Work Text:
“I’ve just read the most extraordinary thing.”
The restaurant thrums around them, silverware chiming softly against plates, bursts of laughter rising from nearby tables, servers weaving through the crowded room balancing glasses of wine and steaming dishes fragrant with butter and garlic and rosemary.
But their table sits tucked into a quieter corner near the back wall, half-hidden behind the lush green spill of ivy, trees, and trailing plants climbing the window behind them.
“…Anthony?”
“Hm? Er.” He blinks back to himself. There is a loose thread on Asa’s collar. He could see it tremble ever so slightly as the man inhaled, exhaled, nudged by the movement of his Adam’s apple as he swallowed. “Most people call me by my surname, actually. Just Crowley.”
“Oh, by all means. Crowley, then. Dear, are you alright? You look like you drifted off in thought for a moment. Have I lost you already?”
Crowley has already decided he likes listening to Asa speak. He’s been listening to him for a while now. Two glasses of wine have disappeared already, one for each of them.
They’ve been here for hours. And the conversation has wandered everywhere imaginable with the strange, effortless ease of two people who somehow skipped past awkwardness entirely.
They’ve discussed whether gorillas truly build nests, savory versus sweet crepes, the tragedy of poorly performed Shostakovich, why every Miles Davis album mysteriously turns up in secondhand shops, and, somehow, Regency silver snuffboxes.
Crowley still has no idea how they arrived at the snuffboxes.
He also doesn’t care.
Because he’s discovering something about himself tonight: he could happily listen to Asa Fell talk about absolutely anything.
And Crowley has the strangest feeling.
Not nerves exactly. Not attraction either, though there’s certainly plenty of that. He can’t quite put his finger on it. There’s something about this man before him. Something he cannot place. Should he—nah, don’t want to make it weird now. Not when this is their first date. If that’s indeed what this is. He already hopes there will be more.
“You smell familiar,” Crowley says after a moment.
Asa blinks. “Oh! It’s a new cologne, actually. My barber suggested it. Perhaps you’ve come across it before?”
“No, it’s not that.” Crowley frowns slightly, trying to pin the feeling down. “It’s more like…”
He gestures with his fork, searching for words that don’t sound completely insane. Nothing arrives. So he settles on, “You smell like old paper.”
Asa looks delighted rather than offended. “Do I?”
“A bit.” Crowley takes another sip of wine. “It’s working for you.”
A faint flush rises into Asa’s cheeks, and Crowley feels absurdly victorious over it.
God. He’s in trouble.
“Got a question for you.”
“Do go on,” Asa says, delicately dabbing at his mouth after finishing another bite of burrata crostini.
Crowley watches the movement before dragging his attention back upward. “What was it?”
“Pardon? What was what?”
“The extraordinary thing you read.”
A quiet laugh slips from Asa, and he glances at Crowley almost shyly from beneath his lashes.
“And here I thought you weren’t listening.” His fingers curl lightly around the stem of his wine glass. “You don’t mind that I’m talking so much? I’ve been told I can ramble. Particularly if I’m nervous.”
“Why would you be nervous? We’ve been talking for ages now.”
“Yes, well.” Asa smiles faintly down into his wine. “It’s been a while since I was out to dinner like this.” He hesitates, then admits more quietly, “I don’t want to do the wrong thing.”
Crowley shakes his head slightly. “Oh, I don’t think you can do the wrong thing.”
The blush returns at once—soft pink rising across Asa’s cheeks this time without fading—and Crowley has the urge to lean across the table and see if it feels as warm as it looks.
“It’s a novel,” Asa says, setting the glass back down and circling carefully toward his original point.
Crowley snorts lightly. “Oh, thank goodness. I thought you’d found religion.”
“Religion is not my cup of tea, I’m afraid.”
“Really? Not for an angel like you?”
“I’m no angel,” Asa says, gray eyes meeting Crowley’s over the brim of his wine glass, and it’s Crowley’s turn to flush.
“Ngk.”
“But it’s hardly intriguing,” Asa says after a moment, clearing his throat lightly, and the thread trembles, “that a man who works in a bookshop should read. I apologize if I’m boring you.”
Crowley’s too interested. That’s the issue. Interested in the way Asa gently folds his lovely plump hands when he listens. Interested in the soft crease beside his mouth when he’s trying not to smile too much. Interested in the strange sense of familiarity that keeps brushing against Crowley every time Asa looks at him for too long.
And Crowley still cannot decide whether bringing that up would sound romantic or deeply concerning.
Probably deeply concerning.
