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It's been too long since I've done something in Good Omens. (And no, psycho Bond-crossovers don't count.)
This was written for the flying leap challenge. Basically, we were given a quote and sent off to celebrate the leap year in our own, very special way.
Much thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gileonnen for the last minute beta. All mistakes are mine (because I was greedy and wouldn't let her take them away).
It was a love of the air and sky and flying,
the lure of adventure, the appreciation of beauty. It
lay beyond the descriptive words of men - where
immortality is touched through danger, where life
meets death on equal plane; where man is more than
man, and existence both supreme and valueless at the
same time.
-Charles A Lindbergh, on contemplating his first parachute jump.
***
It was a nice day, so Crowley parked the Bentley and stepped into the sunlight. He was far enough out of London that the road ran along fields and trees that were just beginning to turn green with spring. There were even a few early flowers – sickly looking things, wilted from cold and car exhaust, but Crowley felt proud of the world for making the effort.
He stepped away from the road, following a half-defined game trail that led into a grassy meadow. The clearing was, like most things on the verge of an English spring, somewhat brown and soggy, but sunlight was filtering through newly opened leaves and glinting off drops of water and generally acting so optimistic about the scene that even Crowley was inclined to believe it was rather pretty.
The trail wound towards a small pond, but Crowley walked deeper into the field instead. There were a few scattered shrubs, and a blackbird startled him by leaping out of one when he stepped on it. It chattered at him in reproach and flapped off, rising a few metres as it flew into a thermal.
With a sudden grin, Crowley joined it. He stripped off his shirt and opened his own wings,* letting the updraft raise him into the sky. He quickly overtook the blackbird, smirking as it tumbled in his wake. It chirped once and angled back towards the ground, unimpressed.
The meadow fell away, becoming little more than a smudge of green with some bumpy bits. The Bentley looked like nothing so much as a lazy reptile, sunning itself by the asphalt. Crowley looked a few miles back along the road, taking a minute to fully appreciate the spectacle of a cracked cement truck. The faint strains of car horns were still audible if he listened, and there was a truck that hadn’t moved out of the way fast enough – and now wasn’t going to be moving anywhere until someone brought a jackhammer.
There were never very good thermals before summer, and this one hit an inversion wall a hundred yards into the sky. Crowley kept going anyway, just because he hadn’t in a while. He reached his wings into the cooler air and pulled himself up, savouring the feel of the wind between his feathers. His muscles quickly began to strain against his weight, and he realized with some chagrin that he was getting out of practice.
The atmosphere thinned and then gave way, keeping its attention to things closer to the Earth. He was flying now by will and momentum - which was faster than slapping at the air, although not nearly so fun – and heading in a direction that wasn’t so much up anymore as out. Crowley had to dodge out of the path of a satellite, and he hovered for a moment to watch it tumble away. It seemed odd company, planets and stars and this little hunk of metal.
He stopped finally in front of the moon. Crowley wasted a second looking for footprints and American flags, despite knowing how silly the idea was, and then glanced back. Distances bent differently, this close to the edge of things. The Earth seemed like something close and very small.
It really had been a while, then, since he’d last been far enough from the planet to see it.
Crowley settled into the sky and watched the universe spin slowly on the axis of the world.
***
Crowley quite enjoyed parties, on the whole. He was a creature who could appreciate flashes of neon and the smell of candied drinks, or the writhing of bodies in a smoke darkened room, or the clipped voices of society members sharing tea. They were always in same shades of anger and bitter lust, filled with people who thought companionship was just sharing the same loneliness.
The constitution of the first civilization was ‘a rockin’ good time until morning.’
This one was held in the top suite of a hotel. It was night and the lights were dimmed, but no one looked twice at Crowley for all that he kept his sunglasses on. He was here for a business meeting, although it was likely his… client didn’t know it yet.
