Night– it should be thriving hours for a demon. Treachery often is dealt best in the late hours, when few eyes are watching and even fewer care. But it isn’t some, human misdeed being spoken of. Sin before sin existed. The _original _betrayal. A fall from grace. And from other things.
**“They do.” **He speaks, head tilted upwards, to the stars. **“Don’t look right from here.” **He doesn’t mean London. He hasn’t found a spot on Earth that can bring him as close as he used to be; one doesn’t exist, and it isn’t in his power to make it. It’s a taunt, being forced to view them from so far away, but it isn’t in a demon’s prerogative to go gallivanting around the galaxies. And he’s too sure he’d never want to come back, anyway.
**“The rest of it–” **The ends of loosely-styled curls sway with the motion of his head, turning to look at Uriel. Everything else. The Fall and all that’s come after– all that’s turned him from the sibling they once knew to the demon they face, now. A bitter sort of smile crawls along his lips as his mind turns to it. It’s a _familiar _place.
“Doesn’t wait for the sun to go down.”
the starlight danced against the features of the serpentine demon’s face, reflecting on his sunglasses in blurred distorted lights. there was a silent consideration to his words, the understanding deep within uriel the importance the stars had to him. each burning mass like a child, so lovingly made, & perhaps mourned like a parent would their deceased offspring.
the question wasn’t asked with malice, but perhaps for some sort of sympathy. a, “does it pain you to see them too? all those burning orbs that remind me when i was young & you would heal my smallest scrape _& soothe _me while tears rolled down my cheeks”. the kind of longing for a coat when you’ve gotten lost in the snow or the kind of longing for a brother who you have lost.
lost, yet standing besides them. they could not consider him a ghost, like the messenger did. whenever crowley caught their gaze no matter how far, perhaps even by miles where he was just a dot on the horizon, they would feel a yearning in their heart that he belongs to them as their brother. that he is theirs, in the way they were his, a sensation so deeply engrained uriel wondered if god herself made it an intrinsic part of their soul, given she gave them one at all.
oh, but they knew they had a soul because they had lost a part of it after they had seen their brethren 𝐩𝐥𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐭 from the white halls of heaven with fiery tails like meteors. they contemplated the irony, their face tilted towards the stars that crowley so adored, of crowley looking akin to his so called children as he fell to the sulfur & brimstone of 𝕙𝕖𝕝𝕝. uriel considers would they had joined him if he had asked— or, in the words of sappho, would their mind be divided? it didn’t matter anymore. he hadn’t asked, so they hadn’t answered & that was that, wasn’t it?
uriel sucked in a slow shaky breath they didn’t need, lips curling with the inhale & the intake rattling their lungs. all so superficial, but still when they did breathe they could feel the soft thrum of the muscle within. blood was running through their veins, pumping through it. they were alive. so was he. their hand, covered with thick calluses they never miracled away because it reminded them of the strain of the job, reached & took crowley’s in its palm, long fingers intertwining with his to give a firm squeeze.
then they dropped it like they had touched a coal, moving the hand to fold against the other one & put them politely against their front. think of Michael, their cool composure. such questions shouldn’t be asked— apologize & go.
❝ ･･･ i 𝕒𝕡𝕠𝕝𝕠𝕘𝕚𝕫𝕖. that was a very probing question, & far from professional. i just let myself slip, i guess. good night, crowley. ❞
