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July 2020. The Love Nest, London.
Two nights before the R&R programme.
“Crowley?” Aziraphale called out softly, leaning back over the arm of the sofa to peer into the kitchen, where the demon had disappeared a few moments earlier to retrieve a bottle of wine and two glasses.
“Mmm?” The demon’s reply came from the kitchen, the sound distant and blurred around the edges.
“Can you come here for a moment, my love?”
Crowley padded in, barefoot and smiling, a bottle of wine tucked under one arm and the narrow stems of two glasses clutched between his thumb and index finger. He sank down, swinging both legs over the arm of the sofa and laying back across Aziraphale’s thighs. He sighed contently, closing his eyes as Aziraphale brushed copper hair back from his forehead and deposited a kiss on the demon’s cool skin.
“I want to read you something,” Aziraphale said, and there was something humming around the corner of the words that left Crowley frowning. The angel’s tone was too cheery, too light to be anything other than deceptive.
“What is it, angel?” Crowley asked, craning his neck back to stare into Aziraphale’s stormy blue eyes. Yes, he found something there that he was looking for: a darkness that turned the angel’s gaze steel grey and grave. It was never good when Aziraphale’s eyes took on those shadows. Periwinkle, duck egg, the colour of a cloudless spring sky, those were the hues that meant the angel was happy, relaxed, safe. It wasn’t a surprise that his mood was sombre. Not really. Only two days remained before Crowley would make his way to heaven and stand in front of Gabriel for judgement and, if he was lucky, absolution. Aziraphale had been doing his best to keep his fears to himself, and Crowley loved him all the more for that, but his eyes never lied.
“It’s going to be a big day.” No further explanation of context fell from the angel’s lips, not that it was needed, as if he could be referring to anything other than heaven’s R&R programme, and the worrying part Crowley was to play in it. “I thought, perhaps, something to boost the spirit.”
“Excellent idea. Great minds really do think alike.” Crowley grinned, felt his shoulders relax and he nodded in concurrence, leaning forward to reach for the wine. Before he could rifle through the coffee table drawer for a corkscrew, Aziraphale reached out and slid his hand on top of the demon’s, guiding him back to the sofa.
“Something with, er, longer lasting effects, I hope.” Aziraphale paused, fingers finding Crowley’s temples and pressing gentle circles against his skin. A sigh came then, a long, slow exhale as if the angel was trying to expel every last unspoken uncertainty about what the next forty eight hours might bring. He had been fighting so hard against his instincts, had sworn to himself that he wouldn’t do or say a thing to worry Crowley, to make him second guess his decision to put his fate in heaven’s hands. It was dangerous to trust heaven, indescribably so, and in the darkest recesses of his heart Aziraphale feared there was only one way it could end. He wondered, for a moment, what fears lay hidden in Crowley’s mind, if he was really so sure that he had made the right decision.
What would I see, my love, if I peeked into your beautiful heart? No, the angel gave his head a hard little shake, if only to try and force away intrusive thoughts he had never intended to invite in. It was something they had agreed never to do, to look behind the curtain into the vault of each other’s hearts. This is his decision to make, you swore you would stand by his side whatever he decided. He wants to do this, no, he needs to do this. All you need to do is love him, whatever the outcome.
“I want to read to you,” he said finally, reaching down the side of the sofa to retrieve a dusty, cloth-bound book he’d snuck in from the bookshop earlier that day.
Crowley shifted in his lap, lips parting as he turned to gaze at Aziraphale in wonder. How long had it been since the angel had read to him? A year? Two? Too long, in any case. There had been a time when near enough every one of their meetings included the angel reading to him: an extract from a novel whose story was so all-encompassing that Aziraphale couldn’t bear to keep it to himself, or a quote from a memoir written by a mutual acquaintance who had passed too soon. Sometimes, Crowley’s favourite times, the angel would read him poetry. He read beautifully, as if the words had been cast from his own heart. The soft lilt of his voice, oftentimes rounded further by firelight flickering in their peripheral vision, would never fail to soothe the demon’s soul, whatever tempests were raging beneath the surface.
They had fallen in love over a hundred of these readings, perhaps two hundred, five hundred, even. Each poem, every quote was another string in their shared bow, just another memory locking them together. They were confessions, each of them, a declaration without either of their own hearts having to stand behind it. They knew, of course they knew, but it had become part of the game, pretending it was just a story, just a poem the angel had to share.
Now it was time for another reading, and Crowley felt his heart swell at the mere notion of Aziraphale wrapping an arm around him and hugging him close, murmuring words that would stay locked in the demon’s mind for eternity. In his darkest nights, in those long stretches of weeks that became months when all Crowley could do was close his eyes and try to forget, it was Aziraphale’s readings that were a hundred stars lighting his way when all hope was lost.
“Crowley.” Aziraphale’s voice wavered and he paused, swallowing deeply and holding the breath steady in his lungs before he continued. “In case…just… My love, in case there is ever a time when you need to remember who you are, in case you are ever in danger of forgetting, please hold these words close.”
There, in the space where an angel and a demon dreamed only of love and safety, Aziraphale began to read.
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
As Aziraphale spoke words of defiance and survival into the soft burrow of a home they had so carefully built, Crowley closed his eyes until his vision was nothing but darkness. It was a poor attempt to stop tears coming and he felt wetness slip slowly down his cheek. He reached for Aziraphale’s hand, felt the angel’s fingers slide between his and there they lay, gripping onto each other as Aziraphale read the poem as reverently as if it was a prayer written by the Almighty Herself.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
A second of quiet hung in the air, followed by the dull thud of the book snapping shut, a heavy sound as if it was tugged closed by the weight of the words that lay within it. Aziraphale didn’t speak, knew that he didn’t need to. He had said everything that mattered in that moment. He tightened his grip on Crowley’s hand, gave it three small squeezes and held the demon close as he promised, silently and deeply, that he would never, no matter the consequences, let him face one more of heaven’s horrors alone.
“You will do this, my love.” Aziraphale reached down to press a final kiss to the demon’s cheek, whispering oaths in his ear. “Two more days and you will be free, I swear to you.”
Next to him, Crowley’s eyes remained tightly closed, the demon’s lips pressed together in concentration as he committed the poem’s final two lines to memory, pushing them down until they were buried so deeply in his soul he could never forget them, not even on the nights when it seemed as though the darkness might finally win out.
I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul.