Good Omens Fic: Sleep! Sleep! Beauty Bright

[rainjoyswriting]

Sleep! Sleep! Beauty Bright, a Good Omens Crowley/Aziraphale fic because hey I've gone three whole fics without bringing the angst (which I always do heal again, you know <3 )

Disclaimer: I don't own or profit from these characters, except in sheer glee.

Rating: PG-13?? Bit of cussing, as if I can write without it.

Warnings/spoilers: Set post-series, *do* watch that first. Warnings-wise this is just pretty heavy introspection on the characters' respective angst and growth, with some sleep terrors thrown in. You know best what you feel iffy about clicking on today.

Summary: . . . in every ban, / The mind-forg'd manacles I hear



Note: Rainjoy will these all be named after William Blake poems (I do what I want)










When Crowley asks the question, he doesn't think he's yeeting a can of worms across the room. What he's doing is enjoying the sleepy, summer-night drowsy feel of flowing his body until it lays like water all along his angel's warm, soft, solid side, his body so perfect for laying with like this, like She cut their shapes to tessellate. He's got an arm across Aziraphale's midriff, a knee slunk up one of his thighs, his head, eyes already closed, is resting just above Aziraphale's armpit where his ear can hear his heart's rhythm in the hollow shape of his ribs. He smells good, and he's exactly the right temperature, exactly the right shape to hold. And above Crowley's head he turns the page, rereading Middlemarch for probably the eight thousandth time, in the fateful moment when Crowley, half asleep and suddenly imagining the angel cuddling down as well - freed from anxiety of Heaven Aziraphale can be exuberantly physically affectionate with him which Crowley is finally beginning to not go faint and flustered about, the thought of him sleeping with his arms around Crowley, he would be perfect to entwine fully with - at the thought he innocently, idiotically mumbles into his side, "Why don't you sleep?"

It would be nice, is all he's thinking. Aziraphale's arms tucking around him like a teddy bear, the softening of his breath, the sight of him - the sight of him, that spikes a keener longing in him; the sight of Aziraphale feeling so safe as to lay eyes closed and trusting beside him, dreaming in Crowley's bed, and then tousled and muzzily waking in Crowley's arms, fuck suddenly Crowley's hungry for it. Why doesn't he sleep?

Underneath his body, Aziraphale has gone stiff.

It's enough to dispel Crowley's sleepiness, he's immediately as alert as Aziraphale is, Aziraphale who keeps the book in front of his face and says behind its shield, "Oh, well, you know how it is, you like it more than I do. It's not like you enjoy food the way I do."

"But I do eat, sometimes."

"When I offer you things."

"Well, yeah," because clearly the point of eating is to do it off Aziraphale's fork. Crowley doesn't mind eating, some things are quite nice - he keeps bags of those nuclear-orange cheese puff things around just to make Aziraphale twitch and huff because it's funny (and because, maybe it's a demon thing, he does enjoy them). But Aziraphale never sleeps. In all the time he's known him, Crowley can't remember him ever even talking about it. "But you never sleep. Do you sleep?"

Behind the book, Crowley knows simply from knowing him, Aziraphale is mouthing nothing for a time, searching for words, before he eventually says, ". . . not for a - while."

Crowley rests an elbow on Aziraphale's chest to prop his cheek up, eyes narrowed through the spine of the book. "How long?"

Aziraphale makes the vague noises of looking for a way out of answering the question.

"How long, angel?"

". . . thirteen- . . . something. I think the last time was thirteen-something, I can't remember everything."

"Thirteen - the fourteenth century? Alright I get why you'd want to sleep through that arsehole of a century -"

"Crowley, that's a very unpleasant image."

"- but that's - oh for fuck's sake angel, give me the book."

"No! Dorothea is in the middle of a very delicate thought process!"

"Give me the book." Crowley pulls it down by the spine and, glaring into Aziraphale's eyes - he looks ruffled, embarrassed but not only embarrassed, something worse as well - pulls it from his hands, and puts it on the bedside table. "Why don't you sleep? Even if you're just killing time it's nice."

Aziraphale aims his pout at the lampshade, away from Crowley, who begins playing with the braided cord of Aziraphale's dressing gown because it's there. The lampshade is new, new-ish. When Crowley finally made it back into his flat in his own body again after the apocalypse didn't happen, everything was exactly as he'd left it - better than he'd left it, actually, the toxic stain of Ligur had vanished from his office floor - except that the bed in his stark bedroom, previously decorated only by his few most prized, most petrified plants, now had two bedside tables. There was the one where Crowley dumped his phone and sunglasses when he laid down, and there was another one at the other side of the bed, which had a book on it with the bookmark two thirds of the way through, and a little tube of hand cream that smelled like Aziraphale's hands, and this lamp with a light tartan shade. Crowley knows that Aziraphale didn't put any of it here, because the first time he saw it he'd been terribly touched that Crowley had put it all there for him, and said he'd been looking for that book everywhere. He took it for granted, of course, that Crowley basically stole one of his books to put there for him as a surprise, which, in fairness, does sound like something Crowley would do.

Adam Young, Crowley thinks, knows what his parents' bedroom looks like, and he hadn't understood why this bedroom didn't function in exactly the same way. Barring a few details, nowadays it pretty much does.

The rest of the flat's adapted more, in the long months since. There are more bookcases around the place, and Aziraphale keeps putting Radio Four on so the plants have 'something soothing' to listen to (whenever he leaves the room Crowley turns it off and gives a silent stare to all the plants, because Aziraphale isn't always there, Aziraphale can't always defend them by merely being present so Crowley can't do anything to them in front of him, and Aziraphale doesn't know that an underperforming plant didn't have some infection that meant Crowley had to remove it to keep the other plants 'safe'). Crowley has teabags as well as coffee and more than one mug, now. Aziraphale still calls it 'your' flat though they're often both there on an evening, unless they spend the night in the shop, which Aziraphale now lets Crowley mind when he's visiting his accountant or out of town looking at a collection of books, or just thinks that the customers are looking a bit too comfortable in their browsing. At first they just agreed that they had best stay close for a while in case Heaven or Hell were planning anything else, but 'a while' span out and out and now it feels strange, the hours when they are apart. If asked, it would take either of them a moment to remember to give the old excuse; to each other, they don't even bother. For Crowley, eternity means Aziraphale, and he still can't control what it feels like to know that the sentiment is returned.

In Crowley's bedroom, in what literally any other being on three realms would just outright call their bedroom, Aziraphale says without looking at Crowley, "I don't need to kill time. Before, I always had the work of Heaven to be doing. And they invented the printing press then, anyway, and they write faster than I can read, there are a lot more of them than me."

"You're rereading Middlemarch."

"It's good."

"If you cared about keeping up you wouldn't be rereading Victorian breezeblocks, you're . . . are you lying to me?"

"No! No, that is a dreadful thing to accuse an angel of, that is a scurrilous -"

"Oh, good one," Crowley murmurs, because he keeps a note on his phone of the words Aziraphale comes out with to describe Crowley's own conduct.

"- slanderous -"

His indignation runs out of steam and he looks down, and tugs the cord of his dressing gown out of Crowley's hands so that he can play with it instead. "It is true," he says. "I'd rather be reading. And there always are more books, there are so many more. I am allowed to reread the ones I like, Crowley."

"Alright," Crowley says gently, and touches his cheek, just a brief hold of the side of his face, to say that he won't tease, that they're safe, here. "But you do have literally all of eternity, so it's not like you really have time pressures, angel."

Aziraphale shrugs in that squirming one-shoulder-then-a-bit-of-the-other-one way he does when uneasy, fingers rolling at the cord. "I prefer reading," he says. "I mean, I prefer most things to sleeping, really, I suppose other people must enjoy it but I never have."

Crowley tilts an eyebrow, trying to work it out. "Does it remind you of being dead?"

"What would I know about being dead?" Aziraphale says, which is a fair point. "No, it's the - dreams."

"You don't like dreams? We-ell, I s'pose they are a bit . . . anarchic, for someone like -"

"I know that people have nice dreams," Aziraphale says, in the clipped tones of not wanting emotion to show in a single syllable he's saying, "they write about them in books. But all of mine have been entirely dreadful and I don't intend to have another one. Ghastly things," he adds in a lower tone, eyes flicking to the side, an expression of extreme - disgust, anger it looks like, glared at the lampshade. Crowley doesn't know what to say, just looks at him for a long time - humans might blink in surprise, Crowley just folds up his forehead - until Aziraphale says, a little plaintive, "May I have my book back now, please?"

"Do you mean nightmares?"

"I thought you wanted to sleep, Crowley."

"What's an angel got to have nightmares about?"

"I don't want to talk about this, it's really not -"

"You've never had one nice dream? No - Aziraphale -" He sits up, catches and tries to calm Aziraphale's hands; ordinarily they might anxiously flutter but now they snatch back to get out of his grip like his touch stings; Crowley touches him for just long enough to feel that the tendons under the skin are like steel. Crowley tries to read his face, tries to see something there he can understand, Crowley's just - confused, he just doesn't - "Not even a neutral one? Like, one of those weird ones where Beelzebub's an angry duck and you know you're in trouble because you were supposed to bring them the special box but you forgot to ask anyone where it was -"

Aziraphale gives him a look so confused it looks furious, and says, "No."

Crowley stares at him some more, because he's had some pretty shitty dreams himself over the centuries - some really shitty ones - but they've never put him off sleep, and it had never occurred to him in all this time that angels might have anything to have bad dreams about at all. Whenever Crowley had nightmares it was usually about the very fact that he wasn't an angel anymore, so if he'd ever guessed at what Aziraphale dreamed about he would have thought it was flowers, puppies, harp music, pretty clouds, just, angel crap. Now he sits there looking at Aziraphale looking angry and upset and frightened, arms folded aggressively tightly to his chest, glaring down the bed like he wants to be anywhere else, and Crowley doesn't want Aziraphale to ever feel like he wants to be anywhere but beside him. And it's not visible, it doesn't even happen in any physical sense, but he knows the angel can feel it the same way he does; he flexes a wing out, wide behind them, curling protectively in, not touching Aziraphale, just there at his back, around his side, keeping him safe.

He says, keeping his voice steady and quiet, "What do you dream about?"

Aziraphale shakes his head, chin dug into his chest, and his tone is pleading. "I really don't want to talk about it, dear."

"Alright. Alright." Crowley strokes the side of his arm with the back of his hand, and while his mind's churning on it all a bit, while a tiny part of himself that he's not proud of isn't just really freaked out and worried but is just a bit greedy to know what the Heaven Aziraphale does dream about - eternity means that nothing ever has to happen right now. "Alright. You want your book back?"

Arms still folded tight, said very quietly to his own knees, "Yes, please."

Crowley draws his breath in, and he is going to say this, he's going to get this out, this sentence is a thing that is going to exit his mouth. He fights the tightening of his own jaw, millennia of training himself not to say things like this. "You want to cuddle first?"

"Oh can we?"

He aims his eyes at the ceiling and lifts an apparently weary arm, and Aziraphale wraps his arms around his chest, presses his cheek to his shoulder, and in the space of three breaths manages to untangle all of his jangled muscles, smoothing them out to softness again. Crowley settles an arm around him and can smell his hair and feels a bit high on it, lowers his nose to it and closes his eyes, breathes in slowly. He wonders what angels have nightmares about, what Aziraphale might have dreamed, to put him off sleeping forever.

He battles saying it and not saying it. He doesn't know which he really wants to win.

He says, and it's a hiss even where there shouldn't be sibilance, his wing tightens around the shape of them, "Nothing's ever going to hurt you. Anything that tries I'll end its fucking world."

"You soppy old thing," Aziraphale says, and for a moment they pretend, weight relaxing into the other's hold, that Crowley's the one whose spine is strong enough for the both of them.

*

When he's certain that Crowley has gone to sleep, pinning half of Aziraphale's body to the bed and breathing very low and gentle, Aziraphale lowers his book, and looks down at the demon's head, and feels just so terribly sad.

There's still a lot else underneath the sadness but the sadness looms too large to pay much attention to anything else at this particular moment. It's a sadness Aziraphale is familiar with in various forms; the sadness of knowing what he very well ought to be and knowing that he's failed in it, that he knew exactly where the line was and just couldn't make himself reach it. He never was a very good angel. Too soft, until he hardened against Heaven itself, and always thinking that some of what they called righteousness looked just too much like cruelty from Earth. He was a rubbish angel, really. More interested in humans themselves than the great war between Heaven and Hell from the beginning.

He doesn't know quite the particulars of how he's been a disappointment to Crowley quite yet, but he knows he can find the particulars if he really wants to, he's got all night to worry over them. He also knows that Crowley, however he likes to pretend, is really very kind at heart, at least to him. Crowley will already have forgiven him, won't even have been angry with him for getting so snappish (really, he is a dreadful angel). And he does know why Crowley asked, what Crowley must have thought, because it's what people do - it's what couples do, and he blushes a little, brushing his fingers through Crowley's hair. They are one of those, sort of, as much as they're anything; to humans they would look like a couple. And couples sleep together, don't they?

Well - he doesn't mean like that. But literally. Literally, people who love each other enjoy sleeping next to each other. They seem to think it's very nice. And Crowley really enjoys sleeping, and he probably thinks he'd enjoy sleeping beside Aziraphale while Aziraphale was also sleeping, but Aziraphale remembers every dream he's ever had and hated every one of them. The better dreams were the ones where he was merely a failure, gave away the sword he was given because they needed it the poor things but it really didn't always look like that was the right decision and it couldn't have been the right decision or he would have been told to do it, wouldn't he? So in the better dreams he was a disappointment to God, or wretched Gabriel, even Sandalphon's contempt felt just awful in those dreams where his failure was not just known but voiced.

As for the worse dreams, well, by the time he came to have a body capable of sleep, on Earth as it is now, he already knew as everyone did what the punishment for a failed angel was. And how on Earth is he supposed to tell Crowley that he has spent centuries avoiding sleep because of dreams of that?

The dreams weren't always about his own Fall, though they were terrible dreams, and once just the sight of a black wing on his own back woke him almost retching in fear. But back in the time before time there was nowhere to escape the sound of a battle the size of the universe, nor the screams that resulted from it. Those screams linger in some very foundational part of his soul, the screams of damned angels, and Aziraphale trying to cover his ears from a sound that was not merely physical. Those screams scored something inside him too deep to heal and he feels it, when he breathes, the scar tissue stretching and moving.

