Chapter Text
The morning is pale, wan, too early for the sunlight to hold any warmth. A chill, salt-tinged breeze whispers through the forest of masts in the harbour, wheezes through the rigging, tugs at the half-hoisted sails.
Thirteen miles, Aziraphale thinks as he looks towards the distant horizon. He shivers, pulling his overcoat closer, and imagines a cup of hot cocoa, a cosy armchair, an unread book.
Behind him, the crew of the cutter is making the last preparations for departure. They have been subdued since the captain had told them where they are going: not a joke, not a snippet of a song. Tension hangs heavy in the air, as crackling and full of restless energy as if a storm is building above them, invisible in the cloudless sky.
Aziraphale is watching a determined seagull swoop over the waves when he hears a new set of footsteps on the deck boards, an unhurried tread of fashionable shoes. He whips around in startled recognition.
Crowley.
The demon is strolling towards him, the whiplash swing of his hips unimpeded—helped, perhaps—by the gentle rolling of the moored ship. He looks entirely too awake for the hour. He is—oh Lord—carrying a leather travelling bag.
The angel blanches. Crowley is—Crowley shouldn’t—they are going to be seen—
“Crowley, what—what are you doing here?” he demands when the demon is within hearing range, pitching his voice low as he casts an anxious glance over Crowley’s shoulder. In the distance, the first mate appears to be giving the captain a report, one of the sailors is lugging a wooden crate along the deck, and nobody is paying them any attention.
“Did you follow me?” Aziraphale continues incredulously. “You can’t just—you can’t just invite yourself over like this, Crowley!”
Crowley’s eyebrows arc over the rims of his spectacles. His mouth twitches.
“You told me where you were going,” he says slowly, amused, “and expected me to stay put?”
—
The seagulls are holding their formation beautifully, and Crowley glances at Aziraphale to ascertain the effect.
There is none.
The angel is staring down at the waves, his hands clasped under his breastbone, one thumb going over and over the signet ring. He looks entirely too distressed, even if no longer as alarmed as a hare who’d suddenly found itself transported to the middle of Trafalgar Square.
“Relax, angel. I can make these humans forget all about taking another passenger, if you like,” Crowley says, his voice carefully level. He flicks his fingers, and the birds disband, relieved and slightly dazed.
“Crowley, that’s really not the point!”
The argument, of course, is long-lost; they are three miles out to sea. As the cutter rises on another swell, the angel unclasps his hands, reaches to steady himself on the gunwale. And—
…Ah. That’s what it is.
Below the brim of his ridiculous top hat, Aziraphale’s hair is plastered to his temples; there is a bit of sweat over his upper lip, and his skin has turned the delicate green of sea foam.
Of course.
The demon shakes his head, clicks his fingers in an upwards arc. Aziraphale gasps—it is entirely too endearing—and stands up straighter, casting him a grateful look.
“Oh,” he breathes. “Oh, thank you.”
“Nah, don’t go doing that,” Crowley winces (will he ever get used to the embarrassing head rush those words induce)? Then, he adds, sympathetically: “Upstairs on your case about frivolous miracles again?”
The slump of the angel’s shoulders tells him everything.
The bastards, Crowley thinks viciously, his hand still tingling with dissipating power.
Aziraphale is going to get all the frivolous miracles he wants while Crowley is around, and it will serve those winged wankers right.
—
In good weather, one can see the lighthouse at the Rock from the shore: a dot on the horizon, a distant star flashing red and white and red again.
It’s been dark for a fortnight, of course—ever since the incident that every newspaper had breathlessly written about, that the paper-boys on the corners had shouted themselves hoarse over. Aziraphale has it on good authority that more than one experienced keeper had, wholly unthinkably until this month, refused the posting—and five days ago, Trinity House was forced to announce that the Howling Rock Lighthouse will not be lit until further notice. (“Have they considered offering more money?” Crowley had inquired with mock solemnity. “I hear that’s a sure-fire way to get the place teeming with humans.”)
They can make it out clearly by now: a grey stone tower rising from the choppy waves that glitter beneath mid-morning sun. The glare causes spots of green to float in Aziraphale’s vision; looking sideways at the demon, he almost wishes for his own pair of spectacles. Crowley catches his glance and raises an eyebrow.
“Well,” Aziraphale says quietly. “Here we are. I think the crew are getting the rowboat ready.”
They turn back towards the tower.
It’s so much like Eddystone, Aziraphale thinks—and he’d seen Eddystone Lighthouse countless times as he sailed into the Channel.
A little taller, maybe.
Nothing sinister about it at all.
The walls are studded with small windows, more of them at the top; the tower’s base is a sweeping curve. It’s beautiful, all the more so because humans have built it on an uninhabitable rock, as they’ve learned to do.
To protect each other.
To light each other’s way.
Last night in town, Crowley didn’t even scoff when Aziraphale expounded on everything the humans have achieved, setting concrete underwater (“Do you remember opus caementicium, my dear? I do believe they are using it again”), cutting every perfectly matched stone in advance and transporting them to the island without losing or breaking a single one. He’d talked about the humans’ sacrifice in building the first lighthouses of this kind, Eddystone and Bell Rock—and with the latter, of the way they had toiled patiently and painstakingly in the scant hours available when the tide exposed the treacherous isle. He had, truth be told, gotten rather carried away and so was quite startled when—in the middle of his speech about the light of industry and the human victory against the shadows of ignorance—Crowley had leaned across the table and said, conspiratorially: “But that’s not why you are here.”
Aziraphale had blinked, then, bringing the demon into focus. Crowley’s hair, swept back from his forehead in a dark wave, shone with firelight; the curls he sported—ah—mere decades ago were long gone, but a stray ringlet descended over his right eyebrow. It brought currents to mind. Eddies. Being swept out to sea.
“No,” Aziraphale had said slowly. “No. That, ah, that would be the ghosts.”
—
The ghosts.
Oh, Crowley had heard the stories all right. Flashing lights above the sea: never seen from the coast, mind, only from passing ships—and later, one would find the sailors of those ships scattered across every alehouse in port, ready to tell anyone who’ll listen about the ghostly boats they saw sailing out of the fog, the siren songs they heard, the monsters they glimpsed beneath the keel.
They would tell all this and more if someone bought them a drink.
They would sing a siren song themselves if someone bought them another.
(Not that Aziraphale was likely to have noticed any of this. For all his love of fables, the angel wouldn’t know guile unless it tried to buy one of his books.)
Chin in hand, Crowley studies his companion. He’d gone post-chaise straight from Plymouth when he heard the angel was in the area, had found Aziraphale in a dingy tavern in Sandham, staring pensively at an untouched tankard of ale. Now, one drink in, Aziraphale’s cheeks have gone a cherubic pink, and the furrow between his eyebrows is shallower, a pencil mark rather than a chiselled line. It’s a good look on him, and the demon finds himself pushing a plate of gooseberry tarts closer to Aziraphale’s fluttering hands.
“It was all over the papers,” Aziraphale says in the meantime. “My dear, do you mean to tell me that this is not—that you didn’t know?”
“‘Course I knew. It’s just—you can’t take it seriously, yeah? Not to say that ghosts don’t exist, but we both know they aren’t what the humans make them out to be. People just love the thrill of ghost stories.”
“I’m certain there is something to these particular stories,” Aziraphale says. “And given the—the symbolism, I thought this could actually be direct interference from Hell.”
“Hell?” Crowley echoes in surprise. “’S just a lighthouse, angel. Keepers have disappeared before. Hell wouldn’t bother with a trifle like this.”
“It has rather captured the public imagination.”
“You could have written to me, you know,” Crowley says obstinately. “Sure, I was in France until a week ago, but we have the Arrangement, yeah? I’d have told you there is nothing to it. Saved you the journey. I can’t believe Heaven thinks…”
“It’s… not Heaven, Crowley,” Aziraphale says with a touch of defiance. “It’s… well, if you must know, I’ve wondered about this place for decades. I would have gone earlier, too, but you know what our assignments have been like with… with the uprisings and the famine and everything.”
They’ve been largely meaningless, Crowley thinks, but certainly plentiful. And angel, you look exhausted with them.
“Regardless, it’s rather too late now,” Aziraphale folds and unfolds his napkin, moves his ale tankard an inch to the right. “I’m—I’m supposed to be an investigator. Here in official capacity. Trinity House had sent people before, you know, and they found nothing, and—well. I thought, with Hell likely involved, it’d be my duty…”
Duty. Of course. It’s always duty with you, angel, isn’t it. Crowley scowls at their ale until it takes on a significantly richer flavour. When he looks up, he sees that the chiselled line of worry has once again lodged itself between Aziraphale’s eyebrows.
(They say the Devil makes work for idle hands. They know nothing, of course; even Beelzebub and Dagon have far better—er, worse—things to do. But Aziraphale had taken this to heart nevertheless, like everything Heaven had told him.)
The angel trails off, studying the gooseberry tart in his hand with something akin to wistfulness. Then, he takes a delicate bite of the pastry, and—oh.
Even the light in the room seems to change as he savours it, eyes fluttering closed.
Babies across town must be falling blissfully and contentedly silent. Lovers must be clasping hands, overcome with joy at each other’s existence. A lonely poet in one of the rented rooms across the street must be grasping blindly for a pen as inspiration rends through him, as sure and brilliant as lightning.
Crowley looks on, helplessly fascinated.
This, he thinks.
This is what Aziraphale needs more of. Rather than chasing unlikely ghosts in the name of duty, he needs a break. A break from his endless assignments. From the big cities, London in particular. From the throngs, from his insufferable customers, from the clatter of carriages on macadam roads and the incessant clomp of horses’ hooves, from the beggars and the dandies and everyone else. He needs a break, and things to savour, and things to bring him joy.
Crowley could tempt him, of course. Tempting an angel to idleness is a truly demonic deed. It’s only that Aziraphale seems to be determined to go to that lighthouse, which—
Oh.
An idea emerges in Crowley’s mind, a flame reflected and focused until it shines with all the power of a lighthouse beam. He sits up straighter.
Oh. This—
This is going to be fun.
—
“They were good sports about it, really. Just waited by the road to see how the new arrivals would fare,” Crowley says, hiding a smile behind his tankard—though Aziraphale can still see the tell-tale signs of it, the dimples and the crow’s feet.
“You—you put them up to it, didn’t you,” Aziraphale asks through hiccuping laughter, waving an incredulous hand at the demon. “You absolute fiend. And the bakers, too?”
“It really got going when the hearse arrived,” Crowley says proudly.
Aziraphale wipes at his eyes. “Oh, that’s good. I mean—I mean, how utterly wicked of you.”
“That was nothing, angel. I’ve got one better…” [1]
And that’s how the evening goes: the stories, the drink, the desserts brought over by the puzzled publican who hadn’t known he had anything remotely similar prepared. Hours later, when the tavern is mostly empty and the publican sits in the corner, nodding off and blearily dragging his eyelids open again, both of them fall silent, looking at each other across the table.
“So, angel, what’s next?” Crowley asks, one sharp elbow balanced on the tabletop, his chin in his hand, the long index finger of his other hand tracing the veins in the rough oil-stained wood.
Aziraphale, of course, had been taking great care not to think about this exact question.
Because—
Well.
He wasn’t supposed to tarry even this long. He is still hours away from the port where he is expected at dawn, he cannot use a miracle to get there because Gabriel and the others are bound to notice, and that means…
The thought is as cold as sea spray, cutting through the honey-coloured warmth of the night.
…that means it’s time for him to leave.
Which the demon knows, and is reminding him of—almost startlingly gently.
Too soon, Aziraphale thinks, already feeling the chill of the night air against his skin, the rattle of wheels in his bones, in his teeth. Across the table, Crowley watches him, eyes obscured by dark grey glass.
Too soon. We have barely seen each other in the last decade, have not seen each other at all for the last two years. We have so much to talk about, and these conversations are…
…a lifeline, the angel understands suddenly. Ariadne’s thread through the changing world.
Crowley’s hand on the table has stilled.
There is so much I want to tell you. So much I want to ask. How long were you in France? Did you go to the Exhibition last year? You must have gone to the Exhibition, you wouldn’t have missed it for the world. And all this while there’s been so much to do, assignment after assignment, and there are only more assignments now, and more humans, an incomprehensible two million people in London alone, and I—
I’ve missed you terribly.
The angel doesn’t say it out loud, of course not, but something must show in his face because Crowley, moving again, pushes his drink aside, takes his glasses off to look at Aziraphale.
“Angel?” he asks softly.
“Yes, yes, jolly good,” Aziraphale says, distracted, in response to a question that had never been asked. The corners of Crowley’s mouth curl upwards, and even through the protective haze of alcohol, something flares within Aziraphale at the sight (a signal flare, he decides, a warning: demon, wiles).
I don’t want to leave. I don’t want you to leave.
Crowley leans back slightly, takes a breath.
“How are you getting there, anyway?” he asks before reaching for his tankard again. “I heard the captains are flat out refusing to take their boats to the rock, freshly cursed as it is.”
And before Aziraphale can think better of it, the angel tells him.
—
As they prepare to disembark, the captain, his cap crumpled uncertainly in his hand, comes to talk to them.
It is, as far as Crowley is concerned, an underwhelming attempt. The man keeps stepping stupidly from foot to foot, squinting up at the tower where the sun burns on the glass of the lantern. When he speaks, all he manages to say is “God bless you, good sirs”—so fervently that it sends Crowley into a volley of sneezes, his eyes watering. The angel drags him away before he can start on a proper glower.
A small rowboat takes them out to the western side of the islet where the rocks turn into a flat sandstone shore. Aziraphale, his carpet-bag in hand, has barely any time to bid their surly oarsman goodbye before the man pushes off and rows determinedly away.
Over at the cutter, the crew, all but lined up along the side of the boat, keep surreptitiously glancing in their direction.
“Well,” Aziraphale says, surveying the scene: the cutter, the retreating boat. “This certainly makes for an ominous beginning.”
“For my money,” Crowley says as they turn and start making their way across the seaweed-slick rocks, “if something is happening here, it is absolutely, one hundred percent not supernatural. And some of the locals might be in on it.”
Aziraphale hums. “You seem quite set on the idea that it’s all mundane.”
The rock under their feet is criss-crossed by deep fissures, rivulets flowing through them with each heave of the waves. Seagulls, disturbed by their arrival, wheel around the tower, sharply crying their indignation.
“Yeah, well, there’s clearly no trace of Hell around—hey!” Crowley shoots out an arm—pure reflex—and grabs Aziraphale by the sleeve just as one of the angel’s laced walking shoes slides on a treacherous slope. He glances at Aziraphale, making sure the angel has regained his balance. “Case in point: you’ve nearly discorporated yourself already, and you’ve only just arrived. A human would fare no better.”
Aziraphale puffs up immediately, like an affronted pigeon, which is, of course, a perpetual delight.
“I would’ve—I’d have been just fine, thank you very much. And I hope you are not suggesting that all the three keepers of this lighthouse perished by—by slipping on the rocks. All in a single clear night.”
“Could have if somebody pushed them,” Crowley shrugs, slowing his pace to match Aziraphale’s now-careful tread. “Humans are notoriously fragile. And do you know what the currents are like at places like this? They’ll pull you under in a storm, trap you below the surface, smash you into the rocks, and humans are soft and breakable and tender things for all their bravado. One wrong step and there they go. Those are pearls that were his eyes, of his bones are coral made, all that.”
“We went to see that one,” Aziraphale says thoughtfully, his vexation already dissipating like early morning fog. “Remember?” He looks at Crowley with a wistful half-smile, and Crowley breathes in, turns sharply away, focuses on the rock beneath his feet.
I do. I remember how delighted you were, so much so that Ariel nearly fell off the stage after spotting you. You are a blessed lighthouse yourself, angel, did you know?
As the tower looms closer, Crowley tilts his head up to look at it. The sun, high overhead, still catches the beacon; glints of red slowly move along the panes of the light-room like a cool glass flame.
That’s when it hits him: he’d seen this before.
He’d stood on this shore, he’d looked up this tower, he’d seen the reflections glide at the top.
Except—he had not.
The gulls are screaming. A cormorant passes silently overhead. The wind tugs at the ends of Crowley’s necktie, slides under the lapels of his morning coat: cold hands searching for exposed skin.
He’d seen this before, but he had not.
“…Crowley? What is it? Why have you stopped?”
The moment pops like a soap bubble, and the world rights itself: salt spray, the gurgle of water in the cracks, Aziraphale’s hands clasped on the handle of his carpet bag as he looks at Crowley, eyebrows raised.
Bugger. It’s rubbing off on me already, Crowley thinks, very nearly pulling a face.
“’s nothing, angel. Let’s go,” he says and, determined, stalks off towards the lighthouse.
—
The entrance to the tower is about thirty feet above the ground, safe from even the highest tide. A metal ladder, flush to the curve of the base, leads to it.
Crowley climbs the ladder first, with surprising eagerness for someone so sceptical about the whole endeavour, and stands on the narrow ledge at the top, studying the heavy door. It’s encased in sheet metal and looks reassuringly sturdy even from Aziraphale’s vantage point—and it must be, of course, given the winter storms that wash against it year after year, driving the waves up to the very lantern.
“Ready to solve the mystery of Howling Rock?” Crowley asks cheerfully, reaching a hand to Aziraphale as the angel nears the top of the ladder himself. “Though whoever came here from Trinity House probably mopped up any blood.”
“Crowley, I wish—“ Aziraphale waves the demon on, the ledge being hardly wide enough for two, “I wish you’d be less flippant about it. People have disappeared. Have very likely died.”
“There you go, then,” Crowley says reasonably, “they are far too busy to care.” Withdrawing his hand, he goes to open the door. It swings silently on well-oiled hinges, revealing a rectangle of darkness beyond.
“Anyone home?” Crowley calls out. A metallic echo answers him, once. The sea roars below.
“You know,” Crowley tells Aziraphale over his shoulder, “I think we are the scariest things here by far.”
And with that, he steps into the dark.
Aziraphale catches up with him before the demon is four feet into the passage. He clicks his fingers, filling the air with light, and puts a tentative hand on Crowley’s sleeve. “Don’t rush ahead, Crowley. We should study the scene very closely before we disturb it.”
The passage they have stepped into meets them with stillness; even the roar of the surf is nearly blocked out by the thick stone walls. There is a winch by the entrance, and debris along the floor: a broken crate, a snapped wooden pole, a length of rope. Slowly, they walk to the heart of the column, a circular room with a spiral staircase that twists upwards and downwards.
“Huh. Lighthouses are supposed to have a solid base, yeah?” Crowley asks as they stand over the dark circle into which the steps disappear, one by one. “Bell Rock does. And this one was built later, right? So you told me.”
He clicks his fingers in turn, flooding the chamber below with light, and they descend the echoing stairs. The space turns out to be just storage, and sparse: barrels and crates, mostly empty, wooden and metal implements Aziraphale cannot fathom the purpose of, a row of spare oil-lamps on a shelf. Everything is covered by a thick layer of dust; barren cobwebs stretch between the crates and the ribs of the railing.
The hollow base is a surprising choice, Aziraphale thinks as his mind presents him with images of the lighthouse door being breached, of water rushing into the passageway, swirling to fill the chamber below. But the humans have built more than one such structure by now and must have thought of that, too.
They return to the level above. Here, there’s a dinghy leaning against the wall, oars next to it. “For rescues, you think?” Crowley asks. He saunters over, picks up an oar, flips it over in his hands before letting it fall back against the stones. “Were the keepers even supposed to leave the island? Anything could go wrong if they went around rescuing people, you know.”
The air is damp, Aziraphale notes, but not stale. And although the place is barely forty years old, it reminds him of castles, of towers from long ago: the solid masonry, the slight chill. The walls must be six or seven feet thick.
Their steps ring out as they climb the metal stairs.
The first floor greets them with a pungent smell: colza oil, according to a smudged label on the side of a brass-bound tin tank, one of the few crammed into the windowless space.
The second floor turns out to be a store-room, with a water-tank and baskets of provisions. Parsley roots and carrots peek out of a burlap sack; there is wheat flour, barley, oats. The fruit, in their separate baskets, have gone off, the apples all wrinkled into ancient faces, the plums well on their way to becoming prunes.
A narrow and uncomfortably steep wooden ladder takes them to the third floor. The walls here are thinner, and the kitchen—this is where they end up—is illuminated by three actual windows, the placid blue of the sky bright behind their perfectly clear glass.
“Oh!” Aziraphale exclaims, delighted into forgetting the solemnity of their mission. Crowley stops beside him, tilts his head.
“Not half-bad,” he says appreciatively.
It’s a beautiful space, arranged with care, warm oak surfaces glowing with a gentle gold light. There’s a table, a bench, several chairs, a dresser, a cupboard with an ornament of carved acanthus leaves, a kitchen range, even a pump for drawing up water from the water-tank below.
“Think we should take a look at the rest of the tower and come back here?” Crowley asks. “For a little break? I brought some chocolates, you know. Belgian.”
“Yes,” Aziraphale says emphatically.
They make quick work of the next three levels.
There are the sleeping quarters, with a wilting apple geranium in one of the windows (it perks up visibly on their approach; Aziraphale gives Crowley a sideways look, but the demon stares ahead as impassively as ever).
The next floor is a library, or possibly guest quarters, complete with a carpet, a large mirror in a gilt frame, a fold-out bed, and two winged armchairs next to a bookshelf where a Bible and a book on engineering are prominently displayed side by side.
Then, there is the sixth and final floor, the light-room—that is to say, the lantern itself. It reminds Aziraphale of a conservatory, all glass and sunlight; something like a beehive, fashioned of thick greenish glass, is at the very centre (“That’s a Fresnel lens, angel, they are all the rage.”) An oil burner is apparently hidden within the hive, surrounded by panes of red glass which will, at night, give the lighthouse its distinctive red-and-white flash—but for now everything here is still and unmoving, the lens frozen in its shining brass track.
Crowley steps outside, onto the balcony around the light-room, into the sunlight and the wind, and Aziraphale follows him. They stand side by side at the railing.
It’s all blue. The hazy blue of the sky, lightening as it dips towards the horizon, turns into the Bristol blue of the sea. Seagulls soar overhead.
Aziraphale turns to Crowley, curious about his apparent familiarity with lighthouse lenses, and finds the demon looking at him thoughtfully.
“You’ve got something… here,” Crowley says and reaches out. He is very close; the sun is at his back, and Aziraphale is standing in the demon’s shadow.
Crowley’s fingers sweep at something just below the rim of Aziraphale’s hat, and he pulls back a few silky, gossamer threads, lets them float away on the wind.
“Looks like you nearly fell prey to the local blood-sucking monsters,” Crowley says gravely. “This is a dangerous place indeed.”
Aziraphale glares at the demon with what he hopes is reproach. “You,” he says sternly, “are impossible.”
Crowley only grins at that, proud as a house-cat who’d found the stashed jar of cream and the fresh butter besides.
—
“So,” Crowley says as they descend back to the kitchen. “Are you convinced now?”
“Convinced of?..”
“That Hell has nothing to do with this place.” The demon is shuffling through the cupboard, opening and closing ornate doors, rearranging the crockery on the shelves. He brings down cups and saucers, sugar, coffee, tea; water is already heating over the range.
“Well, I—I certainly didn’t notice any Hellish influences yet. Present company excep…”
“Biscuits!” Crowley exclaims as he brings out a silvery tin. “You like this kind, don’t you? Want one?”
Aziraphale shakes his head.
“You are not even listening,” he says.
“‘Course I’m listening. No cocoa here—I can magic some or—is tea good? Anyway, yeah, listening. First-class listener, me.”
“I will have to stay here for a while to observe,” Aziraphale says, to himself more than to Crowley.
Instead of sitting down on a chair, Crowley hops onto the table, the cup of coffee in his hand miraculously unspilled, and watches Aziraphale drop lumps of sugar into his tea. The demon’s eyebrows are drawn together, and—that stubborn curl is almost in his eye, Aziraphale thinks distractedly, his fingers aching to tuck it back into place.
“Why, though?” the demon says. “I mean, yeah, no, we’ll stay if you like, but what makes you think there is anything here worth observing? There’s no trace of ghosts. Or Hell. We’d have felt it. Both of us.”
Biting the inside of his cheek, the angel turns away. His gaze falls on one of the windows, onto the expanse of the sea beyond. He struggles to gather his thoughts.
“I…”
It is a difficult thing to explain. He had not sensed anything supernatural about the place, that’s true enough. But also, though every trace of tension had gone out of Crowley’s shoulders after they’d been to all the floors, Aziraphale himself isn’t ready to let go of the idea that there is something here. Now more than ever, this place is drawing him in, like the blank spaces on the maps draw in explorers despite—because of—the lions and dragons stationed over the lacunae.
“There have been quite a few reports about odd occurrences in this area,” Aziraphale says finally, once again turning to face Crowley.
“Yeah, well, ‘course. You hear your mate spin a good yarn, you spin your own.”
“People have been noticing odd things since the year the lighthouse was built—in fact, the builders, too, talked of odd lights and of voices telling them to abandon their work and return to their homes.”
“Preferably with full pay.”
Aziraphale sighs. “Crowley, you—you are just determined to be sceptical about it.”
“We know a fair bit more about the world, angel, than any of these humans,” Crowley says. “Anyway, what else?”
“What else?”
“Yep. What other things are odd about this place?”
“Well, the—the howling.”
“Yeah, what with it being called Howling Rock.”
“That’s not it,” Aziraphale says with as much patience as he can muster. “It’s called Howling Rock because sometimes, particularly in a gale, the fissures in the rock give rise to… to what humans describe as howling. ‘Hungry wolves trapped under the ground’ was one of the expressions used.”
“Fanciful,” Crowley nods. “But irrelevant, as we know now. No Hellhounds here.”
“Certainly, but—”
“So there you have it!” Agitated, Crowley jumps off the table and starts prowling the floor, circling around Aziraphale until the angel, on the verge of vertigo, closes his eyes. “The humans called this place Howling Rock, and you didn’t expect them to build an empire of rumour around it?”
“Not like this, no,” Aziraphale says stubbornly. Then, he sighs. “Crowley, can you—can you please stop spinning? You are making me dizzy.”
The steps pause. There is a considering silence.
“Sure, yep.”
Wood scrapes against stone. When Aziraphale opens his eyes, Crowley is sitting astride one of the heavy chairs, his arms folded over the chair’s back, the chair balanced precariously on two legs. “Your tea, by the way.” The demon tilts his head towards the table. “You should drink it before it gets cold.”
Aziraphale walks over, picks up the cup, frowns absently at the half-moon of cold liquid at the bottom. He replaces the cup on the saucer.
“So,” Crowley nudges. “Howling.”
“Right,” Aziraphale says, trying to recover the thread of his thoughts. “Um.” He sits down on a nearby chair, folds his hands, faces the demon. “So that howling… That’s not even new. It’s been that way for centuries. But there’ve been reports of another sound in the last few years. Sailors’ tales, mostly. A ship nearly ran aground here only a few months ago: the fog was as heavy as milk, they said, they could see no light, hear no bells—but then an unearthly wail arose from the waters, fit to rend a soul apart, and the crew had all taken to praying. The fog had lifted within the hour, and they found themselves a mile from Howling Rock, miraculously unharmed.”
Crowley shudders. “You call that a haunting? Somebody in Hell could get a promotion for a haunting like that. Dreadful things, promotions.”
“The crew did pray,” Aziraphale points out. “It’s possible that they had… Heavenly interference.”
“Pfffffff. That’d be a first,” Crowley says, unconvinced—and then adds, under his breath, “unless you were involved.”
“W-well, regardless,” Aziraphale says, slightly mollified despite himself.
Below, the sea crashes into the tower and recedes, gathering forces for another attack.
“Anyway, I... I suppose we should take another look at all of the floors,” the angel continues uncertainly. Crowley drums his fingers on the back of his chair, and Aziraphale’s gaze is drawn to the demon’s elegant hands, to his ostentatious carnelian cufflinks adorned with gold snakes, to his crossed wrists.
“Or not,” Crowley says, letting the legs of his chair slam to the floor. With a start, Aziraphale looks up to see himself reflected in the dark grey lenses. “Because that sounds a lot like actual work, angel, and I think you need someone to save you from that.”
“To—to save me from—”
(It’s oddly thrilling, the idea of being saved—and not in a Heavenly way.
Which is patently absurd, and has nothing to do with what Crowley actually said.)
“From that, yes,” Crowley goes on, entirely unhelpful. “Because you clearly cannot save yourself. The way I see it, you’ve taken on this self-imposed assignment because you didn’t know what else to do. For once, Heaven didn’t send you new instructions immediately after you handed in your report, and you decided to go searching for Hell. At a lighthouse, of all things. But you see, now I’m here.”
“So you are,” Aziraphale says faintly.
“To remind you what it’s like to have fun. How long since we’ve had no assignments? Well, I’m shirking mine but I assure you, the pompous fool I’m supposed to be corrupting needs no help. So, no assignments. And no ghosts either. Sure, we can keep looking for clues if you like, but we don’t have to do just that. Or to do that this very moment. We’ve got time. We can have fun.”
Animated, Crowley rears up as he speaks, balances on one sharp knee on the seat of his chair, his other leg a long line to the floor. He grins at the angel: a well-practised, vaguely predatory grin that makes small animals freeze fatefully in their tracks.
“We could play games,” he says. “Human games, I bet I can teach you a few from this century. Or—or, you know, the old ones. Senet! Remember senet? It’s been a few thousand years, you’d barely talked to me then.”
I’d wanted to, Aziraphale thinks distractedly, wading through the memories: green water, smooth scales glistening under the evening sun, the quickly whispered I’m not supposed to, what are you doing, Gabriel is on the way, followed by the retreating tail of a much-too-familiar large snake.
“Oh, I know,” Crowley says in the meantime. “We should continue our argument from 1136. Unless you need a little more time to think through your defence?”
“You’d lost that one!” Aziraphale objects, dismayed, as he resolutely pushes the memories away.
“Nnnnyeah, falling asleep doesn’t count. But! Walking on water! You promised to teach me, don’t think I have forgotten.”
“Wait, do you really…”
“Better yet: sea-bathing. It’s still summer. We could—”
Oh, absolutely not! Aziraphale looks at the demon in true alarm, his mind’s eye a field of black print: every newspaper article decrying the modern practice of Englishmen swimming in the nude. “Crowley, you cannot possibly…”
“That a yes, angel?” Crowley arches an eyebrow in what’s clearly a dare—and then, before Aziraphale can begin to collect his thoughts, thoroughly spoils the effect by bursting out laughing.
“Foul fiend,” Aziraphale states, covering up his confusion. He gets up decisively and marches towards the table to collect his saucer and cup. “You… You can do whatever you like, my dear, but I’m afraid it’s time for me to really focus on—on the investigation.”
“You wound me, angel,” Crowley says lightly, his gaze never wavering from Aziraphale. “I’d hoped those were tempting options. But if we must…”
The angel heads for the stairs.
“Wait!” The demon swivels in Aziraphale’s direction, slides his knee off the chair, saunters over. “Hold that cup right there. ’S empty, yeah? Hold it steady.” Crowley clicks his fingers, and the cup fills with a fragrant tea, intriguing scents of citrus and spices wafting through the air. “Try it,” Crowley says, pushing his glasses up. “Bergamot and other stuff. Picked it up recently, thought you might like it.”
A peace offering, Aziraphale thinks. And quickly made. Standing in the middle of the floor, he takes a sip; the flavour is fresh, comforting, and just a little sharp, like an early autumn morning when the leaves have already started to turn.
Crowley watches him, a barely-there uptick to the corners of his mouth.
“You don’t have to come with me, you know,” the angel says sternly, not yet ready to relinquish his position. “I’m sure you are more than capable of inventing something to—keep yourself amused.”
(The demon nods, and agrees, and proceeds to complain about the futility of their efforts with dramatic flair—
and slinks after the angel just the same, as sure as Aziraphale’s own shadow.)
—
The next few hours in the lighthouse turn out to be the most trying time Aziraphale has been through in years.
Crowley—who has no apparent interest in uncovering any mysteries—is, more often than not, in Aziraphale’s way. With preternatural precision, he settles on top of the writing-desk where the angel had just spotted a curious document, steps into Aziraphale’s path when he is about to cross the room to an oil-lamp forgotten in the corner, starts up a soliloquy to the bust of Robert Stevenson just as Aziraphale tries to remember where he’d last seen his teacup, and the angel’s focus shatters beyond repair.
More than that: early on, Crowley startles Aziraphale quite badly as he shouts up the echoing shaft of the lighthouse to get the angel’s attention; the thunder-like echoes go wild, become their own presences as they roll up and down the spiral stairs, and when Aziraphale, breathless, arrives to the store-room to round on the demon, Crowley laughs and laughs and laughs, his spectacles in one hand, wiping at his eyes with the heel of the other: “Not a ghost, I swear, angel, the honest truth, ’m not a ghost, I wasn’t trying to spook you!”
These things alone are exasperating enough, but there is more.
At some point, they are in the library and the demon (who lounges on a fold-out bed, sits with his feet up on the writing-desk, perches on the bookshelf by turns) is giving an impassioned speech about the real issue at Howling Rock having been human folly: too much to drink, tempers, fights.
“A random bunch of humans. Thrown together with no thought about—compatibility. And then they are brought to this rock and all but locked together for months.”
“Compatibility,” Aziraphale repeats, shaking his head as he tries to shoo Crowley off another piece of potential evidence. If his next question comes out sharper than he’d intended, the demon can only blame himself. “How much would you know about that?”
“A great deal, actually,” Crowley says, opening his hands palms-up and stepping sideways at last—though not quite far enough, so that Aziraphale still brushes against him on his way to the bookshelf. “Demon, yeah? I get to see the worst in them. Trust me, angel, humans don’t like each other all that much. Living in quarters this close, isolation, danger… Your average humans will be at each other’s throats in no time when the going gets tough.”
“Plenty of humans work together,” Aziraphale says, producing a fountain pen to make another note in his journal and studiously ignoring the unseen-but-suspected point where his and Crowley’s sleeves touch. “Even in… in trying times.”
“Oh, but angel, think about it.” Pushing away from the bookshelf to circle the room, Crowley picks up a book here, a half-written letter there, a dusty bottle, a cartwheel twopence from 1797 that Aziraphale had catalogued earlier. He flips the coin before pocketing it. “If isolation does get to them. If they start, I dunno, seeing things. What are they going to do, talk about them? Open up? Nah, not these big grown men. They’ll decide to tough it out, prove they are masters over themselves, all that. Sure, some will pray, but they’ll keep it quiet. And anyway, praying won’t help. Never does.”
Aziraphale sighs, not taking the bait. “We’ve been through this, Crowley. You won’t dissuade me. Even if this is completely mundane, I’m determined to find out as much as I can, and I—”
“And you,” the demon interrupts him, sounding both vexed and amused, “are a workaholic. Have you heard the term? I invented it, you know. While thinking of you.”
So yes, yes, having Crowley there, in the lighthouse, in close quarters, is even more exasperating than one would expect it to be.
Except—
And that, that’s the thing—
Except when it’s not.
They talk. Not just about the lighthouse and about the task at hand; they talk about the last few decades, about their assignments, about the Exhibition at the Crystal Palace (they had both gone the same month, it turns out, and had just missed each other; Crowley spends a good half-hour describing his favourite human inventions, only occasionally remembering to point out their usefulness to Hell, and Aziraphale tries and fails to stifle smile after smile).
And—well. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, but Crowley is the one creature Aziraphale can actually talk to when it comes to human affairs. The one creature who understands.
Oh, Crowley teases him. But before long, Aziraphale is responding in kind, and he’d missed this, had missed Crowley’s surprised and delighted laugh that follows a repartee. When Aziraphale misplaces his teacup again—“Really, angel, that’s got to be the fifth time!”—Crowley searches for it with him, and his smile is sharp and wry, and the sea outside is green glass—and after a while, the demon sheds his morning coat, folds his spectacles away; his eyes are copper-bright, his skin flushed, his hair wind-tousled when he returns from an excursion to the rocks, carrying—“Is that seaweed, Crowley?”—“That’s dulse, angel, humans eat that, I think I can make this work… unless that’s too plebeian for you, of course?”
And they do play a game, one still older than senet, one that Aziraphale remembers with a rush of startling longing (of course, it has been thousands of years): Mehen, named so for the snake-protector who would, as the legend went, wrap around the sun-god Ra to shield him during his nightly journey through the underworld (as Crowley nudges his pieces along the coils of the freshly-conjured game board, Aziraphale keeps thinking of a red underbelly, of glistening black scales, of the weight of a large snake across one’s chest…)
They have a picnic outside at low tide, Crowley bringing out more of the delightful Belgian chocolates he’d taken with him, providing them both with tea, laying out a plate of croissants with a perfect golden crust; an enterprising seagull nearly makes off with a croissant straight from Aziraphale’s hand as the angel watches Crowley roll up his trousers, take his shoes and socks off, exposing pale ankles, and wade into the swirling foam to the flat side of the rocks...
And, quite by accident, they do continue their argument from 1136; it evolves into what could have been a shouting match in the library, each of them pointing at the illuminated Bible by turns—except both of them are far too amused, and Aziraphale is the first to start laughing when they can no longer sustain it: “Crowley, your Gabriel impression was quite... quite...”—“Spot on, angel?”—“Shockingly irreverent but… ah… that, too…”
And throughout all of this, Crowley appears—comfortable, at ease; he abandons his red silk necktie, unbuttons the collar of his shirt (there should be a law against that, isn’t there a law against that? Aziraphale wonders faintly before muted concern makes him snuff out the thought). Crowley’s top hat sits on one of the bunks in the sleeping quarters, the demon’s travel bag a tripping hazard in the middle of the floor, and Aziraphale should not be startled by these signs, but he is, he is: Crowley is staying, Crowley is planning to be around for—for who knows how long, just the two of them, just them; Aziraphale had practically invited the demon to come with him, hadn’t he, he’d told him the name of the ship, and now…
What am I doing, the angel asks himself (his hands folding and unfolding in front of his waistcoat quite apart from his consciousness of the fact, his journal and pen long-forgotten somewhere in the lighthouse), this isn’t an invitation for lunch, this isn’t an evening at a tavern, this is—I’m not sure what this is—
but there is one thing he does know, and it’s that his insides have gone all sparkling and tingly like the fizzy water from the crystal fountain at the Exhibition, and that it’s joy, effervescent joy, and that he feels more alive than he has done in a long time.
—
It comes when Aziraphale is in the library, settled in one of the winged armchairs, a novel in his lap. The sky has darkened an almost-imperceptible shade; it’s still far too early to light the beacon.
The howl.
It rises from a low, shuddering note, something that must surely be below the range of human hearing—and then it comes into full, deafening force.
No human could make this sound. No animal, either, or rather Aziraphale does not know of any God’s creatures that could make a sound like that: a sound that makes the trumpeting of wild elephants seem no more than the buzzing of a lost mosquito.
The book slides to the floor, falls open on the last page.
Abruptly, the sound ceases.
Aziraphale, on his feet now, looks around wildly, searching for the demon. Crowley isn’t in the room, he’s somewhere else in the lighthouse, he’d said something about that, what did he…
Aziraphale half-sprints towards the stairs.
“Crowley!” he shouts before he even reaches the hatch. “Crowley!”
“Yeah?” comes a faint response.
The angel rattles down the steps and nearly runs into the demon two levels below, at the bottom of the stairs descending into the kitchen.
“Aziraphale?” the demon asks, his eyebrows climbing upwards. His sleeves are rolled up, his hands are dusted with flour, there’s a smudge of white on his cheek. “What’s gotten into you?”
“The. The sound!” Aziraphale’s heart hammers half in excitement, half in alarm. “Oh, I wasn’t certain at all that there’d be something here, but now—the sound!”
“The… sound?” Crowley frowns. He clicks his fingers absently, not taking his eyes off Aziraphale, and the dusting of flour on his hands and cheek vanishes. “You heard something?”
Aziraphale’s thoughts come to a stuttering halt.
“Do you mean to say you… didn’t?”
Crowley looks at him, blank-faced. “Uh.”
“You… did not.”
“What kind of a sound was it?”
“A… Well. A—a howl. Crowley, are you serious? Are you… hang on, is this one of your practical jokes?”
“What? Why would you say that?” Crowley asks, aghast. “What did you hear? Actually, wait, no—” He takes Aziraphale by the elbow and pulls him towards a chair. Grudgingly, the angel follows. They settle in their corresponding spots, Crowley astride his chair as usual, still wearing an expression of confused incredulity. There’s a bowl on the table to their left, a small sack of flour, a jar of what looks to be honey.
“Let’s go over this,” Crowley says. “You heard a… howl.”
“I—yes.”
“Were you in the library?”
“I was. Crowley, why—”
“Was your window open?”
“I…” Aziraphale frowns, trying to remember. “I—I don’t know, Crowley, but that can’t possibly have anything to do with it.”
“Angel. Look outside. Look at the water. Look at the ships. The wind has picked up, and this place is called Howling Rock. As you yourself have said.”
The angel shakes his head. “No, that—that didn’t sound like the wind at all.”
“Right,” Crowley says slowly, rubbing the side of his nose. “Uh. You know that there are birds that like to rest on the balcony railing?”
“Crowley, for—for Her sake, this wasn’t a bird. It was exceedingly loud.”
“Fine, sure, not a bird. Must’ve been the sea, then? ’S loud, yeah? When it crashes against the tower?”
“It wasn’t the sea, Crowley,” Aziraphale says, exasperated. “You are being absurd.”
“Nhhh—me? Angel, did you doze off while reading?”
“I don’t sleep, Crowley,” Aziraphale says, pushing his chair back abruptly to pace the kitchen floor. “You know that. And I don’t understand why you have to be so… obstinate about this.”
“I,” Crowley says, opening his hands as if to show he’s concealing no secret strings or wires, “am trying to suggest reasonable explanations. Because we’ve already checked every inch of this place, and there are no ghosts here. But you are still expecting something to happen, so...”
“You… think I’d caused it, somehow,” Aziraphale says, stopping by the kitchen range to stare at his dismayed reflection in the ornate grillwork. “Or—or imagined it.”
“No—Aziraphale! I’m trying to help. Really. ‘M saying that it couldn’t have been that loud, right? But it must have sounded quite jarring in the silence of the library. And it must have been a lot closer to you than to me. All of this should be of use when we’re trying to pinpoint it, yeah?”
Yes. No. Must you be so obstinate? Aziraphale adjusts his waistcoat, runs his fingers over the chain of his pocket watch, gives the demon an uneasy glance.
Crowley’s answering look is disarmingly earnest.
Is this, Aziraphale wonders, how a human would feel if the painted lions and dragons stirred over their lacunae?
—
“I suppose,” Aziraphale says when the water, and the air above it, darken further, “that we should light the beacon.”
Up in the light-room, everything is as still, as dormant as it was during the day. Open to the early dusk on all sides, it is now the lightest room in the lighthouse, and the flames in the oil-lamps Aziraphale and Crowley have carried with them fade into near-transparency in the orange glow of the western sky.
Crowley clicks his fingers to light the burner within the large glass lens, nudges the brass-framed door shut. The beacon flares to life. Instantly, the room is bathed in bands of white and red; deep shadows appear on the metal grid of the windows, on the waxed planks of the floor—moving with the two of them, following their steps.
The next part is the winding handle; turning it will, as Aziraphale read in a conveniently placed light-keeper’s manual, raise a weight in a channel built into one of the walls below. The slow descent of that weight will power the rotation of the lens for hours.
They wind it—or rather, Crowley does (“This is it, yeah?”), sitting cross-legged on the floor, while Aziraphale watches his fingers, wrapped around the brass knob, and the way he’d drawn his eyebrows together, absorbed in the task.
After the winding, however, the lens remains still.
“That,” Aziraphale says, frowning as he flips through the manual, “isn’t mentioned here.”
“Lessee.” Impatient, Crowley pulls the pages from his hand, ignoring Aziraphale’s startled protest, flips through them as well and unceremoniously drops them on the floor. The angel glares at him before he bends to pick them up. “Right, yeah. Hm.”
Together, they stare at the unmoving signal bell that is supposed to ring when the clockwork is running, at the cogs and gears visible below the lens.
“I think it needs a good kick,” Crowley says, squinting at the clockwork. He lifts his right foot and tilts his head, taking aim.
“That’s your advice?” Aziraphale pulls the demon back, causing Crowley to hop on one foot like an overlarge sandpiper, hissing in protest. “Only it sounded like you were quite the expert on human technologies when you talked about them earlier.”
There is, he knows, enough acerbity in his voice to cure a sailor or two of scurvy. It is, perhaps, not entirely deserved.
They step in opposite directions and walk along the narrow room, circling the glass beehive as they look for anything that would be so common knowledge among the humans that the manual would have failed to mention it.
“There’s got to be—there’s got to be something else, yeah? Like—a release of some kind?” Crowley asks from behind the lens. There is a metallic clink, followed by a muttered curse. “No. Uh. Wasn’t that bit—”
“Crowley, what did you do now?” the angel asks in consternation, quickening his steps. “Really, my dear, there is no need to…”
And then, his attention is captured by something large and pale moving outside, behind the plate glass. He half-turns that way, squinting against the reflections, but his feet still carry him forward, and just as he realises that the shape outside is a bird, an uncommonly large owl landing on the railing—he walks straight into Crowley.
Both of them stagger. Crowley’s hands fly to Aziraphale’s elbows, steadying him. Several teetering steps later, when they are no longer in danger of collapsing on the floor in an undignified heap, the demon lets him go, but doesn’t move away. Instead, he looks at Aziraphale curiously.
“Angel? Everything fine? Sorry, I shouldn’t have just—rushed along like that. Sunwise, widdershins, recipe for disaster. Are you…”
“I’m fine,” Aziraphale answers quickly. “Splendid. Tip-top.”
The room is getting quite warm, the lens flaring with all the heat and light of the sun at high noon. Aziraphale steps backwards, pulls at his waistcoat, looks anywhere but at Crowley.
“Angel,” Crowley asks. “Are you really…”
He doesn’t get to finish his thought.
BAMMMM, goes the signal bell to their left, causing Aziraphale to start quite badly.
BAMMMMMM. The glass in the windows responds with a sympathetic note.
Then, there is a click, a hum like a hive of metal bees waking, and the flaring Fresnel lens begins to move.
Both Crowley and Aziraphale swivel to look at it—and then, in symmetric half-blinded puzzlement, at each other. Bands of hot light slide over them: white, red, white, red again.
“Crowley, why did you… I thought we agreed not to use magic for…”
“I didn’t,” the demon says quickly. “That wasn’t me.” He turns to the lens again and reels back instantly, eyes half-closed, hissing at his mistake. “Angel, do you mean to say this wasn’t you either?”
Aziraphale shakes his head. Crowley stares at him.
“Oh,” the demon says finally. “Oh, that’s a good one.”
And he begins to laugh.
Notes:
1I wouldn’t put it past Crowley to have been involved in the Berners Street Hoax, too.
[return to text]
Chapter 2: Shadow
Notes:
Hello and welcome 🤍 Please take a look at Martina’s fantastic painting for Chapter 1! The light, the sea, the Fresnel lens, Aziraphale and Crowley, I love everything about it.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The darkness around them is an odd, clinging thing, a heavy blanket thrown over the water, stifling even the sound of the waves. The ship’s lanterns barely cut through it.
It feels wrong, Crowley thinks as he squints into the distance.
And their course—their course is wrong, too. These are dangerous waters, full of submerged hazards, each enough to wreck a ship far bigger than theirs. They have names, these jagged rocks: the Resting Place, the Widow’s Lament. It really doesn’t get any more ominous than that.
We shouldn’t be turning to shore, Crowley thinks, biting the inside of his cheek as he steps away from the gunwale. Not until we see the light in the mountains. Not until it’s safe.
And the mountains are dark shapes against a darker sky.
“I’ve seen the beacon already,” the Captain says impatiently. “Over there. Get back to your station.”
What? No. You couldn’t have, Crowley is about to say. That’s not even the right direction. I have not seen it, and I—
That, of course, is precisely when the impact comes.
—
That’s not how it went, Crowley thinks as he opens his eyes into a sunny summer morning, as his gaze falls onto the geranium in the window next to his bunk. That is not how it went.
The dream seems to cling to him as he gets up, threading through his very bones. It leaves behind a scratchy, feathery kind of unease that makes him irritable at breakfast. More so than wonted: when Aziraphale comes down from the library and clasps his hands at the sight of the table (and Crowley had thought about it, yes, all right, the buttered bread and the cheeses and the sun-filled pears straight from an orchard in Kent), Crowley probably hisses just a little louder than usual, snaps at the angel just a little more.
Before long, Aziraphale is pinching the bridge of his nose, breathing out slowly, giving Crowley a long-suffering look.
(Which has no right to be as horribly endearing as it is, but that’s angels for you.
Well.
That’s some angels for you.
Well.
That’s this one.)
Said angel is looking at him very sternly now, and isn’t that one of life’s great delights.
“Crowley. What is it?”
“What?” Crowley says, raising an eyebrow. He is not about to confess anything as incriminating as being—well—evidently rather too affected by the whole ambiance.
Across the table from him, Aziraphale sighs, putting a piece of buttered toast back on his plate.
“I can tell that something is bothering you,” he says.
“Nah. Nothing’s bothering me. ‘M fine.”
Aziraphale holds his gaze. He looks like a Greek statue, Crowley thinks irrelevantly, especially like this: questioning, poised. The curve of his forehead, his round chin, the stubborn line of his nose. The way the tight curlicues of his hair appear almost chiselled in the morning light. The pink-marble flush of his skin.
“Well, I won’t pry,” Aziraphale says, looking away with the haughty air of someone who would absolutely pry if they didn’t consider it beneath their station. Eyebrows drawn together, Crowley reaches for a newspaper (which is, of course, about three weeks old, and all the rumours in it have long grown stale)—but then, the angel picks up a jar of Keiller’s marmalade, one of those Crowley found in the store-room, and dips a spoon into it, carefully spreading some of the orange jelly over his toast.
The room seems to grow brighter as he takes a delicate bite. Sunlight sparks on the smooth ceramic sides of the marmalade jar, on the curves of the spoons and forks, on the gold swirls along the edges of Aziraphale’s cup. Crowley puts the newspaper away without glancing at it once.
“Oh, this is lovely,” the angel sighs, opening his eyes—and there’s sunlight there, too, wavering as if on the changeable surface of the sea. “Thank you, my dear.”
This, Crowley thinks with half-hearted indignation, would mean immediate disqualification in any reasonable sport.
“And... I was thinking,” the angel continues. “About—the night.”
“Nmhh?” Crowley shakes himself and reaches for his coffee. “What about it?”
“It’s just that… You’re quite the malcontent this morning. Did you sleep well? I couldn’t help noticing that those bunks are awfully narrow. Why don’t you take the fold-out bed in the library for the next night? I’m not using it, of course. That is, if… if you are still planning to stay, I didn’t mean to presume…”
“Oh, you’re not getting rid of me so easily,” Crowley says, not missing the way Aziraphale’s hands have fluttered together, irresolute. “‘m absolutely not going back to Plymouth, that wanker I’ve been assigned to can tempt himself. I mean—I was supposed to make him take up gambling, yeah? Oh, Mister Crowley, he says the first evening he sees me at the club. Oh, Mister Crowley, I’ve had terrible luck at cards today—may I depend on you for a favour? Pffff. It’s demeaning, an assignment like that. A waste of my highly developed demonic talents.” Putting his coffee cup back on the table, Crowley frowns at it, acutely aware of the writhing worm of disquiet under his sternum.
“Of course,” Aziraphale says, uncertain but encouraging all the same. Then, he looks at Crowley searchingly. “Right, well—so what do you say?”
Crowley blinks.
“Only it really would be no trouble at all. I would be just as comfortable in the kitchen.”
Oh. Oh, right. The fold-out bed. If you’d stay in the room and I could bother you, that would be a different matter entirely. As it is, though, I would truly be a fool to take you away from your books.
“Nah,” Crowley says. “I know better than to stand between you and a library. Or to lie, as the case may be. And I told you, ‘m fine.”
But… did you sleep well, Aziraphale had asked—and there they are again, jumbled images from his dream, a mix of memory and fancy: feet pounding along deck boards in pitch darkness, ragged flashes of lamplight, terrified cries; a shudder going through the hull of a ship which may as well be, in that moment, no thicker than a walnut shell; a plunge into icy black water.
It’s bloody embarrassing, Crowley thinks, biting down on his molars. I’m a demon, for Somebody’s sake. Being disturbed by a bloody dream isn’t something demons can afford. (And just what would Aziraphale say to him having nightmares in a decidedly unhaunted lighthouse, after everything Crowley himself had said?)
“Crowley?” Aziraphale asks softly. His eyelashes sweep upwards as he gives the demon a beseeching look. “I really don’t want to pry. It’s only that it would be… so much easier if you did talk to me.”
And bless it, it almost works. Drawn out by the softness of Aziraphale’s voice, traitorous words are already forming on Crowley’s tongue before his brain catches up with them, yanks on the reins. ”I…”
Aziraphale leans forward minutely, the very picture of rapt attention. His hands unclasp. “Yes?”
No. Absolutely not.
“Well,” Crowley says slowly—while inside his head, metaphorical horses are changed in record time, amended routes laid down, signs flipped, the curricle sent careening on its new way. “I am, perhaps, a little… disappointed.”
“You are... disappointed?” Aziraphale repeats in faint puzzlement.
“Mm. You see, I come to Howling Rock, I expect it to deliver. But have I heard so much as a hiss, let alone an actual howl? I have not. What’s up with you getting all the fun?” The demon leans back, opening his hands in mock dismay.
“All the fun,” Aziraphale echoes in an odd tone.
“Yep,” Crowley says, reaching for his cup again and taking a defiant sip of piping hot coffee. “And no ghosts either. I’ll grant you that a few of the dust bunnies we’d seen in the far corners were terrifying, but still. Hardly a replacement.”
