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It’s been a good night so far, in Aziraphale’s estimation.
The cacciatore recipe turned out splendidly, and even the teacupful that Crowley agreed to try had brought some color to his face. Wishing to be closer to that secondhand warmth, and realizing he had no reason not to, Aziraphale had reached out to cup a hand around his cheek, smiling and asking him how he found the food.
Crowley had reddened further but held his gaze as he mumbled out an “It was lovely.”
Aziraphale could lose himself in those twin amber sunrises, and has done on occasion. This time, though, he’d sat back after a minute to offer Crowley a bite of dessert. The cherries jubilee were, by a small miracle, still warm an hour after coming off the stove.
Now that they’ve migrated to the study for wine and music, Crowley is loose-limbed and endearingly cranky, complaining about the soporific effect of a large meal.
“Happens with alcohol alone, of course,” he says, “but it’s worse when there’s food involved.” He presses a palm against his forehead. “It’s downright conspiratorial. I’m sure that I’m feeling the effects twofold, to compensate for your eternal liveliness.”
“Hardly.” Aziraphale takes stock of himself, sinking deeper into his armchair. “I feel… calmed. Content. But not tired, no. I suppose that because I never got in the habit of sleeping, all of those symptoms are foreign to my corporation.”
“Lucky bastard.”
Though he still feels a surge of delight at the unorthodox term of endearment, he doesn’t let it deter him. “There’s a chemistry to it, isn’t there? Enzymes, hormones…”
“Dunno,” says Crowley, now raking fingers through his fringe. “I never had to tinker with any brain chemicals the first time I went to sleep. Just concentrated until everything went dark.”
“That must have been somewhat frightening.”
He shrugs against the back of the sofa. “I had plenty of humans examples to follow, and they all seemed to wake up as the same person they’d been the night before.” After a pause, he says, “It was quite a while before I started dreaming, though.”
“You remember your first dream, then?” Aziraphale perks up. “Was it a good one?”
Crowley’s face twists in thought. “I’d call it neutral. And largely nonsensical, but that’s par for the course.” He groans when Aziraphale looks on expectantly. “I’ll have you know, I popularized the tedious practice of recounting dreams to uninterested parties; I’m not about to put you on the receiving end of it.”
Far from uninterested, Aziraphale elects to push in a different direction. “Well. If you’ll reveal nothing else, when and where did you have this first dream?”
“Oh, early on, in one of the Nubian kingdoms, I think. But there’s really no significance there…” He squints suddenly. “Why do you ask?”
“No reason in particular.” Aziraphale lets his gaze wander benignly. It alights on Crowley’s eyes in time to see them sparkle.
“Were you hoping it was after one of our encounters?”
Answering in the affirmative will provoke some fascinating new facial expressions, he knows, but it will also reawaken Crowley’s mischievous streak from its evening slumber, and Aziraphale may never hear the end of this. He decides not to risk it. “Not hoping,” he says, “I was merely wondering if there was some connection.”
Crowley’s expression softens, and he sits back. “Believe me, angel, I’ve had some of my best and worst dreams following our meetings across the centuries.” A small smile, or perhaps a grimace. “Nothing neutral about them.”
It’s strange—a little thrilling, and a little unnerving—to think of a fabricated version of himself in Crowley’s unconscious mind. He wonders how this counterpart developed as time went on and their relationship deepened, as the Arrangement set in. He doesn’t want to think of how he might have hurt Crowley in the worst dreams, but he would very much like to know what made the rest so exquisite.
Aziraphale smiles down at his hands folded in his lap, and says, “It’s when you say things like that that I most wish I could reciprocate.”
Crowley takes a few seconds to catch his meaning. “What, by…? Don’t be ridiculous, you don’t owe me any dream attention.”
“Perhaps not that specifically,” he concedes. “But if sleeping is something you enjoy, part of your romance with the human experience—”
“Romance, for the love of—”
“In the eighteenth-century sense, dear.”
