Work Text:
From the moment Professor Anthony Crowley met Asa Fell, he was inexplicably drawn to him. The man was silly at best, potential to be quite ditzy, yet there seemed to be an ancient soul in his body crying out for Anthony’s response. Something deeply buried inside his own chest had stirred, and when Asa had asked for his number, Anthony could have sworn the man had wings.
Anthony wasn’t a very fast person, not at all- he drove the speed limit, edited every word he wrote over and over again, and had never moved fast enough to even consider his own limits. But Asa… Asa made him fast. A sudden dinner agreement, a lighthearted argument about whose flat to return to- Anthony’s was quite suitable, he thought, if one ignored the exams he’d yet to grade, but Asa insisted, that man did always insist.
At some point, likely the next morning, the two men found themselves in Asa’s kitchen.
“I’m sorry, I… I don’t really bring people over much, so I don’t have much. I tend to just run to the shop on my way home from the bookshop,” Asa was saying, trembling slightly. “I really should have thought about it-”
“It’s alright, Angel- Asa,” Anthony responded, stumbling over a word he’d never once called another. Where had it come from? What did it…?
Asa looked up at Anthony, his shaking ceasing and posture different. “I… we’d met before… well, yesterday…?”
“Yes,” Anthony breathed, eyes open yet finally seeing. They had met. They had met, they had known each other for far longer than any human should have. Asa Fell and Anthony Crowley were not just strangers who happened to have a bond- they were together since the dawn of time. Their bond was there, strange, transcending every line of reason… ineffable.