Author's notes: Since I was unable to get the last chapter of A Diamond Sky Above Titanic up this week, and felt really bad, I thought I would put up this 'deleted scene' that I wrote for it several months ago. This is what grew from several people wishing that the sexy portrait scene in the film could have made its way in somewhere; my friend's suggestion of a paint fight ensuing was what eventually pushed me into writing it, because how could I resist such mental imagery?
Thus, to lighten the cyberatmosphere after all the tears and tragedy of the latest chapters, here it is :) I was intending on posting it after the fic was complete, but I think it works in quite nicely as a pre-final chapter thing, and isn't that spoilery for anyone who hasn't read the fic. I would, however, recommend re-reading Chapter 6 first to refresh your memory of the goings-on, if you'd like, since this was supposed to 'fill the gaps' for that one... That is, be NC-17 all over the place, which just is not happening for me (sorry!).
Hey, for once I can say 'Enjoy!' and actually mean it! So, enjoy! And I shall definitely have the final chapter, 'The Last Diamond Sky' up next week - if I don't, then assume that I am drowning in an ocean of deadlines, battling away the Summative Essay sharks, and trying to avoid standing on the spiky sea urchins of Physics Where Physics Should Not Be.
– DELETED SCENE –
The Rearrangement
Crowley is all angles and edges: chiselled and defined, a landscape cut by the ridges of ribs, and the hollows of dark underarms, and the rising peaks of rosy nipples. He lies utterly naked, gleaming and glorious, spread on his back across the sheets, cradled between the snowy whites of his uncharacteristically ruffled wings. He is completely unselfconscious, as comfortable in his nudity as a snake in its scales – and indeed, lit by the new afternoon's languid honeyed rays, he appears as contented as a basking serpent, sated and sedate, prepared to move only when the sun does. Crowley is a work of art, and, immortal though the subject may be, Aziraphale has never wanted to immortalise anything quite so much as he wants to forever capture his lover today in this one quiet moment; immortalise him in canvas, and oils, and smudged muted lights.
The angel bites his lip; runs a thumb along thigh, working definition in where deserved. Crowley watches him work from his not-quite upside-down position, surrounded by a world languorously tilted, intriguingly unfamiliar and impossible. He lets out a deep sigh, stretching his toes out and curling them in all kinds of ways a poor delicate human's should not be able to.
Aziraphale lets out a sound of exasperation. "Crowley, would you please keep still?" he says, raising his brows above eyes for once naked of their glasses. "You're really making this very difficult, you know."
Crowley smirks across to him. It's been a while since he's been painted, and it is going to his head: he feels sensuous, and high, and so bloody turned on by the thought of those sage blue eyes teasing out his every little detail; his every imperfection. And the angel's increasing impatience with his restless fidgeting is only augmenting this. Aziraphale has to keep sternly reminding him to practise greater control over his wild, wanton thoughts – the physical manifestations of which are completely ruining the effect of the softness and 'unguardedness' of the moment the angel is trying to capture. Or something.
Personally, Crowley reckons that Aziraphale just can't handle distractions.
The angel is sitting cross-legged across from him, wings stretched wide and flowing, an expression of deepest concentration set in his soft features: all furrowed brows and compressed lips and dimpled cheeks, dishevelled curls the colour of sunlight tucked thickly behind an ear. Quite exactly what he is using to paint his little magnum opus with is anybody's guess, since there is no pallet to be seen, nor regular artistic implements. Perhaps he is weaving the colours from air.
Crowley narrows his eyes, and experimentally wiggles a toe.
"Crowley!" Right on cue.
"What?" says the demon ingenuously, serpentine eyes wide with innocence. "Surely you're done with that one little digit by now."
"As a matter of fact, your muscle movement affects other regions of the anatomy. Now be still, pesky serpent!"
Crowley cocks a mischievous eyebrow. "Well in that case, then you won't mind if I move this other region…?"
And he brings one hand deliberately up his flawless ivory body, lightly skimming his lean, subtly muscled abdomen, curling his fingers around his throat before gently drawing the nails up along his jaw. Finally he brings them to his lips, easing them between the two, and tenderly sucking their tips, ever so slowly, as though each one is the finest culinary delight on Earth(1). He closes his eyes in pantomime bliss. "Mm. Sweet."
Aziraphale is clearly making some effort to appear unmoved.
"You seem to have an inflated conception of your own sexual appeal, my dear," he says stiffly, going back to his art, and Crowley grins in smug triumph at the deep blush spreading up the angel's throat; at his curled-up toes; at the ever-so-slight tautening of his wings.
