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Aziraphale wakes up. It’s still pitch dark out; he can see the stars twinkling outside of Crowley’s window. He has not completed a successful night’s sleep. Of course, the first night that Aziraphale tries to sleep, to copy the one human habit that he hasn’t yet added to his arsenal, he is rudely interrupted.
For a moment, Aziraphale is tempted to blame the flat itself, as if all of that wide, open, grey space has crawled under his skin and rendered him frigid and uncomfortable. On the surface level, he is not cold. In fact, Crowley keeps his flat rather warm. But he feels as if he’s floating in a vast abyss with nothing to tether him back to Earth. On a regular night, Aziraphale wouldn’t hold so much spite for a flat, especially not one that he’d been welcomed into unflinchingly. Tonight is no regular night. He yearns for the bookshop, his sanctuary, its downy carpets, rooms cast in the glow of sunlight, the warmth of its more secluded corners. How ironic that it should go up in flames.
Next to him, Crowley lets out a low whirring noise, not unlike a cat. Was that a snore? Aziraphale has never heard one before, not up close. On television — as he knows from the rare times that he actually chooses to watch television — snoring is always so aggressive and unpleasant, but the sound that Crowley is making, in truth, can only be called adorable.
Upon observing the demon, though, it’s Aziraphale who becomes aggressive and unpleasant. He notices, after a not-so-brief period of admiration, that Crowley is tightly wrapped in the blanket, like a chrysalis, or a particularly well-made crepe. A flash of red hair is all that emerges from Crowley’s blanket fortress. The blanket, of course, was the only one on the bed, and it was one that they’d promised to share.
On any other night, Aziraphale might just let Crowley have it. He would get up, make some tea, and alternate his gaze between the navy night sky and the deeply comfortable demon. But this is not any other night, and quite frankly, Aziraphale has sacrificed enough.
“Crowley,” Aziraphale hisses into the night, shaking the demon’s silk-clad shoulder.
“Ngk– wha?” Crowley grunts incoherently.
“You’re using the entire blanket,” Aziraphale whispers.
“Whazza?” Whether Aziraphale spoke too quietly or Crowley just wasn’t listening, he isn’t sure.
“The blanket! You’re hogging it!” he repeats, more emphatically, pulling a corner of the cursed thing towards him.
“I’m cold blooded,” Crowley complains.
Aziraphale huffs in reply. “Indeed you are.” So as to not be accused of hypocrisy, Aziraphale takes only his fair share of the blanket, and leaves the rest draped over Crowley.
Despite his efforts to keep the demon comfortable, Crowley seems to have been irreparably disturbed by the fact of having been woken up at all. He sits upright in bed. As he watches Aziraphale, it is concern, not annoyance, that darkens his golden eyes. “You look utterly miserable, Angel,” he mutters into semi-darkness.
Aziraphale had hoped that he was doing a decent job at hiding his true feelings, but that hope is frivolous. He knows that he’s pouting. “I am utterly miserable,” he remarks, before remembering his manners, and the fact that Crowley was under no obligation to invite him here in the first place. He sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I’m sorry, Crowley, I’m being awfully rude.”
“‘S alright,” Crowley says, “Being rude can feel good when you’re utterly miserable.”
“Well, to you, maybe,” Aziraphale defends.
“We’re not so different,” says Crowley.
Aziraphale chooses not to argue that point. After the day that they’ve both had, together, he’s beginning to feel like any argument would be useless. “I miss the bookshop,” he says instead, whispered like a secret. “It was… my place. My home. I feel unmoored without it.”
“I feel the same way,” Crowley admits.
“About the flat?”
“No, about the bookshop.” Aziraphale furrows his brow, surveying Crowley, who isn’t looking back. Crowley continues, faster, “I don’t mean to take it from you, or presume anything, but to some degree I feel like it may have been our place.” Our home, he doesn’t say. It lingers anyway. Our side.
A pause. “I feel the same way,” says Aziraphale eventually. When Crowley grasps his hand under bed sheets, he doesn’t pull away.
“I wish I could tell you that it’s all going to be okay,” he says, “I wish I could tell you anything, actually. But for once, I don’t want to risk lying.”
“Would it be a lie?” Aziraphale mumbles.
“I don’t know, Angel,” says Crowley, “I have no idea what happens now.”
Aziraphale sighs, lets his shoulders deflate, and leans slightly into Crowley, as if pushed over by a strong gust of wind. “We’re not so different,” he whispers, barely audible.
A low, melancholy laugh bubbles out of Crowley, and he wraps an arm around Aziraphale’s shoulder, pulling him closer.
“Oh, Aziraphale,” he says, “What can I do to help you?”
“Well, for one,” Aziraphale starts, “You can let me have at least a small section of the blanket.”
Crowley gestures wildly around them. “Already done!” he defends.
“And second… and I do apologize if this is at all transgressive –” Aziraphale stutters, “please don’t feel the need to acquiesce just because I’m having a… difficult day, but…”
“What is it that you want, Angel?” Crowley interrupts gently.
Aziraphale sighs. “Would you mind, perhaps holding me? Just for a bit? It’s just– I’m very cold, and…”
Crowley shushes him before he can blabber on any further. “All you had to do was ask, Angel. Though I’m not sure how much help I’ll be. Cold blooded,” he says again.
“That’s alright,” says Aziraphale, who isn’t exactly cold in the traditional sense of the word, “I just don’t want to be alone.”
Crowley sighs his understanding. Aziraphale doesn’t know what he’s expecting, but it isn’t for Crowley to fully drape himself over him, arms around his chest, facing downwards, like a snake lounging on a particularly warm rock. Aziraphale chuckles and wonders if Crowley can feel the vibrations, like Aziraphale can feel a strange rumbling against his chest when Crowley speaks.
“You aren’t alone, Aziraphale. Never.”
Each word settles on his skin like a kiss.
Cold blooded or not, Crowley warms Aziraphale from head to toe.