The American was standing in the corner of the balcony, staring into his canary yellow drink like he was wondering what it was. Crowley stepped outside. The American glanced over at him, and frowned, as if the brink of recognition. Crowley made a short gesture of greeting, and the man looked away, pointedly contemplating an adjacent building.
Crowley shrugged and started to walk over. He already knew how the conversation would play out. I’m your biggest fan. That was how it went, wasn’t it? When I heard you were in London, I couldn’t very well not stop by and let you know that I think what you do is brilliant?
Something grabbed his jacket. “They can’t fly, you know,” said a voice. Crowley turned to face a girl just this side of womanhood. She stared up at him with the wide, fevered eyes of a desperate messiah who finally understands.
Crowley picked up her wrist with a minimum of contact and moved it from his arm. There was a thin residue of sweat and powder where her hand had touched his sleeve; he glanced at it, and it tumbled onto the floor.
“They can never really fly.”
“Who can’t?” Crowley asked, trying to move around her.
She leaned close, as if imparting a ill-divulged secret. “Astronauts,” she whispered. She stepped away then, and said, “It’s only a trick of gravity. They think they’re flying, but they’re really falling; falling forever and never reaching the Earth.”
She was at the side of the balcony, smiling in Crowley’s general direction. And maybe she really had figured it out, and maybe it was simply bad balance, and she leaned too far against the ledge and tumbled over.
The air whistled through her clothes, and lighted windows streaked up by her like fireworks. Crowley reached down and wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her back onto the balcony. “No,” he said. “Not just yet.”
The girl leaned back into his embrace; she smelled of life and dreams and hairspray. “It’s only flying if you’re in control,” she whispered.
Crowley lifted just enough of the haze from her mind. He took her chin and angled her gaze towards the American. “The Good Reverend Marvin Gorman,” he said. “Television star. Why don’t you teach him how to fly?”
He released her, and she staggered for a moment before heading towards the corner of the balcony. The American was still staring into the night, but the press of feminine body was enough to get his notice. He said something to the girl, and she giggled.
Crowley turned from them and looked into the sky. From behind him came the staccato clatter of heels against polished wood, and thin fingers pressed against his arm. It was the same girl, give a few inches and a thinner nose.
“Thank you,” she said, breathless. “I wouldn’t have made it in time.”
“Of course,” Crowley said. “She seems like a lovely person. Would have been a shame to let it end like that.”
***
It was hardly a day for a walk in the park. The sky was dark and grey, and the weather was that particularly English flavour of rain that was tiny droplets of water suspended in the air. But Crowley saw Aziraphale sitting on a bench, throwing crumbs into a pond of ducks, so he parked the Bentley and went over.
“I don’t know what you see in them,” Crowley said in greeting. “Dirty, noisy, smelly things.”
Aziraphale nodded to him. “They’re peaceful,” he said. “And easily pleased: give them some bread and they’re happy as anything.” He smiled. “I like ducks.”
“Should put some in with your books; see what you think then.”
“You’re late,” said Aziraphale, and even this was part of the pantomime: the admission that the casual meeting was planned, that they had fallen into the habit of these odd, same-time-next-decade encounters.
Crowley shrugged. “Work. This and that. You know how it is.”
“Mmm,” said Aziraphale. “Anything I should know about?”
“Nah.”
Aziraphale stood up and dumped the rest of the crumbs into the pond. A few ducks glided over to peck at them, and then they all beat their wings against the water and rose into the air. They circled overhead a few times and then, with a slight re-angling of wing-feathers, flew off in search of better weather or fresher bread.
“Crowley?” said Aziraphale. “Whatever are you thinking of?”
“Nothing,” said Crowley. Aziraphale made no sign of believing him, so he said the first thing that came to mind. “Hairspray.”
“Hairspray?” Aziraphale repeated.
“Sure,” said Crowley. “I’ve got an end of the millennium report coming up, sooner or later, and I think they’ll be impressed with that one.”
“But, hairspray.” Aziraphale frowned. “It’s not exactly a… traditional evil.”
