The Known/Unknown Quantity

Chapter 86: Crowley's Knowledge of the Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey

Chapter 86: Crowley's Knowledge of the Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey

1:30 PM

When they opened their eyes, Crowley found himself sitting in a chair beside the bed, Aziraphale was laying on top of the covers with ice packs along his limbs. In the aftermath of the dream, they both instinctively explored the condition of his sensitive skin, but there was no sign of what the trauma of the dream. Not a phantom pain, not a speck of blood. And Crowley's hands were gentle and thorough.

The angel sat up against his pillows, and Crowley removed the ice packs, then returned with a small towel to wipe up the moisture they left behind. The olive oil had absorbed into the angel's skin, and he kept touching his arms and chest in amazement at the results. Crowley's hands soon followed, and they wordlessly studied its effects in the early afternoon light.

When Crowley's hands came up to the angel's throat, they lingered there, and Aziraphale leaned his downy head back and silently reveled in the attentions. Then he turned toward the demon, and opened his tired eyes. Crowley rose and laid down next to him, his chest still bare from before. They pressed close, and shared the pillow. No one spoke a word. No one moved. It's cliché to admit, but they stared into each other's eyes, and let themselves feel all the emotions carrying over from Aziraphale's dream.

There was no observation this time. There was just...letting it be. And it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows, but it was deep, and it churned, and was a spectrum of strong feelings that eventually rose past the surface and dissipated into the air.

By the end of it, Aziraphale's eyes were red, his face flushed, his throat rough. Crowley's viperous yellow orbs glowed hugely over his cheeks, his mouth a thin line of a frown, his eyebrows ascending nearly to the hairline. Normal tears dried along the sides of his face.

Both of them took turns applying the towel to each other's spent expressions.

And when at last it seemed there was nothing else to be done, they picked each other up and headed without thought to the bathroom for another bath. Just seemed, dunno, the next thing.

At 2:30 PM the doors opened to the bookshop and two bundled figures marched out across the falling snow into the mountainous landscape. There was no sign of switch grass or gently rolling hills. It was true terrain, chilly and wet and windy. The kind the makes your blood pump before you even traversed it.

And they traversed. And from 1:30, to that moment, and into the waning hours of the afternoon, not once did they utter a word. And yet, so much was spoken between them.

5:17 PM

The shivering duo trudged back in and knocked the snow off their boots. The way they were dressed you couldn't pick an odder couple to be seen trapsing about the countryside.

Crowley, apparently, went in for sport knits, streamlined and midnight black, a high collared lean pullover that deceived in its capacity for warmth. A knit cap covered the back of the demon's head, although his forelock flamed in a shock of hair that he refused to shove underneath, and, (here Aziraphale seemed unable to figure their exact nature) a pair of skiing goggles or sunglasses that made him look like very stylish stick bug.

The angel, on the other hand, was clothed in something a bit more.... antiquated. As in: well-suited for an early twentieth century polar expedition with Admiral Byrd. He really did have goggles, and gigantic fur trimmed mittens, and a fur lined hood, and a down quilted coat, and he was freezing his heavenly ass off. But if the discomfort got to him, during those quiet hours trekking through the snow, he made not a sound about it.