“Crowley,” Aziraphale says. “I thought—I thought I had made it perfectly clear why I am going to the lighthouse. I—well, it’s not that I’m not grateful for your company. When you came here…”
The angel cuts himself off, then, and turns quickly to the side, his throat bobbing as he swallows the rest of the sentence. The hair at the nape of his neck flashes golden in the sunlight that streams through the windows; dust motes float over his shoulder, caught in the slanted beams. Crowley stares, feeling like the whole tower has shifted, is swaying gently with the wind.
The angel turns to him again.
“Anyway, I know you are looking for—for fun things to do, or for something interesting to happen, and I am well aware that the only unusual thing that both of us saw yesterday was the lens starting to turn, which…”
“…was not supernatural.” Here is a familiar topic, solid ground, and Crowley feels like settling up an encampment. “Yeah. I’d have felt it. You would’ve felt it. The humans are very clever with their machines, angel, but their machines are far from perfect. That one just got stuck. And then it came unstuck. Nothing to it. But sure, let the humans see a few things like that, and they’ll fall over each other to hammer a ‘Haunted’ sign to the door. Unless they are running away screaming.”
“Quite,” Aziraphale says slowly, and Crowley backtracks. He is missing something, what is he—
“You’ve spent the rest of the evening yesterday telling me there’s nothing to it, yes,” Aziraphale goes on. He picks up a white linen napkin and starts folding it over and over as he speaks, running his fingers with neatly-trimmed nails meticulously over the creases. “Regardless, I plan to stay and observe. I also think that it’s time for another circuit of the lighthouse, and…”
Unable to help himself, Crowley groans.
“Angel, you can’t be serious. We’ve done three of those already, and there is nothing… Look. Yesterday evening, we could’ve been sitting by the fire, could’ve moved the armchairs down to the kitchen, easy, could’ve been having a grand time, but instead? It’s dead-cold down in the basement, I’ll have you know, you can feel the water seeping through the stones—yes, yes, it doesn’t actually do that, I know, it’s just so blessed damp all the time, yeah? And how many hours have we already spent combing through everything?”
The angel folds his napkin again, saying nothing, so Crowley goes on, picking up speed like an ill-advised train on an arrow-straight track.
“D’you know what we could’ve done instead? We could have tried the wine I brought, for one. We could have—would have gone flying if you were restless. Just above the lighthouse. The nights here are as dark as Satan’s… uh, they are really dark, yeah? Aziraphale, when have you last flown?”
But the angel is shaking his head. “You don’t have to come with me, Crowley,” he says, sounding tired.
“Nah, ‘course I’ll…”
“In fact, my dear,” Aziraphale says very pointedly, putting the napkin away, “I do not think you should come.”
Crowley freezes.
“I’m—I’m boring you,” Aziraphale continues. “I know that. I know you have no patience for my—how did you put it earlier?—penchant for domestic archaeology.”
He did say that, didn’t he.
“It will take me some time, and I just—I’d feel better if I knew I’m not dragging you with me.”
“Angel…”
“I insist,” Aziraphale says mildly, tilting his head up to meet Crowley’s eyes. Crowley snaps his mouth shut. There’s no arguing with Aziraphale when he gets like that. And anyway, he’s not wrong, Crowley is in his way. This is, of course, rather the point of the whole endeavour, but…
It wouldn’t do to have Aziraphale really take up arms, the demon tells himself. Hardly conducive to fun, for the most part.
“Fine,” Crowley says, tamping down his disquiet. “Fine, yeah, sure.”
He takes another sip of his coffee, shakes out the fingers he had wrapped around the handle of the cup a little too tightly, glares at the cup itself. Its porcelain, in this light, is the translucent off-white of adulterated milk.
“It won’t take all that long,” Aziraphale says with a beatific smile his way. “And we could play senet after, couldn’t we?”
“Yeah,” Crowley says. “‘Course, angel. Whatever you like.”
—
After breakfast—which was, despite Crowley’s sputtering when the angel said as much, absolutely scrumptious—Aziraphale starts his circuit of the lighthouse.
Without Crowley at his elbow, the tower feels different, an empty shell echoing with the roar of distant waves. The difference should not be surprising: places such as this one, desolate outposts at the very edge of human habitation, are bound to induce a certain mood—yet still Aziraphale has to remind himself that whatever the demon is up to, he is a few dozen feet away at most, well within hearing range.
It’s a foolish thing, he thinks, but this just goes to show: it was wise of the humans to start sending three-person crews to run lighthouses, even if it was prompted by a tragedy.
In the light-room, sunlight reflects off the motionless signal bell, the heart of the tower that lets the keepers know when the clockwork is running. Cormorants and seagulls wheel in the blue outside, level with the top of the beacon, occasionally sweeping close to the glass as if curious what is kept within.
Walking down the narrow stairs to the library, one hand on the smooth oak handrail, the angel imagines what it would have felt like to be a solitary light-keeper in a place like this. Quiet days spent in polishing the plate glass of the light-room, in dusting the ridges and valleys of the lens, in cleaning the soft black soot off reflectors to expose the gleaming brass underneath. Toiling to bring about a man-made dawn just in time for nightfall.
A solitary light-keeper would have been in constant danger: the loneliness, the injuries, the fear. Storms could last for weeks, cutting off supply lines, stranding relief boats in port. Fog could linger for days, and the keeper would have to ring the fog-bell hour after hour, in a sleepless haze, until the weather turned. Back then, the company of even a single other person could literally mean the difference between life and death—of hundreds, of whole ships’ crews.
But also, of course, there’d be peace to this life: the quiet, the sea, the sky, the birds, the green and the white and the changeable blue. The multitude of stars at night.
And the nights are different here, are they not?
Long before dawn, at low tide, Aziraphale had carefully stepped out while Crowley was asleep (arms and legs splayed across the narrow bunk, the fingers of his right hand trailing on the floor, his shoulder twisted so awkwardly that Aziraphale ached to take hold of the demon’s arm, to fold it safely across his chest). The angel had stood on the rocks, had looked at the river of light spilled across the sky, reflected in the black water. Had thought of how he himself had felt like a light-keeper, sometimes, keeping a lonely watch.
(But not quite lonely, something had whispered within him. Never quite lonely, isn’t that right?
It’s just that the other angel keeping watch with you is Fallen.)
The nights, though—yes, the nights were different here. By this time, stars were already dimming above English coastal towns, lit by gas-lamps, by lanterns above doors, by chandeliers burning in the large windows of sea-facing houses, by the mirror-backed glass lamps of carriages that cut through the night. Inhaling the damp pre-dawn air, hearing more than seeing the foam thrown by the waves almost to his feet, Aziraphale had thought that here, miles and miles out to sea, the night felt at least half a century younger, somehow, and so much darker despite the beams of the lighthouse rotating overhead, aimed outwards.
The angel is in the kitchen now, and he looks around, searching for his teacup. He’d thought he had carried it with him, had placed it on the edge of the table as he went over the humans’ supplies, checking the nooks and crannies for anything other than dust and bored spiders—but the cup’s presumed place is conspicuously empty.
The library, then. He must have left it there. Forget my own head next, Aziraphale thinks, smiling wanly at the memory.
The angel descends another floor, once again deep in thought by the time his foot touches the landing. Shadows scatter out of his way, chased off by the unsteady light of the oil-lamp he’d picked up at the top of the stairs.
How do the humans carry the weight of this kind of loneliness?
Despite what Crowley says—and he is a demon, of course, ever-bleak about human nature—Aziraphale thinks that the light-keepers are immensely brave. It takes… well, it takes a certain type of person to choose this life—whenever choice is involved.
The angel remembers the earliest beacons, fires on rocky shores. He remembers the hermits who set up braziers on raised platforms, maintaining them night after night. He remembers how, in time, lighthouses started cropping up along coastlines, getting brighter and taller and bolder every century—though the first and greatest of them all, the Lighthouse of Alexandria, remained unmatched.
There were the coastal lighthouses, the island lighthouses, and lighthouses much like this one, wood or stone towers clinging to half-submerged rocks.
And there were places that were not lighthouses at all, yet had served the same function.
Standing in the store-room, a sputtering lantern in his hand, feeble bands of daylight reaching out to him through the hatchway above, Aziraphale remembers.
A seaside monastery. A lantern hanging outside one of the towers on the darkest nights, guiding the sailors home.
Crowley—his long ropey hair twisted into a tight knot, his saunter more precarious than usual, salt still clinging to his skin—had found him there one day in the fifteen hundreds, had asked for him at the gate. The curious monks had summoned Aziraphale at once, and when the angel, a little breathless, came down to meet his visitor at the threshold, Crowley had smiled a familiar crooked smile, tired and brittle as it had always been after their long absences from each other’s lives. Something had shifted within Aziraphale at the sight; he’d been reaching for his rosary, but had changed his mind with his hand halfway to it, had stepped forward, some emotion surging within him, not quite knowing what he was going to do—and though he resolutely did not take the demon’s calloused and weather-roughened hands in his, had not so much as considered it, he had thought—inexplicably—of homecomings, of nostos, of Odysseus returning from the sea.
The world goes dark abruptly, as if even the sun outside is extinguished by a mythical giant’s hand. The blackness that envelops Aziraphale is complete, all-encompassing, a starless void; only the steady pull of gravity tells him that he hasn’t changed his position in space.
The water roars far below.
My lantern has guttered out, Aziraphale thinks as he blinks into nothingness. That must be it.
He clicks his fingers, and the air fills with light: an obedient pale glow that makes dust motes flash silver as they swim through the air like schools of fish in a bottomless sea.
The flickering light (that’s peculiar, Aziraphale notes absently as he looks around, it has never flickered before) illuminates the burlap sacks, the shelves, the crates; it colours the beet-root nearly black, gives the wrinkled apples a sheen of deep oxblood-red.
Something moves to his left, a presence that hadn’t been there a moment before. He whips around to face—
Nothing.
A step creaks on the wooden stairs going downwards. Another one. A third.
This is what the humans had seen, isn’t it. No wonder they’d thought of ghosts.
“Crowley?” Aziraphale calls out. Stubborn as he is, Crowley won’t believe anything he hasn’t seen for himself. But the demon is…
Where is he, actually?
The silence continues, stretches, does not snap.
Where did he say he would be?
“Crowley!” the angel calls again, louder.
“Yeah?” comes a faint response from upstairs. Aziraphale breathes out.
The change is unmistakable, as if smoke has dispersed to let a beleaguered sun shine through. Bands of daylight are once again reaching towards Aziraphale from the hatchway above, and, taking inspiration from them, his own flickering light grows stronger and steadier.
“Angel?”
Crowley’s voice is closer now. His staccato footsteps spill down the wooden stairs: he is coming Aziraphale’s way.
“Down here,” Aziraphale calls back—and trails off, frowning, just as Crowley’s footsteps pause briefly on the floor above.
He must be coming from the library. But I’d… I’d just been in the library, and I didn’t see him. How distracted had I been…?
Above, the heels of the demon’s fashionable shoes are once again echoing against the wood—and in a few moments, Crowley is next to Aziraphale, circling him, fluid as a shadow in his blacks and greys. The demon looks around the store-room curiously, tilting his chin up as he does: a movement so familiar from his other form that Aziraphale can almost see his forked tongue sliding out to taste the air.
That survey apparently inconclusive, the demon turns to Aziraphale. “You called me, angel. Did you find something interesting?”
“I thought I did,” Aziraphale says wonderingly, looking around. “I had a sense of… well, presence, I suppose. Very like what the humans describe with hauntings. And—there was a shadow, I think.”
“A shadow,” Crowley repeats. “Right. Uh. And… anything supernatural?”
Aziraphale shakes his head.
“Nothing. Just as before.”
“Right.” Crowley circles the room again, picks up a withered root that might have once been a turnip, wrinkles his nose, lets the thing drop. “So uh. And you are sure you didn’t… you know. Nudge reality a little too much? Inadvertently? By the weight of your expectations?”
Aziraphale gives him a look.
“All right, all right, I had to ask, yeah?” Crowley throws up his hands. “No need to get so defensive about it. ’S a possibility, isn’t it?”
“I would have known,” Aziraphale says. “I’ve been in this physical reality for just as long as you have, Crowley. Longer, actually.”
Crowley glances at him sideways, says nothing.
“Crowley, I would have known.”
“Hm? Yeah, no, I get it. ‘M just…” The demon spins on his heel, looking around. “There’s nothing here. Could it have been—you know, a regular shadow? Your own? And speaking of shadows, why aren’t you using that thing?” He sticks out a finger towards the useless oil-lamp Aziraphale is still holding. “I thought you were all about fewer miracles and more… doing things the human way.”
“I—yes, I am,” Aziraphale confirms, raising the lantern to eye level. “This lantern just went out on me.”
“Human things tend to do that, yeah,” Crowley says sagely, sauntering over. “Let’s see.” He reaches out, and their fingers brush over the arched handle briefly, a whisper of skin on skin. Startled, Aziraphale opens his hand.
Gulls start a commotion somewhere outside the walls of the tower. The surf, monotone and predictable, reverberates at its base.
“Do you know,” Crowley says, one corner of his mouth curling upwards as he weights the lamp in careless fingers, “that oil lanterns actually need oil? I think we’ve solved this particular mystery.”
Aziraphale accepts the lantern back with a frown. I’d filled it just this morning, he thinks, I can’t possibly have used it all up…
“So,” Crowley says, stepping backwards, looking around again, “nothing here right now?”
“No,” Aziraphale shakes his head.
“In that case,” Crowley says, both of his eyebrows jumping upwards. “Were you trying to discorporate me or what?”
Aziraphale starts. “Wh… Crowley, what do you mean?”
“The cup?” Crowley says. “That you left in the middle of the stairs?” He points his thumb back over his shoulder, in the direction of the hatch. “Only if you are trying to get rid of me, angel, you really can tell me, there’s no need for an elaborate plot.”
“I—what?”
Crowley gestures for him to follow, climbs up the narrow stairs. Aziraphale blinks at the lantern in his hand before he sets it down by one of the burlap sacks and follows the demon.
Upstairs, in the kitchen, they stand at the stairs that lead to the sleeping quarters. Aziraphale’s cup—and the saucer, too, both with their unmistakable gold swirls—are indeed sitting in the middle of the fourth step from the bottom, gently luminous in the shade like a porcelain lily growing quite out of place.
Crowley gestures at the ensemble, all theatrical exasperation and offended sensibility. “You are a menace, Aziraphale. See?”
“And you just… found them here?” Aziraphale says, reaching for the cup. It’s quite empty, a dark dry film peeling off the bottom. He tilts it in his fingers, mystified.
The thing is… the stairs are steep. So narrow and so steep that he’d already wondered if they had been a danger to the light-keepers, especially on shift changes in the dead hours of the night. The fourth step is at hip level; it’s not inconceivable for someone—even him—to put something there for momentary safekeeping and forget all about it as soon as they blink.
Not inconceivable, but not particularly likely, either.
And he knows he had not.
“Just found it here?” Crowley echoes, watching Aziraphale’s hands. “Well, yeah. I didn’t put it here, if that’s what you are asking. ‘M not one to want to literally keep myself on my toes.”
Startled, the angel looks up at him. Crowley raises an eyebrow in response, his dark amber eyes as earnest as ever.
“You didn’t… Right, yes, of course,” Aziraphale says. “Well. I’d—I’d better keep an eye on it, then.”
“Good plan,” Crowley nods. “So. Senet?”
—
Crowley fishes, later that day, rigging up a hand-line he’d found among the missing keepers’ things to the small dinghy he manages to get on the water.
From a platform next to the light-room, Aziraphale watches the boat (they had only found one boat, but were there more, before? Did the humans use them in an ill-fated attempt to escape?) drift on the waves, gentle and slow as breath, as it slides further and further away from the lighthouse.
(It tugs at something in his chest, this inexorably growing distance—and he frowns, and runs his fingers over his signet ring, and resolves to ignore the feeling.)
Crowley, sprawled at the bottom of the boat, appears comfortable. His arms are behind his head, his dark shades firmly on his nose; he looks boneless and relaxed. Still, the demon half-sits up when he notices Aziraphale at the top of the tower—and waves at the angel, grinning, before he settles back down to look at the sky.
The fishing line trails placidly behind the boat’s stern.
Later, Aziraphale is startled to find that, for all that Crowley appeared to use the dinghy as another nap-place, the demon does not return empty-handed. He brings back a single—though very large—cod, and practically dances through the kitchen with it: more than a little ridiculous, wholly at ease.
“You,” he tells the angel, grinning widely, “are entirely at my mercy. Unless you are content with salt beef, or decide to magic your every meal,” (he makes a face at that) “or resort to stealing some unlucky fops’ fancy dinners. Which I would approve of, by the way, you should absolutely do that.”
It’s a wonder, really, the way Crowley picks things up from the humans. Aziraphale has, on some level, always known that—the demon is ever-curious even if it does clash with his carefully cultivated indolence—but the angel is amazed anew at how deftly Crowley debones the fish, at the sureness with which the demon pulls down spices from the cupboard (most likely connected, in that precise moment, to another household’s pantry, but he chooses not to pry). The end result is mouth-watering: fillets of cod boiled in salted water, tempered with vinegar, fried in fragrant oil, with a delectable side dish of baked parsnips and purple carrots—and Crowley whips up a sauce of almonds and garlic with almost uncanny ease.
The demon is his usual self when they sit down to the meal, and gives Aziraphale a stern look that tells the angel plainly to hold his compliments.
As they eat, to the accompaniment of the distant surf, Aziraphale is reminded of long-ago summer evenings in France, of meeting Crowley in seaside towns, in taverns along the coast, and can’t help smiling quietly at the memories.
They talk less than usual over the meal: there is a curious stillness to everything in the lighthouse, to the very air that surrounds them, to the sunlight pouring in through the glass. To Aziraphale, everything they’d left on the shore seems distant, wavering and hazy, as if what they are looking back at are no longer the things themselves but only their uncertain reflections in an old mirror. Even Heaven and Hell feel far less real than they should by rights.
And they’ve been at the lighthouse for less than two days. No wonder humans are so fascinated by these places.
When the meal is over, and it is time for their already-habitual coffee and tea, Aziraphale remembers something else. He looks at Crowley, who is frowning at a three-week-old newspaper, and the demon, instantly aware of his gaze, lifts his head.
Aziraphale smiles at him, a smile he had been saving just for this.
“You know, my dear, I didn’t realise you’ve—you’ve learnt to bake, too. Yesterday’s honey cakes—that was rather an old recipe, wasn’t it? It brought back so many memories.”
Crowley shifts, reaching for his coffee. “Yeah. Well. One picks up a thing or two on assignments. And a lot goes on in the kitchens, you’d be surprised.”
“Oh, I shouldn’t think so. I’ve done my share of kitchen duty, though not recently—and, of course, with far less skill. Gabriel was quite incensed at the number of miracles I had to employ.” (“Clearly never saw a human make a soufflé,” Crowley mutters under his breath.) “But I have to say,” Aziraphale continues, “the heated honey and the pine nuts on the side were such a lovely touch. I’d almost felt like we were back in Rome.”
There may, the angel thinks, be an actual red flush to the tips of Crowley’s ears. The demon glares at his coffee cup as if it had just recited an uncalled-for psalm at him, and had gotten it wrong to boot.
“’tis no trouble,” he manages finally, reaching for the newspaper and quite possibly planning to put it up like the world’s least convincing paper shield. “Hey, listen to this. Apparently there’s been quite a scandal in Brighton recently. Well. A month ago.” He whistles. “These are some high circles.”
He proceeds to read the article out loud, hardly pausing for breath, eyebrows jumping at particularly scathing turns of phrase—and as he does, keeps slowly sliding down his chair until he is all but draped over it. Aziraphale presses his lips together tightly against his bubbling amusement.
It’s a moment quite out of context, quite out of time. A moment that should have been impossible, given who they are.
(I could get used to this, the angel thinks—and then, startled, tries to reel in the thought.)
When they are quite done with the coffee and the tea, Aziraphale gets up with new determination. “Right then,” he says brightly. “I’ll just finish the—the search. Won’t take long.”
“Ta-ta,” Crowley says over the edge of his newspaper, watching Aziraphale leave but making no offers to come along.
(The angel tells himself, quite firmly, that he has no reason to be disappointed.)
—
When Aziraphale comes to find Crowley outside at low tide, the angel is breathless, his cheeks are flushed pink, and he looks nearly as giddy as when he first discovered that the humans have learned to preserve quinces by smothering them with honey, and had realised the possibilities that opened up. It’s unfairly endearing.
To his chest, he is holding—
A book.
Of course, Crowley thinks, biting down on a smile.
Not moving from his spot on the rocks, he tracks Aziraphale’s progress towards him.
“What’s this, then?” he asks when the angel is a few steps away—and only then does he get up, with as much lazy languor as he can manage given that his curiosity is already piqued.
“Oh,” Aziraphale says, stopping right in front of him and practically bouncing—bouncing!—on his heels in barely contained excitement. “Crowley, this—oh, I can’t believe we missed it yesterday. I found it in the basement store-room, between two casks. It’s—a journal. A diary. See, there was the main keeper’s diary, and the Trinity House people took that. But it turns out one of the other keepers kept a journal, too, and—”
Triumphant, the angel waves the black-bound book.
“So,” Crowley says as temperately as he can, faced with the staggering force of Aziraphale’s excitement. “What kinds of sordid secrets does it reveal?”
Even in his agitation, Aziraphale pauses to give the demon a disapproving look. Crowley preens.
Then, the glow of Aziraphale’s excitement dims by a tiny fraction.
“W-well. About that. It’s—quite damaged, I’m afraid. Just oil stains and saltwater, but enough to make a good half of the entries near-impossible to decipher. And it does appear to cover at least several months, but what I have glimpsed so far is quite mundane: the day-to-day of the keepers, notable ships passing by, lists of items delivered to the lighthouse…”
“So, no diagrams for demon summoning,” Crowley intones, “no incantations, no misspelt runic inscriptions. In short, no fun at all. Just what it says on the cover, then. Which is...” Reaching out a finger, the demon tips the journal towards himself as Aziraphale reflexively grasps it tighter. “S.P. Davies. That’s our bloke, then? The keeper?”
“The junior keeper,” Aziraphale says, unhooking Crowley’s finger disapprovingly and pulling the paper-cloth bound book back. “I’d started reading, but then I thought… I thought I would ask you. We could read it together? If you like?”
“I’ll make some time in my busy schedule,” Crowley grins. “Just for you.”
Aziraphale opens his mouth to tell him off, closes it with no retort forthcoming, shakes his head, and turns to go.
Soon enough they are, at Aziraphale’s predictable suggestion, settled in the library. Aziraphale chooses one of the wingback armchairs, a near-twin of one in his bookshop; Crowley himself flops down on the guest bed, his arms behind his head, and puts his feet up on the wall, immediately making a game of toeing a seascape that hangs just above him. (He’s quite sure that Aziraphale gives him a suitably unimpressed look, but the angel does not deign to comment—not even when the painting falls on Crowley, frame and all.)
“So the journal starts in March,” the angel says, flipping through the pages. “The keepers have just arrived. S.P. Davies—Steven Paul, as I recall—is the youngest. He’d completed an apprenticeship earlier, but this is his first official posting as a lighthouse keeper. Then, we have Brown, the principal keeper, and Miles, who has a few seasons under his belt.”
“All of them gone now. So,” Crowley says, unable to help himself. “Let me guess. What’s it going to be? A love triangle? A fishing competition where the losers gang up on the winner? Oh, I know—a smuggling operation gone awry. Any hints yet?”
Aziraphale purses his lips. “Crowley. Really. As I said, though, I’ve only seen descriptions of their daily life so far. And before you ask, yes, I did flip to the last page. It’s a fascinating document, but I think there is exactly zero sensational material here.”
“Disappointing. S.P. Davies must be a very unobservant kid.”
“He is hardly a kid, my dear. He is—was—twenty years old.”
“Ah. An infant.”
“Anyway,” Aziraphale says, pinching the bridge of his nose before producing a pair of small gold-frame spectacles to perch atop it. “You are free to leave, Crowley, but if you decide to stay, please pay attention. Let’s see… An entry for March fifteenth, very well preserved. Here is how it goes. ‘A stiff wind, though sunny. Brown says the weather is about to turn, something about haze at dawn. Bobbed for any addition to supper, caught two haddock despite the waters being quiet these two weeks. Miles, who is on kitchen duty, prophesies fried fish and fish stew and fish soup in our future, though I don’t suppose we will get any chips on account of him having eaten the potatoes the first week after our arrival.’”
“There!” Crowley interrupts the angel triumphantly, pointing towards the ceiling. “The beginning of the end. What kind of a monster does that?”
“‘The whole dozen,’” Aziraphale reads on, lips twitching. “‘Which is probably for the best, for I have never seen potatoes in such a poor state, more root than flesh within two days.’ So no, my dear,” he casts a meaningful glance at Crowley over the page. “They did not get into a brawl over potatoes.”
“Pity,” Crowley says, making a face. “A missed opportunity for both entertainment and exercise. Which one can hardly get around here, no wonder the humans get under each other’s skin.”
Steadfast, the angel reads on. Weather, the more notable of the passing ships, and deliveries to the lighthouse do indeed make up a lot of the entries. Daily chores are described in passing: kitchen duty, keeping the mechanism of the new lens well-oiled, the endless polishing of glass.
“Wait,” Crowley interrupts again, half-rising on an elbow. “So we know their names, yeah? But you didn’t know if they are dead or not. Couldn’t you, uh… check with your people?”
“Clearance,” Aziraphale says dejectedly. “I would have to request special access and… Well. I am not on an official assignment. The paperwork alone… But oh! Since—since you mentioned it. I don’t suppose you could…”
“Nope,” Crowley says quickly. “Nuh-uh. Not an assignment. Not in Plymouth. Not gonna attract anyone’s attention Downstairs. Go on, angel.” He waves Aziraphale on and plops back, toeing the miraculously restored painting again to make sure it hangs at a barely perceptible but unsettling angle. Then, he stretches out on the mattress and prepares to listen.
Aziraphale reads on, and with time—perhaps with the keepers getting to know each other—the tone of the journal changes. There are amusing anecdotes from the letters Brown and Miles had received from their families. There are records of stories told during the long and still-dark evenings by the kitchen fire. One of the men apparently plays the flute, another the fiddle; S.P. includes words to a few lesser-known songs. The main keeper, Brown, turns out to have a penchant for proselytising, singing off-key hymns, and incessantly winning at draughts. (“Sounds like a right ass, that one,” Crowley comments. “Knew there’d be something.”)
And there are other notes, too, those that Aziraphale lingers on. How empty the lighthouse feels at times, for all that it is inhabited by three keepers. The tricks that the constant roar of the sea plays on their minds. “I swear I hear voices calling out to me, sometimes,” S.P. Davies writes, “though of course, it is only the waves.”
Aziraphale reads of the way fish scatter before a storm, retreating to the depths.
Crowley doesn’t notice drifting off—it’s a slow, gentle slope—
and then, abruptly, he is on the spiral stairs in the centre of the lighthouse, plunged into near-darkness, and quite alone.
Frowning—this doesn’t seem right, and a small alarm bell has started going off in his mind—he starts walking up, metal treads ringing out with each of his footfalls. It’s an odd echo, hinting at a space too large for the confines of the tower. Somewhere, water is dripping: a slow, measured sound. He walks faster—any moment now, he is going to reach the oil-room—but the stairs seem to circle on and on, glinting dully in the gloom. Crowley clicks his fingers and wishes for light, but the miracle doesn’t catch, fizzling out like damp brimstone. He walks faster. There’s light somewhere above him, a familiar beckoning glow; he can reach it, but only if he walks fast enough. Faster. Faster. To no avail: the light retreats inexorably even as Crowley sprints up the steps, two and then three at a time.
Drip, drip, drip, drip goes the darkness. Dizzy with the spinning of the corkscrew stair, Crowley nearly trips, grabbing onto the handrail at the last moment. Panic is rising within him like floodwater, the light is slipping away, and he can’t let it, he cannot, there is nothing more important than reaching that light. Then, he does trip, hissing as his knee hits the unyielding metal. The light above flickers out, and in that moment, a sudden, searing sense of loss tears through Crowley, knocking the wind out of his lungs.
He’s too late. He’s too late he’s too late he’s too…
“Crowley? Crowley!”
Aziraphale.
The demon arches towards the voice, desperately, before gravity pulls him in the other direction.
Aziraphale. The angel’s hand is on Crowley’s shoulder, a dizzying touch, or maybe these are just the aftereffects of his—
Oh. Dream.
Abruptly, things come into focus. He is in the library. The day is August 8, 1852. Aziraphale is sitting next to him on the fold-out bed, one hand on Crowley’s shoulder, gripping it tightly: he must have shaken him awake. The angel is holding the journal to his vest with his other hand. The mattress has dipped a little under Aziraphale’s weight, and the angel’s soft hip is pressing into Crowley’s side.
“Crowley?“
Aziraphale’s eyes are the grey-blue of the sea in pre-dawn twilight. The ruffles of his decades-out-of-date cravat are sea foam next to his gently flushed skin, and sirens have nothing on the lure of his warmth. Aziraphale’s hand, on Crowley’s shoulder, is an anchor, pinning the demon down, and Crowley does not want to move from under its solid and steady weight.
Something is unwinding within Crowley, something he did not know was so tightly wound. Aziraphale is here.
The moment goes on for too long. The furrow between Aziraphale’s eyebrows deepens, and the angel bites his lip, about to ask—
Crowley shoots bolt upright, gratified to hear Aziraphale’s startled gasp as the angel’s hand drops from his shoulder, as the angel scrambles to stand.
“Do you know,” Crowley asks, “how much this journal can bring in as a sleeping draught? You should get on making copies, angel, it’s going to be a true miracle for the sleepless.”
He throws his arms wide and flexes them at the wrists as he makes a long show of yawning. Then, he flops back onto the bed and glances sideways at Aziraphale. The angel is standing in the middle of the room irresolutely, holding the journal to his middle with both hands.
“Anyway,” Crowley flashes him a grin. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to fall asleep on you. Did I miss much?”
—
The evening comes clear and airy, with the sharp pearlescent moon pinned to the fading blue of the sky, shining like a brooch on the only presentable dress of an impoverished spinster.
This time, they have no difficulty with the beacon: cranking the handle is enough to get its rotation started. Before long, oil-lamps are ablaze inside the tower, too, tiny echoes of the light above. Aziraphale does another circuit of the floors—a perfunctory one—and settles in the kitchen; soon enough, Crowley trails in after him, as independent as a cat who, time and time again, happens to find itself in the same rooms as the family through nothing but pure chance. The angel resolutely doesn’t smile.
“Did I ever tell you,” Crowley asks as he sits astride a chair, arms folded across the top, eyes tracking Aziraphale as the angel closes the black-bound diary, puts it on the table, “of the time Dagon requested a rundown on the last three centuries of human warfare? Not from me, mind. A group project with Hastur at the helm, that was,”—and when Aziraphale shakes his head, Crowley plunges into a story.
It’s a funny anecdote, yes, and full of highly gratifying demonic ineptitude—but, as Aziraphale watches Crowley, warfare is relegated to the furthest and dustiest shelves of his mind.
Crowley is—
Well.
There is something off about him, something jittery and uncertain, and Aziraphale can’t quite put his finger on it. Soon enough, however, Crowley brings out a bottle of very fine wine (allegedly one he’d carried in his travel bag, although Aziraphale suspects that, with everything else he’d ostensibly carried within, his bag would have to be rather bigger on the inside), and the evening softens.
They tell stories that have been waiting for their turn for years. They share grievances against their head offices: mostly Crowley, of course, he is free and expansive with his critique—but even Aziraphale, eyes downcast and speaking to his glass, manages to voice strong disagreement with certain policy decisions taken quite without his input. (Crowley cheers.)
It’s a blur, past a certain point. Somehow, they get on the topic of humans and what the evenings had looked like for the keepers, with their stories and readings and cards and draughts. Crowley finds the draughts board and the pieces on top of a kitchen cupboard, brings them down; Aziraphale proposes a game, thinking that, although draughts hardly carry the gravitas of chess, a match between him and Crowley would be very symbolic—and it has all the potential to be, until Crowley steadfastly refuses to play anything but the white pieces.
They have more wine.
Crowley drags Aziraphale up to the gallery around the light-room, and they look at the ships sailing over black water, at the reflections of the stern-lights that break up and fizzle out like lost embers in the choppy waves. Crowley very nearly convinces Aziraphale to take to the air before the angel thinks better of it and, stifling a hiccup, haughtily states that—unlike a certain irresponsible demon—he is absolutely not willing to add to the poor humans’ alarm by contributing to the tales about Howling Rock.
“Now that,” Crowley says happily, “is an excellent idea”—and then he is rising over the balcony railing, glossy black wings beating, a few lost feathers swirling in the updraft—so that Aziraphale, flustered, has to pull him down by the ankle and then, as Crowley tries to kick free, by the waist; giving up, Crowley folds his wings and plummets to the floor in front of the angel, collapsing against the metal barrier in merriment, and Aziraphale steps away with sweating palms, a wildly beating heart, and a vertiginous feeling of having just reached for a flaring star.
After a while, they end up in the library. With a contented sigh, Aziraphale settles in the wing-back chair and puts his teacup (freshly filled, delicate plumes of steam rising over it) on a side table. Crowley circles the room, unforgivably graceful even as he struggles with the treacherous gravity of the planet.
Then, the demon nearly trips over a fiddle.
“Thassit!” he exclaims excitedly, picking it up. “That’s what we need!”
“What do you mean, my dear?” Aziraphale asks, squinting at the instrument.
“A sspot of music!” Crowley slurs no less excitedly, gesturing with a bow in one hand and the fiddle in the other.
“Wait—really?” Aziraphale frowns at him. “You—you actually play the fiddle?”
“Angel, you wound me. ‘Ss professional pride, yeah? I’m a p-professional.”
“But… but… isn’t this a little bit on… on the nose?”
Crowley only grins wider and, with a completely extraneous flourish, takes the bow to the strings.
It’s—
Dismal, actually. Crowley doesn’t even bother to tune the thing, and, though the melody he is playing is faintly recognizable as Auld Lang Syne, the sounds produced by the bow are most like the yowling of a frustrated lovesick cat.
Shock must be writ quite plainly in Aziraphale’s face. Too late, the angel manages to control his features. Crowley raises an eyebrow at him and looks solemn for a breath or two, but in another instant, the music breaks off and Crowley is nearly doubled over with laughter.
“Angel,” he says as, leaning against the stone wall for balance, his shoulders shaking, he wipes tears from his eyes with a free hand, fiddle and bow clutched in the other. “Angel, did you believe me? Oh, Aziraphale, you are—you should’ve seen your face.”
“Crowley—you—but—” Aziraphale flounders. Though Crowley’s exuberance is catching, he’s dizzy trying to follow the shifts and spikes of the demon’s mood.
“Oh, angel,” Crowley says, his expression softening. “You are a treasure, you are. Admit it, you wouldn’t even have told me how appalling that was. Wouldn’t have wanted to hurt my feelings.”
“Well—I—you did look happy—” Aziraphale says, still bewildered, flushing under Crowley’s gaze and startled at the unexpected softness of the demon’s voice.
“You know what?” Crowley says seriously, startling him further. “I think I am.”
And, before the angel can catch his breath in the aftermath of this proclamation, Crowley slides down the wall he was leaning against, fiddle and bow still cradled against his chest, and lets his head fall backwards against the stones before he turns to look at Aziraphale.
“I can sing, though,” he says. “Well. Kinda. I’d still set up a glamour if I needed to impress.”
And with that, he does indeed start to sing.
It’s—
Oh.
No, it’s—it’s by no means perfect. There is none of the glass-like clarity of angelic choirs, no celestial harmonies of distilled light and Heavenly hope. Crowley hisses under his breath when a line escapes him, and a number of verses end up with additions or replacements, funny or crude or both… and yet.
Leaning against the wall, the fiddle in his lap (isn’t he cold? the angel wonders off-handedly, looking at the demon’s narrow shoulders pressed against the stone), Crowley sings, and each of his songs is a journey into the past. It could easily have been magic, Aziraphale thinks—but he knows it is not, not in the supernatural way.
Crowley sings old battle songs—or rather, songs that were sung around campfires on the eve of a battle, which is not quite the same. Wedding songs—and Aziraphale closes his eyes, breathes through the sting in them, holding on to the arms of his chair a little too tightly, catches Crowley’s quick sideways glance when he opens them again. The demon sings bawdy minstrel songs, songs of journeys and a soft wistful lullaby, too. He sings in languages that have long ago ceased to be spoken, that only the two of them remember, now.
And Aziraphale is transfixed.
His whole being resonates with the songs, with Crowley’s voice, like the body of a lute when its strings are plucked and the music is amplified, expanding within its hollow. He feels the warmth of long-ago sunlight, sees children playing in the alleys of Byzantion, hears laughter in the night streets of Verona.
The untouched tea on the table beside him grows quite cold.
You remember them, he thinks. You remember them, just as I do, and you care. You’ve kept your own watch for six thousand years.
He studies Crowley’s quick fingers, carelessly splayed over the bridge of the fiddle, rubbing at a spot in the polished wood, plucking at a random string. He remembers, quite without warning, the feel of Crowley’s clavicle under his thumb back when he’d shaken the demon awake, one thin layer of silk between his and the demon’s skin. He looks at the demon’s sharp profile, at the stubborn curl that falls over his forehead, at the way lamplight catches the very tips of his eyelashes, gets tangled in his hair. He marvels at Crowley’s faraway expression—the demon is there, too, in the ghostly cities of long-ago. What does he remember? Who does he remember?
They’d spent centuries without seeing each other, knowing nothing of each other’s lives.
The angel doesn’t notice it when the next song ends and stillness falls over them, the roar of the surf and the heartbeat of the bell the only sounds within it, already familiar as the rush of one’s own blood. He surfaces from his reverie to see Crowley looking back at him, one eyebrow quizzically raised.
“Here you are. Got you mesmerised, I think,” the demon says softly. “Didn’t think it worked on angels. Old Mesmer would be proud.”
“Oh, hush,” Aziraphale says, and holds Crowley’s gaze, and something is shifting in the air around them, and Crowley’s eyes go wider, uncertainty and surprise and fear and something—something entirely else flickering over his face, and Aziraphale must indeed be mesmerised because he finds himself looking at—at the tantalising curve of Crowley’s lips, and slowly, slowly the demon sets the fiddle away, places one hand on the floor…
And then, startling, unprompted, chilling, the roar of the waves changes.
Aziraphale, something seems to say against the sound. Aziraphale.
The angel jumps out of his armchair, a horrified hand flying to his mouth. Crowley sinks back against the wall, blinking up at him in confusion.
“Crowley,” Aziraphale whispers, hand still over his mouth. “Did-did you hear that?”
“Wha?” Crowley asks, sounding as dazed as he looks.
“That sound!” Aziraphale says urgently. “Just now!”
“What sound?” The demon is getting up then, too, unfolding from the floor, looking at Aziraphale entirely earnestly.
“My name!” Aziraphale says, the pitch of his voice climbing higher. “Somebody called my name!”
“What? No, that's just—that's just the waves,” the demon protests. “Angel, d’you—do you need to sober up? Let’s sober up.”
…and when they sober up, when, on Aziraphale’s insistence, they walk around the lighthouse, checking for—for anything at all, finding nothing—Aziraphale first becomes aware of how frequently his and Crowley’s shoulders brush, how close they are standing together in the cramped and narrow rooms, and something flares within him again, something that he recognizes at once.
Warning, the flare says. Danger. Danger.
What do you think you are doing? What do you think this is?
Notes:
The soundtrack for the first two chapters might be bits and pieces of The Heart Wants / The Heart Needs by Kerry Muzzey and the Chamber Orchestra of London. Ah, and Auld Lang Syne, which may have sounded something like this if Crowley hadn’t been Crowley.
Chapter Text
In the early hours of the third morning at the lighthouse, Crowley dreams.
(It’s not a nightmare. It’s not a nightmare at all.)
It’s a dream he’d had before, and this one takes him back: nearly two thousand years back, to be precise, into the waters of the Mediterranean and onto the deck of the Arete, a small trading ship he’d sailed with at the turn of the century.
When he wakes, he sits bolt upright, heart pounding hollowly in his chest, and for a disorienting moment, past and present feel like the two sides of a coin spinning on its edge: spinning and spinning and spinning, on and on.
Then, he hears steps on the floor above. They are followed by familiar tuneless humming, by the rustle of pages. The coin lands present-up. The angel’s in the library, Crowley thinks wryly. All’s right with the world. He rubs the sleep out of his eyes, rakes a hand through his hair, clicks his fingers impatiently to get his day-clothes in order.
This place is getting to him. By now, it’s more than a little embarrassing.
This was only a blessed dream.
Outside, the tide is nearly at its highest point, and the rocks have become the floor of a shallow sea, fronds of seaweed unfurling in the currents, schools of sprat darting around the base of the tower. Crowley half-considers going for a swim, but the thought is gone before it really takes shape; instead, he sits down on the ledge, legs dangling, the lighthouse door open behind him, and looks towards the horizon. A crisp salt breeze cools his skin. If not for the complete stillness of his perch, he could be on a ship.
Then, he lets himself remember.
—
They are two days away when they first see the lighthouse at Pharos, just as the travellers back in Britannia described: a star above the horizon, dim but unmistakable, a guiding light. The ship sits heavy on the water with its cargo of well-sealed amphorae; once in port, the crew will unload them, will stock up on grain and fine cotton to take back along the coast.
Crowley won’t be with them for the return journey.
It’s more than a little ironic, he thinks as he watches the distant light from the ship’s bow. This: a star marking his destination. And he’s bringing gifts, too, isn’t he, though neither gold nor frankincense nor myrrh.
The lighthouse at Pharos burns bright during the day as well, the light of the sun mirrored and thrown back defiantly, a proclamation: we are here, we have built this, behold. Crowley’s crew-mates (a motley bunch, descendants of Phoenicians and Northern barbarians shoulder to shoulder, sharing drink) shout across the deck in joy: good weather is holding, Arete is making excellent time.
He might miss them, he thinks (not too loudly: he is a demon, after all, and they are not family: he doesn’t do families).
In a way, however, they are just like him.
He’d long known this about himself. Ever since the Fall, since he felt the edges of the hollow it had left within him.
Cast out. Unforgivable. Unbelonging.
(Longing, though. Ever longing.)
Unmoored.
Perhaps he had belonged once—though was it real belonging if a misplaced question could trip him into calamity? In any case, it was over before he knew it, he’d been judged and cast out to Hell, and in Hell, one could belong in one sense only. One belonged to Hell, and did its bidding.
So he’d taken to travelling early on. Sailing, when the humans had gained some mastery over the waters. They were all equal—the sailors, the wanderers, travellers of all kinds—while they were en route. Unmoored, all of them. Sure, many would talk, belowdecks or around campfires, of a home, of families, of lovers waiting for their return. Some of the stories were even true, but over the distance of hundreds or thousands of miles, that mattered little.
(On occasion, he would talk, too, weaving a story of someone waiting for him back whenever his imaginary home was, someone with soft hands and dandelion fluff curls and a smile that would light up the stormiest of days, someone fussy and anxious and fearsomely intelligent and…
…and if it sounded like someone he actually knew, well, it stood to reason that the face that jumped to mind was one he’d see at least every century. Human faces tended to all run together after a while.)
Up close, the lighthouse at Pharos is colossal, an edifice of gleaming white marble rising into the sky. They sail past it and into the West harbour; Crowley’s ship-mates bemoan the heat but spare no lustful detail in talking about their long-awaited shore-leaves. When the ship docks, Crowley shifts the sack of manuscripts over his shoulder, casts one last glance at the Arete, clicks his fingers—and steps onto the boards of the dock unobserved.
The walk to the Musaeum—the temple of the Muses, with its gardens and walkways and lecture halls—isn’t even a half-mile. That’s where the angel is, holed away among manuscripts, walking in the cool of the marble colonnades with the most pompous and boring scholars of the age.
There is a law in Alexandria: every manuscript from every ship must be taken for copying at the Library. And if Crowley is choosing to deliver these himself, into the hands of someone who will surely know their worth, what of it?
It’s been too long.
They can go to the Lageon to see the chariot races, and the angel will gasp and bless all the competitors equally and make the race the most boring event of the fortnight, a clear demonic victory given the spectators’ seething disappointment. They can—they can go to the Theatre, fine, all right, Crowley can suffer a declamation of the Argonautica while miracling an extra flea or two or dozen onto the performers. They can…
That’s the thing.
They can.
They did.
Aziraphale had met him in the lobby of the Musaeum, had smiled that radiant spellbinding smile (which the Pharos lighthouse had nothing on, Crowley had thought dizzily), had clasped his hands on seeing the manuscripts—“Oh, Crowley! Where on Earth did you get these? Oh, they are magnificent!”—and had taken him to meet the philologoi, to join a meal in the dining hall (where, in a most satisfying turn of events, Crowley had set four of these pompous gits on each other by the arrival of the main course)…
It had all happened. It was great fun.
He’d dream of it later, at least a few times per century. Of this meeting and of others, too: Athens, Londinium, Rome. Those dreams felt—in a way he couldn’t quite explain—like anchors. Like a weight that kept him from drifting too far off to sea.
But this dream, this latest dream, was different. It repeated the same journey, sure enough, but it diverged, sharply and disconcertingly, at the very end, in the lobby of the Musaeum, when a familiar apprentice had looked at the demon, head tilted to one side, dark curls falling into his eyes, and had said, articulating the name carefully: “A-zi-ra-phale? You must be mistaken. There is nobody here by that name.”
And Crowley had—he’d literally staggered on hearing that.
It’s ridiculous, that’s what it is—but now, well, now Crowley is sitting in the open door of the lighthouse, looking at the water below, and is itching to throw something into the waves, to see the surface of the water tear and explode.
It’s just a dream, he tells himself vehemently as, unblinking, he tracks the seagulls swooping over the swells. It’s a bloody dream. That’s not how it went, yes, but there is—there is nothing to it at all.
The birds cry out, sharp and hoarse. The breeze seems to leave traces of salt on Crowley’s skin.
Nothing to it at all.
—
“Crowley, really now, what’s gotten into you?” Aziraphale says, pushing away a saucer with cherry preserves.
Why, Crowley asks himself, did I ever take my spectacles off? “Nothing’s gotten into me. ‘M thinking.”
“I can see that, yes. I can also see that you have eaten nothing and have not touched your coffee. And—my dear, are you relying on a miracle to keep your chair rocking on two legs at that angle?”
The legs of Crowley’s chair crash to the floor. He folds his arms over the backrest, puts his chin over them, lifts an eyebrow at the angel. “Happy now?”
“Not if you keep tapping your foot.”
And that, of course, has been their whole morning. It’d started over toast, with them arguing about whether Aziraphale truly heard something in the tower last night; the angel had been obstinate, Crowley had been impatient, and—well.
Crowley stops tapping his foot and starts to drum his fingers on the chair’s carved back. Consternation and dismay flutter across Aziraphale’s features.
(I should stop, Crowley thinks.
He should, but the itching disquiet within him is spurring him on.)
The angel looks at him, lips pressed together, and takes a fortifying sip of tea. Then, he sets the cup back and, apparently resigned, once again slides the saucer with the cherry preserves closer.
“Crowley,” he tries afresh, dipping a gleaming spoon into the syrup. “I… do wish you’d talk to me. It’s rather difficult not to notice how restless you are. You look like you are about to start pacing the ceilings. I—I know this is a small and confined place, and we’ve been all but locked here for two days, and I’m not much fun as company…”
Angel, Crowley thinks incredulously, sitting up straighter. Why, exactly, do you think I’m here?
“…not as much fun as you probably hoped, anyway,” the angel continues, flushing slightly as he looks at Crowley, chin defiantly raised. “It’s just that—I find it all really interesting, and I have a journal to decipher, and I—I can’t just abandon this effort to… to frolic about. Heaven could send me a new assignment at any point, I may only have these few days to help the humans I’ve promised to assist. I know I’m… I know that this is not enough for you, Crowley. And if you are bored…”
This, Crowley thinks, is entirely too much.
“Angel. For Somebody’s sake,” he interrupts Aziraphale before quite thinking it through. “Don’t fuss over me. ’M not bored. I’m on a blessed vacation, that’s what I am.”
“On… vacation,” Aziraphale repeats slowly.
The demon reaches for his coffee, still steaming on the table before him. “Mhm. A nice sea-side vacation. Great weather around these parts this time of year. Sure, actual ghosts would’ve been added fun, but I’ve gotten over my disappointment.” He shrugs one shoulder, waves his free hand in a show of unconcern.
Aziraphale is looking at him with an expression that is somehow almost fragile. The angel’s lower lip is stained with cherry, just at the centre, sticky and sweet; irrelevantly, Crowley wonders what it would feel like to press his thumb to it, shakes his head to clear it, takes an unnecessarily large gulp of coffee—still scaldingly hot, as it turns out—and spends the next half a minute extinguishing a small fire on the roof of his mouth.
“So that’s it,” Aziraphale says. “And everything is…”
“Everything is fine,” Crowley says emphatically. Then, inspiration strikes him. “And you know, I’ve got lots of plans. Vacation-ey plans.” He racks his brains furiously for what humans do on their sea-side holidays. “Went fishing already, yeah? So ’m going to do the rest of it. Sun on the rocks. Take to bathing. Care to join me, angel?” He waggles his eyebrows in what he hopes is a sufficiently preposterous way, and is rewarded by an exasperated look.
“I do not care to join you, no, and—and bathing is really a terrible idea with the rocks,” Aziraphale says, picking up a napkin.
“Not for us it isn’t,” Crowley protests.
“Even for us. It’s a significant miracle, calming the sea. You’d always have to keep part of your attention on the currents, and…”
“Angel,” Crowley says, putting his coffee cup back on the table and leaning forward, eyes widened theatrically. “Angel, are you worried about me?”
He is, of course: Crowley knows that much. The angel is almost always worried about something, though he will undoubtedly draw the line at actually admitting he is worried about a demon.
“Certainly not,” Aziraphale says haughtily, though he doesn’t quite meet Crowley’s eyes. “I just—I have a lot of work to do and no time for, for frivolous distractions.”
“Oooh. ’S that what I am? A frivolouss dissstraction?” Crowley lets his tongue slip around the s’s as he savours the term, and is rewarded by the sight of Aziraphale’s cheeks flushing a deep cherry-pink.
“That is not what I meant and this is quite enough,” Aziraphale snaps, pushing his chair back. “You may do whatever you wish, Crowley. I’d deciphered more of the diary while you were away this morning, and if you’d like to hear me read it, do come up to the library. Otherwise, I hope you enjoy your vacation. As long as you keep your—your wiles to yourself.”
“…that a challenge?” Crowley calls after him cheerfully—but the angel is already gone in a huff of pride and ruffled feathers.
Well, Crowley thinks as he settles back in his chair, as he flicks a nail against the side of his coffee cup: clink, clink, clink.
He’d certainly distracted Aziraphale from his line of questioning. A resounding success.
But why does he feel like something is rattling within him, a window half-open against a rising gale?
—
“We are lucky that it happened during the first shift, when Brown himself was in the lantern and could attest that it was lit,” Aziraphale reads. “Otherwise we would have heard no end of it, I’m sure. Brown’s been a right bear about it even so.”
Water reflections shiver on the white domed ceiling; seagulls wheel outside, their shadows darting across the glass. Over on the fold-out bed, Crowley is stretched out luxuriously, his long legs crossed on the wall, his arms folded under his head.
“So,” he says. “All we have here is a couple of captains reporting that they couldn’t see the lighthouse when it was supposed to be lit. We also have someone in the village, who might have been sober enough to look through the right end of a telescope, confirming it.”
“It’s not a small thing,” Aziraphale says. “It was a clear night, from the reports, and the ship’s crews should have at least seen the tower when they got close.”
“If they got close,” Crowley says. “Which they probably didn’t, considering they didn’t end up on the rocks. But yeah, sure, a missing lighthouse is a far better story than getting drunk and holding a map upside down.”
Aziraphale sighs.
It’s—it’s not that the demon is necessarily wrong. S.P. Davies’ journal is a fascinating document, but so far, the boy reports nothing outright supernatural, no apparitions trying to lure the keepers into harm’s way. He also makes it plain that, although no fights have broken out (yet, Crowley had naturally said), the keepers’ easy camaraderie had been replaced by simmering irritation within three short months. The principal keeper, Brown, is apparently alarmingly devout even by Aziraphale’s standards, Miles has rather a few theological grievances, and S.P., a faithful scribe, records their arguments in detail.
The angel has just enough time to read the last of the deciphered entries (S.P. bemoans two days of frigid fog so dense it appears to be swallowing even the sounds of the fog-bells) before they are interrupted by the arrival of a supply ship.
A small boat (its sole occupant lets go of the oars to make a sign of the cross before he navigates closer) brings a supply of fresh fruits and vegetables, more flour, a few recent newspapers rolled up in a sturdy oil-cloth. Aziraphale thanks the sullen man, recruits Crowley’s help in winching up the bags and crates; then, when everything is arranged in the store-room to his satisfaction, the angel settles in the library once again, with the journal and a fresh cup of tea, to decipher more entries while daylight is strong.
For a while, Crowley hovers on his periphery, taking books off shelves to riffle through them, lounging on the fold-out bed, frowning at the gossip in The Times, folding himself into the nearest window before Aziraphale waves him away (the spot is certainly very nice, and Crowley’s hair is vivid flame in the sunlight, but the ink of some of the entries is so washed out that the angel needs all the illumination he can get). Meanwhile, Aziraphale’s attention is drawn to a particularly intriguing line in one of the entries (“Miles… unwell”, with an unreadable word between these two)—and when he resurfaces, Crowley is gone.
Sunlight pours through the windows, relentlessly hot. Aziraphale pulls at the collar of his shirt as he looks around, vaguely aware that something must’ve brought him out of his concentration, but the tower is as silent as ever except for the roar of the surf and the cries of the gulls outside. An ornate table clock is ticking away gently in the far right corner of the writing-desk; the previous keepers had it in the kitchen where they’d spent their evenings, but Crowley had moved it upstairs, no doubt to remind Aziraphale about how much time he’d been spending behind this very desk.
“Crowley?” Aziraphale calls out. There is no response; the demon is likely sunning on the rocks or bathing, just as he planned.
