un_fallen | (no subject)

Raguel grins in return and goes.

The wind howling past him pulls tears from the corners of his eyes. Patches of silvery landscape flash past with increasing speed, and all Raguel's concentration is bent on avoiding the small hillocks and scraggly plants dotting the earth. He weaves wildly between them, only a couple of feet from the ground.

For a few moments, Raguel is alone.

Then, the thudding sound of another set of wings emerges from the rushing silence, in counterpoint to Raguel's own; and there, far to the left, is a dark shape hurtling over the sand, speeding closer in an arc designed to bring him up as close beside Raguel as their wingspans allow.

Crowley's gaining.

Raguel can see him out of the corner of his eye, but if he diverts any real focus he'll find himself half-buried in a mound of dirt. He does angle a bit more to the left to bring them more quickly into shouting distance, though if he tried, the most he could manage right now is wild laughter.

Crowley tries, and it might be that the wind whips the words away into their roaring wake, or it might simply be that there were no words at all; just a shout of inarticulate delight.

Impossibly - impossibly for anyone but them, for anyone who can't slip outside all governing laws and traverse the length of Europe in a night - impossibly, they're already halfway to the mountains, the great black slabs flying up out of the horizon with shocking speed.

Inevitably they draw closer together until they're more or less on the same heading. Only a few feet remain between light and dark wings, both pushing hard for speed. Raguel is just a little less strict with the sharp, shallow turns that send him weaving between obstacles until he feels the tips of some of the smaller shrubs brushing his arms. He frowns and redoubles his efforts until he can't feel them anymore, but whether his turns are sharper or he's just tuned out the sensation, he couldn't say. The mountains rush closer, the lights of a small town are visible far to the right, the ground is coarser and strewn with boulders, and without changing speed Raguel yells to Crowley "Up!" and arrows toward the sky.

Crowley's managed well, only once or twice remarking some thin, outstretched twig clipping the very tip of his primaries; perhaps there's something to be said for making ninety down rush-hour Oxford Street after all. And what is this, if not taking a corner on two wheels?

The ground is starting to rise under him, now; the nearest outcrop juts out of the desert, ringed with jagged rocks like a barbed-wire fence. And there, there, just a little to the left, there's one that's tipped over, a narrow slab leaning back against the sheer rock-face that's at

maybe

(probably)

just enough

of an incline.

Crowley's answering shout to Raguel is not very loud - but it echoes off the mountains with perfect clarity.

"Speak for yourself - "

Raguel is relishing the coolness of the air after his exertions, and he'd been going at a pace ridiculous enough that when he shoots upward he's almost coasting. He frowns when he hears Crowley's shout, though, and interrupts the movement to turn so that he can see what's happening below.

At the very last moment, it occurs to Crowley to wonder whether this is such a good idea.

But then his wings are filling with air rather than slicing through it, and there's rock under his feet, at just enough of an incline not to shatter the bones of his legs with impact, and -

"Oh - "

one step (45^o)

two steps (45^o)

three steps (90^o)

his own breakneck momentum crushing him crouching against the rock in a moment of hang-time.

And then the muscles in his legs bunch again, push off again, and launch Crowley into space, back the way he came.

A half-second ticks past, and it seems to Crowley that his brains are not decorating a desert rock. He opens his eyes.

"Yes!" comes the triumphant crowing. "Did you see that?"

Raguel is gliding along about twenty feet above at this point, so Crowley probably can't see him shaking his head in mock despair.

"Yeah, I saw it." He sighs. "You know that if you get yourself discorporated then I'm going to be the one left to take the hit for it."

He can't sound too unhappy, though. It did look pretty cool.

"Did you fucking see that?" Crowley repeats, craning over his shoulder to look back at the outcrop. "Discorporated my arse, that was - "

And then, Crowley flies into a stunted cactus.

Raguel winces, half-jerking an arm up to cover his face. He circles lower, looking horrified.

"You okay?" he asks. He knows it's a stupid question, but he can't think of anything else that won't make him start laughing.

Crowley does not reply until the cloud of dust has cleared.

(It takes a minute.)

He gazes up at the sky, flat on his back at the end of a short but fairly impressive trail of destruction.

"Well," he says, "I just had a close encounter with a cactus that I don't think I can pretend didn't happen. I've been better."

He lands unsteadily, scattering bits of rock and raising a much smaller cloud of dust, and walks over to crouch next to Crowley.

"Uh. Anything I can help with?"

He presses the back of one hand to his mouth as though he's trying to think what to do. Actually, it's to hide the grin he can't suppress.

Rustle rustle.

Crowley's hand, holding the flask.

"Tell them I died bravely."

"Uh huh," he says, looking Crowley over. He doesn't see anything immediately out of place, but that doesn't mean much. He takes the flask and unscrews the top.

"And you didn't spill the alcohol, that's important. Think you can sit up?"

Crowley eyes the flask speculatively, and decides, "Yeah."

In point of fact, apart from a few inevitable consequences of the tumble - largely consisting of dust, bent primaries, and unfortunate cactus spines - Crowley is perfectly all right. Which is not to say that he doesn't make a show of it, of course (although to be fair, probably at least one or two of those winces are for real).

Raguel offers him the flask once he's fairly sure that Crowley isn't about to dump it all over himself.

"Well, at least it's a nice place for a rest," he says with a sigh. The moonlight does throw the uneven cliff faces into relief where they blot out the stars, and the sharp shadows form complicated patterns.

His focus is directed more at the bent primaries at the moment, but he doesn't comment on them yet.

Crowley takes a bracing sip, and stares sullenly at the wreckage of the cactus stretching away between them and a sad-looking stump.

"It would've worked perfectly, you know," he says after a few moments.

"If we look past the potential for 'messy death spattered on a rock,' then yeah, it seemed to be working. Good move for emergencies and lunatic stunts."

He does not mention the need for a 'look where you're going' caveat in the manual.

"It's not my fault there just happened to be the - the only thing taller than a foot within a hundred miles," he continues.

(It's a toss-up as to whether he's actually heard Raguel or not.)

Raguel looks pointedly around at the several cacti visible from their sad little encampment in the dirt.

"It would work better someplace completely empty, yeah."

More empty than the desert. The moon, maybe.

"Fuck off," he says companionably, and passes across the flask.

"Uh huh," he says again, vaguely, and takes a swig.

"I think the moon's setting again pretty soon."

"Really?"

He twists around, blinking at the round disc of the moon, low in the sky.

"That was - "

Fast, he was going to say, but maybe that's not so. Time flies, as it were.

"Well, 'pretty soon' being an hour or so, but yeah." He shrugs.

"Not that I think we'd have a problem finding that fire again, in any case."