“M’not saying that at all,” he says quickly. “I just—”
He hesitates.
Because what is he supposed to say?
He doesn’t want Asa thinking he’s distracted because Asa himself isn’t enough to hold his attention. If anything, Crowley’s struggling to focus because of him.
“Look,” he says instead, softer now. “I’ll tell you what I was thinking in a minute. Now you tell me about this extraordinary novel you read.”
Asa studies him for half a second longer, like he knows there’s something Crowley isn’t saying, but then he relents with a small smile.
“You interrupted the last chapter, actually.”
“Did I?”
“Yes. It was the other afternoon when you first came into the shop.”
Crowley grins into his glass. “Terrible of me.”
“Quite.”
There’s something almost unfair about how easy it is becoming to imagine this happening again. Another dinner. Another conversation stretching late into the evening. Asa looking across a candle-lit table at him like this.
“I admit to you,” Asa continues, “this story is absurd.”
“Mm.”
“And clever, and thought-provoking, and dramatic.”
“Mmhm.”
“And occasionally terribly written.”
Crowley winces theatrically. “Oof. Cutting review from a bookworm such as yourself.”
Asa laughs softly. “I didn’t say I disliked it. But,” he says, sitting forward suddenly, eyes bright, “the relationship at the center of it is fascinating.”
“That’s the bit you’re interested in.”
“Well, obviously,” Asa waves a dismissive hand. “I’m not generally drawn to apocalyptic literature.”
“There’s an apocalypse in it? But you said you didn’t find religion.”
Asa chuckles. “The apocalypse is technically the plot, I suppose. But there’s so much more than that going on.”
“Alright then.” Crowley settles back in his chair, wine glass loose in his hand. “Tell me.”
“So,” Asa gives a delighted little wiggle in his chair and leans forward to begin this tale, “according to the novel, the Earth is a Libra.”
Crowley grins. “The planet.”
“Yes.”
“Has a star sign.”
“Yes.”
“That’s complete nonsense.”
“Somehow I knew you’d like it,” Asa says, smiling.
And somehow that expression alone is enough to keep Crowley listening.
He explains the prophecies first. A seventeenth-century witch predicting absolutely everything with bizarre accuracy, then the Antichrist misplaced at birth due to what sounds like an ordinary cock-up. Crowley finds himself laughing, contemplating, and asking questions while Asa elaborates on hellhounds, dancing on the heads of pins, and a God who is proud of whales.
I’ve just seen a face, I can’t forget the time or place, where we just met. He’s just the boy for me and I want all the world to see we’ve met, mm-mm-mm-m’mm-mm.
And Crowley realizes, somewhere in the middle of Asa describing infernal nuns and a Bentley that plays only Queen tapes no matter what cassette is inserted, that he can feel it.
He can feel it happening in real time—this slow, helpless slide into wanting more of the man sitting opposite him.
Fallin’, yes I am fallin’, and he keeps callin’ me back again.
More of his laugh, more of the way he tells stories with his whole face involved, more days and nights exactly like this one.
“This story is ridiculous.”
“I told you it was ridiculous. The thing that truly intrigues me,” Asa says, lowering his voice slightly as though confiding a secret, “is that this angel and demon keep finding ways to stay near one another.”
Crowley’s smile fades a little for reasons he can’t name.
“What sort of ways?”
“Oh, all kinds.” Asa counts them off lightly against his fingertips. “Dining at the Ritz. Countless conversations. Saving one another’s lives. Petty arguments. Alcohol. One of them drives the other about constantly.”
“That sounds codependent.”
“It sounds romantic.”
“It sounds dangerous.”
“It sounds devoted,” Asa counters gently.
Crowley looks down at his wine for a moment. There’s something oddly intimate in the certainty with which Asa says it.
“What’s the apocalypse got to do with them then?” he asks finally.
“They decide they rather like Earth,” Asa says simply. “And don’t particularly want it destroyed.”
“I mean, that’s fair,” Crowley replies with a thoughtful tap to the table. “How long had they been friends—six thousand years?” Crowley shrugs lightly. “Makes sense to get attached to the place after that. And the people.” His gaze flicks briefly back to Asa. “And each other, really.”
“The demon is clearly smitten.”
Crowley smiles crookedly. “Not a comedy then.”
“What?”
“You said he was smitten.” Crowley gestures vaguely with his wine glass. “Thought perhaps the angel finally got fed up and smote him. Smited him. Whatever the past tense is. Y’know—took him out, and the demon meets his fiery end at the angel’s hand.”