Steadfast, the angel focuses on the journal. Something is certainly going on with Miles, but the swathe of pages under Aziraphale’s fingertips turns out to be particularly difficult to decipher. Troubled. Trouble. Something troubling in Miles’ letters from home? Or… No, that’s not it. The man had… seen something. Someone? I’m most certainly getting closer, Aziraphale thinks, reaching to take another sip of tea before realising that his cup is quite empty. He walks downstairs to refill it, checking the sleeping-quarters for napping demons as he does, and returns to his spot.
When Aziraphale looks up next, his human corporation is already feeling the first pangs of hunger, and Crowley still isn’t back. The clock shows half-past twelve; the demon has been out for at least an hour and a half, though it had certainly felt much longer.
Placing the black-bound book on the table in front of him, Aziraphale frowns.
He should look for Crowley.
No, the demon is—he is assuredly doing just fine, and Aziraphale has no cause for worry. But a break will do him good, and, come to think of it, Crowley had been so—attentive, really, hadn’t he, and generous when he’d offered to make meals for both of them. The least Aziraphale can do is to return the favour, inexpert though he may be.
First, however, he resolves to once again survey the tower.
The balcony around the light-room is quite empty, as are the rocks below, as is the wide placid sea. This emptiness, of course, signifies nothing: if Crowley had decided to go for a swim, he’d be quite unconstrained by the need to breathe and could well be terrorizing the deep-water fish.
Still.
Aziraphale walks down the wooden steps, and the next set, and the next.
The lighthouse is empty. Just as before, this emptiness seems to play tricks on the human part of his mind. The shadows in the lightless rooms at the base of the tower appear a little too deep. His own steps echo off the walls to become ghostly footsteps in his wake (needless to say, there is nobody behind him when he turns around). Once, he thinks he hears a voice upstairs, in the library, and he rushes up there, arriving quite out of breath; he finds the sun-filled room as desolate as before. (It’d sounded like Crowley, that voice, he admits to himself later: a clear case of mind informing matter, as that was what he wanted to hear.)
It is high time, he thinks, for him to do some work with his hands.
He settles on making a salt beef stew, a meal straightforward enough even for his skill level. Having soaked the beef in hot water, he walks down to the store-room to select a few of the fresh vegetables. He brings them upstairs. Crowley might be careless with his miracles, but Aziraphale has to keep his in check—and so he does, carefully cutting up the carrots and the freshly-arrived potatoes as he hums pensively to himself.
By the time the stew is ready and well on its way to cooling, Crowley is still not back, and Aziraphale’s forbearing mood is gone.
This is too much, he thinks, turning on his heel to march to the light-room gallery and then back downstairs—to stand at one of the kitchen windows, hands clasped, a thumbnail pressed into a groove on his signet ring. Crowley had been gone for hours, with not so much as a word, or a note, or—or anything reasonable at all. Even if the demon had been very bored—though he had quite vehemently denied it—it would have been common courtesy to announce his intentions. As it is, Aziraphale cannot even focus on—
A dull thud sounds out at the base of the tower, reverberating through the stone walls. This must be, Aziraphale realises, the lighthouse door hitting the wall of the passage.
He whips around and is on his way downstairs before he can finish the thought.
Crowley is sitting in the open doorway, one leg sharply bent, and is putting on a cufflink, biting his lip in concentration. His hair is quite wet, dripping seawater onto his shirt. His shoelaces are still untied.
“Angel!” he says cheerfully, looking up at Aziraphale. “Missed me already?”
Aziraphale strides up to him, both absurdly relieved and indignant to the point of incandescence, and stops a half-foot away, fixing the demon with one of his best glares. “Crowley. Where—where have you been?”
“I should think it rather obvious,” Crowley says, drawing one eyebrow up as he picks up the second cufflink and starts doing up his other sleeve, “And you are missing out, you know. This is the place to bathe. No crowds, for one. D’you know how loud it gets—”
“Crowley,” Aziraphale interrupts him in exasperation. “You’ve—you have been gone for hours. Disappearing without so much as a word. Really, my dear, I know you’ve been—well, that you’ve been in a rather dour mood, but… this?”
“Huh?” Crowley looks up from tying his shoelaces, eyebrows drawn together. “Angel, did you find a secret recipe in the journal? Or—or details of a gruesome murder? Something you couldn’t wait to share? ‘Cause it really hasn’t been all that long.” Laces tied, the demon unfolds from the floor and faces Aziraphale, an earnest look in his eyes as he considers the angel. “Or… did something happen?”
Crowley’s still-wet eyelashes are clumped together; there’s a sheen of seawater over his cheekbones, and his freckles are sun-bright against his pale skin. The demon hadn’t bothered with a necktie; the water-soaked collar of his shirt is folded carelessly, lopsided, and even in his exasperation, Aziraphale has to stifle the urge to reach out and adjust it, just there.
“Angel, did something happen?” Crowley repeats.
“No—nothing happened,” Aziraphale says crossly, startled. “Nothing happened for—for at least five hours. Six, perhaps. How on Earth do you not…”
“What?” Crowley says, scandalised.
“Oh, I’ll show you,” Aziraphale says, reaching for his pocket watch. “Really, I am certain that even the food is stone-cold by now, all because you—”
He trails off, frowning at the timepiece.
“The food?” Crowley echoes in the meantime, his head snapping in the direction of the stairs. He squints upwards as if that can help him see through the stone. “Aziraphale, did you—you cooked! What’d you make?” (He sounds eager. And far more excited than Aziraphale had expected. This wasn’t supposed to be anything—anything of note; the angel can feel his cheeks growing hot.)
“Did you cook for both of us?” Crowley goes on, curious, hopeful.
“Of course I did, don’t—don’t be absurd,” Aziraphale hurries to say. “Though it’s really nothing much.”
His watch has stopped, most inconveniently, at five minutes to eleven. He must have hit it on something: a hairline crack is going through the glass.
Catching up to the silence, Crowley also looks down at Aziraphale’s hands.
“O-oh,” he says with amused sympathy. “No proof, then? How dreadful. Come on, there’s a clock upstairs.” He swivels on his heel and steps deeper into the passage, motioning for Aziraphale to follow. “You still have a chance to catch me out. How ‘bout a bet?”
“I,” Aziraphale says quietly to the demon’s back, “can hardly expect you to play fair, can I?”
“Mm,” Crowley says noncommittally, swinging around on the first step to scale the next two backwards, facing Aziraphale. He grins at the angel. “Said like someone who expects to lose.”
In another minute, both of them are standing in front of the clock in the library, looking at its clearly mocking hands frozen at half-past twelve.
“Well, there’s always the tides,” Crowley says with a stubborn half-shrug. “And we still have hours until low tide, which proves I’m right. As I obviously am.”
“Obviously,” Aziraphale repeats.
“You forgot to wind it, didn’t you,” Crowley accuses, giving the angel a sideways look.
Aziraphale does not deign this with a reply.
Outside, the blinding sun hangs high above the tower, pouring molten sunlight into, the angel thinks ruefully, an apparently endless summer day.
—
“A… spiderweb,” Crowley says sceptically. “A tower of bones.” Humans just love ominous comparisons, he thinks. Always on the hunt for a frisson.
“To all appearances, yes,” Aziraphale says. “This was a few months before Miles, Brown, and Davies started their shift. A fisherman out in his boat got turned around in the fog, saw what he thought to be the lighthouse, except it was ‘all spidery’, as he described it, and he didn’t know what was holding it up. Turned around and made for shore, praying all the while. Swore he had his eyes closed the whole way, scared that the web would lure him in.”
“Thirteen miles to shore. In the fog. With his eyes closed. Yeah, that checks out,” Crowley says with a dramatic yawn.
They are in the library. Of course they are: the room seems to be custom-built and custom-furnished for the angel, with its books and its soft carpet and the armchair Aziraphale has settled into as habitually as if he’d done it every day for the past year. Whenever the temperature drops, the library is probably not the cosiest of spaces, heated as it is by a single pipe that goes from the kitchen through the sleeping quarters and then along one of the walls—but this day is hot to the point of being stifling, even here above the sea.
Crowley tries and fails to hold back another yawn, his shoulder-blades sliding down one more inch on the headboard of the fold-out bed.
“And the second case was a boatswain on a trading ship,” Aziraphale continues. “Said he first saw a brilliant, unearthly white light, the glow of Heaven he called it—”
“…and then he heard a booming, rolling sound, the wrath of Heaven he called it,” Crowley picks up cheerfully. “Because saying you’ve been in a thunderstorm doesn’t buy you drinks, and spinning a half-decent yarn does.”
Aziraphale gives him a sharp look.
“What?” Crowley asks innocently, shifting to get more comfortable on the bed. Not too comfortable: the heat of the day, the hearty meal the angel had cooked (which was, despite Aziraphale’s demurral, remarkably well-executed), and his own exhaustion from calming the currents all combine to make the world rather diaphanous around the edges. Now, however, would not be the time to fall asleep. “Fine, fine, ’m listening. So this fellow saw the lighthouse as a tower of bones, did he?”
“Well, yes,” Aziraphale says. “And it appears, from the latest entries, that Miles might have seen something similar. He went out in the boat, one night, and returned saying that the tower looked… wrong. Just what he meant, I could not decipher, but apparently Brown treated them to a speech about Heaven-sent visions, ‘to dust you shall return’, and rather a lot about memento mori.”
“Charming,” Crowley mutters, rubbing his eyes. “Just the thing to set the mood.” He massages his eyelids with the pads of his thumbs in blissful darkness; light assails him anew as soon as he removes his hand. (Fine. Fine. Maybe he did overdo it with calming the currents. Even his magic is slow to replenish, seeping back as opposed to coming in the usual rush. The angel was right, not that Crowley would admit that out loud.)
“And then I think Miles saw something inside the tower, I’m not sure what. It seems that he’d requested to leave, except—well, apparently Brown told him he’d be forfeiting his salary, and not to be ridiculous, and that God is watching over them.”
Crowley can’t help snorting at that. “That last bit,” he says, “should have scared him the most. Don’t want to attract Her attention.”
“Regardless,” Aziraphale says with a withering look at Crowley. “It seems that Miles had stopped telling them about seeing things afterwards.”
“Can’t—can’t imagine why,” Crowley says through another yawn and lets his eyelids fall closed for just a second.
“Perhaps he figured that with only two months remaining in their shift, he can tough it out.”
Aziraphale’s really got a soothing voice, Crowley thinks vaguely. Figures, he’s an angel. Still, s’good.
And thankfully, the angel keeps talking, though now his voice seems to be moving further and further away: “Oh, you know—there was something else peculiar. They were getting all this unseasonable fish. It was earlier in the summer, of course, and apparently…”
No light. No light in the mountains, there on the low slopes where the monastery is supposed to be. The night is pitch-black and too-still.
No light, yet they are turning to shore. No light, yet the ship is gliding over the surface of the water, even and smooth like black oil—and picking up speed.
They won’t make it to port. Not like this. Not like this, and there is—there is somebody he needs to reach, somebody he has to reach. The name is on the tip of his tongue.
The ship lurches, horribly, and Crowley is thrown forward, face-first onto the deck-boards. Only then does the sound come: the thundering crash of impact. Panic rises in him as he scrambles to all fours.
This is wrong. This is wrong, this is not how it went, this—
Crowley shudders awake.
“…Brown says there are deep-water currents bringing the fish from up north,” Aziraphale reads, squinting at the page through his tiny gold-frame spectacles.
The angel had noticed nothing. Crowley’s brief lapse into nightmare had, apparently, taken mere seconds.
And that, Crowley thinks, blinking the afterimages away, will be quite enough.
He swings his legs off the bed, gives his head a chance to clear. A dip in the sea would be just the thing right now, that would clear his head all right, but he can’t risk it. His full power is still not back.
“My dear?” Aziraphale asks him over the edge of the book.
“’S hot here,” Crowley says quite truthfully—and leans back with a flamboyant yawn. “I need some air, I’ll just—go up to the balcony, yeah?”
“Of course,” Aziraphale says, closing the diary. “Should I come with...”
“Nah,” Crowley says quickly. “Do your deciphering, yeah? Sounds like there’s some good stuff waiting there. Sounds like you’re close.”
Aziraphale nods, studying him a little too attentively for comfort. The fingers of the angel’s left hand curl tighter around the spine of the black-bound book.
Crowley makes his escape.
Does it bloody have to be like this, he thinks as he walks around the Fresnel lens in the light-room, as he steps out onto the balcony, as he half-heartedly kicks the metal railing.
It makes perfect sense, of course. Tell yourself not to think of apple trees and the cursed things will haunt your every thought.
It doesn’t matter. There is nothing to it. It’s just—contagious, that’s what it is.
He folds himself down on the edge of the balcony, legs dangling (the widely spaced balusters do nothing to prevent this), and looks out to the sparkling green expanse of the sea.
—
An answer, or at least a part of an answer, seems to be at the very tips of Aziraphale’s fingers, but the diary holds on to its secrets with little regard for the angel’s impatience.
Miles has... visions. They are never described, but rather suggested between the lines; S.P. is convinced that Miles is unwell. The boy himself also appears to be feeling some degree of anxiety, and deciphering his handwriting is increasingly painstaking work: spidery at the best of times, S.P.’s lines are becoming flatter and thinner, and more and more contractions creep into the text.
Aziraphale leans back, taking his spectacles off to rub the bridge of his nose. He needs a break. He needs tea.
The angel walks downstairs to the kitchen. Then, he walks further down, teacup in hand, with a vague idea of checking how high the tide is by this hour.
It’s there, in the passage at the heart of the tower, that he first notices an as-yet distant but unmistakable smell of smoke.
He hurries back to the entrance to look for steamships or anything else that would explain it. The outside air is warm and salt-tinged, but quite clear, and Aziraphale whirls around to make his way back to the spiral stairs.
Oh.
The oil-room is filled with smoke, acrid and harsh on his tongue. There are no flames to be seen, but neither can he see anything else. He stifles a cough, eyes already watering, and clicks his fingers, but the miracle proves to be no match for the black billows.
Crowley, he thinks. Whatever this is, I’ve got to get to him.
Blindly, he searches for the stairs.
“Crowley!” he calls as he feels his way to the store-room, likewise shrouded in smoke. There is no response, and he resolutely stops breathing as he lets his legs and his memory take him to the next set of stairs. Presently, he is up the steps and in the kitchen, and—
And just like that, the air is clear.
The last tendrils of smoke subside, retracting into the room below. The acrid smell is already dissipating in the salt breeze coming through the open windows.
Sunlight pools on the oak floors. The wood fairly glows with it.
Aziraphale finds Crowley at the top of the lighthouse. The demon is dangling his legs over a drop of at least one hundred sixty feet, looking out to sea.
“Smoke?” Crowley repeats, extricating himself from the railing to stand next to Aziraphale. “You’re fine, yeah? Right then, let’s go see.”
They walk downstairs, Crowley in the lead.
There’s going to be nothing there, Aziraphale thinks with grim certainty, looking at the silky sheen of Crowley’s maroon vest, at the way Crowley’s shoulder-blades move beneath the fabric as the demon reaches for the bannister. Just like all the times before.
“No-no, there’s… I can definitely smell smoke, even here,” Crowley assures him when they reach the kitchen. “’S subtle, just a trace, but ’s there.”
It sounds almost soothing, the way Crowley says it.
(Somehow, that is not enough.)
The demon looks around the space: at the open windows, at the stove (of course, Aziraphale thinks, he’s bound to think it’s the stove). Then, he returns his attention to Aziraphale—and steps abruptly closer, putting his hands on Aziraphale’s sleeves before leaning in. The angel freezes. What—
“Even on you!” Crowley says triumphantly, grinning at him as if the discovery is some sort of a prize. “Wait.” He steps back, clicks his fingers with a flourish. “That should take care of it. Didn’t think you were keen on having your favourite waistcoat smoked through.”
“I’m—grateful,” Aziraphale says faintly, but Crowley is already on his way down the next set of stairs.
“You know, it’s really very hot outside today,” the demon says over his shoulder. “Too hot. I think the weather’s going to turn. You sure it wasn’t just something carried in by the wind?”
“Positive.” There it is, Aziraphale thinks. We are going to repeat the same conversation we’ve already had, about the howling, about the lens, about the shadow and the cup and the clock and the voices in the tower. Everything will have a dozen sensible explanations, my own accidental miracles chief among them.
The store-room and the oil-room are decidedly smoke- and fire-free. Crowley prowls around them, touching his hand to the walls and benches and turning it palm-up to study his fingers. “No soot. Huh. And you didn’t see a light-keeper’s ghost smoking a pipe?” the demon asks with a slanted half-smile.
Aziraphale says nothing.
“Right then,” Crowley says, thoughtful again. “D’you think there was a lamp left burning? Or a spill of oil?”
“No, Crowley, there was—there was too much smoke for that to be the cause.”
“Mm. Y’know, let’s go upstairs,” the demon says. “I want to check the chimney in the kitchen. ”
Do you actually believe me, Crowley? Aziraphale thinks as they climb the stairs, as he watches the demon open the oven, run a finger along the stovepipe, frown at the ceiling. Or are you indulging me? Or worse—
“Huh,” Crowley concludes eloquently, his examination at an end. He saunters over to the table and hops up on it, ankles crossed. “So what do you think is going on?”
—
When the day starts to dim, Crowley offers to cook dinner again—and does, a leek and barley stew with spices that remind Aziraphale of Alexandria some two thousand years ago.
Outside, the tide is rising, encroaching on the little island, drowning the curve of the lighthouse itself. The keepers would’ve been locked in the tower every evening, Aziraphale muses. Nowhere to walk to but up and down the stairs. Did they feel trapped?
It takes the angel a long while to breathe out, to stop scrutinising shadows and looking over his shoulder, to forget about the still-lingering smell of smoke. Crowley’s presence seems to make forgetting easier, and the demon does not leave Aziraphale’s side.
When Crowley brings out the wine, it’s a welcome thing. This time, the demon does not pretend to have carried a cellar’s-worth of it in his travel bag; instead, he reaches into one of the kitchen cupboards and triumphantly produces a dark glass bottle. His eyes go a little wider as he looks at it. “Impressive,” he says slowly. “D’you know, you might have had some of this vintage with old William?”
It is excellent wine. So is the second bottle, and the third; Crowley only gets more excited as he brings out two more, proudly stating their origins.
They tell stories. They play games. Crowley cajoles the seagulls over the lighthouse into a fairly impressive aerial performance in the light of the spinning beams; the show goes swimmingly until Aziraphale catches on to Crowley being the conductor and puts a decisive end to it. (“You’re no fun,” Crowley complains with his usual theatrics. “Why don’t you try a loop-the-loop?”)
Back in the kitchen, Aziraphale busies himself with breaking a fresh sugar loaf into pieces as Crowley hops onto the table and sits there, legs swinging, with the latest Morning Chronicle in his lap.
“Now that,” he says, looking at the second page intently, “is a load of bollocks. Bloody fools.”
Sugar nips still in hand, Aziraphale moves closer, intrigued.
Ah.
He’d read the article earlier. It’s a familiar type of a story: a young woman, a ward of the Court of Chancery, has eloped with a near-penniless thespian. They’d managed to reach Gretna Green and, to the outrage of the lady’s remaining family, tie the knot.
“I’d have thought,” Aziraphale says in some surprise, “that elopement would be exactly your kind of a thing.”
“Oh yeah,” Crowley says darkly. “Nothing like it to get a couple more souls for Hell.”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Aziraphale amends. “It’s just—I know how you feel about… well, rules. And they have broken them to be happy.”
Crowley looks up at him in frank amazement. “Happy,” he repeats.
“You think he’s after her fortune, don’t you.”
The demon’s face goes through a complicated set of expressions. Finally, he settles on an incredulous shake of the head. “Angel. Really. What else?”
“Perhaps he is,” Aziraphale concedes. “Though she isn’t set to inherit all that much, not according to this. Even if he is, though, that wouldn’t mean damnation for her. Nor for him, if—if he mends his ways. But... Crowley. This could well be love. Both of them are young. This could be their chance to be happy despite—well, despite society’s expectations. Humans have done far more reckless things for love.”
“Love,” the demon repeats, wrinkling his nose. “Blech.”
“Really, my dear. This is rather juvenile, even for you.”
“Oh sure,” Crowley says, eyes narrowed. “Sure. Call me juvenile. Y’know what’s juvenile? Believing in a happily-ever-after. Of any kind. Let’s pretend, for a second, that they really are in love. That’s worse. How long’s it going to last?”
“Well, I...”
“’S not. ’S not going to last, is it?” the demon says with sudden vehemence. “They are poles apart. She’s an heiress. He is… well. ’S all fine and easy when they’re infatuated and lust-blind, but jus’… jus’… he’s going to slip up, right? One way or another. He won’t be what she expected. And then she’ll regret it, everything she’d given up. Her reputation. Her family. Her friends. And she’ll hate him for it. They’ll be miserable, both of them. That is how it works.”
Aziraphale stares at him, quite stunned.
Crowley holds his gaze for a moment longer and then, shoving the newspaper aside, smiles a small crooked smile. “Never mind me, angel. Demon, yeah? See the worst in everything. ’S professional. Are you done with the sugar? Let’s have another drink.”
The evening goes a little patchy after that.
Decades after, Aziraphale will remember it in flashes, in dioramas such as he’d seen back in London, in Egyptian Hall.
Here they are in the kitchen—and Crowley has pulled all of the cutlery, has laid out a shining map of Brighton streets to explain an elaborate prank involving three carriages and two identically dressed ladies.
Here they are in the sleeping quarters, and Crowley is kneeling on the bed, reaching for the apple geranium in the window above. The geranium had gone into bloom, apparently overnight, a veritable explosion of star-shaped white flowers over its fragrant leaves.
Here they are in the basement—and Crowley, who’d been sitting on an empty cask and soliloquizing about another assignment, grins at Aziraphale before starting to slide off at such a precarious angle that the angel, marginally less drunk, hurries to grab his arm (afterwards, they sober up somewhat at Aziraphale’s responsible behest—just enough to really appreciate the next bottle).
Here they are on the ledge at the lighthouse entrance, sitting side by side. The sea is startlingly empty, not a ship in the vicinity, and Aziraphale is telling Crowley about the lengths to which an insistent customer had gone for acquiring a certain first edition. “I was forced,” Aziraphale tells Crowley, “simply forced to act to—prevent it from falling into undeserving hands.” Crowley laughs throughout the story, wiping at his eyes, and raises his glass at the very end: “I’ve always said you were a right bastard!”
And here they are, finally, in the library, Aziraphale woozily comfortable in the depths of his wingback chair, Crowley slinking around the place, miraculously avoiding obstacles (the shelf, the fold-out bed, the writing-desk) as he whirls, showing Aziraphale the steps of some cutting-edge descendant of the waltz. The tension has finally, finally left Aziraphale’s body, and the angel is happy, and warm, and quite unplagued by shadows, and increasingly amused as he watches the demon flop onto the bed to give an impassioned speech in the direction of the ceiling:
“D’you know?” Crowley complains. “With all the fuss about the waltz back then, you’d think I’d have gotten a commendation. An indecent foreign invention, they called it. A threat to national morals. Look, they said, look at this vol—voluptuous intertwining of the limbs. I sent in newspaper clippings and everything. But na-ah.”
“Oh, it was hardly that bad,” Aziraphale says incautiously, swirling his wine. “The waltz, that is, I’m sure you were dreadfully disappointed with not getting a commendation. Anyway, dancing is rather a fine pursuit in—in—bringing people together and… and… it’s just so joyful, isn’t it?”
Over on the bed, Crowley rises unsteadily on one elbow to stare in Aziraphale’s direction.
“Really, angel?” he says with peculiar emphasis. “You actually noticed the waltz? Even though it’s a dance from this century?”
Which is most unfair and Aziraphale will absolutely not stand for it.
“If you must know,” the angel says haughtily, “I’d danced it myself.”
“You did not,” Crowley says, theatrically aghast.
“The Polka, too,” Aziraphale insists, stifling a hiccup.
“What? No. Just—no. To begin with, that’s from last decade. It’s practically yesterday.”
The angel nods ponderously, grasping his wine glass tighter as liquid sloshes inside it.
“For an assignment? Must’ve been for an assignment.” Crowley balances on his elbow, looking for all the world like he’d just heard Aziraphale renounce desserts until the end of time.
The angel shakes his head. The room moves with it.
“No,” Crowley says flatly. “I don’t… no. You’re an angel. Everybody knows angels don’t dance.”
“Well, some do,” Aziraphale says, affronted. “I do. If you’d paid any attention…”
“Prove it,” Crowley says, rolling off the bed and onto his feet in one movement, surprisingly fluid for the amount of wine they’ve had.
“What?” Aziraphale snaps his head up—too fast, apparently, as the room around him spins.
“Prove it.” Standing over Aziraphale, the demon extends his hand. Aziraphale blinks at it.
“The—the Polka?” he asks, gripping the stem of the wine-glass tighter still. “But there’s—there’s no space here to dance a Polka!”
“Oh, very good,” Crowley grins at him. He wiggles his fingers expectantly, hand still outstretched. “You do know something. No, not the Polka. ‘Course not. The waltz.” And, as Aziraphale lingers, the demon adds, his grin becoming a glittering, magnetic thing: “Or have you, perhaps… stretched the truth a little too thin? Will I have to teach you after all?”
I will not stand for it, Aziraphale thinks, rather light-headed—and puts his wine-glass aside, and takes Crowley’s hand, and stands.
To call what follows a disaster would be… not wrong, but rather imprecise.
Both of them are clearly familiar enough with the waltz to get the pose right: one hand on their partner’s waist, the other rising in a half-arc above one’s head.
Their fingertips touch.
They move together, and—
“Crowley!” Aziraphale exclaims, scandalised.
“‘M drunk,” Crowley says defensively.
“Well, so am I, but I’m not stepping on your toes!”
This is as much as they can manage without dissolving into giddy laughter.
They try again, then, with the knife-sharp focus of two very drunk beings dead-set on an absurd yet captivating goal—and this time, it works. Laughter held in, they step in a careful pattern, very close but formal, their only points of contact being the hands on each other’s waists. They are in sync now, though the signal-bell above them is quite useless as accompaniment, and the angel is already proudly reflecting on his skill in the face of so many distractions.
Then, Crowley suggests they try a faster rhythm. Aziraphale regrets going along with it within ten steps.
“You are quite dreadful at this, you know,” the angel says accusingly. “To think you were offering to teach me.”
“Mm,” Crowley says softly. “Yeah.”
They’ve drifted closer. The demon’s breath ghosts over Aziraphale’s cheek.
Something in the air changes.
Aziraphale feels the warmth of Crowley’s hand on his waist, through all the layers of clothing. As the evening before, he notices the way firelight catches the ends of the demon’s eyelashes, brings out sparks of bright copper in his eyes—and although they were just laughing, levity has leaked from the air, leaving something irreparably changed in its wake, and—
there is nothing remotely funny about any of this at all.
What am I doing, Aziraphale thinks hazily, making no move to pull away. He can hear the signal-bell, the surf, the ticking of a clock, a barely-there whisper of cogs in the light-room above. Somewhere over their heads, the beams of light spin on and on, sweeping the empty seas.
The angel does not know how long the dance lasts. He does not notice both of them lowering their arms, breaking the formal arc—not until he comes to his senses with his hand on Crowley’s shoulder, and then it is the room spinning gently around them while they stand quite still, and Crowley—
Crowley smiles at him.
It’s a small thing, a barely-there uptick of the mouth. Aziraphale hurriedly drops his gaze, but it’s—not better, actually, because now he’s looking at Crowley’s chest, and the cut of Crowley’s waistcoat is—is unfair, that’s what it is, and Aziraphale wants to run his hands over the silky fabric, feeling the muscle underneath, and then to grasp Crowley’s shoulders, and…
He makes the mistake of looking up.
Crowley’s expression is strangely unfocused, like he is not quite seeing Aziraphale himself, like he is stepping through memories or through ghostly ballrooms of years past. He’d moved one hand to Aziraphale’s back in what is by all accounts an embrace, the other to the angel’s upper arm where his fingers are pressing gently into the fabric—and as Aziraphale looks at him, at his wistful half-smile, the angel realises that he wants to—he wants to—
Terror cleaves through him as he really, truly understands what he wants to do.
He sways.
Crowley’s attention flickers back, and he tightens his hold around the angel, trying to steady him.
“Aziraphale?”
The angel shivers with the way he says it. It’s—too much, entirely too much all at once, and he had made a dreadful mistake in ever allowing Crowley to get this close, and what on Earth is he going to do now, and Crowley is still holding him, looking at him questioningly, and—
Surely, he must know? Surely, he must see exactly what’s happening to Aziraphale?
“Angel, you need to sit down and sober up,” Crowley says, abruptly sounding far more sober himself. He walks the angel backwards, half-lowers, half-pushes him into the armchair, crouches by the armrest, looks into his face. “Yeah? Can you do that?”
Aziraphale nods, not daring to meet the demon’s eyes, and excises the alcohol from his corporation’s blood; the effort leaves him sweaty and nauseated and clammily cold.
Crowley, he thinks, willing his hands not to shake. Crowley, what have you done? What have I done?
“Angel?” Crowley asks uncertainly. “How d’you…”
“I—I am dreadfully sorry, Crowley,” Aziraphale hears himself say. “These human corporations—I’m not—I’m afraid I haven’t partaken in this much in quite a while. It’s nothing, I’m sure this will pass soon now that—that I’ve sobered up.”
He’s acutely conscious of Crowley’s eyes on him, and looks steadfastly straight ahead.
(Even like this. Even cold and horrified and entirely too aware, all he wants to do is to turn to the demon, to see understanding mirrored in those yellow eyes. He wants Crowley to unfold from the floor, their gazes still locked, wants him to step in front of the armchair, to lower himself, a sharp knee to each side of Aziraphale’s thighs, and then—)
That the angel isn’t sick is a miracle and a blessing.
“Aziraphale?” Crowley asks in a half-whisper—and then the demon is getting up, touching a hand to the angel’s forehead, combing Aziraphale’s sweat-soaked hair away from his face.
“I—I—I think I just need to rest a while,” the angel says weakly, rousing the remains of his resolve like sleep-logged revellers the morning after a feast. “Perhaps I should also—yes, I’m sure that will help—would you make me a cup of tea?”
“‘Course,” Crowley says readily, taking away his hand.
“Real, not miracled?” Aziraphale pleads.
“‘Course. Anything, angel. I’ll—go see to that. You’ll feel better lying down—let me help you to bed first?”
“No—no need,” Aziraphale says. “I’ll wait, I’ll—I’ll be just fine right here, and then I’m sure the tea will set me to rights in, in two shakes of a duck’s tail.”
He drops his face into his hands as soon as Crowley is gone.
—
I will get through it, the angel tells himself severely as he looks out to sea.
A salt-tinged breeze combs through his hair. The beacon behind his back douses him in light: white, red, white, red again.
This was—a startling lapse in judgement, but I will—I will just wait it out. Crowley doesn’t need to know.
The surface of the water below is hazy, dark grey instead of the usual choppy black, and the air is filled with moisture, thick droplets clinging to his skin. This is going to be a misty night; soon, he will need to get the fog-bells going, to keep the humans safe.
The bells will probably wake Crowley. Though I could—I could dampen their sound around him, for a while.
The demon is asleep on one of the bunk beds in the sleeping-quarters, loose-limbed and frowning even in repose. It took Aziraphale more than an hour to convince Crowley, who’d hovered about him with the air of a concerned governess, that what he truly needs is solitude and stillness and time. The demon had left him alone, then, albeit with great reluctance—and Aziraphale could finally gather his thoughts. (This is not a disaster, he’d told himself sternly, having gotten over his initial panic. Do nothing rash.)
It’s this place, really, the angel thinks as he steps back into the lighthouse. I’d been—so tense and so worried, expecting something else to happen. It wore me down, all this waiting, and then there was the wine, and...
He descends through dark rooms, a fluttering lantern in one hand, the beams of the lighthouse lighting up the misty night outside in enormous white-red sweeps. He can hear the waves lapping at the base of the tower, can hear the metronome of the clockwork above, resonating off the stones.
He can also, he realises with a start, hear something else.
He is not sure where it is coming from. Upstairs, from the rooms he’d just been through? Downstairs, from the lighthouse’s damp base? And then it is echoing all around him, ringing, filling the very air.
Laughter. Amused, delighted, triumphant laughter that makes his blood run cold.
Because only one being in the whole world laughs like that, and that being is—or should be—sound asleep in the room above.
Because he’d learned the notes of this laugh by heart over six thousand years.
Because this should be a comforting, familiar thing—but not here, and not now.
Because this is, and cannot possibly be—
Crowley.
Notes:
(I promise you they will be fine.)
The soundtrack for this chapter is An Invincible Summer, Time Has Changed, and Healah Dancing.
And Compass for the end credits, if a chapter could have them :)
Also, apparently there exists a 1820 elopement board game which I find endlessly fascinating. Make haste, to Gretna Green!
Chapter Text
“We are going down!”
Panic. Blind, roiling panic all around him. Feet pounding the tilting deck; the horrible groaning of wood being pulled apart; a trail of flame running along the edge of a mainsail.
The taste of blood in his mouth.
Crowley pulls himself to standing, dodges the dangerous swing of a low boom, grabs on to the gunwale to keep upright.
“The wreckers! The wreckers!”
Still reeling from the force of the ship’s impact, the demon hears the shouts as if through thick wool, but he cannot mistake their meaning.
The wreckers. Brigands who lure ships into dangerous waters by lighting false beacons, deadly will-o'-the-wisps. Who lie in wait to pick clean the bones of sailors and their vessels alike. Some of their kind must be watching this struggling ship from the now-dark shore, ready—and not to aid.
The Captain must have seen their false light, must have thought it was the lantern on the monastery tower. This is why he turned to shore, this is why—
The ship shudders again, and then the mainmast snaps, arcing like a felled tree, pulling the vines of the rigging with it. Splinters fly out, a swarm of merciless wasps. Crowley flings himself out of the way.
None of this is supposed to be happening, the demon thinks dizzily, rolling onto his back on the tilted deck. He reaches for his power, but the threads of causality fall apart under his fingertips, long-frayed. He cannot fix this, he realises with chilling certainty. A faint light on the shore was all it took to change the course of events, and—
A wave crashes over the ship, sweeping up debris and people alike, drowning out screams, rushing his way.
This is not how it went, Crowley thinks frantically as icy black water closes around him, pulls him down, deeper, pressing in like steel bands across his chest.
This is wrong, this is wrong, this—
this is not how it went.
—
On the morning of their fourth day at the lighthouse, the sun does not rise. The fog lightens at what appears to be the right hour, pales into milky whiteness; standing on the balcony outside the light-room, Aziraphale feels disoriented, weightless, as if flying blind through an endless cloud. His folded wings quiver uncertainly in the ether.
And I am. I am flying blind, Aziraphale thinks, tightening his hold on the cool metal bannister. There are no Heavenly instructions for this eventuality.
The large fog-bells strike—as they do every ten minutes, driven by well-oiled cogs. The sound causes a screeching frenzy among the forgetful seagulls settled on the railing, floats out over the invisible sea.
How do I—how do I even face him? And I have to face him. I have to know.
The angel returns to the library (the carpet, the spines of the books, the golden wood all seem washed out in the diffuse milk-white glow coming from the windows) and settles behind the writing-desk, looking down at the pages of the journal. This exact spot was where he’d spent most of the night, studying S.P.’s shaky handwriting in the light of an oil-lamp until his eyes watered and refused to focus. The entries in the journal were full of rain and bickering, but they obediently took him elsewhere, or rather elsewhen, all the same.
(It was the best he could do, really. He’d considered reading, or re-reading, some of the novels he’d brought with him—all three volumes of Jane Eyre lay beckoning on top of a small stack—but although making out print would have been far easier than studying handwriting, the thought had only brought him more disquiet.)
He’d passed a strange night. Though the chilling laughter he had heard early on did not repeat, and Crowley only seemed to frown deeper in his sleep when Aziraphale ran up to the sleeping quarters, there had been other things. The whispers, for one (though those could well be phantoms his mind had conjured up from the sound of the waves); the missing basement chamber. Restless and preoccupied, Aziraphale made his way outside at low tide, to take some fresh air—and it was only after he’d stepped down onto the rocks that he remembered, quite clearly, smooth floors where the entrance to the lowest chamber should have been. The dark opening was back in existence when he rushed back.
Still more haunting than these events were his thoughts of Crowley, thoughts that—
No. Best not to dwell on those.
And it could all still be explained away, could it not? They are not human; they are by no means passive observers. Even the laughter… was it, perhaps, Aziraphale’s own accidental magic? Or Crowley’s? Was it something of the demon’s mood unconsciously slipping through?
I can’t assume malice on Crowley’s part, Aziraphale tells himself. Even if he is a literal demon.
Before long, the literal demon is stirring in the sleeping quarters below. Aziraphale hears soft rustling, something light clattering to the floor, swear words Crowley hisses under his breath. The demon is up and dressing. (I should not dwell on that either, Aziraphale reminds himself—and does not think of silk whispering against freckled skin, of slender fingers at the buttons of a shirt.)
Soon, Crowley calls to him, voice hoarse with sleep. “Angel? Aziraphale?”
“In here,” Aziraphale responds, after a second’s hesitation, and then Crowley is bounding up the steps, two at a time. So much for being prepared, the angel thinks, turning to face him.
Above them, the fog-bells strike yet again.
“Have we been dropped in a glass of milk while I slept?” Crowley inquires, raising an eyebrow at Aziraphale and immediately drifting to the nearest window.
Aziraphale’s first thought is that the demon must have passed a strange night, too, for all that he seemed to sleep through its entirety. Illuminated by the eerie light that calls forth no shadows, the demon looks—exhausted; his face is drawn, and his freckles stand out sharply against the pallor of his skin. Except for a slate-grey shirt, he is wearing all black; he has also, for the first time since their arrival at the lighthouse, donned his spectacles.
“It does rather look like that, doesn’t it,” Aziraphale agrees quietly. Getting out of his armchair, he walks to the window where Crowley had stationed himself and stands next to the demon, though not quite close enough to touch.
There, he tells himself. That wasn’t so difficult, was it?
“Mm. How was your night?” Crowley asks, glancing at the angel sideways.
(Thinking of you, Aziraphale does not say. Not knowing what to think.)
“Feeling better?” the demon goes on.
“I… yes, I… am,” Aziraphale hurries to say. “Quite rejuvenated. Tip-top.”
The corners of Crowley’s mouth thin with evident scepticism, but he does not challenge the assertion. “Well then,” he says, and turns to lean against the window-sill as he studies Aziraphale. “What do you say to breakfast? You haven’t eaten yet, have you?”
Aziraphale shakes his head.
“Tea and toast with marmalade? Marmalade’ll be good for you, y’know. Just the ticket for, ah, overindulgence.”
“Is it?” Aziraphale asks, surprised. “I’d never heard…”
“Oh, no idea if it works for everyone,” Crowley says with a slanted smile. “But angel. I can guarantee it’ll be good for you.”
Aziraphale’s ridiculous heart thumps loudly, once, somewhere in his throat.
They go down to the kitchen, Crowley leading the way. The demon arranges the promised breakfast, quickly and with seeming ease, though he does drop a spoon—not once, but twice—and at some point, stands at an open cupboard for a good half-minute, frowning at a small glass vial he’d just taken out. “Huh,” Aziraphale hears him mutter, “where did you come from?” before he puts the vial aside.
They eat, and they talk—flitting from subject to subject, touching them lightly and moving on. All the while, Aziraphale is acutely, startlingly aware of how drawn he is to Crowley; how much he wants to reach out and touch the demon, to run his hands over Crowley’s shoulders, over his chest, to his waist. To make sure Crowley is quite solid, quite real, quite himself. To feel the warmth of Crowley’s skin under the slate-grey silk of his shirt.
It will pass, the angel tells himself. It’s bound to. It’s—an infatuation, that’s what it is, and no wonder, because when hasn’t Crowley been temptation incarnate? “’S professional", he would say with his rueful smile. Might even apologise, if he knew.
But he won’t know. He will not. It’s going to be fine.
(The angel believes that, for a while, he really does—
—but when Aziraphale is on his second cup of tea, Crowley remembers a jar of blackcurrant jam he’d found earlier and gets up for it, bringing it over to the angel. “Here you go,” the demon says softly, leaning against the side of the table and extending his hand, “’s spiced, I think you might like it—”
Their fingers brush over the smooth porcelain, and Aziraphale jerks his hand away so fast as to almost drop the jar.)
—
Too much, Crowley thinks. He took too much, he came too close, carelessly basking in the angel’s warmth. He was having fun, and had dared to forget the divide between them.
(How long had he felt like he’s living on borrowed time?)
So fine, yes, that was a mistake. He’s a demon. That is not a kind of thing you set aside, especially when you are an angel of the Lord.
But also, and quite emphatically, what the deuce? What has gotten into Aziraphale? The angel had practically run off after breakfast: first, for a circuit of the tower he insisted he would do alone, and then to all but lock himself in the library: telling Crowley with unwarranted urgency that he simply had to continue deciphering the journal, advising Crowley to come back in an hour, or two, or perhaps not at all. (Well, no, he didn’t say that last bit, Crowley’s imagination did. The point, though, the point still stood.)
They are here to figure out whatever is happening—and sure, that wasn’t really Crowley’s plan, not until now, but that has changed, yeah? They are on the same side, they are supposed to work together. Rule number one of haunted places is not to go off by yourself, and yes, yes, this place is not haunted per se, but—
Something here is wrong, Crowley thinks, squinting into the impenetrable wall of whiteness from his perch at the open door of the tower. Some distance below his feet is the indistinct surface of the sea, grey like the back of a giant whale: a whale that could well be carrying their isle, and their lighthouse, and both of them through the uninhabited cosmos, them being none the wiser.
Something here is wrong.
And Aziraphale is not acting sensible about it at all.
—
It has not been an hour, Aziraphale thinks. It has most definitely been less than an hour. He steals a look at the demon, who is staring moodily out of one of the library windows, and returns his gaze to the black-bound book.
“The rain is interminable,” he reads. “I am afraid it is beginning to affect our spirits. Tempers are growing short. The wind and the waves knock against the tower, which shakes powerfully whenever the swells come in from the eastwards. We are quite safe within, of course, as Brown keeps telling us: this lighthouse has withstood far more over the years. But there is another thing that has us shrouded in disquiet. Miles is convinced of it, and I am starting to believe it, too: sometimes, the knocking we hear comes not from the waves at all, but from inside the tower—from below.”
“From below,” Crowley repeats, rubbing his temples. “Not exactly helpful, is it, kid?”
“It takes impressive presence of mind to detail these experiences in the first place,” Aziraphale says reproachfully. “Crowley, they… they are already worried about running out of food. There’s been significant spoilage, apparently, and no supply ships can come until the storm passes. Nor can the keepers leave. Imagine how trapped they must feel.”
“Tempers growing short, yeah, don’t think I didn’t notice.”
“Quite,” Aziraphale says, watching the demon. Crowley has stepped away from the window and is moving along the room in a slow, deliberate arc: pausing in front of the mirror, dragging a finger along the spines of the books on the bookshelf—and finally, coming to lean against the writing-desk not a foot from Aziraphale, arms folded. He is so close that the angel could touch his calf if he were as much as to point the toe of his shoe.
Steadfast, Aziraphale looks down at the journal. “What follows are descriptions of their daily tasks, notes on polishing and cleaning, an inventory of pantry contents, a list of shifts for the next few days. I… I suspect Steven was trying to hang on to their routines to keep as calm as he could.”
“Mm. ’S smart, I’ll grant him that.”
Aziraphale looks up at Crowley in surprise, only to be met with his own reflection in the tinted lenses.
He is... really paying attention. This may be the first time since our arrival, but—what has changed?
Herding his wandering thoughts back to the conversation, Aziraphale goes on. “There are two more entries of note. The first one is about Brown. It… sounds like he might have had a vision? No details are recorded, but—here: ‘Glory be, Brown said when he came down from the lantern in the morning. I’ve had a sign. God and His angels are watching over us. Except he was whiter than the plaster bust of old Robert when he said it, and Miles had started laughing, and could not stop until his mirth turned into hiccups, like in a child. That was no angel you saw, he said when he could speak again. Didn’t you see its wings?’”
“Huh,” Crowley says, frowning at the journal in Aziraphale’s hands.
“M-hm. And here is the second entry. ‘Miles has been quite poorly these few days, and I’ve been putting tonic into his tea, to fortify him. Today, Brown saw the cup I’d prepared for Miles to take up to the lantern with him, and had all but gone wild about it. We are of course not allowed spirits, but he would hear nothing about this being a tonic and my grandmother’s recipe to boot. He swore, spittle flying, about writing both of us up, yet he must have himself partaken, for I’d find the bottle getting lighter lately, with neither me nor Miles having touched it.’”
“O-oh,” Crowley says, suddenly animated. He unfolds his hands and half-turns towards Aziraphale, eyebrows slanting over the rim of his spectacles. “D’you think… Did they poison each other? Could’ve been by accident, yeah? Maybe that was why they saw things. Did he say what was in the tonic?”
“He did not,” Aziraphale says carefully. “Or if he did, that was one of the parts I could not decipher.”
“‘Course, it could be something else,” Crowley muses. “Something in the drinking water. They’d hardly think to clean the water tank, would they, and She’d had her fun with—uh, the unseen world. What was that about their food spoiling?”
“A lot of the vegetables didn’t keep past a few days, even the root vegetables. The fruit, too.”
“The air! Spores or somesuch!” Crowley exclaims, though this new bout of agitation is short-lived. “Although… na-ah. None of that is likely, is it. Else we’d have been affected, too, our corporations are human enough.”
(It’s an uneasy thought—although, given the lightness of Crowley’s tone, perhaps only uneasy for Aziraphale.
Of course, the angel thinks, only I have been—seeing things.)
“Well,” Crowley says impatiently. “Go on, what else does the journal say?”
This, too, is new: Crowley’s eagerness in looking for clues. “I’m afraid this is all I could decipher so far,” Aziraphale says. “But the light is excellent right now, so, um, you—you can come back in an hour or two, and in the meantime, I—”
Crowley, however, is no longer listening. “Mm?” he says, stepping away from the desk and yawning as he runs a hand through his hair. “Ah—yeah, sure, ‘course, I’ll wait.” The demon looks around and, before Aziraphale realises what he is about to do, nabs a book from the top of the stack on the writing-desk, steps backwards, and falls into the second armchair. Crossing his legs, he brings the book up to his eyes. “Jane Eyre. An autobiography. I suppose,” (with that, he is already flipping through the pages), “that this will have to do.”
No, Aziraphale wants to say, seized by a powerful desire to pull the book out of the demon’s hands. No, you don’t—you don’t read, why on Earth would you do this now? And—Jane Eyre?
But he has no reason to stop Crowley, and it really won’t do to make a fuss. In any case, the demon, as is becoming abundantly clear, is not about to leave.
With Crowley in the room, focusing on the journal turns out to be no easier than shepherding reluctant angels onto the head of a pin. Aziraphale’s eyes seem to slide off the loops and spikes of S.P.’s handwriting on their own accord, darting towards Crowley—who, by turns, settles in the armchair cross-legged, or drapes himself across it in a way that suggests anatomy far more serpentine than human, or trails one long leg on the floor, balancing the book on a sharply bent knee.
Is he actually reading, the angel wonders, or is he just flipping back and forth through the pages?
It’s only when Crowley gets up to stretch and to pick up the second volume of Jane Eyre that Aziraphale realises how little work he’d done in all this time. It doesn’t help that S.P. has turned to memories—for comfort, the angel supposes—and that the journal has become a patchwork of past and present, its now-undated entries filled with rain, dread, and poignant hope.
Whatever shadows Miles and Brown have seen, S.P. writes, Brown considers them to be visions, and Miles to be warnings. (In a smaller hand, at the very bottom of that same page, he adds a heartbreaking: I dreamt of going home.)
When, in a while, Aziraphale does come upon a section that is most definitely talking about the keepers’ present, it is not what he expects.
“Hm? What has you looking like that?” Crowley asks from the second armchair, lowering his book.
“I… Oh, it’s—it’s nothing, just another entry…”
“Yeah?”
“Well, I—I think S.P. has just seen whatever Miles and Brown had seen before.”
“That’s good for us, though, yeah? Might give a clue. Come on, angel, what’ve you got?”
Carefully, haltingly, backtracking and puzzling out each word, Aziraphale reads the entry aloud.
He reads about the storm that keeps raging—with foam flying up to the plated glass of the light-room, with waves crashing around the stone tower and seeming to shake the very rocks it is built upon. It is at the top of the lighthouse, during a lonely evening shift, that S.P. finally sees one of the elusive shadows haunting the place—sees it far closer and clearer than he ever did before. “Not quite close,” he writes, “and not quite clear, for I was inside the light-room, next to the lens pouring forth its light, and the shadow was outside, in the gloaming, lashed by the rain—but I could see that it was no bird, and that it was winged.”
“I know, now,” Aziraphale reads, slowing down as the meaning of the words catches, takes root in his mind, “why Miles said what he did, and my hand trembles as I write this: it was no bird, and its enormous wings were as black as a starless night.”
Crowley sits up in his armchair, frowning, and closes his book. “Huh. Really? That’s what it says?”
Aziraphale nods, bites the inside of his cheek as he once again looks at S.P.’s spidery writing. Wings. As black as a starless night.
“Well, assuming he’d really seen this and it wasn’t a—you know, a phantasm of some sort… D’you think that something lives here? A—a harpy or somesuch? Didn’t those have something to do with storms?”
A harpy, Aziraphale thinks. That’s quite a thought, and Crowley had been so—ready with this suggestion.
“They… did, if they ever existed,” the angel says slowly. “They were storm winds personified.”
“They were winged,” Crowley suggests, ticking the points off on his fingers. “And certainly not birds. Bizarre enough to scare a grown man as well as this kid here. And you would hear all about them snatching people away, wouldn’t you, whenever somebody seemed to disappear from the face of the Earth.”
“But—Crowley, they are legends from two thousand years ago. For all we know, harpies were never anything but metaphors.”
“Weren’t they?” Crowley asks. “’Cause there are still no ghosts here, so—y’know. Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, might just be it.” The demon pauses, looking thoughtful. “Hey, d’you think I should write this down?”
“Crowley. I—I really don’t believe anyone had ever actually seen a harpy. Don’t you think that if they truly existed, we would have known?”
“Well, we can’t know everything,” Crowley says defensively. “But sure, fine, maybe not a harpy. It’s just that we have found nothing else, so—what if there is a creature living here? Or—or creatures? Wasn’t that what you were thinking?”
“No,” Aziraphale says slowly. Above them, the fog-bells strike again: a hollow, unsettling sound. Wings, he thinks. Wings, as black as a starless night. “No, I… hadn’t been thinking that at all.”
—
“Angel!” Crowley shouts from the kitchen. “Come down, it’s time!”
It is, the angel realises as he glances at the clock in the corner of the writing-desk. It’s almost two, yet the whiteness beyond the windows has not changed at all; the sun, concealed as it is by layers and layers of pale gauze, is of no help in tracking the passing of the hours.
The angel shivers. It has gotten distinctly colder over the morning, as if the fog has leached some of the summer itself from the air. Before going to cook, Crowley had asked him, quite insistently, whether he would like his armchair to be moved downstairs, to the fire. Aziraphale had refused, sensing a respite from the demon’s distracting presence, but now, descending into the kitchen’s enveloping warmth, he thinks wistfully of having been able to agree.
When the angel steps down onto the stone floor, Crowley whirls around to grin at him. In the heat of the room, the demon’s cheeks are flushed, his temples damp, the curl over his right eyebrow even more unruly; it is with difficulty that Aziraphale looks away from the sheen of sweat on the side of Crowley’s neck.
The demon had made crêpes. Crêpes, and a few delectable-looking sides for them, all in barely more than a half-hour—undoubtedly helped along by miracles and no small amount of skill. No wonder the demon is looking a little breathless—and exceptionally proud. The smell alone is mouth-watering.
“Oh,” Aziraphale whispers despite himself, looking over the table—and then flushes, recalling a certain encounter during the French Revolution. Crowley remembered, didn’t he, exactly how much Aziraphale likes crêpes.
The demon’s grin grows wider. “Go on, angel, don’t jus’ stand there. Try them and tell me what you think.”
Aziraphale does—and Crowley, who watches him throughout, manages to withstand his compliments for almost three minutes before he looks to the side and gruffly says, “well, don’t go telling the whole world”.
Sitting at the table across from the demon that afternoon, Aziraphale can almost pretend that nothing has changed—though above them, the fog-bells, resonant like the chimes of a church, keep ringing out the time, and the mist beyond the windows is filled with the flutter of wings and the sharp cries of invisible gulls.
They talk. They have things to discuss: the recent entries in the journal, the newborn idea of a creature, or creatures, inhabiting Howling Rock. The demon names all kinds of beings—goblins and nereids and sirens—that could have made a sea-drenched, wind-swept isle their home; none of them seem to be the likely culprits given the recent events, but Crowley appears determined to find the malefactor in their ranks. He doesn’t find one, of course, but Aziraphale appreciates the sense of normalcy the search itself brings.
Then, the meal ends, and the conversation moves on.
“So,” Crowley says as they draw closer to the fire. Leaving his coffee cup precariously close to the edge of the table, the demon settles astride his chair as usual: arms folded over the backrest, chin resting on the grey silk of his sleeve. “Enough shop talk. I’ve been wondering... That book. What’s it about?”
“The—the book?” Aziraphale asks in momentary confusion, reaching to push Crowley’s cup towards the solid safety of the tabletop.
“The book, yeah,” Crowley follows his reach and then looks back at him, raising an eyebrow. “The one I was reading. You brought it here, didn’t you?”
“Oh!” Aziraphale exclaims with dawning understanding. “Oh—Jane Eyre?”
“Thass’ the one.”
“But—what do you mean, what is it about? You were reading it.”
Crowley flicks a dismissive hand. “Yeah. Well. You wouldn’t expect me to have the patience to read all of it, would you?”
“No, I… suppose not,” Aziraphale says carefully.