Once, in one dream, he could hear Crowley.

He puts the book aside, closing his eyes and breathing slowly through his nose, trying to manage himself to calm. His hand is too tight in Crowley's hair; he makes it relax, and shivers his breath loose, marks his place in the book to lay it on the bedside table to give himself both arms free to hug Crowley's head to his chest where it's safe.

He never slept again, after that. He only ever had done it to kill time, or when he felt very lonely and weary and wretched in his work, and humans seemed to feel better for sleeping, didn't they? But he never did, woke at best unsettled every time, and by the time he knew Crowley well enough to smile at just the sound of his voice, he could never bear to sleep and face that again. But Crowley sleeps. Aziraphale looks down at him - he's a sound sleeper, always, even if Aziraphale gets up in the night to fetch a new book or potters about making tea he never starts to wake - and he doesn't know what Crowley dreams about. Crowley must have worse to dream about than him, mustn't he? And yet Crowley sleeps, and Aziraphale . . .

He murmurs to the top of Crowley's head, "You were always braver than me, my dear."

Crowley diced with danger from the beginning, defied Heaven and when that led to Hell, defied Hell from very early on. And still he slept; he took himself to some mortal bed and closed his eyes and left himself vulnerable to anything, unafraid of the danger from angels, demons, humans, or from inside his own head. And Aziraphale who should have felt protected by all the forces of divine goodness snatched furtive naps on lonely nights and woke terrified of the contents of his own soul, and has never stopped being terrified of that.

But why, now? Now it's not about Heaven or Hell anymore, they have no dominion over either of them. Aziraphale doesn't give a decided fuck what Gabriel thinks of him now, and Gabriel has nothing to punish him with. Aziraphale faced Satan, defied Heaven, chose Crowley's side - and his wings remain as white as a dove's. If She were going to punish him for his choices, wouldn't She have done it by now?

He strokes Crowley's hair, just softly, and feels how loose, how open Crowley's body is within the circle of Aziraphale's arms, how helpless and trusting it is. He does want to try to make Crowley happy, he wants to be good, by their own definition of the term, the way they choose to enact it. A lot of it, for Aziraphale, is being allowed to act on the ever-bubbling affection he feels for Crowley, his desire to care for a demon no-one has ever cared for, to love him with all of the endless oceanic immensity of the love he was created to spend.

He tucks Crowley's head up in his arms to kiss him there on the crown of it, and then he squirms himself lower on the mattress, rearranging Crowley on him - so his head now sits much higher on Aziraphale's chest, tucked to his throat, so Crowley's arm loose in sleep lays across his belly, not his lap. Perhaps demons ought to smell of sulphur but Crowley's hair just smells pleasantly of the cedary cologne Aziraphale gave him, and that unplaceable scent of him.

Maybe it will be different, he thinks. I was always alone when I tried before and I never really felt safe, humans can do some ugly things when they see something helpless. And I really was alone in many ways but he's here, he's here, and he allows himself to close his eyes on that thought, his breath holds in; he's here, he's here, forever. I don't have anything to be afraid of now. Maybe next to him it will be absolutely fine.

He lays there, and breathes.

He thinks, Drat, I can't remember how you do it.

How do you fall asleep? Crowley just seems to get himself comfortable and after a few minutes he just switches himself off somehow, it's like he's had a lot of practice finding the switch and Aziraphale can't remember where it's placed. What did he do before? He let himself focus on how tired he felt and . . . somehow it just happened. How did he invite it to happen?

A watched pot never boils, he thinks. Keep your eyes closed and think of something else. Think of something nice. Like how nice it is just to lay here with Crowley, once he couldn't have been capable of imagining such a thing, the shock of the bliss of it, facing something he couldn't even recognise that he wanted so much would have panicked him. But he has him now daily and nightly, to read with and listen to music with and go to dinner with and take walks in the park with. Crowley is trying to expand Aziraphale's musical tastes and Aziraphale indulges him, though he does tell him when it's outright awful. He mostly likes sitting with a glass of wine and his cheek propped on a hand, watching Crowley get excited talking about an 'EP', the way he gesticulates and forgets to pretend that this is anything other than him sharing with Aziraphale something he loves. They go to museums and galleries together, and the theatre and opera (Aziraphale likes the music, Crowley likes the sex and death). They're never bored - it is very hard to be bored in London, that would take a great deal of effort, and they're discussing a holiday abroad though it's difficult to compromise on a location neither too 'boring' nor too busy.

Mostly it's just Crowley's company, every day, all night; it's being near to Crowley, after millennia of not even being able to even admit that an angel can feel lonely, especially not lonely for one demon in particular. And the little moments - like when some months after the apocalypse, for the first time Aziraphale felt Crowley just wrap his arms around him tight and hold him, wordlessly, breathlessly, and Aziraphale could do nothing out of his sheer shock of understanding what Crowley meant by it. And then Crowley let go and carried on like nothing had happened in that way of his and Aziraphale's heart was full of fireflies and bass drums and riptides and he was speechless, and in love like he'd only just recognised it for what it was all over again. Those little moments, the little perfect things, when they tried to dance and they were dreadful, or all those mornings when Crowley automatically passes him the crossword and kicks his legs over Aziraphale's lap to read the rest of the paper -

The world seems heavier now, it's like being drunk but less spinny, and Crowley is such a lovely anchor to hold . . .

All those lovely mornings feeding the ducks, he thinks, drowsy and slower now; and that first time he kissed, he kissed me in the bookshop and I didn't know what to do with my hands, and - and -

Falling asleep feels like falling.

His breath sucks in and his eyes are open and every muscle in his body is alert, one hand is dug in the mattress, it's all he can do not to squeeze Crowley so hard he hurts him, let alone wakes him. For a frozen frigid second, he does not move, with the terror of what moving might precipitate. Then his breath shivers loose, and for one second, he closes his eyes and hates himself.

Then he carefully picks himself out from underneath Crowley, setting his body comfortable on the mattress, using a pillow to prop his cheek where Aziraphale's chest isn't anymore. He paces the room, one fist over his mouth and blinking hard, all skinned nerves and self-hatred until he can't bear it anymore, there's nothing to pretend about. He makes a cup of cocoa, and sits in the armchair he moved into the corner of the room because it just looked so bare before, and he sits there, watching Crowley sleep like an angel, while the steam from his mug slowly disappears.

*

Aziraphale doesn't mention what they talked about so Crowley doesn't either, though he watches him, because he's not stupid and Aziraphale is very obvious. The angel's a little quieter than usual, which isn't to say he doesn't talk, but that bursts of talk are interspersed with a particular quality of quietness. Aziraphale does know how to turn parts of himself inwards, keeping them closed inside where they're dark and safe, he needed to learn that from hiding so much from Heaven; it's only in those moments when he's startled into baring them that most people ever see that the angel is not just fluff and smiles, and that's why Crowley's feeling awkwardly guilty, and doesn't know how he should apologise, because he doesn't know what he's apologising for but he knows Aziraphale needs something.

