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The timing could not be worse. Just as Aziraphale was really, truly accepting that they didn't have opposing sides, that they could be their own side against everything else, just as Crowley was about to get something he'd wanted for as long as he could remember, he'd had his first dream. Crowley was furious.
The world hadn't ended one August afternoon, much to the disappointment of Heaven and Hell and the delight of everyone else. This had lead to Crowley and Aziraphale having to reconcile their place in this new order. What had started as a tender-hearted conversation on a bench in Oxfordshire had become a sweetly intimate bus ride when Aziraphale had reached for Crowley's hand and held on to it all the way back to London. Crowley had spent most of the journey forgetting how to breathe and trying not to give Aziraphale any reason to let go. They had danced around saying anything concrete, but Crowley would take "I care very deeply for you" over "You go to fast for me" any day of the week. Especially if he got to feel Aziraphale's thumb stroking the side of his finger at the same time. That first night had been full of talk, apologies, half-spoken confessions, and desperate embraces in the face of their imminent destruction. Around 4 am, Aziraphale had remembered the prophecy and suggested the body-swap. Crowley had nearly kissed him then, nearly.
So, they had gone to their trials in each others place, wearing the appearances like costumes. Naturally, the Ritz followed for a celebration and Crowley's desperate attempt to keep Aziraphale from leaving him just yet. The invitation to continue the celebration into the evening surprised Crowley far more than it had Aziraphale. Back at Crowley's flat, they had been too weary from the trials of the past two days to dance around what was proper or acceptable and collapsed onto the only bed available. Crowley had kissed Aziraphale's forehead and promptly passed out.
Aziraphale was still asleep, snuffling softly into a pillow. Cursing his abominable luck, Crowley slipped out of bed and stalked to the kitchen to make himself the angriest cup of coffee he'd ever tasted.
Clever, inventive humans had worked out the mechanics of soul dreams a long time ago. A couple destined to be soulmates would share vivid dreams every time that they were both asleep, often seeing each other or clues for locating their soulmate. For six thousand years, he had watched humans find their soulmates and fall into a love so deep that it transcended the earthly plane.
There had been centuries, millennia even, where Crowley would have done anything to have dreams and experienced the soul-bond that it signified. When humanity had first discovered that dreams were always shared with a soulmate, Crowley had been delighted. The idea of having a connection with someone that reached deep into your subconscious mind and left its mark; that appealed to Crowley in a way that few other things ever would.
Thus began Crowley's love/hate relationship with sleep.
Undeterred by the fact that no other demon had ever found a soulmate, Crowley chose to believe that he was different. Perhaps demons and angels would find each other if only they slept and allowed themselves the chance to dream. Not needing to sleep seemed a weak excuse to Crowley and he had put a considerable amount of effort into trying to convince the other demons to at least give it a go. Crowley was caught up in the romance it represented and it hurt him.
Not everyone would find their soulmate or experience a romantic attraction upon meeting them. Some soulmates were best friends, closer than siblings. Some collaborated on remarkable works of art, literature, and music, using their soul bond to explore themes beyond a single souls comprehension. Crowley devoured anything created by soul-bonded couples, romantic or platonic. They were the only books he read, the music he played, the exhibitions he visited. So deep was his desire to experience the reciprocal love and understanding of a bond that he immersed himself in the culture of it.
But Crowley never dreamed.
He loved, oh he loved fiercely, more than he would have thought possible before coming to earth. Over his many years, Crowley had loved humanity and individual humans, indescribable moments of beauty, the child Warlock, one particularly affectionate lamb-turned-pet in the middle ages, and Aziraphale. Of course, Aziraphale. Always Aziraphale.
In truth, there was only one being in all of Creation who Crowley really hoped would be his soul mate, when he allowed himself to think about it in more specific terms. Crowley couldn't imagine another soul better suited to his than Aziraphale. If his soulmate was some other being, the bond would surely overwhelm him completely. Regardless, the idea of an angel and a demon being soulmates wasn't just ridiculous, it was blasphemy. At some point over the millennia, he had come to terms with the fact that Aziraphale had been on earth for as long as Crowley and yet they had never shared a dream.
Crowley kept these two duelling parts of his heart hidden from each other and the world at large. Even as he kept himself open and hoping for a sign from a soulmate, a dreamer he could hunt down, he nurtured and protected his love for Aziraphale, keeping him safe and close by. What he would actually do if a soul-bond made itself known and he had to choose between a soulmate and Aziraphale was a topic that he studiously avoided thinking about. Crowley figured that for as long as he didn't dream, it didn't matter. And if the situation changed, Crowley hoped that his heart would know the right thing to do. What else could he do?