Crowley shrugged. “It smells bad, and it comes in those great aerosol cans that wreck the environment,” he said. “I saw it on the telly. And it encourages vanity, of course.”
Aziraphale had raised a hand to his head, and was twirling a few strands of hair with a guilty expression. He had, in deference to the times, allowed his hair to grow past his ears, and it was staying flat despite the moisture in the air. So was Crowley’s, of course, but Aziraphale felt that miracles were to be saved for incidents involving puppies and tax collectors.
“Vanity is a sin, angel,” said Crowley, as piously as he could manage with a straight face.
“Yes,” sighed Aziraphale. He dropped his hand and said, “I’m not entirely certain how one would go about… thwarting… hairspray.”
They started walking back down the path. “I’m sure you’ll think of something,” said Crowley magnanimously.
“I suppose,” Aziraphale said. “I think I need a drink.”
“The Ritz?” said Crowley. “They should have restocked by now.”
Aziraphale glanced at the Bentley, which was sitting directly in front of the park. “Some place in walking distance this time, my dear.”
There was a feather lying across the path. It was striped brown and grey, colours of ash and earth. Crowley stepped around it.
“All right,” he said to Aziraphale, as they moved onto the pavement. “Where did you have in mind?”
***
The entrance to Aziraphale’s bookshop was locked with a steel bar that passed though the doorjamb, so Crowley knew that it only applied to bored tourists and rabid bibliophiles. The inside of the store was dark, but he found Aziraphale in the back room, sitting at a table between a newspaper and a bottle of wine.
“Oh.” Aziraphale looked at Crowley over the edge of his wine glass. “It’s you. I should have expected.”
“Yes,” said Crowley. “You should have. You were the one who scheduled this little meeting, after all. Didn’t you want to discuss the Situation?”
Aziraphale grimaced slightly, like the wine had been unexpectedly sour. He took another sip anyway.
“Crowley,” he said. “Do you think we’re too close?”
“What? No,” said Crowley. “We’ve got a professional agreement, that’s all.”
Aziraphale made an exasperated noise. “Not to each other, Crowley. To the Earth. Do you think we’re too.” He gestured about the room with his wine glass. “Emotionally invested in creation to consider Armageddon properly?”
“Oh. Well, yes, angel. I thought that was the point.” Crowley moved into the room. “What is this about?”
Aziraphale picked up the newspaper and tossed it to him. The front page was devoted to an accident on the M25 – a side collision involving a drunk driver and two school buses. There was a class photo over the top fold, and a young boy in the second row looked just enough like another boy, a child in America who had just determined that his favourite colour was orange, on further reflection, and not black at all.
Crowley dropped the paper onto a counter. He drummed his fingers a few times and glanced at Aziraphale. Aziraphale stared into his drink. And sometimes there was another Arrangement, and it was that Crowley didn’t tell and that Aziraphale didn’t ask.
“Come on,” said Crowley. “I want to show you something.”
***
It was an interesting challenge, flying at the right speed so that he didn’t lose Aziraphale, but that the angel had to struggle to keep up. Rather more of a challenge than it should have been, actually, and Crowley remembered guiltily his abandoned resolutions to travel occasionally under his own power.
He paused under the cloud layer, and Aziraphale caught up a moment later, his wings pounding unevenly against the atmosphere and listing to one side. He looked damp and miserable and was panting for breath, and Crowley toyed with the thought of reminding him that he didn’t need to breathe.
“Crowley, is there a point to this? My wing is strained.”
A knot of Crowley’s own pinion muscles was offering its opinions on better ways to spend the evening, but he grinned at Aziraphale and said, “You don’t really have wings, you know. It’s a metaphor.”
Aziraphale looked sideways at him. “Then my metaphor is strained. And you didn’t answer my question.”
Crowley turned from him and pushed off, breaking through the cloud above with enough force that it was pulled after him like the wake of a jet. Aziraphale was beside him, but his trail wavered and twisted like the message of a skywriter with bad penmanship.
They passed up through the lighter elements and into the nothingness beyond. Aziraphale shivered a few times until he realized that the cold didn’t have to touch him, and then the ice that had formed through his hair and his feathers broke off and fell away.
There was a time when after the world there was nothing until the moon and stars, but now the heavens were filled with junk. Crowley caught sight of a satellite with the stamp of MTV, and he gestured proudly at it, miming all the effort and dealing with Americans that had gone into its launch, until Aziraphale came over, looking puzzled, and said, “What?”
Crowley rolled his eyes, and then kicked off another satellite and dived into the sky. Aziraphale was easily matching pace with him now, and Crowley thought, unkindly, that the angel at least had momentum on his side.
“Where are we going?” Aziraphale said. “We can see the stars perfectly well back home, and there isn’t much else this way.” His eyes widened as something occurred to him, and Aziraphale looked at Crowley in sudden panic. “I mean-”
“Have you even been up this far?” Crowley said.
“Yes,” said Aziraphale. “Of course I have.”
“Recently?”
“Er.” Aziraphale’s gaze shifted to something ahead of them. “What’s recently.”
“Say, the last century or so.”
“Well, no then,” said Aziraphale. “Not recently.” Crowley grinned, speculating on Aziraphale’s answer if recently had been defined as a millennia.
They were about opposite the moon now, and Crowley slowed. “I just want you to see something.”
Aziraphale huffed. “I don’t imagine there’s anything out here you couldn’t show me in London.”
“That’s kind of true,” said Crowley. “Turn around.”
Aziraphale was silent for a while. Then he said, “oh.”
“Malcontented buggers, humans,” said Crowley. “It’s like they looked up at the heavens and said, ‘Sod that, then. We can do better right here.’”
Aziraphale tilted his head to one side. “That never ends well,” he said distantly.
“Right,” said Crowley. He put his hands in his pockets and started into a gentle orbit, looking back once to make sure Aziraphale was still with him. “Do you ever wonder what it looks like? From the outside, I mean.”
Aziraphale shrugged. “Not as interesting as you might expect. Something like a, like a football, I suppose, and a bit round.”
Crowley gave him a flat look. “Well, yes, angel. The world is round.”
“No, I mean….” Aziraphale gestured, trying to encapsulate the idea of roundness, but his hands kept running into each other. Finally he just wrung them together. “Rounder,” he said, and sighed.
It was an old game, finding patterns in the lights. This constellation is America; this one Europe. This one’s Australia - well, the eastern half of Australia, anyway, and if you had seen the lines drawn before and knew how to squint.
Aziraphale hummed tunelessly under his breath as he looked, the way he did when listening to a radio in the background. Mars rolled behind them in its complicated retrograde dance, its light reflecting through their wings like an echo of flame; and the thing about space, Crowley remembered, was that it was supposed to be very silent and very cold.
Aziraphale smiled at him. “You’re right,” he said. “I’m glad you brought me here. I needed a bit of perspective.”
Crowley shrugged. “It’s the wrong perspective,” he said.
He grinned at Aziraphale’s questioning glance, and then broke out of orbit, heading inwards. Stars streaked past him, and other pinpricks of light gained definition and became cities. Gravity grabbed at him, pulling him towards the centre; but his destination was set on London and his wings were out and steady by his side, so he must have been flying.
.
.
.
.
.
* The sunlight set on his feathers with ardent glee, trying to find gold highlights or levels of shadow to play with, before finally settling on a painful brightness to hide the fact that, although they were impressively large and reflective, Crowley’s wings were a rather boring** white.
**There’s no accounting for taste.
Notes: The Universe, for the purposes of this fic, is a variation of the Aristotelian system, with the earth as the centre and the Heavenly spheres for decoration and God on the outside. I added a level of space, because having them flying through the fire above the atmosphere was really not the image I was going for.
Rev. Gorman, of course, was a televangelist who got caught up in scandal.