He spends his own day brooding over the conversation from last night, the very brief one where Crowley found out that angels can have nightmares. Maybe what he feels guilty about is just that, the flippancy of his attitude, what the Heaven could angels dream of with dread? But he looks at Aziraphale who She made too gentle for Heaven and far too gentle for Hell, where could Aziraphale's allegiance ever lie but here? It's only on Earth that there's space for more than Right or Wrong, there's a place here you can even risk tenderness, and love. And Crowley has a keener idea of Heaven now, not just the memory of it once, before the Fall, when it was palatial, gleaming, spires and glory. Now it's open impersonal offices, blank and empty, and he felt in Aziraphale's body how easy it was to feel so small in that space. Heaven -

It's a nice day so they're in the park, Aziraphale sitting in his prim way beside him on a bench, throwing bread for the ducks; the only thing that's really changed in this from the way they were before is that now Crowley lets one arm lay out along the back of the bench behind Aziraphale's shoulders, and Aziraphale lets him do it. Crowley is staring over the water and thinking about Aziraphale's bookshop, the safety of all those enclosing shelves, the friendly ranks of books, the comfortable sofa and chairs, the cosiness of it. And he thinks about Heaven empty of anything to care for, empty of care, thinks about the white space like an endless dentist's office, the utter lack of actual concern behind the glaring sense of whatever you may think, this is for your own good.

Crowley knows that Hell unsettled Aziraphale but Aziraphale faced it down and enjoyed it, the brilliant little bastard. But up in Heaven, facing Gabriel, Crowley found himself dealing with something very different from the wrath of demons, who knew that what they were doing was vicious. Gabriel thought that what he was doing was right. He was going to burn Aziraphale's soul to ash with utter unthinking certainty in the solidity of his self-righteousness. The demons didn't tell themselves that they were doing the right thing in killing Crowley, they didn't give a shit about right and wrong, they were just pissed off. Heaven didn't even question itself in its conviction that killing Aziraphale was the right thing to do. Heaven knew that Aziraphale deserved it. And Crowley's really glad that it was him facing that and not Aziraphale, already made so anxious of Heaven that facing it, he might have believed it.

All along, for centuries, Aziraphale worried over what Hell might do to Crowley if it found out some of what he'd been up to, Crowley knows it, Aziraphale brought it up in a pained way frequently, scared of the consequences for Crowley as Crowley pushed at the boundaries of their Arrangement. It never even occurred to him to worry about what Heaven would do to him, but now Crowley knows what it would have done, and now he knows what angels have bad dreams about. Fuck, easily wounded as he knows Aziraphale is, why did he think he wouldn't have nightmares? The open brutality of Hell has something going for it compared with the cool insidiousness of Heaven convincing you that the guilty sentence should come first from your own mind.

It's the fucking Fall, it always comes back to the fucking Fall, that's what gives Heaven its certainty, its righteousness, the whip in its hand that never has to be named. Bastards like Gabriel never had to say what happened to bad angels so they'd better all do as they were told, everyone already knew it. Crowley watched Aziraphale live in a cage in his own head where his face lit to see Crowley and then he would remember himself and lock down and look so unhappy in it, so guilty.

I thought it was all love and harps and happiness up there, Crowley thinks, looking across at Aziraphale as he wipes his hands off from crumbs, and puts his hands on his knees to smile down at the ducks and geese squabbling over the last of the bread. I thought it was all light and love because you acted like it was. But it changed. The Fall changed it. It wasn't just us, was it? Everyone Fell, whether they deserved it or not.

It's weird, it makes him feel better about it is what's weird, that it wasn't just about them, that it turns out that if someone is named unforgivable then that makes every single other being unable to forgive, and binds them in the same set of manacles. The Fall fucked over everyone, every demon, every angel. It's the first time Crowley can really think with any clarity of Aziraphale after the Fall, before he knew him, Aziraphale being informed that it was fact that these were beings he could not forgive, when Aziraphale, stubbornly, idiotically gentle as he is, must have had the terrified thought in the back of his mind: But I can forgive them. Oh dear.

Because of course it would have brought on the second thought of the gun aimed right at every angel's head and never, never spoken of: If I can forgive them, am I a bad angel too?

Crowley's willing to admit that after the Fall he was not okay, for quite a long time; he's willing to admit it to himself at least, the rest of the world he'll deal with later. But he wasn't okay. He went through cycles of rage and bitterness and lethargy and numbness, he blamed, he sneered at every angel in Heaven for thinking they were better than him, for having a security they'd ripped from him in fire and agony -

But he was never the only one suffering. He thinks of the bitterness and depression and loneliness of it, for thousands of years, and he thinks of Aziraphale, and he thinks, Fuck. Crowley had thought Aziraphale was floating around in his happy little bubble of love and blessings, while actually Aziraphale was trying to - trying to survive in a fucking cult. Aziraphale had to believe because he had no alternative, he couldn't leave. Hell would punish Crowley for his transgressions in some fucking disgusting ways, but, it tightens his teeth, but Hell would never tell him they were right to do it while they were doing it . . .

Aziraphale says, "Do I have something on my face?"

Crowley's staring at him; he blinks, which he probably hasn't done in a while now, and says, "Nah. Look fine. You wanna get a drink?"

He stands up, offers him a hand. Aziraphale's confused face, after a moment, softens into a smile, and he takes it, allows himself to be pulled up. Crowley wants to say - something, that he gets it more, that he's sorry he didn't, that he never wants to be anything but there for Aziraphale, that he just wasn't thinking, that he never meant last night to turn into some thing. He doesn't know how, he's spent centuries learning how not to say the words, they're both still working through their scars, fuck they're still both finding new wounds they never knew they had -

"You look fine," he says, more quietly, more meant; he trails the back of a finger along Aziraphale's hairline, brushing past his ear, watching the confusion flicker again in the angel's eyes as he stares back, hypnotised as if by a snake. "You look beautiful," Crowley says, and for once, after the gesture, he doesn't look away and change the subject.

Aziraphale stares at him. And then he turns in a fragment of a second a profound beetroot purple, every drop of blood in his body must be in his face, his hair looks shockingly white against it. "- ah," he says in a strangled way. "Ah - ?"

"Let's get a drink," Crowley says, because he wants these things to be more normal for them, squeezing Aziraphale's hand and tugging him into a walk along the path. "You think Dukes'll be fucking insufferable around now?"

They manage to get two armchairs anyway, and Aziraphale has at least faded down to a rosy sort of pink by then, though he does fan himself with the cocktail menu for a bit when they first sit down. "Look," Crowley says, and wants to say, Last night, look -

His nerve fails him when Aziraphale looks at him, it's the way he looks at him, Crowley doesn't know how to live up to that much love, it throws him every time. Their drinks are brought - Crowley just has whisky, Aziraphale is having a Chrysanthemum, a coil of orange zest on its rim. The waiter's presence gives Crowley a moment to try to think about what to say, but once Aziraphale's smiled the waiter away, he picks up his drink and says, "Crowley,"

Aziraphale wants to talk instead, yes, brilliant. Crowley picks up his whisky, says, "Yeah?" like he never intended for this conversation to go any other way.

Aziraphale takes a sip, does the happy little eyebrow raise of an angel who is very glad that human bodies come with taste buds, looks at Crowley and says, "I want to try again."

"Try - sleeping?" His mind's immediately back on last night's - not squabble, it wasn't like their usual fights. Last night's incident. The rock Crowley turned over that turned out to cover so very many insects. The can of worms that he did, indeed, yeet at the wall with all the strength in him.

