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Crowley floats back to awareness gradually. No sudden rush of waking, no scream half-lodged in his throat at a memory of fire and paper ash and where are you, I can't find you — just a gentle return of consciousness. It's so slow that his dozing mind can't be sure what sensations are real and what's just a dream. There is no concern in this, though. It's actually very pleasant.
He seems to be in his bed, coiled on his side. Warm and safe beneath the covers. His pillows have apparently been abandoned at some point; his right hand curls beneath his cheek, relaxed and easy. If he were to twitch his fingers, it might stir him faster, but he doesn't.
Warmth near his face, his forehead and nose lightly pressed against something. His knees and shins tangled in it through the blankets. Under his arm, too — his left arm is crooked outward, uncovered, draped over something. It's soft. It's so soft that this takes over what there are of his thoughts, and he spins off for an unknown time into a dream where he is drifting on a cloud. The cloud is made of shining white feathers. He tries to gather it all up into his arms, the cloud, and can't, because there is too much of it. But he is still happy to keep trying.
The dream slips away, possibly because of a tiny sound somewhere over Crowley's head. He's not awake yet, but not quite asleep either. The hand under his cheek is still. The other hand, though, has begun to register the surface it's gently cupped against, and it does twitch, just a bit. Worn fabric under his loose fingers, under his resting palm. A gentle convex curve that gives ever so slightly under the weight of his touch. It moves, almost imperceptibly, in a quiet and unceasing rhythm. Up, down. Almost as slow as Crowley's half-sleeping breath. He lets the gentle motion lull him down again for a while.
The tiny sound is repeated above him. A whisper of paper.
There is nothing in any of this to suggest a problem, and yet a suddenly alert quadrant of Crowley's mind is sending up a flare. It's telling him no, telling him not this, you can't have this, it's not for you. It's screaming too fast too fast too fast.
He feels himself dragged closer to the surface, now, and he makes a sleepy noise of protest. His limbs constrict, the start of a stretch which promises to be extremely satisfying. His arm around the soft warm something squeezes, hand more firmly curving around the yielding surface.
The slow rhythm stops for an instant. And then there is a chuckle, one he can hear, yes, but one he feels too. It vibrates through the softness beneath his arm, tingles against his fingers.
He is suddenly not sleepy at all, and it's the signal-flare part of his brain in charge, and he is frozen far too solidly to ever complete his stretch.
Over his head, the sound of a book closing. A familiar voice, saying his name.
Crowley is completely, miserably awake now, so he knows that his body is curled up in a near-fetal position beneath the covers, next to Aziraphale's body, which sits on top of them. His bony knees knock against the angel's legs from the other side of his fabric cocoon. His face has come to rest against the angel's hip. His left arm is out, flung wide, and it is wrapped around the angel's stomach like a hungry serpent (and Crowley knows quite a bit about the hunger of serpents).
Crowley's sleeping hand cannot curve itself around all of that soft expanse, not nearly, because there is too much of it. But that hasn't stopped it from trying.
The warning flare has set something in him on fire, and he burns, now. Burns in shame and fear and the knowledge of the betrayal his sleeping self has committed. This is no slight brush of hands when they pass a bottle back and forth. It's no handshake, no quick clasp of a shoulder. Crowley's arm lies across the wondrous swell of Aziraphale's middle like a lover's, and he can't imagine how he can possibly back-pedal from that.
Aziraphale shifts beside him, and Crowley holds his breath, eyes still squeezed shut — but then there's only the quiet thump of a book being set down on a table, and Aziraphale shifting back again. And Crowley has been ice and fire and now is ice again, frozen again, because there is a hand on his head. Stroking through his hair. Aziraphale is stroking his hair.
Something new is trying to make itself heard in his brain, but there's not even enough bandwidth for the panicked signal flare, let alone anything else.
"Crowley," Aziraphale says again, in a voice that should be shocked or offended or angry but isn't. "Did you sleep well, dear?"
Crowley croaks some kind of response.