Crowley scowls, grabs his wineglass, and mutters into it, “Still sounds mawkish as all heaven.”
“The point is, your taking pleasure in it makes it more all the more intriguing to me.” Feeling Crowley’s eyes on him again, he takes a breath and continues, “Piques my curiosity.”
“You want to try.”
He falters. “I— I want to, yes… or I think I do…”
Crowley keeps quiet, allowing him to collect his thoughts against the low backdrop of Vivaldi. Aziraphale almost wishes he wouldn’t. He never realized, until they began to fully open up to each other, how many truths he kept hidden from himself.
As a starting-point, he says, “Even if you get the chemistry right, it seems… complicated.”
“I wouldn’t say so. Just lie down, close your eyes, and—” Crowley makes a loose gesture— “conk out. Nothing to it.”
“Right…”
“Angel,” Crowley says in a gentler voice. He straightens up and holds Aziraphale’s gaze, even as he seems to struggle to get the words out. “Whatever it is—fear, or guilt, or anything else—we’ve endured all that separately for long enough, don’t you think?”
By implication, sharing those unpleasantries can only ease the strain on the both of them. Aziraphale nods.
“So what’s the real hang-up?” Crowley asks softly.
Aziraphale takes a breath, preparing to sort through his tangled strands of thought. “It’s difficult to put succinctly, but…”
Vulnerability is the easiest aspect to admit. Even if Heaven is no longer watching, or at least poses no real threat anymore, he’s so accustomed to self-scrutiny that dropping his guard entirely feels perilous. Beyond that, Aziraphale used to invite the disdain of other angels by entrenching himself in the physical realm, in the tangible pleasures of food, dance, prized possessions. Those, at least, are familiar indulgences. Sleep is new territory altogether, uniting absolute vulnerability with existential uncertainty: how to maintain the still-fragile fortifications around his sense of self while not inhabiting his own body?
Crowley looks like he’s about to say something in response, but closes his mouth.
“I know that the mind is unchanged between states of consciousness,” Aziraphale says. “I trust that; I trust you. But it is one of the concerns I harbor.” He musters the will to dig deeper, to excavate the full vein of his fears. “Along the same lines, there’s the question of finding a way back out. Not to say that I would be so thoroughly seduced by sleep as to want it go on forever, but I imagine it being difficult to… cast off the weight, as it were.”
Crowley cocks his head. “The weight of sleep? As opposed to that of the waking world?”
“Well. I don’t have the experience to compare the two.”
He sees Crowley’s point, though. Of course it can all get so heavy, as a corporeal being; that’s the nature of things. The world gets heavier by the day, always under construction, thick asphalt outside shuddering under the combined footfalls of thousands, noise permeating the walls, humanity rising and falling and rising once more, and—
Falling asleep. At the end of each day. And still they emerge, to face the same pressures with renewed strength in the morning. Aziraphale frowns in thought.
“I don’t mean to steer you too far in the opposite direction,” Crowley says. “I just think… if you’ve survived all of this so far without cracking under the pressure, you’ve got nothing to fear from a brief catnap. Especially not under m— that is—our mutual oath of protection.”
Aziraphale smiles gratefully. “You do take good care of me.” A thought niggles at him. “But perhaps I haven’t always returned the favor, if some of your longer hibernations are anything to go by.”
“Bollocks,” Crowley dismisses. “Nothing you could have done differently.”
“I simply mean—Is that often your reason for sleeping, my dear? Lightening the burdens of existence?”
Several expressions compete for control of Crowley’s features. “Well,” he fumbles, “that’s a bit dramatic, isn’t it—”
“Oh, Crowley,” Aziraphale says in a sad tone. He reaches out.
Crowley seems surprised to find his one hand sandwiched firmly between both of Aziraphale’s, and gives an instinctive squeeze before curling his fingers more deliberately. “Look, at certain times I would have said yes. It’s a decent escape, more dignified than getting drunk, and more effective long-term.”
