un_fallen | (no subject)

"Yeah, I can see how that would kind of ruin an evening stroll," he says, wincing. "And I guess flying there is generally too risky, too."

"Mm," he agrees, as the sun slips lower still. "For some reason, they're sort of twitchy about their airspace. Go figure."

"A little harder to pass by when they're not looking up if that's what they do all the time."

Behind them, the clear blue of the sky is deepening and the temperature has already dropped slightly. It's still very comfortable, but the air doesn't seem to hold much of the heat.

Crowley's noticed. Even he doesn't feel the need to close his jacket yet - but even so. They stand in silence for a few minutes, the temperature dropping steadily - and at last, Crowley breathes in deeply once again, as though he can draw in the very last rays of light as the sun, now huge and red, sinks finally below the horizon.

Though there's a while yet 'til moonrise, there's little in the way of twilight - Los Angeles is far in the distance, and there are few, very few clouds to reflect a lingering glow. Crowley's grin flashes in the not-quite-dark.

"Well," he says.

Raguel has craned his head way back and is staring at the stars, which are thick enough to wash the whole sky with a dusty glow. Reluctantly, he drops his chin to face Crowley.

"Well," he repeats after a few seconds.

Now, Crowley does fasten his coat - with the sun gone from the sky, the heat is vanishing up from the ground with shocking rapidity. Unwinding his scarf and looping it tighter around his neck, he looks around; having located the nearest stunted shrub (the only one larger than his hand in the entire landscape), he scoops up the bag at Raguel's feet and saunters over.

Raguel follows warily, looking from the shrub to Crowley and back again.

"Why do I get the feeling that you and that bag are like the magician and the top hat?"

"If you're having Mary Poppins fantasies, Aziraphael would probably be more appropriate," Crowley retorts, setting the bag to one side.

Crouching down by the scraggly little bush, the demon fingers one of its spiny leaves curiously for a moment, before closing his hands around one another.
(Ehyeh asher Ehyeh)
o l'   y e l l o w   e y e s
s a y s   t a s t e   d e s i r e
f r u i t   i s   k n o w l e d g e
k n o w l e d g e   i s   p o w e r
i   a m   s n a k e
a n d   i   b r i n g   y o u   -When he opens them again, a moment later, a tiny flame is dancing in his right palm. Reaching out, he places it carefully in the centre of the bush.

He is momentarily distracted by the idea of Aziraphael pulling item after oversized item out of a carpet bag. He's watching Crowley, though, and grins at the little flame which is already growing in its new home.

"Is this where I make off-color jokes about voices from a burning bush?"

"Ardens, sed virens," he replies, looking up with a smirk. "Flagror, non consumor. And all that."

And indeed, the fire - licking bright and tentative tongues at the branches surrounding it - is leaving them whole, and unharmed. The bush barely qualifies for the name, after all; there's certainly not enough for it to sustain a fire for any length of time.

"Impressive," he admits, crouching down to look at it. The fire is the only bright point in the whole earthbound landscape, and blinding from this close.

"'M sure there are marshmallows in there if you look hard enough," he adds, half-wistful. He gestures vaguely in the direction of what he thinks is the bag.

Tugging it into the tiny circle of firelight, Crowley begins to rummage through it - setting out, as he goes, several cartons of Chinese food, which will not have the nerve to be anything but piping hot once opened, an unlabelled flask, and, finally, a packet of marshmallows, which he tosses across the fire to Raguel.

It's not, in fact, by any means certain that either of them put marshmallows in the bag in the first place. But Crowley sees no reason that this should be any sort of obstacle.

(Of course, the idea of the angel of Vengeance roasting marshmallows over a campfire is still quite blatantly ridiculous; Crowley snorts quietly to himself, and then blinks at the sight of his breath misting slightly in the air.)

"There are," he says, delighted, and grabs the bag. He leans back from the fire and casts around for some suitable sticks; there are a couple nearby despite the fact that they have no business being in the middle of the desert. He starts to reach for them, then glances back.

"You want one now?"