Taking a large swallow of scalding coffee, Crowley felt the weight of every time he chose to ignore this duality of his nature. The unthinkable had happened and somewhere out in the world, Crowley's soulmate was waking up with the knowledge that he existed. Where had this soulmate been during Crowley's century-long sleep? He'd missed practically the whole of the 19th Century in what he considered his last-ditch attempt to dream his soul's dreams. That was the last time that Crowley had slept with a purpose; the habit was harder to break and, really, he’d come to enjoy the ritual and peace of going to bed. When he woke up these days, it was well-rested and pointedly without a tinge of melancholy.
The dregs of his coffee were growing cold. Crowley dashed them into the sink and turned on the tap to rinse his mug. The crash of water hitting steel and ceramic threw him back into a memory he wasn’t ready to face.
The wind whipped at his hair and clothes, salt spray stung his eyes as it flung itself at the sides of his boat. The sky felt heavy and coloured like a bruise, Crowley shivered and wrapped his arms around himself. Waves rocked his boat, threatening to either dash him against the sheer cliff face or sweep him out into the vast unknown ocean, it’s mood as changeable as the wind. Crowley looked for oars, a motor, even an anchor in his small wooden boat. Anything that might help him at least stabilise his situation. The taste of sea-salt coated his lips, seeping into his mouth and drying his tongue. The horizon stretched into oblivion, unmarked by other vessels. There was only the sea and the featureless cliff. Crowley had stared up, searching for the top of the cliffs, wishing perhaps for a lighthouse, a building, hope. Far, far above him, almost beyond the limits of vision, Crowley saw them; a figure, pale and indistinct. He opened his mouth to call out but the wind stole his voice away.
It hardly seemed like the beginning of a romance for the ages. Crowley didn’t know what to make of his dream at all. Whatever clue was he supposed to glean from it, it seemed beyond his comprehension. A stirring from the other room snapped him back to the present. Aziraphale was in his bed, waking up alone. Half hating himself for being so prepared for Aziraphale’s stay, Crowley pulled a teapot from a cupboard and started heating water. Of course, he had Aziraphale’s favourite morning tea blend to hand, as well as a full tea service set just in case. A few minutes later, Crowley entered the bedroom with a well-laden tray. He set it down on the side table nearest Aziraphale and slithered onto the bed to gently wake him.
Aziraphale turned his head at the gentlest touch of Crowley’s hand on his arm.
“Good morning Crowley. I hope this wasn’t too much of an imposition?” His smile went a long way to making Crowley forget his worries.
“Course not. It’s fine. I made you tea.” Crowley pointed at the tray.
An angelic gasp of delight sent a warm feeling deep into Crowley’s core, he would make fussy tea for a fussy angel every morning until the sun burned out if he got to hear that sound again. He watched Aziraphale pour tea and milk into a teacup, saw his hand hesitate over the sugar bowl, and revelled in the musical chimes of teaspoon against fine china. With his heart fairly screaming, Crowley realised that if Aziraphale would have him, he wouldn’t worry about his soulmate ever again.
Screwing up his courage into a ball of pent-up need, Crowley took his chance as soon as Aziraphale put the empty teacup back on its saucer.
“Can I, uh…” His words failed and actions took over.
Crowley took Aziraphale’s face in his hands and kissed him. He tasted of tea, milk and tannins, a taste as English as Aziraphale appeared; his tongue still hot from it when Crowley dared to push past lips and teeth.
Aziraphale froze, thawed, and put his hands firmly on Crowley’s chest and pushed away.
“No. No, I’m sorry. This was a mistake. Thank you for the tea.”
Aziraphale leapt out of the bed as if it was on fire and scrambled to pull on the clothes he’d bothered to remove the night before.
“Angel, wait. Please. Don’t go. I’m sorry.” Crowley pleaded, following Aziraphale to the door of his flat.
The door closed in his face, only partially muffling the hurried footsteps running away from him.
Idiot.
Idiot Crowley.
He pressed his back into the cool surface of the door and slid down, his legs buckling in a barely controlled collapse. He wanted too much, too quickly. Always going too fast and ignoring the signs. Regret had claws and teeth and it was making itself known in the torn-up shreds of Crowley’s heart. His hands became fists and pressed into the hollows of his eyes, if this hadn’t been the right moment, if this hadn’t been the point that they had been waiting for then perhaps it was never coming.
The same certainty that had chosen Aziraphale shifted its focus to the figure in the dream, the soulmate he had waited for. This was always the problem with free will, the ability to make the wrong decision, the wrong choice at the right time. Crowley had done that often enough to recognise the iron grip of the vice around his chest. He unfurled himself upwards, curving out like a full-bellied sail full of wind and purpose.