A bittersweet smile pulls at Aziraphale’s lips. “And when have you ever cared about dignity?” he murmurs, tangling their fingers.
“Just said: at certain times.”
“Hmm.”
“Now, though.” He glances at their hands, and back up. “Now’s a pretty good time to be among the living, I’d say. Plenty of interesting stuff going on in the world already; no need to break up the monotony, let alone sleep away entire days or years.”
“Yes, precisely.” Aziraphale draws back his hands. “We’ve only just got back our forward momentum, after eleven years of counting down to the end of time!”
“Indeed.”
“So why do I still find you napping back here at least once a week?”
Crowley shrugs. “S’just relaxing, I suppose. Feels nice.”
“I see.”
The record player crackles, having reached the end of a concerto. They sip their wine in silence until Crowley says, “You don’t have to try it. At the very least, not right away.”
The relief is greater than Aziraphale expected. “Thank you,” he says.
“But, ah…”
“Yes?”
Crowley shifts on the sofa. “When you mention vulnerability… it’s not because I do something embarrassing, is it? Talk in my sleep, or act out dreams or anything?”
“Oh, no, no, you sleep like a lump.”
“Like a log, you mean?”
“Like a lump,” Aziraphale insists, while filing away the correct phrase.
“All right.”
“I’m not sure how, given your physique, but you manage it.”
“All right.”
Aziraphale chuckles; Crowley does as well.
He then clears his throat. “I just, er, thought I’d ask. The next time I do take a nap… even if you’re not interested in following suit… do you think you might—if it’s not too much trouble—”
Aziraphale blinks encouragingly.
“It’s just that, even if it’s done purely for leisure, not out of despair or anything, sleeping can get a little lonely sometimes, and I’ve always thought it might be nice to have someone—”
“Hold you?”
Crowley jerks back, sputtering. “I was going to say in the room, angel.”
“Ah.”
“Keep a lump company, and all that.”
“Of course.”
“But, you know, whatever works best for you.” Crowley’s hair has a bit more verticality to it than usual.
Aziraphale beams. “I think ‘in the room’ is a lovely start. You don’t mind if I bring a book?”
A few afternoons later, he pays a visit to Crowley’s flat.
Aziraphale accepts a cup of tea and a plate of biscuits, and tries to appreciate the warmth and the aromas, but he finds himself glancing repeatedly in the direction of the bedroom. Crowley hides his amusement at first but eventually tips into laughter.
“Anxious to be rid of me for a couple hours?” he says.
“Oh, come now.”
Aziraphale keeps his eyes trained on Crowley as they idly discuss the day’s events, but he drains his cup as soon as it’s cool enough to drink. He knows there’s no reason to be nervous. He’s here to lend his presence and catch up on his reading, nothing more. Still, this somehow feels like a trial run for something more fraught and exacting.
With an oddly serene air, Crowley does the washing-up before leading him down the hall.
A comfortable chair has appeared at the bedside. The patterned cream upholstery clashes remarkably with Crowley’s minimalistic dark decor, but it calms Aziraphale’s nerves nonetheless as he settles in.
Crowley kicks off his shoes before scrambling atop the bed and throwing himself back against the pillow. In the process of pulling the sheet up to his chest, he discovers his glasses still hooked onto his shirt collar, and deposits them on the other side of the mattress.
He turns his head to Aziraphale. “Are you comfortable?”
“Me? Well, yes, thank you, but I should be asking you that question.”
“Don’t worry about me. Got a memory foam topper a few years ago, haven’t looked back since.” Crowley closes his eyes. “But the chair’s of a more vintage construction; I thought it would suit you…”
Aziraphale finally hears the suppressed tension in his voice, and the last of his own dissipates into calm assurance. “It does,” he says gently. “You’ve done beautifully, Crowley. If you’re ready to sleep, I will be here for as long as it takes.”