“Well then,” Crowley says, and grins at him. “Tell me what it’s about. I’m sure you’ve already read it. Multiple times, if you liked it. I mean—it came out five years ago, you would probably re-read it every year. On the anniversary or something.”
“I—well, I’d only read it twice, actually, which is why I brought it with me…”
…and, as Crowley keeps looking at him in silent, amused expectation, Aziraphale folds.
The conversation starts out innocuously enough. Crowley did, apparently, form some idea of the book’s plot, though he’d clearly skipped whole chapters—and just as clearly, he’d seen enough to have his curiosity piqued.
Aziraphale gives him a summary. Jane Eyre, a mistreated and unloved orphan brought up by an uncaring aunt, is sent to a charity school, where she spends six years as a pupil and two as a teacher. Then, determined to forge her own way, she leaves the school for Thornfield Hall and becomes a governess to the young charge of its master, Mr. Rochester. She finds herself drawn to the brooding and taciturn man—while he, in turn, is drawn to her.
Crowley has things to say throughout. He is particularly delighted by the portrayal of the school’s director, the vindictive and hypocritical Rev. Mr. Brocklehurst—and no less delighted by the detail of Mr. Brocklehurst remaining in power, though tempered by a committee, even after his wanton cruelty comes to light.
“An excellent depiction of the clergy,” the demon says cheerfully, watching Aziraphale. “Is there more of this later on? I might’ve been missing out on the whole reading thing.”
“Right, yes, that would pique your interest,” Aziraphale says drily.
“Oh, it certainly did. ’S a good look at the whole system, right? Have enough money and you’ll buy your indulgence. But what I want to know is, what piqued your interest? ‘Cause it’d hardly be the same thing. Or—did anything? Did you like the story?”
Startled, Aziraphale looks at Crowley, realising as he does that the demon’s question is quite in earnest.
And—well. With all the assignments, it’s been a while since he’s had a chance to talk to someone about an extraordinary book.
“W-well,” he says. “All—all right. I did like it, yes. As to why… There is the compelling first-person narrative. There’s the social critique, which—you noticed some of it. And there is the complex story of—of transformation, repentance, and love.”
“Oh yeah?” Crowley says, pushing his spectacles up. “All that?”
…and Aziraphale, who’d long been fascinated by the slow growth of Jane’s and Rochester’s mutual regard and its power, starts telling him.
Crowley listens: in silence, sometimes, and sometimes asking questions about the plot. He appears attentive, if occasionally puzzled—but the deeper Aziraphale gets into the book, the more Crowley’s mouth thins, the faster his fingers drum out a broken rhythm on the carved wood of the backrest.
“D’you believe it, then?” Crowley asks just as Aziraphale wraps up describing wedding preparations. “That all of this is actually talking about—” (he wrinkles his nose in apparent distaste) “love?”
He is a demon, Aziraphale reminds himself. Of course he would scoff at the idea.
“Yes,” the angel says with conviction. “Not—the simple kind, of course. And they do take rather different paths into it. For Rochester, it ends up being a transformative force—”
“—at somebody else’s expense, yeah. See,” agitated, Crowley dismounts his chair to pace the room, “that’s what gets me. Humans mistake all kinds of things for love. You… you are an angel, yeah, you are jus’ going to see hope and love everywhere, or—or the potential for them. The girl here believes she’s in love—might really be, which would be worse—but… think about it. She is eighteen, and impressionable, and has finally been given a few tiny grains of appreciation and warmth. From that, ’s all gratitude and self-sacrifice, just like your lot teach—and she should take care to trust her employer blindly, not to ask questions, or disaster will follow.”
Oh, Aziraphale thinks. Oh. Of course. Questions leading to disaster.
“Him, though,” Crowley goes on. “There’s nothing in him of love. He expects obedience and sacrifices—and gets them, too. Considers them all his due. Enjoys the reputation of being eccentric, thanks to his fortune. Sure, he might think he’s in love, but all he does is toy with her.”
“Crowley, you—do tend to go for the least charitable interpretation.” Almost always, actually—though that should hardly be surprising.
“Well, but—let me get this straight. He patronises and torments her. Talks to her sweetly and then not at all. Spends days trying to make her jealous, using other people as props. Sets up an elaborate performance to get her to admit that he’d succeeded. Angel, that’s not love.”
“He makes mistakes, yes, and plenty of them,” Aziraphale admits. “But they are not irreparable, as the narrative goes to show…”
“Mistakes,” Crowley says bitterly. “D’you notice how she is the one set to pay for them? He holds all the power, she is facing all the danger. If he tires of playing with her, his fortune will protect him no matter what, while she will end up penniless and ostracised. And heartbroken.”
“That—is not what happens,” Aziraphale says helplessly.
“Only because it’s a blessed book!”
I am not sure, the angel thinks, that you are still talking about the book. I haven’t seen you this worked up about fiction since Paradise Lost. “You are forgetting the human capacity for transformation. And—Crowley, you are a demon, I think you—”
“You think I don’t know what love is?” Crowley asks, a muscle jumping in his jaw.
“No, that—”
“‘Cause you are right, y’know. You can say it. I am a demon. Hope, love, ’t was all burnt out of us in the Fall. But d’you know what I am exceedingly familiar with? Manipulation. Which is all that’s happening here. D’you see?”
“That was not what I was going to say,” Aziraphale says in consternation. “Crowley, you—you are not listening.”
“No, but—do you see it? Actually, no, you wouldn’t, would you. Heaven has been calling all kinds of things love, too. And to be a beloved servant of Heaven, to be in Heaven’s good graces, is to take your assignments unquestioningly, to—”
“You know nothing about Heaven, Crowley,” Aziraphale says sharply.
And the argument unfolds from this as readily as ferns unfurling from their tight shoots all over the forest floor in the spring.
—
Well, Crowley thinks, scowling at the rapidly wilting geranium. That went down like a lead balloon.
He gives the plant one last withering glare before he bounds down the stairs.
The worst part, too, the worst part is… it was working, wasn’t it. Before he went ahead and ruined it. Aziraphale had stopped trying to send him away, had stopped jumping at his touch. Had stopped quite literally looking over his shoulder with every strike of the fog-bells. Had begun talking. And he’d liked the crêpes, oh, he’d most definitely liked the crêpes. Whatever had made Aziraphale so on edge seemed to finally let go of him—and then Crowley went ahead and, and asked him about the blessed book.
Because he was curious.
(Because he is a bloody fool, that’s why.)
Crowley paces. Stairs, store-room, stairs; the passage to the door of the lighthouse; the spiral staircase and back up the stairs. You look like you are about to start pacing the ceilings, Aziraphale had said the day before—and Crowley would do it, too, just to switch things up, if the few miracles he’d used for the crêpes didn’t punch right through his reserves of power. Is Head Office limiting me? Again? The bastards.
He is back down the stairs and by the dinghy, an oar in his hands (was this the keepers’ last remaining boat, he wonders, or their only boat? Did they try to escape, there at the end?), when he hears Aziraphale stepping onto the wooden stairs. The angel descends flight after flight, seeming to pause briefly in each of the rooms—but before long, he, too, is on the spiral staircase.
“Um—hey, Aziraphale,” Crowley says before Aziraphale can notice him and startle again.
“Oh,” Aziraphale says, stepping down onto the stone landing and turning to face him. He doesn’t clasp his hands, but the aborted hint of the movement is there. “Crowley. I—had been looking for you. You were just upstairs, weren’t you? Have you seen the journal?”
“The journal,” Crowley says slowly, putting the oar back. “No?”
“No?” the angel says, his voice strangely brittle. “Crowley, are you quite certain? It’s only that I left it on the writing-desk just now, and went up to the balcony to get some fresh air, and—it wasn’t there when I returned.”
The angel is looking at him intently, and Crowley does not know what to make of that. “Right,” he says, raking a hand through his hair, rubbing the back of his neck. “I, uh—I can help you search for it?”
Angel, he thinks. I’ll find it for you. Just tell me and I will.
At first, he thinks Aziraphale might refuse. Then, however, the angel nods. “Ah—yes, please. I would like to get it back.”
As it happens, Crowley is indeed the one to find the journal: almost as soon as they start the search, in the basement chamber where it lies nonchalantly on top of an empty cask. Slowly, the demon hangs his oil-lamp on the hook in the wall to the left, moves to pick up the black-bound book. It’s oddly heavy in his hands, and it—it reminds him of something, something that—
He blinks, and the feeling is gone.
“I’d just checked the passage,” Aziraphale says behind Crowley’s back, his steps ringing out on the spiral stairs as he descends. “I haven’t been down here at all, of course, so it’s…” He trails off as Crowley turns around, still holding the journal. “Oh. You… found it, then. It was just… here?”
“Yeah.” Crowley looks down at the cover, runs a thumb over the black paper-cloth. What was it that the journal reminded him of? “Back there, on top of a cask,” he says, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. “Which is odd, isn’t it. Aziraphale, d’you think…”
But when he looks up at the angel, he is startled to see Aziraphale looking not at the journal in his hands, but at him: with a strange, wary, almost haunted look in his eyes.
Oh no no no, what is it now? “Aziraphale?” he asks cautiously.
“So you… came down here just now and found the journal on top of a cask. And you don’t know how it got here,” Aziraphale says with the same tense expression.
“Well, yeah.” When the angel says nothing, Crowley attempts a nonchalant shrug. He feels directionless, adrift, like he is clinging to flotsam in the middle of a strange sea. “I… wait.”
Obediently, Aziraphale waits.
“Wait,” Crowley repeats. The cellar around them seems to grow colder. “Wait a second. Are you—are you suggesting that I brought it here? Without telling you?”
“Did you?” Aziraphale asks evenly.
“What? Aziraphale—what? This is ridiculous. Angel, seriously, what the deuce has gotten into you?”
“Crowley, please. Just—just answer the question. Did you?”
“No!” Crowley shouts. “What—no!” He wants to grab the angel by the shoulders and to shake him until Aziraphale snaps out of it, whatever it is. And he shouldn’t, of course, because that’d make it worse, oh, so much worse. Instead, he shoves the journal at the angel wordlessly—and Aziraphale takes it.
Crowley breathes out, rubs the heel of his hand over his mouth. “Aziraphale,” he starts. “This—”
“Thank you for returning the journal, Crowley,” Aziraphale says quietly. “It is rather an important document, as you understand.”
Crowley wants to hiss, bite, break things. “All right,” he says instead with forced calm. “All right. Hold on, just—just hold on.” Then, a thought strikes him. “It’s… it’s not the first object to have moved, yeah? Didn’t you consider that neither of us is doing this?”
Aziraphale blinks. “I—”
“Oh,” Crowley says savagely, unable to help himself. “Now you consider it. After deciding that this is all the local demon’s fault. Isn’t that always so.”
Even in the ruddy light of their oil-lamps, Aziraphale is as pale as the mist outside.
“Crowley,” the angel asks just as quietly, “what were you doing down here?”
Bloody hallowed halls of Heaven. “We are on a rock the size of a millstone, surrounded by the bloody sea! Where am I supposed to be?”
The angel blinks again—and for a moment, looks as lost as if a familiar doorway had opened onto a street in a city half a world away. The look is quickly shuttered, replaced with something cautious and remote.
“You know, Crowley… I think I should go for a walk,” the angel announces with unyielding determination, pressing the journal tighter to his waistcoat. “Outside. While the tide is low.”
Do not follow me, the demon reads in his face, in the set of his mouth—and then, left alone in the cellar, thinks in puzzled consternation, when did it get so cold?
—
Bless it all. Crowley falls face-first onto the fold-out bed, turns over to smother his face with a pillow. Just—bless it. Did he have to? Really, did he have to? Yes, yes, I’m a demon, I’ll always be a demon. But did he have to go and assume I’m—lying to him while I’m really after his precious journal? That I’m hiding in the basement, cackling as I read it? That I’m determined to be the first to find out where the keepers have gone? Or—or whatever he was imagining.
“’S not a bloody competition, Aziraphale!” he shouts, lifting the pillow by half an inch.
Not that the angel is going to hear him. He’s probably still outside, strolling in the mist, preaching the dangers of trusting demons to cormorants, seagulls, and incautious fish. Likely a half-step from twisting his ankle, or, or worse. (And he’s about to find out if Crowley is going to fix things for him, frivolous miracles or not. So there.)
Throwing the pillow aside, the demon rolls to his feet. Fine, he thinks, glaring at the mirror, at the bookshelf, at the entirely-too-soft carpet under his shoes. Fine. See if I care. Setting off on a prowl around the room, Crowley kicks the leg of the writing-desk, pulls out a few books from the middle shelf, puts them back with their spines to the wall. (Let Aziraphale see that, he thinks viciously, slamming the door on the part of his mind that tuts at the pettiness of the act. Let him.) Then, some of his nervous energy spent, he collapses into Aziraphale’s favourite armchair, the one by the writing-desk, and stares moodily out of the window; the world beyond the glass consists of nothing but mist, as if they have been swallowed by an enormous cloud.
Fine, he thinks again for good measure—and folds his arms over the writing-desk, letting his forehead fall against them.
Bless it all.
Exhaustion rolls over him like the swells of a winter sea.
He sits like that, eyes closed, until his heartbeat slows, his anger simmers down, his thoughts stop racing like the chariots at a hippodrome, around and around and around again.
This must be when sleep claims him. He comes to with a start, another strike of the fog-bells bringing him out of an apparently dreamless doze.
No, I—I shouldn’t sleep, he tells himself woozily, straightening in the armchair. It hasn’t gone well when I’ve fallen asleep here before.
Then, he hears rustling behind him—and the indistinct murmurs of a far-off conversation floating up from below. The windows are closed, but the distant clang of a hammer is seeping through the frames. A few voices start up an old song. “Here?” a man’s voice asks in one of the downstairs rooms. “It’s remote enough,” comes a woman’s voice.
Frowning, Crowley looks around. The library is empty, but everything, every object his gaze falls on, seems… charged, somehow, imbued with particular meaning. So is the very air, as if in the moment before a great thunderstorm, all torrential rain and jagged lightning—though nothing of the kind is brewing behind the windows, which show only the foggy blankness of an untouched page.
I… shouldn’t be alone, Crowley remembers suddenly. There was someone in the lighthouse with me, someone I—
“Aziraphale?” he whispers into the air.
Something in the space around him twists, shudders, snaps.
crack
and a fracture appears in the glass of the window to his right.
crack
and another fracture goes across the surface of the gilt-frame mirror.
CRACK
and the glass of the table clock splits, a fissure going through it as if it’s been struck—half a second before the glass explodes outwards.
SHATTER
and Crowley opens his eyes.
He is looking at the writing-desk’s polished oak surface. I’d been asleep, he realises, straightening slowly from where he’d been collapsed over his folded arms.
He is alone in the library.
Aziraphale is nowhere to be found.
—
This is a warning, Crowley thinks as he bounds down the stairs (not too fast; he’s a demon, he isn’t going to run because of a bloody dream). It’s clearly some kind of a warning, I get it. Though then again, this whole lighthouse is a bloody warning. But a warning about… what, exactly?
That can wait, though. First, he’s got to find Aziraphale.
“Aziraphale!” he yells out. “Angel! Where the Heaven are you?”
And—thank Someone. There is definitely movement below, and a sound that might be a response, though he can barely hear it over the roar of the surf outside the walls of the tower. He hurries to the main floor.
“Aziraphale?” he calls again, stepping off the spiral staircase. The outside door is open, and the undulating milky whiteness beyond sends misty wavelets along the littered floor of the passage. “Where are you?”
“I’m in here,” Aziraphale’s voice says from the basement room. “I’m in here, Crowley, everything is—fine.”
Crowley breathes out, counts to four, heads downwards.
“Do be careful,” Aziraphale advises from somewhere in the room. “The steps are still wet.”
They are, Crowley realises. Something had spilled over them, is dripping onto the stone floor below—and there are shards on some of the treads, sharp porcelain petals glinting in the light of the oil-lamp.
Oh.
“That was your favourite cup, wasn’t it?” Crowley asks, coming to stand next to the angel in the middle of the cellar. Quickly, he looks the angel over. There’s a sharp line between Aziraphale’s eyebrows; he is holding one of the shards in his fingers, is pressing the diary to his waistcoat with the other hand.
“Hello, Crowley. Yes, I… do believe it was,” the angel says, glancing at the demon in turn and turning his attention back to the shard.
“Right,” Crowley says. “Well, we can’t have that. Hold on.”
He clicks his fingers, and then he is holding Aziraphale’s cup, whole once again. Aziraphale looks up at him in surprise.
“Couldn’t get the tea back,” Crowley shrugs by way of apology, “but you prefer it non-miracled anyway, so.”
The angel, however, does not at all appear relieved. “Crowley,” he says slowly. “I—I do appreciate it, but… You see, I don’t know how the cup was broken.”
“You don’t know how the cup was broken,” Crowley repeats, feeling like he is looking at a particularly obscure prophecy in one of Aziraphale’s most-prized books. Clearly, now would not be the time to point out the fragile nature of porcelain.
“Yes. I was—returning from my walk, and I heard something shatter. And then I walked over here and found the cup, but—”
“Oh,” Crowley says.
Aziraphale nods. “So you see. I… do appreciate you fixing it, though.” With that, the angel reaches to take the cup—and Crowley blinks as he looks down at Aziraphale’s hand.
“Wait,” he says, transferring the cup to his right hand and putting it on top of the nearest cask without looking—just as he captures Aziraphale’s hand with his left. The angel breathes in sharply, but Crowley is for once not concerned with that.
“S’that…” he says, squinting down at Aziraphale’s fingers. A shiny bead, dark-red in the unsteady light, is forming on the pad of Aziraphale’s forefinger. “That’s blood. How did that happen?” And how, he thinks, how did the angel not notice?
“It’s—it’s nothing,” Aziraphale says, too lightly. “Something startled me earlier, is all.” He’s already pulling his hand away.
“No,” Crowley hurries to say. “Aziraphale, wait.” He clicks his fingers, reaching for his power—
and nothing happens.
Oh, he thinks, briefly disoriented, as he stares down at the droplet of blood. Well, that’s—embarrassing. A wild idea flashes into his mind, something he’d seen the humans do countless times: putting their fingers in their mouths, sucking on the hurt. What—no—focus, he hisses at himself—and clicks his fingers again.
The droplet of blood disappears, the skin underneath knitting itself together. Crowley runs his thumb over the spot, making sure.
Aziraphale pulls his hand away abruptly. “I—I—appreciate it,” he says, not looking at the demon.
Crowley nods—and then bites the inside of his cheek. The pull on his magic had left him oddly light-headed, almost dizzy. Sure, he’d always been a little light-headed around Aziraphale, which he’d attributed to angelic nature (whether it worked with any other angels, he had not the slightest inclination to check). But this, he thinks, this is different: it’s as if the miracle itself pulled on far more power than it was supposed to, or far faster. This isn’t right.
“That… was from the shard, yeah? Not from a cursed spindle?” He flashes the angel a slightly puzzled smile. “I think we’re good, but let me know if you get sleepy.” And then, before the angel can answer him, he blinks. “Actually. Have you? Felt unusually sleepy? Or, well—tired, since you don’t do sleep?”
“I… have not,” Aziraphale says, looking up at him with a peculiar expression. “…Should I be?”
—
A fairy-tale, Aziraphale thinks. Crowley is right, though he doesn’t know it. I might well be in one. Locked in an enchanted castle, in a tower high above the Earth.
Spellbound.
Getting up from the writing-desk, the angel walks over to the nearest window. He looks down at his hand as he stands there, rubs his thumb along his unblemished index finger. Feels the ghostly warmth of the demon’s hands on his waist, on his arm.
Crowley had asked him—with a slanted half-smile that was as unfair as the rest of him—whether he’d pricked his finger on a cursed spindle. I probably did, Aziraphale thinks. Sometime during the very first day, because by now—well, by now the spell is holding fast.
And all around them is fog, rendering the whole world invisible. They haven’t seen a single ship for the whole day; do the sea and the faraway coast even exist beyond the impenetrable white walls?
They are in a blotted-out part of a map, in a blank, in a lacuna.
Just him and Crowley.
Just them alone.
Focus, the angel tells himself—and wills himself to return to the writing-desk.
“The damnable rain,” S.P. writes. “We haven’t seen the sun in what seems like forever. No dusk, no dawn. No fishing. No relief. Miles and Brown are more often than not at each other’s throats.”
Taking his glasses off, Aziraphale passes a hand over his face. There are no longer any dates in the journal, but this… this doesn’t quite add up. Surely the weather this summer wasn’t nearly that wet? Yes, yes, summers are over in a blink of an eye, particularly for an angel, but even he would have noticed the weather being this unusual.
As he reads on, the keepers’ arguments seem to be taking on a new intensity. One night, S.P. and Miles see Brown on the main floor, proselytising to the empty air of the passage and not responding to their incredulous shouts that he is supposed to be in the light-room, that it is his shift. Sermon concluded, Brown walks out of the lighthouse door and into the raging storm. His horrified interlocutors don’t follow him, which very likely saves their lives: the real Brown descends from the light-room several hours later and vehemently denies having ever left his post.
Before long, the passions in the lighthouse are at an all-time high. Brown finds out that Miles has smuggled in liquor (“everybody does that,” S.P. writes, “for precisely this kind of a situation”)—but as Brown is a stickler for the rules, he throws the bottle, or perhaps bottles, into the sea. The keepers nearly come to blows. Crowley would have loved this, Aziraphale thinks. Would have said this proves nothing supernatural is going on.
And then, one morning—a morning by the clocks, not by any hint of the weather—S.P. wakes to see Miles’ blanket crumpled over the thin mattress of the bunk, Miles himself gone. Gone for good, as he and Brown understand by the end of the day.
Oh, Aziraphale thinks, closing the journal and turning it over in his hands, studying the front cover, the back cover, the ink-stained and waterlogged edge. I—didn’t realise the diary got this far. Although… were these entries even here before? Were there quite so many entries?
Didn’t the keepers all disappear in one clear night?
The fog-bells strike again—but even before the air stops vibrating with the echo of their peals, another sound attracts Aziraphale’s attention. There are steps behind him, slightly muffled by the carpet: the oh-so-familiar tread of fashionable shoes. Carefully, Aziraphale puts the journal down on the writing-desk, steels himself.
“Angel,” he hears almost at his ear: a gentle, soft, teasing call.
He already knows that this is going to be the case, but the experience is just as chilling: there is nobody behind him when he turns around.
—
What does he mean, not coming down for supper? He’d never… What does he mean?
Pacing the sleeping quarters in irregular arcs, Crowley whirls around in search of a likely target and then half-heartedly kicks the base of the nearest bunk. None of this brings him any relief.
Does he expect I’m going to just—take that at face value? Pretend that this is fine?
Except I should, shouldn’t I. If I don’t want to make things worse.
Bless it all.
Flopping down on one of the bunks, the demon glares at the ceiling, at the hatchway to the library at the top of the stairs. It’s open, but as unwelcoming as the doors of Aziraphale’s bookshop to anyone with the vaguest inclination of buying a book.
He can see what’s happening. He can see Aziraphale stepping away, and away, and away. Going off by himself. Deciphering the bloody journal, with no offers to read it aloud. Really, the angel hardly even talks about the journal any more, absorbed as he is in it.
And Crowley feels—like an intruder, every time he does come up to the library. The glances Aziraphale sends him are nothing short of wary, and—fine, fine, he’s going to keep his distance, he’s going to give the angel space…
But keeping distance, he thinks, passing a hand through his hair, just now, is a bad idea.
Because there is something here, something they should be working against together. Which they can hardly do from different ends of the lighthouse.
(We should be working together, period, and not just for this, Crowley thinks emphatically. That’s what the Arrangement is. Lending a hand whenever we can. We need to be on the same side. For Somebody’s sake, we’ve been watching humanity for six thousand years! That alone is one Hell, or, or Heaven, of a common venture. Practically partners, that’s what we are.)
Crowley rolls to his feet, is on the stairs before he realises he does not have a destination. Fine, he decides. Fine, I’ll get some bloody exercise. He bounds down the steps.
It’s tempting to say that Aziraphale is being ridiculous, even recklessly so, except—well. Crowley does actually understand what happened. A self-fulfilling prophecy, wasn’t it? (He hates the bloody things.) Crowley had been too much in Aziraphale’s way, the angel had reacted to that, Crowley didn’t take it well—and his attempts to fix things only made matters worse.
That last bit is hardly new, Crowley thinks.
But the question is, what should he do now?
Nothing, he tells himself, crossing the floor of the oil-room. I should do nothing. Aziraphale not coming to supper is as clear a sign as any to give him space, so that’s exactly what I’ll—
And then, he freezes.
This, he thinks, staring at the spiral steps in front of him, this is wrong. The space itself, where the glinting metal steps are engulfed by the darkness, is pulling at him, as twisted and unsettling as an open fracture—and he knows, with absolute certainty, that he shouldn’t go that way. His snake instincts rear up, urging him to hiss at the threat—but before he can make sense of it, the space rights itself, the darkness below rendered once again into a simple absence of light.
Oh no you don’t, Crowley thinks, clicking his fingers to bring more illumination to the tower’s lower levels and stepping forward. His wavering light is far dimmer than normal and the sharp pull on his power nearly knocks the breath out of him, but he ignores it all, pressing on.
The stairs, however, are just the stairs. Crowley runs down them, whirls around in the resolutely empty cellar, runs back up. Striding all the way to the tower’s entrance, he opens the door into the greying mist and inhales a lungful: all water vapour, with no promise of land. Then, he spins on his heel and heads back, letting the lighthouse door slam shut behind him.
Whatever this is, he thinks, biting down on his molars, it’s getting worse. Bolder. More dangerous.
To Hell with self-fulfilling prophecies and keeping distance.
He needs to tell Aziraphale.
—
“I told you, Aziraphale. I don’t know what it was, it just felt wrong, yeah? I didn’t have time to figure out why.”
The demon is sitting on the floor of the light-room balcony, his back to one of the supports of the metal railing, one knee sharply bent. He seems to be looking slightly past Aziraphale, but the angel cannot be certain: Crowley’s eyes are still hidden by dark glass.
The slowly rotating Fresnel lens bathes both of them in light, watercolour-pale in the early dusk: a translucent red, then a watery white. The light glints off the frames of Crowley’s spectacles, off the polished metal of the railing; it casts his and Crowley’s thin shadows far into the mist, over the invisible sea.
“’T was the biggest ‘keep out’ sign,” the demon continues.
“But you didn’t keep out.”
Another bird flutters down on the bannister next to Aziraphale with a sharp caw halfway between a cough and a lament. By now, the fog around them is full of birds: magpies and crows, blackbirds and sparrows, larks and the inevitable gulls. The birds settle on the railing, blinking at the light, and only flap their wings half-heartedly when Aziraphale or Crowley move, their long shadows trailing behind them.
“‘Course not,” Crowley says irritably. “But I also didn’t learn anything.” He rubs a hand over his sleeve, digs his fingers into his arm—and then shifts, clearly uncomfortable. The thin metal spindle he leans against must make for an atrocious backrest.
(And… he is cold, isn’t he, Aziraphale thinks, quite unprompted. He imagines stepping up to Crowley, extending a hand, pulling the demon to his feet and then pulling him close. Imagines his hands on Crowley’s back, over the demon’s shoulder-blades, then trailing inwards and down where the base of the demon’s wings would be.
Wings, as black as a starless night. The memory is a whipcrack.
Aziraphale looks away so sharply that a nearby sparrow flutters in alarm.)
“Angel,” Crowley says. “So, uh—hear me out. I’m, I’m just going to say this. Never thought I’d be the one, but… I don’t think either of us should be going around the tower alone. Not until we understand what’s happening. I just… I don’t think it’s safe, yeah?”
“You—want us to constantly be in each other’s… physical presence?” Aziraphale specifies, still resolutely looking away. The fog around them is definitely colder now, its droplets seeming to cling together—though perhaps these are the beginnings of a chilly drizzle.
“W-well,” Crowley says, sounding a little startled himself. “Sure? If that’s what it takes?”
If that’s what it takes? Aziraphale echoes inwardly. “I understand.”
“So you—you aren’t going to go off without me, right? I mean—the next room is fine, ‘course it is, but—not for one of your circuits of the tower? ‘Cause even if I’m asleep, you can wake me, you know. I will go with you.”
“Yes,” Aziraphale assures the demon, glancing his way. “Yes, I do understand.” (It’s an answer, but not a promise.)
Crowley nods, turning his head to the side. He is still not at ease, his lips compressed into a tense line.
“Maybe it’s a warning,” he says. “Angel, would you… consider heeding it and getting out?”
“What?” Aziraphale says, fully turning back to the demon in surprise. “I—I can’t leave this to the humans!”
“Thought so,” Crowley says grimly. “Right, never mind.”
By now, dazed birds are everywhere: on the railing, whirling in the air, foolishly flying at the glass of the light-room. Aziraphale had read about it in the journal, back when the keepers had their share of foggy weather: birds disoriented by the fog, lured in and dazzled by the flaring lens. The keepers would catch them for supper those days, as easy as that. “Brown tells us,” S.P. had written, “that with migratory birds, this happens even more.”
A lure, Aziraphale thinks. It’s—ironic, isn’t it, how the lighthouse is a lure and a warning in one.
“Hey!” Crowley hisses at a stunned lark that collapses on the balcony floor a foot from him. “Beat it. Get away from here if you know what’s good for you. Shoo!”
A lure and a warning in one, Aziraphale thinks again—
and realises that he is still looking at Crowley.
—
The rain starts within an hour, melting away the last tendrils of fog—and the fog-bells finally fall quiet. In the lighthouse, oil-lamps are ablaze on every floor, their reflected flames fluttering in the black glass of the windows.
Settled in his favourite armchair in the library, Aziraphale is looking through the pages of his own journal, covered in diagrams and notes. Crowley comes by every so often, with a question or an idea, but never stays long, evidently sensing the angel’s mood.
Creatures, the angel thinks. What kinds of creatures could be the culprits here? Kobolds, undines, boggarts; an opportunistic genius loci; spirits of the air. These are all mostly human inventions, of course, conjured up to explain things outside of the humans’ grasp.
And so are harpies.
But what else—or who else—could be behind all this?
The angel flips to the pages where he’d written down his first observations: the voices he heard in the roar of the waves, the howl. (Nothing alive, he thinks, nothing alive could have made that sound. It wasn’t the call of a living thing.)
Then, he turns the journal to a blank page and stares at it, unseeing.
There is another possibility, one that he’d been backing away from all day as if it were a crumbling precipice.
No ghosts. No creatures. So what if—what if something entirely else is going on?
He had thought, before coming to the lighthouse, that Hell might be involved with its haunting. He hadn’t thought about it over the last three days, but… why hadn’t he?
Because Crowley had said, with absolute certainty, that Hell was not involved.
Crowley.
The demon had followed him. Had scoffed at the idea of ghosts, had been the first to say that there are none at the lighthouse. Had tried to distract Aziraphale, time and time again, with games and conversations and a picnic on the rocks. (It worked, of course it did—with Crowley smiling his slanted smile, handing Aziraphale a cup of fragrant tea, or one of those Belgian chocolates, or… or just looking at the angel in his teasing, magnetic, enticing way.)
‘M not a ghost, Crowley had laughed on the very first day. Then, he’d laughed at the idea that there was anything odd to the sudden turning of the lens. He’d accused Aziraphale of placing his own teacup in the middle of the stairs; had told him the voices he heard were just the sound of the waves, the shadow just a shadow, the howl a screech of a particularly large bird.
Why, Aziraphale thinks, did he go so out of his way to convince me there is nothing here? And to distract me from digging deeper?
Why was it that far more of the hauntings happened when Crowley was elsewhere? When Aziraphale couldn’t see him?
Aziraphale’s infatuation with Crowley—he can finally name it, can see it for what it is—had caused him to miss some very important and rather alarming signs. They are coming back to him now, all at once: Crowley’s vehemence in saying that Hell has nothing to do with Howling Rock, his denials, his jabs. “No proof, then? You still have a chance to catch me out.”
Were those… warnings?
And it’s not like Aziraphale hadn’t known Crowley’s fondness for practical jokes: the demon’s own stories were proof enough.
This could have started as a joke. The demon may have meant no harm, may have indeed just been bored. Perhaps he took the joke too far—and now, is either not willing or does not know how to end it.
But it could be worse still, Aziraphale thinks, taking his reading-glasses off, folding them carefully before putting them down next to the journal. Rain lashes at the plate-glass of the windows, and although all of them are closed, oil-lamps flutter under unseen drafts.
S.P. wrote of wings, as black as a starless night. Did S.P. see… Crowley? Because if he did, it would mean that Crowley had been playing at this for a long time.
And it would have been a cruel thing, to drive the keepers to desperation like this. Aziraphale had never, not in six thousand years, known Crowley to be cruel. But what if the demon had had no choice? What if Crowley had been acting on Hell’s orders?
What if he is acting on Hell’s orders still?
What if Aziraphale had been right all along, and this is indeed a project of Hell’s design? What if Crowley had been tasked to keep Aziraphale from discovering it, by—whatever means necessary?
This would explain, wouldn’t it, why Aziraphale had been the only one to see and hear things. Maybe the hauntings were never real, neither for him nor for the keepers. Maybe they were all… visions, apparitions, induced by Crowley’s magic or whatever other means the demon chose.
And perhaps the change he has seen in Crowley in the last day is simply the demon understanding that Aziraphale is catching on. Perhaps Crowley had changed his strategy, had pretended to believe him, all the while planning to get him away from the tower or—
or to prevent him from doing his rounds.
Is it possible that Crowley is behind this?
Oh God, Aziraphale thinks, closing his eyes to shut out the world, burying his face in his hands. What am I going to do if he is?
—
“I’ve made you hot cocoa, angel,” Crowley says, appearing through the hatchway with a steaming cup in one hand. “Since you didn’t want supper. Made sure to borrow the milk where that would do no harm.”
Not waiting for an invitation, he saunters to the writing-desk, cocks a hip against it, offers the cup to Aziraphale. “Come on, angel. It’ll be good for you, yeah? ’Tis a chilly night. If you don’t want to come down to the fire, at least take this?”
Mutely, Aziraphale reaches out, takes the proffered cup. It’s warm in his hands, and the rich aroma of cocoa carries memories of royal courts, of meeting Crowley at chocolate houses in Florence and in Venice, of evenings at the bookshop that he’d spent thinking of—
But it doesn’t matter.
Because he remembers, then, what he’d read in the journal. Remembers the keepers, during more than one chilly night, trying to be unafraid in the face of the impossible. Remembers S.P. putting his grandmother’s tonic into Miles’ tea to keep the man’s spirits up. Did they poison each other? Crowley had asked lightly on hearing that. Maybe that was why they saw things.
And the precipice Aziraphale is standing on crumbles a little more.
Why did you say that, Crowley? he thinks, looking down at his hands, clasped tightly around the cup. Was... was that a warning, too? Were you trying to tell me? Or were you just amused?
And he remembers, with stunned clarity, that Crowley had been preparing almost all of their meals.
“Go on,” Crowley nudges, flicking his fingers at the cup. His voice is gentle and oddly hopeful. “Try it, let me know what you think.”
Six thousand years, Aziraphale thinks desperately. Six thousand years, and… You are a demon. What if—what if I should never have trusted you? And if I cannot trust you, then what—what—do I have left?
The angel grips the cup tighter still, willing his hand not to shake. He raises it to his lips, takes a deliberate sip.
“Thank you, my dear,” he says, lowering the cup and looking up at his own reflection in the demon’s tinted spectacles. “It is absolutely delicious.” My dear, he thinks—and the premonition of loss envelops him, as bitter as the sea that is rising around them, that beats against the tower wave after relentless wave. My dear, why did you start hiding your eyes?
The demon’s lips move, soundlessly, and Aziraphale waits. Crowley appears to be on the verge of something. A decision? A confession? What am I going to do with whatever he says? What will it do to me?
“I... uh, you like it, that’s, that’s good,” Crowley says finally—and pushes away from the table. “You plan to keep deciphering the journal for a while yet, yeah? I, I should sleep. You will wake me if you need anything?”
The angel nods, the cocoa as bitter as ashes in his mouth. “Good night, Crowley,” he says quietly—and watches Crowley go.
—
Minute by minute, hour by hour, the clock in the corner of the writing-desk slices away the time.
Outside, the wind rises until it turns into a gale. It howls beyond the walls of the lighthouse, and the angel can hear the rock itself responding to it with wails that reach the very top of the tower.
It is long past midnight when Crowley stops pacing and falls asleep on one of the bunks in the sleeping quarters, his arm thrown over his eyes. Aziraphale stands over him for a while before returning to the library. Shortly after that, the angel walks up to the light-room, steps out onto the balcony and into the rain.
He will do his circuit of the tower. He will do it alone. Like a ghost, he thinks ruefully. Walking a familiar route.
The balcony. The beacon, with its flaring lens. The library and the sleeping quarters. The kitchen, where Aziraphale makes a cup of tea to take with him to the lower levels that must be, he knows, colder still.
If there are whispers following him as he walks around the tower, he cannot hear them over the roar and hiss of the waves that crash against its base, over the thunder that rolls in the distant sky, drowning out other sounds.
Slowly, the angel walks all the way down to the store-room, to the oil-room, to the main floor. He descends to the cellar. Once there, he leaves his cup on top of one of the casks, wraps his coat closer to keep out the damp chill that creeps over the stones. There are footprints in the dust in one of the corners; he miracles extra illumination to study them, but his light keeps flashing and flaring, or dimming as if stifled by roiling storm clouds (a reminder, he thinks, that he should keep his miracles to the absolute minimum). Even despite this, however, he ascertains that the footsteps belong to him, and to Crowley, and to nobody else.
He picks up his cup and heads back upstairs, deep in thought. He gets as far as the store-room when he hears something below, a hollow sound of something falling, or—
Is that the door of the lighthouse?
He turns around.
There is a voice, he notes as he walks back down, stepping carefully and lightly lest the wooden treads give him away despite the howling of the storm. No, there are—two voices. And they sound… familiar, although the lilt of the conversation is largely drowned out by the crashing of the waves and the keening wind.
There is somebody here after all, the angel thinks—and nearly misses a step when, in a window of calm between the swells, one of the voices comes through with ringing clarity.
Crowley.
It is true, then. He shouldn’t have trusted the demon. He will never be able to trust him again.
The angel is almost on the main floor, and now, he can make out the cadence of the conversation: light and easy, full of murmurs and laughs. He descends the metal stairs as discreetly as he can; there is no break in the dialogue, so he is apparently not seen. Almost there, he thinks, almost there, I can almost see…
And then, he does see.
There, in the passage—
oddly backlit, like there’s another light source in addition to the oil-lamp burning next to the stairs—
his wings out—
is Crowley, standing close to someone else, blocking his companion from view.
They haven’t seen Aziraphale yet. In fact, Crowley is singularly focused on the other person, is practically crowding them against the wall. Aziraphale is about to call out, to confront the demon, to let Crowley know that he had caught him red-handed, to ask him what he’d been playing at, but then—
no, this isn’t real—
this is a vision, a warning, a—
The angel’s head is full of odd resonant humming, like he is standing inside a struck bell. His vision dims; he realises that he’d quite forgotten to breathe, takes a shuddering breath.
That… other person, that second person, dressed in light colours, a head full of flaxen curls—that is him. Crowley is talking to him. To Aziraphale himself, to his impossible double. And Crowley has pinned one of his double’s hands to the wall, palm to palm—
No, Aziraphale realises, no. Both his hands.
And—oh God. They are not just talking.
Aziraphale watches, quite unable to move or to speak, turned into a pillar of salt by already-flaring sympathetic desire, as Crowley kisses him. It’s a passionate, wild, unrestrained kiss, and his double’s fingers curl where they are slotted through Crowley’s own, locking their palms together. His double is responding, too, lifting his chin, kissing Crowley back with… with abandon, meeting the demon’s every challenge, smiling at Crowley when they briefly break apart—before the demon dives in to kiss Aziraphale’s neck, to bite at his ear before once again going for his lips.
He’d—never seen Crowley like this. This playful, this at ease. This passionate, this sure.
The angel does not know how long he watches Crowley and himself for; time seems to have stopped, and something wild is burning in his chest, neither burning out nor dimming despite its power.
When Crowley and the alternate-him break apart again, his double appears—no, not panicked at all. Not like Aziraphale himself had been the previous evening when he’d realised that he wants to pull Crowley to him, to kiss every single one of the demon’s freckles, the stubborn curve of his lips; that he wants to have Crowley breathless, and dazed, and his.
No, the alternate-him looks… radiant. Completely at ease. He beams at the demon, saying something too low for Aziraphale to hear, and Crowley swoops in once more; the heat of the kiss that follows is that of deserts collecting sunlight for thousands of years, of the molten cores of planets, of lighthouse beams, focused by the clearest lens.
Aziraphale watches them, quite unable to look away. When, an indeterminable time later, the pair break apart again, his double says something to Crowley—and inclines his head in the direction of the spiral stairs, as if reminding the demon that they were on the way. The double looks in Aziraphale’s direction as he does that—
and sees him.
Their gazes lock. His double’s eyes go wider, his mouth turning into a small startled ‘oh’.
A particularly heavy wave hits the lighthouse, breaking over its walls with thunderous force.
The spell of stillness is broken.
Aziraphale drops his cup.
Notes:
They WILL be fine, I guarantee it.
For music this time, we have: Pulling a Thread by Kerry Muzzey and the Chamber Orchestra of London, and lullaby by the abyss inside us. Especially that last one.
---
As of Jul 12, Chapter 5 is at uhhhhhh 14.4k and needs a LOT of editing still, so stay tuned!
Chapter 5: Knock
Chapter Text
Their fourth night at Howling Rock, Crowley gets no rest.
Tossing on the narrow bunk, floating in and out consciousness, he dreams, and his dreams are shards of a broken mirror, each jagged-edge surface reflecting a different view.
Now, he is in the lighthouse. It’s nighttime; the sea, seen from the windows of the library, is a lightless plain. Somewhere above Crowley, over the roof of the light-room, is the soft blanket of the sky—and he can feel the heavy lens turning in the lantern, can feel its heartbeat reverberate across the walls, across the floors. He can hear, too, the clicketyclack of the cogs, their teeth slipping into each other, locking, moving: tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.
Tock.
Wait, he thinks in sudden, puzzled alarm—and, spinning around in a slow circle, frowns at the empty writing-desk, at the dusty armchairs, at the faded carpet under his feet. Wait. Am I—supposed to be here alone?
And the staggering, searing sense of loss descends on him like an avalanche, like a mass of falling rock.
Then, he is on the deck of a ship, looking up. Mountains rise to starboard, dark jagged shapes against a darker sky, and he is... searching for something. A fire on the slopes? A signal, a guiding light?
Oh. A lantern on a monastery tower.
He never sees it. The inevitable impact comes, violent and splintering; all is chaos. Then, black water is closing around him, pressing in like steel bands across his chest, and his corporation shouldn’t be telling him to breathe, but somehow, impossibly, horrifyingly, it is—urging him to inhale a lungful of water; water is forcing its way into his nostrils, into his mouth, and all around him, dark shapes float down, trapped as he is, being pulled deeper and deeper into the black.
This is not how it went, is his last thought before darkness claims him. I have to reach him, this—this is not how it went.
Then, he is on a spiral staircase in the centre of a tower. There is light at the top, a familiar radiant presence; below, in the depths of the shaft, the darkness is an ink-black sea. He can hear it lapping at the metal steps, engulfing them one by one.
Run.
And Crowley runs. The staircase twists on and on, endlessly, bringing him no closer to his aim; the echoes of his own footsteps collect and reverberate until they are a deafening clamour in his ears. He runs as fast as his corporation will let him, but even as he does, the presence at the top is withdrawing, fading…
And then it’s gone.
No! he thinks vehemently—but the currents of his dream pick him up, push him towards the surface of the waking world. He fights them blindly, grasping for the lost light. No! Aziraphale! Aziraphale, Aziraphale, don’t—
Don’t leave me here alone.
He wakes to lashing rain outside, to wild and broken seas.
Oh, he thinks, balancing on the cusp of awareness. Really. He hisses through his teeth, rolls out of bed, drags a hand through his hair, glares at the morning’s selection of clothing: strewn across two bunks, spilling over to the floor. Really, how much more embarrassing does it get? I’m a bloody demon, demons do not—
He snips at the thought, roughly pulls out a few items in pure black from the pile and starts dressing, pulling on the fabric with unnecessary force.
Demons do not show weakness. Demons do not ask their hereditary enemies for—
For anything. Least of all to hold their hand.
Because that, he realises in dismay, that is what he wants right now, sleep-befuddled as he is, wants so badly that his breath seems to pool somewhere in his chest, below his constricted throat. He wants to run up to the library. To find Aziraphale in his armchair, engrossed in the journal or in a book. He wants the angel to look up, perhaps frowning at the interruption, but then somehow recognising Crowley’s burning need. To soften, putting the book away, and to rise towards Crowley. To smile at him reassuringly. To take his hands.
(He would, wouldn’t he? Crowley thinks wildly, unable to redirect his pinwheeling thoughts. He would?
Aziraphale would be solid, and real, and warm. He would look up at Crowley, bemused, the line between his eyebrows deepening—and Crowley would step closer, carefully and gently. He would bring up their joined hands, would press his mouth to the backs of Aziraphale’s fingers. Would step closer still. Would nuzzle into Aziraphale’s dandelion fluff curls, would close his eyes, would be home.)
A carnelian cufflink falls through Crowley’s fingers and to the floor, rolls away along the floorboards. He dives after it, straightens with his prey in an over-tight grip.
Bless it all. What the deuce am I thinking? ’S the dreams, ‘m still addled by them. As if Aziraphale would ever… Here is a sure way to send the angel packing.
He pauses, then, his hand suspended in the air next to his still-undone cuff.
Packing. Right. Yes. We should leave this place.
Because these dreams, persistent as they are, are without a doubt warnings. Rather incoherent ones, certainly, but warnings nevertheless. In each of them, something goes horribly wrong; each of them is a may-have-been or a may-still-be, a twisted version of his past or present or… future?
He does not know what any of this means, but he doesn’t like it one bit.
We should leave. Consider it all from the safety of the shore. Discuss, plan, prepare. Aziraphale will persist in trying to solve this mystery, but we don’t need to do it all from here.
Crowley is completely dressed and standing in the middle of the room irresolutely when the stairs behind him creak under familiar steps. Relieved, he wheels around. “Aziraphale! I was just thinking, we need—”
And then, he cuts himself off, his heart dropping like a stone when he sees Aziraphale’s face.
“Crowley,” the angel says. His voice is a whoosh of steel through the air. He has stopped at the foot of the stairs, one hand on the bannister. “Crowley, why are you doing this?”
Rain lashes against the windows. A deep, drawn-out peal of thunder rolls across the sky; something in the light-room rattles along with it. Aziraphale’s face is almost as white as the lace ruffles of his cravat, his mouth is pinched at the corners; deep shadows have settled under his eyes.
“Doing… what?” Crowley asks slowly. He feels like he has walked into a cold draft, into crosswinds as icy as a winter gale—but somewhere within him, a defiant spark of anger is growing brighter under the gusts. Aziraphale isn’t asking, not really: he’d already made the assumption. “What am I on trial for? This time?”
“Did Hell make you do this?” Aziraphale goes on. “Or was it your own idea of fun?”
“My idea of fun,” Crowley repeats, fighting the urge to hiss through his teeth. “Indulge me, angel. ’S the journal gone again? ’S that it? Six thousand years, and you won’t believe me when I tell you I didn’t do it? When I tell you there’s something here, something that neither of us has dealt with before? ’S that so difficult to believe?”
“I distinctly recall,” Aziraphale says, clipped, “how you kept telling me there is nothing here.”
“Well, yeah—before we had actual evidence!”
“Is that so? Because I had plenty of evidence from the very first day.”
Crowley blinks, backtracks, tries again. “Angel, you... you are not making sense. And you’d been acting strangely all of yesterday, too. I think—I think this place is getting to you. Has gotten to you. We really, really have to leave.”
He takes a step towards the angel as he says this, and does not miss Aziraphale’s hand tightening around the bannister.
Bless it all.
“Leave?” Aziraphale asks with deadly calm. “What do you want me to not know? What do you want me to not see? I am not leaving, Crowley. And I am most certainly not going anywhere with you.”
For a wild moment, Crowley wonders if he’d be able to overpower the angel. If he could get Aziraphale safely away from the lighthouse and to solid ground, and still have Aziraphale talk to him in the aftermath, when this—whatever this is—relinquishes its hold on the angel’s mind.
As if reading his thoughts, Aziraphale gives Crowley a hard look, shakes his head. “There is… really no point in us talking about this, is there.” The angel draws himself up—and speaks the next words in a clear, ringing tone of an incantation. “You are interfering with Heavenly purpose. I request that you leave this place and do not return.”
“Oh no,” Crowley says through gritted teeth, the tightly-wound coil within him going off, springing him into action. He sets off to pace the cramped room, feeling like one of the caged beasts at the London Zoo, spinning on his heel at the end of each short arc to retrace his steps. Something hot is trapped beneath his breastbone, burning through. “Oh no no no no. This doesn’t end here. Doesn’t end like this.” Stopping in the middle of an arc, he swerves towards the angel. “Aziraphale, don’t you see? This isn’t us. We are supposed to be working together, and instead…” Briefly too agitated for speech, he flings out his hands, pointing at the circular room, at the bunks, at the walls that seem to be coming nearer and nearer, stifling them, closing them in. “Look, I was wrong when I said there’s nothing here. Happy now? I was wrong, but angel, you are being bloody absurd. For Somebody’s sake, stop wasting time!”
“Crowley, don’t—don’t make this any harder,” Aziraphale says, a crack in his voice. “Just go. I am sure you will find a way to explain your... failure to your superiors. You were always remarkably inventive with your reports.”
“No.” It comes out rougher than Crowley intended. “You are wrong.” He takes a step towards the angel, and then another: unable to resist, as if there is a string pulling at him, wrapped around his throat, around his heart. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands. “No. We leave together.” Aziraphale, just—listen to me, please listen to me.
Aziraphale holds his ground. “I am not going with you,” he says, tilting up his chin. “You—you have no power over me. You cannot force me.”
“I don’t want to force you!” Crowley says desperately as he steps closer still, barely registering where his body is in space, the way his hands fly open in exasperation. “I want us to work together! And I want us to leave this bloody place before it’s too late!”
“Before I see something I’m not supposed to? Because I’ve already seen enough.”
Crowley groans in helpless frustration. The obstinate angel is standing right before him, so very close—and as immovable as a mountain: shoulders thrown back, eyes blazing with Heavenly fury, chin lifted defiantly, lips compressed.
He is terrifying, and beautiful, and utterly wrong. And Crowley is half a breath away from grabbing him by the waistcoat, and pulling him even closer, and—
Oh no no no.
Impossibly, Aziraphale blanches even more at whatever he sees in Crowley’s face—yet he still does not move away.
Crowley is the one to stagger back. He closes his eyes, chest heaving with something far stronger than anger and infinitely more terrifying, and counts to four. Then, he opens his eyes again. Focus, you useless—
“‘M not going, Aziraphale. Not unless you are.”
Slowly, the angel shakes his head.
I have to get him away from here, Crowley thinks, forcing his thoughts down the only track that makes any sense and isn’t filled with ringing alarms. Will he agree to leave alone? Except… if he does, I might never see him again.
I might never…
Still. He might snap out of this, given time and distance from Howling Rock. ’S better than what’s happening now.
“You could leave by yourself,” Crowley offers, all of his attention on getting to the end of the sentence. “If you tell me not to follow, I will not follow.”
But he can see, even as he says the words, how wide they fall of the mark.
“Crowley.” Aziraphale’s voice is quiet, shot through with pain. “Crowley, why did you follow me here?”
And as Crowley stands there, pinned by the question (why? well, why, you useless prat?), the angel turns away and walks resolutely back up the stairs.
—
It’s not much of a barrier, Aziraphale reflects as he lets the hatch fall closed, as he flips the massive brass hook into its eye. Not against a literal demon.
Still, he does not bother with wards. Whatever words were just said, Crowley isn’t about to attack him. Isn’t about to force his way in.
(Really? a voice much like Gabriel’s demands within him. How do you know? You didn’t believe Crowley capable of malice. You didn’t believe a literal demon capable of malice, and now—
But he does know, with certainty as immovable as a cornerstone and just as solid. And if I am wrong, if I am this wrong about Crowley… then, it doesn’t matter any more, does it?
Don’t be ridiculous. Of course it matters. You cannot afford this kind of despondence in your struggle against evil. Remember your Heavenly duty.
Duty. Right. Yes. Of course.)
Forcing himself to step away from the hatch, Aziraphale walks over to the writing-desk, lowers himself into the armchair—so mechanically that his movements might well be guided by the spinning of cogs in his joints, under his skin. His hands shake minutely as he reaches for his notebook and pen. (It’s a fault, he thinks sadly: this tremor of residual agitation. A fault in what should have been a perfect system—except, of course, it never was.
He never was.)
He lets his gaze drift towards the mass of grey cloud roiling behind the glass.
Precisely what, he asks himself, did he expect, confronting Crowley? Did he expect Crowley to confess? To apologise? To tell Aziraphale gratefully, like an enchanted prince in a fairy-tale might, that he was forced to act against his will, was bound to silence? That once Aziraphale named the compulsion Crowley was under, he broke the spell and set them both free?
Of course not. And yet—
He’d hoped for something. Otherwise, why had he even risked coming down to face the demon? After all, Aziraphale’s startling… urges, his desires—they are undoubtedly a compulsion, too, and a profoundly dangerous one. He should be staying as far from the demon as he can.
But he’d hoped for something.
And instead, they’d just argued, again. Crowley had been angry, defiant, entirely unapologetic…
And hurt, something indomitable speaks up within Aziraphale. And scared.
Which must have been a pretence. A deliberate ploy to rouse his compassion, since none of the demon’s other wiles had worked.
Oh yes? the same stubborn part of him asks. And what about that vertiginous moment of Crowley a half-step from you, swaying closer as if pulled by an invisible force—before he scrambled back, looking stricken, and breathed out, and closed his eyes behind the smoky glass of his spectacles?