This was a familiar practice, now. Crowley knew the ins and outs of every soulmate matching service, website and app that existed. He knew the count of hours he had spent on each one; half hope and half agony. Seeing humanity reaching out, finding their other halves, seeking that person who knew them as well as they knew themselves. He had personally orchestrated the downfall of several charlatan operations that had preyed upon the desperate and gullible. The prepared argument he had in defence of that action was about selfishness, about his own want, deflecting from the idea that he was protecting the dreamers. To date, no-one had asked for an explanation.
Previously, Crowley had looked for any other mention of those who didn’t dream. He had searched and scoured the literature, the internet forums, he had attended the lectures, the public debates, the philosophical meanderings between learned minds in a tavern and deep in their cups. He had asked his questions still, what did it mean? Could such a person exist? Was happiness out of reach? Hypothetically, of course, always a clinical detachment to a purely scholarly conundrum. Now he had a different purpose.
One by one, Crowley logged in to accounts across platforms. He wrote his descriptive recollections of the dream; the feel of the chill wind, the taste of the salt-spray sea, the helplessness at the base of a featureless cliff face and that smallest glimmer of hope at the sight of the pale figure high above him. No detail seemed too small to mention, just in case. With painstaking care, he categorised the dream to aid searchers. Once he had laid himself bare for the finding, only then did Crowley dare to look.
Filter the search results; the window of time, a first dream, the ocean, cliffs, a storm, a boat. Apply.
No entries match your specifications, try expanding your search criteria.
He did. Again and again, until he’d been given a list of every entry from the past 6 hours. They numbered in the thousands, these voices crying out for notice, seeking their validation, their comfort. The algorithm is smart enough to hide his own submission. He read them all. Then he refreshed and read them all again. Once more, for luck. Nothing. His soulmate wasn’t looking for him here.
The double hit of rejection tasted bitter and hung heavy in his stomach. The last lingering memory of Aziraphale’s lips disappeared under a tsunami of remorse and isolation. Wine, then. A bottle appeared, uncorked, on the desk. Crowley swigged from its open neck, rivulets of red escaped from the corners of his mouth and ran courses down his throat like open veins. Throughout it all, his phone refused to ring no matter how hard he wished.
The feeling of being so utterly alone and unwanted had never before been this palpable, not even in the deepest and darkest moments of Crowley’s self-loathing had he felt this lost and adrift. He drank until the bottle was empty, then another, and a third. Perhaps, he hoped, perhaps wine-drunk and unconscious was dream-proof.
Greasy green-grey water rolled under the little boat, tossing it between wave peaks as a cat might toy with a mouse. Crowley knelt on the wooden planking of the bottom boards and gripped the gunwale, squeezing hard enough to leave the impression of fingerprints. The boat was empty again, no oars, sail, not even rowlocks for the missing oars to rest in. The cliffs were further away than they had been, no longer looming over him. The faintest pinprick of light at the top of the cliff seemed to call to him. Crowley waved his arms in exaggerated arcs.
“Hello! I see you! I want to come to you!”
The wind didn’t snatch his voice this time, it didn’t need to. The distance was too great. If the figure even saw him, Crowley didn’t see any reaction.
Slumped over his desk, cheek pressed to the sleek lid of a laptop that definitely considered itself too good to be used as a pillow, Crowley slowly regained his senses. The taste of last night’s bad decision on his tongue and the familiar pit of self-loathing were the first to make themselves known. A second dream, so soon after the first. Six thousand years of nothing and now two dreams in two nights. Crowley would have laughed if he wasn’t so hollow from it. He dragged himself up from his desk, threw himself into the little-used bathroom and turned on the shower. With a thought, his clothes vanished and probably reappeared in a wardrobe across the flat. The water was hotter than he preferred, all the better for burning out his unwanted thoughts, scalding away a bond he’d given up on, distracting him from the emotional torment that he couldn’t purge in any other way. He stood under the torrent and stopped breathing, immersing himself in the stream as much as possible so that his thoughts might be replaced with the roaring of water in his ears, the hellhot pressure on his skin, and the darkness behind his eyelids. Tipping his head back, Crowley opened his mouth and became a gargoyle with water filling and foaming out of his maw. Memories of wine, Aziraphale, and coffee were washed down the drain. He felt better, not good, but better than he had. Thoughts of a rickety rowboat were banished to a locked off part of his mind. Of the many things that Crowley excelled at, compartmentalising has always been top of the list.
Another day passed with a silent phone and an ill-tempered itch in Crowley’s hands and feet. Pick up the phone.
Get in the car.
Go to him yourself.
Fix what you broke.
He doesn’t move, the itches nothing more than an ignored irritation on top of a head accustomed to being full of worries. More internet searches. Refresh. Refresh. No results match your query. A new search, a new website, a new app downloaded. A heart poured into a search bar.
I just had my first dream and I’m scared.
I kissed my best friend and fucked everything up.
My dreams unsettle me.
