bare in millennia, and his breath catches at the question she asks.

All of a sudden the moment has become an exchange, private and quiet as any moment human beings share. This can’t simply be a gift—this is a declaration, and it has to be mutual. Otherwise it would be, as she rightly points out, incomplete.

(Incomplete, as he’d tried to resist admitting in the depths of lonely silent moments, like himself without Crowley around. The world has always been a beautiful place, with incredible delights to offer, but all of them are so much richer shared with this one soul. Once he’d thought that meant that his own soul was in some way lacking, that his loneliness was in some way his own fault; now he knows better. The greatest of these is love.)

“I’d be honored,” he whispers.

No worries, of course. =) And gonna blatantly plagerize myself with this but I liked it so there.

[duckshaveears]

Crowley closes her eyes for a minute, letting those words sink into her somewhere to be kept and cherished and wondered over. Honored.

Then she sighs and steps back a step so Aziraphale has to let go of her, and shakes her shoulders a little. It's not a large room, but it's large enough to materialize her wings in, if they're kept folded. She sighs again--it's always a bit of a relief to have them out, like an itch or tension so familiar you've learned to ignore it suddenly vanishing. Carefully she reaches back and under, feeling at the feathers, and pulls at a small one. She winces a little as it comes out, but it is small. It'll grow back, and it's not one it harms her to lose.

Then she reaches up to her hair, plucks out a couple strands, and wraps them around the feather.

Right, base materials accomplished. Now for the interesting part. Crowley closes his hands around the feather and concentrates.

She could have just summoned a ring out of nothing, of course; she summons clothes and such for herself all the time. But it wouldn't be the same, wouldn't have the same impact. There's such a thing as style, after all. And gravitas. And equality.

I'd be honored.

It's been hard for Crowley to accept that they're on equal footing now, after centuries--longer--of seeing their relationship as one where she did all the chasing, all the tempting, all the yearning. Thousands of small acts of service to say the things she couldn't say, show the things she couldn't show. Smaller, safer gestures, things Aziraphale would accept, instead of the things he couldn't or wouldn't. But now does.

It's hard, learning to let yourself be loved without fear. For both of them, in different ways. But here they are.

Crowley's hands begin to glow, a pulse of starlight between her closed fingers. As Aziraphale did, she includes a small spark of herself, a grain of soul melded together with feather and hair and spun together, altered, transformed.

It only takes a few moments, and when she opens her hands she's holding a ring. It's a snake, of course, a serpent ouroboros, made from an unknown black metal with faint streaks of red running through it. The tiny, delicate scales shimmer in the moonlight.

Silently, Crowley holds it out to Aziraphale.

I love it and so does Aziraphale.

[confoundthemighty]

Aziraphale draws in a breath at the sight of her wings—oh, but they are beautiful, sleek and black, the feathers gleaming with a faint iridescence like a raven’s. It takes genuine effort for him not to reach out and stroke along the gorgeous dark sweep of them with a finger, or with one of his own primary feathers. But this is Crowley’s moment, and so he simply watches her in reverent silence.

Raven Queen, serpent, best friend, best beloved. Sometimes when he’s fallen asleep he finds himself waking all at once, heart pounding, certain he’s dreamed every loving word and caress that’s passed between them, absolutely sure he’s gone back to being his former self, cowardly and lonely. Lord knows Aziraphale had gotten used to keeping his love silent and secret, had learned to let it out only in tiny fragments, shyly hidden in glances and daydreams and acts of kindness.

And every time he wakes panicked, terrified he’s been wrapped in the strangling vines of I can’t again, there’s an arm around his waist or long warm breaths stirring against his skin, or a familiar voice drowsily murmuring to him. Like the North Star she forged millennia ago, Crowley lights his way, orients him in the world.

The starlight that spills between her fingers limns her face, its sharp and lovely contours; not for the first time he imagines her brilliant against the night sky, spinning clouds of energy and fire into endless points of light. And when she opens her hands the ring she reveals is dark and glimmering with the promise of heat, like the heart of a star, every scale of the serpent’s small body perfectly formed.