Nothing. It’s nothing. He is a demon. A tempter of the first order. Aziraphale cannot trust him. What’s more, Aziraphale cannot trust himself. That kiss he saw in the night, the kiss that left him with ghostly touches all over, with the ghostly heat of a mouth over his—this was either a well-planned seduction, or a warning, or… the representation of desperate desire, conjured up by his own overwrought mind. Whichever one it was, he should be ringing all of his alarms.
And there is more, isn’t there. Yesterday, he’d accepted the cocoa. Right from Crowley’s hands, when he already thought that Crowley might be… if not quite poisoning him, then at least affecting his thoughts. Did Aziraphale… not care? Was he hoping against hope?
I cannot do things like that, he tells himself furiously. I cannot give in.
He has to fight against the despondence of losing Crowley—and against the seduction the demon had laid out. Because that’s what this is, whether or not Crowley had anything to do with yesterday’s vision. All of this: the evenings spent together, the singing, the waltz—all of it part of Crowley’s design to keep him docile, harmless, out of the way.
And he fell for it. For the oldest of the old tricks. Crowley singing to him. To him. Really, how did he not realise? “Angel, did you believe me?” the demon had asked gleefully only two days prior, overjoyed at the success of the tiniest of his practical jokes. But how many times had Crowley said this in earnest: “trust me, angel”, “believe me”?
It’s a spell. It’s a spell, and Crowley has been—has been pulling him under, manipulating him, wrapping him in layer upon layer of gossamer lies. And yet, searching within himself for outrage to match the betrayal, all Aziraphale manages to unearth is a staggering, profound sense of loss. He’d believed, hadn’t he (deep within himself, never daring to acknowledge it), that all this time, he’d been holding something precious—and it had turned out to be a dream-thing, fae gold.
All of him rises up against it. Against the hollow weight of loneliness, against the future with no Crowley in it. No matter how severely the angel tells himself that he had fallen for Crowley’s wiles, that Crowley cannot and could never have been trusted, Aziraphale’s absurd heart refuses to listen.
Crowley, it beats out. Crowley. Crowley.
Don’t do this. Do not do this.
Don’t leave me here alone.
—
Right, Crowley thinks. Right, okay. Focus. Think about what happened.
He bites the inside of his cheek, turns away from the closed hatch in the ceiling, bounds downstairs. The currents of anger are still there, hot against his skin—but so are the icy undercurrents of dread.
He’s not going to panic, he tells himself. Yes, Aziraphale had suspected him before. Yes—in the past, the angel had always believed him when Crowley said he wasn’t the one behind the Inquisition, or the French Revolution, or whatever other calamity was at hand. Yes, right now, Aziraphale insists on being mulishly obstinate and entirely unreasonable.
Still. He isn’t going to panic. He is just… going to figure out what to do. And then he’s going to do it. As simple as that. He’ll be the reasonable one.
The kitchen, dim in this weather despite its three windows, is filled with the hiss of rain and the crash of the waves. A deep chill creeps forth from the stone walls, as if the rough seas beyond are winter-cold and pulling at the feeble warmth of the room. Crowley reaches for a tin of matches and starts a fire in the stove, focusing on every movement with singular purpose, willing his hands not to shake. Then, he slouches back in his chair and stares, unblinking, at the orange tongues licking the coals. Almost without his volition, the heel of his right shoe goes tap-tap-tap against the floor.
It must be bloody cold upstairs, too, he thinks despite himself. I should keep the fire burning. ’S almost useless, that single pipe that goes through the library, but it will bring the angel a little comfort.
At that, a familiar, mocking voice within him speaks up. He’s not going to thank you for it, you know.
“Shut up,” Crowley snaps aloud. The angel shouldn’t go thanking him regardless; that’s not what they do.
Not what you did. Use your tenses properly: Aziraphale wants nothing to do with you, not any more.
Crowley does not deign to argue. It would be pointless, really: he knows this part of himself well, it’s been his constant companion over the centuries. Reminding him of who he is, of everywhere he is not welcome.
Aziraphale is an angel, the voice prods. Their lot is quick to judge. That’s why you were going to stay away from them.
“Yeah, well,” Crowley snorts, folding his arms across his chest, pushing his hands under his armpits as he slides further down in his chair.
The storm throws another brook’s-worth of water at the plate glass of the windows. In between the gusts of the wind, Crowley can hear other, quieter sounds: the gentle crackling of the fire, the incessant ticking of a clock somewhere behind his back. Darkness coils in the corners. The wavering shadows thrown by the firelight dance on the stone walls.
Crowley stares into the flames.
Right, he thinks. Yes. This is a proper mess. And Aziraphale just had to go and blame me. Six thousand bloody years, centuries of… of lending a hand, and… how are we here, exactly? How did this start?
How far back, the ever-present voice inquires with mock solicitude, would you like to go?
Not that far, no.
In that case, how about Sandham? You had no business following the angel. What possessed you to do it?
Crowley shifts in his chair.
(Aziraphale was the brightest thing in that dingy tavern, in the whole blessed town. No smoky lenses would have protected Crowley from the dazzling, spellbinding smile Aziraphale gave him as he looked up from his pocket watch; the angel’s eyes held more light than there was in the fire-lit room. “I’ll have to start on my way long before the first larks, but—my dear, we’ve got hours still.”
Wilt thou be gone? Crowley had remembered despite himself (would have never admitted to remembering). It is not yet near day. It was the nightingale, and not the lark, that pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear.
He would have followed Aziraphale to the edge of the world.)
“’T was supposed to be fun,” Crowley says defensively to the empty kitchen. A hissing coal falls through the grate in the stove; the clock ticks behind his back, a reminder of passing time.
He was drunk on it all, wasn’t he. Ale and wine, yes, but mostly Aziraphale: his brilliant presence, his radiant warmth. Just a few hours more, Crowley had thought. Just a few more before we step apart again, for who knows how long.
He’d had the presumption to think that the angel would like that, too.
…So, how did that turn out for you? the mocking voice inquires. Dream come true?
Crowley keeps sullen silence. ’S the dreams, he thinks then. Those bloody dreams, yes, they got me all riled up.
Did they, now. Why is that, d’you think?
They were nightmares, Crowley shrugs with forced nonchalance.
Except when they happened during the day.
Right.
They weren’t even about the Fall. Funny, that.
…Right.
And what were they about, exactly? Or should I say, who?
“Shut up,” Crowley mutters, rubbing the bridge of his nose.
The ticking of the clock behind him is as relentless as water dripping into the cylinder of a two-thousand-year-old clepsydra.
D’you know, the voice muses. Time is ticking away as you sit here moping, doing nothing whatsoever. The longer Aziraphale spends at the lighthouse, the less likely he is to snap out of this. Although you probably don’t need to bother. Why don’t you just give up? You were always going to lose him, weren’t you.
Not like this, Crowley thinks, biting down on his molars.
Exactly like this. He’d never trusted you. Couldn’t possibly, yeah? You are a bloody demon, the embodiment of everything that’s wrong. The best it could’ve ever been is an uneasy treaty. You knew this couldn’t last, knew that one day, you would lose him for good. Weren’t supposed to get attached. Well, welcome to the rest of your existence.
No, Crowley thinks vehemently, sitting up in his chair, scowling at the indifferent fire. No, I refuse. This is not how it ends.
No? the mocking voice speaks up wryly. You planning to do anything about it? How much time have you already wasted, talking to me?
Behind him, the clock ticks with the insistence of hoofbeats on a rocky road.
“Sshut up,” Crowley hisses in the direction of the aggravating timepiece. Shut up, I know I should be coming up with something, I can’t bloody just sit down and—
Wait.
Crowley holds himself very, very still as he brings his attention to the sounds around him: the crackling of the fire, the rain, the howling wind, the waves breaking on the fluting base of the tower and, yes, the inexorable metallic ticking of a large table-top clock.
There is no clock here. I’d moved it upstairs, to the library. And this certainly isn’t the clockwork of the lens.
There is no bloody clock here—so what. The deuce. Is ticking?
Jumping off his chair, Crowley spins around. The floor lurches under his feet, like the deck of a ship about to capsize; bile rises in his throat as unwonted sea-sickness washes over him. The space in front of him is wrong, crumpled carelessly like a note from a vexing acquaintance, torn along the creases—
And then, with another sickening twist, reality reasserts itself once more.
The ticking stops.
Oh bloody hallowed Halls of Heaven, Crowley thinks, his chest tight, his heartbeat hammering in his ears, drowning out even the ferocity of the storm. Oh, this. Is. Bad.
In one of the lightless rooms below, barely audible through the turmoil outside the tower, there is a sound like a laugh.
—
Thunder rolls in the distant sky, hidden by the dark-grey wool of the storm clouds. Rain lashes against the lantern’s roof, streaming down in rivulets over the lattice of the windows.
Aziraphale reaches over to the next prism and carefully passes a cotton cloth over it, brushing away invisible specks of dust.
Focus, he tells himself. If you are planning to stay at the lighthouse, to be of any use, focus. Stop thinking about him.
The demon had been by, not long ago. He had called to Aziraphale from the still-closed hatch to the library. Aziraphale, he’d said, his voice hoarse and urgent. Aziraphale, are you there? I swear to you, whatever is going on here is getting worse, we’ve got to work together, now is not the bloody time…
He went on to say something about twisted space, about things seeping through.
He’d sounded truly alarmed.
And even the day before, Aziraphale would have listened. Would have pulled the demon inside, sat him down in one of the armchairs; would have tried to piece together the shape of the mystery from the fragments each of them held.
Now, of course, he knows this was nothing more than a masterful performance. He knew it as Crowley spoke—yet Crowley’s voice kept pulling at the very core of him, kept resonating within the hollows of his foolish, hopeful heart. How did this happen? the angel asks himself in consternation. When did this happen? How did I manage to give my… my adversary this kind of power over me?
Oh, the indomitable part of him replies. But how could you not?
They’d met on the Wall.
(Aziraphale had wondered, many times since, whether he’d met Crowley Before. Whether there had been an angel among the multitudes whose curiosity burned as bright as Crowley’s, who smiled future-Crowley’s glittering, captivating, mischievous smile. He could remember none—and mischief, he’d remind himself, was hardly an angelic quality.)
So, they’d met on the Wall, and had gone out into the world: not quite together, but not far apart. Even then, the world had been a busy place, the humans going about inventing all kinds of things, the wheel and the concept of zero and double-entry accounting. Aziraphale had plenty to do, and plenty of news to bring back to Heaven to share with his kin. He’d run into Crowley at least every few centuries—warily, at first, but with growing curiosity. Once, early on, he’d found the demon in Sumer, badly injured; he’d tended to him, despite Crowley’s initially-feeble protests, and told himself that it was his duty to care for all living things. As the demon recovered and his power returned, Aziraphale had time to notice Crowley’s keen and eager mind, to be surprised at how much a part of the human world Crowley had become—just like him.
At the same time, the other angels—his kin—seemed to float further and further away from the tribulations of their Earthly charges. Aziraphale had tried to bridge that rift. Heaven was apt to notice wickedness and weakness first, but Aziraphale was eager to show them the rest: what the humans had to contend with, the beauty and the indignity of life in the flesh. As centuries passed, however, he was met with more and more blank stares in ethereal faces, perfectly amiable and polite, perfectly uncomprehending—and a few times, he’d caught looks that, in the human world, would have meant disgust.
It wasn’t their task, he’d admonish himself, it wasn’t his kin’s task to look at this kind of detail. It was his: to keep close to the humans, to watch over them, to shield them from the wiles of the Evil One. Heaven was looking at the big picture, at the Great Plan.
And so, he’d stopped. Had stopped bringing new recipes Upstairs, describing the latest traditions, sharing inventions that had caught the humans’ eyes. Had stopped talking about the stories humans told and what those stories meant. There was less and less reason, then, for him to visit his kin, and without meaning to, he started to postpone and forget the visits—until a century had gone by without him coming for his customary stay in Heaven, and then two.
He realised that he’d made a home on Earth.
By then, he knew that he wasn’t the only one.
Crowley was a demon, there was no doubt about that. He’d whisper in people’s ears, he’d rile people up, he’d sow chaos. His assignments were apparently a lot about choice, but given choice, humans would rather frequently use it for ill.
Yet there was something else to Crowley, too, though the demon hissed vehemently at the idea. Whether miracling coin into thin purses, or surreptitiously nudging probabilities to give those who have chosen poorly another chance, or very literally stealing from the rich to give to the poor (“’S the stealing that counts, yeah?”)—Crowley had been kind.
That, Aziraphale thinks, that was why he’d convinced himself that his mission must be to redeem Crowley. That She had planned it: a demon he could lead to Light, perhaps opening the way for—he’d barely allowed himself to consider that, so staggering was the hubris of that presumption—something momentous. If he could lead Crowley back to Her, it would mean that no being was truly unforgivable. Not even those who were supposedly Evil incarnate.
But though Crowley hovered on Aziraphale’s periphery since their first meeting, though he seemed drawn to what Aziraphale represented, through Aziraphale could imagine the demon’s skin marked with gold once again, his freckles turning into shining constellations…
…it hadn’t worked. Not even remotely: the demon would either withdraw, or scoff, or look at Aziraphale with something disconcertingly like pity when the angel so much as touched on the possibility, and Aziraphale’s tremulous hopes would wither and retreat. Crowley seemed to notice that—and would change the subject, would tell a story that made Aziraphale laugh and forget all about who they were, who either of them was—until, a while later, something else brought it into unsettling focus.
(Sometimes, Aziraphale thought that a better angel, a stronger and truer one, would have succeeded where he kept failing—but then he realised that any other angel he knew would’ve smote Crawly on sight back on the Wall, and—well. Some things didn’t bear thinking about.)
Those were the early centuries. He hadn’t thought about redeeming Crowley for at least two thousand years, having gotten… fond, he admits with a pang of keen longing, of Crowley’s exuberant and mischievous nature. Crowley was no angel, and Aziraphale could no longer believe that, were Crowley to become an angel again, he’d still be himself.
Crowley had travelled the world; from the time of the first sea-faring crafts, more often than not he seemed to be on a ship. Trade routes, mostly: Aziraphale had learned early on that, demon or not, Crowley didn’t abide war, would have nothing to do with the military unless an assignment forced him onto one of their vessels.
And about every century, in those early seafaring days, and every few decades afterwards, the demon’s ship would dock at a nearby port, and Crowley would seek out Aziraphale.
No, the angel tells himself sternly, raising the cleaning cloth to wipe at his eyes before he focuses on it, frowns, and goes for his handkerchief. No, I won’t think of this.
Not of those long-awaited meetings, not of the fierce joy that broke through all of his composure when he saw Crowley’s tentative smile. Not of the way he ached to reach out, to take the demon’s hands in his, to pull him close; to brush back his hair, bleached by the sun into burnished bronze. Because no matter how far Crowley had travelled, he came back, he always came back—
But he isn’t going to come back now.
The sea around the tower is a boiling, foaming plane, as far as the eye can see. Lens forgotten, Aziraphale steps to the plate-glass of the windows and looks out at the fury of the storm.
He won’t think of this. He won’t torture himself with—memories, with this yearning that had only gotten keener since he’d come to face his desire.
His desire.
Oh, he thinks then, a chill running over his spine.
How long, exactly, has this desire been there? The demon had always been alluring, yes, but this… This is neither infatuation nor plain lust; what he feels for Crowley is far vaster and infinitely more dangerous.
I won’t think of this, the angel tells himself with desperate resolve. I—I—I am going to light the beacon. It’s a dark day, surely there is use in the beacon being lit?
He turns away from the wall of rain, walks around the lens to the brass-framed door, pulls it open to reveal the burner. Then, forgetting to look for the tin of congreve matches, he clicks his fingers to bring forth a flame.
The miracle pulls. It pulls, and catches, and twangs; the draw on Aziraphale’s power is staggering—and the angel stumbles back, stares at his hand without comprehension, his breath coming in minute shaky gasps.
The burner in front of him is still unlit.
What, he thinks, stunned, as he looks from the burner to his trembling fingers, what in Heaven’s name was that?
—
The first thing Crowley does, after his entirely unsatisfactory attempt at talking to Aziraphale, is a circuit of the lighthouse. It’s bloody ironic, he thinks as he bounds down the stairs, bloody ironic how their roles have reversed. Aziraphale is certain that he’d found an explanation; Crowley is only certain of something being very, very wrong.
He scowls at the indifferent shadows as he strides past them, looking for—listening for—anything that should not be there.
What, he asks himself for the hundredth time, what the deuce is this?
Not harpies, that much is clear. But what had he heard, down in the lightless levels of the tower? Was it really laughter? Or was it a trick of the mind, a phantom conjured from his own expectations of something hiding in the lighthouse, toying with both of them?
He kept telling Aziraphale that there’s nothing here, over and over again. That whatever Aziraphale saw was his own accidental magic.
He could almost laugh at the irony of it all.
What Crowley himself saw, twice now, are… cracks, tears in the fabric of the world, dangerous and wrong. Everything in him rose up against their very existence; his instincts screamed that neither he nor Aziraphale, let alone any humans, should come anywhere near these aberrations. Yet he doesn’t know what caused them—or what would happen if somebody did get too close.
My dreams, he thinks then. (He’s reached the cellar—and he circles it, barely taking in his surroundings.) Those bloody dreams. I’d dreamt of cracks before I saw them, didn’t I? ‘Course, nothing’s easier than matching vague dreams to whatever has actually happened. There might be nothing…
Are you going to say, ‘nothing to it at all’? the mocking voice within him inquires.
Shut it. I might.
You’ve done enough damage, don’t you think? By not facing what your nightmares have been about?
They’ve been a bloody mess, Crowley thinks sullenly.
Have they? No common topic? No theme? No repeated images of, perhaps, staggering loss? ‘Cause you do actually know, and you have to face it.
“I have to face nothing,” Crowley hisses, kicking at the nearest crate and heading for the stairs.
They’ve been about Aziraphale. About you losing him. You kept telling the angel that there’s nothing at the lighthouse, kept telling yourself that the dreams mean nothing, all because you didn’t want to look at any of this too closely. Because the dreams had affected you far too much, and you didn’t dare ask yourself what it means that your greatest fear is losing…
“I’m getting Aziraphale out,” Crowley spits into the echoing space of the main floor, cutting through his unspooling thoughts. “I’m getting both of us out.”
You can’t run from this.
“I can and I will.”
A boat, he thinks as his gaze catches on the dinghy by the wall. That’s an option—if Aziraphale agrees to get into a bloody walnut shell in the middle of a storm. Which he won’t if he doesn’t trust me, and he doesn’t trust me. ’T would need a fair bit of power, too: calming the way for it, navigating to shore.
The demon runs up to the oil-room, his heart thudding dully in his ears.
Manifesting away. We could do that. Well, I could. ’S expensive. Might attract attention, particularly of those twats Upstairs, but bless it, I can do it for both of us. Needs even more power, though, and Aziraphale has to go along with it.
Swimming, Crowley thinks next, forcing himself to slow down, to breathe out, to stop his pacing. Thirteen miles to shore, a considerable distance. A lot of power would be needed to calm the currents, and Aziraphale still has to go along with it.
Was it just two days ago, in the middle of an apparently invincible summer, that he’d teased Aziraphale about going to swim with him? The angel had refused, as Crowley knew he would—but now, standing in the cramped room that smells of colza oil and dust, Crowley closes his eyes and sees sunlight on the insides of his eyelids.
What if, he thinks, his throat tight, what if Aziraphale had agreed?
Crowley could have kept the sea around them as calm as a mirror, if that was what Aziraphale wanted. They’d enjoy the warmth of sunlight on their bare skin, the cool water licking at it; they’d feel the salt breeze—and when they tired of the surface, they could dive into the sea, together, unseen. He imagines it now, with startling daring: green light, green shadows, Aziraphale’s curls loosening in the water to become a fluid halo around his head. Aziraphale is remarkably graceful on land, Crowley knows this, he remembers their waltz—and he would be more graceful still in the water. They wouldn’t need to breathe—and Crowley could take Aziraphale’s hand, could pull the angel deeper into the quiet, soft shadows where they would be alone in all the world, or as good as: the weight of the water protecting them, keeping them safe.
Crowley’s eyes burn, when he opens them again, and it has nothing to do with either dust or oil.
Flying, he thinks desperately, pushing his spectacles up to rub at his eyelids. But in this weather, that won’t work either, not without sustained power. And there is no saying when the weather will improve.
Up in the store-room, where he runs next, the air smells cloyingly of rotting fruit. Oh, come on, Crowley thinks, his disapproving gaze falling on a crate of early season apples. They’d seemed innocently golden-pink just an hour before, are now wrinkled and crawling with flies. Unthinkingly, Crowley clicks his fingers, intending to send the offending article away—
And staggers with the draw on his power.
The miracle doesn’t catch. The flies keep at their task. Oh, Crowley thinks, poised on the precipice of understanding. This isn’t Downstairs limiting me, this—this is a lot worse.
His very next thought is about Aziraphale. If Crowley’s own powers are unreliable—and they have been for some time, haven’t they?—then he cannot actually sustain the power needed for any of the escapes. Swearing with unrestrained sibilance, he sprints back up to the sleeping-quarters, pounds at the still-closed hatch.
“Aziraphale!”
No answer.
“Aziraphale! I promise you this is important. How well do your miracles work?”
He holds his breath until (finally, thankfully) he hears the scraping of a chair and a few reluctant steps over his head, nearing the hatchway—but the angel makes no movement to open the hatch, and when he speaks, it is in a pained, brittle voice that barely pierces the barrier between them, barely rises above the hiss of the rain and the roar of the waves.
“Oh,” Aziraphale says; the word is almost an exhale, heartbreakingly quiet. “That… is also your doing, then.”
“What? No!” Crowley exclaims, one hand on the hatch—but Aziraphale is already moving away.
Right, Crowley thinks, chilled anew. He folds down on the steps in sudden exhaustion, lets the back of his head thump against the wall. Right. So there is no escape.
—
“Brown is unwell,” Aziraphale reads in the journal. “He disappears for hours, I cannot fathom where—and once, I saw him in the middle of the main passage, speaking to the empty air as if it was Miles, berating the void for not trimming the wicks of the burner. Brown’s mind must be going, cracked under the weight of it all—and we cannot leave on account of the storm, and no ships come.”
It’s one of the last entries. The angel spends the next half-hour deciphering the entry that follows; he writes out lists of words that match S.P.’s oil-smudged scribbles and pores over them until, one by one, the pieces snap into place.
“I’d woken late yesterday,” S.P. writes, “and it was dreadfully cold, but no rain fell. I could hear Brown and Miles arguing in the kitchen. Still muddled by sleep, I’d somehow convinced myself that the last month had all been a nightmare, a terrible dream that felt startlingly real, so I creeped downstairs, thinking of tea and my grandmother’s tonic and of whether I should tell them, and God help me, there was nobody there. The voices had ceased. I’d gone back to my bunk, then, and had covered myself with the blanket, and prayed. And in a while I fell asleep, waking up in the dark I do not know how many hours later, to thunder outside.
I have not seen Brown since.”
Aziraphale closes the book.
This, he tells himself, is Crowley’s doing. This is the anguish the demon had caused. Toying with the humans, having fun at their expense. Even if this is an assignment, he must have done it with relish.
This is proof of Crowley’s malice.
The indomitable part of Aziraphale listens, considers, is unconvinced.
What else? Aziraphale demands of it fiercely. What else is proof enough? He’d followed me, he’d been trying to convince me to abandon my work, he’d been a deliberate distraction. He’d toyed with me, too, and you won’t let me accept that?
He remembers the night. Remembers stumbling back to the library when the startling vision (the warning, the temptation) had faded, leaving him sweating and dizzy and awash with helpless desire. He remembers the rain lashing against the windows, the gale rattling the wooden frames, the waves crashing and roaring against the fluting base of the tower as the whole structure rang, reverberating with the sound. He remembers seeing Crowley, the real Crowley, still asleep, or pretending to be, in his bunk; Aziraphale tore his gaze away from the demon’s face forcibly, afraid lest he should see Crowley’s dark eyelashes tremble, his deep amber eyes open in a triumphant, amused look.
He’d reached the library. He’d sunk into the wing-backed armchair, seeking respite in its familiarity—and had pressed a hand to his mouth, screwing his eyes tightly shut, repeating a litany of no no no no, don’t think about it, don’t think about it, this wasn’t real, none of this was real—
but then he was thinking about it, of course he was, and his skin sang with the touches it had never felt, and Crowley’s name was on his lips, despite everything, despite everything, despite it all.
And this, he thinks, surfacing from the memory, his breathing ragged with desire and despair, this is the most terrifying thing of all.
His desire. The desire that had been there for… for thousands of years, that he’d managed to ignore for just as long.
Or rather... No, he has to face it. It’s not about the desire itself, is it? Simple lust would hardly have left him this shaken. The really terrifying thing is what that desire points to, the enormity of what he feels for Crowley.
I have been getting more and more scared, haven’t I, the longer I spent here with Crowley. The closer we stepped together. I had wanted this, and I couldn’t even face what it was that I wanted.
But none of this matters now.
Leaving the journal on the writing-desk—he’d spent hours hunched over it, that was hardly kind to his human corporation—the angel gets up and meanders slowly, aimlessly around the room. He stops by each of the windows, by the tall mirror, by the shelf. A few of the books on it are set with their spines to the wall; once, he would have thought it the height of Crowley’s petty defiance, and now, incongruously, embarrassingly, he has to wipe at his eyes.
Had he considered, before, spending his immortal life without Crowley? Losing the demon long before the final days, long before the skies turned red and the rivers ran with blood and the stars fell from the sky? Sometimes, in the long grey hours before dawn; there were ways for a demon to be killed, cut out of the world for good—for Good—as if he’d never existed.
But he’d never thought of this. Never of losing Crowley like this.
It’s like a light has gone out. A whole sun, perhaps, or a nebula; a galaxy, or more still.
(More still, he admits to himself quietly. So much more.
His whole sky has gone dark.)
Crowley, he thinks, and the name is half-prayer. Crowley, how are we here?
—
Crowley is sitting on an empty cask in the cellar, his back to the stone wall, an oil-lamp burning on the hook to his right. Tension is coiled within him—and bright hot anger, too, searching for release. He’d restrained his corporation from pacing; it pulls against the restraint.
Tears, he thinks. Tears in the fabric of the world. Where do they come from? Is something making them? Or is something getting through them? Are they the result of a mindless force, some kind of... stress fractures, random and uncontrolled?
It’s tempting to see an intelligence behind this. Humans would do that, too: inadvertently hold up a mirror, see their own intelligence reflected in it, say “gotcha” and go chasing nonexistent ghosts. That Crowley thinks something is taunting him doesn’t mean it’s real. That he thinks there’s a pattern, with more happenings when he and Aziraphale are further apart, doesn’t mean the pattern is there.
But it might be.
So here he is, as far from the angel as he can be (and fervently hoping for Aziraphale’s safety), as far down in the lightless levels of the tower as he can go. Waiting. Tapping his heel impatiently against the wood of the cask.
Come, he thinks. Show yourself. Or would you like me to wait alone in the dark?
Time passes, with the only sounds being the beating of the waves against the tower, the hiss of rain outside, thunder rumbling softly across the sky.
How’s the ghost-hunting going? his mocking voice chimes in after a while, amused. Caught anything yet?
Will you bloody shut up? Crowley thinks vehemently in response.
Mm, you might want to work on anger management. ’S not me, you know. I’m your voice of reason. ’S you, bungling all of this up. How long are you planning to sit here, then? Avoiding talking to the angel?
What am I going to talk to him about? Crowley hisses.
Oh, let’s see. About why you’d been an absolute hissing and biting nightmare for the last four days? About why you kept insisting you were fine when he could see, clearly, that you were not? He knew you were lying. Don’t you think he might have come to a few wrong conclusions?
’S the dreams, Crowley thinks sullenly.
Yeah. ’S the dreams.
So what, I’m just going to—to go up to the library and say, ‘hey, Aziraphale, so I’ve been dreaming about you for six thousand years, but never like this’?
Well, have you got much to lose?
“It wouldn’t bloody help,” Crowley hisses aloud. “‘M a demon, he wants nothing to do with me, ’s not as simple as…”
Above, in the passage leading out of the tower, something takes a step.
Crowley freezes—and listens, his body a tense curve, ready to spring.
Yes. Oh yes, there is something there. Steps are followed by scraping, as if someone is moving the broken crate or the snapped pole out of the way, dragging them along the stones. In one fluid movement, Crowley is off the cask and running up the stairs. The anger within him unspools, floods his senses—and he is on the main floor in mere seconds, whirling around to see where the thing (there must have been a thing!) had gone.
There is nothing there. An oil-lamp is still burning by the spiral stairs, illuminating the scene. The flame jumps and flutters in the currents of cold damp air.
And then, at the very end of the passageway, there at the door closed fast against the storm, something knocks.
Oh no you don’t, Crowley thinks incredulously, stepping towards the sound.
The knock comes again.
It’s coming from outside the door of the lighthouse. It’s—coming from bloody outside.
Crowley’s anger ignites in a blinding flash, like kindling in a tinderbox—and then he is sprinting through the passageway and to the door.
The waves are coming in from the north-west. The door faces south. There will be something on the ledge, waiting for me.
He is at the door and pushing it open before his brain catches up with his hands.
The air is suffused with moisture, sea-spray and rain. Crowley is instantly drenched as he steps outside. There is nobody—nothing—on the ledge, nothing in the sea that’s almost level with the top of the ladder, but—
Above him, haloed in raindrops, a shadow streaks upwards into the sky.
His wings unfurl before he knows it, propel him upwards—but the sudden draw on the dregs of his power leaves him light-headed and dizzy, and his next wingbeat is haphazard, too weak. Above him, the shadow—most certainly winged, too, though the rain in his eyes is half-blinding—nears the top of the lighthouse just as a powerful gust of wind buffets into Crowley, taking him off course, away from the stone wall. He beats his wings with as much strength as he can muster, course-corrects through the spray of a billow coming in from the north-west, barely dives out of another buffet of wind that threatens to throw him into the wall—and then a wave of nausea and wrongness hits him, causing him to stagger against the gale. He takes himself upwards with lopsided, frenzied wingbeats, climbs higher and higher until he finally reaches the light-room balcony, scrabbles at the railing, drags himself over it, collapses ungracefully onto the floor.
The gale is less fierce here, as is the rain. The air itself seems lighter. Crowley rolls to his feet, his wings returning to their hidden plane with a relieved whoosh, and whips around, looking for—whatever it was he was chasing.
He freezes mid-circle.
Cracks.
Cracks are going across the window-panes of the light-room. A few pieces of the plate-glass are missing altogether; rainwater is running down the latticework, into the beacon itself.
Crowley’s heart does a sickening flip in his chest—and then he is running along the balcony, through the creaking door, inside.
The lens is cracked, too, several of the prisms missing, its brass track dull. How long had it not moved? Weeks, at least. Months? There’s dust in the ridges of the prisms, on the warped floorboards strewn with damp sheets of paper, dropped once and never picked up.
Aziraphale, Crowley thinks, his heart a fog-bell in his chest. He spins towards the stairs, runs downwards.
Dust.
It is everywhere; the whole place seems to be crumbling, receding to an earlier, undefined state of existence. To dust, Crowley thinks dizzily, you shall return. He runs through the library—and the dust is a soft carpet under his feet. It gathers in the corners, smothers the writing-desk; the armchairs may well be upholstered in grey velvet, dull and washed-out.
It’s like one of his dreams.
“Aziraphale?” the demon calls hoarsely at the top of the stairs, at the open hatch—and, licking his lips, tries again, louder. “Aziraphale!”
No response. Some of the wooden treads have rotted, and as he runs down to the sleeping-quarters, his heel gets caught in a crack, nearly sending him sprawling. Enchanted castles be blessed, this place has gone to ruin: the blankets on the bunks in the sleeping-quarters are grey and limp, a window-pane is missing, the wood of the bed-posts is cracked. Crowley spins around the space, dizzy with the knowledge that wherever he is, this is wrong this is wrong this is wrong, Aziraphale couldn’t have done it, his magic wasn’t working properly either—and then, sickness rises within him again; he staggers on one of his circles, his right foot barely missing the open hatchway, oh, wouldn’t that be a fine way to go—
He ricochets down the steps and into the kitchen, holding on to the wall all the while, and he is about to really be sick there at the bottom of the stairs, in an entirely embarrassing all-too-human way, when the nausea recedes abruptly. Straightening, Crowley takes a shuddering breath, leans against the wall to keep upright.
Thunder rolls overhead, seeming to shake the very foundations of Howling Rock.
Aziraphale. If the angel isn’t here, then where—
There is no dust in the kitchen, Crowley’s mind nudges him urgently. Look. No dust.
He pushes away from the wall, frowning as he takes in the scene.
No dust. No dust, and a soft glow of embers in the stove, and a newspaper on one of the chairs, just where he himself had left it the night before. Slowly, the demon looks up towards the sleeping-quarters. Is it… over? Is he… back?
Crowley runs up the steps, three at a time. No dust in the sleeping-quarters either, not any more, and the mess of his own clothing is right there once again, and—
And the hatch to the library is closed, just as it has been for the whole day.
Heart pounding, throat dry, step by step by tentative step, Crowley climbs up to the closed hatch, extends his hand, says a quiet, desperate please that has the weight and burn of a prayer—
and knocks.
—
At first, Aziraphale doesn’t hear the knock through the rain lashing against the glass of the windows. When he does, he keeps his eyes on his book. This is either another haunting, which he would do well to ignore, or Crowley himself—and the same goes for Crowley.
“Aziraphale?” Crowley’s voice is muffled by the barrier between them, but the tension in it is unmistakable. “Aziraphale, are you in there? You don’t have to talk to me, just—tell me this, yeah? Tell me you’re in there. Tell me you are safe.”
There it is again, Aziraphale thinks in consternation. There it is, Crowley’s voice wrapping around his heart, tugging at it insistently, drawing him in. Despite everything, Aziraphale is near-helpless against its power. (The angel presses a hand to his mouth, closes his eyes against the fresh sting of tears.)
“Angel, please. If you are there, for the love of Someone, say it.” Crowley’s voice shakes on the last two words.
Crowley is very skilled at this, Aziraphale thinks, eyes still tightly shut. But… I am not actually gaining anything by not answering him, am I? He should know that I haven’t left, that evil does not have free reign.
“I am here,” he says, in a voice as steady as he can make it. “And now, please leave me alone.”
Even through the wails of the wind, he hears a long, shuddering exhale.
Crowley is—better than just skilled at this. He is brilliant. Look, you are barely breathing.
His hands clasped in front of him on the writing-desk, the signet ring cutting into his finger, Aziraphale waits for Crowley to release his hold on him, to head downstairs.
The demon does not. Instead, after a half-minute’s hesitation, he speaks again.
“Aziraphale. ’S just that… Things are really getting worse. I know you don’t want to leave, but… hear me out, yeah? I’ve already told you that I think there are tears here, tears through the fabric of the world. I think something is… making them, or perhaps slipping through them, toying with us as it did with the humans. I don’t know if I saw it just now, but I’d just chased something outside, and I think… I think I went through one of those tears.”
Aziraphale listens, despite himself. Crowley is just looking for another way to make me believe him, to reel me in, he tells himself stubbornly. No matter how rough his voice is, how earnest he sounds.
“I chased whatever it was, and I ended up at the top of the lighthouse. Which looked like this lighthouse, but I don’t think it was. That one was abandoned, and the lens was cracked, and there was dust everywhere, and you”—Crowley’s voice breaks, and Aziraphale has to bite his lip to stop himself from calling out in the pause that follows—“and you were gone.”
He is a remarkable storyteller, Aziraphale tells himself. Always has been.
“I… panicked. I ran downstairs, through the library, through the sleeping-quarters, into the kitchen. It was in the kitchen that I came to. It looked—normal, the fire and everything. So I’d gone back upstairs, and found the hatch closed again, and… found you, and you are fine. But this won’t be the last of the tears. More of them have been opening up, ’s like… the whole place is getting less stable, and I don’t know why. We’ve got to figure this out together, angel, see?”
Crowley told Aziraphale that he wouldn’t have to talk to him—but the silence that follows is as expectant, as hopeful as an outstretched hand.
And it’s a ploy.
And Aziraphale has to resist this pull.
“No, Crowley, I don’t see,” the angel forces himself to say. “This is quite enough. Please, just—go.”
—
Crowley leans against the stone wall—and slides down until he is sitting on one of the narrow treads. He shivers, only then realising that his clothes are soaked through.
He can’t leave. He can’t leave because one, he just can’t, and two, that might place Aziraphale in even more danger, and three, he would never see the angel again.
But that last one is a given, isn’t it? I’ve lost him already. Because I never had him. Fair or not, it’s just the same as with… with when I Fell. A misstep exposing the depth of my presumption. A demon, friends with an angel. Hah, Crowley thinks bitterly, raking both hands through his hair. What a cosmic joke.
(Black water closing around him, pressing in like steel bands across his chest. Aziraphale, Aziraphale, don’t—)
Going down, he thinks, closing his eyes. Going down. All souls lost.
Time passes quietly as he sits like this, his hands in his hair, eyes closed. No clock ticks, no pendulum moves to and fro, no sounds come from the library upstairs. Wouldn’t want anyone from Hell to see me like this, Crowley thinks hazily. Here’s a sure way to make myself a mark.
Shadows aside, however, for the moment there is nobody in the lighthouse to see him in this attitude—or to care. In time, he straightens, drops his hands in his lap, lets the back of his head hit the stone wall.
Right, he thinks, opening his eyes. So Aziraphale doesn’t believe me. Can I still protect him if he does not?
Crowley has no idea what the cracks he saw actually are, and where they lead to. No idea of what happens when the cracks close. He went through one, and came back—but did the keepers go through them, too, to disappear forever? Was something waiting for them on the other side? An outright attack may or may not mean simple discorporation for him and Aziraphale—but for all Crowley knows, these tears lead to phantom worlds, worlds that wink out of existence the moment the tear disappears, returning their matter to pre-Creation nothingness. Aziraphale could walk—or be lured—into one of those.
And neither of them can use their powers to escape this blessed place and have time to think.
The demon bites the inside of his cheek as lightning flashes outside, briefly flooding the room with sharp white-blue light. Thunder follows.
Would… would Aziraphale be able to contact Heaven, if he had to? To ask them for assistance, even an extraction? Would he have enough control over his power to do that? Of course, obstinate as he is, right now he wouldn’t want to. But what if he were actually threatened? By a demon? Forced to call for reinforcements? There’s a convenient demon at hand, isn’t there, one that Aziraphale already believes to be behind the whole thing.
Crowley does not know whether the sound bubbling up from his chest is a laugh, or a sob. How about discorporation, then? he thinks wildly. Does Aziraphale still go into the safety of Heaven if he gets discorporated here? If I do it? Compared to everything else that’s going on, is discorporation the best-known quantity?
…What the actual Hell are you thinking, his self-proclaimed voice of reason asks him sharply.
Crowley drops his face into his hands, stifling the ragged sound. This is why, he thinks, eyes tightly shut against the tell-tale saltwater sting, this is why Aziraphale will never talk to me again, and will be right not to.
Oh, for Somebody’s sake. Is this really the road you want to go down? Wallowing in self-pity? You’d walk into any number of aberrations rather than hurt Aziraphale.
Like walking into them would help, Crowley thinks.
No, yeah, it wouldn’t. Y’know what might, though? Bloody telling him. Bloody telling the angel everything, for once. Not hiding. Not running.
You have to tell him.
Another wave breaks over Howling Rock, with the noise of a siege engine if not its power. Crowley is still for a few minutes more, assailed by emotions he is refusing to name. Then, the demon exhales through his palms, takes his hands away, looks up towards the hatch.
Bless it. I can’t go on like this. Yeah. Yeah, I… do.
—
“Aziraphale?”
The call finds Aziraphale in the armchair, clinging helplessly to the cold comfort of its half-embrace—and on hearing it, the angel closes his eyes. Is this going to be the last time I hear Crowley’s voice? Or will I still run into him sometimes, after this is over, only to be the target of his mockery?
“I—think you are still there,” Crowley goes on. “I hope you are. You don’t have to answer, or to talk to me. Only… There is a thing I haven’t told you. I should have, I know. I was just… too stubborn, at the beginning, and I didn’t want to think it was important. But it was.”
Crowley’s voice is… off, somehow—and at first, Aziraphale does not understand why. Oh, he thinks then, startled. There is no anger in it. No challenge, either, and not a trace of mockery. For the first time in almost as long as Aziraphale remembers, Crowley simply sounds—resigned?
“D’you remember that abbey in the mountains, by the sea? Back in… what was it, the fifteen hundreds? You’d spent a while cooped up there. That was the one where they lit a lantern outside one of the towers to guide sailors home.”
I do remember, Aziraphale thinks, eyes still closed. I remember you finding me there, asking for me at the gate.
I’d missed you so.
I miss you now, too, miss you terribly, even knowing that I have simply been deluding myself about... well, everything.
“You’d remember, I think. I found you, yeah? Fresh off my ship. And we went to the village, and ended up at that tavern. They were giving us glances, the people there, ‘specially by late evening—well, you hadn’t changed out of your habit, told you you should. You’d missed the Compline and the Matins, had barely made it back for Terce, and—that was fun, wasn’t it? We had fun. ’T was a good evening. I had a really nasty assignment in those parts, but seeing you… ’t made it bearable, yeah?”
Crowley pauses, evidently collecting his thoughts. It takes him clear effort to go on; when he does, his voice is raw.
“So I… I’ve been dreaming of this. Ever since we came to the lighthouse. Or, well—not quite of this, and not only of this: I’ve been dreaming of things going wrong. In this dream, it’s that I can never reach you. That there are wreckers on the shore, and they lure the ship onto the rocks; that I have no power to do anything about it, and we all go down with the ship. And there were other dreams, too, all twisted. Alexandria, back when I visited you at the Library—‘cept in the dream, you weren’t there. You were never there, that’s the thing. Even when I’d dream of this lighthouse, I’d be here alone. ‘Course, I didn’t think, at first, that all these dreams were about you. Sometimes, I was simply trying to reach… light. Talk about hackneyed images.” Crowley laughs, embarrassed and self-deprecating. Something twists in Aziraphale’s chest; the angel curls his fingers into the armrests of his chair, digs his nails into the carved wood.
“The first night at the lighthouse is when I had the first of those dreams. I’d woken, and it had lodged itself under my skin. I didn’t want to think about why, so instead I—well, you saw me. I got my hackles raised. Raised at you. And ‘m sorry, that was the opposite of what I should have done. I should’ve told you. I know it’s too late now, but I owe you the full story, yeah?”
Crowley is determined to tell it—and as the demon speaks, Aziraphale finds himself enthralled. Almost in the way he’d expected to be, except… Well. What Crowley says sounds right. Startlingly right—and though one part of Aziraphale is berating him for once again falling for the demon’s wiles, another part, the indomitable one, quietly offers up memories of that first morning. Did you sleep well, Aziraphale had asked—and Crowley had gone as taut as a bowstring.
Listen to him, the indomitable part of Aziraphale says. Not to your own fear, not to your own doubt. Listen to Crowley.
He does. At some point, only half-aware of it, he gets out of his armchair and drifts slowly, silently across the floor, sits down with his back to the wall a few steps from the still-closed hatchway. Crowley’s voice is closer like this, easier to hear through the hiss and crash of the storm.
Crowley tells him more still. The demon recollects the fragments of his unsettling dreams, and it’s just like he’d said at the outset: there’s a theme there, a heart-wrenching motif of loss. Of reaching and reaching and reaching, and never grasping.
Like what’s been happening today, with him trying to get through to me. Of course, Aziraphale amends hurriedly, he must have been—inspired by exactly that in constructing this story, this whole thing must be a ploy…
You’ve known him for six thousand years, the indomitable part of him says in tired outrage. Has he ever done anything like this?
But—the journal. The black-winged figure the keepers saw. That… vision. The shadow, Crowley’s laugh, Crowley’s voice, all the hauntings. And the way Crowley was trying to distract me from it all, to—
To seduce you? Is that what you are thinking?
Well, y-yes, I…
Do you really think he tried? Six thousand years in, do you really think this is what he was attempting to do?
Aziraphale pushes the thought away, clasps his hands together to the point of pain, closes his eyes again as he listens to Crowley’s voice from the other side of the thin partition. Imagines the demon sitting there, just a few feet away.
Crowley had made no attempts to open the hatch. Aziraphale had marked a boundary, and Crowley hadn’t tried to cross it. And if… if he is telling the truth, then all the despair in his voice is real, and he still—
Aziraphale bites his lip almost to the point of drawing blood, keeps his eyes tightly shut.
Crowley had nightmares during the day, too. He says as much, and Aziraphale’s memory confirms it: he woke the demon from a nightmare on their second day at the lighthouse. He remembers Crowley’s thin shoulder under his palm, the sheen of sweat on the demon’s temples. He remembers Crowley looking at him, wide-eyed and panicked—and then stilling, breathing out, relaxing under his touch.
That happened. That was real. Aziraphale had thought that Crowley must be dreaming of his Fall, but… he wasn’t, was he? Because if he’s saying the truth, he’d been dreaming of—
Oh.
“I don’t know what it is about miracles,” Crowley says in the meantime. His voice is tight, like he is trying to keep emotion out of it, to tell Aziraphale the bare facts, things that might be of use. “I thought it was Hell, at first. They limit us sometimes so we wouldn’t get too comfortable. But it wasn’t. The miracles… I think they pull power faster than they should, and it replenishes far slower. I kept falling asleep from exhaustion. My corporation’s probably used to sleep helping with it, so it’d just do its thing. And bless it, I should’ve realised it earlier. I just. I don’t know that I was thinking straight by that point. Am certainly not thinking straight now.” Crowley exhales—and once again laughs in familiar self-deprecation.
Aziraphale’s chest aches. His throat is so tight that he doesn’t think he could speak.
“Anyway,” Crowley says. “There were more dreams, afterwards, where I’d be looking for you. Looking and never finding and… you get the idea. And the thing is, Aziraphale, I… I always knew I’d lose you, one day. When you take a good close look at… at what I am. You know how you’d sometimes visit Heaven and come back so quiet, and then just withdraw and not want to talk to me? I’d thought, at first, that Heaven was… that they were—well, that’s on me, that’s the kind of thing Hell would do—that they were punishing you for something. Hurting you. D’you remember how I’d seek you out? I thought I could help you. Bloody stupid of me, I know. When had a demon ever helped anyone, let alone an angel of the Lord? And you’d—you’d tell me you have things to get on with, and—
Anyway. Sorry. ’M getting distracted. I promise you there is a point to this.”
When had a demon ever helped anyone, Aziraphale repeats incredulously. Crowley, you—you’d saved people from the Flood. Said later they were the wicked ones, of course you did, but—
“Right,” Crowley goes on, oblivious to Aziraphale’s inner turmoil. “Losing you. I think it comes down to that. That was the possibility my dreams kept suggesting, and I didn’t want to face it. So I kept denying there was anything to them. Past it being in any way reasonable, which is why we are here now. I… angel, ’m sorry. I know I kept looking for explanations: for that howl you heard, for the bloody cup playing hide-and-seek. Doubting anything you told me. Y’know, before I followed that thing outside, I had a smaller… haunting, let’s call it that. I could hear a clock ticking behind my back, and it was driving me out of my mind, reminding me how little time we have to figure this out before something irreparable happens. ‘Cept there was no clock. I’d moved it myself, hadn’t I. Had teased you about it, too. And then I imagined what I’d have told you if you were the one to hear it. How it’d sound like I’m dismissing what you say. And ’m sorry. I think I was just… afraid.”
Crowley stumbles over the last word—and then recovers, marches resolutely forward. “Too afraid to think about it clearly. To really let myself look closely at these dreams, to admit that they might mean something. I couldn’t—I didn’t want to think about losing you.”
You were afraid, Aziraphale thinks, stunned by the simple truth of it. His hands twist on themselves, his heart picks up pace. He opens his eyes and stares, unseeing, into the dim air of the room. You were afraid. You were afraid of losing me, and I was afraid of—
“Not supposed to have courage, ‘course. Y’know. Demons. ’S not for our kind. But—I could’ve done more. Should have. For you. I should have bloody started one of those dream-journals, should have pored over the symbolism of every object, should’ve bored you stiff with the minutiae if that meant—if that meant I could protect you.”
Aziraphale shakes his head, incredulous at himself now. This… this makes so much more sense than the six thousand years of deception he’d been imagining. Just how absurd and self-important was it to suppose himself Crowley’s quarry for all that time? If Crowley wanted to seduce him, the demon could have done it thousands of years ago, to applause from all of Downstairs, to commendations and a corner office. And after all of their common history, how did Aziraphale even get to thinking that Crowley would be gloating over this smallest of victories, a haunted lighthouse set up by Hell? Next to sieges, and Crusades, and wars, and cities burning, how is Crowley going all-out on an assignment like this in any way plausible?
(Losing you, Crowley had said just now, his voice breaking on the words.
And Aziraphale cannot, for the life of him, look at that head-on.)
You were afraid, he thinks again. You were afraid, and… you are telling me this despite being afraid still.
“Anyway,” Crowley says, marginally more in control of his voice, still as brittle and tight as if held together by hastily wrought wire. “I hope to Somebody that you’re listening. That I’m not too late in—trying to keep you safe. I think all of these dreams, mixed up as they are, are alarms. And you probably believe that I set up the hauntings, but Aziraphale, I swear to you I did not. So just. Please. Do not walk into any of those tears. ’S far too dangerous, I still have no idea what might—”
The demon pauses—and then speaks with rising urgency. “Oh. Oh, bloody… I don’t even know if you can see them. They’re like… getting sea-sick, yeah? I think that’s how it works for me. Bizarre given my history with ships, but there you have it. So if you notice anything like that, for Somebody’s sake, stay away.”
Aziraphale nods mutely, biting his lip, no longer quite aware of his surroundings. A change is taking place within him, as if a kaleidoscope has been shaken and the beads, reflected in the mirrored surfaces, slot into their places one by one, forming a picture that is entirely consistent—and entirely new.
The naked, pained earnestness of Crowley’s voice. Of course the demon isn’t lying, of course he isn’t behind any of what happened, but Aziraphale had been so quick to suspect him because—
Because I was terrified of how drawn I was to him. I didn’t want to admit what I was feeling, not even to myself, and so I... did the easy thing. I blamed him. For that, and for everything else.
And Crowley... even now, after everything, Crowley is trying to protect him. To keep him safe. Because Crowley cares. Despite the accusations Aziraphale threw at him, despite the angel’s harsh words, despite his mistrust, Crowley cares.
Because this is who Crowley is. Who he has been all along.
Aziraphale presses his fist to his mouth, screws his eyes tightly shut. My God, he thinks, my God, what have I done?
I am in love with him.
I am in love with Crowley.
And I have just—
“Well,” Crowley concludes, and he is almost managing to sound unaffected, though his voice is much too hoarse. “That’s… all of it, I think. I’ll… I’ll go now. Not leaving the lighthouse, I haven’t figured out how to do it anyway, but just… I won’t bother you, angel. Be safe, yeah?”
And with that, Crowley starts walking down the steps.
No! Aziraphale wants to shout, coming to his senses all in a rush, opening his eyes—but he cannot speak through his constricted throat. He is not ready, not ready to face Crowley, but he cannot let the demon walk away, cannot bear to be separated from him for another moment; he scrabbles at the lock, throws the hatch open, and then he is running down the stairs. There is water on the steps, he thinks in puzzled consternation, holding on to the wall for balance, why on Earth is there—
Oh.
Crowley, who’d already reached the middle of the sleeping-quarters, is turning to face him. The demon is soaking wet. Water is dripping from the hem of his jacket, weighing down his tangled hair; the unruly curl over his eyebrow is plastered flat against pale skin. The demon hurries to wipe his cheek with one hand, pushes his spectacles up.
“Aziraphale?” he says softly, with all the disbelief reserved for talking to improbable ghosts. His eyebrows slant upwards; he takes an uncertain step towards the angel.
“Oh, Crowley,” Aziraphale manages to choke out through a throat that barely feels his own. “I’m so, so sorry, my dear, I—”
The angel doesn’t have time to finish his sentence before Crowley is upon him and pulling him into a desperate, waterlogged, off-kilter embrace.
Notes:
“Don’t leave me here alone” is, of course, a reference to Neil Gaiman’s sonnet.
The music for this chapter is:
Silent Flight, Creeping Dawn by MONO
Find Our Way Home by Message to Bears
And by the end of the chapter, we are definitely going towards, though have not quite reached, Every Picture Tells a Story by Kerry Muzzey and the Chamber Orchestra of London.
---
UPD: As of Sep 5, I am at 9k, some of those k very much in need of editing, and am approaching the chapter finale. So close! (But also a few more k to go.)
UPD 2: As of Sep 17, I am at uhhhhh 10k because this is going to be my most-rewritten chapter. Still, getting there!
And in the meantime, have you read The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley? If history/alternate history, haunted lighthouses, tense plots, and a heart-wrenching romance sound like your kind of a thing, please consider it. It’s brilliant, I’ve read it four times in a single week and will probably read it again, it's not for everyone but BLOODY HELL IS IT GOOD.
UPD 3: I... think this will be a double-length chapter? 15k as of Oct 20, plus 1k of still-unexpanded drafts. Also, definitely not happening before Halloween (darn).
UPD 4: Oh. OH. This is two chapters. Well. Here we go.
Chapter 6: Dusk
Notes:
So it turns out that what was supposed to be Chapter 6 is, in fact, two chapters. Here is the first of them 🤍🤍🤍
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Thunder rolls heavily through the sky above the tower, drowning out other sounds. The rain seems to grow more vehement, lashing angrily at the glass of the windows.
Aziraphale—stunned, bewildered, sharply aware of the depth of his misjudgement, of the devastation it has wrought—is standing in the middle of the sleeping quarters, and Crowley is in his arms.
