un_fallen | (no subject)

"Yeah," he says, as though in confident agreement, but his eyes are fixed intently on Raguel's hands.

He holds the stick back over the fire, higher than before so that it's hard to tell if the flames are licking at the marshmallow or just below it. He leans back on the other arm and watches it, looking content.

"So what sort of shrimp did you end up with?" he asks, eyes unwavering. Every so often he turns the stick so that the marshmallow gets an even browning.

"Black bean," he replies distractedly, sounding slightly distressed. This looks like more of a complicated operation than he'd imagined.

"Oh, yeah, I think I've had that one before. They do a really good-- shit," he breaks off, sitting up straight and yanking his stick out of the fire. The marshmallow attached now has a merrily burning flame on one side and he blows on it frantically.

"Oops," Crowley says cheerfully, puffing out clouds of laughter into the air as he watches Raguel try to save his marshmallow - with, it must be said, more than a little relief. He has a little margin for error, now - although on balance, he'd still prefer to put the moment of truth off as long as possible. Ideally until they can both use alcohol as an excuse for any gaffes.

With that thought in mind, Crowley reaches out for the flask - and abruptly recoils at the touch of the icy metal, dropping it hard enough to send it rolling out of their little island of light.

"Bollocks," he says mildly, hauling himself to his feet and loping after it into the dark.

Raguel manages to get the flame out while Crowley's gone, and is looking it over critically when he returns. Most of it is brown and bubbly, but one quarter is covered in charcoal black where the flame took hold.

"Apparently there are people who prefer them this way," he says doubtfully, pushing the thing toward the end of the stick and leaving a sticky white trail behind. "Not me, but I'm not too picky."

He grabs the marshmallow in his teeth and slides the stick away, trying to grin at the same time.

"Mmmmph," he says expressively.

Crowley sits down with a grunt, very close to the fire, close enough to give his face some colour.
No one has crossed through the mountains
He grins back at Raguel.
for twelve leagues it is darkness throughout--
He doesn't have the flask.

It takes a minute for him to be able to speak, and he's obviously trying not to look too hard at the trail of melted sugar left over on the stick. That would be undignified. He looks up at Crowley and pauses for a long moment.

"What is it?" he asks.

No one has crossed through the mountains,
for twelve leagues it is darkness throughout--
dense is the darkness, and light there is none."Nothing," he says. (Lie.)

When the shivering is under control again, and he looks up, Crowley lets out a quiet moan of fear.

"The afterglow from the fire - I couldn't see it." (Truth.)

He can't see.

It's been months since he was out over the ocean, black sky above and black sea below.

(This is not true; there is simply nothing left, in the vast and empty black, to look at.)

And the fire, though small, is, is very bright. He couldn't see -

Nothing to see; nothing to hear, either. It's all swallowed up by the dark, like being cast into
some great, formless void, endless, unchanging.

And for a moment -

Crowley's alone.

He shuffles closer to the fire, scuffing through the dust.

The ground might as well be slicked over with ice, it's so cold.

Raguel frowns, watching Crowley edge forward. Something's not true there - he can't be as precise as he is with some people in picking out lies, but he knows Crowley normally sees very well in the dark, for a start.

He decides to wait and see; he sets the stick aside and shrugs expressively.

"We can find it later when the moon comes up. You wanna try some of that shrimp now? It's probably at least as warm as the ground is."

The fire burns unobtrusively a little hotter as he speaks, and the ring of light extends a few feet further than it did, illuminating a couple more scraggly bushes.

There's a faint ringing in his ears.

"Yeah," Crowley says after a moment, forcing the word up past the tight bands of panic constricting his ribs, his chest, his throat.

He picks up the cartons one after another, identifying them by the semi-legible ballpoint scrawls on the lids. Finding his, he contrives to open it with only moderate fumbling.

Silence.

(He stares blankly at the plastic-sealed chopsticks in his hand.)

Growing steadily more alarmed, Raguel climbs to his feet and walks slowly around the fire to Crowley and the remaining boxes. He crouches to look through them and plants one hand on Crowley's shoulder, apparently for balance.

He isn't really looking at the boxes.

Crowley's shoulder is entirely rigid; the only response to Raguel's hand is a slight tremor in the muscles of his jaw, and a jerky dip of his adam's apple as he swallows.

Until, a moment later, something glitters in his eyes. He inhales deeply, nostrils flaring - and on the exhale, the chopsticks in his hand begin to smoke.

(Ehyeh asher Ehyeh)
Crowley blinks in surprise at the small pile of ashes in his palm, gluey in parts with melted plastic.

His fingers seem much warmer now; so too his shoulder. The air immediately around him seems as hot as though the sun had never set.

Flagror, non consumor.

"What did you order?" he manages. There's a little colour in his face now, too.

(Red.)

Ardens, sed virens.

Raguel had been on the verge of doing something drastic - what, he wasn't quite sure; setting the scorched earth on fire, maybe, or knocking Crowley out somehow and getting him back into town. But he seems - well, if not all right, then at least better - and without that horrible, frozen look on his face. And nothing else seems to be in immediate danger of turning into ashes.

"Sa cha beef - here it is," he says, and picks up the box. Another pair of chopsticks land in Crowley's hand; looks like the place had given them three.

"Oh," he says. "Er. Thanks."

Switching hands, and employing the help of his teeth to tear open the flimsy plastic wrapping, Crowley shakes the ashes from his palm, vanishing the insistently gooey clumps with a thought.

If it takes a moment for him to grip the chopsticks entirely steadily, the look he gives Raguel as the angel resumes his seat is more than enough to dare him to mention it.

If Raguel hasn't mentioned anything so far, a pair of shaky chopsticks.. probably... aren't going to push him over the edge. But that was damn weird, and he's still watching Crowley closely.

"Y'know, when you stand up you can see the glow from the city behind you. The whole thing's visible once you get in the air," he says.

"Yeah?" he says, holding the chopsticks firmly against the edge of the carton to steady them before finally scooping up a shrimp. "Sounds like a sight to behold. Not that this place generally isn't already."

"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'.)