a tiny little ficlet based on this lovely comment from @queer4cryptids on this post! (i accidentally made it angsty, i’m so sorry!! but there’s comfort and gay yearning in there, i swear!)
when the night falls low and settles against the side of the Earth; when the the dark begins to carry a certain weight, he shifts his stance. he lets himself breathe air he doesn't really need into lungs that exist simply by virtue of his inclination to breath.
it's the same pattern Crowley's watched unfold a hundred million times times over—the stretching of a thread until it frays, three women, a set of blades; a wicked inevitability carried in the lines of time-weathered hands.
and still it never changes, never lessens the welling of grief that builds and breaks in his chest, that stagnates and stratifies like layers of sand upon gravel upon so many eons since he first fell from the sky and lost the right to mourn a woman hungry only for bread and a little kindness.
he leans back against a headstone, swallowing down a familiar hollowness. the sparrows have all taken root in the knots of tree trunks. the moon blinks back at him, clouds swaying like an eyelid closing to sleep.
he turns his face away from the light, sucks in breath for which he still has no need. the rough-hewn granite is going to scuff his coat; he knows this with the certainty of having lived in a world full of serrated edges for so many years.
and yet he doesn't care.
Crowley can't find it in him to give a damn because finally, finally he's there. he's there and he's real and tangible and it's been eleven months, two weeks, and four days since he's last felt the warmth of angelic skin so close to his own.
not that he's been keeping count, of course.
and Aziraphale's got that faraway look again. the one pressed into the lines of his face in the aftermath of a flood that tilted against the sky; the same one Crowley saw in the stark daylight of a death warrant unfurled and stamped with the name of the holy Mother herself. it's the same, hollow, teeth-gritted look Crowley himself wore as he stood on a hillside reeking of freshly-cut wood, bearing witness to yet another child of the Almighty thrown to the wolves.
Aziraphale turns, then, and blue eyes meet black lenses meet amber-gold.
"Crowley—" Aziraphale manages, choking it out in a half-whisper, like it hurts—like it scrapes his throat with bits of barbed wire. and, just like that, something in him is breaking and the oak trees are all whispering dangerous things and still, still he can't find a version of this story in which he doesn't lean closer, doesn't press himself forward into air that smells of earl grey tea and old books and something celestial and hallowed and holy underneath it all.
and as though he's drowning—as though the moon doesn't watch them with a flickering gaze and the trees can't hear the brush of skin meeting skin—Aziraphale presses his fingertips to the side of Crowley's wrist.
he moves no further. the air holds still, time seeming to freeze around them. it's intentional, he realizes; it's fire and it's heat and it's utterly fucking terrifying. even now, so far above ground, Crowley can nearly feel the weight of hellish eyes on his back. a shudder runs the length of his body.
and yet. in the atomic space of that hungry, desperate, throat-baring yet, he turns his hand, trembling, to the side. he finds the angel's touch like a bird bearing North—like a compass forever calibrated to a single, fixed point.
"I know—" he rasps. “Angel, I know.” he twines his fingers with Aziraphale's, and it's positively electric. every cell in his tragically, wonderfully human body has turned pure gold, conducted and galvanized and sparking.
a sharp, stilted inhale; a quiet anticipation carved out in the space between their pressed hands (and palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss...).
the graveyard is still. the grief is there, still. the grief might always be there. but the sharp edges dull, the welling in his chest grows steady and slow and gentle.
and the world becomes a little less difficult to bear with the two of them holding it up.
i feel more comfortable now to discuss my transformers fanon but I don't even have a Proper plot. I only have one human sorted so far. I only really have character personalities, teams and motivations. Only SOME designs.
super important though that there is skystar yuri + divorce.