"No smiling," instructs Aziraphale, even as he has to fight to keep his own face straight. "Really, my boy, you're a demon – is it so difficult to practise stasis for a time?" He thinks for a moment, trying to put an appealing spin on it. "Sloth?" he suggests. "Inertia?" Then, raising a brow in contemplation, "Perhaps hibernation?"
"What?" groans Crowley. "You can't be bloody serious, angel; I'm as horny as Hell over here, I thought you said this was going to be quick!"
"One can never rush a masterpiece such as yourself," says Aziraphale, with the smug and self-righteous tones of one who knows himself to be correct and cannot be swayed otherwise. "Besides, patience is a v—"
"Don't you bloody dare!" Crowley points a finger at the angel in warning.
Aziraphale ducks behind the canvas to hide his smile.
"If you'll just keep still, my dear, then I'll have this done in a jiffy and we can get back to the sex. How does that sound?"
"Fine, I'll be still," sighs the demon in defeat, arranging his arms back the way they were: one thrown casually back over his head, the other draped across his navel.
Aziraphale gives him a little encouraging smile, far too close to patronising for Crowley's liking, but he bites back the remark that rises. "Just let your face relax now," says the angel helpfully, and Crowley narrows his eyes in a scowl before forcing his features to settle into what he mentally refers to as his Adonis impression: the faintly brooding lowering of the eyebrows; the intense stare straight into the eye of the beholder (with just the right amount of tragedy juxtaposed against stoic endurance); the smallest parting of the lips, so subtle that it could only be noticeable if one was really interested in those lips in particular. And, of course, the ever-so-slight upward tilt of the chin in haughty disdain for such mortals who dare look upon the beauty that is this body. Oh, yes. Crowley has it nailed. Adonis, Eros, Dorian Gray… eat your hearts out.
"My dear, do you think you could just… um… relax a little more?" hints Aziraphale tactfully.
Crowley breaks out of character to frown in confusion. "What do you mean?"
Aziraphale doesn't look up from his canvas. "Well, you look rather like you're in pain, love. Or have a stomach upset."
Crowley scowls again and fully drops the Sex God shroud. Stupid bloody angel not appreciating his talent. Aziraphale laughs at the expression on his face.
"That's perfect, just stay exactly like that."
Thus Aziraphale continues. If Crowley could stand over his shoulder and watch him work, he would be astounded at the stunning truth and beauty to the touch of those gentling fingertips, the gripping perfection he is combing out of the air between them. There is a certain technique and mastery to the paintings of an angel that has never before been seen on Earth, and that no human can ever hope to imitate or reproduce: what Aziraphale is painting is quite possibly indescribable – an artistic perfection beyond words – though one can always do one's best.
In the centre of the canvas lies Crowley, and he is glowing. Every angle, every edge; every chiselled and defined ridge and hollow and peak of him; all of it is perfectly captured, perfectly immortalised. Every eyelash and every feather; every crease of the sheets; every caress of the early afternoon light. No facet remains unsanctified. Aziraphale's fingers are enshrining Crowley for everything that he is – nothing more or less – and yet, somewhere along the way, he has turned the demon into a god.
And there is something more, as well. Something on the canvas that can't be seen in reality. It isn't exactly an aura, but there's definitely something there, haloing him; hallowing him. Aziraphale thinks that it is Grace; he is working furiously to capture it before Crowley realises and draws it back in.
After another ten minutes, the demon is fidgeting again.
"I'm almost done, dear," Aziraphale smiles, and this time it is sympathetic.
"Good," whines Crowley.
"You know, I thought you enjoyed being painted? Pride, sloth, a little lust – that's what it's all about, isn't it?" There is the smallest flash of pink as the angel's tongue flicks out in his concentration, and Crowley is heartily glad that his artist is done painting one specific part of his anatomy, which is now moving decidedly impressively in response.
"I do, ang'," hisses Crowley, closing his eyes in sexual frustration. "Just not when there's quite this much lust involved."
Aziraphale tsks fondly. "And here I thought you liked me for my personality."
Crowley laughs at that; fails to think of a witty enough response that satisfies the necessary demonic criteria. Instead he just stares at the angel, eyes languid and heavy-lidded, planning in detail several long and complicated and dextrous ways in which he is going to personally debauch and desecrate and defile and fuck Aziraphale into the next century. Well. Not literally, that is. No need to rush these things.
"There we are." Finally, finally, Aziraphale sits back in self-satisfaction. "I think I've done rather well, if I do say so myself."
"Good, about bloody time," grins Crowley, in one sensuous fluid motion up and wrapped all around him, between him and the canvas. "Let me see, quick, before I ravage you senseless."
Aziraphale does.
