un_fallen | (no subject)

"You and me both."

"I'll tell you what you can do, though," he adds after a moment. "If you see any doors in the walls that aren't normally there, stick a 'do not enter' sign in front of them. A big one. Maybe after throwing in a grenade."

"I mean what happened tonight," he says, and grins suddenly.

"A sign I can do. I think carrying grenades would be a professional hazard, though."

"As opposed to being any other kind of hazard? You're probably right, though. You go to light up a cigarette without paying attention, we eventually find your hat in a palm tree."

There's probably not much to be done. Nothing that Raguel hasn't already.

"I'll be sure to keep any lighters in a pocket without a grenade pin," he promises.

"The hat's okay, though, right?"

"To be honest," Crowley says, "I think that hat would probably survive the Apocalypse, and I say that having been there."

"Oh yeah," he says, grinning. "That's a relief, then. You can't get 'em like that anymore. Dust brushes right off."

"Yeah. Off."

Crowley's more of the opinion that the dust is ground right in, but he doesn't want to tip the balance back the other way: if Crowley's hit his mark, Raguel's probably feeling too sympathetic to blab to Aziraphael about the Cactus Incident.

Or, for that matter, about anything else that's happened tonight.

(His expression might do a good enough job of saying it for him, though.)

"Mm," he says, raising an eyebrow. He is probably opposed to blackmail on the level of principle. Probably.

It's not as though he can argue with Crowley's skepticism, though.

"Well," he says, crumbling a little, "you can't see the dust."

And all that that implies.

Raguel's attempt at a doubtful face dissolves into laughter.

"That's all that matters. Better, actually, for the day-to-day. I just can't attend anything formal without brushing it off."

A large number of responses jump immediately to the forefront of Crowley's mind, most of them beginning with 'You'd wear that to - ?' but the most pressing is clearly, "You attend formal occasions?"

He looks suddenly uncomfortable.

"Well, no. Once in a while, I mean. I've seen a couple of weddings in the bar and I tried not to turn up in a dirty coat. Stood in the back," he adds, a little defensively.

"The others were a long time ago."

Crowley eyes him askance, curiosity now most certainly piqued.

"The weddings, I'll give you, but you can't just be cryptic like that and expect a demon not to get nosy."

"Nothing cryptic," he says, looking at a fascinating (and undamaged) scrap of a desert plant nearby.

"A couple of funerals. Parties aren't my style, as I'm sure you've noticed. And my wife used to take offense to me looking like I'd spent the last week in the undergrowth, so she'd try to get me to a respectable standard."

"What?" He chuckles nervously.

"Hey, I never said she was successful."

"Your what."

Raguel blinks at him. It looks like he's beginning to wish he'd never brought it up.

"Wife," he says at last. "It was a long time ago," he adds, again.

"That's," he says.

"Wow. Really? - I mean."

Though he says no more, Crowley's visibly in agony; naturally curious even before the Fall, he's now downright nosy. But he hasn't precisely missed the look on Raguel's face, nor - most significantly - the sudden abrupt similarities with certain parts of his own past.

And he doesn't welcome uninvited questions. So -

Raguel watches him closely. Crowley doesn't look like he's tempted to laugh, so some of Raguel's automatic defenses come down.

"Yeah, really. They didn't get too formal with ceremonies where we were, but." He shrugs.

"It wasn't long after I got here."

"Huh," he says. "Well, I see what you mean about 'a long time ago'. Um, considering, though," he waves a not very helpful hand at Raguel, "I'm assuming it was after the, er. The Nephilim... incident?"

"Uh. I'm actually not sure. I didn't hear about that until a while after. She didn't have any kids, though; guess that was my fault." He scrubs a hand across his face and sighs.

"I didn't know what the fuck I was doing," he adds, with sudden anger.

Crowley cracks his knuckles uncertainly, the snapping noise absurdly loud in the desert silence. Raguel could mean anything, of course, but if there's one thing that -

"Er, well. If it was after the Nephilim, um, thing, then it definitely wasn't your fault. If it was before, then - you got lucky."

In more ways than one, perhaps - but that's not something Crowley thinks he could say. Nor something he's sure he could say and mean.

"Yeah. Either way, I was lucky, because I had no idea what that would have meant. I thought having a wife was just what I was supposed to do. Necessary to blend in, you know. I think I was half-convinced I was human, I don't know. Wasn't thinking straight."

"Oh," he says, and the world makes a little more sense again. "Oh."

"Yeah, I 'spose I can see the logic behind that. Especially with how small everywhere was back then. You weren't necessarily, you know."

Crowley does not remember much of those years. Not properly. He doesn't like to think of Raguel -