It’s beautiful, and immeasurably so for being a part of Crowley. When his trembling fingers curl gently around it he discovers it’s also every bit as warm as her hands.

In silence he slips it onto his finger, and despite the other slight cosmetic changes it does dispel that sense of incompleteness. The ring settles perfectly where his old one used to sit; the scales wink as he turns his hand a little to examine it.

Only then does he let his own wings show—it seems somehow in keeping with the importance and solemnity of the occasion. They stay folded, of course, and their glow is no more intrusive than the moonlight and street light that slants across their faces, but they’re there all the same.

Love, joyful and certain, fills his gaze as he steps in close to her again.

I just love this image I came up with for making a ring? (didn't cut and paste, just reused idea) :)

[duckshaveears]

Aziraphale often glows. Usually it's figurative: the warmth of his smile, the aura of his love an almost tangible thing. Crowley can feel it even with her eyes closed, the same way you feel the heat from a fire, the same way you see a bright light even through closed eyelids. It radiates, undeniably. She could find Aziraphale with her eyes closed just by following it, rolls over in the night when nightmares or fears or doubts find her to wrap herself around it until they're banished.

Sometimes it's literal. They're both at it now, glowing, something of their celestial/occult natures on display along with their wings. Crowley's dark feathers glitter as though they've caught stardust in the feathers, and Aziraphale's gleam gently like moonlight. These aren't their original forms, but for Crowley at least it's the one that feels truest, the one that feels most like who she wants to be. Not the gender, that's like putting on a belt or a jacket for her, but the combination of eldrich characteristics and human ones. Part human. Part something else.

Wholly Aziraphale's. More profoundly so now, it somehow feels.

Crowley hasn't taken the offered ring from him yet. When Aziraphale steps forward she holds up her left hand, points to her ring finger. "This one," she says quietly. "I want to wear it on this one."

It is fantastic and don’t worry, I don’t know anyone who doesn’t recycle good images!

[confoundthemighty]

Though the room doesn’t get brighter, the glow of Aziraphale’s wings grows somehow warmer, as if every beat of his heart is bringing some hidden heat inside him to the surface.

If he tried to put it into writing, he knows, it would take him years and every language he’s ever learned to put into words what happens to his heart when she declares which finger she wants to wear his ring. Never, in any of his wildest dreams, could he have imagined that she would both understand and reciprocate his desire to share a life; this simple, unmistakably human gesture fills Aziraphale’s soul with a deep and resonating joy.

And it’s human vows he imagines, as he takes her left hand gently in both of his own.

This gold and silver I thee give, fragments of themselves exchanged for safe keeping. With my body I thee worship, a devotion they’ve been perfecting for months and in the cloakroom at the Ritz and outside a theatre during intermission and right here in their shared bed. With all my worldly goods I thee endow, everything precious to him under the same roof and shared by the dearest soul in all of creation.

Even in the soft light, her eyes are a rich and molten gold. Aziraphale doesn’t look away for a moment as he slips the ring onto her finger.

Set me as a seal upon thy heart, a seal upon thy arm: for love is as strong as death. Let this, then, be the guiding force in their shared life from now on—love, without regret or hesitation.

[duckshaveears]

This is not something Crowley ever let herself imagine. Not back in the wistful years, where she yearned not quite hopelessly after an angel of the Lord, not in the millennia before she was able to put a name to how she felt, certainly not in that first thunderbolt moment when it began on a wall around a garden. Not even recently, with love open and incandescent between them. She hasn't dared let herself yet want this much. And maybe it's not what Aziraphale meant, even, when he offered her a ring, but Crowley will be damned a second time if she'll miss the opportunity once it was in front of her. It's not as though he can possibly misunderstand what she means.

No planning, no ceremony, no spectators. None needed. Only the two of them. Always and only the two of them, on their own side.

