Sweet dreams that leave all worries behind you

[always-confuzed.livejournal.com]

John was busy doodling on his notes in front of Star Tours.

He always had kept notes, but he seemed to have gotten worse about it here, where he was without his little tape recorder. They contained jotted bits of information, the ramblings of his muddy head, any little connections he wanted to keep for later. Considering how full his brain was compared to the average human, he really did need them to keep things vaguely organized.

The corner of his notes had a prowler sketched on it. It was kind of like the Peacekeeper version of an x-wing, a one man fighter with lots of firepower and maneuverability. He had accidentally clipped one on his first day in the Uncharted Territories, having been a bit disoriented from getting tossed out of a wormhole.

It was also the kind of ship that Aeryn had flown as a PK soldier.

Draw something different, John. How about that weird necklace Chiana bought on that commerce planet, the one with those bird people who had nests above the market....

He thought maybe he'd go find Daniel later, but he was pretty sure the anthropology wonder boy was giving a Latin lesson at the moment (which, intriguing as the subject was, would be a singularly useless skill for him to have back on the farm). So he contented himself with scribbles and ignored Harvey's harmonica playing at the back of his head.

((closed to John, Crowley, and I'm presuming Cayce at some point ^_^))

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[anthony-crowley.livejournal.com]

Swallowing the part of her sentence that proved his point,

before either one of us could do anything stupid

because they would have, wanted to, were so fucking close that it was okay, Crowley's mouth set in a hard, thin line.

"I am a dick, Cayce. I told you straight up that I'm an utter bastard. What the fuck did you think I meant by that? Did you think I was just being coy? That I was pretending? I told you and you had no fucking problem with it then, so I don't want to hear about it now."

[caycep]

She stared at him in silence for a long moment. I thought you were better than that, she wanted to shout, but the awful, stomach-hurting thing was that she'd really thought she was somehow ... special. That being his friend counted for something, and that somehow that protection might extend to the people she counted as friends, even if he didn't really care much about them one way or the other.

Fuck that.

"Guess I made a mistake," she said, and her voice was small, cold, and brittle.

[anthony-crowley.livejournal.com]

She was special. She was more special than she knew. Outside of the rock of Aziraphale, she was the person he cared the most about in the world, which was why it hurt so badly to learn that he wasn't that to her. He should have listened to the qualifier when she'd said, your friendship is one of the most important things I've got going here, but he was too busy with the catalyst of his real feelings for her to worry about the effects of them. He'd not make that mistake again.

That Cayce might have enough affection, or different kinds of affection for him and John wasn't something that ever crossed his mind. Crowley simply couldn't have understood. He'd just felt sick and used, watching them tumble around on the ground together. For a being over six thousand years old, he had the emotional understanding of a boy of fourteen, sophisticated polish and gift of mimicry notwithstanding.

For the briefest moment, the demon wanted to be that person she wanted him to be, but he knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that he wasn't and never could be. The disappointment in her eyes was achingly familiar and he understood then, in a way he never had before, that he would never find the unconditional approval he'd always craved. Perhaps that was a part of his punishment, too. But it was freeing in a way. If you were resigned to that fate - if you didn't care about people* - it was much easier to say goodbye.

"Guess so," Crowley managed and limped ungracefully to the door. He wondered how drunk he could get before Aziraphale stopped him.

*A major failing in a demon.

[caycep]

"Goddamnit, Crowley," she snapped, fighting with the not-entirely-contradictory urges to smack him in the back of the head and give him a hug.

She had no idea, of course, what was going on his head. From where she was standing, one of her two closest friends had just decided to be gratuitously cruel, really cruel, to the other for no reason other than --

-- the fuck. He couldn't possibly be jealous, could he? Jealous of her friendship? Jealous of the things she and John might have thought but didn't do? (And for Cayce, the not-doing, the refusal to follow the bodily urge, was one of the things that separated humans from animals, so she didn't see it quite the same way as Crowley.)

Jesus Christ. Men.

And then she did say it, because what the hell did she have to lose. "I thought you were better than that," she said. "I knew you liked to hassle people, but I didn't think you were cruel."

[anthony-crowley.livejournal.com]

To a specific Judeo-Christian viewpoint, thought is everything. Crowley was used to tempting thoughts into actions, but it wasn't technically necessary. Hell was full of people who'd thought horrible things but never acted on them; the difference was that they also thought they shouldn't be forgiven for that.

He hesitated at the door. Well, there was one bastardly way to end this quickly...

"And you were wrong. But that's what really bothers you, isn't it? Not that I was cruel, but that you, Cayce Pollard, the woman who surrounds herself with information like it's a damn security blanket, could possibly be wrong about something - that your precious character judgment was off. Well, there's a massive fuckload of things you don't know about me, so get used to it."

[caycep]

And that fucking stung. Cayce was a child of the Information Age, of course. Knowledge was power; what you knew was currency more potent than cash. Information was control. It was identity. It was everything.

It was, in fact, all she had left. That and her friendships. One of which was now, for all intents and purposes, on the rocks.

Go fuck yourself, Crowley.

But as furious as she was, she couldn't bring herself to say it, because that would have been too final.

So she said, "Well then, I'm sorry I misjudged you. You ever want to talk about this shit like a grown-up, you know where to find me."

And she turned on her heel and walked away. No goodbye, no fuck-off. It was the only way she could handle it.

She slammed her office door behind her.

[anthony-crowley.livejournal.com]

Knowledge wasn't going to help in this case. It was worse than useless against the supernatural because you thought you had a chance when you really didn't.

Crowley didn't bother to react and just slogged slowly back to New Orleans Square, drawing on his reserves to make it back without collapsing. If he had to have a roommate, at least it was one who knew better than to fuck with him when he was in this kind of mood. He grabbed the first bottle on his way past the bar, went in his room, and locked the door.