A smile flits across Crowley’s lips. “All right, angel. Off I go, then.”
His forehead relaxes by a fraction. A minute later, Aziraphale whispers, “Are you asleep, my dear?”
A low groan rises out of Crowley. “Well, I was. Now I’ll have to start all over again.”
“Oh, dear. I’m sorry.”
“S’fine.” He adjusts the angle of his shoulders. “See you in an hour or two.”
Aziraphale could easily spend that length of time wrapped up in his reading… if he were alone. As it turns out, keeping watch by a sleeping demon’s bedside feels nothing like being alone. His presence fills the small room, its depth drawing Aziraphale’s eyes astray from the flat printed text of his book.
Rarely has he seen Crowley with his eyes closed, as opposed to covered. He looks… well, vulnerable. Aziraphale feels protective of this being, far more so than any time he’s found Crowley out like a light on the back room sofa, knees askew and one arm thrown over his eyes.
He really doesn’t look like a lump, this time.
Looming over him doesn’t feel quite right, so he moves around to the other side of the bed, still clutching his book. Removing his own shoes, and transferring Crowley’s glasses to the bedside table, he lifts himself onto the mattress and props up the pillow. Carefully, so as to avoid too much creaking or jostling, he finds a comfortable reading position.
Over the next hour, Aziraphale struggles to get through ten pages of García Márquez. Crowley looks so peaceful and untroubled. Every minute or so, he breathes gently. Unnecessary, but perfectly endearing. His foot twitches from time to time.
It can’t be all that bad, sleeping. Seeing it up close like this, Aziraphale really wouldn’t mind trying it once. Crowley could coach him through it and watch over him in return. Perhaps a few days from now, to give both of them a break?
Or perhaps…
Tucking his book underneath Crowley’s glasses, Aziraphale slides down to horizontal. He pulls the pillow beneath his head and tries to breathe evenly.
For several minutes nothing happens. Then… there is something, a flicker of darkness at the edges of his vision. His heart beats faster, and it recedes.
Perhaps not, then.
But there’s no harm in just lying here. With a delicate touch, he laces his left hand with Crowley’s right and brings both to rest against his own breastbone, feeling his heart rate slow. He can’t tell how long they remain in that position, but eventually he starts back into full awareness when Crowley sighs, arches his back, and turns on his side to snuggle closer. “’Zirph,” he mumbles into Aziraphale’s shoulder, still seemingly half-asleep.
“Oh,” Aziraphale whispers, overcome with the same protective fondness as before.
He has the glasses ready when Crowley wakes up properly a minute later, frowning at their proximity.
“I didn’t fall asleep,” Aziraphale says before he can ask, “but… I believe I would like to try sometime soon.”
He only catches a glimpse of Crowley’s surprised delight before his eyes disappear behind the lenses, but the half-grin is as plain as day. “That can be arranged.”
Throughout the next few days, Aziraphale can’t help but fixate on every mention of sleep he hears or sees. A human on the phone dramatizing for a friend how tired she was getting home last night; the overwrought vocals of a love song drifting from a passing car radio; an infant dozing in a pram; a customer browsing through a dream interpretation book—each captures his full attention and drives all other thoughts from his mind. Aziraphale doesn’t even remember how he convinced the customer to leave, but an hour after their departure he finds himself still staring down at the abstract cover art of Modern Oneiromancy. He shelves it and begins to pace the shop floor.
Humans are often ashamed to admit being at the mercy of their bodies—even showing too much enthusiasm for food can put one at risk of judgement—but perhaps sleep is exempt from indignity? Well, no, he’s heard some stigma attached to it, particularly by the population of besuited coffee-drinkers who stride past the storefront every morning. But humanity in general accepts its need for sleep as mundane, unremarkable. Some suffer from nightmares or other stresses, and others might struggle to distinguish the products of their own unconscious minds from ontological reality, but few seem to resent the act itself. Succumbing to sleep betrays no weakness, only restores vitality.