There is a warm, contented silence as Crowley meets Crowley, rakes his eyes over his own gloriously naked body.
"I look good," he says appreciatively after a moment. "I've been working out, you know. It was my idea to have a gym aboard this thing. Well. You know. As well as the whole gym idea in general. So… Yeah. Nice work. Stellar job, angel."
Aziraphale beams.
"That really is a masterpiece you've got there, you know. You'd put old Leo to shame. I really would move it off the bed pronto though, if you want to keep it that way."
"Whatever do you mean, my dear?"
"I mean this!"
And with a grin he pounces on Aziraphale, playfully pinning him to the mattress with each wingtip, his hands pulling the angel into a kiss so deep and dizzying that it seems to paralyse his prey where he lies, immobilising him in acute ecstasy. Laughing, it takes Aziraphale a moment to find his senses enough to push him off.
"You silly old serpent! I've got paint all over me, you'll get it everywhere!"
"Mmm, really?" Crowley's eyes widen in delight, no doubt some mischievous scheme hatching in that infernal mind behind them. "So you were using paints… Oh, I see…"
The angel's plump hands are covered in a whole spectrum of colours, all swirled together into one dazzling vortex of contraries, starting with sunrise yellow around the edges of his palm and working its way in to oranges, sepias, palest roses, warm amber, shots of ebony black, the softest lily whites. His fingers are sticky with a liquid gold Crowley never thinks he would have recognised as the colour of his own eyes before now, and the paint sits as thickly as clotted cream on the angel's fingertips, embedded beneath his nails, crusting on his baby-smooth skin.
Crowley doesn't think twice. He brings those fingertips to his mouth and closes his lips around them.
"Crowley!" Aziraphale exclaims, incredulous with revulsion or fascination or arousal or a mix of all three, as Crowley continues to suck at his hands. "Crowley, stop; you'll get –"
"What, lead poisoning?" grins the demon, running his long tongue around his lips for effect. "Your lot haven't taken that one out yet? Or was that mercury?"
"It was uranium, actually, but that's beside the point!"
"Mmm, I can taste you, you know, 'Zira. Through the lead."
"What?"
"You. Mm. Can taste it. Like…" Another lick, and Aziraphale can't help but shudder pleasurably. "Mm, like beeswax. And ink. Bath salts, too. Lavender, or jasmine, or rose or something. You know, those fancy bubbly things that women and gay men are so fond of?"
"My dear, if you are insinuating –"
"That you're a woman? Oh, no. Not at all, ang', not at all…"
"If you are insinuating that I indulge in such hedonistic pleasures –"
"It's called sanitation, Aziraphale, and it works pretty well for most peopl— hey! Hey!"
Crowley tries and fails to dodge out of the way as the angel dives on him with tickling sticky hands, smearing grinning rainbows across the virgin canvas of firmly muscled abdomen, sending spatters of brightness flying through the air, flecking masterpieces on the cream sheets.
"Hey, stop that! Stop that!" Crowley is weak with laughter, fighting to grab the angel's wrists as those fingers shoot up to doom the demon's beloved hair to the same fate as his chest. "You bloody Picasso! You… you stupid –"
Aziraphale laughs most unangelically with glee as he continues his colourful attack, his palms a paintbrush across his lover's cheeks, covering his chin, his nose, his lips. Crowley has manifested his own paints now – his colours beautifully rich, the clarets and purples of wine, inky blues and gleaming emerald greens – and his psychedelic hands slather their warm pastes against glossy feathers as white as marble, shaking with laughter, flailing and missing as often as they find their target.
Aziraphale manages to take a hold of both his opponent's slippery wrists to give them a moment's reprieve, and he pulls his lover in, until there is barely a paint-free inch between them. His eyes are lit with his smile. "What was that about sanitation, my dear?" he teases, playfully brushing his nose against Crowley's peaches-and-cream-smeared own.
Crowley throws his head back and laughs heartily: a full, true, touching laugh, of the kind that heals and strengthens; like vitamin supplements for the soul. "I could offer a quick-witted retort on how I prefer you dirty, Aziraphale, but I hardly imagine it would be in good taste."
"You are most certainly not wrong there," the angel beams, then reels him in.
Crowley tastes of lead, and slick hydrocarbons, and illegal intoxicating chemicals that really shouldn't be there… But beneath all of that he tastes of woodsmoke. He is rich, and potent, and unexpected – always unexpected, every time like the first time – and, above all, he is earthy. He is the most perfect taste to have ever passed – and that will ever pass – the angel's lips. He is perfect.