"Yes." Aziraphale says decidedly, putting his glass down. "It's silly that I can't, even human babies do it, it can hardly be hard."

"You can't do it? I thought you just didn't like it."

"Well - both. But I - panic a bit at the, the falling asleep part." He's gone pink again; Crowley wordlessly passes him a cocktail napkin to fan himself with. "I just wonder . . . if I could sort of, relearn how to do it. If maybe you would -" With that beseeching look of his as he flaps the napkin at himself, shy even of asking it but so hopeful that he will, as if Crowley has ever denied Aziraphale anything. "- if you would stay awake, when I try? In case I . . . so you're there, if I need you."

His voice quietens towards the end, and it makes Crowley want to snatch his hand and swear that he will always be there when Aziraphale needs him. Instead he takes a mouthful of whisky to hold it until the burn has got his tongue more under control, so he can swallow and say, "Yeah, 'course I will. What brought this on? You were pretty adamant last night."

"Just . . . I don't know, I've been thinking. It is silly." Aziraphale has put the napkin down, tugged at his collar with a finger to resettle it after all the warming of his blood, and is now spinning the drink in his glass a little, holding it by the stem. It's a lot of movement for someone speaking relatively calmly. His mouth twitches with an amusement very slightly bitter and a little more sad, and he says, "Here I am at my age, scared of bad dreams. I mean - you've had them, haven't you? But you don't have them every time."

Crowley shakes his head. "No," he says. "Yeah, it's a good idea. Just try a little nap, see how it goes. I'll keep an eye on you."

Very quietly, Aziraphale says, "Thank you," then looks up at him and smiles, and Crowley's heart tries to fold in on itself, the ancient implosion of what Aziraphale's smile does to him. Aziraphale resettles himself in his seat, a little taller now. "I've been thinking all day, we have all of eternity and I've just let myself stay in the same old ruts for centuries, it'll be good to try something new. Do something different. It'll be fun."

There is a little bit of the tone there of a human facing a family holiday turning into an increasingly extended-family holiday convincing themselves that it will indeed feel like a holiday, but Crowley suspects that Aziraphale has been, like him, working by 'fake it 'til you make it' since the Garden. "Yeah," he says. "Sounds like a hoot."

Still, there's something to be said for the ruts. They spend the afternoon drinking, the evening dining - a 'fascinating little' Thai place Aziraphale likes - and then it's back to Crowley's, since there's no bed at the bookshop and Aziraphale wants his experimental nap. The door opens for Crowley automatically and he walks in slinging his jacket over the back of the sofa, takes his sunglasses off with one hand - and Aziraphale's hand is on his arm, and when Crowley glances across at him, Aziraphale kisses him.

It's only two steps to the wall before Crowley's back bumps there but his head can't, having both the angel's hands laced behind it; Crowley gets into gear quickly, this is not the sort of thing you turn down after thousands of years of pining for it, arms around Aziraphale's waist tugging his body in even closer. The kiss isn't aggressive so much, the love in it is desperate, but there is a possessive edge to it that runs like popping candy up Crowley's spine as Aziraphale's arms close around the back of his neck, he inhales slow and shivery through his nose and breaks back sighing it loose - Crowley feels just the start of his breath on his mouth - and Crowley opens his eyes to look at Aziraphale, who looks a little dazedly back at him as if this entire situation isn't of his making, then says, "I could murder a cup of tea." and unhooks Crowley's arms from his waist, turning for the kitchen.

"What was that?" Crowley says, torn between having enjoyed that inordinately and not liking being the one caught off guard.

"Rut-breaking," Aziraphale calls from the kitchen. "My new resolution! Do you want coffee, my dear?"

There's a little edge in the angel that night, Crowley does get why, Aziraphale is steeling himself for something he's unsure of and Aziraphale really hates uncertainty. Crowley puts a safe old album on, listens for the precision of Aziraphale's cup being set back in its saucer; like crystal. That's the thing about Aziraphale. People look at him and think he's no more substantial than a little fluffy cloud but anyone who kicks the cloud is hobbling away with a broken foot, having hit the core of steel. Aziraphale's had to be strong, made himself strong. No-one weak could face the wrath of Heaven and still dare to be simply kind.

He remembers what Aziraphale told Adam, in the place outside of time where Crowley took them, the breathing space. Aziraphale told the kid that it was alright to be only himself, a good thing to be only himself, that being just himself was enough. And Crowley's finally beginning to get where that came from, the more he really gets to know the every day of Aziraphale, not just the moments between decades. He's finally getting to know it himself. They don't need to be more than they are, sanctioned by some higher power, approved of by authority. It's enough to just be as they are. They don't need someone else's permission to feel worthy, and fuck, it took Aziraphale centuries to be able to get there. If he needs a night or two to be able to get his head down without the hatchet job Heaven did on his psyche getting in the way, of course Crowley's going to be there for him. He faced down the apocalypse for him, getting to watch Aziraphale sleep isn't the task, it's the reward.

Getting ready for bed feels really very portentous, though. Aziraphale has a pair of light silk pyjamas and a dressing gown he keeps here - that he bought specifically for here, Crowley now knows, bought to be able to keep Crowley company while he sleeps, which makes him clear his throat a bit as he watches Aziraphale shuck the dressing gown on before Crowley catches it by the back of its neck.

"These aren't for sleeping in," he points out, sliding it back down Aziraphale's arms.

". . . no, I . . . suppose that is what I'm going to be doing, now, isn't it," Aziraphale says, with neither visible nor audible enthusiasm for it. Crowley tosses the dressing gown over the foot of the bed, raises an eyebrow.

"You don't have to."

"Yes I do," Aziraphale says in a quiet steely way, the angel who won't be owned by Heaven, turning and glaring at the bed. "Right," he says. "If I thrash about or anything, you will -"

"I'll wake you up," Crowley says, taking his hand, tugging him towards the bed he's already sitting on. "I'll be right here, I'm not going anywhere."

Aziraphale lifts the covers and climbs in, and then folds his hands on his stomach, gnawing at the inside of his bottom lip. "I haven't done this in - I mean, I've never, with someone . . ."

He gestures between himself and Crowley. They've both been each other's firsts in every category that matters to them. "I know," he says, actually getting it for maybe the first time, that this is at the least odd for Aziraphale, to be the one lying down and closing his eyes rather than acting as the angel-shaped pillow hugged all over by a sleeping demon, calmly reading his book overhead. "But I'll be right here."

Aziraphale gives him a long, uneasy look, then smiles, and says, "I didn't - say anything, earlier, I know, you - you surprised me. But you know, Crowley, dear - I do think you're so beautiful." His voice is hushed and entirely honest. "I really do."

He looks right into Crowley's yellowed snake's eyes as he says it and Crowley thought he'd fallen in love long ago but Aziraphale just keeps finding ways to make him realise that he hasn't even conceived of how deep the well runs. He knows he can't speak and keep his voice steady; he just lays a hand to Aziraphale's cheek, which the angel smiles and leans into, eyes closing in pleasure, and Crowley thinks of all of eternity like this, and he's the luckiest demon who ever fucking Fell.

Aziraphale automatically tries to plump the pillows into a backrest, re-remembers the point of this, flumps them down for his head. Then he lays there on his side facing Crowley, looking concerned. "It's quite hard to, ah, remember how to do it," he says.

