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go_exchange2023-12-12 06:54 am
Happy Holidays, kitkatkelly!
Title: Sketches of a Future
Recipient: KitKatKelly
Summary: Crowley searches for ways to pass the time after Aziraphale leaves for Heaven. Drawing doesn't come easily to a demon but it does make him happy, at least.
Crowley orders himself some coloured paper from Amazon. Had that been one of his, back when there were things that still mattered in the world? Maybe. Encouraging greed and excess shopping sounds like the sort of thing he might have done once.
By the time it's arrived, he's sobered up and doesn't remember why he'd ordered it. Leaves it on the desk that used to be Aziraphale's, that isn't anyone's now, and tries to distract himself with something. Anything. It doesn't work.
Three weeks, four days. A handful of hours. He won't let himself start counting the hours.
**
There's nothing online to read, no games left that don't make him sick with boredom the moment he clicks through to them. The shower runs cold as though it wants to join him in his misery and taking the Bentley out would require having somewhere to go. He's the freest he's ever been and the empty shop holds him like a trap.
He's been pacing for the best part of an hour, disturbing the dust around the shelves. No-one's been back here for six weeks, one day. Are the books ok left untouched? They ought to know better than to get damp or have worms or whatever books do when they're left unsupervised. Perhaps he ought to...to do...
Crowley turns away.
Aziraphale's former desk is still the same, aside from the paper and he remembers ordering it now. Coloured paper because the white had looked like Heaven and he can't think about that for longer than - he can't think about it at all.
The dark green sheets are too much like Hell and he throws it out for rubbish. Catches himself a moment later and puts it neatly in the recycling box that's been empty since the book packages stopped arriving.
His first sketch is rough. Bentley. Her proportions come out all wrong and he stabs at the paper in frustration. Tears a hole in it; snaps cold fingers to fix it and tries again. She still looks like something Warlock would have drawn.
By the time he looks up, his neck's cricked and Whickber Street is as close to silent as it ever gets. He hasn't needed to stop himself counting the hours. It's got late without him noticing. Sleep is as hard-won as before, but this time, he doesn't dream.
**
He stops counting the days, eventually. Marks them with sketches instead. That one of a duck, that one of Bentley, that one of a cottage and a tree and a far distant downland under a soft evening sun. He thinks that one must be mostly imagination. A still life cobbled together from what he has at hand - some books that had never been put on the shelves, a white winged angel mug and an empty Scotch bottle that frustrates him with the reflections.
Google shows him a picture of a nightingale. He draws that half a dozen times. Always alone on the paper, never allowed to find a roost for the night.
He thinks it might be close to Christmas when he manages to draw Bentley without cringing. It's January when he gets bored with pencils and orders himself some watercolours; he's not sure what Hell would make of him miracling something so pointless. And it's February when he can bring himself to use them, worried that it seems like much more of an involved hobby to be setting up in the angel's space.
A declaration that he intends to keep living here. A declaration that he intends to keep living.
He does it, eventually.
**
The 'What's On in Soho' messages keep coming into the spring. He's learnt to scan past the plays, the parades that Aziraphale would have liked, but they stab at him every time regardless. The art course info is there three weeks in a row before he gets in contact.
The fact that his phone number comes out garbled and his email address nonexistent - well, he's never been too sure of how much his desires can affect reality. Isn't sure if he does want to go, when he's barely ventured outside since Aziraphale had left.
He'd learnt a lot of things in the past. The shoemaking that started out as a joke; lace making and knitting and blacksmithing that he'd loved because working the forge felt like shaping stars. He's used to sitting in a room and learning. Enjoys it even.
('I don't think I know how to enjoy anything anymore,' he mutters to Bentley as he polishes paintwork that hasn't been touched since the last time he did this.)
This time, he does make the phone call.
Does drag himself there, the first week and the second and the third when he felt a flicker of interest and found himself there a few minutes early. There's people to talk to and a tutor who seems to understand that he wants to be left alone, and eventually they get onto painting light and he forgets himself enough to ask a question.