Aziraphale is staring at her face as he puts the ring on her finger, but Crowley looks down at their hands. Hers are long and spindly, the hands of someone who makes things, pries into things, takes them apart and looks at them and then puts them back together differently just to see what happens. His are strong, but the strength has been covered by deliberate softness, manicured, the ages-old callouses of holding a sword replaced by the gentler marks of someone who works with books.

The ring fits her finger perfectly, of course, and glimmers as though it was always meant to sit there.

"Ani l'dodi v'dodi li," she says quietly, tilting her hand to see how the light shines on the ring, to examine this strange, significant new adornment. There could be other words, other vows, but those are the heart of this gesture for Crowley, those words and their meaning in all its terrifying, wondrous simplicity. She finally looks up to meet Aziraphale's gaze. He knows what the sentence mean as well as she does, but she repeats it all the same as she twines their fingers together, gripping his hand. Hers is trembling a little. So is her voice. "I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine."

[confoundthemighty]

Her fingers knot gently with his, and his wings spread and curve a little, as if to embrace her or shield her or both. The space between them has grown heavy with quiet, every breath full of meaning, every touch a silent message.

Crowley looks rapt, and perhaps a little frightened—exactly how Aziraphale feels, exactly how most souls would feel upon glimpsing their own personal Paradise. Aziraphale reaches up to trail the fingers of his free hand over her cheekbone, feather-light touch stroking gently over the serpent mark beneath the soft red wave of her hair, in a slow progression down to her jaw. He can remember the first time he wanted to touch her like this—a quiet moment before they’d parted in Rome, laughing about something together.

Thousands of years, and for all that’s changed they have always been a constant for one another, have always belonged. Tonight is just an acknowledgement of that.

(In the kitchen at the Ritz, a champagne flute an angel’s lips have touched suddenly breaks during the dishwashing process. Just crumbles all at once, the confused kitchen staff attest, like someone stepped on it.)

“My beloved is mine,” he whispers, knowing this moment is too sacred to exist in anything but a hush, “and I am hers.”

Hers, his, theirs, as long as the heart and soul are Crowley’s he’ll follow and protect, tease and share. Aziraphale can think of no better way to spend eternity than this: giving and accepting love, defending their side. Together, his heart sings, and somewhere in space a scattered choir of stars whisper it to each other in wonder.

Another eternal moment of watching those beloved gold eyes, and then he leans forward, up just a little, to seal their unspoken vows with a kiss.

"Make of our hands one hand, make of our hearts one heart."

[duckshaveears]

Crowley's eyelids only slide shut at the last moment before their lips meet.

They've spent the entire evening in a state of excitement, teasing and passionate and almost wildly happy. But this level of joy is something else again. It's almost painful in its strength and purity, transcendent. If Crowley didn't know better she'd wonder if she'd Risen, if the strength of Aziraphale's love was great enough to pull her out of damnation and make her holy again.

But it isn't that. It's better.

Aziraphale's mouth on hers is warm, soft and sure, as is the touch of his fingers on Crowley's jaw. Their wings curve, caress, envelope the two of them in a cocoon shutting out the outside world. Crowley's free hand rests on Aziraphale's hip, and their ringed fingers stay entwined. Bound. As the two of them are bound, now--as they always have been, but now formally, openly, freely. With every step they take to be taken together, the future unquestionably one they share.

This is my beloved, and this is my friend.

If a tear or two slide down Crowley's face, she doesn't notice or care. Nothing matters except their joined hands, joined mouths, joined hearts, joined lives.

And now… a swing at trueform?

[confoundthemighty]

A little slice of eternity melts into nothing between them. This, like so many moments since the world didn’t end, is a moment not stolen but claimed—openly, indelibly and without regret. It’s written on them both, now, even without the earthly evidence of their rings. Aziraphale can feel it, even in the parts of himself that don’t inhabit this plane of existence.

For the first time in millennia, those bits of him begin to shine through again. Though his corporeal eyes stay closed, a dozen or more eyes flicker open between the layers of reality. Some are dreamy, some bright with grateful tears, but they all turn their gaze lovingly towards Crowley. It’s only the barest hint of Aziraphale’s true form, the one that exists above and between and around the things humans can understand or perceive.