The same could be true for him, if less literally. Viewed in that light, as a new experience, an experiment, bringing him closer to the human sphere and to the one other nonhuman entity who shares his affinity for it… it seems quietly revolutionary.
These thoughts embolden him to call Crowley. “I’m going to close the shop early today,” he announces. “I have a nap to take!”
“Do you?” Crowley sounds both proud and amused. “And might I have the honor of witnessing this momentous occasion?”
Aziraphale intends for it to be as uneventful as possible, but he responds, “Of course, my dear. I wouldn’t dream of doing this without you.”
“Hey now—”
He hangs up, thoroughly pleased with himself.
Having lain down in this outfit several days before, he deems it comfortable enough but elects to loosen the collar a little. Aziraphale convinces the back room sofa to convert into a large bed, fluffs a pillow, and has just taken his hot cocoa off the stove when Crowley shows up bearing…
“Flowers?” Touched, he accepts the small vase.
“Not quite. It’s, ah, aromatherapy. Supposed to be relaxing, you know, for easing into sleep.”
He examines the sprigs more closely—lavender buds and the silvery medallions of eucalyptus leaves, giving off a pleasing fragrance—and smiles at Crowley. “Thank you, I’ll set this by the bedside. Would you be a dear and pour out the cocoa while I do? The mug is on the counter…”
Aziraphale returns a minute later to see Crowley treating the spoon like a delicate instrument, holding it perfectly vertical between his thumb and forefinger as he stirs the hot drink. Of his own accord, and with his eyes on Aziraphale’s, he then lifts a spoonful of cocoa to his lips. He nods approvingly. “Good temperature.”
All these small gestures, so outwardly casual but performed so carefully, caringly, to set him at ease. Aziraphale feels emotion welling up in his chest as Crowley’s warm hands place the mug in his; the feeling, heavy but not oppressive, remains as they talk quietly in the kitchenette, as they drift over to the bed, and as he allows Crowley to tuck him in beneath the cloudlike duvet. Gratitude and awe and trepidation and devotion swirl together in the cresting ache over his ribs, and he thinks, absurdly, that he loves Crowley too much to leave him behind in the waking realm.
Of course, he is doing this for him; they are each doing what they are doing for the other, and for themselves and their union and their freedom. Building a world together. Wherever he goes when he falls asleep, it will be within that world.
But holding Crowley’s hand to anchor himself along the way certainly can’t hurt. This time, Crowley, leaning forward in his chair, is the one to lower their clasped hands to Aziraphale’s heart.
“Do you smell the lavender?” he asks almost in a whisper.
“Yes. The eucalyptus is subtler, but it comes through as well.” He lets his eyes fall closed. “Relaxing indeed. I almost want to call it heavenly, but we both know that’s not quite accurate.”
“Mm. No, I don’t recall Heaven having a floral aroma.” Crowley’s tone is languid despite the subject matter. “Almost aggressively scentless and sterile, actually. Not unlike the recycled air in an aeroplane cabin.”
Aziraphale laughs softly, opening his eyes again. “Is that more or less agreeable than sulphur and damp?”
“Depends on what you’ve built a tolerance for.”
“True.”
“Come to think of it, if you relax the definition to include carrion flowers, rotting meat is technically a floral smell.”
Aziraphale purses his lips. “Then I’ll thank the florist’s shop for not keeping any of those in stock.”
“I wouldn’t have, of course…”
“I know.”
Somehow—and Crowley must be aware of this—the mildly ridiculous topic of conversation helps to soften the atmosphere, to reduce the intensity of emotion in Aziraphale’s chest. He’s still not ready to let go completely. At least, not before commemorating the moment.
He takes a deep breath, feeling his ribcage rise against their joined hands. “I almost wish it were nighttime, so the words ‘good night’ would hold their full meaning,” he says. “Perhaps I should say ‘goodbye’ instead. Until we meet again…”
“For Earth’s sake, Aziraphale. Anyone would think you’re being euthanized.”