"No nightmares?"
Nightmares. The shop. The fire, the ash, the emptiness of no Aziraphale, anywhere. No. There had been none of those, anyway. He shakes his head against the fabric covering Aziraphale's hip.
"Good," Aziraphale murmurs, and Crowley shivers helplessly at the way the angel's fingers move through his hair. "Good."
He's been awake for all of thirty seconds, and already the world is so strange and terrifying that he thinks he'd be better off going back to sleep. For a decade, maybe. Or three. Long enough that Aziraphale will maybe forgive him for the mortifying crime of actually cuddling him.
too fast too fast too fast, screams the panicked voice in his head.
— hold on — mutters the new voice. It really seems like that voice has something to say, something Crowley might be interested in hearing. It's really hard to pay attention to past all the panic and mortification and Aziraphale-petting-his-hair, though.
The problem of what to pay attention to is solved rather neatly a moment later, because every thought is blasted out of Crowley's head when his hand is covered by Aziraphale's.
His hand, Crowley's hand, on Aziraphale's belly. Covered by Aziraphale's hand. The one not still stroking Crowley's hair, because that hasn't stopped, no.
"Ready to get up, love?"
Love. The word stabs straight through Crowley's heart, but it also gets something going in his brain again. The new mental voice, the one that isn't a panicked screaming mess, is telling him to quit being a bloody idiot already.
"Mnuh," Crowley replies, because he feels as though he should at least say something.
The hand in his hair gives a brief ruffle before resuming its gentle stroking. "I was hoping for an actual answer."
Crowley decides he might as well get it over with, whatever's going to happen now. So he pulls his arm away from Aziraphale (and it's cold, so cold, away from all that yielding warmth), and he rolls over on his back under the covers (away from the hand in his hair, which is another tragic loss), and he opens his eyes.
Aziraphale sits on the bed beside him, coat and shoes off but otherwise fully clothed. There is a closed book on the table beside him, and the ridiculous reading glasses he doesn't need but still wears and which Crowley never, ever pokes fun at him for, because Aziraphale looks adorable when he wears those glasses, and Crowley never wants to give him a reason to stop.
Of course, Aziraphale also looks adorable in other circumstances. Such as when he's beaming down at Crowley, round face so aglow with happiness that Crowley half-expects it to singe him with its light. For example.
"Angel," Crowley notes. There is something familiar about this, about Aziraphale sitting on his bed (on his bed!), beside him, smiling down on him.
Oh. Oh, that's right. In all the perfectly reasonable panic, he'd completely forgotten that —
The bit of his brain which has been trying to get his attention for the last minute throws its hands up in frustrated triumph. Finally, you numpty.
Crowley, at long last, gets in that stretch, arms and legs stabbing out in random directions, groaning appreciatively as the last of his tension drains away. Then he slithers over to Aziraphale and throws both arms around that great soft cuddle-worthy waist, closing his eyes and wriggling his face against the rounded surface until he's comfortably pillowed. "Angel," he says again, a drawn-out sigh that leaves his mouth curled up when it's done.
This is the third morning he's woken up like this, now. Well, not the panic, the sudden forgetting of a certain long-overdue conversation that had finally happened a few weeks back. But the plump angel on his bed, sitting up with him all night to shield him from bad dreams — yes, that is something he is finding it absolutely fantastic to start to get used to. He doesn't need it every night, but there are evenings when some memories still seem too close. When the bookshop smells a little too much like phantom smoke. And when that happens, Crowley has only to ask, and then his protector is at his side, flipping silently through some decrepit tome or other, and just being there. Just being Aziraphale.
Crowley raises his head long enough to smack a kiss against the rise of Aziraphale's belly, lips firm against the ratty old waistcoat. "Little while longer, angel. ‘M comfy."
Aziraphale doesn't say anything, but he laughs, quietly, as Crowley lies back down again. And his tender fingers smooth through Crowley's hair, lulling Crowley, warm and loved, back to sleep.