"Sleep?" Crowley says, with sceptically high eyebrows. "You can't remember how to sleep?"

Aziraphale takes a slow breath in. "It's the falling asleep," he says. "It's the - the falling makes me - jump."

That makes sense, he thinks, brushing at Aziraphale's hair over his ear with the pad of a thumb; fear of falling was encouraged in Heaven but Crowley's fallen more than once and no longer has anything to fear from it, given, smiling into Aziraphale's eyes, how well the second time worked out. "I'll catch you," he says. "It's alright. You're alright, angel. Just close your eyes."

Aziraphale looks up at him so trusting, then his smile twitches and he says, "Goodnight, Crowley."

Crowley says quietly, "Night, Aziraphale."

The angel takes a long breath in, sighs it out as his eyes close. He settles his nose a little closer to the pillow. He lays still. And Crowley who had never previously had the sense to think in any extended way about Aziraphale sleeping really gets now that this is the reward, his heart's started jumping, this is way better than fucking Heaven. Aziraphale's eyelashes laid to his cheek are just fucking sinful, how he manages to still be an angel looking like that Crowley has no fucking clue, more tempting than Crowley's ever managed in thousands of years . . .

"Just go to sleep," he whispers, slithering down the bed to lay face-to-face with him, sliding a gentle arm around his back to settle a hand just below a wing. "I've got you. You're alright. Just go to sleep."

His voice slides into the softest low hiss. Aziraphale's breath is beginning to relax.

*

"Angel," he says, leaning his forehead against the door, "Will you just - open it. Aziraphale. Please. I don't know what to - just open the door, please."

Neither of them are under any illusions about the power a locked bathroom door has to keep a demon out. They just both know what it would mean if Crowley forced it open, and they both know it's not going to happen.

Crowley grinds his forehead there, he can hear Aziraphale's sharp breathing trying to settle itself inside, shit, shit shit shit. "Angel -" he says.

"Can I just -" His voice is all high and uneven. "Have a moment. Please."

". . . yeah," Crowley says, and swallows, and wishes . . . "Yeah. All the time you need." He stares down at his own feet, and breathes slowly. "'m right here," he mumbles, so low he doesn't know if Aziraphale can hear it over his own panicked breathing right now.

Quiet, for a while. Just an angel on one side of a door trying not to cry and a demon on the other side really wanting to.

Crowley keeps on staring at the floor remembering the way Aziraphale woke, the pained noises like someone had stabbed him in the stomach. It hadn't been obvious to Crowley that it was a bad dream until clearly far too fucking late but he really was hardly moving at all, just the flicker of his eyes behind the lids, does he look like that when he's dreaming and Aziraphale is reading a book and stroking his hair? But he's normally dreaming just weird shit, he likes dreams, he likes being away from the world's tedious rules of logic for a time. For centuries he got to dream that Aziraphale was there when in reality he hardly ever was.

He swallows again, lifts his head and says, "Ang-" but the lock has already clicked, and Aziraphale opens the door. He looks as composed as an angel wearing pyjamas can, and for a time they just look at each other, both not at their best, Aziraphale straight-backed almost to the point of iciness, a really bleak look behind his eyes, Crowley knows his own hair's a mess from his rubbing at it in stress and he probably looks scared, his least favourite way to look. In the silence Aziraphale touches the side of Crowley's hand, face twisting miserable with apology, and Crowley's jaw goes rigid, he tucks his arm roughly around the back of Aziraphale's neck, tugging him in range to kiss, almost enraged, his forehead above one eyebrow. It's not Aziraphale he's angry at.

He growls there, "Drink?"

Aziraphale, head still low, takes a slow breath and says, "Yes."

In terms of physics as they matter to Crowley and Aziraphale, heads of pins and single armchairs are basically the same. Crowley has a leg slung over basically both arms of it, arse on one arm, one leg kicked out long behind Aziraphale's back; unable to easily twist for a table like this, it's easier to pass a single glass of whisky back and forth between them, taking alternating sips. Aziraphale's hunched with his arms folded around his stomach and he's brooding, or fretting, which is Aziraphale's version of brooding (Crowley is definitively a brooder). Eventually in the silence he swallows his mouthful, passes the glass backwards and upwards again, and says, "I know you probably don't want to hear it, but I am sorry. It just . . . I thought it would be different, now."

Crowley empties the glass and holds it out empty; Aziraphale picks up the decanter from the table, and they co-ordinate to refill it before Crowley can take another angry slug, and pass the glass back. "No," he says. "I don't want to fucking hear it because it's not your fault."

"But you can sleep and you don't have them, and you must have seen much worse things than I have. I have been to Hell now you know, I do know what it's . . . like. And all of the . . . everything. Everything." He swallows a mouthful of whisky, Crowley suspects, because his throat's already burning. "I really did want to be braver than this for you."

Crowley takes the glass back. "You've always been brave."

"I have not. I've been a wretched coward my entire life, I am absolutely terrified of absolutely everything-"

"And it's never stopped you. It didn't stop you - when we had the apocalypse breathing down the backs of our necks, I'd've gone with you, just run off, I'd have watched all of humanity burn and I wouldn't have cared if I could just keep you. But you wouldn't quit. You were literally never going to stop fighting for them, you'd have done anything to save them. That was . . ." He turns the glass, swallows nothing. "You've always been braver than me."

Silence, then Aziraphale says very quietly, "You would have cared."

For a long time Crowley doesn't think he's going to reply to that, doesn't want to admit to anything either way. But it's Aziraphale, and they can finally be honest now, so he clears his throat, and looks at the wall, and says, "Yeah. And I was terrified too, it's not your fault if they made you scared of them, they wanted you like that, it's not your fault that Heaven fucked you up on purpose -"

"I'm not fucked up," Aziraphale says. "Am I fucked up?"

Crowley nearly coughs his drink back into the glass, squawks, "You can't say that!"

"I can say whatever I fucking well like," the angel says, holding his hand up for the glass. "Am I fucked up?" He says it in such a genuinely puzzled way, as if it's never occurred to him before. He takes the glass from Crowley's still-unsteady fingers, and takes a little contemplative sip. "I suppose I must be," he says. "I'm sure angels shouldn't have nightmares."

"You don't have to be what they wanted you to be anymore."

". . . I know. But it lingers, doesn't it? I don't want to care about what Gabriel's thinking of me, but - I -" He tuts helplessly. "I do. Silly, really." He passes the glass back up. "You'd think I would get over it, but . . ."

"You will." Crowley runs a hand over Aziraphale's hair so he looks up and smiles, a little sunny smile in the middle of the night, Crowley's own face softens to see it. "We've got eternity. You know you will."

Silence. The glass passes back and forth.

"What did you mean," Aziraphale says, handing it back to Crowley, "'they did it on purpose'?"

"Well - they had to, didn't they? They had to make you scared of them, once they realised what free will really meant." Crowley empties the glass, holds it out for refilling again. "Hell was full of demons who'd fight out of - bitterness and jealousy and resentment and just sheer fucking nastiness, and alright maybe some angels would do it for just the same reasons -" Aziraphale shrugs a probably between Crowley's knees, as Crowley lifts the refilled glass - "but Heaven needed you to fight, I mean, you. They had to make you afraid of them so you'd do what you were told, otherwise you'd go around forgiving us all the time."