Crowley is in his arms. He is not a traitor, not an incubus, not anything that Aziraphale had been imagining these past two days. He is just… himself, and he is trembling, actually trembling as Aziraphale pulls him closer: his left arm around Crowley’s thin shoulders, his right hand in the demon’s sea- and rain-soaked hair. Heavens above, Aziraphale thinks, chilled to his core by the implications of everything that happened. Heavens above, what have I done?
“Crowley,” he whispers. “Crowley, Crowley.”
The demon laughs at his ear—a shaky, incredulous sound. “‘Ziraphale. You are... This is you. Actually you. You are back.”
“Crowley, I’m sorry. I am—so sorry. Oh, I’ve made such a terrible mistake.”
“You are here,” Crowley repeats. For all of his exhaustion, the demon is holding on to Aziraphale with startling strength, his breath hot and ragged at the angel’s ear; Aziraphale shivers with it. I’m in love with you, he thinks dizzily. I’m in love with you, I have been for… centuries, for millennia—but my dear one, how much have I hurt you?
Because he did hurt Crowley, dreadfully, all while the demon had been trying to warn him of real danger. All while Crowley kept reaching, and reaching, and reaching—only to see Aziraphale step further and further away, led by his fear.
And despite this, Crowley hadn’t given up. Had tried until he got through the layers of Aziraphale’s Heavenly armour, his suspicion, his doubt. Had shown staggering vulnerability: on purpose, not even knowing that it would help, but... hoping?
He held on to hope, didn’t he, when Aziraphale had lost all vestiges of his.
A demon, blindingly brave. An angel, unforgivably faint-hearted.
The frame of Crowley’s spectacles is jutting sharply into Aziraphale’s cheek; water is seeping from his jacket into Aziraphale’s frock-coat. That’s right, he’d been outside, Aziraphale remembers with renewed horror, he’d chased something in the storm—through that gale, within reach of those monstrous waves. Good Lord, he could have been—
“Oh, my dear,” he whispers against the shell of the demon’s ear, tasting the bitterness of his own tears. He pulls Crowley closer still; the demon shivers in turn, says something that gets buried in the crook of Aziraphale’s neck: a bitten-off, stifled sound, the notes of the angel’s name.
I love you, Aziraphale does not say. He cannot: not right now, not after what he had done. Crowley is exhausted, overwhelmed, and Aziraphale has no right to impose this on him, too, no right to cause him any more alarm.
Lightning rends the dimness of the room, and then the gong of thunder strikes above them, the glass across the lighthouse responding with a tremulous note. Crowley starts with the sound—and steps back from the angel unsteadily, as if waking from a dream. Looks down, at the water stains soaking Aziraphale’s cravat and spreading over the angel’s frock-coat. Runs a nervous hand through his hair. “I—uh—‘m sorry, angel, I’ve gotten you all wet, I shouldn’t have—”
“Nonsense,” Aziraphale says determinedly. “And I won’t have you just stand there and get cold. Come back here this instant.” He steps towards the demon, reaching for him again—and Crowley swallows, gives him a small crooked smile, touches a hand to his spectacles, and goes.
It feels right. It feels right, and welcome, and wonderful, to have Crowley in his arms. It feels like relief, like the first breath of wind in the sails of a becalmed ship—but Aziraphale has to call on all of his resolve to not kiss the demon’s damp hair, his temples, his brow. He will do none of this, he tells himself sternly: Crowley is not thinking straight, wouldn’t be able to tell him if he crossed a line. He cannot possibly take advantage of the demon’s state.
However, he can and absolutely should say some vital things aloud.
Sliding his hands to Crowley’s shoulders, he leans back enough to see the demon’s face. “My dear. I am—so very sorry. I’ve wronged you, and hurt you, and there is no excuse for what I’ve done.”
“Pffff,” Crowley says feebly, turning his chin to the side as if something in Aziraphale’s face is far too bright for his ophidian eyes. “Angel. Really. Don’t. You’re here. That’s all that matters.”
I have a long way to go, Aziraphale thinks, to be worthy of your kindness.
“Crowley, I’ve… I’ve put you through an ordeal. You deserve so much better than how I’ve treated you, than all the mistrust I’ve thrown at you. I will endeavour to do better. And… please, you must let me thank you, if only just this once. You had courage and hope when I had none.”
“Didn’t, though,” Crowley objects, still not quite managing to look at him—but the demon’s hands flex in the fabric of Aziraphale’s frock-coat, digging stubbornly in. To have and to hold, Aziraphale thinks through a fresh wave of heartache. “I didn’t have any of that, I just—I had no idea what else to do. Anyway,” the demon continues with a valiant attempt at lightness, “don’t let anyone from Downstairs hear you. Hope, I’ll have you know, is a mortal virtue for a demon.”
It’s meant lightly, yes, in reference to what Aziraphale had long assumed was Crowley’s protective coloration—and the angel can see an uptick to Crowley’s mouth, a faint edge of a smile. Yet there is something else to the way Crowley says it, a deeper current. When was the last time Crowley had spoken about hope? “Hope, love, ’t was all burnt out of us in the Fall,” he had told Aziraphale not long ago, defiant and bitter—and now, suspicion gathers within Aziraphale like evening shadows as the angel asks himself: how much of this has Crowley taken to heart over the millennia? How much of that does Crowley really, truly believe?
Aziraphale is silent for too long, and Crowley finally looks up. Instantly, his eyebrows move together, and he raises a hand to swipe at a fresh tear-track on Aziraphale’s cheek (apparently not masked, now, by the transferred sheen of sea-water and rain). “Angel,” he says, indignant. “Angel, don’t you dare—‘m not worth—”
You are worth everything.
Mutely shaking his head, Aziraphale pulls the demon into another embrace. Crowley, after a moment of resistance, exhales and relaxes against the angel, though he mutters admonishments into the crook of his neck. Cities could rise and fall, Aziraphale thinks, blinking away stray tears, and I’d care for nothing if I could just hold you like this, to have you this close.
They stay like that until Crowley is no longer trembling, until no space is left around them for the creeping chill. Then, they move apart, equally dazed—and Aziraphale recalls himself to the here-and-now forcibly, tells himself that they have work to do. They need to talk; they need to plan. They need to figure out what is really happening in the lighthouse and how to deal with the present danger. Crowley has already risked enough, chasing whatever it is by himself.
It’s overwhelming, everything that lies ahead. The implications of the last few hours alone are a mountain range, once invisible in the dark but coming into focus, crag by crag, in the pale light of dawn: a mountain range they still need to cross.
What’s the first step? Aziraphale asks himself. It has to be simple, for us to manage it even now.
Oh. Right. Of course.
“Crowley?” They have stepped apart, but Aziraphale’s hand is still on Crowley’s sleeve. “You really can’t go around with a bucketful of rain in your clothes. Not with how easily you get chilled.”
“Uh.” Crowley looks down at his soaked jacket, at the sorry state of his shoes. “Aziraphale. I… do mean it, with the miracles. I don’t think I could heat a cup of tea right now, let alone—”
“I presume,” Aziraphale says, turning Crowley gently towards the mess of clothing on the bunks, “that these are yours?”
“Oh. Yeah.” Crowley steps towards the pile. “Yeah, ’s a good idea,” but he snaps his head back as Aziraphale’s hand falls from his sleeve. “Angel, wait. You… know how I said earlier that we shouldn’t be too far apart? I, uh, I think there really is something to it. You won’t go too far while I change, yeah? You’ll stay in the room?”
It’s a perfectly rational request. Aziraphale knows that far more hauntings happened when Crowley and he were out of each other’s sight (for Heaven’s sake, he’d accused the demon of setting them up!) But there’s something underneath Crowley’s words, too, a dark shape half-seen through the choppy surface of the sea. The last few days have left both of them raw; to Aziraphale, steps of distance between them feel like miles just now—so what does that say about Crowley?
“I’m not going anywhere, Crowley. That would be dreadfully unwise, given what we know.”
Crowley breathes out at that, his shoulders dropping as some of the tension leaves him.
Aziraphale removes his own frock-coat, lays it out on a bunk as Crowley sifts through the pile of dark fabrics to pick out a new ensemble. Then, the demon shrugs off his jacket, drops it carelessly on the floor—and his hands go to the buttons of his shirt. Aziraphale turns away hurriedly, fixes his gaze on the grey murk behind one of the windows, tries to chase away images that are—well, wildly inappropriate, given everything.
He should give the demon space. Shouldn’t try to… precipitate closeness, especially not after what he’d done.
He presses his hands together, digs a nail into a groove on his signet ring.
But I will have to tell him. I will have to explain the assumptions I made and why I made them. What I’d been haunted by.
Something clatters to the floor; the demon lets out a sibilant curse, and Aziraphale turns towards him without thinking.
“Crowley, are you… oh. Oh, I—do apologise.” He snaps his gaze back to the window.
“Nah,” Crowley says, faintly amused. “You don’t have to turn away, angel, ‘m hardly indecent. ’S just the collar stud, d’you see where it went?”
Aziraphale turns towards the demon, mouth dry. Crowley is completely unselfconscious of his state of dishabille, as he should be: he is wearing trousers, after all, and his shirt is tucked in and mostly buttoned. It’s just that the low collar is loose, and so are the cuffs, and he is barefoot, which makes him appear altogether vulnerable and… domestic?
To Aziraphale, that easy domesticity is sharper than a Sheffield razor.
He watches Crowley (the sharp jut of his collar-bones, the curve of his back just where the shirt dives into the high narrow waistband) as the demon looks around for the lost stud, kicking a black silk sleeve and a brocade coat-tail out of the way—and a flash flood of images rises within him, daguerreotypes of a different life. Waking up next to each other; Crowley’s sleepy smile. A long morning with no danger looming over them, a morning they can spend however they like. He’d help Crowley dress for the day; they’d have breakfast together, and he’d convince Crowley to try a new dessert, something extravagant with ice-cream and almonds and a few spoonfuls of jam: Crowley loves sweets, though he’d protest such a slight on his character passionately should anyone dare to say that out loud.
The angel swallows, almost physically faint with longing, and steadies himself on the post of the nearest bunk.
“Pick a different bloody shirt, that’s what I should do,” Crowley complains in the meantime. “There’s bound to be one without these fiddly bits… Angel? Are you all right?”
Heavens above, Aziraphale thinks. Heavens above, how am I going to get through this?
“Yes, my dear, I just…”
It is then that Aziraphale spots the collar stud next to his own shoe and bends down to retrieve it. “There you go,” he tells Crowley, stepping up to the demon.
Their fingers brush.
“Oh! Crowley, but—you are freezing already! Right—once you’re done, we are going straight down to the kitchen to start a fire.”
“Sound plan,” Crowley agrees easily, flashing him a real smile. Producing a second stud and picking out a collar to match his storm-grey shirt, he bites down on the longer of the studs before reaching around to the back of his neck. His voice is slightly muffled as he goes on. “Y’know, ‘m not sure why ‘m bothering. ’S not like I need th’thing.”
For the same reason, perhaps, that you are still wearing your spectacles, Aziraphale thinks, looking up at his own reflection in the dark lenses. A degree of… formality. Of distance. A kind of armour.
Yet despite this insight, he cannot stop himself from stepping in as he watches Crowley try and fail to pin the collar without a scattering of his habitual miracles. “I could… help you attach it, if you like?”
Crowley stills.
What are you doing, the angel admonishes himself the very next second, blood rushing into his face. Crowley is perfectly capable of dressing himself, you are only doing this to get your hands on him, which is particularly reprehensible under the circumstances. And you should not be forcing care on him either, not to make yourself feel better about all the damage you’ve done!
Abashed, he takes a step back. “Oh, I’m… I don’t mean to get in your way, I’ll leave you to—“
Crowley half-lowers his hands, takes the stud out of the corner of his mouth, polishes it surreptitiously on his sleeve. “Yeah,” he hastens to say, his eyebrows going up. “Yeah, actually—could you? ’S just going to go faster, is all.” He looks away sharply, as if startled by his own daring, two high points of colour in his still-pale cheeks.
Oh, Aziraphale thinks, stepping closer once again. Oh.
This—is new. The daring is new, the acceptance is new. Crowley is seeking his warmth, too. (Losing you, the demon had said—and there is an undiscovered planet, a galaxy, a universe of meaning behind those words.)
Aziraphale reaches out, takes the collar and the studs out of Crowley’s hands. Steps around the demon, puts a hand on his shoulder to get him to turn just right. Crowley obeys wordlessly; Aziraphale is not certain that the demon is breathing.
It’s not difficult to pin the collar like this—and the angel only lingers a little bit, only thinks once of stepping closer, of sliding his hands around Crowley’s waist. He consoles himself with a single infraction: running an open palm over the demon’s shoulders, smoothing the storm-grey linen of his shirt. Crowley inhales so sharply as if he hadn’t, before now, remembered the existence of air.
It’s a pretence, isn’t it, Aziraphale understands with unflinching lucidity. For both of us. As it has always been.
He puts his hand on Crowley’s upper arm; Crowley turns around to face him. “I—can attach it in the front, too?” Aziraphale asks tentatively. The demon nods, his eyes invisible behind the dark lenses.
The angel pushes the stud through the folded layers of fabric at Crowley’s throat, adjusts the wings of the collar with the tips of his fingers. Crowley swallows, his Adam’s apple jumping with an audible click; the demon is very, very still, as if one stray movement could wreak havoc with time, shattering the moment beyond repair.
Aziraphale wants to kiss him so badly that his whole body tingles with it.
Does Crowley realise, he wonders, his fingers splayed at the demon’s throat. Crowley needs distance, yes, he is very purposefully wearing his spectacles, he has chosen the most formal of his garments, but… he’s invited Aziraphale to do this. He is allowing the angel to do this. He is affected, too, is he not?
“The necktie?” Aziraphale offers, his voice hoarse.
“Mm,” Crowley says, just as still as before. “Please.”
For a moment, Aziraphale is transported back to the library, to the evening of their waltz.
I should not be imposing on him, the angel thinks desperately. Not after everything I’ve done. I should be giving him space.
Crowley’s chosen black necktie is coiled at the summit of the fabric mountain on the nearest bunk. Aziraphale reaches for it, threads it through the retainer, carefully ties the knot. Crowley’s face, now that the demon has gained a measure of control, is inscrutable—but the two high points of colour on his cheeks are as vivid as before.
Next, Aziraphale helps him with the cuffs. It feels like a ritual, like a rite: taking Crowley’s hands, one and then the other, wrapping a layer of stiff fabric over the demon’s wrists. It is, Aziraphale reflects, indeed very much like armour—and it is an honour to assist Crowley in putting on his.
He’d long suspected that there was a soft and vulnerable side to Crowley, one hidden and masked by all his extravagance and swagger. And now, he’d seen it: Crowley, who’d always hated presenting anything but an unassailable front of irony and scepticism, had shown it himself, with staggering honesty, in a bid to try and keep Aziraphale safe.
Losing you, the demon had said, his voice breaking on the words. Had barely managed to say.
Aziraphale watches Crowley step away to pick up a waistcoat, then a tailcoat: brushing them off, putting them on with the solemnity reserved for dressing before a battle—and the angel’s next thought roots him to the spot.
Crowley, he thinks—and the sudden clarity is blinding. Crowley, are you also in love—with me?
—
Warmth comes back first. It’s followed by colours, and sounds, and scents.
Aziraphale makes him coffee: a tinge bitter, fragrant, piping hot, complete with two lumps of sugar that the stubborn angel insists on (and that Crowley does like, yes, all right, but he doesn’t have to admit it). The angel supplies Crowley with toast, hot off the toasting fork, and brings out the jams; serves him soft-boiled eggs, practically glowing in their porcelain egg-cups, and a plate of sliced pears and plums. “You haven’t eaten since yesterday, Crowley,” Aziraphale says gently, nudging the plate towards him. “I know you don’t need to eat; really, neither do I. But we are far more human right now than we are used to being, and... my dear, a hot meal will do us both a world of good.”
It does. And what does Crowley even more good, by far, is Aziraphale’s steady presence, the angel’s encouraging smile—and the way Aziraphale does not take away his hand when their fingers accidentally brush over a serving spoon.
(Losing you, Crowley had said what feels like an age ago, his throat closing around the words. He’d said a lot more, too, raw truths tumbling out of him like marbles, rolling away where he could never get them back or render them unspoken. He has the uncomfortable feeling that Aziraphale picked up and studied every single one.)
The incessant storm hisses and roars beyond the walls; both dim grey daylight and firelight flicker on the ornate grillwork of the stove. Within it, the fire is radiantly hot and the lighted oil-lamps have evicted the coiling shadows out of their hiding places, have rendered the kitchen into a safe haven, a seemingly-impermeable domain of light and warmth.
Aziraphale is with him. Aziraphale is with him, and the angel held him, actually held him after Crowley had—
Had literally thrown himself at Aziraphale after the angel came down those stairs.
Right.
Talk about embarrassing.
“It… seems like the hauntings have quieted down, doesn’t it?” The angel, oblivious to the line of Crowley’s thoughts, looks around the kitchen pensively, places his empty teacup gently on its saucer.
The question yanks Crowley into the present, dissolves the remembered warmth of Aziraphale’s arms around him, the feeling of Aziraphale’s fingertips at the pulse point of his throat. “I, uh—what?”
“Well, I’ve been hearing a lot of whispers, sometimes right behind my back, and now they have all subsided. Although I do think something is happening on the lower levels. Do you notice how the echoes sometimes respond to a sound that… wasn’t there?”
“Right,” Crowley says, watching the angel’s hands as they flutter around the cup, tidy up a stray spoon. “Yeah, ’s quieter. You are right, though: whatever those echoes are, they are coming from elsewhere. For a place with zero ghosts, this lighthouse turned out to be remarkably haunted.” He gives Aziraphale a half-smile, an admission of his folly, and the softness of Aziraphale’s answering smile manages to trip his all-too-human heart.
Aziraphale, he thinks, light-headed. Angel. What would I have done if you—
“Do you suppose more cracks are opening up, then?” the angel asks, inclining his head pensively to one side as he listens to the faraway sounds.
“Must be.” Crowley blinks away his daze. He’s supposed to keep Aziraphale safe, and what’s he doing instead? “On that note—I, uh, I still think we should get out. Find a way to get you out, anyway. ‘Course, I’ve been bloody useless with finding one up to now, but if we go over them together…”
“Crowley,” Aziraphale says so sharply that Crowley snaps his head up in alarm. “Crowley, stop this. I am not going to leave you here alone.”
“Aziraphale, you—”
“I won’t hear any more about it,” Aziraphale says with the same intensity. Then, he is pushing back his chair, marching over to Crowley’s side, pulling the demon to standing by the hand. Crowley inhales unsteadily as Aziraphale looks up at him, his eyes troubled and storm-dark.
“‘Ziraphale?”
The angel drops his gaze, his hands balling up at his sides. When he speaks, his voice is low, and every word seems to cost him great effort.
“Crowley. There is—so much I haven’t told you. I apologised, yes, but it’s worth little if I don’t also tell you... If I don’t give an explanation for my behaviour, or as much of an explanation as I can give. I owe you the truth.”
“’S a long story, then?” Crowley asks, with deliberate lightness, touching a suddenly-too-heavy hand to Aziraphale’s sleeve. “D’you want to stay here by the fire? Or go up to the library?”
When Aziraphale raises his eyes at him, they are bright with tears.
“Oh no. Oh no, don’t... Angel, don’t…”
Crowley has never done well with seeing Aziraphale dejected, and the dark circles under Aziraphale’s eyes, the chiselled crease between his eyebrows, his actual tears are quickly becoming too much. He wants to put his hands on the angel’s face, to smooth every one of his worry lines, to wipe away the tears, to kiss the soft line of his hair. Don’t—don’t go thinking that, you bloody fool, he hisses at himself in panicked outrage. You’re lucky the angel is back, don’t cause him any more alarm!
Aziraphale shakes his head, smiles a wavering smile. “It’s quite all right, my dear. And the library sounds lovely.”
They make their way there—but though the room is as close as it gets to the angel’s habitual domain, Aziraphale looks far from comfortable. He eschews his familiar armchair, and Crowley, who’d flopped down on the fold-out bed as soon as they entered, watches him pace with mounting unease, is seconds away from springing up and stepping into Aziraphale’s path when the angel finally pauses, breathes out, and decidedly walks over to the bed, settling on the edge with his hands folded in his lap.
“Right,” he says. “Right, ah, I—should be telling you everything, everything that I...”
“Aziraphale,” Crowley interrupts him, scooting up to the headboard and leaning against it. “You... don’t actually have to, you know. You don’t have to explain. If you think you saw something that could be a clue, you could just describe that, and we will work with it?”
Aziraphale blinks several times in quick succession. “That is very kind of you, Crowley. But I do have to tell you. The thing is, a-as you might have guessed, a lot of my hauntings… they were about—you.”
Crowley nods, runs a hand through his hair, resists the urge to push up his spectacles. “Right, yeah. I figured as much.”
“I… suppose they really started that evening when—when you sang. When I heard somebody call my name. You—remember that, yes? Of course, after we went around the tower and found nothing, I started thinking I’d imagined it. It made sense, I did read all those entries about voices in the sound of the waves. And since you heard nothing whatsoever, I didn’t tell this to you at the time, but… you see, even then, I kept thinking that the voice I heard sounded rather like... well, rather like… you.”
“And then you heard more,” Crowley prompts.
“Y—yes.” The angel looks down at his hands before he tilts his chin up again, his expression tight. “Do you remember the next evening? When we—”
“The waltz,” Crowley says, his heart twisting uncomfortably in his chest. “Yeah, ‘course I do.”
“So you would remember that I felt unwell, and you’d wanted to stay up with me, but I convinced you to go to bed?”
Crowley nods. “Should’ve stayed up,” he says quietly.
“That—ah, I’m not certain that would have helped. But as it was, I’d—gone for another circuit of the tower later that night, and that was when I heard… laughter. I did not know where it was coming from, but I recognised it at once.”
“Right,” Crowley says slowly.
“And I knew you were asleep, but…”
“But.” Crowley stares straight ahead. “Yeah, no, it makes sense. ‘M still a demon, and you—”
“And I,” Aziraphale interrupts him with sudden fierceness, “am a fool. Crowley, do you have any idea how—oh, I am doing this all wrong, but Heavens above, I need to say this. Crowley, do you know how—devastatingly attractive you are?”
“I—nnhhg—what?”
“Well, I assume you have some idea,” Aziraphale says with a note of desperation. “It’s bound to be of use in certain temptations. But—the thing is, I was becoming more and more aware of that fact during… during our time here.”
“Oh,” Crowley manages, the clockwork of his mind grinding to an abrupt and undignified halt.
“And there was—that evening when you sang, and the next one, when we danced together, and… Crowley. Just—being here, with you… I felt happier than I’ve done in decades. What’s more, the last time I felt even remotely as elated was the last time I saw you. Spending these few days together had been intoxicating, arguments and all, and I loved it, loved everything about it. The way you cared for me—oh, Crowley, I—”
The angel shakes his head, briefly too overcome for speech. Crowley watches Aziraphale’s hands, clasped in his lap, twisting around each other in something akin to supplication. I did have it right, he thinks, sucking in an involuntary breath. I had it right back at the tavern. Aziraphale did not want us to part.
“But you see, that was also what had me… alarmed.”
Crowley surfaces from his eddying thoughts. “Being happy?” he specifies, rueful. “Your lot do seem to have something against that.”
“W-well. That you made me so happy.”
Him. He made Aziraphale happy. It’s a direct hit. Good thing I am already sitting down, Crowley thinks dizzily, or else.
“But… Crowley, I didn’t dare look at it. Didn’t dare wonder why your presence makes me feel so elated, so warmed. And I was deeply afraid, so instead, I’d started constructing this elaborate scheme in my head, one that would explain—my attraction to you, and the hauntings, and why you followed me to the lighthouse in the first place. I’d noticed, of course, that you weren’t telling me everything, that you were agitated and tense, and I—I started thinking that there was a connection there. That perhaps you’d been tasked with—distracting me from Hell’s design on this lighthouse, and that one of the methods you’d chosen was—oh, Crowley—was seduction.”
Crowley scrabbles for words, which, when they finally come, arrive all at once, with no regard to order: a flutter of overexcited sparrows. “Angel—what—I—how—nhhhgk—do you—just because you felt happy?”
Aziraphale shakes his head sorrowfully. “And enthralled.”
Incredulous, Crowley can only laugh—and he does, dragging the heel of his hand across his forehead, pressing it into his temple. “Oh, Someone. Aziraphale, I wouldn’t—I would never—”
“I know, Crowley,” the angel says quietly. “I know that now. But… this place is somehow wrong on a fundamental level, is it not? I’d assumed, at first, that this was what remote lighthouses felt like, with all their dangers and the stories attached to them, but I’m convinced now that there is more to it. I think I’d been affected by this… nebulous sense of unease, this wrongness. But Crowley, that wasn’t why I went so far in my suspicions. The real reason was that I could no longer ignore the supremely dangerous thing that I felt for you. I was not prepared to face it, so I found it easier to believe that I’d… fallen for some kind of a ploy, and I just kept taking every observation as evidence of that, even when it made no sense. I’d completely misinterpreted and misapplied my fear.”
What you felt for me. But this, this… There’s meaning to what Aziraphale is saying, and Crowley needs to look at it straight on—but the gears of his thoughts spin unconnected, whirring through empty space.
“And—this is the difficult part. Crowley, I really don’t think I trusted you properly. I can’t imagine I’d have locked you out if I did. There were those voices I kept remembering: Gabriel, Michael, the other angels. I knew exactly what they’d have said, I’d recalled every lecture on demonic temptations, and I was listening to them, not actually looking at what was right in front of me. I wasn’t seeing what was true, and that nearly brought me—both of us—to disaster. I should have trusted myself, and… Crowley, I should have trusted you.”
Crowley wants to say several things at once, and manages none.
You can’t trust demons, he wants to say. Except he really, really wants Aziraphale to trust him (obviously, bloody of course).
And—
What do you mean, you thought I was seducing you? What do you mean, that you were enthralled? (Are you still?)
And—
Did you mean it, that I make you happy? (I want to make you happy. Tell me, tell me what you need.)
“Well, this is really the core of it,” Aziraphale says with a smile so tentative, so small, that Crowley aches to trace a thumb over it, to press his palm to the angel’s cheek, to sink his fingers into Aziraphale’s soft curls. He is already sitting up when he catches himself, fear twisting within him with the sharpness of a bayonet.
What do you think you’re doing, he hisses at himself in silent alarm. Aziraphale just told you that he panicked because he thought you were seducing him, and this—this is how you think to comfort him? Just when he thought that he could trust you?
“Right,” he says, his voice snagging on every word. “Right, I... yeah.”
“But there is more,” Aziraphale goes on—and his colour rises as he looks down at his hands: locked in his lap, twisting and white-knuckled.
The urge to reach out is almost overpowering. Crowley wants to take both Aziraphale’s hands into his, to hold them, to drag his thumbs over the angel’s knuckles. To see Aziraphale look up in surprise. He could move closer, then, seeking warmth like the snake that he is, coiling into the angel’s space…
Oh. Oh no no no.
He is lucky indeed that Aziraphale does not look up.
“There were—many times when I heard your steps, or your voice, when you weren’t there. I’d even started wondering about the shadow in the store-room,” Aziraphale is saying, and Crowley tries to focus, he really does—
But all these things you just said, he thinks despite his efforts (as Aziraphale talks about S.P.’s choice of words: ‘wings, black as a starless night’)…
All this, does this change what I’m allowed to do? You said I make you happy, you actually said it… (“The cup on the steps,” Aziraphale says, “I’d convinced myself that was either a prank, or part of your plan to make me doubt anything I was experiencing…”)
Can I touch you, angel? What can I do? What would you like me to do?
How about: his hands brushing back Aziraphale’s sweat-damp curls, his fingers seeking the hidden nape of the angel’s neck. Aziraphale’s eyelashes dipping—and then staying down, merged with their soft shadows. If Crowley moved closer still, pressed his mouth to them, would they tickle his lips?
Just like that, the images of what Crowley could do become a cloudburst.
Too close, the demon thinks, his heartbeat syncopated, louder in his ears than the signal bell, that echoing heart of the tower. Danger, danger, too close, cut this out—
“We—should investigate.” Crowley sits bolt upright on the bed, swings his legs over the side opposite to Aziraphale’s, gets up abruptly and unsteadily.
“Investigate?” Aziraphale’s eyebrows climb up as he twists to follow Crowley’s movement. The demon stalks around the bed frame to stand in front of him, there, look, everything’s under control. “Crowley, what on Earth... right now?”
“Yep,” the demon confirms, holding fast to his excuse. “’S as good a time as any. I mean, think about it. ’S got to be important, the places where you saw things. Might suggest a pattern in where the cracks form, or, or something. So let’s do one of your circuits, yeah?”
Slowly, still puzzled, the angel nods. “If you are sure that’s a good idea,” he says dubiously.
“Absolutely. ’S a great idea. I thought of it. Let’s go.”
’S not a terrible idea, anyway, Crowley tells himself defensively a short while later, as they stand by the slowly spinning lens in the light-room. It keeps me from doing something absurd and scaring you off.
Aziraphale is mapping out lines of sight to where S.P. must have glimpsed the black-winged figure. “I was so convinced that Steven saw you. That you’ve been to this lighthouse before.” His exercise in geometry complete, the angel drifts back to Crowley’s side; their sleeves touch, and Crowley has to bite the inside of his cheek.
In the library, Aziraphale tells Crowley of other hauntings: of the new entries in the journal, of hearing Crowley’s steps behind his back, occasionally accompanied by his voice. (“The steps, though—you couldn’t have known that they were mine unless you also heard me speak,” Crowley points out reasonably—and is startled when Aziraphale looks up at him and says, very softly: “But… Crowley, of course I could.”)
The sleeping-quarters turn out to be a jewel-box of memories. Knock it off, Crowley tells himself in exhausted indignation, his nails digging into his palms, but the memories do not retreat. Aziraphale’s warm breath at his ear, the whispered endearments, the way the angel stood steady against the shifting world and kept Crowley steady, too: the images are a rip-tide, pulling Crowley further and further away from shore. I am not sure, he thinks hazily, that I can find my way back. (You are not sure, another part of him suggests, that you’d ever look for it.)
In the kitchen, they stand shoulder to shoulder at one of the windows, looking into the grey world beyond. Rain streams over the glass, and the restless sea throws spray high into the air as wave after wave douses the tower. “It’s still not evening,” Aziraphale says in faintly disapproving wonder. “Is this day even planning to end?” The clock in the library has stopped again; the angel’s pocket-watch won’t start. A few strains of music drift down from the upper levels, odd and discordant. The cracks are growing, multiplying: out of their sight, but inching closer hour by hour, almost if something is probing at the space around them, soft-gloved hands feeling for a way in.
And soon enough, that something comes close.
They are in the store-room when it happens. The air fills with premonition; Crowley throws an arm across Aziraphale’s chest to stop the angel from stepping any further. His tell-tale sickness dissipates rapidly, the fracture does not make its way to the surface of reality—but as the hammering of Crowley’s heart slows down, he glances at the angel and is met with a concerned frown, a look of inquiry.
“Is… something wrong?” Aziraphale whispers.
“You... felt nothing, then.”
The angel shakes his head.
“Bloody of course,” Crowley mutters darkly. “And to think I’d deliberately gone to the very bottom of the tower earlier to put distance between us, and to observe. I’d placed you in danger, and you didn’t even know what to be wary of.”
Thoughtful, Aziraphale switches his oil-lamp to his right hand, holds his left out to the demon. “Safer this way, yes?”
Crowley takes his hand before either of them can change their minds.
They stay in the store-room a little while longer, conferring in whispers, and Crowley can only think of one thing: he is holding Aziraphale’s hand. He is holding Aziraphale’s hand, and the angel is unperturbed, his fingers warm and steady around Crowley’s. Does that mean Crowley could… do this, sometimes? Even… afterwards, assuming they make their way out of—wherever they are? But no, he reminds himself, no, of course not: it’s only that it’s safer for them to stay close for the moment. He should absolutely not take this as permission to overstep.
But I can do this right now, he tells himself, tightening his hold on the angel’s fingers in a wave of possessive longing. By that point, they are on the way to the oil-room, and when the angel squeezes back, dragging his thumb slowly, deliberately along the side of Crowley’s hand, Crowley nearly misses a step on the narrow stairs.
“I haven’t seen or heard much here, surprisingly,” Aziraphale says into the oil-soaked air of the room. “Of course, I’d never stayed here for too long.”
And then, he goes very, very quiet as they step off the spiral stairs onto the smooth cold flagstones of the main floor.
Crowley waits, studying Aziraphale’s profile, the flyaway puffs of his hair, the gentle touch of firelight on his cheeks.
“Ah,” Aziraphale says after another pause, letting go of Crowley’s hand (no, Crowley thinks immediately and has to restrain himself from reaching after the angel). Aziraphale steps to the right to put his oil-lamp on a hook, watches it swing gently before he once again turns to face Crowley. “My—dear,” he says finally. “Do you… recall those entries in the journal where the keepers had… visions? Where they saw each other?”
“Uh, a few?” Crowley frowns. “Others, you must have read by yourself.”
“Of course,” Aziraphale says faintly. “I—yes. Regardless, nothing… nothing for it. I do have to tell you. Over here,” he gestures to the passage, “is really where I had the… the most memorable of all my experiences. This is where I saw us kissing.”
Crowley swallows, hard.
“You—you saw us…”
“Kissing, yes. I—”
“What was it—” the demon asks before he can stop himself. “What was it like? I mean. This... This might be important, too. A key to whatever… whatever is going…”
Stop. No. You bloody fool, how is this important, why are you—
He trails off, licking his suddenly dry lips.
Aziraphale looks up helplessly, the lines on his forehead deepening. Crowley is about to stammer an apology, to backtrack, to try and recover from this stupid, stupid—
The angel steps towards him, takes Crowley’s oil-lamp out of his unbending fingers, hangs it on another hook. “Y-yes,” he says, a touch too brightly. “Yes, of course. It may matter, yes. It’s only that… This is going to be difficult to explain, but I’ll try to…”
Aziraphale closes his eyes, then, and there’s a half-word on his lips, a reflection of an inner struggle in his face. Crowley watches him, mesmerised. When the angel opens his eyes, their colour, in the unsteady firelight, is the dark blue of open seas.
“Right.” He seems to have reached a decision. “Right, this all happened there. The apparitions, they were—over by this wall.”
He motions for Crowley to follow him. Crowley does, through air as still as glass and, for the moment, just as fragile.
“I couldn’t—yes, my dear, stand over here for now—I couldn’t really see... well, myself, I suppose, that other angel: I could not see him from the stairs. Just you, and your wings were out, so you can imagine they took up… some space. And I—that is, he—his back was to the stones, and…”
The angel, backed into the wall by his own volition, is not quite looking at Crowley. His breathing is scattered, his cheeks flushed; he runs out of breath in the middle of a phrase.
“I realised later that these… apparitions, they weren’t wearing the same clothing as we are wearing now. The right palette, if you will, and you looked—well, as much a dandy as ever all in black, but the cut was certainly different, like nothing I’d seen before—and your hair might have been shorter, too, quite… a fetching style.”
He takes Crowley’s hands as he speaks, one and then the other, threading Crowley’s fingers through his.
“This—is part of it, if you’re wondering. My arms were out like this, and your—his—hands were just here…”
Crowley shakes his head: incredulous, awed. “And… then?” he asks in a strangled half-whisper. “Then we…”
“Mhmm.” Aziraphale nods minutely, lips pressed together, seemingly too afraid to say more, or to move—but his eyes finally flicker to Crowley’s spectacles, or perhaps to the tip of the demon’s nose.
They are very close. Crowley finds himself looking down, at the bow of Aziraphale’s upper lip, at the tantalising curve of it—and catches himself swaying towards the angel. He exhales, lets his fingers curl against the wall where they are slotted through Aziraphale’s, his fingernails digging into the stones. The whole tower seems to shift, its walls diaphanous all seven feet through.
“Aziraphale,” Crowley whispers, searching the angel’s face. The angel is about to smile, to indulgently say oh yes, well, you can imagine my surprise when I saw all of this—
But Aziraphale is just looking at him, his eyes ocean-dark, and the weight of his gaze is that of all the waters in the Atlantic.
“Angel?” Crowley manages, almost too quiet for his own ears. “Would you really…?”
(What are you doing, the voice within him flails, unheeded. You can’t do this, you cannot, STOP—)
Aziraphale nods, very slightly, and Crowley’s breath stutters—
and the angel sways forward, and kisses him.
The whole world tilts, the Earth’s magnetic poles flipping with no warning.
Aziraphale is…
Oh Someone, Crowley thinks helplessly. Oh.
Aziraphale.
His closeness floods Crowley’s senses. The heat of him, pinned under Crowley’s body. His searching lips, the invitation of his open mouth—and Crowley is lost within a heartbeat, kissing into it in desperate hunger: no hesitation, no pause, no will to stop. The angel tilts his head, just so, and Crowley’s glasses are almost out of the way, letting him advance, press in. Their palms are locked together, their chests flush (their hips, too)—and then there is a sound, one that Crowley is only dimly aware of before understanding, much too late, that this stifled, muffled cry, as if of pain, is his own,
yet he is not in pain
(isn’t he?)
no, this isn’t pain
(isn’t it?)
no, this—
this is need, freshly woken and ravenous,
need that expands within him, fills him, threatens to tear through his ribs, to break through his skin,
Aziraphale, he thinks again, pressing closer still, crushing their mouths together, curling his fingers into the spaces between Aziraphale’s, closer, closer, oh Someone, please, angel, I need you, I—
Am I hurting you?
But no, he’s not: Aziraphale is responding, meeting each of his attacks, countering them, advancing, and oh Someone, he started it, he isn’t about to retreat, he is a Heavenly warrior, all strength and determination and brilliant light, and he is—magnificent, and there’s current between the two of them, a blinding electrical arc like that of Sir Humphry Davy’s carbon lamp, except this, this arc could power lighthouses, could cross between the stars—
The force of it is terrifying.
And Crowley wants more.
With a swell of sudden terror, Crowley breaks the kiss. Stares at Aziraphale slack-jawed, chest heaving. Sways back, letting go of the angel’s hands.
This, he thinks with mounting panic. This thing that just happened, this—
“This,” he croaks, barely recognising his voice, “this was what you saw?”
Breathless, Aziraphale nods, evidently not yet capable of speech. His cheeks are a splotchy red, his cravat is flattened against his chest—and more than anything, Crowley wants to rush at him again, to pin him to the wall, to kiss and bite and lick into his mouth, to trail kisses down his neck, and then go lower, and lower still—
And Aziraphale would run from him if he knew, the angel would want nothing to do with—
But he’d—he’d started it!
Crowley whirls around, faces away from the angel, rips his spectacles off, tries to polish them against his sleeve with all the effect of trying to un-sweeten sugar with honey, slams them back onto his face. Behind him, there is a shaky intake of breath.
“Oh—oh dear Lord, Crowley, I—”
Crowley whirls back.
“I should not have done that,” Aziraphale says weakly. His eyes are too-bright in the light of the oil-lamp, a watery sheen to them; his chin wobbles as he goes on: “I should not have forced you to do this, I—I overstepped, I’m sorry, I thought…”
He is not running.
“…I should have told you,” Aziraphale is saying, “I should have given you time. Oh, I am so sorry…”
Through the roar of panic in his ears, Crowley steps closer, bites his lip, puts an unsteady hand on the angel’s forearm. “‘Ziraphale, ’sss—fine, I jussst—I need a moment, yeah? ‘Ssss fine, angel, you were... You saw what you saw. We’ll be fine. I just. I need to—sssit down.”
Aziraphale looks up at him, eyes limned by unshed tears. “Yes,” he breathes. “Yes, of course,”—and then he is sliding an arm around Crowley, is at his side, strong and steady and warm and not running—
“My dear,” the angel says in a whisper. “Can I—take you upstairs?”
“Yeah,” Crowley says hoarsely. “Yeah, please—do.”
Notes:
For music, I offer you Julia Kent's Gardermoen—and a reprise of The Heart Wants.
Chapter Text
I should not have done this, Aziraphale thinks as they climb the echoing spiral stairs. Crowley had not agreed to this. He wasn’t ready, of course he was not, not after everything that happened, and I just… assumed that he wanted this, too, and went ahead, and tore through all of his armour.
To Aziraphale’s left, Crowley stumbles, and Aziraphale tightens his hold around the demon, feeling Crowley’s ribs expand and fall under the layers of silk and linen beneath his open palm.
My dear, he thinks with a pang of keen tenderness—and stiletto-sharp guilt. My dear.
Crowley is in love with him. Of that, Aziraphale is now quite certain. He is perfectly aware, too, that this is an acute, personal kind of love, nothing to do with Heaven or the divine. Yet he is also painfully conscious that Crowley did not expect him to step this close, to do what he did: no matter the signs Aziraphale thought he saw, no matter that Crowley’s response to the kiss was—
—dear Lord, Aziraphale thinks, something within him catching fire at the memory. Crowley’s response.
The kitchen, he decides. Not as comfortable as the library, but warmer: a good thing. The zigzags of the narrow stairs take them there, and in the welcoming stillness, Aziraphale gets Crowley to sit in the oaken chair by the low fire and kneels next to him, looking up into the demon’s face.
“My dear. How… how are you doing?”
Crowley is bone-china pale, his freckles a dusting of pollen over his skin. When he manages to speak, his voice is frayed. “Angel. Aziraphale. Why did I… why did you…”
Aziraphale swallows. “I’m afraid I’m a coward, my dear,” he says quietly, rueful and matter-of-fact. He has to say this: all of it. “I… used a pretence. I should have told you I wanted this, should have given you… choice, time. This isn’t an excuse, but I… I haven’t got much practice in saying things aloud.” He closes his eyes, briefly, gathering strength to complete the thought. “And—my dear. I thought you wanted this, too.”
“Wanted this,” Crowley breathes—and then his voice gains frantic strength. “Wanted this? Aziraphale, I’m a demon! Do you have any idea of the danger you are putting yourself into? It doesn’t matter what I want!”
“It does to me,” Aziraphale says softly, reaching out to touch Crowley’s hands.
—
The fear, in Crowley, does not come all at once. It’s as insidious as water seeping through cracks, widening them until the foundations crumble, everything above toppling in a shower of broken masonry and splintered wood.
How is this possible, he thinks feverishly. Aziraphale’s hands on his are warm, they should be grounding—but he could well be in the middle of a maelstrom with the way everything in him lurches towards the angel, the whole of his attention narrowing to their point of touch.
“Crowley,” Aziraphale is repeating. “Crowley, my dear one. You are afraid, I can see you are afraid. I am so sorry, I shouldn’t have done what I did. I don’t know what I was thinking. Well, I do know, but it was terribly selfish and forward of me, and I—I will not do it again. But can you—talk to me? Can you tell me? What has you so afraid?”
“Aziraphale. Don’t you understand?” The panic within Crowley is a living, howling thing. You can’t do this, angel. You can’t do any of this. Don’t you remember? I’m a demon. I’m not safe for you, I never was.
He isn’t about to scare Aziraphale off. The angel is stepping towards him on purpose, and right now, Crowley can find out exactly how far Aziraphale is willing to go, how much warmth he is ready to give: buoyed up by everything they have seen, have said.
And Crowley cannot take advantage of that. He cannot. He cannot.
Because he wants too much. Far too much.
Because he wants.
He is a Hell-thing. There is nothing else he can be—and for Hell-things, the rules are clear.
You do not want, when you are a demon. You do not want, and do not need. Not where it matters. You make others want: that is your job. Make them covet, and need, and beg, and grasp—and then you bloody well see where it leads them.
And you, you do not want. Because if you do (anything of consequence, anything past the regular offerings of pride and hubris and gluttony and lust), if you let on that you do… They will have power over you, then, the rest of Hell—and the things you want (worse yet, care for) will be in the gravest danger.
And that… that is just the start of it.
The angel is walking into a fire. He said that Crowley made him happy, he did, but Crowley has to push back a surge of dread at the sober thought: this is not good. Aziraphale should know this, too, should remember: any happiness provided by a demon comes with a catch. Crowley has nothing, nothing to offer that would make the risk of coming close to him worthwhile.
“Aziraphale.” Crowley’s skittering heart is much too loud in his ears. “I’m a demon, and you just—you went and kissed me, like that. You can’t possibly be thinking straight. You’re kind, and you are—affected by everything that happened, and… Actually—right, yeah, I know what this must be. Demons do have glamour, ‘course we do, you know that, it can work on anyone, and I didn’t mean for this to happen, I swear I did not, but I must have—forgotten, I must have—affected you by accident, and I’m sorry, angel, I never meant to. But this isn’t real, and you’ve got to, you’ve got to step back—”
“What’s not real, Crowley?” Aziraphale asks, his eyelashes sweeping upwards as he gives Crowley a steady look. “Are you telling me that you think you… actually seduced me? By accident?”
“Yes!” Crowley says belligerently. “Clearly! And now you have to—now you have to stand back! Well, now I have to stand back, but I’m bloody useless, angel, I’m bloody useless if, if you keep doing this, if you keep holding my hands. And of course I am, you are—for Somebody’s sake, you are an actual angel, how could anyone not want this?”
He is about to yank his hands away when his mind clamps down on the idea, crying out with the sense of imminent loss—and his frantic fingers close around Aziraphale’s even tighter than before.
—
“You… really think you seduced me,” Aziraphale says slowly, incredulously. “That this was what happened. Even after I told you how happy I’ve been to see you, to spend time with you. That is what you think.”
His mouth a thin, tense line, Crowley nods.
“Good Lord.”
Everything he’s been trying to tell Crowley—
He should have known. He should have expected this, that Crowley wouldn’t recognise his feeble, roundabout confession. That the demon would have no reference to make sense of it. Crowley has almost never talked about love, any of its kinds, without scoffing, or prophesying a dreadful fate for all involved, or calling its very nature into question.
“An accidental seduction. Really,” Aziraphale continues in growing dismay before he checks himself. “Well, I... I suppose, with everything I’d been imagining for the last two days, I’m not really one to talk—but… Crowley. The idea is absurd.”
“’S—not permanent,” Crowley says tightly. “’S going to pass.”
How deep does this go, Aziraphale wonders as he studies the downturned corners of Crowley’s mouth, the sharp angles of his face, the once-again defiant curl over his eyebrow. Crowley is not acknowledging that Aziraphale is in love—but does he know that he himself is? Does he, perhaps, not want to be? Is he giving both of them a dignified way out?
Or is it something else?
My lot do not send rude notes, Crowley had told him once. What if, for Crowley, the mere idea of being in love is far too perilous? No matter how frequently Crowley had defied Hell on his own accord, Aziraphale has no right to expose him to any more danger.
Or—and this could well be true alongside the other things—does Crowley not consider the possibility of actual love because he’d believed what Hell, and Heaven, have been telling them all along: that demons can neither love, nor be loved? Is this the hook that Hell sunk into him? Is this their poison? Crowley has gone against Hell time and time again, has done his own thing; he is a brilliant, fiery being, full of passion and kindness and care. And if he believes himself not worthy of love—
“Crowley,” Aziraphale asks, careful. “Do you… want it to pass?”
—
Tell him, Crowley orders himself. Tell him that you do. Make him believe you. Let go of his hands.
“It doesn’t matter, angel,” he hears himself say. “’S not real, yeah? I’m sorry, ’s just not.”
But as he speaks, the images of a possible—no, impossible—future unfold and multiply in front of him; he closes his eyes against their brilliant light. Aziraphale, his kindness, his radiant warmth, the way he has always held Crowley steady, has always been there, a beacon, Crowley’s true North.
And Crowley has to step back. Even though he’d felt the unstrung force of the angel’s regard, his attention, his passion. Even though, for a few glorious moments, he had it all to himself. Everything, all of it was under false pretences. He never deserved and could never keep any of it.
Stop this, he orders himself. Stop this, you useless prat. Aziraphale is much too kind for his own good; it is up to you to make sure your angel comes to no harm.
Oh no you don’t, another voice cuts in, whipcrack-sharp. He is not yours. He cannot be, that’s the whole bloody point. You were kicked out of Heaven, She has weighed you in the balances and found you wanting; you bring danger, and inevitable disappointment, and ruin, Hell-thing that you are.
Get away from him. Get back. Cease and desist.
You cannot want—and if you do, you cannot show it, no matter how unmoored you are, how fierce the longing. There are things your kind does not get, is incapable of keeping.
Belonging.
Home.
Hope.
L—
That other thing.
He knows, through a hazy connection to the outside world, that his hands are shaking.
That other thing. Crowley’s mind resists the completion of the thought, but the unspoken, the unacknowledged within him is clawing to get free. Say it, it hisses, fierce. Say it, you coward. Name it. Say the bloody word.
“You need a hot drink, my dear,” Aziraphale says softly, glancing down at their joined hands. “Shall I make you more coffee? Tea?” He tightens his hold on Crowley’s nerveless fingers—and Crowley looks back at him and helplessly thinks,
Love.
The cogs tick forward, once.
Wait. The realisation is like stepping off a cliff into a chasm of icy air; something in Crowley’s chest drops and then keeps dropping.
Wait.
I’m in love with him. Of course I am.
And—
Oh.
It’s worse than that, isn’t it.
It is so much worse, because he—
He is in love with me.
—
“No.” Crowley yanks away his hands and springs out of his chair, so abruptly that it nearly topples backwards. “No, you can’t be!”
“Pardon?” Aziraphale says, lost, as he gets up, pulls on his waistcoat, readies himself for whatever he needs to face.
“You—you can’t be in love with me!”
Oh. Oh dear. “And… why ever not?”
Crowley makes a choked, pained sound, folding forwards as if he’d been hit, both hands in his hair—and then flicks back, jackknife-sharp. “Wh… Aziraphale, are you asking? But—no, no, you—you can’t be in love! You, you are overcorrecting for earlier, or you are under the effects of my glamour, or you are affected by this place, you can’t actually be…”
“Well, I am,” Aziraphale says with quiet dignity, holding himself still against the flame of Crowley’s panic: rising, scorching the ground. “I am in love with you, yes. You have the right to know this, but—please. If… if this is too dangerous for you, we don’t even have to talk about it. Tell me what I can do, what’s allowed and what’s not; I won’t push you. I am sorry I did, before. And I will not expose you to danger.”
“Me?” Crowley exclaims incredulously, his voice brittle and high. “Me? Expose me to danger? Bloody Hell, angel, that’s nothing compared to the danger you are putting yourself into even thinking this! Aziraphale, if nothing else—you could Fall!”
“Is that what you are afraid of?”
“Yes! No! Not only!”
Aziraphale links his hands just below his breastbone, steadying himself, and breathes in. “It’s just that… I don’t think that is going to happen. Not… because of my feelings for you.”
“You are an angel,” Crowley informs him accusingly. “And I…”
“And you are a demon. Yes. Still.” Aziraphale could almost laugh with the sheer absurdity of this exchange if not for a desperate, aching need to get it right. “What I mean is… My dear. I’ve been in love with you for… millennia, even if I did hide it from myself. If I were to Fall for this, it would have happened already.” He offers Crowley a reassuring smile, but the demon, far from being soothed by it, only looks wilder, steps sideways to put his heavy chair between them: a barricade, a makeshift wall.
Aziraphale bites his lip, presses his thumb into the back of his hand. “Right, um… before we go too far down this road. I have to ask. Crowley, do you... want this? Because if you don’t, or aren’t sure… nothing has to change. You are my friend, I am absolutely not willing to risk—”
“It doesn’t matter what I want.” Crowley’s grip on the back of the chair is white-knuckled. “Angel, you don’t understand. I’d make you a target, and you’d let me. If they ever found out, Hell would be after you, or somebody in Hell would be. For the fun of it, for revenge, for anything else their twisted minds come up with, this is not safe.”
“It would be far more important,” Aziraphale says quietly, “if they were after you. Crowley, I’m a Principality.” He gives the word a fraction of its proper weight—and the echoes of it reverberate in the space between the atoms. “Trust me, I can stand my ground. There is a lot we are authorised to do when conditions call for it. But if they are after you...”
Crowley breathes in (too sharply, as if he’d just remembered to), visibly shakes himself. “They are Hell, angel. They are always after me. I wouldn’t care about them a bloody inch if this was in any way a good idea, but it is not. ’S not worth it, yeah? You do not want to get involved with a demon.”
“I do, rather,” Aziraphale says, shocking himself with his boldness. “Although I—I believe I’ve already made that clear. But Crowley. You… keep talking about what you think I want. What about you? And… good Lord, no, you do not have to tell me anything. I know this is all very abrupt. I’m not asking you to take more risks, to make decisions in this moment, or at all, but you have to know that what you want matters no less than…”
“‘M a bloody demon,” Crowley says emphatically, loosening his grip on the back of the chair to wave an outraged hand at the angel. “You’re brilliant, Aziraphale, why do you keep ignoring that? Demons are not supposed to get what they want! Did you miss the memo on our lot being eternally damned, fit only to spread destruction?”
“Is… that why, then?” Aziraphale asks slowly. “Are you… afraid that I will regret this? Reaching out to you? Being with you? Afraid that it won’t last?”
“Afraid? Afraid?! Angel, it’s my literal job to make things end in flames!”
“You didn’t choose your job. I have seen what you choose, time and time again, when you have choice. And also, quite frankly, when you don’t,” the angel adds in an undertone, half to himself.
“Don’t say it,” Crowley hisses frantically. “Aziraphale, you just—you can’t take this risk, you can’t, it’s not worth it! I’m not worth it!”
…Oh, Aziraphale thinks, standing up straighter. Crowley hasn’t ever said this before, not so openly; the angel’s inklings are coalescing into a painful certainty. “You… are not worth it?” he asks, dismayed.
Crowley jerks his chin to the side, grinds his teeth. “’S what I said.”
“And you are not worth it because…”
“I’m a Hell-thing, Aziraphale. With everything that entails.” Every word, the way Crowley struggles with them, might well be as heavy as freshly quarried marble.
“Right.” Aziraphale tamps down useless outrage (not at Crowley, no, never at him). I always knew I’d lose you, one day, the demon had said earlier. When you take a good close look at… at what I am.