Crowley immediately looks alarmed by his own statement.
“No, no, of course there’s nothing to worry about,” Aziraphale says quickly. “I know I’m safe here with you. I know I’ll return to myself, and to you, in no time.”
Crowley recovers, nodding and squeezing his hand. “Don’t think of it as an interruption, but rather… a different state of being. Just an alternate way to move through time.”
“Just another worldly pleasure to enjoy,” he murmurs, closing his eyes.
“Precisely.” Crowley’s voice glides over him from above, like a thumb smoothing a line of tension at his brow. “Go to sleep, angel. I’ll be with you the whole way.”
It takes a while yet. When, after many minutes of stillness, the same fuzziness as before enters his darkened field of vision, Aziraphale lets it linger in the periphery, neither ignoring it nor chasing it away through direct attention. He has nothing to fear from sleep. Let it come.
He detects no clear transition between wakefulness and slumber, but eventually he can no longer feel the contours of Crowley’s palm against his own. In fact, his whole body feels less responsive, less substantial even…
But not incorporeal. Not departed, simply detached. A brief respite.
There is an viscosity to the environment that, for a reason he can’t keep hold of, makes him think of stirring it up with a spoon to watch the lazy whorls and eddies form. The shades of darkness that wrap around him, visible in all directions without any movement on his part, are similarly fluid. They evoke something ancient and comforting: scraps of apparent nothingness, calling to be illuminated and chiseled into part of a newborn universe.
He floats, absorbing it all.
Does all of this exist, he wonders, somewhere back in time, or out of time, accessible only by way of this unconscious drifting? Or is it an embellished memory unfolding purely in his mind?
From what he knows of dreams, this does not resemble one. Perhaps that would take more practice, or deeper dives into sleep. First, though, he must resurface from the shallows. How?
Old fears start to seep in. Getting lost in the expanse, permanently untethered from his physical form and out of alignment with the arrow of time. Being unable to locate, let alone break through, the heavy barrier back into consciousness. The inevitability of it all quells his panic; he foresaw this happening.
But no, that’s not the end of it. He—they?—someone took precautions. Someone kept an eye on him, a hand around his, to coax him back to reality when he was ready.
The gentle undulation of his cosmic surroundings now strikes him as deliberate: the folds of a theatre curtain grazed from behind by a passing actor. A presence, unobtrusive but there. Reminding him that…
He is safe.
He is loved.
He is asleep… but waking up.
Aziraphale opens his eyes. As soon as Crowley’s face, tender with expectation, comes into focus, he draws him down into a tight embrace.
Seated against the headboard, with Crowley stretched out beside him once more, he reorients himself amid the perfumed air.
“How long…?” Aziraphale starts.
“No more than half an hour.”
He nods in acknowledgement.
“Did it feel longer?”
“I couldn’t say. It felt so different.”
“You looked… at peace.”
“Did you spend the whole time watching me, then?”
“Couldn’t look away.” Crowley seems to say this in jest, but the honesty bleeds through.
“Well.” He smiles. “I’ll confess to feeling the same impulse last time, while you were asleep.”
Crowley nods, without any indication of surprise.
“We are strange, vulnerable creatures, aren’t we?” Both the watchers and the watched.
“Only the strangest.”
Aziraphale meets his eyes—bright, attentive, awake. “Crowley, my dear… if I never do this again…”
At a glance, he sees no disappointment in Crowley’s gaze, only anticipation for his next words. And what should those be?
He is grateful for the push, moved and cheered by the protective instincts it inspired in them both, curious at what he perceived while unconscious, and awash in all the other emotions of the past hour. Though these included uncertainty and even fear, from the vantage point of the wide-awake present, he is satisfied to look back and describe the experience as, simply, good.
“I will remember it fondly,” Aziraphale finishes, and his voice alone warms the room.