un_fallen | (no subject)

"Yeah, it is," he says, suddenly thoughtful. He shakes his head and opens his own carton. "Gosh," he says in mock surprise, "it's still hot after all this time."

He lifts an eyebrow at Crowley, but there's still more relief than accusation there.

"What?" he asks, making a pass at affronted and doing tolerably well. He still looks faintly off-colour, and might uncharitably be said to be clutching his food, rather than holding it. But he's breathing deeply, and if his heartbeat is still a little emphatic, it no longer feels like it's about to hammer right out of his chest.

"You can't expect me to eat cold takeaway. That's disgusting. Or for hangovers."

"Well, I'm not complaining," he says. "I usually go for pizza for hangovers, if I have some handy. Maybe cold Chinese leftovers will be what I try next time." He nods to the box Crowley's holding.

"But what do you think of it now while it's still hot? Does it pass the 'decent by standards of most people' test?"

After a short pause, Crowley makes a grudging sort of noise around the shrimp in his mouth, conveying with a complicated wave of his chopsticks that this, too, is acceptable.

"At least my taste in food passes the mark," he says, digging into his own box.

"It was keeping me up nights."

It probably hadn't, but Crowley's opinion on the house, food, and so forth is more important to him than he would dare to let on.

He gets no reply for a few minutes, as Crowley industriously works his way through his food. The process of eating, mechanical and repetitive, provides a welcome space for the demon to gather up the stray fragments of his composure - and, to be fair, it really isn't bad as far as Chinese takeaways go.

Shortly, though, he looks up, hastily swallows a mouthful of shrimp, and points with his chopsticks.

"Look."

The moon is coming up.

Raguel is still watching him as unobtrusively as he can, but as he sees no further evidence of odd behavior, he keeps eating as well. At Crowley's comment he turns a little too quickly, nearly spilling the box's contents all over the ground.

"Ah. Yeah," he says approvingly, as though he had something to do with it. "The whole desert will be lit up with it almost full like that. Practically daytime."

He turns back and casts one more half-wistful glance at the stars.

"You can still see the lights, though, don't worry."

"Good," he says, still watching the moon climb slowly into view, the edges of the world start to take on a silvery cast. "I mean, you've built them up, now, so I expect to be shocked and awed."

His voice is a little quiet again, as other people might speak inside a church; again, the slight tone of something that - if you didn't know any better, if you didn't know that Crowley's seen six thousand years of what the world had to offer - you might call 'wonder'.

(As it is, it could be called 'respect'.)

"Yeah, well." Raguel smirks. He doesn't want to build it up too much, but it is pretty amazing, so he's not worried that there will be anything like disappointment.

"Lights or moonlight - like you said, the whole thing is worth more than the price of admission." Each of the bushes and quite a few of the rocks are gaining the sharp outline of a shadow now as the moon climbs higher.

"Want a marshmallow first?"

One-track mind, that one.

Damn.

"Okay," he says, setting aside the remains of the Chinese and holding his hand out for the bag.

(A stick to roast one on probably wouldn't go amiss either.)

Raguel beams and passes the stick over first, then pulls out a marshmallow for his own stick and tosses the bag to Crowley. He appears to be debating about putting his stick in the fire again, then shrugs and does it anyway. The white goo catches fire and starts to turn black.

Crowley inspects the stick warily for a moment, then shrugs and holds it out, turning the tip gently in the fire. After a few moments he pulls it back, tapping it gingerly with his fingers before selecting a likely-looking marshmallow and impaling it delicately upon the end.

So far so good.

Finally, when he can put it off no longer, Crowley holds the stick out again as he'd seen Raguel do, just above the reach of the flames, eyes narrowed in concentration.

Raguel is not paying a lot of attention, distracted as he is by waving his own stick around, blowing on it and tapping it against his hand in an effort to remove the black stuff.

Eventually he decides it's a lost cause and just puts a new one on over the charred bit and holds it back over the fire.

"I still can't get them to quite melt all the way on the inside," he confides. "Even if they do catch fire."

"I don't see how that'd be possible, without them just falling off. Er."

Anxious to not have tempted fate, Crowley redoubles his concentration, turning the marshmallow a few more times over the fire. When it starts to look distinctly saggy, he brings it clear of the flames, and then... eyes it, hesitantly.

"They do get sort of drippy, yeah. That's how you know it's done right," he confides, grinning.

"That one looks pretty good. Have you done this before?"

"Yes," he says scornfully.

(Lie.)

He can kind of tell.

"Uh. Okay," he says, a little surprised. "So how do you eat them?"

This must be the ~~mean~~ analytical streak.

Most definitely without a poisonous glare (a credit to both his self-control and his powers of dissimulation), Crowley lifts the stick and assesses it with a critical eye.

Finally, and with extreme delicacy, he nibbles at the outside, biting through the lightly crystallized layer of sugar holding the whole thing together. Pulling it away (and lapping up the long bridge of melted goo that forms as he does so), Crowley then tips his head back and holds the stick overhead; its structural integrity compromised, the marshmallow begins the slow process of oozing into Crowley's mouth, liberally helped along by teeth and tongue.

(All told, the spectacle is probably a contender for 'Most Comical Scenes Ever Witnessed' - but Crowley looks very proud of himself, afterwards.)

Raguel watches this performance, riveted and doing an admirable job of not laughing.

"Complex, but creative. I give it a ten," he says. "I don't know if my way is any better, actually. Probably faster if you're in the mood to get a lot of sugar in you really quickly, but now my hands are sticky."

There's always a price, Raguel.

It seems like this could be a not very subtle metaphor for something else, but after a moment spent contemplating his own performance, Crowley for once decides not to comment.

Instead, rolling the stick between his fingers, he looks up at the sky, a thoughtful expression on his face. He's adjusted to the cold, now, though the high spirits of the day's warmth are certainly not diminished. And if earlier - if earlier, a certain sense-memory had caught him unawares, the sudden clench of fear is gone, calmed away.

The adrenaline, however...

"Any good?" he asks, nonchalant, but he's looking away. There's a pebble he's trying to convince to prop up his stick so that the sticky end doesn't get dirty. This is a lost cause after the white goo of two marshmallows has been dragged across it, but he is determined.

Finally, he looks up.

"...What is it?"

Crowley shakes his head, as if to say Nothing, looks down at the dirt again - but then flashes Raguel a grin across the firelight, one that is not Nothing at all.

Standing, his wings are two darker spans against the night, massive and black and picked out only where the moonlight gleams against the topmost feathers, and the firelight glows against the lowest.

"Ah," Raguel says, giving up on the stick. He climbs to his feet rather less gracefully, but his grin is just as wild.

"I'm thinking the liquor can wait," he says, stretching his own wings. "Which way?"

Crowley shoots him a look.

You'd never credit it to look at him, built like he is out of steel rope strung on a coathanger frame rather than the meaty, compact muscle of an athlete. But from a crouch, legs bunching like coiled springs, he clears high enough for the first powerful down-stroke of his wings, leaving his answer eddying in the dust, and the streaming fire, and the sound of a huge, soft heartbeat.

"Up."

The wind from Crowley's liftoff is enough to blow the fire into a frenzy, flames licking at Raguel's knees. He doesn't appear to notice, watching Crowley's progress for a moment before jumping after him.

He hesitates in order to make note of the general location of their fire before speeding after the demon.