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[aj_crawley]

It's a picture-postcard sunrise as Crowley ghosts back through the streets of L.A., headed towards Raguel's apartment, and it gives his face a little colour. He feels strange - flattened and insubstantial, like nighttime in the desert has eroded something out of him, worn it away with cold and dust, from right around the time when he found that it

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[a_fell]

The furniture inhabiting Raguel's apartment is improbably stylish, but the contrast between the owner and the place's understated elegance isn't as jarring as Aziraphael might have expected. It's all rather tasteful, in fact, and he's more than a little certain that Crowley had a hand in it - if for no other reason than that he can't imagine Raguel taking the time to pick it out, any more than he can imagine Crowley suffering Raguel to decorate his pet project with worn but serviceable charity rejects.

Nevertheless, Aziraphael can't quite get comfortable. By the time the sun comes up, he's flitted from armchair to couch, one place to another, until he's sat almost everywhere there is to sit, first perched on the edge of the deep cushions and then settling back, then getting up to fetch another cup of tea. Raguel would no doubt be surprised to learn quite how much of it he had in his cupboards.

There's no milk, however.

(His thoughts falter here, chest constricting tightly.)

He'd been surprised to find how clear the path had been, how easy it had been to arrive here, once he'd made that first decision. He's anxious, of course -- his stomach hasn't stopped twisting since Christmas morning -- but whenever a particularly bad flutter threatens his composure, that image of Crowley leaning against his cupboards surfaces again, stark and simple, stopping his thoughts in their tracks. It's an easy choice to make. He'll simply stay until Crowley comes back. He will wait for as long as it takes. And he will make this right again.

Eventually, he settles back into the first armchair, hands wrapped around yet another cooling mug. It's the sound of the door that makes him look up.

"Crowley," he says.

[aj_crawley]

Crowley doesn't reply; doesn't react.

He just stands there, framed by the doorway and - still, so utterly and suddenly still, his hand resting loosely on the doorknob.

[a_fell]

He looks - small, there. Small, and so far away.

After a moment (long enough), he leans forward and carefully places the mug on the coffee table, brushes some imaginary lint from his trouser leg. And only then does he stand, and take a couple of steps toward the demon. Crowley doesn't look well at all.

"Are you all right?"

[aj_crawley]

Flat black sunglasses track Aziraphael's movements, follow his hands as he sets down the tea and brushes off his trousers, look back to his face as he gets to his feet.

And still, Crowley just stands there - just looking at him, and nothing else, as though he can't quite process the fact that Aziraphael is here. That despite everything, Aziraphael somehow knew where he was, and came to him, and waited for him, and is here.

"Aziraphael," he says, stupidly.

His sunglasses are supposed to be a shield. A multitude of sins, he'd told Raguel. But there's no hiding the cracks running through the demon's expression. Not like that.

[a_fell]

He looks so tired. Aziraphael is not going to let himself go any further than that, just at the moment. He allows one hand to reach forward a little, as though gentling a spooked animal.

"Will you come and sit?"

There's a thick quilt lying half-folded on the couch. When he was 'decorating' Crowley might have decided that the room needed a little visual warmth, but it's unlikely he'd have chosen quite those colours.

[aj_crawley]

"I was," he says, gesturing uselessly behind himself. And then, "Your jumper is inside-out."

He'd had a plan. Rehearsed it and everything, endlessly, out in the freezing desert, revised and reworked and rehearsed it again, how he was going to come back and what he was going to say to put things back the way they were. He'd had a plan.

This just wasn't in it.

Aziraphael isn't supposed to be here.

(It doesn't make sense.)

[a_fell]

"...Oh." He blinks down at himself and a tiny hint of a smile breaks through his composure.

"Thank you, my dear; I'll deal with it later, I think. Come sit? There are some things I have to - things you should know."

[aj_crawley]

Again, it takes a moment - for the words to sink in, and for Crowley, still silhouetted against the hallway behind him, to step slowly forward, to turn, to close the door carefully behind him. The distance to the chairs, where Aziraphael is standing, seems immeasurably vast, absurdly, impossibly vast - impossible that he should have reached them already.

Impossible.

He folds himself down onto the couch, spare and precise, avoiding the garish quilt without ever (quite) looking at it.

His forehead is furrowed. Wary.

[a_fell]

He sits back down in the armchair (when had he taken those steps away from it?) gratefully. Now that they're here, face to face and in the flesh, he's almost forgotten how he meant to begin.

"Look, you are all right, aren't you?"

...That wasn't it, but he couldn't help it. Crowley still doesn't look well at all.

[aj_crawley]

"I was on my way home," Crowley says, head turning towards the door and then back. "I was going to - "

His hands twitch on his lap, before he fastens them firmly together.

('Home'.)

[a_fell]

That still isn't an answer.

"Oh," he says, a little taken aback. Crowley seems very unguarded, for a demon in sunglasses. Well, for Crowley.

"Er. 'Going to -'?"

[aj_crawley]

The beat of silence wrongfoots him - distracts him from from the confusion firing off inside his head, muddling his thoughts - and when he looks up at Aziraphael again, it's with a sense of things finally clicking into focus.

His fingers loosen a little from their sudden, tight cage, and he turns his hands palm-upwards on his knees. A supplication.

"Apologise," he says. "I was going to apologise."

[a_fell]

He doesn't say anything at all for a moment. Literally can't, for a moment. The familiar invisible band constricting his chest is back, and all the air has disappeared from the room.

"I'm not sure that's entirely--" he begins in a wavery voice, and trails off before he can finish.

"I have plenty of apologies to make as well, as it happens," he says instead, a little more strongly. "That's part of why I needed to come. And I wanted to be sure you were all right."

(That's a hint, if Crowley chooses to take it.)

[aj_crawley]

"I was just - in the desert," Crowley says, one hand ticking up to rub above his eyebrow. It leaves another dark smudge behind it; dust and dirt. Stuff gets everywhere. "It was cold."

He's exhausted.

(And Aziraphael is sitting here in front of him, and asking if he's all right.)

[a_fell]

He has a sudden, strong urge to wrap himself around Crowley and call up as much heat as he can stand, cover them both with that quilt and doze right here on Raguel's couch until Crowley is relaxed and comfortable again.

But he can't, yet.

"I'm sorry," he blurts out. "That's the last thing I wanted, after all this."

[aj_crawley]

"No." He shakes his head once, abruptly. "I just - felt like somewhere that wasn't London."

He needed somewhere that wouldn't make him sick with memories, everywhere he went.