No, said Aziraphale, it's ineffable.

Anonymous asked:

So this isn't on the list but a ficlet with palm kisses? Like Aziraphale reaches out to Crowley to comfort him or something and he kisses his palm? I'm a bit partial to Crowley being tender and it surprising Aziraphale (if you can't tell), but either way would be lovely

lineffability answered:

There is a magic trick that time plays with light.

It shows you the light of fires that have long since burned out. If you are looking at the night sky, at dark velvet spangled with millions of stars, you are looking at the past. And then the light fades and is forever gone. But you, you have witnessed it. You have been there, on this day, in this time, long after the stars sent you their love–and exploded.

Time shows you ghosts.

Crowley is thinking of ghosts.

If you look at the sun, what you see is the sun as it was eight minutes ago. So little time, so much distance. Eight minutes for light to travel into your eyes.

From Proxima Centauri, the red dwarf outlier burning up around the Alpha Centauri star system, it’s four light years. From the Pleiades cluster, four hundred. Light travels for four hundred years to show you ghosts.

Ghosts of old friends.

The Pleiades, the seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione. Crowley had told Hesiod all about them. Oh, he would have sailed to them. If Alpha Centauri had not been enough, he’d have payed them a visit. They were his, too.

Atlas, who shouldered the world for his sins, because he had stood on the wrong side of a war. Crowley, who did too.

Maia (Μαῖα), Electra (Ἠλέκτρα), Taygete (Ταϋγέτη), Alcyone (Ἀλκυόνη), Celaeno (Κελαινώ), Sterope (Στερόπη), Merope (Μερόπη). They had been his friends, and he had only seen it fit to have his stars named after them. But they are long gone, now. So long gone.

Humanity is so very fleeting.

(Crowley doesn’t like looking at the stars for too long. Can you blame him?)

But light is eternal. Light lasts longer than time.

A hand on his shoulder, soft. “Crowley?”

Sometimes light blinds you, momentarily. It does now, and Crowley looks away, back up to the stars, and then down, onto the ground. They are outside, on the little rooftop terrace above Crowley’’s flat.

(What had been here, two thousand years ago? Who had looked at the stars in the sky in this very spot? Someone else. The same stars. Different light. How long had they been dead, the old stars, and the old people?)

“Angel.” The word has a bitter tang to it, sometimes. When he separates it from him, and lets it remind him of himself. He’d made the stars. How about that, angel? But it is never a bitter word when it means Aziraphale. How could it ever be?

The angel sits down beside him, quietly. He glances at Crowley, in just the right second, and their eyes meet. Aziraphale smiles, reassuringly.

“You’re no ghost, are you?”

Crowley watches Aziraphale trying to comprehend the words; he isn’t sure he does, but it doesn’t matter, because he comprehends something far more important.

“Do you want me to leave?” he asks. Crowley does not answer right away, his face immobile, so Aziraphale begins to get up.

Don’t leave me. Not you.

Crowley’s fingers enclose the angel’s wrist. Tug, gently. No, I don’t want you to leave. Never, never his fingers say. “Nah,” his mouth says.

He doesn’t say more, because he can’t. (He’s not always good with words, not when it counts. They fail him, sometimes.) But words are not the only thing mouths are good for.

Aziraphale sucks in a little breath of air when Crowley’s lips touch the spot right between palm and wrist, but Crowley doesn’t notice. His eyes are fixed on the angel’s light skin, and then they close, and when they open again the ghost of dead starlight fades from his memory a little.

Aziraphale softens. “Alright, dear. I’ll stay. Do you want me to tell you about what I found today, when I reorganized a bookshelf?” Do you want me to talk to you?

“Sure.” Thank you.

“A manuscript on the catasterism. An original, of course,“ Aziraphale says smugly. He, too, is looking at the stars.

Finally, a grin. “Is that so?”

“Oh, yes. The British Library would turn green with envy. You see, I came upon it when I met Perses, son of Hesiod, back in Askra in…”

Aziraphale talks, and Crowley listens. They are looking at the stars, as so many have–but not before them. Not after them, either. But with them.

If you are looking at the night sky, think of the ghosts speaking to you.

Think of the angel who created them, and the demon who loves them, still.

Oops guess who’s writing a thing

Crowley had taken to gardening in a big way after the No-pocalypse. The gardens around the cottage were extensive and astounding, both aesthetically and biologically. Crowley didn’t pay much attention to trifling matters like soil pH, shade or climate; tropical palms and desert succulents flourished next to temperate ferns and highland heathers because that was where he had put them, and if they didn’t care for it, they didn’t dare show it. In the vegetable patch by the kitchen door, marrows and common peas rubbed tubers with skirret and snake gourd like old friends. The cottage walls dripped with wisteria, clematis and rambling roses.There was an ancient and luxuriant willow which lived a life of quiet confusion having been, until quite recently, a small shrub.

The only conspicuous absence was an apple tree. He’d felt that was a bit too on-the-nose.

Crowley was proud of the garden, in the Deadly Sin sense of the word; a nosy neighbour peering over the fence that week would have seen him stalking up and down the rows of fuchsias like a drill sergeant, growling things like “Stand up straight!” and “Don’t you dare embarrass me tomorrow!” and casting meaningful glances at the compost heap.