un_fallen | (no subject)

"Ugh," says Crowley, succinctly expressing his opinion on that.

Giving his eyes a final wipe, he bunches up the handkerchief and sends it sailing back across to its owner.

"Anyway," he continues, sanctimonious and wholly hypocritical, "I hope we've learned our lesson about dangerous mid-air stunts?"

"Lesson?" he says blankly, stuffing the piece of cloth back into a pocket. "So what would you call that dive you like to do, if an unarmed feint was a dangerous mid-air stunt?"

"I'd call it 'not assaulting someone with an open flask of eye-burning liquid in their hands'. And anyway," he adds smugly, "if you want to get technical about it, the dangerous bit of that one isn't exactly in what you'd call mid-air."

"Oh right," he says, with a very slight roll of his eyes. "A long drop and a sudden stop, isn't that what they say? Only the stop's not quite as sudden. And it's less messy."

He brightens in spite of this rather morbid idea.

"And we got a flask out of it."

"I rest my case," Crowley replies. "My actions brought us alcohol, and yours only resulted in its loss. That seems like a pretty fair arbiter of was that a bat?"

"It wasn't a loss if we still have the same-- oh," he says, staring off in the same direction.

"Prrrrobably? Too late for birds, anyway, and most of them don't come out this far." He grins.

"Unless it was a really, really big bug."

Crowley makes a face.

"Eurgh. I'll hope it was a bat, then, and just... be sure to keep my mouth shut. Something kind of unsettling about thinking you see something moving out of the corner of your eye when you're practically at cruising altitude."

"I doubt it was a bug," he says, relenting a little. "Not enough food out here for them to get that big. But if you want to avoid the bats we could always go higher. Or lower. Really low."

He gets a rather predatory look at this idea. They aren't quite as high as they'd been at the beginning of Crowley's dive, so if he really listens he can hear the creatures' calls all around them.

He can't read Raguel's mind, but the facial expression is hard to miss, and Crowley narrows his eyes suspiciously.

"Why, what's really low?"

"Oh, a few plants, I dunno. A bunch of nothing. But when you're skimming along a few feet above the ground you get a really good sense of how fast you're going."

Also there's a good chance you'll slam into something in the dark, but still. It's kind of a Thing. He wisely does not mention the potential of getting bugs stuck in the teeth.

" - Ah," Crowley says, lighting up. "Now that, that I can get behind."

There is a reason he gets the same kicks from flying as from driving.

And there's a reason Raguel is always trying to goad Coyote into taking him for a desert drive on her motorcycle. Fortunately, he doesn't have to goad very hard.

"Want to give it a try?" he asks. "It's one of the perks about the middle of nowhere."

"You say that now," Crowley smirks. "Obviously you've never done ninety down the middle of Oxford Street at rush hour."

Raguel blinks at him.

"...In a car? What do you do, shrink it to the size of a mouse?"

Crowley looks a little affronted at the notion that he would ever do such a thing to his Bentley at all, let alone in order to chicken out of reckless endangerment.

"Come on, you've seen my car. It's a pretty big fucking car. That's what makes it so fun."

"Yeah, but that seems pretty - oh." It strikes him that possibly 'dangerous' was what Crowley had in mind with the entire venture.

"All those people, though. Don't you have to keep them from noticing?"

Crowley eyes Raguel askance, eyebrows raised.

"I dunno about you, but actually I prefer people to be able to see me coming. Maybe it's just a personal preference."

(And of course, it means Aziraphael can't fault him if pedestrians are still stupid enough to get in his way.)

"Make them forget, then. I mean. Ninety? In rush hour? They must at least realize you're not human."

"Nah," he says, leaning easily into the breeze and starting a broad, spiraling descent - not the lunatic dive of earlier, but not what you'd call leisurely, either. "I mean, they might wonder, but as long as I deal with the traffic cameras - who's going to believe them? And anyway, most of the time, people don't even believe themselves - end up persuading themselves they didn't see anything."

"Well, that's convenient, at least," he says, following the pattern Crowley's taking.

"And I guess you'd have to take care of the, you know, not killing anyone part. Probably hard to get hospital coverage on cars that don't exist."

"And I can get rid of the dents myself," Crowley agrees, "but it's the principle of the thing. Vintage paintwork isn't easy to get right."

In point of fact, his driving has never killed anyone (even if he probably hasn't helped any heart conditions amongst his near misses), but Raguel doesn't need to know that.

"Dents, right," Raguel says. From this angle it's unlikely that Crowley can see him rolling his eyes, but the dull horror in his voice is audible under the sarcasm.

"Not much to dodge out here but scrub and mounds of dirt, but they're still challenging if you get low enough."

"Yes," Crowley replies, "I am somewhat known for having my belly in the dust. It's in the Bible, you may have heard of it."

"Yeah, something about that is familiar," he says with a longsuffering sigh. "But-- did you have to dodge things?"

The idea of snake!Crowley zipping along the ground, weaving between trees and stones is certainly amusing, though.

"Birds."

Crowley has the grace to look a little sheepish.