Chapter Text
Crowley dreams of eyes. They’re everywhere. He can’t escape them.
They flutter through the air wherever his feet carry him. They swim in the same streams he crosses and watch him from the tree tops when he stumbles through the woods. They’re all unique and yet, they’re exactly the same.
They glisten in purple and red and green and yellow, reflecting light that’s at once coming from everywhere and nowhere at all. They shine bright but do nothing to illuminate the darkness that lurks at the corners, threatening to seep into Crowley’s vision. Seemingly at random, they appear and disappear again in a matter of fractured seconds, they’re solid and ethereal at the same time. Crowley tries to reach out and feel them for himself, understand what they are, what they do, why they’re here, but somehow his arms are never long enough and his hands clench around nothing but cold fear and hot flashes of anticipation. They’re all just so out of his reach, it’s frustrating.
Some of the eyes stare, unblinkingly. They seem to be looking right through him, observing either what’s behind him or what lies within his soul. Crowley doesn’t know which thought makes him more squeamish. He doesn’t dare turn around to check if there’s something behind his back, he doesn’t know why, but a voice is telling him not to let the eyes out of his sight. If he weren’t so terrified, he’d be scoffing at the irony. Other eyes are crying tears that sparkle like diamonds when they cling to their lashes and the biggest ones drip jet black blood all over the ground every time they blink.
He knows it’s blood because when he wakes up, his tongue lies metal-heavy in his mouth. The taste doesn’t leave him for days afterwards.
The images don’t leave his mind either. He carries them with him, takes them to school and back home again, tugs them along when he’s searching for an empty spot on the bus, makes sure not to leave them behind when he stops by Madame Tracy’s to pick up dinner for himself and his mum. They follow him through the park when he’s throwing frozen peas at unsuspecting ducks (he recently learned that feeding them bread leads to malnutrition), look over his shoulder when he’s doing homework at Anathema’s place, whisper in his ears as he’s watering the plants in the living room, creep along the walls when he’s wasting time in front of the tv.
He doesn’t tell anyone.
What difference would it make? Nobody listens, nobody ever does. They hear what he says, the clever careful cunning tales he spins without any effort whatsoever, the words that spill from between his lips like water out of a marble fountain, but nobody. ever. listens. They all grin and laugh when they think he expects them to, they slap his shoulders in gestures that mean anything from thank you Tony to you’re a good kid Anthony, really to that’s a great story mate, haha, ya comin’ to Ally’s on Friday? and they don’t listen to what’s underneath. Nobody ever has. He starts to suspect that nobody ever will.
He’s not lonely. That’s not it, at all. His friends are ever-present, he knows they all adore him, can’t get enough of his company. Crowley is meticulous when it comes to crafting the image of himself that everyone gets to see. Whether it’s his clothes, the way his eyes crinkle when he grins, the food he orders when others are around, the colour of the pens he takes to school, there’s not a single little thing he leaves to chance. He guesses there’s a word for it, control freak, and he thinks to himself that he doesn’t even mind. He’d agree, control is as important to him as breathing air is necessary and he doesn’t find anything shameful in that. He likes the company of others as well. At least that’s what he tends to tell himself. Being sociable comes easy to him. Actually enjoying the notion of being sociable? Not so much.
After a while, the dreams get bigger, more elaborate. They’re so rich and full of details now, almost a fleshed-out reality of their own. But it’s a cruel one. It’s filled with eldritch creatures, with ripped-apart tentacles and wings drenched in blood, with tears in the very fabric of the universe, with decisions that are never to be made by any human being and questions that make dream-Crowley’s ears bleed when the first syllable is spoken; with the wails of damned souls and the laughter of the devil who’s torturing them. And torturing Crowley. He doesn’t know which sins he’s committed, he’s pretty sure he’s been good all his life – at least relatively speaking – but still, the devil has it out for him especially. After all, this has to be satanic punishment, doesn’t it?
He wakes up screaming every other night. His mother worries, of course she does, but she cannot understand what’s going on. Crowley’s not sure he himself can, so he doesn’t try to make her. He wouldn’t even know where to start.
It’s just…nightmares, he says instead. Completely normal for my age. I looked it up. She smiles one of those tired smiles of hers, nods, and goes back to her bed. It’s a tragedy playing out right in front of his eyes. And it’s getting ever so much closer to the final act. He can feel that there isn’t much time left for her. It’s running out faster than the sand through the plastic hourglass he still uses to make sure he brushes his teeth long enough.
There’s no need to burden her with this. She knows she’s leaving soon and it kills her even more, the idea of leaving him behind. All on his own in a world that hasn’t shifted to make space for him yet. He thinks, maybe it never will. Maybe I don’t belong.
But he does, he knows he does. There’s just a feeling in his bones, a pulling downwards, down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down down right to the center of the earth or even further below. It’s something that keeps him grounded, literally, but it also makes him scared to look up, at the sky. It will be stained with blood soon. Somehow, he just knows.
He can see the war up there. Above the earth where real life happens, where humans die and suffer and lie and steal and rape and murder and fight and drink and watch and laugh and love. Up in the sky, on top of the clouds, they just carry out their petty battles with no regards to life itself, to the beauty of free will, to the marvel that is knowing you are infinite and mortal at the same time, the knowledge that you can only walk along one single path in your whole entire life but that path, that glorious handsome brilliant path has the potential to lead you anywhere. Everywhere. Crowley has to sit down when he starts to think about it, or the world will never stop spinning around his head.
The night his mum passes, Crowley feels actual, real, physical pain in his dream. Something is tearing his body apart from the inside while the eyes are hovering atop his head, watching, always watching him, like they’re trying to understand him in return.
He wakes up, sweat-drenched, his heart pounding in his throat, fingernails straight on their way to destroying his bedsheets and it’s- just gone. His stomach is fine. No wounds, no blood, just the phantom feeling of terror that he knows he’ll never be able to shake off again. He rubs at his eyes until they’re itching like crazy, then he falls back asleep again and the dream continues right where he’d been pulled out of it, gory and unforgiving. His throat is too sore to scream anymore.
No one would hear it anyway.