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(no subject)

Crowley has been surprisingly charitable for most of the time spent in Raguel's new apartment - criticizing everything, of course, but only in the most general way. He pronounces it barely habitable, which Raguel takes to mean that he's done a decent job. And if the shower (and by necessity, the bathroom) has slightly larger dimensions when Crowley walks out of it than when he walked in, Raguel doesn't mention it.

It's late afternoon when they step out into the hallway and furtively climb the ladder to the roof. It's not much of a view, but the sunlight through dry air casts sharp shadows that make the grunge a little harder to see.

"You don't think anyone will notice us, with the sun still up?" Raguel asks, a little nervously.

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"Well, don't wet yourself with excitement," Crowley says, arriving at the bottom at a leisurely saunter. "It'll still be the same place as it was earlier."

"Let's hope so," he says, pulling the door open. "Got locked out once. I'm sure it didn't help my reputation around here, opening the same door over and over to the same hallway."

He's out the door of the building before he thinks to add, "Uh. It was a while ago."

What!

"How long ago? For how long?"

Cutting someone off from a favourite watering hole seems unnecessarily cruel, to Crowley.

"Couple of years back," he says, trying (and failing) to sound nonchalant.

"It was only for a few weeks. I found another door that worked, and haven't been back to the old place since."

"Um," he says. "Okay."

At least it was only for a few weeks. And yet - Raguel doesn't exactly sound like it wasn't a big deal.

"Did you ever figure out why?"

He snorts, but doesn't meet Crowley's eyes.

"There's a why to these things? At the time I assumed I'd just been locked out from the inside, but when I got back I figured out that it's not really a matter of control. From inside, anyway."

"Well," he says after a moment, hands deep in his coat pockets, "if it happens again and you're that desperate to get in, you can always stow away on a flight to Heathrow and use our door."

"I wasn't - er. I mean, I don't." But he can't seem to find a way out of that sentence that isn't a downright lie, so after a few seconds of flailing he gives up.

"Yeah. Thanks," he concludes glumly.

A few moments pass, measured in the (relative) silence of the Los Angeles streets. Crowley seems to be undergoing a sort of internal struggle; at last, he lifts his chin out of his scarf again and says:

"I'm making a great sacrifice here, for my tormented curiosity, just so you know. But since we've already Shared tonight, I'll drop it if you don't want to tell me what you're actually on about."

"Not much of a secret," he says, but he still hesitates before he speaks further.

"Last few years, I haven't done well without down time. I don't get it in many places, and I don't like needing that kind of thing. And not being let in, I figured it wasn't random. Everything happens for a reason, all that."

Crowley nods slowly, one hand tugging idly at the end of his scarf.

"That's... understandable," he says at last. "I've - well. I get it. Though that might not be what you want to hear from a demon. For what it's worth, it hasn't done Aziraphael any harm."

Crowley's hand disappears abruptly back into his pocket.

"The down time, I mean."

"No, I guess it hasn't. But our duties are pretty different." He turns down a side street automatically, not paying a lot of attention to where his feet land. It's clear he's been this way quite a few times already since the move.

"I don't guess it makes much difference who it comes from, if they've got somebody trying to pull their strings," he adds with a small smile.

"Fair," Crowley says with a shrug. And then wryly, "Though for something like down time, at least, I can always make the argument that sloth is in the job description. Not that it'd go over well, but it'd be worth a shot."

"Have you ever tried that?" he asks, awed.

"I mean. Can you, without getting fidgety?"

"Can I what? Make the bluff, or be slothful?"

"Be slothful," he says. "I guess you can bluff after that thing about eating people. Even with Chianti they don't go down too well."

He stops at a nondescript door. It looks to be the back way into a club, judging by the pounding bassline drifting through from the other side.

"Here we go," he says. "Cross your fingers."

"Please," Crowley's in the middle of saying. "I've made sloth into an art for- oh. Fingers crossed."

The door is locked from this side, naturally, but on the second try this doesn't seem to deter Raguel. The door swings open, and instead of a dingy hallway with thumping techno and a sleepy bouncer or two, they're greeted by the familiar warm light of the bar. It's not quiet, exactly, but at least there's no bassline.

"Bingo," he says, grinning, and gestures Crowley inside.

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