Another Year, Another Open RP Post

[duckshaveears]

Currently offering: Crowley, angel!Crowley, Haleth. Will update this if that changes. If you want one of those three, have at it.

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[confoundthemighty]

Oh, that’s not good at all. Aziraphale’s uneasy thoughts manifest as fidgeting; he twists his pinky ring fretfully.

“I did try to tell you! More than once.”

(Minutes ago he felt like the most beautiful being in creation, caught up in the greatest and deepest love he’s ever felt, and all at once he’s starting to shrink back down to his pitiful unremarkable self again. Why did he do this? Why did he think this was a good idea?)

(I'm sorry Aziraphale! ...on the other hand I do rather feel Crowley has a point!)

[duckshaveears]

"You told me, did you?" Crowley retorts. "You said 'Oh, by the way Crowley, sorry to pop into your dreams without warning but this is the real me and not one of the fakes you have running around to take advantage of,' did you?"

He'd like to stand up and walk around and pace but he's still bareass naked and far too worked up to do things like manifest clothes. Which would be easier in here than it would outside but he doesn't remember that either. And Aziraphale is looking unhappy and upset, and that's awful, especially after...but seriously what the fuck? "How are you even..." He waves a hand, indicating...everywhere, really, the entire dreamscape.

[confoundthemighty]

“I… I came by the flat. You were still asleep, and I wanted to ask if I could wake you up—” (He won’t add with a kiss now because it’s ridiculous, it was so foolish of him) “—and I thought I’d look in and say hello before I…”

Damn, he’s buggered this up, he’s possibly ruined the best thing that’s ever happened to him. But there is another thought surging in his heart, one that spills out far more easily in this dreamscape than it would in the real world where he’s as much substance as he is thought.

“I’m not sorry we did that, but I am sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”

[duckshaveears]

"I--"

Words dry up in his mouth. What should he even address first? Crowley feels it, the sharpness of fear coming off of Aziraphale, the anxiety that he's broken something irreplaceable. And twined with it...

I'm not sorry we did that.

Crowley runs a hand over his face, trying to process.

"Right," he says finally. "Right. One thing at a time. Clearly we need to talk, yeah? But let's do it...out there. Waking up time. If I slept through my alarm I'm overdue anyway. Can we start with that?"

Because talking here...that's too vulnerable for him, right now. And the way they can feel each other's emotions is as much a hindrance as a help given how confusing and overwhelming they are (oh fuck, all that earlier was coming from Aziraphale, actually Aziraphale, not...)

Waking up first, definitely.

[confoundthemighty]

Right, well. That’s… it’s not progress exactly, but at least Crowley isn’t flying into a rage, which is promising (even though he’d be perfectly within his rights to if he were so inclined).

Aziraphale nods, swallowing back his anxiety. “I, ah. See you outside, then?”

Already he’s preparing to draw his consciousness back, to pull fully into his own corporation and rejoin earthly reality. But he hesitates, taking a long look at Crowley first, aware this might be the last time he’s in the demon’s bed in any capacity and (selfishly, he knows, so selfishly) hoping he’s wrong.

[duckshaveears]

"Yeah." Aziraphale's looking at him with...Crowley doesn't even know what that is.

Except he does. He can feel it, a bit of it. Longing and guilt and worry and...

(And ohhh he remembers with a sudden visceral awareness that only minutes ago they were twined together and writhing and laughing and kissing and it was real, it was all real, what should he do with that?)

"Don't run off," Crowley adds, just in case, before closing his eyes and concentrating on waking up.

[confoundthemighty]

“I won’t.”

Aziraphale pulls his focus back from the dream, up and up and out, their minds disentangling. It’s almost a shock, the moment he fully separates from Crowley’s consciousness, though breath in his lungs feels almost more intense. His entire self flows back into his human corporation, nerves and bone and muscle and all of it, and it’s a bit like the time they switched bodies, if a touch lonelier.

With some chagrin he realizes, even before his eyes are open, that he’s sticky.

It’s not surprising, but it is uncomfortable. Especially since he’s still bent over Crowley, which is also starting to get uncomfortable. His eyes flutter open, and he blinks rapidly, trying to adjust to actual earthly sight again.

[duckshaveears]

It takes Crowley a bit longer to rouse. He's been asleep for over half a year, after all; that's not a small thing to shake off, even with all the practice he's had. But things are rather urgent, so he puts in the effort.