What they were looking at. Oh, and: a football.
This was written for the flying leap challenge. Basically, we were given a quote and sent off to celebrate the leap year in our own, very special way.
Much thanks to
gileonnen for the last minute beta. All mistakes are mine (because I was greedy and wouldn't let her take them away).It was a love of the air and sky and flying,
the lure of adventure, the appreciation of beauty. It
lay beyond the descriptive words of men - where
immortality is touched through danger, where life
meets death on equal plane; where man is more than
man, and existence both supreme and valueless at the
same time.
-Charles A Lindbergh, on contemplating his first parachute jump.
***
like Lucy and the eve of December
It was a nice day, so Crowley parked the Bentley and stepped into the sunlight. He was far enough out of London that the road ran along fields and trees that were just beginning to turn green with spring. There were even a few early flowers – sickly looking things, wilted from cold and car exhaust, but Crowley felt proud of the world for making the effort.
He stepped away from the road, following a half-defined game trail that led into a grassy meadow. The clearing was, like most things on the verge of an English spring, somewhat brown and soggy, but sunlight was filtering through newly opened leaves and glinting off drops of water and generally acting so optimistic about the scene that even Crowley was inclined to believe it was rather pretty.
The trail wound towards a small pond, but Crowley walked deeper into the field instead. There were a few scattered shrubs, and a blackbird startled him by leaping out of one when he stepped on it. It chattered at him in reproach and flapped off, rising a few metres as it flew into a thermal.
With a sudden grin, Crowley joined it. He stripped off his shirt and opened his own wings,* letting the updraft raise him into the sky. He quickly overtook the blackbird, smirking as it tumbled in his wake. It chirped once and angled back towards the ground, unimpressed.
The meadow fell away, becoming little more than a smudge of green with some bumpy bits. The Bentley looked like nothing so much as a lazy reptile, sunning itself by the asphalt. Crowley looked a few miles back along the road, taking a minute to fully appreciate the spectacle of a cracked cement truck. The faint strains of car horns were still audible if he listened, and there was a truck that hadn’t moved out of the way fast enough – and now wasn’t going to be moving anywhere until someone brought a jackhammer.
There were never very good thermals before summer, and this one hit an inversion wall a hundred yards into the sky. Crowley kept going anyway, just because he hadn’t in a while. He reached his wings into the cooler air and pulled himself up, savouring the feel of the wind between his feathers. His muscles quickly began to strain against his weight, and he realized with some chagrin that he was getting out of practice.
The atmosphere thinned and then gave way, keeping its attention to things closer to the Earth. He was flying now by will and momentum - which was faster than slapping at the air, although not nearly so fun – and heading in a direction that wasn’t so much up anymore as out. Crowley had to dodge out of the path of a satellite, and he hovered for a moment to watch it tumble away. It seemed odd company, planets and stars and this little hunk of metal.
He stopped finally in front of the moon. Crowley wasted a second looking for footprints and American flags, despite knowing how silly the idea was, and then glanced back. Distances bent differently, this close to the edge of things. The Earth seemed like something close and very small.
It really had been a while, then, since he’d last been far enough from the planet to see it.
Crowley settled into the sky and watched the universe spin slowly on the axis of the world.
***
Crowley quite enjoyed parties, on the whole. He was a creature who could appreciate flashes of neon and the smell of candied drinks, or the writhing of bodies in a smoke darkened room, or the clipped voices of society members sharing tea. They were always in same shades of anger and bitter lust, filled with people who thought companionship was just sharing the same loneliness.
The constitution of the first civilization was ‘a rockin’ good time until morning.’
This one was held in the top suite of a hotel. It was night and the lights were dimmed, but no one looked twice at Crowley for all that he kept his sunglasses on. He was here for a business meeting, although it was likely his… client didn’t know it yet.
The American was standing in the corner of the balcony, staring into his canary yellow drink like he was wondering what it was. Crowley stepped outside. The American glanced over at him, and frowned, as if the brink of recognition. Crowley made a short gesture of greeting, and the man looked away, pointedly contemplating an adjacent building.