A landscape is coming out of the darkness, desolate and wild.
“This isn’t really about the danger, is it?” the angel says slowly. “This is about you not believing that you can be loved. That you are worthy of love. That you won’t be a disappointment, if… you let yourself be loved.”
Across from him, behind his feeble barricade, the demon goes altogether too still.
“I… see,” Aziraphale says, and there is a part of him that might break if he stops speaking. “I… Crowley, there are some things I need to tell you.”
Crowley is as still as a statue, as if he’d frozen in time. Firelight catches on his cufflink, moves across the damp strands of his hair.
“Crowley. It’s… not true, what Hell and Heaven have been telling us. About demons and—love. Your... Fall, your exile from Heaven… I won’t pretend to know what it was like. Won’t pretend to understand why it had to happen to you. It would have been—shattering. Life-altering. But I do know that it did not take away your capacity to love. Did not change the fact that you are worthy of love. You are, my dear, and I love you, and... it matters, what you want.”
Another wave breaks on Howling Rock. Very slowly, his jaw set, Crowley turns to face him.
“Aziraphale.” Crowley’s fingernails are digging into the carved foliage on the back of the chair; his freckles are a rust-coloured constellation against his skin. “Aziraphale, you don’t know what you are getting into. You can’t possibly know. I want this, yes, I bloody want this, I’ve been as good as sleepwalking, thinking of what I want. Demons are not known for their restraint, and you are—you are making it possible, you are calling it up, but angel, you have no idea what you are getting into!”
Crowley looks, Aziraphale realises suddenly, like someone holding a wildfire at bay by the sheer force of will.
“Tell me, then,” the angel says, tilting up his chin.
“I’m—I can’t believe we are... Angel. I was exiled. ’S a big deal, yeah? ’S not the kind of thing you forget or, or recover from. ‘M not like you. I don’t know how to do any of this. ‘M not… For Somebody’s sake, I can’t even talk about this properly!”
“None of this makes you unworthy.”
“Right.” There is an edge of desperation in Crowley’s voice—and the heat of the approaching fire. “Yeah, no, just unforgivable. Going to go ahead and ignore that, then? Aziraphale, I’m only good at making a mess of things. That, I’m a pro at. D’you really want to wait around ’til I mess up? ‘Cause that will happen, and then you’ll regret this, and it will be too bloody late!”
“Six thousand years, Crowley,” Aziraphale says, undeterred. “You’ve never disappointed me, not in six thousand years. The only time things went wrong, here at this lighthouse, was because of my own cowardice. Because I was looking at who I’d been told you were, not at who you actually are. And right now, aren’t you doing the same?”
“You realise,” Crowley says through his teeth, “that you are saying this about a literal demon?”
“A very specific literal demon, yes. One I have known for millennia and should never have doubted.”
Crowley shakes his head. “Angel. You are bound to regret this. You deserve to be happy, yeah? Properly happy, without having to look over your shoulder all the blessed time. You deserve to be safe, to be cared for, and I’m… I’m useless, that’s what I am, I don’t know how to do any of this!”
“Don’t you? Crowley, you… are the most caring being I know. It’s so much a part of you that you don’t think about it. Do you even notice the things you are doing? Do you recall everything you’ve done for me in the last few days alone? And I’ve seen you with humans. You—”
“No!” Crowley interrupts him, fully desperate now, hitting the back of the chair flat-palmed. “Angel, don’t! Don’t give me bloody permission, because I’m going to take it. And I’m too much. Even just now, downstairs, when you kissed me: I was too much. Immediately, yeah? ’S not, ’s not on you to deal with me being too much, needing too much. You saw what I was like!”
“Oh, my dear. We are well-matched in that. I think both of us might have… desires that have grown rather wild, having been denied for so long.”
“You can’t just say things like that!” Crowley says, choked, throwing both hands in the air. “For Sssomebody’s sake, angel, you… ’M trying to step away, yeah? ‘M trying to warn you, and you, you are not listening! You can’t possibly want this, can’t want me, you just haven’t thought it through!”
“My dear, but I do. And there is the question of safety, of course there is. We’ve been waltzing around it since the Arrangement. Yet your fear, right now, is of a different kind, is it not? And you are listening to that fear, not looking at what is actually true…”
Crowley drops his hands and steps sideways from the chair, mute and mutinous.
“Just as I was doing, before,” Aziraphale goes on. “Which is another way we are alike. That’s… that’s the thing, isn’t it? We are alike. And we are in this together, trite as that sounds.” He shakes his head. “Crowley. I… don’t have expectations of you, or of the future. But I do believe in us. We can find the way forward, together. We can discover what that way has to look like, together—and not just for me, Crowley, but for you, because what you want matters, because you deserve to be happy, too, because—”
“Aziraphale,” Crowley says, in a way he’d never said his name before (again, Aziraphale wants to hear it again). “Angel. Bloody Hell. I am in love with you.”
He throws the words out like a challenge, like a thing he expects Aziraphale to recoil from.
It’s only after six thousand years of knowing him that Aziraphale can hear the raw, brittle hope in his voice.
“I... yes,” Aziraphale says softly into the silence Crowley’s proclamation leaves behind. “Dearest, I know. And I’ve been a fool, because I should have… recognised this hundreds of years ago. I should have made it safe for you to feel, I should have been by your side all this while…”
He shakes his head again, painfully aware of everything he had not done, and Crowley looks as dismayed as if he’d unleashed his best weapon, only to see it fall uselessly to the side.
“But I know this now, and I love you, and I’m not about to leave you alone,” Aziraphale concludes, as softly as before.
Crowley watches him for a long, fragile while before he speaks.
“You—mean it.” His voice is hoarse.
“I do.”
“Bloody Hell, angel.”
“Quite.”
“You would—” Crowley raises his hands in an aborted gesture, drops them again. He looks to be in pain. He looks like he’s teetering on the knife-edge of hope.
“I would.”
“Well—do, then, you useless feather duster!” Crowley explodes with sudden heat.
Afterwards, Aziraphale can never remember which one of them has taken the first step.
—
This can’t be real. You are deluding yourself, he cannot possibly care about—
Shut up, Crowley thinks vehemently at himself. I refuse.
And when the angel is a half-step from him, he lets go of a corner of his restraint.
Aziraphale’s eyes widen as Crowley grabs him by the lapels of his waistcoat, walks backwards with him in tow until they hit the dresser, the crockery on its shelves shivering in complaint. The flare of desire, as their hips come into contact, is white-hot, as searing as sun at high noon; the angel actually gasps, and then, for the sake of his own sanity, Crowley has to wrangle his restraint back into place, not yet, not yet, you blessed fool, give him time to change his mind.
Safely balanced against the oaken weight of the dresser, he pulls Aziraphale closer by one lapel. He reaches for his spectacles with the other hand, dragging them off before closing his eyes and leaning his forehead against the angel’s.
“This is your warning, angel. ‘M going to be too much.”
“This—rather sounds like a promise, my dear,” Aziraphale says breathlessly.
Crowley laughs, almost without sound, his throat too constricted for an attempt at speech. Then, Aziraphale’s arms are around him, and just like that, he can breathe again: properly, after what has felt like ages. The scent is all Aziraphale, the human side of him, yes, and the ethereal, too: iron gall ink, sharp ozone, a ghost of a summer rain. Little by little, the tendons in Crowley’s hands unknot, his muscles ease. Aziraphale is not wearing a frock-coat; his silky waistcoat is the colour of honeyed milk, and Crowley can feel the angel’s every inhale, his chest rising against Crowley’s own.
Time. Give him time. Give yourself time, for that matter. After six thousand years, don’t scrimp on change.
When Aziraphale leans away by a fraction, to look into Crowley’s eyes, Crowley has to keep still, to let himself be seen.
“How are you feeling, my dear?”
“Defiant.”
“Oh, good.” Aziraphale’s smile is a soft, tender thing, as hopeful as something emerging into sunlight after finding its way back from a subterranean maze. “I do believe that is your healthy state.”
His tension unwinding like a loosened coil, Crowley laughs again: incredulous, not quite steady.
“Dearest. What would you like, right now?” the angel asks, pressing a delicate circle into Crowley’s shoulder with one thumb. He bites his lip, looking thoughtful. “It’s just—don’t get me wrong, but I get the sense that… things have been moving rather too fast for you.”
“Oh, only at steam-speed,” Crowley mutters, amused, and as Aziraphale lifts a guilty gaze to him, hurries to say: “No, angel, no. ’S—new ground. You said. We are finding our way.”
“You really are very kind.”
“‘M absolutely not—”
“You are. But dearest. The question stands. What would you like? What would feel… good, right now?”
To answer this truthfully is another act of defiance.
“Angel,” Crowley starts—before his voice frays, and he has to try again. “Angel. Would you just… hold me, for a while?”
“Of course,” Aziraphale whispers, pulling him close.
It’s magnificent, to be held like this. Even more so than Crowley imagined—and he did imagine it, of course he did, in his six thousand years, given as he is to improbable dreams. It’s magnificent, and...
Is it altogether real? Can he actually have this? Or is this a fantasy, a story he’s telling himself? Might he still be in the fourteenth century, burning up with fever, too weak to excise the poison from his blood, dreaming a desperate last dream before his consciousness slides into oblivion, before he wakes up in Hell to jeering and prods and things far worse? A defiant dream of tenderness, of warmth, of love?
“You are shivering, my dear,” Aziraphale says softly against his cheek: one hand pressed steady and warm between the demon’s shoulder blades, his other arm around Crowley’s waist.
“’S—yeah. My lot, we are not supposed to get… this. ’S a whole thing.”
Aziraphale does not let go. When, in a while, Crowley releases him, sheepishly tucking back one of the angel’s stray featherlight curls, Aziraphale’s smile is both encouraging and serene.
“Would you like to sit down, my dear? And my earlier offer stands. May I make you coffee? Or tea?”
“I—yeah. Nnnmh. Yes,” Crowley repeats, still hazy with the warmth of the embrace. “Tea?”
The angel nods. Before long, the earthenware teapot is warming at the edge of the range, tealeaves inside; having set the kettle to boil, Aziraphale comes back to Crowley and the demon cannot help reaching out again, touching the angel’s cheek with the backs of his fingers.
“You’re… certain, then?” he asks Aziraphale quietly. “This is still more dangerous than the Arrangement. You were right to panic when you first thought you might be… when you thought of the possibility of—all of this.”
“Oh, I am.” Aziraphale cups his hand over Crowley’s fingers, turns his head to press his lips to them, his eyelashes dipping and staying down. “Are you?”
“Yes.”
The angel smiles without opening his eyes. “And you can always change your mind, you know. We will find the right way. Simply knowing you makes me spectacularly happy. It’s the most remarkable thing.”
“Pffff,” Crowley says, not quite steady. “Too late, contract signed, you’ve got a personal demon now.”
Aziraphale opens his eyes. “Do I,” he says softly. “And what does my personal demon wish for next?”
—
They have their tea. Aziraphale keeps Crowley well-supplied with jams, and as before, these appear to do Crowley a world of good.
My dear, the angel thinks, studying the softening lines of Crowley’s face. Thank you. Thank you for letting me care for you, too.
Around them, in the meantime, the lighthouse lives a life of its own: with the distant steps, and creaks, and whispers on the very edge of hearing, with the disquiet of things hiding just out of sight.
Both of them ignore this as thoroughly as they can.
Crowley keeps reaching out. Time and time again—and Aziraphale’s breath catches on every occasion—the demon adjusts Aziraphale’s cravat, or smoothes a wrinkle in his waistcoat lapel, or (finally with no pretext) brings his hand up to Aziraphale’s cheek. His reach is bolder, steadier every time, and, despite Aziraphale’s attempts to talk himself down, the angel’s every nerve is taut with expectation.
The silence, when it comes, cuts right through that.
They are still in the kitchen when it descends on them, sudden and enormous, as if a colossal bell jar has dropped over the lighthouse, cutting it off from the assault of the waves, the howl of the gale, the hiss of the rain. Everything outside goes dark. Instantly alert, Aziraphale steps in front of the demon, shields him from the hatchways and the windows: hardly knowing what he is planning to do, what he is trying to protect Crowley from, where the danger lies.
The silence is so absolute that they can hear the ticking of the lighthouse clockwork, the beat of the signal bell, the grinding of the lens that turns in the room above.
“Aziraphale.” Crowley puts a hand on Aziraphale’s shoulder. “’S… not here. ’S outside, some distance away. And—big. Very big.”
“A crack?”
“I think so.”
Then, just like that, the storm is back, heavy waves once again crashing into the tower, threatening to shear its base from the half-submerged rock. The last vestiges of daylight, dark-grey and watery, flicker back into existence beyond the glass.
Crowley hisses under his breath—and pulls Aziraphale to him by the shoulder. “Angel. For Somebody’s sake, you can’t do that. Don’t go trying to shield me, you can’t even sense these things.”
“It’s getting worse,” Aziraphale says. He is not asking.
Crowley presses his lips together, grave and off-colour. “’S… not good, yeah.”
“Should we investigate?”
“No.” Dragging a hand through his hair, Crowley glances towards the windows. A current of tension is once again flowing through his body; Aziraphale blinks away an image of St. Elmo’s fire at the demon’s fingertips, over his sharp knuckles. “No point. I’m useless, angel. I’ve barely any power left, it’ll be hours before I am able to do much at all. I don’t know how to get us out, don’t even know where we bloody are.” He takes hold of Aziraphale’s hand as he says this and pulls the angel to one of the windows to look outside. “See? Useless,” he repeats towards the storm with disgust.
“Crowley, stop this,” Aziraphale says, stern. “I cannot stand for you disparaging yourself. We are in this together, yes?” He squeezes Crowley’s fingers. “We are going to figure this out. We’ve got a few pages of the journal, I… do have power, though it’s been unpredictable, and... at least whatever is happening is still at bay?”
“Right,” Crowley says to their ghostly reflections in the glass. He has not regained his colour. “Right, yeah. Still at bay.”
But the strangeness is coming in as unstoppable as the tide.
Half an hour later, they are in the library. The endless day is finally turning into night, and darkness is once again coiling in the corners, under armchairs and shelves. Aziraphale steps away from the bed where the stubborn demon is sitting cross-legged, frowning at the journal devoid of further clues, and crosses to the writing-desk to light another lamp.
“Aziraphale,” Crowley says urgently behind his back.
The angel whips around. “Yes? Yes, what...?”
On the bed, Crowley is very still, his hand hovering over the page of the journal.
“I heard that, too,” he says tightly. “Angel, that wasn’t me.”
He slides the journal aside, half-rising, but Aziraphale gestures for him to stop, crosses the room, sits down on the edge of the bed, listening to the distant echoes. Crowley puts a hand on Aziraphale’s back.
“Is it gone?” Aziraphale asks him quietly. “That was a crack, wasn’t it?”
“Mm. Tiny. Very close. Gone in a blink.”
Time moves on. The rain, the wind, the distant thunder, the whirring of the cogs—all the regular sounds of the lighthouse keep steady long enough for Crowley’s hand on Aziraphale’s back to slacken, to fall. The demon twists to reach for the diary on the bedspread behind him. “Right then. Angel. About the journal. How many pages were filled when——oh bloody Hell.”
The journal slides to the carpet with a soft thump as Crowley reflexively grasps the angel’s sleeve, then his hand. He’s gone white.
That’s all the warning Aziraphale gets before the light-room above them explodes with sound. Steps, a clatter, a shout, the bright crash of shattering glass. “Aziraphale,”—this, from upstairs, in Crowley’s voice, clipped and alarmed. “’Where are you—I cannot—”
A whooshing stroke, as if of a great pair of wings beating.
Silence.
“This is what you heard before?” Crowley asks finally, voice level.
Aziraphale wraps his fingers tighter around the demon’s, his heart at a full gallop in his chest. “No. Y—yes. It... never sounded like this.” He looks up at the vaulted ceiling, bites his lip. Rain hammers at the windows. “Crowley, I think we should go upstairs.”
The demon gives him a slow, guarded look. “Yeah?”
“Y—yes. This sounded like you. And like something has gone wrong. With you.” Aziraphale is all too aware of how inadequate his explanation is, but the silence upstairs is pulling at him, drawing him in. It’s as if the lions and the dragons inked over the lacunae have raised their heads, are following him with expectant, watchful eyes—and the image is not nearly as disquieting as it should be.
“Angel. I’m right here. You don’t think that I am not who—”
“Crowley, good Lord, no! I am not doubting you are who you are. I don’t think you a changeling, or anything absurd like that. It’s just that I don’t understand what’s going on, and that was your voice,” Aziraphale finishes helplessly.
“Used as bait, angel, have you considered that? We’ve both seen shadows we could not identify. We haven’t excluded the possibility that there’s an intelligent actor here, trying to lure us in. Trying to lure you in. And it’s working, isn’t it.”
“Maybe. N-no.” Aziraphale casts another glance upstairs. “Crowley, this feels far too random. I’ve heard your voice here so many times, calling out to me, whispering, laughing. None of these times have been an invitation. None were a simple ‘angel, come look at this’ with you out of sight, which would have worked, Crowley, that would have worked. It’s as if we are simply hearing fragments, echoes scattered about the place. But echoes of what?”
Crowley watches him, unhappily, as he considers this. “Right,” he says finally. “Sure, fine, yeah, you have a point. And you’re certain you want to go upstairs.”
Aziraphale nods.
“Fine. Let’s. But I’m going in first.”
“Crowley, there is no need to—”
“I’m going in first, angel, or we are not going. Not until we get some power back.”
“I do have power.”
“Some usable power. Aziraphale, I know we don’t have a whole lot of options, and whatever’s happening is getting worse. So yeah, let’s go see what this thing was about. But I’m pulling you out at the first sign of a crack, or anything.”
Aziraphale nods again, acquiescing, and takes both Crowley’s hands into his, dipping his head to kiss the demon’s knuckles.
The light-room, when they walk up to it, appears unchanged: no damage, no shattered glass. The lens, quite whole, is turning at its centre; the hot air rising from it hums and hisses in the ventilation grate in the metal roof.
Nothing moves but the rivulets of rainwater on the other side of the plate glass windows, the spinning beams, the signal bell marking out the time. Slowly, they circle the lens: a quarter of the way around the room, a half, three quarters. Raindrops flash in the lighthouse beams: red, white, red again.
Aziraphale is the first one to sense the change.
He is also, as it turns out later, the only one to sense it. (If that was a crack, a tear like any others, wouldn’t Crowley have known about it instantly? Wouldn’t the demon have pulled him back?)
It’s a call.
An appeal, on the very edge of hearing. An image on the edge of memory. Something is looking for him; something—someone—is trying to reach him, is repeating his name: a faint and wavering entreaty, a reflection of a reflection. Aziraphale. Aziraphale, can you hear me?
And the voice—inevitably, hauntingly—is Crowley’s voice.
The angel is vaguely aware that, to his left, the real Crowley has stopped, that the demon’s fingers are a steel grip around his hand. “Angel,” Crowley is saying: his voice fuzzy and indistinct, as if coming through felted wool. “Angel, is something happening?”
Aziraphale, the faraway voice repeats, no less familiar, no less dear. There’s distress in it—and heartrending hope. Angel. Where are you?
“Here,” Aziraphale cannot help whispering in response. “I’m here.”
“What?” Crowley says in alarm, yanking Aziraphale to him by the shoulders. The demon’s freckles burn ember-like against his chalky skin. “Angel, who are you talking to?”
“I—” Aziraphale shakes his head, feeling like he is surfacing from turbulent waters. “I’m really not—”
And then, the air of the room is rent with sound.
It’s not a howl. It is, if anything, a younger sibling of an archangel’s trumpet, low and powerful, resonating in the very stones, coming through full and clear to flood the space around them.
And it’s—
Good Lord. Aziraphale knows this sound. The overtones, the harmonics of it are unmistakable: strikingly like those of the howl Aziraphale had heard on the first evening at the lighthouse, but this time, there is no fuzziness around its edges, no distortion, no discord, and, though the sound is so loud as to be nearly painful to his unprotected human ears, Aziraphale recognises it without a doubt.
Of course. Of course it’s not the call of a living thing.
His hands on the angel’s shoulders, Crowley has frozen in place. The demon is looking down, to their feet and below, as if his gaze can penetrate the mass of wood and stone and land on the call’s invisible source.
The sound cuts out. The wind flings a fresh sheet of rainwater against the plate glass. Lightning strikes above; thunder follows.
“It’s a horn,” Crowley states slowly, incredulously, lifting his eyes to the angel’s. “Aziraphale, ’s this what you heard before? ’S a bloody... I don’t even know what size it must be to be this loud, but angel… That was a bloody horn.”
—
Darkness falls. Soon after it does, the tide of strangeness recedes once more, taking the stray echoes and the eerie shadows with it.
Back in the library, Crowley paces.
“A horn,” he repeats for the half-dozenth time, spinning on his heel to face Aziraphale. “It was almost mechanical, wasn’t it? Certainly not one of your lot with a trumpet, they wouldn’t resist a flourish. No, there was no breath in it, it was too flat, too—” He waves his hand, searching for a word. “’S got to be a signal, yeah? However it was made. But a signal for what? For who?”
“I still don’t think there is a who,” Aziraphale offers quietly from where he’d stationed himself by the window.
Crowley strides towards him, hops up on the windowsill, breathes out as he looks into the angel’s face, pale even in the warm glow of their lamps. He touches his fingertips to Aziraphale’s cheek, smoothes the flounces of the angel’s cravat, presses his hand to Aziraphale’s chest, over the deep thud of his heart. Focus, he orders himself. Focus. Figure this out.
The tower vibrates with another crash of the waves. The foam licks the outside of the glass, chased by the lashing rain. They are plunged in semi-darkness, Crowley’s supply of miracles still exhausted, the hollow pull in his chest reminding him how little power he’d recovered in the hours that passed.
It’s the most human he’s felt in centuries.
“You’d answered someone, angel. And I don’t like this. ’S like humans hearing a knock on the outside of their diving bell when they are deep undersea.”
They’ve already spoken about this. Aziraphale says nothing, covering Crowley’s hand with his own, and Crowley closes his eyes, breathes in time with the angel’s steady heartbeat. Aziraphale, he thinks, the name a refrain within him. Aziraphale, angel, I have to keep you safe.
“The howling you told me about,” he says, opening his eyes as a new idea strikes him. “Those unearthly wails that sailors reported in the last few years. It must have been the same thing.”
“That does appear likely, doesn’t it.”
The angel is inches away. Right now, Crowley could pull him closer still; he could get Aziraphale to step between his knees, could lock his ankles over the backs of the angel’s thighs, holding him there, keeping him in place. He very nearly does it, too, though the thought is still dazzling in its daring, but the darkness seems to push against the window behind him, and the disquiet of the place is like pressure over his skin, like a scratchy gaze on the back of his neck.
He needs to figure out what’s happening. He needs to think.
Bringing the angel’s fingers to his lips, once, Crowley pulls Aziraphale away from the window, starts his pacing anew. To no avail: pacing only serves to tire him more, and presently, the demon collapses onto the bed in exasperation, slides down to the carpet like the snake he lacks the power to transform into, ending up half-draped over the bedframe, head thrown back as he glares at the vaulted ceiling.
“You look exhausted, my dear,” Aziraphale says, walking over and settling next to him on the floor.
“I look useless,” the demon says darkly, ignoring Aziraphale’s reproachful glance. “There are just too many pieces, yeah? They can’t possibly fit together. My nightmares, your apparitions. This not-howl. And these fractures, these cracks: they must be the key to this, except all I have right now are more questions. Where did they come from? Where do they lead? Why can’t you sense them? And finally: where the bloody hallowed halls of Heaven are we, angel?” Crowley drags a hand over his face, pinches the bridge of his nose. “Because I don’t think we are where we started out.”
“Quite,” the angel agrees. “I’ve also been thinking about how remote everything feels. Heaven. Hell. It’s as if we have crossed into—I am not certain how to describe it. Into a blank spot on the map. Into a lacuna: no landmarks to it, just the endless rain.”
“Crossed into another place,” Crowley repeats. “Maybe we did, yeah. Or maybe we are at a crossroads. We are hearing things through the cracks. I bet we are seeing them, too. Perhaps that’s what your apparitions were. Perhaps there’s a world out there like ours, ‘cept where the two of us…” Crowley gestures between them, “knew, and dared. Or maybe there are many worlds, possibilities made real. I wouldn’t put it past Her. But those cracks feel very, very wrong. Reality shouldn’t be fracturing.” The demon falls silent, bites the inside of his cheek before he goes on. “Do you know that even galaxies can collide? ’S not good when they do.”
“I’m aware.”
“Sorry. Yeah.” Crowley massages his temples, watches the streaming rain. Then, he shakes himself. “No. You know what? It doesn’t add up. What happened to your cup? What was going on that morning when you waited for hours, and I just went for a swim? What was up with today? It lasted for a bloody week. Yet we’re not in the Arctic.” The demon pauses, considering, and gives Aziraphale a wry smile. “Although maybe we are. ’S freezing; maybe that was the Franklin expedition knocking on the door. But do you see what I am saying? There’s just too much. It doesn’t add up.”
“I do see,” Aziraphale says quietly. “And my dear, there is still more. Something else I’ve noticed.”
“Yeah?”
The angel nods. “I’ve been… uneasy about this for some time. This lighthouse. It’s full of echoes. Echoes of you: your laughter, your voice. It’s like you’ve walked through this place. Like you did truly haunt it, like you’ve reflected in all the mirrors. Back when I suspected you, I thought that I kept hearing your voice because of how hopelessly you enthrall me—but I’m quite certain, now, that that’s not it. Or not all of it.” Aziraphale smiles a small, self-conscious smile that Crowley wants to safe-keep for millennia. Firelight shines through the soft wool of his curls.
Behold, Crowley thinks, unable to stop the words rising within him. Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast doves' eyes within thy locks: thy hair is as a flock of goats that appear from mount Gilead.
“My dear?”
“Yeah.” Crowley surfaces from his reverie. “Yeah, no, ‘m listening.” He finds that, without noticing it, he’d shifted closer to the angel. Somewhere in his memory, a wing rises, shielding him from the gathering storm clouds, from the first-ever rain. He shakes his head, dredges through his half-completed thoughts. “But angel. The keepers quite certainly saw each other, not only a winged thing. And I heard the ticking of a clock, long after the clock was moved. And you saw that smoke. There’s plenty going on here, most of it having nothing to do with me. Isn’t it possible that you’ve simply paid more attention to things that… did appear to involve me?”
Aziraphale considers it. “Perhaps,” he says finally. “Yes, perhaps that’s what it is. Still. I abhor that you are stuck here with me, having to deal with whatever this is.”
There is a shadow of distress in his voice, unmistakable now that Crowley is paying attention.
“Aziraphale.” The demon frowns. “I chose to be here. With you.”
“But you didn’t choose this. And I dragged you into—”
“Oh no no no. I see where this is coming from.” Crowley sits up, twisting away from the bed-frame and towards the angel. “Don’t go all morose and contrite on me, Aziraphale, ’s what they taught you in Heaven. And… really, angel? Do you imagine that, had I known that this was going to happen, I would have just left? ‘Ta-ta, Aziraphale, this seems a tad too dangerous, how about you go on without me?’”
The angel smiles, seemingly despite himself. “Oh, my dear, you are…” He shakes his head. “Remarkable,” he finishes softly.
“Nnnhh, ‘m not…” Crowley starts to object—but then the expression on the angel’s face shifts again, and Crowley’s eyes snap to Aziraphale’s.
“This might be a warning, mightn’t it?” Aziraphale goes on quietly, earnestly. “What we heard upstairs just now, it might be a warning. We can do very little about worlds colliding, but if we assume that’s not what’s going on... What if something is about to happen to you?”
“Angel. We can’t trust this place. We can’t trust what we see here, or what we hear. There is really no reason to assume this is anything but a random manifestation.”
Aziraphale bites his lip, looks down at his hands. “Quite. Yes, of course, I’m… sure you are right. It won’t do to draw hasty conclusions.”
“You are worried,” Crowley enunciates, feeling slow. “And not even about the cracks. You are worried about me.”
“Crowley. Dearest. Of course I’m worried about you. You are precious to me. And I’ve only just realised it, I haven’t even had time to tell you properly. If something were to happen to you…”
“Wait—no—that—” Crowley rolls up to his knees, reaches out to still Aziraphale’s twisting hands. “Angel. First of all. Nothing’s going to happen to me.” He moves his hands up to squeeze Aziraphale’s shoulders, tips Aziraphale’s head up to look into the angel’s face. “Nothing is going to happen,” he repeats emphatically. “Not to me, not to you. I refuse, yeah? ‘M not bloody going to let it. We’ve got things to do, we’ve got a future that’s ours. Nobody—nothing—gets to take that away.” The demon inhales deeply. “And. Second. You were listening to me, just now, when I was saying all that stuff about other worlds, about things we can’t affect. Don’t, angel. Don’t listen to me, not about that. ‘M tired, ‘m not seeing things straight. There has to be a simpler answer. We can affect those cracks, I’m sure we can. Actually, I’m sure we did, reality appears to be far more stable when we are around each other, and that wouldn’t be happening if the cracks meant that worlds were colliding. So there has to be something we can do, angel, and I promise you…”
But his promise becomes a soundless exhale as Aziraphale reaches to take Crowley’s hand off his shoulder, turns it over, and (deliberately, intently) presses a kiss to Crowley’s open palm.
“Thank you,” he whispers softly into Crowley’s skin.
His words go through Crowley like an electric current, like the discharge of a Leyden jar.
“I—ghhh—don’t go thanking me, angel, I’ve done nothing.”
The angel smiles, and that simple thing shouldn’t have the effect that it does, but as Crowley feels the edge of that smile, half-hidden by his palm, something flares within him: something so powerful that to keep it contained would be like trying to bottle up lightning.
“You’d noticed my distress, just now, and your first instinct was to reassure me,” Aziraphale says. “You’ve done that so many times in the past, too. I realise I’ve been thanking you so little, when you deserve so much.” The angel lets Crowley’s fingers slide out of his grasp, still holds the demon’s gaze. “May I tell you now?”
The kiss is hot in Crowley’s hand: a fluttering, almost-tangible thing. He wants to press his own lips to it. He wants—
“You are remarkable,” the angel goes on. “The way you care. And also, the way you keep searching, believing, hoping.”
Whatever is flaring within Crowley is growing hotter, denser, brighter by the second. “Those are fighting words,” he says helplessly. “Angel, I understand that you’re worried about me, but ‘m a demon, you can’t…”
“I really think you need to hear this, my dear. I spent thousands of years not thanking you properly, not telling you how extraordinary you are. I can’t even begin to catch up, but Crowley… Your defiance, your daring, your bravery, you have to know how much I love…”
Crowley chokes on air. “I’m—I’m warning you, angel,” he says, his heart a fire-bell in his chest. Something is happening to his insides, to his breath; the flaring thing within him might be the blue-tinged core of a newborn star.
“Oh,” Aziraphale says, backtracking. “Dearest, was that too much?” He searches Crowley’s face and his eyes widen, almost imperceptibly, at what he finds. “Or is this… the kind of warning that is also a promise? Because in that case, I have to tell you that your kindness…”
“Don’t you bloody dare,” Crowley breathes out, halfway between embarrassment and laughter—and pulls Aziraphale to him by the shoulders, and cuts the angel off with an indignant, fierce, long-overdue kiss.
—
What follows is a wildfire. A whirlwind, rising from a single spark.
Crowley lets go, finally tearing down his restraint. Without breaking the kiss, he straddles Aziraphale in one swift movement, pins him in place, seems to balance on the edge of incredulous laughter, and then his hands are on Aziraphale’s shoulders, cupping the angel’s face, exploring, challenging, daring.
This, Aziraphale thinks, instantly lost to Crowley’s closeness, to the demon’s roving touch. It’s intoxicating: Crowley’s mouth on his, the pressure of the demon’s hips, the heat of his body, radiant and alive and—oh dear Lord—
Aziraphale is allowed this. So much more than allowed: he is desired, passionately and wildly. Crowley’s fingers are in his hair, at the back of his neck, travelling down as Crowley kisses into his mouth, bites at his lower lip, whispers his name in an orison of desire.
Aziraphale reaches back. He is invited, he is welcome to, so he slides his hands over the lapels of Crowley’s tailcoat, over the demon’s chest. The coat buttons fall open readily beneath Aziraphale’s questing fingers, and the angel finally gets to run his hands over the silky fabric of Crowley’s waistcoat, feeling the muscles underneath—while Crowley shivers and stutters, his voice breaking on Aziraphale’s name, his eyes wide and fully golden.
His own heartbeat rushing, Aziraphale loosens Crowley’s necktie, trails kisses on the underside of Crowley’s jaw, leaving the demon gasping for breath. He undoes Crowley’s collar, dropping the stud that he himself had so carefully fixed in place, brushing it away, letting it roll under the bed—and then, he is pressing his lips to the exposed vaults of Crowley’s throat.
“Angel,” Crowley says, swaying back briefly, breath ragged, one hand on the bed frame behind Aziraphale’s back, the other one in Aziraphale’s hair. “Angel. Angel, I—”
Whatever else he means to say is lost as his eyes snap to Aziraphale’s lips, as he half-groans, half-exhales, and once again falls towards the angel.
“We should relocate,” the angel says breathlessly in the next pause, summoning all of his willpower to speak. “Dearest—we don’t have to be—on the floor—”
“Mmh,” Crowley says against his lips, sounding oblivious and long-lost, and Aziraphale, his hands on Crowley’s thighs, realises with unshakeable certainty that in another minute, he won’t have any presence of mind either, that any control he’s managing to keep comes from the last vestiges of caution (is Crowley ready? does he want this?) and that this time, the answer is abundantly, unequivocally clear.
“There is a bed,” Aziraphale attempts once more. “Just—behind us”—and as Crowley ignores him, the angel pushes back, lifts Crowley off him by the waist—
and then his thoughts turn into the radiant blankness of sunlit sea; almost before he knows it, he is the one straddling Crowley, and the demon looks outright ecstatic at that, laughing up at him in delight: “Angel, do you have any idea what this is doing to me?”
Aziraphale kisses the stubborn curve of his lips.
—
This can’t be real, Crowley thinks, wonderstruck, a wave of hot happiness flooding him, mingled with raw desire. Aziraphale’s weight over him is glorious and welcome and wholly unexpected, his kisses burning star-like over Crowley’s skin (more, Crowley wants more, he wants more).
It’s a fiction, a bewildered part of him is insisting. It’s like one of those stories he’d tell himself, the stories where the angel was—
Where Aziraphale was waiting for him. Stories Crowley would never dare tell in daytime, never within earshot of Aziraphale himself (how could he? Listen, angel, I’ve got this—’s embarrassing, really—would you mind it terribly if I just went ahead and—Aziraphale, whatever I feel for you is far vaster than I can contain).
Stories that belonged to the borderlands, to the liminal, to the spaces between the lines, to marginalia, to journeys, to campfires in the middle of the desert, to ships’ lower decks, to mornings of waking up in a room one has never before seen in the leaden light of dawn.
Stories to be imagined passionately in the small hours, when a useless candle sputters on the window-sill, not a symbol, not a beacon, just a weary light. Stories to be told anonymously, stories to be hidden and allowed to dissolve into oblivion, stories to be let go.
This can’t be real, the dazed, disbelieving part of Crowley is repeating, yet Aziraphale’s hands are under his tailcoat, mapping out the terrain of his ribs, yet the angel’s mouth is on his, searching, asking for, giving, yet Aziraphale had told him things that were impossible, and Crowley had believed—
“Not—the floor,” Aziraphale says, imperative once again—and, before Crowley can stop him, can demand that the angel remain exactly where he is, he unstraddles the demon, kneels next to him—and lifts him up as easily as if Crowley weighed nothing at all.
—
As Aziraphale lowers Crowley onto the bed, the demon does not let go. Quite the opposite: he pulls the angel down with him, holding on to Aziraphale with frenzied strength.
The very sight of the demon—breathless and flushed, a sheen of sweat in the hollow of his throat—is mesmerising. Reverent, Aziraphale brushes back Crowley’s hair, kisses his temples, the stardust of his freckles; the angel’s wildest forbidden imaginings from the previous days have nothing on the reality of holding Crowley, being held by him.
“Angel,” Crowley is repeating. “Angel, angel. I can’t… Is this real? Are you actually real?”
“I could ask you the same question, my love,” Aziraphale says quietly, running the tips of his fingers over Crowley’s eyebrow, just below the stubborn curl.
Crowley freezes, then, his expression wide-eyed disbelief, and in a heartbeat, Aziraphale understands. He reaches out to take Crowley’s hand, kisses the demon’s long fingers, the pale underside of his wrist. “My love,” he whispers into Crowley’s skin, against the dark rivers of his veins. “My love. My love. My love.”
Crowley’s breath hitches. With a broken sound, the demon lunges for Aziraphale’s lips again, freeing his hand to pull the angel closer, grabbing fistfuls of cloth as the kiss grows sharper, more desperate, teeth in it (tears, too, Aziraphale understands, a dizzying swoop under his ribs).
“I—love you,” the angel manages to say against Crowley’s mouth, and the demon keens.
Then, he is pulling on Aziraphale’s cravat, untying it, tossing it impatiently to the side, and his unsteady fingertips trace along Aziraphale’s collarbones, over the lines of the angel’s neck. The heat of Crowley’s lips follows his touch: to the open collar of the angel’s shirt, to his Adam’s apple, to just behind his ear—and Aziraphale is getting lost, he is getting lost, but he has been lost for so long, hasn’t he, he’s been lost long before he knew it, not looking, never looking at the rising tide.
How long have they wanted this, Aziraphale asks himself—as Crowley rolls on top of him, curves backwards to shrug off his unbuttoned tailcoat, hissing as he struggles with the fashionably narrow sleeves. Without magic, both of them are as human as they have ever been, and—
Oh.
How long have they wanted this? To reach out, to hold?
His hands on Crowley’s waist, travelling up, Aziraphale pulls the demon closer, folds Crowley against his chest, whispers into the demon’s rust-colour hair: words that make Crowley shiver, and dig his nails into Aziraphale’s shoulders, and, when they become too much, silence the angel in the way lovers have done for thousands of years.
How long, Aziraphale asks himself again, lost in the heat of Crowley’s mouth. How long ago was the first moment when, had he dared to look, he would have seen his own affection, tenderness, desire mirrored in the demon? How many times have they almost reached out?
Because they have been teetering on the edge of this for most of their history.
They’ve almost reached out in Alexandria, in the lobby of the Musaeum. He’d ached to take Crowley’s hands on the threshold of the monastery by the sea. He would keep forgetting to breathe when Crowley walked into rooms, he would catch himself gazing—and time and time again, he’d ascribe that inexorable pull to Crowley’s enticing nature, to his demonic charm.
Oh, so many times. Versaille, opera houses, that meeting at the Ascot races, that walk along the edge of a meadow, the low summer sun the exact warm gold of Crowley’s eyes—and the early days at the lighthouse, too, all full of unconsummated possibility. Every may-have-been, every once-impossible thought is rising to the surface, now, jewel-bright; every one is a shard in a kaleidoscope of images around the two of them, locked and tangled on the bed: defiant, and daring, and entirely, brilliantly alive.
—
How long have we wanted this, Crowley thinks. He feels like he is surfacing, like he’s drowning. This has to be a dream, a story he’s telling himself, but it feels real, and raw, and human in the way his dreams never do. And Aziraphale—
He would never have dared to imagine this about Aziraphale.
Not the angel’s scattered breaths when Crowley kisses the hollow just below his lower lip. Not his hands roaming under Crowley’s shirt, pausing at his waistband—and dipping lower, teasing and feeling and cupping, audacious and impossibly bold. (All of a sudden, Crowley needs air, of course he does, he is far too human right now not to, but he seems to need all of it, all at once, and most of all, he needs the angel to keep going.)
And yet, Aziraphale is careful, too. Oh so careful—and too tentative when Crowley wants more, wants him, wants him now. Withdrawing his hand, the angel leaves a feather trail of kisses along Crowley’s cheekbone, presses his lips to Crowley’s eyelashes, whispers a question at his ear. “Yes, you blessed fool, yes, how many times do I need to say this, yes,” Crowley hisses at him in exasperation, and then, he has hold of Aziraphale’s hands, is kissing every finger, pressing his lips to the perfectly healed spot where the angel’s skin was once marked by the shard of his cup. “‘Ziraphale, bloody Hell, you have eyes, more of them than your fair share actually, can’t you bloody see? Now, I need you now, stop wasting time—”
Time, he thinks, his thoughts snagging on the idea, but then Aziraphale’s hands are back, on him, and he is moaning into the angel’s mouth.
They can do this. They can, there is nobody here to watch them, nobody to demand that they stop. With how distant both Heaven and Hell have felt all this while, this might well be an opium dream, a lacuna, their personal universe; they are not anywhere, and they finally, finally have time to—
Time, the demon thinks again, going still under Aziraphale’s touch. Their personal universe. A lacuna. Time.
Somewhere within Crowley, the teeth of vainly spinning cogwheels connect and lock.
The endless day.
The ticking of a clock, long after the clock was moved. Long after. After.
The hours that passed for the angel when Crowley was briefly away.
The cold, which is certainly not the cold of a chilly spell in August.
The bloody unseasonable fish.
Aziraphale’s cup.
Time.
“Dearest?” Aziraphale whispers, searching his face. “Was this too much? Would you like us to—”
Crowley bolts upright, looking at the angel wildly as his whole understanding of what they have seen and heard shifts. “Bloody hallowed halls of Heaven,” he breathes. “‘Ziraphale... Aziraphale, angel, we haven’t been asking the right question. We haven’t…” He shakes his head, half-drunk with realisation as sudden as a downpour produced by clear skies.
Aziraphale sits up as well. “Crowley? My dear?”
“It’s when. It’s when we are, angel, not where we are,” the demon says with rising glee, grasping the angel’s hands, then his shoulders, and digging his fingers in. “Time, time is what’s breaking here, that’s why I feel it and you don’t, I can’t believe we haven’t… I’ve missed every single sign. We are hearing the future, Aziraphale, or—or the past, and just now, we heard something that the humans haven’t invented yet, a signal horn of some kind; we are at a bloody lighthouse, angel, of course they are going to have signals at a lighthouse…”
And, out of breath and no longer able to contain himself, Crowley begins to laugh.
Notes:
And now, dear readers, I take you to the weather.
This Night Is for You and for Me by Danny Norbury
Four Dimensions by Ludovico Einaudi
Time by 2CELLOS
Also also: this is already bordering on an M rating and is very likely to cross into it in the beginning of the next chapter, so I expect the rating of the whole story to go up. (Not even Crowley’s revelation has the power to stop them now.) The more M-rated parts will be in the vein of what you’ve read so far and won’t cross into E territory; I’ll also tell you when to jump back in for the plot if you’d rather skip them! 🤍🤍🤍
UPD Jan 24: Not ready yet, though I have 10k+ of outline and very early drafts. This is like sitting in a darkroom, in a pool of red light, waiting patiently for the shapes on photographic paper to resolve into detail. Shhhh, don’t turn on the lights.
UPD Mar 19: uhhhhhhh WELL this is definitely not just one chapter. I'll say two more? And an epilogue, though there was always going to be an epilogue.
Chapter 8: Lacuna
Notes:
WELL. Hello again, it’s only been a few months 😅 The number of chapters in the finale of this story is changing, but this is just me finding a different way to slice them.
As planned, the rating is going up, but it’s all very tame. Still, if you’d like to skip the more M-rated portions, you can jump out at the first ‘~’ separator and jump back in at the next.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
“Crowley,” Aziraphale says desperately. “Crowley, how do you know? And if you do know, how is this good?”
Crowley, who has managed to insinuate himself into Aziraphale’s lap, is still laughing: incredulously, giddily, as if he’d just been let in on a practical joke of absurd proportion. He cups Aziraphale’s face, kisses the bridge of the angel’s nose, the bow of his upper lip, the corner of his mouth. “’S more than good, angel. ’S bloody brilliant. Because with this, I bet I can find a way to get us out.”
“Out of fractured time…?”
Crowley grins. His forearms are resting on Aziraphale’s shoulders, his sharp knees are planted to both sides of Aziraphale’s thighs; his elation is infectious, his closeness supremely distracting. “Do you know,” the demon confides, “that I am bloody thick? I should have realised what was happening days ago. ’S embarrassing, that’s what it is.” He laughs soundlessly, his forehead against Aziraphale’s. “And bloody Hell, angel. I want you an absurd amount, I can’t think straight around you. There is something we should check in the journal, yet I can’t possibly—”
He does not finish the thought before he is kissing Aziraphale again. The kiss deepens, Aziraphale quite unable to stop it even as his mind reels with the sudden shift of perspective. Time. Time. This makes startling, unquestionable sense. It explains, too, why he has not felt the hauntings in the same way that Crowley has: unlike Crowley, Aziraphale has never quite mastered weaving webs of probability, nudging events, outright making the world stop.
They emerge from the kiss, breathless and newly flushed.
“We should… talk about what to do next?” Aziraphale attempts.
“Counterproposal,” Crowley says happily, descending to nip at Aziraphale’s ear. “We should stay right here and do unspeakable things.”
“But…” Aziraphale starts, and nearly forgets what he is about to say as Crowley moves against him, teasing. “You said there is something that we should check…”
“Your sense of duty,” Crowley murmurs at Aziraphale’s ear, “is a force to be reckoned with. Not that I didn’t know it.” He puts a finger to Aziraphale’s lips. “Right. Fine. No arguments. We do one thing. One single check, to find out how long this has been staring us in the face. And then we are going to bloody well finish what we started.”
The demon scrambles off Aziraphale’s knees and holds out his hand, grinning. Aziraphale allows himself to be pulled to his feet and towards the writing-desk, where Steven Paul’s diary is lying in the wavering circle of lamplight. Crowley reaches for the black-bound book, weighs it in his hands, starts flipping through the pages. “April. May. June. July. August. Oh yes. Are you seeing this?”
“I… thought he lost track of time,” Aziraphale says in consternation. “There are a lot of undated entries.”
“Mm, yeah, but ’s more like time lost track of him. When were the keepers said to disappear? The fourth Friday in July? And what day are we? The eleventh, the twelfth of August? Look at all the entries after that. This Steven kid has been here for weeks. Well into September, by this reckoning.”
“You think that proves that he has—fallen through time, as to say. It’s… no, I suppose it does. But what do we do now?”
Crowley snaps the journal closed, returns it to the writing-desk, turns around to face Aziraphale. Raises an amused eyebrow at the angel. “Oh, I think you know.”
“But—”
“Right, yeah, I’m not actually explaining this properly. Angel, I know what we have to do next. ’S just that I’m going to need power for that, yeah? Which means waiting for a few more hours. Which means…” Crowley trails off, his glittering smile an open invitation, and reaches for the angel’s hand, raising it to his lips and letting his breath ghost over Aziraphale’s skin.
“But...” the angel persists, light-headed, and gathers up the dregs of his willpower. “If… if you need to restore your power. Shouldn’t you try to sleep rather than…”
Crowley starts laughing—and laughs until he has to wipe at his eyes with the heel of his free hand. “‘Ziraphale. Oh, angel. Your bloody sense of duty is killing me right now. Do you think I can sleep? Look at me. I’m more awake than I have been in my entire blessed life.” He kisses Aziraphale’s hand again, giving one of the angel’s knuckles a tiny nip—and Aziraphale, more light-headed still, is forced to admit that their earlier frantic kisses have done nothing to dull the effect of incisors pressed into his skin. The angel cannot resist taking a step towards Crowley, making the negative space between their bodies razor-thin. “Really, dearest,” he says, and struggles to pay attention to his own words, “aren't you tired?”
“Oh, very good,” Crowley murmurs against his fingers, amused, and nips at another knuckle. To his obvious delight, this sets off a full-body shiver in Aziraphale. “I was tired,” he goes on, “though I hardly remember it. But I suppose, demon that I am, I should propose a deal to you?”
“Yes?” Aziraphale asks breathlessly, unable to look away from Crowley’s lips. “Yes, what—what do you propose?”
“I will sleep,” Crowley offers with a widening smile, “if you make me tired.” With that, he takes Aziraphale’s thumb between his teeth, his tongue darting wantonly across the tip, and Aziraphale chokes on air.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Crowley says, reaching for the angel—and makes a delighted, eager sound as, giving up control, Aziraphale kisses him back.
~
It takes all of seven seconds for Crowley’s composure, as much as there ever was of it, to shatter. Aziraphale is kissing him like their lives depend on it, his hands in Crowley’s hair, then at Crowley’s waist, then at the buttons of his trousers. He is pressing Crowley into the edge of the writing-desk, crowding him against it; within seconds, Crowley is once again running out of air, all of it seemingly consumed by desire—a roaring, living flame.
The oil-lamp wobbles on the desk behind them, and Aziraphale, after an infinitesimal pause, has enough presence of mind to pull Crowley away from the desk’s edge.
“Good thinking,” Crowley comments breathlessly, laughing. “We should only burn this place down after we’ve figured everything out.” And then he can no longer speak, because the angel’s hands are on his hipbones, on his hips, because Aziraphale is pressing him into the wall—and in another half a minute the wall is, embarrassingly, the only thing still holding Crowley up.
“Mmmhh,” he manages, and breathes in ragged gulps as Aziraphale kisses his neck, his collarbones, the corner of his jaw, as the angel pushes his waistcoat and his shirt off his shoulders to kiss the crook of his neck. The cold wall behind him is the perfect counterbalance to the heat of their bodies. Happiness floods him; unsteady on his feet as he may be, his earlier uncertainty has been replaced by complete focus, his desire as bright and hot as a first-order lens. “Angel,” he says. “Angel. Angel. You have to choose first. What can I do? What would you like? ”
“You,” Aziraphale whispers against the shell of his ear. “My love, I just need you.”
Later, Crowley will claim that everything in those moments went precisely to plan. That his knees didn’t buckle; that he intended to drop down (angel, I knew this was doing things for you, I knew it then). As it is, though, Aziraphale follows him, drops down with him, his hands on Crowley’s shoulders, at the nape of his neck, then cupping his face.
“Well,” Crowley says, laughing, once both of them are on the floor. “You are. Making what I was going to do. Rather more difficult.”
“Oh my love,” Aziraphale says earnestly. “Please. May I? I’ve been thinking about this ever… ever since I faced my desire.”
And Crowley stops laughing, stricken by the openness in Aziraphale’s face, breathless with the images that flash through his mind. It’s happening, of course it is, it’s a wonder that the physical world around them has not caught fire with the intensity of their desire, and yet. And yet. “Yes,” Crowley says. Stumbles to say, elated and terrified. “Yes, angel. Bloody Hell. Yes to everything, you are going to discorporate me by the idea alone—”
Neither his thousands of years among the humans nor being an actual demon have prepared him for any of this. Not for the way Aziraphale’s hands close around his waist, not for the ease with which the angel lifts him up. “’M not going anywhere,” Crowley says obstinately before Aziraphale can try to guide him towards the bed. “We are not going anywhere.” His shoulder-blades are pressed against the wall, against the bracing delicious cold of it, and he loves that—the solidity of it, too. “We are staying right here,” he insists. Aziraphale nods.
Then, impossibly, the angel is kneeling in front of Crowley—and Crowley nearly panics again. This isn’t happening, he has imagined it; it’s a vivid and wonderful dream, one he doesn’t want to wake up from. He does not dare touch the angel in case Aziraphale proves to be insubstantial, a figment of Crowley’s wild wants; instead, he digs his fingers into the crevices of the wall behind him, presses his palms against the stone. But then the heat of Aziraphale’s mouth is on him, and it is very real indeed, and Crowley won’t last, of course he won’t, not like this, and especially not with the sounds the angel is making, each of them sending a wave of acute pleasure across the whole of Crowley’s body. His hands are already in Aziraphale’s hair, and he is biting his lip, trying not to cry out, but he cannot possibly stay quiet, cannot stop repeating the angel’s name.
It’s dizzying, the rush of it, the force of their desire. Crowley is allowed to need, to want; he is allowed to show it. More than that: Aziraphale asks him, encourages him to take what he wants—and Crowley does, crashing over the edge with a bit-off cry, far beyond coherence or caring.
His knees give out a second time, and he drops down to kiss the angel, his eager hands on Aziraphale’s shoulders, in his hair, at the nape of his neck. He pushes Aziraphale’s waistcoat open, pulls off the angel’s shirt, kisses the dip at the base of his neck. His desire, blunted for a moment, is already roaring back; he dizzily thinks that thousands of years of it will hardly be satisfied in minutes—or in hours.
“What would you like?” the angel whispers to him in between hot kisses, timid and daring at once. “Please, my love. Take your pleasure. I’m yours.”
It’s the “I’m yours” that does it. “How are you bloody real?” Crowley says, incredulous and dazzlingly happy—and, pulling the angel to him, laughs again with sheer disbelief.
—
Their desire is a conflagration—and neither of them is planning to put it out. Crowley insists on getting his turn, demands to have his mouth on the angel, ends up not even needing a serpentine tongue to leave Aziraphale boneless and breathless and spent and yet, within minutes, wanting more.
Their kisses, hectic and hungry, are an attempt to catch up after thousands of missed chances, to drink their fill while both of them are still dizzy with the desert sun.
“I…” Crowley says, pausing with his lips over Aziraphale’s—his breath unsteady, his desire achingly plain. “Angel, I… I’d like to… can I…”
“Would you like to take me?” Aziraphale suggests, startled by his own bravery. Yet it feels right to say this, now: they have left too much unsaid, for too long.
Crowley’s eyes widen. “I—nghhhh—I bloody well would!”
Both of them half-dressed, they make their way downstairs, to the firelit kitchen, and Crowley riffles through the cupboards, talking entirely too fast.
“’S just, I’d rather we didn’t use miracles for this, angel, not with me trying to restore my power. But I, I want you to be comfortable, and humans have this down. They’ve been using oils for millennia, ’s a really good idea, and… here it is.” He whirls back to the angel, a dark glass bottle in his unsteady hand. “See! I knew I’d gotten some. I mean, we are obviously not human, but still, ’s going to be far better—”
Tenderness rendering him speechless, Aziraphale takes the bottle of oil out of Crowley’s fingers and kisses him. He keeps kissing him until Crowley is making incoherent, desperate sounds, until he is swearing against Aziraphale’s lips in long-forgotten tongues. Until, his desire at a fever pitch, Crowley launches a counterattack, spins the angel around and holds him in place, presses against his back in one taut line, biting at his ear, his insistent hands exploring and teasing and taking hold.
