Work Text:
Broken bits of everyone, everything under his hands. Soft soil, hard rock of what was once Rome; is still Rome. Tourists flooding the street behind him, car horns and ring tones and the chatter of a guide.
If he finds enough here, maybe he’ll be able to make something whole again. Stitch the memories back into reality, turn shards of myths like potsherds into a reassembled pot for the local museum. Half faded tales of a place long gone into a journal entry, a scholar’s pride.
Sun heavy against his skin. Red hair tied up, falling against the snake tattoo. Hands doing their old job without conscious thought: digging through what was once a bar, remembering a bar from last night.
A stranger. Smiling to see him, waving him over as though his black mood wouldn’t spoil the evening. The offer of dinner.
‘Oh, let me tempt you,’ as though he meant so much more than overpriced seafood and another glass of wine.
They’d served wine here, once. His hands work through another layer of dust, find an oyster shell. Sure, steady. Cataloguing the little things.
His tongue’s dry. Had choked him last night against the soft words, the teasing conversation. It’s choking him now on regret, on words not spoken.
Another layer of dust.
He’ll make a good article from this. General audience friendly. Pubs through the ages, and how people used to sit here and laugh and argue and share food.
There’s a sprig of rosemary growing on the edge of the dig; he crushes it in passing and it drowns out petrol fumes with the taste of remembrance.
‘I’m on holiday, technically. I live in London.’
‘So do I,’ and they’d talked about the parks, about history, about how strange it was to find each other in another city after all this time. About the man’s bookshop, and his battles with the funding boards, and a hundred other things.
Coded glances. Half swallowed hopes. He’s always been a coward. The stars visible by some kind of miracle, one of the clearest nights he can remember here. Crickets singing, and cars, and nothing else in the night was real except for the stranger’s voice.
The most handsome man he’s ever seen. He knows what the poets were talking about now, and why men might build sculptures of their lovers, and why Juliet would wait on a balcony. He falls over a few hours and a few bottles of wine.
Long past closing time and he isn’t brave enough.
The long ago past, decently buried under a few millenia of history, can’t hurt you. Can be fixed, can be made real without it scouring your skin, without it being something you’re not allowed to talk about in school.
Click click of tourist cameras, casual conversation with some of the other staff here. The shadow beneath him, moving with his moving, vanishing as he digs down into it, torn into non-existence as he moves the rock next to it. Bare plane of earth now, unbroken on this layer. Straight.
He tears it apart. Again.
Works on his knees, furious-angry-scared-ashamed. So careful at his work, huddling under it like a cloak.
‘Crowley? Is that you?’
The stranger’s voice. Italian sun behind him, giving his white hair a halo.
He drops his tools. Scrabbles to his feet. A moment of silence in the whole eternal city. A blue eyed smile and all the memories of last night, an overwhelming moment and he’s brave, braver than he’s ever been in his life, trying to make something whole of himself for once…
‘It is. Ummm. Would you like to go for dinner later?’
More memories of last night. The stranger standing up, the half extended hand. The unspoken offer. The bolting.
‘My name’s Aziraphale. I don’t think we got that far last night, did we? And yes, I would love that, my dear.’
Somewhere overhead, a bird sings. Crowley brushes dirt from his hand and reaches out. Aziraphale takes it.