He speaks without breaking the kiss, and this voice is different from his earthly one. It’s a strange music woven of a thousand tiny comforting sounds: the warm sputter of a candle flame and the whisper of a spring wind in young grass; the soft beat of waves and the calls of evening birds.

My heart was forged to love you when the stars were in their cradles, Aziraphale says, promise and praise. It will love you still when they are in their graves.

yessssssssssssssssssssssss also spot the gratuitous Marvell quote I love that poem

[duckshaveears]

Crowley's breath catches as she suddenly feels Aziraphale, not in the now-usual sense of skin on skin, human body touching human body, not even in the vague awareness of ethereal presence. This is something far greater, for all that it's only an echo of a reflection of the reality: Aziraphale, angel, vaster than empires, spread through dimensions in a way no human can conceive. And all that awareness is focused on Crowley, singing praise and devotion.

Crowley's head swims as an overwhelming sense of purest love washes over and through her. She feels it, tastes it, hears it.

She follows, pulled as irresistable as the ocean to the moon, stretching herselfhimselfthemself into a form as much their own as the small corporation that still stands embraced in the room.

Crowley is a bonfire crackling, redgold sparks flying up to dance against the black of the night sky. Crowley is the heat at the heart of a newborn star, a plume of kretek smoke caressing the lungs, the cool smoothness of scales coiling around an arm, the glint of a fang, the unexpected laugh in the dark, the shiver of leaves in an unseen wind. All of it flows towards Aziraphale, engulfs, twines.

I chose this, Crowley says, because they see the world differently but it's still reflections of the same thing, still choices, everything has always been choices. Perhaps even their love for each other is part of God's Ineffable Plan--Aziraphale certainly thinks so--and perhaps not. Crowley doesn't care. It's not what matters. This is. I choose this. I choose you. Then, now, always.

And it's there in those words without voice, there, unquestionable, as inherently a part of Crowley and as undeniable in this form, in this place. Scales and scars, wings and questions, all the things that make up Crowley, and indivisible from the rest of it is love, love, love.

don’t. don’t look at the time stamp. HI.

[confoundthemighty]

Together, occult and ethereal formed of the light and dark of a long-ago Creation, they are more than simply angel and demon. They are the texture of film grain in black and white, all the soft and sharp shades of grey that make up a world; they are the night sky and the stars that bloom across it, the sunset and the volcanic ash clouds that catch its colors.

Here in this space where thought and intention and touch are all the same, Aziraphale unspools a bright thread of memory and reflection twined together.

When the world was young, so was my heart. A crackling burst of starlight illuminates a sharp profile, seen for the very first time. I was a thing without form, knowing I had some purpose but not understanding it. Starlight becomes darkness becomes sunlight; a sweet smile seen before the invention of time gains golden eyes, a shade of yellow that erases all memory of what color came before. God didn’t forge my heart to love you—you yourself struck that blow, shaping me, teaching me the height and depth of what I could feel.

A shared laugh lands like a hammer, bending something away from its previous shape, altering them both. Centuries of memory flash by: hundreds of smiles, of small kindnesses, of jokes and rescues and meals together, the bricks and mortar of true love. Not a love made true by any sort of decree from on high, nor by destiny, but by its own steadiness over thousands of years—by the two of them returning to one another, even in small ways.

Whatever else eternity might be, I know that it will be wonderful with you.

For another timeless moment Aziraphale lingers there, still caught up in the warmth and depth of this otherworldly embrace. Then, with a strange sensation that’s somewhere between the pull of gravity and the slump of settling into a beloved armchair, the extradimensional awareness begins a slow collapse back towards the focus of their human bodies. Aziraphale’s shape changes: shoulders and waist narrowing, curls lengthening and tumbling loose, breasts gaining weight and softness.

When she pulls back from their kiss, the faintest touch of mischief gleams through the deep love in her smile.

“I may have lied about the lingerie,” she whispers.