Crowley shrugged and started to walk over. He already knew how the conversation would play out. I’m your biggest fan. That was how it went, wasn’t it? When I heard you were in London, I couldn’t very well not stop by and let you know that I think what you do is brilliant?
Something grabbed his jacket. “They can’t fly, you know,” said a voice. Crowley turned to face a girl just this side of womanhood. She stared up at him with the wide, fevered eyes of a desperate messiah who finally understands.
Crowley picked up her wrist with a minimum of contact and moved it from his arm. There was a thin residue of sweat and powder where her hand had touched his sleeve; he glanced at it, and it tumbled onto the floor.
“They can never really fly.”
“Who can’t?” Crowley asked, trying to move around her.
She leaned close, as if imparting a ill-divulged secret. “Astronauts,” she whispered. She stepped away then, and said, “It’s only a trick of gravity. They think they’re flying, but they’re really falling; falling forever and never reaching the Earth.”
She was at the side of the balcony, smiling in Crowley’s general direction. And maybe she really had figured it out, and maybe it was simply bad balance, and she leaned too far against the ledge and tumbled over.
The air whistled through her clothes, and lighted windows streaked up by her like fireworks. Crowley reached down and wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her back onto the balcony. “No,” he said. “Not just yet.”
The girl leaned back into his embrace; she smelled of life and dreams and hairspray. “It’s only flying if you’re in control,” she whispered.
Crowley lifted just enough of the haze from her mind. He took her chin and angled her gaze towards the American. “The Good Reverend Marvin Gorman,” he said. “Television star. Why don’t you teach him how to fly?”
He released her, and she staggered for a moment before heading towards the corner of the balcony. The American was still staring into the night, but the press of feminine body was enough to get his notice. He said something to the girl, and she giggled.
Crowley turned from them and looked into the sky. From behind him came the staccato clatter of heels against polished wood, and thin fingers pressed against his arm. It was the same girl, give a few inches and a thinner nose.
“Thank you,” she said, breathless. “I wouldn’t have made it in time.”
“Of course,” Crowley said. “She seems like a lovely person. Would have been a shame to let it end like that.”
***
It was hardly a day for a walk in the park. The sky was dark and grey, and the weather was that particularly English flavour of rain that was tiny droplets of water suspended in the air. But Crowley saw Aziraphale sitting on a bench, throwing crumbs into a pond of ducks, so he parked the Bentley and went over.
“I don’t know what you see in them,” Crowley said in greeting. “Dirty, noisy, smelly things.”
Aziraphale nodded to him. “They’re peaceful,” he said. “And easily pleased: give them some bread and they’re happy as anything.” He smiled. “I like ducks.”
“Should put some in with your books; see what you think then.”
“You’re late,” said Aziraphale, and even this was part of the pantomime: the admission that the casual meeting was planned, that they had fallen into the habit of these odd, same-time-next-decade encounters.
Crowley shrugged. “Work. This and that. You know how it is.”
“Mmm,” said Aziraphale. “Anything I should know about?”
“Nah.”
Aziraphale stood up and dumped the rest of the crumbs into the pond. A few ducks glided over to peck at them, and then they all beat their wings against the water and rose into the air. They circled overhead a few times and then, with a slight re-angling of wing-feathers, flew off in search of better weather or fresher bread.
“Crowley?” said Aziraphale. “Whatever are you thinking of?”
“Nothing,” said Crowley. Aziraphale made no sign of believing him, so he said the first thing that came to mind. “Hairspray.”
“Hairspray?” Aziraphale repeated.
“Sure,” said Crowley. “I’ve got an end of the millennium report coming up, sooner or later, and I think they’ll be impressed with that one.”
“But, hairspray.” Aziraphale frowned. “It’s not exactly a… traditional evil.”