He gets an answer.
Asks more, gets more.
He can't remember, afterwards, when he started looking forward to the sessions. Just that he does, and he clings to the Wednesday evenings, clings to them against the emptiness of everything else. It's something he can count down to, for one.
**
Crowley doesn't mean to paint a portrait. He's been playing about with different tools, discovering how it works to paint with a knife, with the edge of a palette, with his hands. Making a mess, crisscrossing lines on sheet after sheet of paper until he's fairly sure he can replicate the effects he likes. One of his own feathers makes sense in the moment.
But it's white paint he dips the feather in; midsummer sunshine that filters through the dusty window and turns the barbs the colour of starlight, and suddenly Aziraphale's all he can think of, all he can imagine.
He can't remember the last time he let himself think of the angel like this. The good memories, the sweet ones, not the goodbye. And there had been so much good, so much that didn't hurt. The remembered joy makes him feel warm. Makes him smile even as he draws.
The portrait's streaked with tears. He keeps it anyway.
A copy of it wins a prize at the art group's autumn exhibition.
**
The days are long and the nights are longer. Lonely. He's only a demon.
'Forgive me,' he mutters and the ink scatters across the paper in a parody of touch. It's been a year.
He's not sure what he's asking for forgiveness for. For still loving, for still hoping? For still being here, for the things moved out of Aziraphale's space and set to Crowley's liking, the easels and the desks and the hoard of paper on the floor?
He draws Aziraphale in Heaven. Tries to make him look like he belongs there, like he fits in the empty spaces and harsh angles, but he can't. Can't imagine it.
He draws Aziraphale back here, in the shop. His dream.
Draws both of them - greedy, grasping, wanting demon that he is - in the cottage that's haunted him for so long. Seagulls in the sky and roses in the garden. That comes as easily as missing him.
It doesn't bring Aziraphale back.
**
Afterwards.
There is an afterwards, and he gets to share it with Aziraphale. Hold the angel in his arms and kiss him and laugh with him and fix up fault lines between them that he thought had been broken forever.
Afterwards, when the world is safe again and Aziraphale is back, he says softly, 'I made a few changes to your shop, angel. I can change it back.'
Aziraphale smiles at that. 'You didn't sell all my Wildes, did you?'
'Of course not! I didn't sell anything. Didn't open the shop at all,' and his voice trails away. 'I looked after it all the best I could.'
He sees the clutter of his workspace with fresh eyes as they step inside together. Ring binders stuffed full of sketch paper. Wet work pinned to a line in a corner. Brushes jumbled in an open box, and sheet after sheet of paintings, drawings, studies.
'Crowley? You did all this?'
He shrugs. Twists away a little. 'Yeah. I can pack it away, it's no problem -'
'They're beautiful. All of them. Please...please keep it all set up if you would. I - I'd like it if you stayed here. Properly, I mean. And kept all this.'
Crowley does keep it. The Wednesday night group, and the sketch books, and the easels; the frustrations and the joys of it all, and if the artwork comes near to matching the books in number in the years to come, neither of them mention it.
Beautiful
no subject
The fact that Crowley liked blacksmithing because is felt like shaping stars - such a wonderful detail of his past!<3
I gasped a little with joy when Crowley asked a question and got the answer; it felt so satisfying - him, finding solace in something human and not divine or infernal.
And the passage where even painting didn't bring him relief and didn't bring Aziraphale back almost made me cry.
I'm glad it ended with them being together too. Aziraphale should better know how special his demon is.
no subject
You've really captured a very human and believable way of processing this kind of relationship rupture. And the ending was such a sweet addition that still did service to the difficult repair work they would've had to do together. Thank you for this!!!
no subject
He’s recycling now because he’s free and can finally do right by the Earth like he always wants to!
The nightingale :(
Shoemaking! Working the forge felt like shaping stars!!
The whole description of him painting Aziraphale, remembering the good times, made me so emotional!
Thank goodness you gave this a happy ending. It was lovely :)
no subject