“Oh!” Asa laughs, waving both hands quickly. “No, no. I mean, the angel certainly wants to take him out—”
Crowley arches an eyebrow.
“—to lunch,” Asa clarifies at once. “Or dinner. Or crepes in Paris. You see, he’s smitten with the demon.”
“…Double tragedy then?”
“No! Oh gracious.” Asa presses a hand briefly to his forehead, laughing helplessly now. “How am I still not being clear about this?”
Crowley gives him a bemused look.
“You think they’re in love.”
Asa looked relieved. “I know they are.”
“How?”
“It’s very obvious,” Asa huffs. “And they bicker like an old married couple.”
“Sounds a bit unlikely. Maybe they’re just dramatic.”
“Oh, they’re definitely dramatic,” Asa assures him warmly. “And deeply in love.”
There’s a peculiar feeling, knocking at the back of Crowley’s mind now. A sense of standing near a door he cannot remember opening.
“M’sure they are then. M’not really one for books personally but I like hearing you talk about them.”
“But you’re a writer?” Asa asks. Crowley notices his lips are stained softly red from wine.
“Actually, my twin passions are shoemaking and obstetrics.”
“Really?”
“No.”
“Fiend,” Asa tuts fondly, his eyes crinkling at the corners.
They both laugh.
“Nah,” Crowley says, settling back in his chair. “I mean, I am a writer. Occupational hazard when you’re an academic.” He waves a hand. “Though it’s not stories, really. More books of facts. Theoretical physics. Astronomy. Instructions for building a nebula, basically. If one could build a nebula.”
Asa’s expression brightens with immediate interest.
Crowley notices that too.
“But I lecture enough in class already,” he continues. “Don’t want to inflict all that on you too. I’ll save the suffering for my students. What’re you reading next, then?” he asks.
“Oh,” Asa says, and there’s suddenly something mischievous in his expression, “I’ve picked up something new.”
“Hope it’s by a proper author.”
“I rather think it is.”
Crowley points at him. “You haven’t started reading mine already.”
“I may have gotten through the first two chapters thus far.”
Crowley groans softly and drags a hand down his face. “Nnngh. I must have come across like the most self-centered arse alive.”
“Not at all! You are passionate about your work,” Asa corrects kindly. “There’s a difference. And I thought it was rather charming, actually,” Asa’s eyes are smiling at him too now. “Though, I confess, at first glance I wasn’t certain which way was up on some of those charts.”
“That’s rather the point of the book, honestly. My publisher apparently felt Astrophysics for Everyone sounded more marketable than An Idiot’s Guide to the Universe.”
Asa nearly snorts into his wine.
“But that’s what I wanted it to be,” Crowley continues, shrugging one shoulder. “Not the idiot part. The everyone part. People hear astrophysics and immediately assume it’s beyond them,” he says, absently tracing a fingertip along the stem of his wine glass. “All equations and incomprehensible nonsense. And some of it does give you a migraine to contemplate,” he admits. “But mostly it’s…” He pauses, searching for the right word. “Wonder, really.”
Asa is watching him very closely now, last bites in front of him seemingly forgotten.
“The universe is large. Mind-bogglingly large.” Crowley’s hands move as he talks now, animated despite himself. “There are stars so massive our sun would disappear beside them entirely, and galaxies so far away their light started traveling toward us before human beings even existed. And somehow…somehow we’re tiny little creatures standing on a damp rock in space capable of understanding any of it at all.”
“It is a bit damp. Blue marble, and all.”
“So I tried to explain it in plain language,” Crowley nods. “No gatekeeping. No pretending confusion means someone’s stupid. I want people to grasp the scale of it. The beauty. Want them to look up at the night sky and feel astonished instead of small.”
Asa’s expression has gone very soft.
Crowley’s mouth snaps shut. A faint flush creeps up the back of his neck as he looks down.
“Right,” he mutters. “Sorry. Bit carried away there.”
“Please don’t apologize.” Asa’s voice is gentle enough to make Crowley glance back up. “No doubt that’s why you became a professor. You explain it beautifully.”
The warmth in the compliment settles somewhere close to Crowley’s heart. He looks away before he can embarrass himself by reacting too obviously to it.
For a moment, neither of them says anything.
“I still find myself wondering,” Asa asks, “what you were reflecting on earlier. You looked rather like a man trying to solve a particularly difficult crossword puzzle.”
Crowley lets out a quiet breath through his nose. Right. He’d said he’d tell him.