Crowley shrugged. “It smells bad, and it comes in those great aerosol cans that wreck the environment,” he said. “I saw it on the telly. And it encourages vanity, of course.”
Aziraphale had raised a hand to his head, and was twirling a few strands of hair with a guilty expression. He had, in deference to the times, allowed his hair to grow past his ears, and it was staying flat despite the moisture in the air. So was Crowley’s, of course, but Aziraphale felt that miracles were to be saved for incidents involving puppies and tax collectors.
“Vanity is a sin, angel,” said Crowley, as piously as he could manage with a straight face.
“Yes,” sighed Aziraphale. He dropped his hand and said, “I’m not entirely certain how one would go about… thwarting… hairspray.”
They started walking back down the path. “I’m sure you’ll think of something,” said Crowley magnanimously.
“I suppose,” Aziraphale said. “I think I need a drink.”
“The Ritz?” said Crowley. “They should have restocked by now.”
Aziraphale glanced at the Bentley, which was sitting directly in front of the park. “Some place in walking distance this time, my dear.”
There was a feather lying across the path. It was striped brown and grey, colours of ash and earth. Crowley stepped around it.
“All right,” he said to Aziraphale, as they moved onto the pavement. “Where did you have in mind?”
***
The entrance to Aziraphale’s bookshop was locked with a steel bar that passed though the doorjamb, so Crowley knew that it only applied to bored tourists and rabid bibliophiles. The inside of the store was dark, but he found Aziraphale in the back room, sitting at a table between a newspaper and a bottle of wine.
“Oh.” Aziraphale looked at Crowley over the edge of his wine glass. “It’s you. I should have expected.”
“Yes,” said Crowley. “You should have. You were the one who scheduled this little meeting, after all. Didn’t you want to discuss the Situation?”
Aziraphale grimaced slightly, like the wine had been unexpectedly sour. He took another sip anyway.
“Crowley,” he said. “Do you think we’re too close?”
“What? No,” said Crowley. “We’ve got a professional agreement, that’s all.”
Aziraphale made an exasperated noise. “Not to each other, Crowley. To the Earth. Do you think we’re too.” He gestured about the room with his wine glass. “Emotionally invested in creation to consider Armageddon properly?”
“Oh. Well, yes, angel. I thought that was the point.” Crowley moved into the room. “What is this about?”
Aziraphale picked up the newspaper and tossed it to him. The front page was devoted to an accident on the M25 – a side collision involving a drunk driver and two school buses. There was a class photo over the top fold, and a young boy in the second row looked just enough like another boy, a child in America who had just determined that his favourite colour was orange, on further reflection, and not black at all.
Crowley dropped the paper onto a counter. He drummed his fingers a few times and glanced at Aziraphale. Aziraphale stared into his drink. And sometimes there was another Arrangement, and it was that Crowley didn’t tell and that Aziraphale didn’t ask.
“Come on,” said Crowley. “I want to show you something.”
***
It was an interesting challenge, flying at the right speed so that he didn’t lose Aziraphale, but that the angel had to struggle to keep up. Rather more of a challenge than it should have been, actually, and Crowley remembered guiltily his abandoned resolutions to travel occasionally under his own power.
He paused under the cloud layer, and Aziraphale caught up a moment later, his wings pounding unevenly against the atmosphere and listing to one side. He looked damp and miserable and was panting for breath, and Crowley toyed with the thought of reminding him that he didn’t need to breathe.
“Crowley, is there a point to this? My wing is strained.”
A knot of Crowley’s own pinion muscles was offering its opinions on better ways to spend the evening, but he grinned at Aziraphale and said, “You don’t really have wings, you know. It’s a metaphor.”
Aziraphale looked sideways at him. “Then my metaphor is strained. And you didn’t answer my question.”
Crowley turned from him and pushed off, breaking through the cloud above with enough force that it was pulled after him like the wake of a jet. Aziraphale was beside him, but his trail wavered and twisted like the message of a skywriter with bad penmanship.