Is it normal to be scared in dreams.
Why isn’t my soulmate looking for me?
Crowley felt like a teenager trying to learn about a strange new world of body hair and wet dreams. There are no satisfactory answers to be found for a demon experiencing something that has never occurred before.
The laptop lid was slammed down, a sharp crash in the previous silence. Crowley threw himself against the back of his ridiculous throne, slouching and sulking. His usual response to a mood this dark was to sleep through it, now even that escape had been taken from him. Insult was added to injury in spades.
Six strides had Crowley surrounded by his trembling, verdant flatmates. The mister was a familiar weight in his hand, grounding and known. He spritzed the leaves around him, checking soil moisture as he went. An inspection held a certain routine, a pattern that he could follow and fall into without overthinking. The ficus, the spider plant, the aspidistra, they shivered but passed muster. Regardless, Crowley growled at them for good measure. There were tiny white blossoms along a sharp stem of the snake plant, petals curled delicately back on themselves. The snake plant, Saint George’s sword, Viper’s bowstring hemp, Mother-in-law’s tongue, so many evocative names for one underwhelming little plant. Humans were so eager to find meaning in anything, symbolism in basic shapes, protection in a native plant. Crowley envied their ability to imagine the world into a form that made any kind of sense. He was stuck in a world that hated him and sought only to punish his existence. It was too late to consider going back to Hell as well, where at least the misery was predictable.
The itch in his hands worsened. Crowley found himself back at his desk, pointedly ignoring his silent phone and digging around in the drawer for paper and a pen. Just as he expected to, Crowley found a pad of cream paper, heavy with cotton fibres, and an expensive-looking pen that he didn’t remember buying but was filled with a rich blue ink anyway.
Writing is easy, he’d heard, you just sit at a typewriter and bleed.
Aziraphale, he wrote, I’m sorry. I know I go too fast, I can’t ever seem to stop myself when it comes to you. Don’t let me lose you over this. Tell me the rules and I can follow them, set the speed limit, please, and I won’t be a bother. You are too precious a friend to lose after all these years, my only friend, my best friend. Don’t leave me alone in a world without you. What was the point of saving the world if you aren’t in mine?
The words flowed far easier than he’d expected. He poured his heart out onto the paper, filling page after page only to crumple them up and incinerate them with a thought. The words came but they were too personal, too revealing, too needy. He’d already fucked this up by being too much, he needed to rein himself in and stem the flow of his love before it overwhelmed them both beyond repair. The thought that he was already too late was banished as quickly as it appeared. One last fresh page, all the forbidden thoughts had been purged and Crowley knew what he needed to say. The pen danced across the page, carefully chosen words cut out of Crowley’s emotional flood to express a more muted version of the love he felt. The flow from heart to limb to pen tempered by an iron will fixed on the sole purpose of coaxing Aziraphale back.
The letter was finished and sealed in an envelope, a name scrawled across the front in a script that hasn’t been seen on Earth in millennia, there can be no mistaking who the letter is from. With a flick of his wrist, Crowley sent the letter the short distance to a Soho bookshop where it came to rest on the pages of an open book beside an angel wing mug. Already feeling the desire to recall the letter and shred it before burning the shreds and eating the ashes, Crowley does the only thing he knows how to do when avoiding his worst urges. He goes to bed.
Again, the boat and the sickly sea. The sky was closer than it had any right to be. Flashes of lightning far off over the ocean. It was darker than it’s been before, between the strikes. The cliffs were closer too, back to looming ominously. Crowley can’t see the top, his neck ached from trying. The little rowboat smacked into the rock face with the splintering crunch of fractured wood. Water seeped in and swamped Crowley’s feet. The cliff wasn’t so smooth this close up. Crowley waited, timing the push of the waves so that when he jumped for the cliff, the boat was pressed into the rock. His fingertips screamed pain against the unforgiving stone, his feet scrabbled to find purchase as waves crashed up at him. The climb was exhausting and dangerous, his heart was in his throat choking him of breath. The top was getting closer, slowly but it was closer. When he allowed himself to look up, Crowley could see the frayed edge of white fabric, pulled every which way by the wind. But then he fell, plucked from the cliff by an invisible hand and thrown to the depths.
Crowley awoke before his dreamself hit the water, his breath urgent and thin all the same. Cursing to himself, he scrubbed his face with his hands as if he could erase the dream. Were all soul dreams this dark? Did everyone have to fight this hard to find their connection? Crowley knew the answers, there was so little that he didn’t know about the theory of soul bonds. The only thing he didn’t know was how he fit into the theory. He threw an arm across his face as if he could hide from the world and all the repercussions of the past few days with one simple gesture.