It is debatable whether there has been a more colourful kiss in history than the kiss being presently shared by Crowley and Aziraphale. Their naked bodies glow with wet oils, clotted lights and smudged darks; their wings are the church windows of children's finger-paintings; like warpaint, their faces are coated with every hue known on Earth. They wrap their arms around each other and pull themselves in as one; roll and roll together amidst the sheets until they are a tangle of sticky, speckled limbs caught in a cocoon of silk the colour of refracted light; until their feathers are bent in all directions and their slick hair clings to their foreheads, and up and down are just synonyms for the same distant destination.
Breathing heavily, glowing and grinning, they reach a halt, Aziraphale straddling the supine demon. His wings pull back, arch over their heads like an eagle's, raise the sheets around them in a fort of muted afternoon. Light shines through the splatters, dappling the both of them with subdued pastels, colours diluted from their true glories. Aziraphale's hands are pressing Crowley's shoulders into the mattress; his thighs, on either side of the demon's waist, contract involuntarily as he stiffens further.
Crowley feels his heart begin to pound; feels his pupils dilate in excitement; feels his lips twitch in anticipation.
There is green dusting the angel's eyelashes, and glistening bronze has dyed one brow. His entire face is aglow with colour. His entire body is a work of art.
The angel lets out a breath: one sweet, hot breath that smells as pure as rain. Then he raises his hips; pushes himself back between Crowley's legs; places a greasy palm on the inside of each thigh.
The demon lets out his own breath.
Aziraphale moves his hands ever so slightly; manifests just a touch more duck-egg blue on his index fingers.
After that, they both forget to breathe.
It was probably a mistake to let the paint dry once their body temperatures fell, but neither of them can say they mind too much. The once-molten colours have melded their bodies together; if Aziraphale thought Crowley was a work of art before, when he was as clean as a fresh sheet of paper, and not crusted against an equally psychedelic angel, then now they are the finest sculpture on Earth. They are quite literally locked together, set solid in their embrace, immovable. They could stay this way for millennia.
There is a quiet, satisfying crinkle as Crowley curls his fingers closed, cracking the shell of paint. He plays with the angel's hair, combing through the stiff and crusted locks.
"You hungry yet?"
Aziraphale smiles; feels the drying paste around his mouth stretch and strain against his skin, not quite cracking. Then he opens his mouth, and it does. "Crowley dear, when are either of us ever hungry, really?"
There is a pause. The hand teasing through his hair drums its fingers thoughtfully across his scalp. After a moment, Crowley tries again.
"You want room service yet?"
Aziraphale smiles again, slowly and sated and contented; a smile that ends up as a massive yawn that splits his mask all the way up his cheeks. He closes his eyes, glowing with happiness, stretching like a cat in the arms of his lover. His true love.
"Oh yes," he says, and he feels oddly disorientated, as though he is losing consciousness again – which surely can't be right, unless the paint fumes really were a concern after all. He decides that he really doesn't care. "Yes, that sounds like a very good idea."
There is another pause, heavy and languid, during which neither makes any effort to disentangle from their position.
"Y'know, we'll probably have to renegotiate our Arrangement," Crowley muses after another moment's wonderful inertia.
Aziraphale raises his brows to himself in thought, then stops as the caking on his forehead tugs uncomfortably at his skin.
"A Rearrangement," he thinks aloud, drowsiness washing over him now like a gentle tide; washing him clean and fresh, scrubbing him spotless against the coarse sand. "That's what it will be."
He feels Crowley's smile against his cheek; feels him plant the softest kiss on his temple; feels the blossom of warmth.
"Sss'a good idea, 'Zira," he says, far away and yet so close. Always so close. "Sss'a wonderful idea."
When Aziraphale wakes up, barely an hour later, in a thatch of feathers and safety and slivered crusted colours, he finds a song on his lips, on the periphery of a dream, retreating ever further the more he tries to draw it back. A voice, singing to him.
In front of him, Crowley is humming to himself as he bisects a salmon skin roll.
Take thou this heart…
"Morning, sleepyhead," Catching sight of him awake, Crowley grins across to him, breaking the spell. His brows quirk in amusement. "You know, if you want me to go easy on you in future, all you have to do is ask."
Aziraphale must admit he is somewhat embarrassed at his apparent lack of stamina. He smiles sheepishly back, shaking the clinging ghosts of the dream away.
Crowley offers a slice of something dark and rich and chocolatey. "Your favourite?"
Ah. Just what he feels like. Beaming, he accepts, miracling himself a little silver fork.
His eyes fall on another Crowley, staring broodingly out at him from his own strokes.
"I see my masterpiece survived," he notes, slicing off the first bite and bringing it to his lips. His eyes widen. Oh Lord above, it tastes like Heaven.
