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[un_fallen]

Crowley has been surprisingly charitable for most of the time spent in Raguel's new apartment - criticizing everything, of course, but only in the most general way. He pronounces it barely habitable, which Raguel takes to mean that he's done a decent job. And if the shower (and by necessity, the bathroom) has slightly larger dimensions when Crowley walks out of it than when he walked in, Raguel doesn't mention it.

It's late afternoon when they step out into the hallway and furtively climb the ladder to the roof. It's not much of a view, but the sunlight through dry air casts sharp shadows that make the grunge a little harder to see.

"You don't think anyone will notice us, with the sun still up?" Raguel asks, a little nervously.

Comments

[un_fallen]

"Never, really?" he asks, surprised. "Even if you didn't agree?"

[aj_crawley]

"I suppose I just didn't do anything very brave during the forties," Crowley retorts.

[un_fallen]

"Hmph," he says, with feeling. "Guess not. It was a good decade for bravery." He thinks.

"Well, mostly stupidity. But there was some bravery too."

[aj_crawley]

"Yes."


"For once, I'm in complete agreement with you."

[un_fallen]

He looks hard at Crowley for a moment, wondering what he's thinking of. Don't pry, his conscience reminds him, and reluctantly he relaxes.

"Well, uh. Good."

[aj_crawley]

"Come on," he says. "Unless you're up to trying to match my grand feat of daring whilst there's still light," (the moon grazes the horizon), "we should head back before any desert wildlife that isn't me makes off with the marshmallows."

[un_fallen]

"Right," he sighs. He'd taken a seat on the ground at some point during this conversation, and now hauls himself reluctantly to his feet.

"You can get up okay?"

[aj_crawley]

"I will manage," he says with dignity, doing so with a marvelously Stoic expression. "Fortitude being one of my strong points."

[un_fallen]

"Fortitude including getting your evil, courageous ass out of the dirt," he says, crossing his arms. He takes a couple of steps closer.

[aj_crawley]

"Yes," he says, cocking an eyebrow at Raguel. "Care to contradict?"

[un_fallen]

"Not unless you need a hand getting up," he says. Crowley really does look kind of a mess. He doesn't immediately uncross his arms, though.

[aj_crawley]

Faring rather better than last time, Crowley unfolds himself from the ground with only a mild cracking of vertebrae - and this at least partly from the slightly hunched position required to sit on the ground with absurdly massive wings.

[un_fallen]

"That's a start," he says encouragingly. "I don't see any pieces of you still lying around on the ground."

He wisely doesn't mention the few feathers blowing around in the light breeze.

[aj_crawley]

Which doesn't mean that Crowley hasn't noticed them.

A quick glance around, and then - a small puff of flame, and then another, and then another, until all the loose feathers that Crowley can spot are no longer there to be spotted.

"No sense taking chances," Crowley says, in complete contradiction of almost everything he's done tonight.

Still - it may be illogical, but it's not quite irrational. It's not paranoia, after all, if they really are out to get you.

Ardens sed Virens.

[un_fallen]

"Mm," Raguel says vaguely. He's not quite looking at Crowley.



Without warning, behind and slightly to Crowley's right, there's an explosion. A huge column of flickering yellow flame roars up from the ground, billows outward and peaks more than fifteen feet in the air. After about three seconds it disappears, leaving only a distracting afterimage and a scorched place on the ground.

"Missed one," Raguel says sheepishly.

[aj_crawley]

There are habits you pick up. Things you don't forget, like.

Crowley picks himself up off the ground for the third time, and dusts himself off.

"Please warn me, next time you plan on doing that. Yeah?"

[un_fallen]

"Sorry," he adds, still a little embarrassed. "It wasn't supposed to be that big."

[aj_crawley]

"I feel like I could go so many places with that, but all of a sudden, I'm just not that keen on making gratuitous fun of you."

[un_fallen]

Presented with a potential reprieve from Crowley's teasing, Raguel... completely misses the opportunity.

"It wasn't that kind of fire," he mutters, then makes a painfully obvious attempt to change the subject. "Don't know why you have to burn them, anyway. They were just the tiny ones."

[aj_crawley]

"Yeah," Crowley says reasonably (or as reasonably as is possible, under the mildly rattling circumstances), "but there was a fair number of them. Anyway, sometimes a small one is enough."

[un_fallen]

"Enough to what?" he asks warily.

"Coyote made me pick mine up, too, and I don't even know what the problem was."

[aj_crawley]

Crowley shrugs.

"Sympathetic magic is powerful. I mean, if you're looking at someone who actually knows what they're doing and who they're dealing with. And obviously you've never been... invoked." Crowley pronounces the word with mild distaste. "It's not very pleasant."

[un_fallen]

"Invoked?" he repeats. "I can't even... I can't imagine. And then they try to make you do things?"

He isn't quite sure what would happen if someone tried to force him to do things who knew what they were doing and had some method of control. Probably nothing good. Nothing good for them, maybe.

[aj_crawley]

"Most bargain," he says vaguely. "One soul for one heart's desire, and so forth. But if someone's got a hold of something like a feather and knows how to use it - well, there are rules."

Foxes in foxholes, and rats down ratholes, they too are hurt.

Even for things like him, there are rules.

"So - yeah. It's not very pleasant. Plus the actual summoning always makes me lose my lunch."

[un_fallen]

"Augh," he says, looking distressed.

"Well, maybe it wasn't so silly to pick them up. She seemed to think that one would know what he was doing."

He looks around once more, but doesn't see any dark feathers dotting the landscape this time.

"So. Ready to go?"