The phone on his desk rang, summoning him out of bed. He rushed for it, stumbling over bedsheets in his haste, but the caller lost patience before he reached it, even before the answering machine kicked in. Sullen, Crowley sank into his chair without bothering to change out of his pyjamas. Back to the internet, then. Another carefully written entry, another fruitless search for the other half of his dream. He went back days, reading entries from before the failed apocalypse, even though he knew it would change nothing. The dreams had to be simultaneous, both dreamers asleep and present in the dreamscape together.
This torture was going to kill him one way or another. Aziraphale was still silent although, surely, he must have seen Crowley’s letter by now. And his dream soulmate, whoever that might be, wasn’t looking for him, leaving no clues to their identity, their location. He was unwanted by everyone. No wonder his soul dreams were so bleak.
Casting one last wide net into the metaphorical sea of search results before calling it a day, Crowley read all the new entries that had been posted in the past hour. They were easy to discredit, the scenarios were so far removed from the setting of his dreams. He had been about to close the laptop and crawl into a bottle of expensive whisky when a notification flashed up on the screen. A private message had been sent in response to his latest dream entry.
Hello! I think we might be a soul match! The past few nights I have had the same dream: I am stood at the top of a cliff wearing an old fashioned, black dress. The sun is setting and I can see a ship out to sea, sailing away from me. I get the feeling that my soulmate was on the ship but is now heading towards me. It’s all very dramatic! Like something out of Poldark or a Catherine Cookson novel, I guess. I’m in South Wales, near Swansea, if you’d like to meet. Kate.
Crowley read the message at least five times, taking it apart word by word and tasting each one. He was sure he’d seen the edge of white clothing, and he didn’t think that his dreams had been against a sunset. There was no larger ship further out to sea, but perhaps her perspective had been different? It was possible that she was seeing things that weren’t visible from his position in the rowboat. He sent a reply asking when she might be free to meet, unsuccessfully fighting the faint spark of hope that had ignited in his chest. He was too excited to sleep after this revelation, patience had never been a strength he considered himself to possess so when he got the response that Kate was free to meet for lunch the next day, he’d barely confirmed the time and place before picking up his keys and heading out of the flat.
Of course, he was several hours early for lunch. Nearly eleven hours early, if he was precise about it, it being a little after 1 am when he arrived on the peninsula that formed the western extent of Swansea Bay. Crowley parked the Bentley and went for a walk along the sea-front, breathing the salt air and hearing the wind play with the rigging of the little boats that lined the sea wall. It was calm here, this sleepy little village on the way to nowhere. Crowley allowed himself to picture a life here, learning to sail perhaps, sitting out in the sun just for the fun of it. The sea air might not be great for the car but Crowley was sure that the Bentley knew better than to do anything as disappointing as developing rust. A mortal soulmate would pose a unique set of challenges, Crowley pondered this as he walked around the headland and up to higher ground, ultimately deciding that it was putting the cart before the horse. He wasn’t even convinced that he had a horse, so to speak. He stopped at a disused coastguard station, finding a place to sit amongst the rocks and watch the sea. Being immortal and ageless did help make the time speed by when Crowley was waiting for something. He zoned out to the sound of breaking waves and sat in a trance-like state as the hours passed.
The cafe Kate had suggested was back in town, a short walk for Crowley’s long strides. His snake-self was delighted with the glass building, an amalgamation of Victorian and modern design with panoramic views of Swansea Bay. On a sunny summer day like this, it was enough to make him almost regret inventing Welsh language television. Crowley ordered a coffee and found a table, crossing his legs to the side in a manner designed to look as cool and casual as physically possible. No harm in making a good first impression, he thought. An extensive list of ice cream flavours was displayed on a nearby wall. Unbidden, the image of Aziraphale dithering over such a selection popped into Crowley’s head and flooded him with fondness. Just what he needed when he was trying to find his soulmate and forget about the angel who had rejected him.
“Anthony?” A woman in her mid-twenties approached his table, her head cocked to one side in question. “I’m Kate.”
She offered her hand in greeting. Crowley took it and squeezed gently before bringing her knuckles to his lips for a brief kiss. Kate blushed prettily and giggled, clearly enchanted with him.
“What a colossal waste of time!” Crowley growled to himself, speeding back towards London. “I drive all the way to the fucking Mumbles for nothing! Waste of my time and hers!”
Kate had been fine, lovely even. Perhaps a little more giggly than he appreciated but nerves often do that to people. Two things had been immediately obvious following their meeting: Kate was genuinely looking for her soulmate, her soulmate wasn't Crowley.
While Crowley had been driving, walking, and lurking, Kate had had a new dream. Far removed from the clifftop setting of the previous dreams, Kate had been eager to tell Crowley all about her nighttime adventures in a meadow of butterflies. He had patted her hand and given the closest thing to eye contact that he was capable of.
"I'm sorry, Kate. I didn't dream last night. I didn't sleep."