Crowley glances over to himself. "Yeah," he agrees. Then, awkward, "Well, there are a few, er, freckly bits, actually. They look good though," he adds quickly, as Aziraphale half-chokes in alarm. "Seriously, they do. I'd've cleaned it up otherwise. See for yourself, I mean it."
By no means mollified, Aziraphale uses his wings to push himself upright and scrutinises his work with eyes as searching as a hawk's.
"Hm," he says after a moment. The sound is surprised, and pleased.
"See what I mean?" Crowley comes to join him, slithering over on his stomach. "It's like another layer, somehow. Like reality over the fantasy."
Aziraphale shoots him a little smile. "That's rather poetic of you, dear," he says, amused. He looks back to the other Crowley again, mesmerised by this new juxtaposition of purpose and accident, perfection and imperfection, order and chaos. Side by side, each makes the other all the more beautiful.
Crowley shrugs. Then, "Speaking of unwanted speckles of paint, would you mind if I…?" he vaguely indicates the rainbows that are their bodies.
"Oh not at all, by all means," the angel says. It can be rather tiring being a masterpiece in yourself, especially when doing so involves quite so much solidified paint.
Crowley snaps his fingers. In an instant the room is clean: no more multicoloured flakes, no more feathers, no more smeared sheets. Their bodies become blank canvases once more, and being monochromatic has never felt so good. The only remaining token is in the other Crowley: the one who is splashed with the finest filigree of glistening threads; gossamer webs of every hue, tangled together in speckles and sprinkles, so slender and delicate and tentative. Every dash of colour knows its place; every curve of the spectrum has a home.
There's probably some symbolism to this, Aziraphale thinks. That their love makes him even more perfect, or something equally maudlin. Whatever the reason, Aziraphale can't stop staring at it. At him.
He looks like an angel.
Crowley is dissecting the slice of devil's food cake that Aziraphale is pretty sure was his own. The demon works chocolate-orange frosting between his fingers, pulling it away from the moist body beneath, rolling its sticky goodness into spheres. Aziraphale finds himself staring at this Crowley, the real one right in front of him. Again with the maudlin thoughts, but this version is somehow even more perfect.
Aziraphale watches those fingers move; watches the tendons pull tight and then release across the back of his hand; watches the precise, forceful movement of each attack of fingertips. He finds himself thinking about something from long ago; something that he has always wanted to ask. He wonders how to broach the subject. With subtlety?
"I never knew you in Heaven," he murmurs.
Subtlety has never been a speciality of his.
Neither of them will remember to give the portrait any more thought over Titanic's remaining life under the sun. During the sinking, as the room gradually tilts and tilts – as the bed slides to the opposite wall, and the small collection of classics Aziraphale had manifested for Crowley topple from their shelf and fall open, their immaculate yellowing pages crumpling and creasing; as lamps crash and vases shatter and paintings fly off walls – Aziraphale's masterpiece will also fall. Glass shards will tear its corners; a gash will slice through its centre; the slipping desk will crush a side of its gilded frame.
But it will be the Atlantic that is its ultimate undoing. The rising water will lap around its broken frame, siphoning away the colours – siphoning them so like blood from a million pinpricked wounds, their colours cloud the liquid destruction consuming it. It will inundate the canvas, overpower it, leach out every stroke and every speckle, dilute every reach of the rainbow spectrum in the water until it is nothingness: colourlessness, blankness. The thickest paints will cling fast, the rest will run and float and die; drown. The besieging Atlantic will be pitiless, and emotionless, and will make no exceptions – even for the work of an angel.
Aziraphale will remember the painting. Aziraphale will spend many nights, his tears a mask half-blinding, trying to recreate its lost perfection; will sob and stab with his brush, and rip each flawed attempt into a thousand little shreds of broken-hearted confetti.
As for Crowley, perhaps one day he will remember. Perhaps one day he will chance across one of his angelic associate's unfinished masterpieces, and he will remember. Perhaps they will find the bleached remains of the original in the wreck, his own face ghostlike, drained and drowned – denuded – and he will remember. Perhaps he will.
Then again, perhaps Crowley will never remember. Perhaps the lost masterpiece – the only physical evidence of that one day of purpose and perfection and order – will remain undiscovered, undisclosed, in the black stillness of the Atlantic abyss, two thousand fathoms below.
Then again, perhaps one day, far in the future, when 1912 is but a distant memory, a relic of an era long since passed – a century long since lost – perhaps the occasion will rise when another portrait can replace its lost original.
Perhaps, one day, under the new sun of a new century, the Rearrangement shall recommence.
(1) Which is fair enough, really.