It is, frankly, unpleasant. His hair's grown and tickling around his neck, his mouth tastes like dust, his eyes frankly don't want to open and are protesting the invention of light with vehemence, and his pelvis area is--ah. Yeah, that'd be the other reason he doesn't indulge in his dreams too often, at least not during extended naps. Just as well he's been woken up early this time.

Except it isn't early. New Year's Eve, Aziraphale said.

Aziraphale.

Crowley forces his body to cooperate and opens his eyes. Even though he was warned it's still surprising to see Aziraphale half-bent over him, blinking and looking uncomfortable.

...ah. Yeah. There's some evidence that what just happened, happened to both of them, if Crowley still needed it.

Well. This is awkward.

"Tea," Crowley croaks, even before sitting up, because he might not technically be English but he's lived there a bloody long time and there are certain things that go along with that. "Gonna need a few minutes to, uh, set myself to rights. Post-nap rituals and all." Splashing water on his face and getting clean clothes on, at the veryleast. "There's tea in the kitchen if you want it." And one of Aziraphale's own cups, stashed there decades ago when Aziraphale first bought the set, which Crowley's kept just in case of...just in case of this, actually. Aziraphale being here, in his flat. Though he would never, ever have guessed the exact circumstances. "Or wine if you want something stronger," he adds, sitting up and rolling his shoulders.

[confoundthemighty]

“Ah. Right.” He glances down the bed at the basket he’d brought in with him, and feels silly all over again, almost ashamed of himself. “I, ah… there’s also a strawberry almond Budapest roll. If you’re hungry. And more wine. I’ll just—I’ll go and put tea on.”

As Aziraphale stands he scrapes together the presence of mind to miracle himself clean, though truth be told he doesn’t exactly feel that way. (Truth be told, he wishes he were still in that bed, the two of them covered in one another and twined impossibly close.) He nearly stumbles into Crowley’s kitchen, re-familiarizing himself with the physical world and with the way he inhabits his own body, trying to keep his churning brain on some sort of solid ground by finding where the various accoutrements for tea are.

Whether it’s because the flat belongs to Crowley and thus responds instinctively to Aziraphale or because he knows his friend’s organizational tendencies or because of sheer dumb luck, Aziraphale manages to find most of the things he needs the first time he opens a cabinet or drawer. Spoons—those are easy, they’re in the very first drawer he opens. Kettle—sleek and shiny, in a cabinet beside the induction stove. Tea above the stove, and an assortment of mugs—

And one white cup with a pair of sculpted wings instead of a handle.

Aziraphale’s heart lurches. He knew he bought six, but he’s only ever been able to find five. Whenever he’d complained to Crowley about it, he’d been teased: dunno, angel, maybe the shop took it as tribute. Or some rogue customer managed to sneak in here and make off with it while you were distracted trying to make sure they didn’t buy any books.

For a moment he remembers the deep, hungry tide of love that held him in its grip. The look in Crowley’s eyes, more beautiful than starlight, as they lay tangled up in one another.

That’s the eternity I want. Just you and I, like this.

By the time the demon makes his own way into the kitchen Aziraphale has mostly composed himself; he still looks a bit subdued, but he’s set the angel-winged mug out for himself and the most serpent-themed black mug he could find for Crowley.

you have understood my angel mug headcanon perfectly

[duckshaveears]

Crowley goes into his ridiculously luxurious bathroom, closes the door, and then leans against it, looking up at the ceiling as he tries and fails to get his thoughts and emotions into any sort of order. After a couple of minutes he gives up.

He brushes his teeth. Hardly necessary but it makes his mouth taste less gross, which is a bonus. He washes his face. A full shower would be nice, would be fantastic, but it'll have to wait. He stares at his now-shoulder-length hair, tries to style it even though it's at that horrible length where no styling is really possible, recognizes he's stalling, and lets it alone for now.

A snap of fingers and change of clothes (nothing exciting, jeans and a shirt, both black and tight) and....that'll have to do.

(All the while he remembers rolling around on the bed with Aziraphale, the adoring look on his angel's face, the easy delighted laughter, his urgent hands, the waves of...)

He puts on a pair of sunglasses. Hesitates. Takes them back off. His fingers twitch with wanting to put them back on. He doesn't.

He heads for the kitchen.

Aziraphale is standing there looking lost, which...hurts. Crowley's owed several apologies, of that he's sure (he's not sure if he owes any in return, knows he probably does). It's still wrong, to see Aziraphale looking like that. Usually it's Heaven making him look like that, not Crowley.