Her face had fallen for a split second as the meaning of those words hit her, but she bounced back quickly.
"Oh no, and you came all this way. I'm sorry to have wasted your time."
Annoyed as he was, Crowley still knew better than to lay the blame at the feet of a woman looking for her promised love. He assured her that the journey had been worthwhile and that he wished her well in her continued search before taking his leave. He didn't let his foul-tempered response loose until he was back on the motorway; careening down the M4 at speeds previously considered outside the capability of most modern production vehicles, let alone classics approaching their centenary.
And make no mistake about it, he was furious with himself for allowing hope to make space within his ribcage. He felt so stupid and small, Crowley had known that the details weren't a perfect match, he'd known that the odds weren't in his favour, and he'd tried to keep a realistic outlook. The hollow, sick feeling in his chest showed him how much he'd failed. The only person who ever really believed his lies was himself.
Wales to London was a very dull drive, speed was the only variable worth toying with and so Crowley made the most of it. Eventually, Crowley felt as though the worst of his sourness had been blown out of him like cobwebs and left deposited along the side of the road.
By the time Crowley had parked up outside his building he felt something approximately close to calm, not the kind of serene and meditative calm he might have liked, but a sort of grudging acceptance of his current reality. This new equilibrium was short-lived, disrupted almost immediately by Crowley’s discovery of Aziraphale fretting outside his front door.
“Oh! Crowley!” The relief in his voice was palpable. “Where have you been? I tried calling.”
The excessive fidgeting of his hands caught Crowley’s eye; he was holding the letter Crowley had sent by miracle express. A sick, sinking feeling gripped Crowley’s stomach and tugged unpleasantly.
“I was out meeting my soulmate.” He snapped, regretting it immediately. “Well, trying to anyway.” His glasses hadn’t slipped, but Crowley pushed them back up anyway.
“Soulmate? But…” Aziraphale trailed off, a thought half-formed. “That isn’t important right now. May I come in or shall we discuss this-” He brandished the letter for effect. “Out here for all your neighbours to hear?”
Crowley thought very hard about telling Aziraphale that the lady downstairs hadn’t heard a thing during her entire tenure as his neighbour but that would just cause more squabbling. He didn’t want to fight now, he wanted to make amends. A gesture had his door swinging open and a second indicated to Aziraphale that he should step inside, the bow was perhaps a bit formal but these were strange times all around and it went without comment.
Aziraphale was no less fretful once inside the flat, he wandered between desk and chair and sofa, almost sitting and then pacing again. It was making Crowley anxious just to watch him.
“Drink? Snack? Some sandpaper so you can do a decent job of stripping my floorboards?” Crowley offered.
“What? Oh, no, no thank you, Crowley.” Aziraphale did at least take a seat on the sofa, looking as out of place as a grizzly bear at a preschool.
Crowley pulled the throne up on to one of its leg, spinning it to face Aziraphale then sinking into it like a gracefully deflated balloon. One eyebrow raised above the rim of his sunglasses, urging Aziraphale to say what he’d come here to say. All the while, Crowley was cursing his damned inability to drop the act, stop the facade of studied coolness that prevented him from just apologising. It had all been so much easier with the end of the world on the line, but now it was just Aziraphale and Crowley’s battered heart. This veneer of pretence was his only protection from whatever devastating blow that Aziraphale was about to deliver.
“I found your letter, of course. I do think we’ve got rather a lot to discuss.”
Crowley braced himself, wincing in anticipation of Aziraphale’s rip-the-plaster-off approach to unpleasant news.
“Go on then, say what you’re going to say.”
“Crowley, whatever is the matter? What are you expecting me to say that you’re already reacting like this? How can you think that I could read your letter and then hurt you more than I already have?” He sounded choked, Crowley forced his gaze up from the floor.
Aziraphale was near tears, not the sort of puppy-dog watering eyes of an angel who wants a little rescue but the barely controlled trembling of a soldier of Heaven faced with losing everything he held dear. It was far too much for Crowley to bear. He crossed the room without even noticing that he’d stood, and sat beside Aziraphale. He wanted to reach out, to comfort him, but he’d been burned too recently.
“Angel, what’s wrong? I don’t understand. You’ve got to help me out here.” Crowley heard his own voice break with emotion.
“Can you forgive me, Crowley? It’s a lot to ask, I know. I don’t know if I deserve your forgiveness, but please let me earn it. I’ve made such a mess of things and put you through so much hurt. I jus-” Crowley cut him off.
“I’m lost here, Aziraphale. I thought I had made a mess of everything so I really don’t understand what’s going on.”
Aziraphale stared at him, an unreadable expression on his face.
“May I?” He asked, reaching up for Crowley’s glasses.
A nod, a nervous swallow.