Crowley looks from the sticks to the marshmallows and back again, a slight (and bizarre) uncertainty flickering across his face.

"I'll hold on 'til after my shrimp," he says then, patting the top of one of the cartons. "Go on, though."

"If you say so," he says, grabs one of the sticks, and thrusts one point, empty, into the fire.

"Coyote says it kills the bugs," he explains, "but I don't imagine there's anything microscopic in there that could hurt either of us. Makes it easier to get them on, anyway."

He pulls the stick out and threads a fat marshmallow onto the warm end.

"Yeah," he says, as though in confident agreement, but his eyes are fixed intently on Raguel's hands.

He holds the stick back over the fire, higher than before so that it's hard to tell if the flames are licking at the marshmallow or just below it. He leans back on the other arm and watches it, looking content.

"So what sort of shrimp did you end up with?" he asks, eyes unwavering. Every so often he turns the stick so that the marshmallow gets an even browning.

"Black bean," he replies distractedly, sounding slightly distressed. This looks like more of a complicated operation than he'd imagined.

"Oh, yeah, I think I've had that one before. They do a really good-- shit," he breaks off, sitting up straight and yanking his stick out of the fire. The marshmallow attached now has a merrily burning flame on one side and he blows on it frantically.

"Oops," Crowley says cheerfully, puffing out clouds of laughter into the air as he watches Raguel try to save his marshmallow - with, it must be said, more than a little relief. He has a little margin for error, now - although on balance, he'd still prefer to put the moment of truth off as long as possible. Ideally until they can both use alcohol as an excuse for any gaffes.

With that thought in mind, Crowley reaches out for the flask - and abruptly recoils at the touch of the icy metal, dropping it hard enough to send it rolling out of their little island of light.

"Bollocks," he says mildly, hauling himself to his feet and loping after it into the dark.

Raguel manages to get the flame out while Crowley's gone, and is looking it over critically when he returns. Most of it is brown and bubbly, but one quarter is covered in charcoal black where the flame took hold.

"Apparently there are people who prefer them this way," he says doubtfully, pushing the thing toward the end of the stick and leaving a sticky white trail behind. "Not me, but I'm not too picky."

He grabs the marshmallow in his teeth and slides the stick away, trying to grin at the same time.

"Mmmmph," he says expressively.

Crowley sits down with a grunt, very close to the fire, close enough to give his face some colour.
No one has crossed through the mountains
He grins back at Raguel.
for twelve leagues it is darkness throughout--
He doesn't have the flask.

It takes a minute for him to be able to speak, and he's obviously trying not to look too hard at the trail of melted sugar left over on the stick. That would be undignified. He looks up at Crowley and pauses for a long moment.

"What is it?" he asks.

No one has crossed through the mountains,
for twelve leagues it is darkness throughout--
dense is the darkness, and light there is none."Nothing," he says. (Lie.)

When the shivering is under control again, and he looks up, Crowley lets out a quiet moan of fear.

"The afterglow from the fire - I couldn't see it." (Truth.)

He can't see.

It's been months since he was out over the ocean, black sky above and black sea below.

(This is not true; there is simply nothing left, in the vast and empty black, to look at.)

And the fire, though small, is, is very bright. He couldn't see -

Nothing to see; nothing to hear, either. It's all swallowed up by the dark, like being cast into
some great, formless void, endless, unchanging.

And for a moment -

Crowley's alone.

He shuffles closer to the fire, scuffing through the dust.

The ground might as well be slicked over with ice, it's so cold.

Raguel frowns, watching Crowley edge forward. Something's not true there - he can't be as precise as he is with some people in picking out lies, but he knows Crowley normally sees very well in the dark, for a start.

He decides to wait and see; he sets the stick aside and shrugs expressively.

"We can find it later when the moon comes up. You wanna try some of that shrimp now? It's probably at least as warm as the ground is."

The fire burns unobtrusively a little hotter as he speaks, and the ring of light extends a few feet further than it did, illuminating a couple more scraggly bushes.