"Not 'us'," Aziraphale points out, taking the glass back. "Them, Crowley. You're not one of them anymore either. And how is it any different from Hell? You're not telling me that they didn't want you afraid of them so that you would toe the line."

"Yeah but - it's not the same. Hell told me to be afraid of it, it told me exactly how - vicious and merciless it was, that was its thing. But Heaven told you that if you were afraid of it it was because you must have done something." He can feel how Aziraphale's body has stilled against his, the slightest of quivers inside him, he knows he's brushed a nerve Aziraphale didn't know he had to be touched. "Hell was brutal on the outside. Heaven did it in your head. I'd have fucking nightmares too, Jesus, if every time I closed my eyes -"

Silence. Aziraphale sighs, and slumps lower in the seat, leaning his cheek against Crowley's thigh and holding the glass up for Crowley's hand. The angel mumbles, "I wasn't dreaming about . . ."

Crowley's breath holds, mouth full of whisky. He waits.

Aziraphale is gazing across the room, something genuinely thoughtful in him, idly twirling the cord of his dressing gown in one hand. "If they came for you," he murmurs, eyes elsewhere, "because they thought they couldn't punish me . . . I think it would be alright. I think . . . because they would have to come here, embodied, they would have to be on our territory. And I know a lot more about having a body than they do." Aziraphale's gaze is steady, and certain as black ice, and he says very quietly, "I know how to break them, if I have to."

Crowley's spine, which still remembers its reign of the entire length of his body, tightens its shiver all the way up because Aziraphale would murder angels for Crowley, and Crowley doesn't doubt it for a breath.

Aziraphale folds his arms around the leg he's taken for a pillow, leaving Crowley with the glass, which he really needs after this, he feels shaken through. "We do have eternity," Aziraphale says. "If you can be patient for me, you always have been. I do already know how you're doing better, my dear, I do see it, and I will too, if you give me time. I'll try to make it worth it in the end."

Crowley swallows his mouthful, says, "What d'you mean, I'm doing better? I'm fine. I've always been fine."

"You hesitate less every time before you do something kind," Aziraphale says, smiling as he closes his eyes, cuddling up to Crowley's thigh. "It's like you're becoming more and more just yourself, and not feeling them over your shoulder all the time. It's so - beautiful, to watch. Like the spring. You're blossoming."

Crowley, who thinks he's going to cry, says into the glass, "Shut up."

"I'm so proud of you, I really, really am," Aziraphale says, and swallows, eyes tight closed. "I really want to feel that way about myself some day too."

Crowley's hand is on Aziraphale's head before he thinks, he blames it on the whisky. "I already am. I already do." he says, low, rough, he blames all of it on the whisky. "You're perfect. You've always been perfect. They've always been a bunch of - of - fucking - pitiless - bastards, and you've been -"

"A pitiful bastard?"

"A bastard with some fucking pity. It makes all the fucking difference in the world."

Aziraphale's hug squeezes his leg, and he says, "You are the most darling creature, Crowley."

Crowley rubs his face, can't cope with this right now. "Pass me the bottle if you're going on like this."

Neither of them sleep that night, but it's fine, it's better. Crowley puts some music on in the slow slide towards dawn, they have another go at dancing, they're fuckawful at it, can't find a shared rhythm at all; they laugh so hard it's worth it.

They sober up with the sunrise. Crowley makes coffee. Aziraphale walks among the plants, touching perfect leaves, eyes all full of quiet, happy awe, and Crowley sees another angel, a long, long time ago, walking in the Garden, feeling exactly the same.

He passes Aziraphale a cup and sees in his eyes on his, in the immediate smile, that same sweet quiet awe and Crowley can't speak, to be looked on as if he is made perfect as well.

Maybe he's getting there. Maybe he can be enough for the way Aziraphale looks at him, as long as Aziraphale keeps looking at him like that. Maybe knowing that he can be healed is the first step of feeling healed. Maybe they're already enough, and all they have to do is accept it, fall into the fact without bracing, without buts.

Aziraphale sips his coffee and says, "What about the V&A today?" and Crowley pauses in his pacing at his shoulder, to lean his cheek without hesitation to the back of Aziraphale's neck where he can smell him, and breathe there, safe.

Then he says, and allows it to sound as if he means it exactly as much as he does, "Whatever you want."

That's all that freedom looks like. Saying exactly what he means without hedging it or hiding it or fearing it. He hadn't realised . . . of course Aziraphale did. Aziraphale knows him. The more Crowley knows Aziraphale, the better everything feels.

Aziraphale gives one of his squirmy, delighted smiles, and says, "You are a dear," and Crowley doesn't even tell him to shut up. He looks at a pothos which is growing acceptably and nods a curt, dangerous approval, because for now, fucking everything feels alright, and maybe it's the first time he's felt it since . . .

*

It only takes a few nights to slide them back into their routine. The first night Crowley makes no move towards sleep and Aziraphale tells him, meaning it, that he doesn't have to stay awake for him; but Crowley says it's fine, he likes the nights. They go to the all-night coffee place behind the bookshop, walk to the river afterwards, watch the lights of the city chime off the chopping water. And it is nice, it really is, even in their quiet it's nice though they don't often run out of talk. They have a lot to talk about; for six thousand years, after all, they could barely say an honest word.

It's not long before Aziraphale guides them back into the pleasant routine of the post-dinner journey to Crowley's flat, gradually to Crowley's bedroom, and then to Crowley sleeping, and Aziraphale with his book. He doesn't always read it; he lays it aside and watches Crowley's face, the gentleness of him asleep. He doesn't think that Crowley has any true sense of how beautiful he is, how lovely She made him. His face inspires such a want to soothe, to protect, to cradle in Aziraphale, which Crowley only really allows him to let out when he's lying down and the angel can smooth his forehead and stroke his hair and love him like a blanket, a pillow, like safety itself. It is a lovely thing, to be the only being in all of creation that Crowley will allow to hold him in his sleep. It's such a precious thing, and Aziraphale does cherish it, it is - well, it is; this is holy, to him. It is the greatest gift he's been given, in a very long and well-gifted life.

But the book must end, on that strange twisting note of the joy plaited in with the grief, oh she was terribly good, Miss Evans, she really was, a fascinating lady, and jolly good fun after a glass or two. Aziraphale lays the book on his lap, thumb idly stroking the cover soft with decades of his touch, and he looks down at Crowley, and what the book makes him feel - it makes him feel the entirety of humanhood, the everything that that brief mortal condition must contain, and he and Crowley after so long amongst them are more human now than angel, or demon. They don't just represent a side. They contain their own multitudes, all that complicated mix of being wrong and being right, and all the confusion of the love and longing, and never knowing the right way to spend it.

But Aziraphale knows the right way, and he's not afraid anymore.

Watching Crowley sleep, gentle as a child, the thought finally emerges that he would like to do that. Not that he would like to be able to be for Crowley what he wants, to not disappoint Crowley, again. The thought rises instead that it must be lovely, to lay down unafraid and be cradled by the best person in your life. He looks at Crowley and feels how he loves him, and how good it would feel to wake beside him, that slow sensuous stretching of Crowley rising from sleep, to feel like that, eyes closed and throat bared and fearless, because he's there, yes. He doesn't want to stay frightened and small because it was convenient for Heaven to keep him that way. He wants to stretch; but first to close his eyes, and fall unafraid.