They passed up through the lighter elements and into the nothingness beyond. Aziraphale shivered a few times until he realized that the cold didn’t have to touch him, and then the ice that had formed through his hair and his feathers broke off and fell away.
There was a time when after the world there was nothing until the moon and stars, but now the heavens were filled with junk. Crowley caught sight of a satellite with the stamp of MTV, and he gestured proudly at it, miming all the effort and dealing with Americans that had gone into its launch, until Aziraphale came over, looking puzzled, and said, “What?”
Crowley rolled his eyes, and then kicked off another satellite and dived into the sky. Aziraphale was easily matching pace with him now, and Crowley thought, unkindly, that the angel at least had momentum on his side.
“Where are we going?” Aziraphale said. “We can see the stars perfectly well back home, and there isn’t much else this way.” His eyes widened as something occurred to him, and Aziraphale looked at Crowley in sudden panic. “I mean-”
“Have you even been up this far?” Crowley said.
“Yes,” said Aziraphale. “Of course I have.”
“Recently?”
“Er.” Aziraphale’s gaze shifted to something ahead of them. “What’s recently.”
“Say, the last century or so.”
“Well, no then,” said Aziraphale. “Not recently.” Crowley grinned, speculating on Aziraphale’s answer if recently had been defined as a millennia.
They were about opposite the moon now, and Crowley slowed. “I just want you to see something.”
Aziraphale huffed. “I don’t imagine there’s anything out here you couldn’t show me in London.”
“That’s kind of true,” said Crowley. “Turn around.”
Aziraphale was silent for a while. Then he said, “oh.”
“Malcontented buggers, humans,” said Crowley. “It’s like they looked up at the heavens and said, ‘Sod that, then. We can do better right here.’”
Aziraphale tilted his head to one side. “That never ends well,” he said distantly.
“Right,” said Crowley. He put his hands in his pockets and started into a gentle orbit, looking back once to make sure Aziraphale was still with him. “Do you ever wonder what it looks like? From the outside, I mean.”
Aziraphale shrugged. “Not as interesting as you might expect. Something like a, like a football, I suppose, and a bit round.”
Crowley gave him a flat look. “Well, yes, angel. The world is round.”
“No, I mean….” Aziraphale gestured, trying to encapsulate the idea of roundness, but his hands kept running into each other. Finally he just wrung them together. “Rounder,” he said, and sighed.
It was an old game, finding patterns in the lights. This constellation is America; this one Europe. This one’s Australia - well, the eastern half of Australia, anyway, and if you had seen the lines drawn before and knew how to squint.
Aziraphale hummed tunelessly under his breath as he looked, the way he did when listening to a radio in the background. Mars rolled behind them in its complicated retrograde dance, its light reflecting through their wings like an echo of flame; and the thing about space, Crowley remembered, was that it was supposed to be very silent and very cold.
Aziraphale smiled at him. “You’re right,” he said. “I’m glad you brought me here. I needed a bit of perspective.”
Crowley shrugged. “It’s the wrong perspective,” he said.
He grinned at Aziraphale’s questioning glance, and then broke out of orbit, heading inwards. Stars streaked past him, and other pinpricks of light gained definition and became cities. Gravity grabbed at him, pulling him towards the centre; but his destination was set on London and his wings were out and steady by his side, so he must have been flying.
.
.
.
.
.
* The sunlight set on his feathers with ardent glee, trying to find gold highlights or levels of shadow to play with, before finally settling on a painful brightness to hide the fact that, although they were impressively large and reflective, Crowley’s wings were a rather boring** white.
**There’s no accounting for taste.
Notes: The Universe, for the purposes of this fic, is a variation of the Aristotelian system, with the earth as the centre and the Heavenly spheres for decoration and God on the outside. I added a level of space, because having them flying through the fire above the atmosphere was really not the image I was going for.
Rev. Gorman, of course, was a televangelist who got caught up in scandal.
What they were looking at. Oh, and: a football.
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