Open To Anyone For Anything RP Post 2

[questionablewit]

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Brilliant ideas and clueless flailing all welcome.
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Yep that's a plan!

[duckshaveears]

The days past swiftly and sweetly.

Crowley isn't usually passive by nature, but for those first few weeks he lets Aziraphale take charge. He helps, of course, offers opinions when asked, does his own miracles to make a safe place for the sparrows to roost in the chimney, starts fixing the holes in the walls and broken tiles on the floors when Aziraphale points them out. But mostly he just enjoys Aziraphale's company. He spends hours dozing, secure in the knowledge that his fiend is nearby; he spends more hours happily watching Aziraphale learn his new instrument. Sometimes he requests songs from the past, harmless happy things, nothing too associated with pain or loss. He knows Aziraphale is...not worried, but watching him closely, protective. And while he doesn't look closely at the past year, he knows it's not unwarranted.

Neither of them suggests stocking the wine cellar. Someday, perhaps. Not yet.

Every night Aziraphale holds him close in their bed, and Crowley's last thought before he sleeps and first thought when he wakes is to wonder what he ever did to be so blessed as this.

The turning point comes after about a month, when of his own initative Crowley begins working in the garden during the day while Aziraphale keeps improving the house. To say the weeds have taken over is to drastically understate the matter, but he gradually begins clearing them out. There are bulbs that might be irises or lilies, and he carefully replants those in a more organized fashion as he goes. One side of the house is lined with dormant roses. They'll look magnificent when they bloom.

He's been at it for a few days and is happily absorbed in the work when clouds gradually crowd the sky, and a drop of rain lands on the back of his hand. He laughs and looks up, covering his face to see the rain start to fall.

Loved this too much to let it go so how about some rainy healing

[confoundthemighty]

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.

bring on the vavoom!

[duckshaveears]

It's not quite true that angels always feel love. They can, but usually they have to be looking for it first, the same as a person not necessarily being conscious of a particular breeze.

The rush of love that flows over Crowley in that moment, however, is unmissable: deep and vast, warm and rich, layered and textured and decadent.

He doesn't have to wonder, and merely turns to Aziraphale with a grin. "Really?" he calls out over the stacatto of rapidly increasing raindrops. "Me not having enough sense to come in out of the rain, that's what does it for you?"

INITIATING VAVOOMING

[confoundthemighty]

This is hardly the first time Crowley’s ever teased him about being able to feel the love Aziraphale carries in his heart, [footnote: Demons can sense most emotions if they try, but their Fall strips them of the ability to sense love in others. Most humans can’t sense another’s love directly, but they have one advantage demons don’t: the ability to have faith in something or someone. The one exception to this rule is and always has been Aziraphale.] but it’s been so long that it catches him by surprise for a moment. His pulse knocks itself out of rhythm for a second under the sudden sensation of being known. Which in turn sends another wave of tenderness through him.

“I can’t help it,” he replies, his own voice raised to cut through the rising hush of the rain. “Reminds me of the day we met.”

BRING IT ON and I'll edit for Gardening Implements whatever later

[duckshaveears]

Crowley raises an eyebrow and places his pruning sheets on the ground, entirely heedless of potential rust. [footnote: They won't rust, of course. Aziraphale has made it Very Clear that no rust is allowed, and besides, Crowley has so much faith in them working well that they don't want to disappoint him.] He walks over towards Aziraphale, hips swaying a little with unconscious grace. "Well, I really didn't know enough to come out of the rain then, we'd never seen rain before."

He grins as he reaches up a hand to push dampened hair back from his forehead. It's still short, and he's been surprised by how much he's enjoying that, looking a bit different. It certainly hasn't put Aziraphale off at all, to judge by the waves of devotion still lapping at him. And there's a taste to that devotion, a heat, which he hasn't felt for a long time, hasn't thought about. They've been too distracted.

No, he's been too distracted. More fool him. He really ought to do something about that.

Crowley finally comes to stand in front of his demon, still smiling, still heedless of the rain. "What is it you remember about that day, then?"

same, idk how much metal is actually in a vihuela but WHO CARE

[confoundthemighty]

For the past several weeks Aziraphale hasn’t let the heat of his own wants have enough air to spark back up into a flame. Crowley has needed his friendship and company more than he’s needed a lover in the physical sense; he’s needed time to heal from more than the lashes and the profound hangover. At certain moments, alone with his thoughts as Crowley slept in his arms, Aziraphale has wondered if this gentle companionship would be the full extent of the intimacy between them during these few months—or possibly for years to come. He knows he could be reconciled to that, if it came down to it; after all, his love for Crowley is made up of far more than desire.

Impossible not to feel twinges of that desire, though, as Crowley saunters towards him, with rain wetting his shirt and hair and clinging to his eyelashes.

He sets his vihuela aside [footnote: Like the gardening tools, it also knows better than to sustain rust or water damage.] and stands to face Crowley. And because he can’t help himself, because the temptation has been there since before the beginning of recorded time, he reaches out to brush a damp lock of hair back from his angel’s forehead. The shorter cut suits him—but then, almost everything does. Rain, sunlight, finery, simplicity: the whole world conspires to make Crowley beautiful.

“I remember you,” he says. “The way you laughed.” A laugh that changed Aziraphale’s world for the better, that burned away some terrible rot before it could take hold in his soul.

btw it's not my fault your tags are irresistible and I have to pounce on them like desserts

[duckshaveears]

Crowley's smile grows even more fond, more sweet. "You laughed with me," he returns. A laugh that eased the grief and loneliness he'd carried unspoken since the war in Heaven, a moment shared between them, the seed of the greatest joy he's ever known. "I've loved the rain ever since."

He cups Aziraphale's face in his hands, leaning in. Crowley is the taller of the pair of them, but not by much, it's not far to bend. "But not as much as I love you," he whispers, just before their lips meet.

The kiss tastes of rain and memory and delight, and Crowley drinks it in.

awww shucks. have some wings!

[confoundthemighty]

Crowley leans in, closing some small but vital distance between them, and Aziraphale can’t help but let out a long breath. His human body has a way of holding on to tension that can be inconvenient and unpleasant, but in the exhale he feels the first blissful rush of being able to relax into his lover’s kiss. His fingers thread into Crowley’s hair—the texture of it is different now that it’s shorter, a change he notes with new delight—and his other arm loops around Crowley’s waist, pulling him in.

Then he inhales, breathing in the smell of Crowley: clean warm skin, wet earth, faint sharp notes of green sap. His lungs fill, and his head swims, and suddenly Aziraphale finds he needs more than arms to embrace his lover with.

His wings stretch up and out, dark-silver feathers extending wide, before folding around Crowley to shelter him and press him close. Scorched and corroded though they’ll always be, they’re still soft and warm and sleek, and they still encircle his beloved with tender care.

What I said last time, and yay wings!!

[duckshaveears]

Crowley finds himself held not just by arms but within a cocoon of feathers, and laughs again at the wonder of it--the softness of Aziraphale's wings grazing his skin, the strength hidden under down and pinion. Crowley can never see them as corroded or tainted, whatever Aziraphale says; to him they're perfect. How could they be anything else, when they're used to hold him as sweetly close as this? When every brush of feather is another caress to tell him how much he's cared for?

All that on top of the love he can still feel radiating from Aziraphale is frankly intoxicating, in a lighter but even more dizzying way than mere alcohol could ever hope to achieve. Crowley reels with it, breathes even more of it in through their mouths, passes it back with each press of lips, and for the first time in centuries remembers what it is to feel hunger. His fingertips press into Aziraphale's scalp, and he moans a little, leaning further into the kiss.