“Yeah. OK.”
Aziraphale took Crowley’s glasses off and folded them carefully. He looked around for somewhere to put them until Crowley snapped his fingers and sent them to the desk. Aziraphale let out a nervous little laugh, flexing his suddenly empty fingers. Then his eyes were back on Crowley, boring into him with an unexpected intensity. Crowley had to fight not to look away, to keep his eyes on Aziraphale, even if his gaze flicked from eyes to lips to eyes.
“Crowley, I’m sorry. Old habits died harder than I expected and I ran away when I should have been here with you.” Aziraphale took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “What I mean to say is simply this: Crowley, I love you.” Crowley felt his jaw fall open as Aziraphale met his gaze again. “I love you, I’ve finally caught up to you.”
“Heh, blasphemer.” Crowley choked out and immediately regretted it.
Crowley’s tongue was suddenly far too big for his mouth, his throat too narrow, his heart too frantic. What was he supposed to do with all these hands? Had they always been so awkward? Aziraphale must have noticed his distress because suddenly he had warm, soft hands closed around his bony fingers. It had been silent for too long, Crowley knew he had to say something, he had to respond, but his voice had disappeared and his brain had gone on strike the second that Aziraphale had taken hold of his hands.
“Wha- How di- I don-” Crowley tried to start several different thoughts at once, tripping over the flood of words that suddenly wanted to escape.
Aziraphale smiled that damnably soft smile and rubbed his thumbs across Crowley’s knuckles.
“One thing at a time seems best, yes?”
Crowley nodded, trying to organise his thoughts into something that could pass as order. They all seemed as important and unimportant as each other at once. He didn’t know what to say.
“I- I have a soulmate!” That wasn’t what he had planned or wanted to say, but that’s what fell out of his mouth.
Aziraphale cocked his head, confusion written clearly across his face.
“Of course you do. Why is that so upsetting to you?”
Crowley pulled his hands back and jumped from his seat to start pacing the room. His hands raked through his hair in fretful motions.
“I have a soulmate , Aziraphale. Someone out there who is meant to be the other half of my soul, the perfect match for me, and you’re here just casually telling me that you love me now and it’s a lot to deal with!”
“I hardly think I’m being casual, Crowley.” Aziraphale sniffed and earned himself a hard glare. “Oh, but that’s not important! Do you really not know? Crowley, you must.”
“Know what? Aziraphale, I am having a crisis here so I need you to stop being so bloody cryptic!”
Aziraphale fixed Crowley with a stare that told him exactly how dramatic he thought Crowley was being. It did nothing to calm Crowley’s pacing and huffing.
“Crowley, what I’m telling you is- Look, would you mind sitting back down? You’re making me nervous too. The thing is, I’m your soulmate.”
And that did make Crowley stop pacing, then he sat down again and tucked one foot behind his knee. He looked at Aziraphale and took a deep breath.
“Angel, you and I have been on Earth since the beginning. If we were soulmates then I would have been having dreams a long time ago, not just this past week. If you’ve been dreaming too then your soulmate is probably out there looking for you.”
Aziraphale looked guilty and shifted his gaze down to his hands.
“So, ha, it’s funny when you think about it and I’m sure we’ll all have a great laugh about it further down the line.”
“Angel.” Crowley growled a warning.
“Right. It’s just that before this week, I’ve never actually gone to sleep. The first time was the night we spent here after the trials.”
“Never? You, the definition of hedonism and luxury, have never slept before this week?” An edge of hysteria crept into Crowley’s voice.
Aziraphale grew more awkward and apologetic.
“There’s so much to experience in the world! I felt like I might miss out if I slept.”
Crowley pinched the bridge of his nose.
“And then, what? You decided you liked it and slept every night since? Because I haven’t been able to so much as close my eyes without having that damn dream.”
Aziraphale mumbled a response, deliberately too quiet to be heard.
“I’m sorry? Didn’t catch that.”
“I slept solidly until yesterday morning! OK? I wanted to be sure that the dreams weren’t a one-off and that it was really you!”
Crowley did laugh then. It was a touch more bitter than was comfortable as he struggled to cope with everything he was learning.
“Angel, I slept through the whole 19th Century hoping against hope that I would dream; that I would catch the rare occasion that you actually rested and share a dream with you. I’ve spent the past century coming to terms with the idea that you aren’t my soulmate and the past week dealing with the appearance of my actual soulmate. And now, you mean to tell me that I’ve gone through all of this for nothing?”
“Well, hardly nothing , Crowley.” Aziraphale snipped. “I’m still here telling you that I love you, that I read your letter and realised that I’d waited far too long to say it.”
“Obviously, I love you too. But let’s not get distracted. Prove you’re my soulmate, Aziraphale. Put me out of my misery.”