Arrrghhhh.

Crowley takes a seat at his (shiny, black granite countertop) breakfast bar and picks up his mug. He'd rather have coffee than tea, but caffeine iscaffeine. "Right," he says again, uncomfortably aware that he's said the word...five times so far? Six? Bugger all this. "So...I overslept, it's New Year's Eve, you came to talk to me, and then..." He waves a hand to indicate you got literally into my head, which is a pretty impressive trick actually which I'll have lots of questions about later. "...and found...what? When did you show up in there? I assume you saw..."

He flushes and takes another sip of tea rather than finish the sentence. It's hard to know what would be more embarassing, the dream-Aziraphale Crowley all but dotes on in there, or some of his weirder or more ridiculous fantasies or ways of amusing himself.

Please, please let him not have been there for the dragon bit. Or the rock star one.

OF COURSE HE STOLE ONE

[confoundthemighty]

“Well. Ah.” He stirs his tea, watching sugar dissolve at the bottom. “When I got there it was Camelot, but I wasn’t there long. Only a few minutes. And then I found the Globe, and traded places with a… figment, I suppose? After which was the cafe in Devon, and then the bookshop, and the beach, and…”

Don’t think it’s not tempting, angel. It’s so fucking tempting.

No wonder I never give up on you.

(Impossible not to remember that first glorious revelation, with Crowley’s arms around him, the knowledge that his feelings are mutual and always have been. Aziraphale may not realize it, but the memory eases some of the worry from his face, softens his eyes with something approaching a smile. He can’t help it; it was one of the most beautiful things he’s ever experienced.)

“That’s all, though,” he finishes, rather lamely, and has a sip of his tea. He hopes Crowley doesn’t think the worst of him, not that he’s sure what exactly that might be yet.

DAMN RIGHT HE DID

[duckshaveears]

Camelot. Damn, probably he did see the dragon thing then. Well, could be worse. And the Globe...Crowley tries to remember what they were doing there but aside from talking and sharing popcorn...

"You left, for a bit," he says, slowly. "Or...the dream version left and you came back. Something like that?"

He'd wondered about that. Aziraphale had suddenly been...flirty. Sidelong looks and darting touches. Which, okay he's imagined that sometimes, but...

I thought we might do something tonight. Out there. Together.

He pinches the bridge of his nose. "And then, when you said you wanted to talk, and in the bookshop..." Something I ought to have done a long time ago. "That was you? Actually you, not...?"

[confoundthemighty]

“That was me, yes.”

It’s all right, angel. You didn’t do anything wrong.

Well. That hadn’t been strictly true, had it? Suddenly all Hamlet’s rambling about wanting his too too solid flesh to melt makes an all new sort of sense, to Aziraphale.

He ventures a guilty glance up at Crowley. Now that their minds aren’t touching anymore, it’s far more difficult for him to communicate the things he’s feeling—they won’t just put themselves into words or make themselves felt. But at the heart of the emotional swirl there’s a simple truth he’s trying to drag to the surface: I thought you might dream about me the way I dream about you. Or at least I hoped you might. I hoped so hard I took a risk, and now I think it’s backfired.

[duckshaveears]

"And on the beach." That'd why he couldn't send the figment away: it wasn't a figment. And while Crowley has almost complete control over his dreams, banishing an angel, even in his head, would definitely be beyond his power level.

Has it occurred to you that I might want to be here as much as you want me here?

The noise he makes is a raw mix of frustration and confusion. "Why didn't you just say? Instead of all the, the hinting around trying to get me to guess--how could I possibly have known it was really you?"

[confoundthemighty]

“I thought you’d know right away you weren’t controlling me!” Aziraphale counters, earnestly. “One of the figments told me none of them could get near you, so I thought you’d clock it was me very quickly.”

I’ve learned not to attempt to tempt him overmuch. It hurts him so.

“So I am sorry about that part,” he adds, even if it sounds a bit pathetic. He knows he has a great deal of apologizing to do, so he might as well start there.

[duckshaveears]

"About--"

Crowley covers his face with hands for a minute, trying to stay calm. "So you think," he says finally, "that just because the, the dream-you wasn't doing what I told it I wanted, and was instead doing all the things that I actually wanted but try not to think about too much...that would make it obvious it was actually you? inside my own dreams, where I had no idea you even could show up, much less that you would?"