He glances down at his wine for a moment, watching the candlelight bend red through the glass. He already knows this is going to sound strange. Too intense for a first date, probably. The sort of thing that sends reasonable people politely fleeing into the night.
But Asa has been honest with him all evening. Open in that careful, thoughtful way of his.
And Crowley finds that he wants to offer honesty back. Even if it comes out tangled.
“You know what it’s like,” he says slowly, “hearing an old song playing somewhere in the distance?”
Asa doesn’t interrupt. He only watches him quietly, eyes soft with attention, encouraging him onward without a word.
“From the next room over,” Crowley continues. “Or through an open window. You can’t quite make out the lyrics, but it seems familiar somehow. You recognize the tune. Or you’re fairly certain you do.”
Asa’s eyes are lovely in this light. Gray, but warm at the edges. Steady on Crowley’s face as though he’s listening to something important.
“And maybe you hum a bar or two,” Crowley says. “Enough that you think if you concentrated hard enough, you might remember the rest. The actual words.” He gives a small, self-conscious laugh. “Then something small distracts you and suddenly it’s gone again before you can place it.”
Crowley looks back up at Asa.
“That’s what I was thinking about,” he admits. “That’s what you feel like to me.”
Asa has an expression on his face that Crowley cannot place.
“And I know that sounds odd,” Crowley says quickly. “I don’t mean it in a bad way. Quite the opposite, actually. It’s just—”
Asa reaches across the table and takes his hand.
“My dear boy,” he says softly.
And just like that, the frantic scrambling of Crowley’s thoughts falls silent, all at once beneath the simple warmth of this man’s fingers curled around his own.
“I know exactly what you mean.”
Oh.
Oh, they’re holding hands.
He likes holding hands with him.
It feels…as though this is something he’s meant to be doing. Like his hand had been waiting for Asa’s without either of them knowing it.
It’s a strange thought. One he keeps to himself.
The evening drifts onward around them after that, unhurried. They talk through their main course and through lingering sips of wine, wandering effortlessly from one absurd subject to another.
Films. Music. Ducks. A hand settles atop Crowley’s while laughing at one of his remarks. Fingers brushing against his wrist when making a point. Asa’s thumb rubbing softly over the back of Crowley’s hand.
Crowley finds that it feels natural. Like habit. Like memory?
By the time they stand to leave, they’ve fallen into holding hands again as easily as breathing.
“Oh,” Asa says as the restaurant door swings open. “It’s raining.”
Outside, the street gleams gold beneath the lamps.
“Didn’t you carry an umbrella?” Crowley asks, already reaching into his coat for his own.
Asa sighs fondly at himself. “Forget my own head next.”
Crowley laughs softly and expands the umbrella before offering his arm almost without thinking.
Asa takes it immediately.
Crowley lifts the umbrella above them both as they step out into the rain.
And suddenly—
A strange feeling catches at him again. Asa tucked close and warm at his side. The umbrella overhead. Their footsteps falling into rhythm together.
Haven’t they…been here Before?
Crowley shoos the thought away almost immediately, brisk as waving off a persistent fly. No. His head’s not big enough for those thoughts.
And honestly, he doesn’t particularly want to question why this feels so—
The word ineffable flashes through his mind.
—right.
He has a beautiful man tucked against his arm in the rain, hip nudging against Crowley’s, smiling softly beside him, and Crowley decides that is more than enough.
Instead, he glances sideways at Asa, flashes him a crooked grin, and says, “Let me tempt you to some dessert?”
The smile the man gives him in return feels like stepping into sunlight.
“Temptation accomplished,” Asa says, a touch breathless now as his fingers curl a little more securely around Crowley’s arm.
“You sure? Not too late for you?”
“Quite sure. Derek brought me a coffee this afternoon to keep me going. I really must thank him.”
Together they continue down the rain-dark street, the wet pavement glittering like a galaxy at their feet.
“That was very kind of you,” Asa says softly near Crowley’s ear, “to wait for me tonight.”
“Oh—” Crowley starts to interject. He’s not being kind, it’s a genuine pleasure to be with him. He should be thanking whatever absurd luck governs the universe for letting him meet this man at all.
Crowley turns his head to say something along those lines—
—and finds Asa already looking at him. Eyes shining like the celestial bodies above. Rain patters overhead. Asa’s breath ghosts warm in the narrow space between them, the loose thread still trembling faintly against the collar of his coat, shifting with every quiet inhale.
Crowley’s heart skips a beat.
“Well, it was,” Asa says quietly. His hand slips slightly farther down Crowley’s arm. “Now,” he murmurs, “tell me about your stars.”