Aziraphale took a deep breath and reached for Crowley’s hands again. Crowley let him take them although he didn’t relax into it as much as he had before.
“In my dreams, I am standing at the top of a cliff looking out to sea. There’s a storm on the horizon and the sea is whipped into foaming peaks. I’m wearing the robes I wore in Eden, pure white and ethereal.” He paused and blinked away a tear. “Sometimes I can see a little boat being tossed about in the waves, other times I have to look right over the cliff to see it. I can always see that it’s you, though.” Aziraphale squeezed Crowley’s hands as if trying to reinforce the weight of his words. “Always, Crowley. I never doubted that it was you. The other morning, you started climbing the cliff, your boat was smashed against the rocks. You were climbing up to me but I couldn’t help, I called your name but I don’t think you could hear. I watched you climb until I could almost reach you and I just knew that if you could get one fingertip to the top then I could help you the rest of the way. But then you fell and I couldn’t reach you. That was when I woke up, I was so worried about you that I ran to call you.”
“I remember that, the phone rang but cut off before I could get to it.”
Aziraphale nodded.
“I felt silly calling you over a dream, and I was still pretty shaken by the, uh, the kiss.”
“So what changed?” Crowley softened considerably.
“I found your letter. And it changed everything.”
“Oh.”
“Yes, oh. I found it on my desk and read it a hundred times that morning. I realised what a fool I’d been, what I’d been putting you through. I’m not ashamed to admit that I cried, Crowley. I know that you wrote it to apologise for kissing me, to try and undo what had been done and keep me as a friend. I could see that. But armed with the knowledge that we are soulmates, I could see everything you hadn’t written as well. I could see that you love me and that you were desperate to have me in your life in any capacity.”
“Angel, please.” Crowley looked away, uncomfortable with this recounting of his vulnerability.
He pulled one of his hands out of Aziraphale’s grasp and wiped his eyes on his sleeve. The fabric came away wet with tears but he snaked his hand back into the space it had vacated. Aziraphale gave his knuckles a gentle stroke.
“Would you like to tell me your version of events?” Aziraphale threw out the invitation, leaving Crowley to give as much as he wanted. And he did want to tell him everything, but that had never gone well before. The idea that things were different now hardly seemed comforting; different had rarely meant better in Crowley’s experience.
He started slowly, explaining how the dreams had felt for him, the flashes of white he saw atop the cliff and the feeling of needing to get up to it but without an easy route. When he explained about the websites and apps, Aziraphale looked distraught, Crowley gave him a weak smile and pressed on with his story. For once, he was less concerned with protecting Aziraphale’s feelings than he was with expressing something of what he had been feeling. If it made Aziraphale uncomfortable to know that Crowley had spent a week thinking that his soul mate didn’t care about finding him then he shouldn’t have stayed away. Crowley continued with recounting his meeting with Kate and a suggestion of the depth of his self-loathing on the drive home.
At some point Aziraphale had coaxed Crowley into his lap, wrapping his arms around Crowley and cocooning him in safety. Crowley rested his head on Aziraphale’s shoulder and spoke in soft tones broken with sniffles.
“Crowley, there’s one thing that I don’t understand.” Aziraphale ran his hands up and down Crowley’s back soothingly. “If you knew you had a soulmate and you were convinced that it couldn’t be me, why did you kiss me that morning?”
It was Crowley’s turn to look uncomfortable.
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“Not to me, love. Please, help me understand.”
Crowley took a deep breath and lifted his head so he could see Aziraphale’s eyes.
“Because I knew that I love you more than anything. If you had stayed, I would have never slept again and never spared a thought for my soulmate. I was choosing you.”
“Oh.” Aziraphale appeared to consider that. “I really did make a pig's ear of this, didn’t I? I thought you were reacting to the dream, doing what you thought you should do. I left because I was scared. Not of you, love, never of you.” He brushed fresh tears from Crowley’s cheek. “I was scared of trapping you, I was sure that you could never really be happy with me.”
The laugh that shook Crowley startled them both.
“I have been happy with you for near enough six thousand years, you idiot.”
Aziraphale smiled a wide, soppy smile that shouldn’t have made Crowley melt the way that it did.
“For what it’s worth, I have loved you far longer than you know. I have loved you for centuries, Crowley. Keeping you safe, keeping you alive has been my priority because I can not imagine having to exist for a single second without you in the world.”
It says a lot about how much Crowley needed to hear those words that, instead of making a glib remark or deflecting the affection, he threw his arms around Aziraphale’s neck and brought their faces to within a hair’s breadth of each other. He froze, rejection too fresh in his mind.
“Angel, can I…?” His unfinished thought barely whispered.
“Always and forever, whenever you want.” Aziraphale answered and pressed his lips to Crowley’s, closing a distance of half a millimetre and six thousand years.