[confoundthemighty]

For just half an instant Aziraphale almost wants to defend himself: if their places had been reversed, that’s exactly what he would have assumed. Hell, it’s happened to him before, left him gasping awake with burning lips and tears on his face. Only once, but the hope was there, and it burned so bright he hadn’t dared to sleep for another two hundred years.

If they were arguing about anything else, he would give in to that flash of indignation. But this isn’t an argument. Or it shouldn’t be.

“In hindsight I admit it was a silly assumption.” He fiddles with his pinky ring, fights a flash of memory of his double doing the very same thing. Hopefully he hasn’t consigned the poor figment to a lifetime of revenge fantasies.

[duckshaveears]

Crowley let's out a bark of a laugh. "In hindsight," he repeats. His face is still hidden behind one hand. "Christ, angel, even Heaven and Hell don't get that invasive. Six thousand years we spent hiding what we said and did from them but at least our thoughts were ours. You wouldn't even let me visit you at the bookshop! And how would you feel if I'd--"

He stops abruptly, not finishing the question, though the end of it is fairly obvious

[confoundthemighty]

“I don’t know.”

It’s the truth. They’ve exchanged bodies, albeit briefly; they’ve had to do a lot of other unorthodox and strangely intimate things, in the course of their friendship. Aziraphale genuinely isn’t sure how he’d feel if their positions were reversed, and there’s also a stab of guilt for that. It feels as if he’s somehow doing the actual friendship part of whatever this relationship is wrong by not having the same answer to this question as Crowley does.

His heart sinks. He’d very much like to make himself small enough to fit on the head of a pin and then dive to the bottom of the tea in his mug.

[duckshaveears]

That actually helps, weirdly. At least Aziraphale isn't claiming he would've been fine with it, isn't pretending this was...business as usual.

Crowley stops hiding his face and goes back to drinking his tea. Suddenly his throat's gone dry. Because with the entire dream-invasion bit...not sorted, exactly, but at least understood...now he has to think about to rest of it. All the things they did, all the things he said, all those terribly vulnerable intimate hopes and desires that he's never breathed a word about. How many of them did he reveal?

To many for take-backs or pretense, that's for sure. But...

Aziraphale lying under him, eyes shining, then closed as he gasps out "please, please, please" while Crowley touches him, so open and earnest in his need and his...

...his...

"You tried to kiss me," he says, so quietly. "In the bookshop, before I left. Didn't you? I thought..." He takes in a shuddering breath.

[confoundthemighty]

It’s strange to hear the words aloud. To hear even part of what they’ve wanted to do with one another for centuries, have in some sense done in that dream, named for what it is and was.

He’s said no so many other times when he didn’t really want to, when he could tell himself it was to protect Crowley (to protect them both) from Heaven’s wrath. He could lie to God Herself about this or nearly anything else, but not to Crowley. Not now.

“Yes. I did.”

His own voice is quiet too, a confession without much real penitence behind it.

[duckshaveears]

"And...all the rest of it?"

He doesn't even know what he asking. Did it happen, did he imagine it?

Stay with me.

(Was that part real too?)

[confoundthemighty]

Tell me I can. Tell me you want this.

Can we do this forever?

So many things I want to do with you. Here in this bed and everywhere. Not even just sex.

I love you.

In a dreamscape, his words would flow effortlessly. Here in the real world they stumble over one another on their way out of his drying mouth. But he concentrates hard on not looking away from Crowley as he hauls the truth clumsily into the light.

“I meant what I said. I—I know I’ve… I’ve made a terrible mess of things, and I am sorry. But I’m not sorry we—we did what we did. I wouldn’t have said yes if I didn’t want to, you know that. You asked. I consented. I don’t regret that.”

[duckshaveears]

"I don't remember doing much asking," Crowley mumbles. He's not blushing, bless it, it's just hot in here. He'll have a work with the thermostat later. "More like telling."

Which is what he does in dreams, orders, demands to be told all the things he wants to hear. Which is another form of begging, in its way, and honestly he almost wishes the ground would swallow him up.

[confoundthemighty]

It’s probably an inappropriate sentiment for a conversation like this, but Aziraphale’s heart jolts in hope as he watches a pink flush stain Crowley’s cheeks and ears. God help him, he adores this demon.

“I still agreed to it. And if you couldn’t force me to leave, you certainly couldn’t force me to do anything else. Which you didn’t.”

He’d like to get out of his seat and go to Crowley, to hold him, to kiss him again. But he’s no longer sure he has the right to initiate that sort of contact. He’s the one who needs permission, now.