He sets the dear old book aside on the bedside table, unties the cord of the dressing gown and drapes it over the foot of the bed, slides comfortable down under the duvet. Crowley's body is bonier than his, Aziraphale's knuckles can feel the bones of his spine through his pyjama shirt as Crowley mumbles, curving automatically into Aziraphale's softer shape, his arms coming home around him, one leg casting over him without Crowley opening his eyes or rising from the sleep-fog; he breathes low and even, and looks so peaceful.

Aziraphale lays eye to eye with him, so he's a little blurred in the lack of distance, just lays there, not thinking of anything much, just being with him. The weight of his body, and the breath in him. He wonders, if he's quiet enough, if he'll be able to hear his heart.

That's how he falls asleep, eyes closed, mind soft, trying to make his breath low enough to find the sound of Crowley's heartbeat, with not a thought of danger in his world.

*

Waking up is really fucking nice as well.

Like, sleep, sleep's fantastic, Crowley likes everything about it - apart from, yes, occasionally fucked-up dreams, but everything else is brilliant. Even the little moments of waking in the night, to take a breath and roll over and feel the satisfaction of his body so relaxed, those moments now honed to brilliance by the warm shape of Aziraphale there to fit himself against like the perfect sun-warmed rock. Falling asleep, feeling weighted and drowsy, that's brilliant, and the actual sleeping is fucking great, and then he gets to wake up, slow and luxurious and thinking, mm, of coffee and a slow morning ahead with his angel, who . . .

Who is lying beside him, eyes closed, arm loose over Crowley's side as he breathes low and even in sleep.

Crowley sits up too fast, staring, he doesn't - Aziraphale's eyebrows twitch, feeling him move, and he draws a slow breath in, blinks blearily. He starts to lift his head, then closes his eyes again and lays back down squirming himself comfortable again, clearly choosing not to rise. He mumbles into the pillow, "What time is it?"

"It's - morning," says Crowley, for whom time is relative, in that it matters to other people but not him. "You're - are you alright?"

"Mmm. Yes. It's all warm," said with a sleepy smile and eyes still closed; he always has luxuriated in the sensual more than any angel should, and he's clearly enjoying the bed like a gourmand with a particularly delectable mousse now that he's discovered its proper purpose. "Mn. Do we have to get up?"

". . . no, don't need to do . . . anything." Crowley stares down at him, then slides down to lay alongside him again, frowning uneasily at his face. "Were you asleep?"

Eyes still closed, nose to the pillow as if he intends to go there again, Aziraphale makes a largely affirmative, partly just sleepy noise. Crowley strokes at his cheek with a knuckle to keep him awake, so he can find out what the fuck. He says, cautiously, "Did you dream anything?"

Aziraphale gives a little laugh, grinning away, eyes still closed. "I did, in fact. I dreamed I was at a garden centre - well it was an open cliff top but I knew it was a garden centre, you know -"

"Yes," Crowley says patiently, as one who has previously dreamed that it looks like Oxford Street but he knew in his heart it's actually, definitely Hell.

"- there were just all these shelves of plants and I was trying to choose one for you but I couldn't decide between them they were all so lovely, and my arms were so full I couldn't work out how to pick up anymore, and then I woke up. It was very silly." He opens his eyes, that gentle light brown, she gave him the softest eyes Crowley has ever known. "Nothing bad," he promises, smiling. "I'm as surprised as you are."

"Why were you even trying? You should have woken me up, I could've - in case anything happened -"

"You just looked so peaceful," he says, lifting a hand and running his fingertips along Crowley's face, tracing lines his eyes seem fascinated by. "I just . . . it just seemed like something I wanted to do, in the moment."

Crowley takes his hand to still it, and holds it, and looks at him. Crowley isn't stupid, Crowley's been through this literally thousands of times, the periods when he felt okay and thought he was through it and then it would catch him again like a ball to the face, worse for the hubris of thinking himself fine. And he knows that those cycles will be forever, he's okay with that, he knows how to work through them; but the thought that Aziraphale's in the same boat and Crowley can't fix that for him, he lowers his head, breathes through his teeth, forcibly softens himself to raise and kiss Aziraphale's hand, eyes closed. He says, voice rough, "There'll be other bad nights."

"I know," the angel tells him gently, tranquil as only true understanding can be. "But there'll be other good ones too. And that's enough, for us, isn't it?"

Crowley stares at him. They know how to do rough patches. Their lives are more or less permanent rough patches with tiny pockets of joy, viewed to scale, it's only these last few months where the joy's stretched out for space. And Aziraphale knows that. He's been lonely and frightened as well and now he's got Crowley, gratitude will get him through the worst. They can both do the worst, if they get each other as well. Viewed to scale, the joy will always be greater than the worst, now.

"Yeah," he says, drawing Aziraphale into a lazy squeeze of a morning hug, fitting his body in close. "Yeah, you could say that."

Aziraphale hugs him back, sighs with his cheek pressed to his shoulder, says, "We should go out for breakfast, it's my first one in forever when it really is a proper breakfast, after sleeping. Pastry, I think, and eggs. And really good coffee."

"Need to get dressed," Crowley says, and makes no move to let go of Aziraphale or get out of the bed.

Aziraphale makes a hummed happy noise against him and says, "What's the weather like, do you want to go down to Kew? We keep saying we should. Everything will be glorious this time of year, all the flowers . . ."

"Yep," Crowley says, hugging in close the only thing he's ever wanted, and not even twitching a muscle towards getting out of this bed.

"They have a bonsai house I'd like to see. We could get lunch . . . I wonder what else we could look at while we're out that way. We should look at a map."

Crowley holds him tight and yawns, "Mmnninternet."

"Oh yes, you do that thing on your phone, don't you. It's all very clever these days. We're probably too late for breakfast at Balthazar's, they might be good enough to overlook it -"

Crowley grunts into his hair, and will make certain that they do.

"We really ought to get up," Aziraphale says experimentally, and doesn't move at all.

"Mm," says Crowley, arms crossed around the angel's back and hands cupping his flesh at both sides, below where he knows his star-white wings stand, because perfect moments are rare, in the long view of things, and he's not bursting the film of this bubble for as long as he can hold it.

"Well," Aziraphale says, nuzzling himself comfortable to Crowley's bony shoulder as if he likes it there. "We have time."

They have eternity for breakfast. Now is for this, the slow satisfaction of sharing a bed, breathing in long the freedom they found for themselves. She gave them free will. Crowley thinks they're spending it exactly as they ought to. He's not afraid here with Aziraphale of being seen to be so affectionate, so - the word comes, he doesn't just let it, he reaches for it, stretches for it; so loving and more even than that, in front of Aziraphale he's safe to feel and show his neediness. He could never have survived Hell admitting to need. But he's safe now in being honest about what's actually inside him. No shields, no bullshit. Just Aziraphale and his own raw heart, treated with gentleness for once, treated with courtesy and care, as if Aziraphale's soft hands could brush all the salt out of the wounds for him.

They will get up. Soon.

Aziraphale kisses his shoulder, nuzzles into the side of his throat.

Soon.

Any blessed minute now.

Any moment . . .

Soon.