un_fallen | (no subject)

"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."

"True," he murmurs, settling back into his small crater of dust and cactus fragments. Then, though, an imperious gesture. "Come on, I'm a casualty here; help me up."

Raguel lifts an eyebrow at him, then makes a show of pushing himself out of the crouch to his feet with much internal creaking and popping. He silently extends a hand to give Crowley a pull.

"Oh, fine."

He still takes Raguel's hand, but doesn't yank it quite as hard as he might have. As payment for his benevolence, however, he's perfectly quick to steal the flask back. A sip, and then he stows it in his pocket, where his hands stay.

He spreads his wings a little, shuffling and flexing them experimentally - and making a face as a several spines fall to the ground.

Raguel watches them, acutely aware that he is in no position to be criticizing anyone else's feathers. And perhaps least of all Crowley's, which are generally in excellent condition.

"Oh. That doesn't look good," he says anyway, sounding a little concerned.

"Mmm," Crowley agrees; his lips purse slightly for a moment before he shrugs (wings and shoulders, and another small rain of needles) and his expression clears.

More than, even.

"I can always get Aziraphael to help me go through and get them all out."

"Does that mean you're going to tell him what happened?" he asks, grinning.

"And can you fly a straight line with your wings as they are?"

"I'll tell him something," Crowley says, with a wave of his hand. "Probably that you pushed me into a cactus after I, say... insulted your girlfriend. And in the interest of ever making it back to civilisation to do so, I think I'll find a way to manage."

"Okay," Raguel says doubtfully, trying to ignore the 'girlfriend' comment. "Does he believe that kind of thing?"

It's probably best that Crowley phrased it thusly - else he really might have gotten pushed into a cactus.

"Nope," he says cheerfully. "That's why I'm going to carefully layer it over unspoken implications that some people - of whom he knows I'm not one - don't know when to pull out of dives."

His expression darkens. He has to work at it, but he sort of manages; he figures it probably looks ok if he faces away from the light.

"Uh huh. And what's to prevent me from setting him straight on what actually happened?"

"You raise a good point."

Crowley purses his lips thoughtfully, looking at Raguel, then out across the desert.

"One secret for another?" he offers.

Raguel blinks. He hadn't actually been completely serious, but Crowley seems to be taking it that way. Or maybe he's only bluffing.

"How do you mean?" he asks, wondering if this kind of blackmail is really allowed.

A little more certain now, a little surer - with a moment's thought - that he might just be onto something.

"D'you have a lighter?"

"'Course I do," Raguel says to this bizarre non sequitur. Frowning, he pulls a lighter featuring a raised sheriff's badge out of his pocket.

Crowley grins abruptly to see it - one of those rare smiles with no trace of sarcasm or irony, that isn't wry, or smug, or devious, or in some way at someone else's expense.

Taking it from Raguel, he runs his fingers across the embossed badge, before flipping the top open.

With a click, the world changes: from a broad plain picked out in dim silver highlights, to once more an island of light standing out against a sea of inky darkness.

He looks curiously at the light, then up at Crowley, now blurred by the afterimage of sudden brightness.

"Still works," he points out in a low voice. That's not actually surprising; there's better-than-average chance that it will still work five hundred years from now, too.

"Still works," he agrees, lifting up the tiny flame between them to eye level.

"Remember, remember," the grin's in his voice, if not visible past the flame, "last November. Not the one just past, I mean - the one before that."

"I remember it," he says, more confused than ever. "Don't forget much."

Nothing at all, unless somebody's making a real effort.

"When I was..." he clarifies as an afterthought. Sort of. For a given definition of 'clarify', anyway. "When we all came through that door in the wall. And you and Aziraphael..."

"Oh," he says. "Yeah, uh. I know what you mean."

Raguel doesn't blush. Not so you can see it by lighter, anyway.

"There," he says, "the walls - well, never mind the walls. But when you got away from them, it was... big."

Crowley reaches over a little, bringing the flame closer to Raguel's face - close enough for the angel to feel what little warmth there is from it, but mostly, mainly, close enough that its glow fills his field of vision.

His voice sounds detached, distracted; sounding out the words carefully so as to be sure of their meaning.

"Dark, so you couldn't see anything, and big enough that I couldn't see anything. For... forever, you know? And cold."

With a click, Crowley flips the top down on the last, lonely flicker of light, and life, and warmth.

Like this, he doesn't need to say.

Big, and dark, and cold.