“My love,” Aziraphale manages to say, shivering with pleasure and expectation as Crowley presses closer still, as the demon’s sharp incisors indent the skin on the side of Aziraphale’s neck. “Please, you must. Now—dearest—”
It’s a long while before they manage to make it back upstairs.
—
They have the night. It’s fortunate that they do. Crowley’s desire does not abate; Aziraphale meets him at every turn.
Hearing Aziraphale say any of the things he is saying now would have once sustained a lifetime of daydreams, but of course, these are no longer hidden desires, no longer something they have to carefully conceal from each other and from themselves.
Still, Crowley will never get used to this. Not to the heart-stopping, breathless way Aziraphale says his name. Not to the reverent way the angel touches him, not to the immovable strength with which the angel holds him in place when Crowley asks for that (Aziraphale praises him all the while, outrageously, until Crowley is undone).
Crowley loves all of it. Loves teasing the angel, loves being the object of Aziraphale’s ardour. Loves it when, as they collapse on the fold-out bed in a boneless tangle, Aziraphale pulls him close: a steady hand on the small of his back, then running along his ribs, his hip, his thigh.
“Darling,” the angel says, sounding wonderstruck. “My love. You are exquisite. You know that, yes?”
“Shut it,” Crowley demands: hiding a smile, nestling in closer, all too aware of his body’s telling response to Aziraphale’s praise (even now, hours in). “‘M a demon, I can’t be any of that.”
“Ah, but you are,” Aziraphale says, smiling into his hair—and then the angel’s hand is travelling upwards again, his fingers leaving hot traces on Crowley’s skin, and Crowley wants to press into them, for Aziraphale to press into him, he wants, he wants.
Oh, Aziraphale is gorgeous. Physically, too; of course he is. His softness, the luminosity of his skin, the radiance of his smile. His hands, gentle yet strong. They are the hands of a scholar, yes, but also the hands of someone who held a sword, and chose to give it up because that was the right thing to do, the best way to protect newborn humanity.
(It’s an absurd thing, but there it is: a demon feeling safe when pressed against an angel, pinned by him.)
Yes, Aziraphale is breathtakingly beautiful: flushed and trusting, and so responsive in turn under Crowley’s adoring hands. Crowley cannot hide his adoration any longer: not from the angel and not from himself, even as he still bites back the ridiculous poetry that his mind supplies.
I love you, Crowley thinks more than once. I love you, I haven’t let myself think this for so long.
This night is a time of secrets coming to light. Crowley catalogues them, remembers them for the future—just as before, when he hoarded the angel’s smallest smiles, his tiniest happy wiggles, their every accidental touch. Crowley will remember firelight over sweat-slick skin, the hidden softness of Aziraphale’s inner thighs, the way Aziraphale exposes the crook of his neck to Crowley and asks for his mouth there, my dear, this is so very good. He asks Crowley to be rough, sometimes, asks the demon not to hold back as he takes his pleasure—and the trust of that alone is enough to ruin Crowley whole.
(Would you, Aziraphale asks him, and Crowley’s only response can be, as ever: anything, angel, anything.)
They lose track of time. They lose track of the world. The wild spin of their release goes on uncontrollable, feeding on elation and hope.
—
They have the night. Of course, the hauntings don’t quite leave them be, and in the long nighttime hours, one comes close: a fracture blooms in the suddenly-heavy air of the library, causing Crowley to whirl around and swear. “Not bloody now!” he hisses at it, and for an absurd moment, Aziraphale thinks that the demon is about to throw something in its direction: a book, perhaps, or one of their discarded shoes.
The fracture shuts itself like a window, leaving behind empty air.
Later, in what must be the early hours of the morning, they have a snack down in the kitchen; Aziraphale pulls out his pocket-watch reflexively before remembering that at this lighthouse, time does not quite exist.
By that point, they are already able to talk, so for a while, talking is what they do: listing out their observations, comparing notes, deciding on what their next steps ought to be. They have a dessert of fruit and jam, have tea, keep talking still; Crowley paces the kitchen and then hops up onto the table (barefoot, carelessly dressed) to reach for the last few pieces of fruit.
“You don’t need to replenish your own powers, do you?” he asks Aziraphale, picking up a slice of pear and thoughtfully biting down on it. “’S just me?”
“Y-yes, my reserves are nearly full, ” the angel confirms after an inwards glance. “I’m… not actually certain why they aren’t perfectly full, but the troublesome part has been using my powers.”
“Interference, I suspect,” Crowley muses. “D’you know how thunderstorms and auroras induce current in the telegraph wires? I bet ’s like that with our miracles. I bet Time is interfering. Maybe there’s some kind of a time-storm happening just below the surface, and we are getting its echoes.”
“And—I suppose this has something to do with what you are planning.”
“Mhmm.” Crowley reaches for another slice of pear. “I want to look under the surface, yeah, to see what Time is up to there. But not right now. In a bit, when I have more power. ‘Course, we should also practise shielding our miracles, keeping them stable, but even for that, I want to collect more power before we start disturbing things. Y’know. Just in case.”
Aziraphale considers this. “I… know we’ve talked about this, dearest. Are you tired enough? Won’t you try sleeping?”
Crowley glances at him sideways, the corners of his mouth curling up. “What do you think?”
“I think,” Aziraphale presses, “that you have to. You have to try resting, even if you won’t sleep.”
“And I think this was quite enough talking,” Crowley says cheerfully, reaching for the angel.
Their kisses taste of plums, and of pears, and of sweetly spiced blackcurrant jam (Crowley, who loves sweets, is no longer pretending he doesn’t). The demon laughs softly as he pulls Aziraphale closer, gets him to step between his thighs, locks him in place—and they spend a while kissing languorously before Aziraphale, struck by an idea, frees himself to step back.
“Oh?” Crowley says expectantly, curiously, as the angel goes down on one knee, tracing Crowley’s calf, his ankle, the rise of his foot. “It tickles, you know.” Looking up at him, Aziraphale wraps his hands tighter around the fine bones of Crowley’s foot, starts to massage his tendons in gentle circles—and Crowley arcs a thoughtful eyebrow. “Go on, then,” he murmurs, watching the angel. “That does feel good.”
“You do understand,” Aziraphale asks him, “that you will get much more of this if you come to bed?”
This works. Crowley goes willingly, lured by the promise of the angel’s hands on him: a promise Aziraphale is more than happy to fulfil. When, after a long and blissful while, the demon asks for different touches, and more of them, Aziraphale is ready for that, too.
“One condition,” he tells Crowley, not even trying to hide his smile. “You won’t be allowed to do anything yourself. You will be able to direct me, however, and tell me exactly how I can best please you. Do you accept?”
“Bloody Hell, angel,” Crowley says with feeling. “Yeah, I bloody do.”
(“I wanted to do so many things to you, my love,” Aziraphale confesses afterwards, when they are entwined on the bed, heavy-limbed. “And, of course, for you to do them to me.” The demon, attentive, is watching him through half-lowered lashes; his freckles seem to catch the firelight, come alive with it.
“Even before I knew that I loved you,” the angel goes on. “The evening when we danced, I wanted to kiss you, and not stop. I was distraught, thinking that I am failing Heaven, failing in my duty. But I’ve come to realise that at the end of it all, I could not accept my duty being not to love you.”
“No,” Crowley says softly, and reaches to touch the backs of his fingers to Aziraphale’s cheek. “No, angel. I don’t believe you could.”)
—
Crowley sleeps, afterwards, tightly wrapped in Aziraphale’s embrace. His sleep is fitful at first: filled with more touches, with scenes of the past turning, delightfully, into intimacy they have never led to before. When he wakes after the first tangled dream, awash with renewed want, Aziraphale is there, pressed against his back, his arm wrapped tightly around Crowley’s chest. The angel is close, warm, reassuringly solid—and Crowley longs to feel his weight, to be pressed down by it.
“My love, you do need to rest,” Aziraphale tells him sternly as Crowley twists around in his embrace, reaching out—yet despite what the angel says, Aziraphale’s breath is already hitching.
“Mm,” Crowley murmurs, and lets the tip of his tongue tickle the side of Aziraphale’s neck. “Yeah? ’S that really what you want me to do? Or would you rather…” He moves against the angel in a sinuous curve, as wantonly as he can, hooking his leg over the back of Aziraphale’s thighs—and finds himself pressed into the sheets. “Oh yes,” he says, grinning up at the angel. “Yes, angel, just like this. Ssstill want me to go back to sleep?”
~
When Crowley is finally tired enough, he sleeps curled on his side, his eyelashes fluttering as he dreams. Aziraphale watches him for a long while, brushes back his fire-bright hair with careful fingers, places a soft kiss on Crowley’s forehead before sitting up against the headboard, one hand in Crowley’s hair. There will be a time, he hopes, when he will be free to try this, too: drifting off in the embrace of the one he loves, both of them staying entwined until the morning.
Not here, however, and not now. Here and now, he must stand guard: against time’s fraying fabric, against anything that might come too close. Here and now, he must keep watch and let his demon rest.
At first, he simply sits: listening to Crowley’s even breath, to the hiss and wail of the storm outside. Distinct against the storm’s noises, odd echoes flit about in the lower levels of the tower, and from time to time, the signal bell strikes above.
After a while of being lost in thought, Aziraphale gets up to retrieve a few books from the writing-desk: S.P.’s diary, his own notebook, and, after a brief hesitation, the third volume of Jane Eyre. He spends some time looking through his notes, correlating the hauntings he had seen with their presumed origins in time. He thinks about Crowley’s presence, scattered throughout the lighthouse, and about the demon’s skill in stopping time. That’s what Crowley did in the Bastille, Aziraphale remembers—and recalls the damp air, the dust motes suspended in slanted sunlight, Crowley’s crooked smile. He remembers, too, how he resolutely did not think about the liberties his dashing rescuer could take—some of which he rather wished Crowley to take, he can admit to himself now.
He reads and re-reads the last entry of S.P.’s diary: an odd, haunting text.
“Today, I was woken by a voice telling me to come home. The call has grown in me until it became a bell in my thoughts. I can almost hear it still. Yet I am lost, I think; I no longer remember where home is. How long have I been here? What home have I left?
I long to hear that voice again, but most of all
whatever home means, oh Father who art in Heaven,
I want to go there.
I want to come home.”
Later still, as the air outside finally lightens, the angel finds himself reading the last volume of Jane Eyre. In it, Jane escapes from Thornfield Hall, duty and love warring within her, and makes her way across the moors. She meets her sisters, though she doesn’t yet know them to be such, and her brother, the austere and exacting St. John. It is with painful clarity that Aziraphale reflects on his character. St. John, fictional though he might be, would not be out of place in Heaven itself: he is duty without love, personified and given shape.
Duty without love.
I’ve been so afraid, Aziraphale thinks, lifting his gaze from the book, transferring it to the sleeping demon. I’ve been so afraid, for so long, of failing Heaven—because I did know, in some hidden recesses of my mind, how much Crowley meant to me. Heaven told me that demons were irredeemable, unforgivable, untrustworthy at their core. Heaven told me they were not to be loved.
And that has never been true.
Forcefully halting that train of thought, Aziraphale reads on. Outside the windows, the air keeps growing lighter, and in the book, Jane Eyre hears a mystical call, words whispered on the wind: Jane, Jane. It’s a desperate, heart-wrenching entreaty. It’s a metaphor, and yet—didn’t he hear the same kind of a call in the light-room, not that long ago? Or did he imagine it after all?
Aziraphale frowns, his fingers curling around the crushed morocco cover, but then Crowley hisses in his sleep, low and distressed, and shifts as if he is trying to break free—and, instantly putting the book away, Aziraphale gets back under the covers to hold his demon tightly until Crowley’s breath is as even and calm as waves in a sheltered cove.
—
Crowley sleeps. After his sensual dreams, his tiredness mires him in insensibility, drags him down into sleep’s formless depths; darker dreams find him there. Familiar nightmares strive to establish themselves: a ship glides over a lightless sea, unseen waters rise from the lighthouse’s hollow base.
He fights every nightmare in turn. More often than not, he succeeds: a light appears on the mountain slopes, chasing away the dark, and in the echoing lighthouse, the waters recede as a dream-Aziraphale answers his call.
Sometimes, when the nightmare tightens its hold, Crowley wakes instead: to find himself encircled by Aziraphale’s arms, enveloped by the angel’s scent. “I’m here,” Aziraphale whispers to him. “My love, I’m here.”
When Crowley wakes for good, refreshed, the rain still lashes at the windows and the waves still buffet the walls of the tower. The morning is windy and grey, as if droplets India ink dissolved in the clouds are coming down with the rain. Still, he can almost feel sunlight on his skin, and the quick pulse of restored power beats in his chest, ready to be invoked.
Next to him, Aziraphale is resting against the headboard, his tousled curls luminous in the diffuse morning light.
The angel closes his book, puts it aside.
“Good morning, my dear,” he says quietly, his smile as radiant as the eastern sky at dawn.
“Angel,” Crowley responds, with all the eloquence he is capable of.
Aziraphale’s smile grows more radiant still. Images of the night flash into Crowley’s mind: the snake-skin of clothing strewn across the floor, his hands on the soft curves of the angel’s body, Aziraphale’s breathless entreaties. Everything that happened should have been impossible, yet here Aziraphale is—and for Somebody’s sake, he is not even wearing a nightshirt, though he’d dragged a spare blanket across his shoulders.
“I… angel, all of last night…”
“Happened, yes.”
Crowley cannot tear his eyes away from the crook of Aziraphale’s neck. There is a cluster of stormcloud shadows there, evidence of the night’s abandon. He did that. Aziraphale had asked for it, yes, but he did that.
“Does this… hurt?” Crowley asks tentatively, quietly, pointing to the same spots on himself. He restrains himself from reaching out to touch the angel: what was allowed in the half-light may not be welcome now.
“It doesn’t hurt, no,” Aziraphale says, watching him. “But—dearest, I would not care if it did.” Crowley breathes out, relieved, and Aziraphale goes on, softly but with unyielding conviction: “My love, this was not an accident. This is not fleeting. This is not a spell that breaks in the morning. Please, won’t you touch me again? Won’t you come here?”
And, with a surge of almost aching joy, Crowley does.
—
“I have been thinking, while you were asleep,” Aziraphale says at breakfast, nudging a plate of pear slices towards the demon. “If the keepers stepped through the cracks into a different time, they might still be alive somewhere, mightn’t they? It happened to you, and—you were able to get back.”
Thoughtfully licking jam off his thumb, Crowley considers Aziraphale’s words.
“‘M not human. I could step into Time itself, if needed, and not go mad. Not for a while, anyway. ’S not out of the question that the keepers would still be alive, but they are human, so it’d very much depend on where they’d stepped to.”
There is a rise in whispers downstairs: echoes from elsewhen. Both Aziraphale and Crowley fall briefly silent, listening. A higher, softer voice is discernible in the echoes, perhaps that of a woman. She sounds concerned.
“You had more nightmares,” Aziraphale says when the echoes die down, dissipating across the levels of the lighthouse.
“Mm,” Crowley confirms, aiming for the open jam jar with a freshly-licked spoon. “But no wonder, yeah? ’S still the same broken place.”
Aziraphale moves the jam just out of Crowley’s reach, mouths a ‘really, dear’, and serves him a sizeable helping in a saucer. Pensive, Crowley considers his spoon, puts it down on the table and dips a finger into the saucer instead, grinning at the angel.
Aziraphale ignores this blatant challenge.
“Dearest,” he says with emphasis. “You yourself have said that we have a lot of work ahead of us. We have to practise countering time’s interference, yes? And then, if I have this right... once we have better control over our powers, we are going to use them to look under the surface of reality. To see what caused this anomaly.”
“Mmhm. And as soon as we do that, I bet we are going to see humans poking reality with an umbrella. Because this thing has ‘humans playing with things they don’t understand’ written all over it. In capital letters,” Crowley adds as an afterthought.
“Do you think they were conducting some kind of a ritual?” Aziraphale frowns, thinking back to the dozens of grimoires in his collection alone.
“Wouldn’t put it past them. Point is, though: ‘m pretty sure that as a result, the lighthouse is lost in time. And so are we, so if we want to get back home, we need to fix this.”
“Lost in time. If we were to reach the shore despite the storm, you don’t think that we’d be in the right year?”
“Pfff. ‘M not even sure we’d be in the same century. And ’s not my favourite century, sure, but I did want to see where this natural philosophy stuff is going. So yeah. I don’t think it would be easy to just leave.” Crowley squints at his now-empty saucer, eyes the jar. Aziraphale patiently supplies him with a new portion of jam.
“There’s one thing, though, that I still haven’t made sense of,” Crowley confesses after he finishes the last of his coffee. “This one kind of has me worried.”
“What is it, my dear?”
“Why aren’t the hauntings worse by now?”
“You… are worried that the hauntings aren’t worse.”
“Right, yeah,” Crowley says, drumming his fingers on the tabletop. “Yesterday, they kept getting more frequent. At least the visible ones did. And then they… receded, almost like the tide. But if they are truly anything like the tide, we should be worried when things get too quiet.”
“We were in each other’s physical proximity rather a lot. That had a stabilising effect before, you were the one to notice it.”
“Yeah,” Crowley says. “Yeah, and maybe that was enough. Except… why? Why would it matter whether we are in the same room? Why would the physical distance between us matter at all? Why would we matter?”
“I see your point,” Aziraphale says quietly. “Well, let’s start finding out.”
—
When trouble comes, it does not come in the form Crowley expects. No gaping cracks rend the air; no howling deafens them.
He and the angel spend a significant part of the morning practising their miracles. They start with small things: vanishing dust motes, filling a cup with water from the water-tank below, repairing the cracked glass of Aziraphale’s pocket-watch. (“Oh, thank you,” Aziraphale beams at him when the repair is complete, perfectly sincere—and Crowley, incredulously putting the watch aside, has to pull Aziraphale to him and kiss the angel in retribution until Aziraphale is breathless and pink-cheeked. “That’ll teach you to thank me,” he impresses upon the angel—but then Aziraphale pulls him back in by his waistcoat for another kiss, and in the next half-hour, no work gets done at all.)
They achieve reasonable success in re-tuning their powers—or rather, Crowley does: it takes him under an hour to learn to counteract the fluctuations of Time. Attuned to them, he even manages to keep his vertigo under control, though the real test will come with another crack opening up. Aziraphale, after a few initial triumphs, struggles a lot more: with sustaining a stable light, with moving the heavier of the books, with transmuting more than half a cup of water into wine. (“’S just weak wine, yeah?” Crowley tells him encouragingly after taking a sip. “Just like at Petronius’.”)
Mouth set, Aziraphale tries again, and again, and again. Crowley helps him, nudges him, reminds him to focus on shielding as Time abruptly twists under the surface of reality, pulling against the miracle Aziraphale is attempting to weave. (It’s a close thing, but the angel does manage to keep hold.)
That is when Crowley becomes aware of a discrepancy, catches a thread of Aziraphale’s power dissipating, soaking into the fabric of reality itself. Of course, a certain ratio of loss is normal, their power always radiates into the physical world… But not this much power, and not like that.
“Are you noticing this, angel?” Crowley asks after a few more experiments, rubbing the heel of his hand against his temple. “’S subtle, but now that I’m paying attention… ’s like reality itself is leaching our powers. I’ve never seen this before.”
“I couldn’t tell, dearest. I’m very sorry. Should this worry us?”
“Nah, no, ’s fine,” Crowley says lightly. “Could be an extra clue about what’s happening, though.”
“Still, that sounds anything but harmless,” Aziraphale says, concerned. “Crowley, is this why you have been getting tired so easily?”
“You know, could be. Right, anyway, let’s practise some more. You’re doing great, angel.”
But Aziraphale, clearly distracted by the latest developments, struggles to focus on his miracles and soon gives up, his shoulders slumping in defeat.
“I’m sorry, Crowley,” he says dejectedly. “It’s not a good sign, is it, that I’m still struggling with simple things.”
Crowley pulls him close again, kisses the furrow between his eyebrows, the curlicues of his hair, the tips of his ears. “Nah. Signs have nothing to do with this. I think you just need some rest, angel. This’d take a lot out of anyone. How about a break? Let’s go to the kitchen, have some fortifying tea.” He gives Aziraphale a bright and unbothered smile.
“That would be lovely, my dear,” the angel says, relieved. “And let’s take a few things with us, I wanted to show you my calculations of the possible time differentials in the hauntings we saw.”
Aziraphale retrieves his notebook, Crowley picks up S.P.’s journal from the bedspread, and they are halfway down the stairs when Aziraphale remembers his pocket-watch, forgotten on the desk.
“Oh! Just a tick, my dear. I think the watch might actually prove useful, now that the glass is whole.” The angel heads back upstairs to retrieve it—and as Crowley follows him, a few steps behind, something in the world shifts.
Crowley does not get vertigo. He does get transiently dizzy, haze blanketing his thoughts: Aziraphale is here, and this is—surprising, somehow, as if they haven’t just spent the night together, as if he didn’t get to kiss nearly every inch of the angel’s skin. He blinks away his confusion, as fleeting as a dream, and re-focuses on the angel.
Aziraphale is facing the writing-desk, has not picked up his watch.
“‘Ziraphale?” Crowley calls out, not quite sure why he is keeping his voice low.
Hesitantly, the angel turns around. “Oh, Crowley,” he breathes out then, relieved and slightly unsteady—and, stepping closer, reaches out, touching his hand to Crowley’s as if to reassure himself that the demon is really there.
“Angel... is everything all right?” Crowley asks, mouth dry.
Aziraphale shakes his head. “It’s nothing, dearest. Our practice must’ve tired me out more than I realised. I... had thought, for a moment, that you weren’t in the room with me, that you were—well, a… a haunting. And that was rather silly of me, but it’s really nothing, just the strain. The tea will set me right in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.” He gives Crowley a wavering, hopeful smile.
“Right, yeah,” Crowley says against his suddenly loud heart—and bites the inside of his cheek.
Notes:
No new music for this chapter, but we have finally really gotten to Every Picture Tells a Story.
UPD May 7: Okay SO! I have a complete draft for the rest of the story, including the epilogue, and it's at 23k. Still needs plenty of work. Will probably break it down into three chapters once done, and post them close together. HOME STRETCH
Chapter Text
It’s nothing, Aziraphale tells himself as Crowley turns in a slow circle, his gaze darting over the room and alighting on the book-spines, on the bust of Robert Stevenson at the top of the bookshelf, on the table-clock in the corner of the desk, on the gilt-frame mirror. The demon watches the mirror tensely, as if expecting something to emerge from the glassy depths behind his reflection’s back.
It’s nothing, Aziraphale repeats to himself, his hands linked under his breastbone. It couldn’t possibly be anything, could it? What happened to me just now was a trifle. It was nothing at all.
“Crowley, what is it?” he asks finally, failing to keep calm. It’s no good: if the demon is worried, then he should be, too.
Crowley turns back. “Angel. I think… I think this might have been a crack.”
“A crack? Like the one that happened yesterday, the one that didn’t reach reality’s surface?”
“Oh, I think this one might have reached it,” Crowley says grimly. “How do you feel?”
“Tip-top,” Aziraphale hurries to say. “Perfectly fine. Was I… affected by it, like you were by the others? Is this because I’m more attuned to time now?”
“Maybe.” Crowley hesitates—and then steps closer, reaching for Aziraphale’s hand. “Can you do something for me, angel?”
“Y-yes?”
“What do you remember of the last few days?”
“I… Dearest, why…?”
“Humour me, angel. Anything you recall about our arrival? About the first day?”
“Y-yes,” Aziraphale says—and breathes in, calming himself as Crowley reassuringly squeezes his fingers. “W-well, we’d… arrived, and… you were rather sceptical that we would find anything supernatural, and we had some arguments about that. I told you about Howling Rock. And—ah, there was that lovely tea you miracled for me. And in the evening, I heard what I thought was a howl, which wasn’t a howl, of course, but some kind of a horn. And the lens! Yes, the lens, even later in the evening: it wouldn’t start turning. Those were the most notable things, I believe?”
Crowley nods to Aziraphale’s words, some of the coiled tension leaving him, and asks the angel to remember more still: about the next day, and the next.
Aziraphale obliges.
“My dear,” he says after he recounts everything he can remember, apprehension sticking to him like cold fog. “My dear, are you thinking that I’m not—myself?”
Crowley shakes his head. “Not exactly. ‘M checking that our memories don’t diverge.”
“Why would... Crowley, this makes no sense. I understand that in the past few days, parts of the lighthouse must have been shifting into another time, taking us with them, together or apart. But we’ve already accounted for those differences. Why would our memories diverge now?”
“Because,” Crowley says quietly, “something just happened. To both of us. To me, too: I had a moment of being surprised by you. Surprised that you were here.”
“But—my dear,” Aziraphale says helplessly.
“Yeah. But ’s fine, angel, our memories are fine. We’re fine. ’S just… I don’t think that whatever happened was caused by you being tired. And we should be prepared for it to happen again.”
Aziraphale nods, more chilled still, and wraps his fingers tighter around Crowley’s.
“Now,” the demon says, “we actually should have some tea. And we should find your favourite cup.”
—
“So,” Aziraphale prompts. “You said that this cup will be of use.”
“Mm,” Crowley says absently, drumming his fingers on the tabletop. “For anchoring.”
“My love, you have to know that this tells me very little.”
Crowley blinks, diving out of his thoughts. “Right, um, yeah. Sorry, angel. Fair warning, ‘m not actually good at explaining these things, only at doing them. So we are going to look under the surface of reality, right? Find out what’s happening with Time? A physical object can be a conduit for that. Especially a physical object that’s already tangled up in Time.”
“Like my cup,” the angel says thoughtfully, turning it in his fingers. “It kept getting displaced.”
“Right, exactly. So it will help us find our bearings.”
“How does this work? And… is it dangerous, what we are about to do?”
“Nah, ’s just a look, a look’s not dangerous. As to how it works… An anchor is a way to narrow our window into Time, right? To focus on a specific part of it. Which is fantastically useful, because Time is a bloody mess. It contains every possibility at once, all the may-have-beens and the may-bes. With all of them layered over top of each other and over what actually happens, ’s like trying to read a few dozen books at once.”
The angel nods, looking down at his tea. The plate of pear slices by his right hand remains untouched; Crowley glances at them and then, with a whisper of guilt, back up at the angel. He is not giving Aziraphale enough time. Aziraphale needs to rest, to recover his strength properly. Even with Crowley guiding the anchoring, he will need to expend this power, too.
Yet Crowley has no choice but to hurry them both along. There are things he hasn’t told Aziraphale: the way he can feel, even now, things moving underneath the surface of reality; the way the whole lighthouse seems to rise and fall like the deck of a ship. Not in any physical sense, and it’s subtle enough—the sea underneath the imaginary ship is ruffled by no more than a gentle breeze—but it’s happening all the same, and it’s a clear sign of danger.
To add to that, reality is still drawing away a fraction of their powers. Whatever has been going on at Howling Rock has been getting worse, and, distracted as he has been, he didn’t notice it in time.
“So yeah,” Crowley goes on. “Let’s start as soon as we’re ready.”
“I’m ready now, dearest,” Aziraphale tells him, resolute, and pushes his cup away.
“Angel, you haven’t finished your tea.”
“Oh no, my dear, I’m quite content.” The angel frowns in concentration as he snaps his fingers, returning his cup to sparkling cleanliness.
“That was a very precise miracle,” Crowley says encouragingly. “You are getting the hang of it, angel. But—are you rested enough?”
Aziraphale nods.
Crowley, who has been sitting astride his chair, dismounts and turns it the right way around, settling back down with one leg folded under the other. “Right-ho, let’s start our little séance. Get comfortable, angel. You’ve never done this before, so ’s going to be an experience.”
“I—take it that you have. That this is how you know all this.”
“Mm.”
“Do you... do this frequently?”
“Nah, not really. But I’ve done it on occasion, for temptations and such. ’S just… it takes power, it takes focus, and usually it’s a blessed lot simpler to go about temptations the human way. I’d first found out I could do this when I stopped time by accident—and after, I was curious and just kept trying things until they worked.”
“You were curious,” Aziraphale says faintly, moving his chair closer. “Yes, of course.”
The cup—their scrying ball—waits at the edge of the table: thin porcelain, milk-white, adorned with golden swirls, made with care. Crowley puts one elbow on the table’s surface, stares at his own reflection rolling across the cup’s lip, tries to quell his unease at what they might find.
“Here goes. Ready?” He extends a hand to the angel.
“Yes,” Aziraphale answers, taking it.
“Close your eyes,” Crowley says—and, with his free hand, reaches, and then Reaches, for the cup.
—
Time opens.
Reality withdraws, and quite without warning, Aziraphale is plunged into chaos. At first, he’s nearly blinded—and deafened, too, surrounded by too much sound, too much movement, too much everything at once. Dizziness washes over him. Somewhere in the real world, Crowley’s hand tightens around his, recalling and drawing his attention.
“Shhh, angel, breathe. Try to… unfocus, for a bit. Let the images flow around you, let Time flow around you. ’S a lot, I know. Get used to it first.”
Aziraphale does just that. Breathing deeply, he focuses on the rise and fall of his own chest, on Crowley’s presence next to him. A dreamlike, wavering stream of images rushes past him, many-voiced, sparkling with changing light.
Hands. Hands touching the porcelain; Aziraphale’s own, yes, here’s a gleaming suggestion of his signet ring—and other hands, too, before that: human and young and too fragile by far. More than once, the hand holding the cup shakes.
Light. Sunlight and firelight, heat, curls of steam over the glossy surface of a liquid. Ghosts of faces. The hinted-at geometry of rooms. Whirlwinds of time, eddies of it; a shifting matrix of possibilities.
Further into the past, blank spots, as if the cup’s history is discrete.
Then, the images shiver and fracture, cracking like thin ice.
“Here they are,” Crowley says. “Those blessed cracks are interfering. Right, let me try something.”
Aziraphale’s view widens. The stream of possibilities resolves into days, and evenings, and nights. The angel sees people. They walk up and down stairs, carrying oil-lamps or tools; they drift through the kitchen, sometimes sitting down at the table for a meal. There is a dark-haired young man among them; most often, the cup is in his hand. (Is this Steven? Aziraphale wonders. He must be. And he does look awfully young.)
The angel sees the keepers argue, play draughts, carry boxes of supplies. Some of the images are vivid, others are pale overlays, as translucent as if drawn on glass—and in those, the men are dressed differently, are playing a different game, or are not present at all, the cup sitting on the counter undisturbed as the light shifts around it.
Other, more fortunate keepers appear as Crowley takes Aziraphale and himself deeper in the past. The cup has evidently been in the lighthouse for years. Oddly, the long-ago images are less fractured, though they are also less distinct.
“Huh,” Crowley says. “Y’know, let’s try the far future. I wonder if—”
The images lurch forward, skipping ahead through time. Before long, the lighthouse is once more populated by familiar ghosts; they pale and wink out until only one is left—and then Steven’s ghost is gone, too.
After a period of silence and stillness, Aziraphale once again sees himself. Then, Crowley is there as well, and the angel catches glimpses of their unwitting dance around each other. Even as he watches, however, the images grow disarrayed, fracturing like plate glass.
“There are more cracks this way?” Aziraphale asks, keeping his dizziness at bay.
“Apparently, yeah. I’ll take us further, we need to see where they start.”
But the cup, their anchor, does not allow them to see much more. Only a few images in, something distorts their view: a sharp, sudden twist, Time curving around the porcelain. Something rends, and then, there is a powerful undertow, a pull, a crack—
With a shudder, both of them open their eyes.
“Was this supposed to happen?” Aziraphale says as the bright spots before his eyes resolve into the interior of the lighthouse.
Crowley swears softly under his breath, massaging the bridge of his nose with his free hand. “No. Still, we’ve got good news and bad news. Looking into Time is working, as a general principle: good. We learned very little: abysmal. I suspect, cracks aside, that the cup didn’t exist long enough to give us a good glimpse into the future. And it’s small, so our window is too narrow, and looking through it is like trying to fit a herd of camels through the eye of a needle.”
“We’ll have to repeat this with something else, then? Something—larger, longer-lived?”
“And affected by time.”
“The journal, perhaps? We saw it change, didn’t we. At least once. It has to be affected, too.”
Crowley considers this. “’S not larger, though. And we need something of this place, something that’s bound to remain here for a long while.”
“The… lens?” Aziraphale suggests uncertainly.
“Ohhhhhh,” Crowley says, springing into focused action. He pulls Aziraphale to standing, absently brushes back a strand of the angel’s hair, kisses him—and unceremoniously drags him towards the stairs.
“Crowley,” Aziraphale asks him as they climb up towards the light-room, struck by a sudden thought. “Does this mean that you could have looked into the past from the very beginning?”
The demon gives an uncomfortable one-shoulder shrug. “Uh. Well. If I’d thought about it. If I realised the cup could be a conduit. If I could properly control my powers, which I was already having difficulty with. And of course, ’s not like this kind of a glimpse shows exactly what happened. But—yeah. I could’ve done more. Should have. I did not take this seriously enough. ‘M sorry, angel.”
“My dear, no, that’s not what I mean,” Aziraphale says, squeezing his hand. “There is no need to apologise. I just—”
“’S still true,” Crowley says soberly, “that we’ve wasted entirely too much time.”
In the light-room, the rain is much louder, hammering on the glass walls and the metal roof. The prisms of the Fresnel lens in the centre reflect the storm in wavering green-grey shapes. Crowley and Aziraphale walk around the lens slowly, the demon touching a tentative finger to the brass frame of the door.
And then, Aziraphale sees the manual.
It’s on the floor in front of them, just a few steps away. It must be the same manual that Aziraphale had been flipping through on their very first day, but its pages are in disarray now, waterlogged and warped. “Oh!” the angel exclaims, stepping towards the book instantly, whisking it up from the floor. “Oh, that’s a shame—there must be a leak in the roof somewhere, it’s completely soaked—”
He turns around to show it to Crowley—and finds that the demon isn’t there.
Which—of course he isn’t. Aziraphale blinks as the haze in his mind clears.
Oh, he must be tired. Of course Crowley isn’t there, and Aziraphale has only himself to blame. If only he didn’t hesitate. If only he had listened to Crowley, had opened that hatch before Crowley had gone away—and disappeared, apparently stepping into a crack in thin air.
Aziraphale presses the waterlogged manual to his middle, as if staunching a wound, and exhales, blinking away stray tears. It had seemed… so real, just now. That he did things differently. That he did open the hatch, that he—that they—
But surely he can still find Crowley? Surely wherever the demon has gone, Aziraphale can follow? And perhaps, perhaps, Crowley simply found a way to go home. Perhaps he is safe.
But he wouldn’t have left you here alone, Aziraphale’s inner voice tells him, and the angel’s shoulders sag with the truth of it.
The lens is blurring because of the water in his eyes. Outside is all rain, with no promise of land.
The world shudders and snaps.
Steps stagger across the room, and Crowley—Crowley—emerges from behind the lens, and then memories are crashing back, Aziraphale’s real memories, of all the things that were.
For a moment, Aziraphale looks at the demon in mute shock, willing him to be real.
“Aziraphale,” Crowley says urgently, reaching out. “Aziraphale!”
Aziraphale drops the manual, grasps at the demon in turn.
“Crowley! I—I am not sure what just happened—I turned around—you weren’t there—”
“Yeah,” Crowley says unsteadily into Aziraphale’s hair, having pulled him close. “Angel, it didn’t only happen to you.”
—
Of course it couldn’t bloody be fine. Of course not. It was always too good to last, Crowley thinks bitterly—and then shuts the door on the thought, bolts it and locks it, turns resolutely away.
Nothing is lost. Nothing will be lost, if they just figure this out. He cannot bear to think about any other option.
“We need a better anchor,” he tells the angel, who looks just as shaken and just as determined. “Something with more longevity. With more scope. If we could get that…”
“I… have been thinking the same thing. And I’m not certain if this is possible, but—dearest… How about Howling Rock?”
“Howling… Rock?” Crowley repeats, frowning.
“Yes. Howling Rock has existed for centuries, will exist for centuries more. It’s a truly massive physical object. And if you need to touch it for anchoring to it, like you did with the cup, that can be done, too. We wouldn’t even have to leave the lighthouse.”
Crowley raises his eyebrows in a silent question.
“The lowest chamber. The walls and the floor. I only noticed it yesterday.”
“Oh,” Crowley says, getting to his feet.
“My dear, what—exactly do you think is happening?” Aziraphale asks him on the way. “We were not... That wasn’t a hallucination, was it?”
“’M afraid it’s worse than that. I… think we are being shifted into other probabilities. ’S like our reality is splintering, like it can’t keep itself straight.”
Aziraphale says nothing in response, but holds on to him even tighter—and Crowley himself steadfastly does not think about what he saw back in the light-room, the splinter of reality he’d been shifted to. A may-have-been, that was just a may-have-been; that wasn’t what really happened. Aziraphale is here.
Together, they descend level after level, headed for the lightless rooms. On the way, Aziraphale stops to pick up an oil-lamp, gives another one to Crowley.
“This really is actual bedrock,” Crowley says when they get downstairs, and he looks around the lowest chamber in the flickering light of their lamps. “Y’know, I did not realise that they must’ve used an existing cavern. That they built the lighthouse around it.”
“I saw the early plans,” Aziraphale says in a hushed voice, putting his oil-lamp on a hook. “And it’s rather odd, but—the cavern wasn’t there in those plans. I’m not sure…”
“…what changed,” Crowley finishes quietly. “Right, anyway, enough of that. Maybe they simply discovered the cavern when they started building.”
He crouches, pulling Aziraphale down with him. “Let’s do this, angel. I’ll anchor to the rock and try to get us a good look into the future. Ready?”
Aziraphale nods—and, one hand in the angel’s, another flat on the floor of the basement chamber, Crowley closes his eyes.
He opens them into a storm.
Into a maelstrom: a wild and churning thing that thrashes against Howling Rock, throwing itself viciously at its stones. Their first moments in it are disorienting. The lighthouse, they should be in the lighthouse and not in the middle of the sea, what on Earth—
His senses catch up. So, apparently, do Aziraphale’s, because next to him, the angel gasps. Crowley can feel shock radiating from him, has the presence of mind to squeeze the angel’s hand in the distant, almost not-real here-and-now.
“Angel, this—”
“My dear, I know.”
It’s not the underside of the sea they are looking at, no: they are looking at Time. At hundreds of years of it, all pooling and thrashing around Howling Rock, pouring in through fractures in the surface of reality.
“This really is a time-storm,” Crowley says, awed.
“Look,” Aziraphale points out softly. “There are… so many cracks. And they seem to all be coming from the future.”
Crowley nods, breathes out, anchors a part of himself to the island—and widens their view as much as Howling Rock will allow.
Time-currents. Swirls and waves and eddies of time, waterfalls of it. And, yes, cracks going across the surface of reality: a network of them has formed around a… trunk, a backbone that widens towards an origin. He can see that origin, now: a fixed point in the future, in the haze of shifting possibilities of things to come. That is where it all starts, and cracks snake backwards from that point, towards their present and into their past.
Crowley’s heartbeat quickens. Into their past. Oh, this is not good.
“That’s when it happened,” Aziraphale says quietly, still looking towards the future. “Whatever it was. Whatever it will be.”
Crowley nods, mouth dry. “Yes. About two centuries away, I reckon. Do you see them, though? The cracks that are going into our past?”
Aziraphale pauses. “I… yes, I do.”
“Right,” Crowley says. “I… Right. Angel, ‘m taking us to the present. Let’s see things up close.”
He makes his corporation a reference point, narrows his focus—and brings them forcibly to the here-and-now.
The cellar. Lamplight catching on torn spiderwebs that hang off the ribs of the railing. Aziraphale, crouched next to him. From the underside of time, the moment appears abstract and weightless, obsidian and spun glass; Crowley can see the time-currents twisting around both of them, wearing reality thin. The thin spots are where the next cracks will be, and in some of them, small fissures are already starting to form.
“Oh,” Aziraphale says—evidently looking at the forming fissures, too. “Crowley, do you see this? There are new cracks forming here, but do you see? They are healing, too.”
Crowley frowns, watching the thin spots. Something is indeed holding off the unravelling: the smaller fissures are knitting together again, helped by an almost invisible counter-current of power. Of powers, and familiar ones at that—
“This is your power, Crowley,” Aziraphale says softly. “And... Mine, too, I believe.”
Oh bloody hallowed halls of Heaven. Crowley stares at them incredulously. It is, they are; this is where his and Aziraphale’s powers are being diverted, reality has been leaching them to repair itself. Of course everything was more stable when they were standing next to each other, when reality could pull from both of them—
“We’ve been holding up this place,” Aziraphale says. “Quite literally, we weren’t allowing it to unravel.”
“But it’s unravelling now,” Crowley says, and pivots them towards the past.
Both of them are very, very still as they take in what lies behind them. Thin, twisting cracks snake backwards into the past even as they watch: into the history of the lighthouse, into the origins of Howling Rock itself. When She created time, she created all of it, all at once, the Pleistocene and the Pliocene and the Miocene, too, and everything beyond it, the deep past ready-made. It was all a big joke, they were told, and Crowley has been wondering ever since when the humans, or anyone at all, would get to the punchline.
And now, cracks are reaching into the deepest parts of things-that-were, changing and eroding them, pulling apart the very origins of the place they’re in.
Pulling apart their history.
—
“What happened to us in those two divergences,” Crowley says. “Where we drifted to… The cracks must have reached our past, changing our present. It wasn’t a stable change, it did revert, but—”
“But we may not be so lucky the next time,” Aziraphale says, summing up their thoughts.
Crowley nods grimly, tightening his fingers around Aziraphale’s.
They are still in the cellar. Crowley, sitting on a cask, is staring moodily at the grey stone wall in front of him, not about to let go of the angel.
(Not, Aziraphale thinks disconsolately, if he has any choice.)
“There’s another risk,” the demon is saying. “If reality is fracturing like this, if our power isn’t enough to hold it up any longer, to prevent the cracks from going into the past… This place could well collapse on itself with us still inside. I—have no idea what happens then.”
“Is this local, whatever is happening? Or does this affect more than this island and this lighthouse?”
“’S probably going to collapse before it gets larger, but—”
“I… see,” Aziraphale says slowly. He has to tear his mind away from the dread of coming loss and force himself to think, which is the only way forward. “And our power has been holding it up, with us being none the wiser. I suppose even more power went towards healing the cracks when we were using miracles. Particularly you, my dear, as I was… economising mine.”
Crowley nods.
“I… keep thinking, my dear. Why are we here? Were we drawn here, do you think? If our powers can counteract this fracturing without us even knowing it, if this is a wound in reality… Are we a defence mechanism, like blood clotting?”
“Don’t see this place teeming with other angels,” Crowley says tersely.
“No, quite.” Aziraphale falls silent, reaches out to tuck back a strand of Crowley’s hair. “I did try reaching Heaven, by the way. Earlier. Not to ask for anything, just to see if I could. And I could not. We must be shifted out of the proper flow of time significantly enough for the usual channels not to work. Not that we could call on Heaven to fix this while you are here, of course. Even if they cared to do the fixing, Heaven is…”
“Not inclined to be lenient to any demons found at the scene?”
Aziraphale nods, pained. “Quite. And they…”
“You shouldn’t be thinking this, angel,” Crowley says quickly, diving out of his daze. “’S not important. Heaven is Heaven, yeah? They aren’t here, and neither is Hell. Which, incidentally, I also could not get in touch with, not that that would be of any use.”
“So it’s just us.”
“It’s just us.”
“And it’s up to us to fix this. To stop the unravelling. Before something else happens. Before—”
Crowley breathes in, looks wretched, says nothing.
“Dearest. I believe we can.”
Something changes in Crowley’s face, but the demon doesn’t look happier or more hopeful. He simply looks resolute.
“Oh,” Aziraphale says quietly. “You... have been thinking this, too.”
—
They end up in the library.
Crowley sketches the cracks they saw beneath the surface of reality on the back of an old map, and both of them hunch over where the map is spread on the writing-desk, its edges pressed down by paperweights and books. It looks like lightning, that widening network of cracks, or like a root system; wet ink still glistens in its far reaches.
“It’s this specific point.” Crowley taps at the origin of the cracks. “Something happened here, must have done. Something significant enough to shatter reality itself, to stir up Time.”
“And it most likely involves humans. Whether it’s a ritual or something else. ”
Thoughtful, Crowley chews on the inside of his cheek. “Right, yeah. But ‘m not sure that matters all that much. What matters is that for whatever reason, the cracks are going backwards from that point, and they still haven’t stopped. We’ve managed to dampen them for a while, but they are past our control.”
The demon drums his fingers over the map absently; they come away ink-stained, and when Aziraphale notices that, he captures Crowley’s hand and methodically cleans the stains off with a pristine white handkerchief.
“So now, we have to prevent them from spreading further,” the angel says, surveying his handiwork before letting go of Crowley’s hand.
“Yeah. And quickly, too.”
“Which is precisely what I was thinking. Crowley, our powers work on them. If they are repairing themselves by our mere presence, we can try repairing them deliberately. We can aim our powers. And if we reach and repair as many cracks around us as we can, we can keep this place stable enough to prevent our past from shattering.”
Crowley nods. The ember of an idea that he’d been carrying around gains power, flares brighter; what he has in mind might just work. It would be a desperate thing, of course, but all the same: it’s the best option they have.
He wonders if Aziraphale has seen it yet.
“Oh!” the angel exclaims in the meantime, turning towards Crowley. “Crowley, do you remember? Do you remember how agitated you were when a tear opened up during the night, and how you shouted at it? You made it go away. This might be proof, mightn’t it, that this will work? You’d directed your will at it, and your power.”
“Yeah,” Crowley says. “Thought ’s not a certainty that my shouting had any effect. We might have just moved past that fracture. These are tears in time, and we are moving with time, so it’s a little like glimpsing a side-road from a moving railway carriage: blink and it’s already behind you.”
“Oh,” Aziraphale says, deflating slightly. “Of course, that’s quite true…”
“But I do think you’re right, angel. I think this is what we have to do. The cracks and the time-storm are feeding on each other, so to get the storm under control, we have to fix the cracks.”
“Oh!” the angel says, brightening again. “Oh, that—that does mean we have been thinking the same thing. And perhaps we can make certain that this works? Perhaps we can practise with the smaller fissures, to be ready to counteract a bigger one when it opens up...?”
Crowley shakes his head. “‘Ziraphale, angel, hold on. ’S not quite like this. I mean, yes, all of this makes sense, but… you realise that it’s not going to be enough, yes? Chasing the cracks from this side of reality, waiting until they decide to put in an appearance… It would take literal years to make any kind of a difference. And we…” Crowley swallows, despite himself. “We don’t have years.”
“But—you just said…”
“That I think there is a way. Yeah. ’S walking into Time.”
“Walking… into Time.”
“Yes, angel. To fix the cracks from the other side. While not bound by Time’s flow.”
“Crowley, that’s…”
“Original. Wildly inventive. Worthy of an epic poem, and you love those.” Crowley manages to grin.
“You said that walking into Time would drive one mad!”
“Sure, absolutely, but not at once! Not unless you get stuck there! ’S what I mean—if we were human, we’d stand no chance. But we are not human. I’m not human. ’S the point. And from inside Time, all of the shattering can be pulled closed. ’S interconnected, cracks causing more cracks, don’t you see?”
“But—but—the amount of power needed to close all of it would be immense!”
“Not if it’s done right. ’S all about going along with Time, not fighting it, right? And it’s about finesse. You don’t need a long piece of string to suture a tear, and these tears want to heal.”
Aziraphale seems on the verge of saying something—but then doesn’t, dropping his gaze to the map instead. Crowley searches the angel’s face for fear, for an indication that Aziraphale is about to put his foot down with a resounding “no”.
But the angel looks determined, if pale.
“I… can see why you are proposing this,” Aziraphale says finally. “Perhaps—yes, if we could reach the point of origin, we may be able to counteract the shattering. And as to the mechanism, I assume we would have to walk into one of those cracks?”
Crowley straightens abruptly, his heart giving a thud of alarm.
“We? Angel, no. You misunderstand me. You wouldn’t be going in.”
The angel, straightening also, gives him an equally startled stare. “Crowley, what do you mean? You alone—you cannot possibly—what are you thinking?”
“That I’m a lot better at this than you,” Crowley says soberly. “And that, which is bloody ironic, we are running out of time.”
“Crowley, this is dangerous! Don’t think I don’t realise that!”
Here we are, Crowley thinks. Here is the foot coming down, Aziraphale standing his ground. And yet Crowley needs the angel to let him do this. This is the best chance they have.
“Aziraphale. Angel. Doing nothing is not an option.”
“My dear, I’m not talking about doing nothing. I’m a Principality, repairing literal cracks in my domain is my responsibility. If, if you imagine that I’m going to let you do this while I sit back here with a cup of tea—”
“Angel. Angel, listen to me. I hate to say this, but I don’t think you stand a chance. I don’t think you are ready. I have dealt with time, I have an affinity for it. I know you want to protect me, but it has to be me. I have to go in there. I won’t pretend it’s not dangerous. Unlike you, though, I stand an excellent chance.”
Aziraphale is looking at him, speechless, retorts clearly piling up behind his compressed lips.
“Angel,” Crowley says again, and wills Aziraphale to listen. “It’s more dangerous with two, not less. You have to trust me.”
“Crowley,” Aziraphale manages to say. He looks desperate—and like all of their six thousand years are weighing on his shoulders. “I trust you. I really do. But this... Are you trying to sacrifice yourself?”
Crowley sighs and gently nudges Aziraphale backwards, enough to get the angel to take a step, to sit down in the armchair just behind him. Crowley himself settles down on the upholstered curve of the armrest—and pulls the angel to him, his chin over Aziraphale’s mussed curls. The angel’s arms go around him, tight.
“How can I possibly let you do this?” Aziraphale asks against his waistcoat, miserable and angry in equal measure.
In the corner of the writing-desk, the table-clock ticks against the howling of the wind outside. For a while, there is nothing Crowley can say.
And then, he blinks.
“Angel,” he says. “What if I tell you that you already have?”
Aziraphale pulls away, looking mutinous. “I—what? Crowley, you can’t just put words in my mouth, I never—”
And then, he cuts himself off, his eyes widening with alarmed understanding.
“No,” he says. “No, you cannot assume—this cannot be—you are quite misinterpreting—this has to be a mistake—”
“But you see, don’t you? You already have.”
—
“I’ve walked through time,” Crowley says. “The keepers saw me. You saw me, I bloody haunted you. Remember how you said I’d walked through all the mirrors of this place? This is why. I went in to close the cracks.”
“It doesn’t mean that you were doing it alone! And it does not mean that it was a good decision!”
“Yeah, but consider: the only time you saw yourself was when you saw us kissing. And that was… that could have been our future, or a stray probability, we don’t know. But the rest of the time, you’d seen me and you’d heard me. Only me.”
“Crowley, we might have been desperate. Even if you are interpreting this correctly, it doesn’t mean that we made the right choice!”
There’s a stubborn curve to Crowley’s mouth. “Sure. Yeah. But angel, make no mistake, we are desperate now. Our past and present are fracturing as we speak. So the real question is, what allowed us to make that choice? What did we come up with to make it tenable?”
Speaking hurts. The air in Aziraphale’s lungs is far thinner than air should be. “Crowley,” he manages. “Crowley, we—heard something in the light-room. When you staggered, calling out to me. What if that is our future? What if we call that possibility into existence as soon as you step into Time?”
“Yeah, but what if that’s the past?” Crowley counters. “’S far more likely, angel. I flew up to the balcony, remember? To the light-room, in the rain, looking for you.”
“We can’t know that for sure—”
“Angel, we can’t know anything for sure when Time’s involved. That can’t stop us from doing what we have to do.”
“No,” Aziraphale tells Crowley, swallowing down panic. “No. No. I cannot let you do this, not alone, we are together, we are on the same side, you can’t go alone, you can’t, you can’t—”
The world fractures before Aziraphale can get to the end of his entreaty.
This time, it starts with a simple crack: Aziraphale can see it by the way Crowley flinches, vaulting up from the armrest and spinning around to face north. The fracture has to be quite large; darkness falls outside the lighthouse, turning their pale day into sudden night.
“Aziraphale,” Crowley says, urgent. “Whatever happens, don’t—”
And then, he is no longer there, and the night is empty, and Aziraphale is alone.
The angel blinks into the darkness, his fingers digging into the fabric of the armrests. Wind shivers and sighs outside. The fog in his head is clearing. He must have—dozed off, as unlikely as it is with everything that happened. Of course, he is terribly tired by now. It’s been days since he saw Crowley last, and his hope is dwindling, but—he has to keep going, keep hoping. If only he wasn’t paralyzed by fear, if only he did not linger, stunned, before running after Crowley on that fateful day. Crowley might have still been here if Aziraphale had been brave enough.
(What if he never sees Crowley again, he asks himself for the hundredth time—and the weight of grief descends on him anew, crushing his ribcage, sucking all air out of his lungs.)
The world shudders and twists.
Daylight is back, and with it, memory, and with it, Crowley, whirling back towards Aziraphale, chalk-white.
Aziraphale is already out of his armchair, already reaching for him. For a horrible moment, he is afraid that his hands will pass right through the demon, but they do not, and then Crowley’s hands are on his shoulders.
“Tell me how you would do this,” Aziraphale says, through a throat that feels raw.
Crowley tips the angel’s head back and kisses him before pressing their foreheads together. “I—yeah. I would walk into one of those cracks.”
—
“I’ll go into the past first,” Crowley explains. “Here.” He traces the black ink river backwards, to where the cracks thin and peter out. “The cracks in the deepest past are the most dangerous. They aren’t large enough to become permanent, not yet, and most of them don’t touch anything significant…”
“But they could, at any point, and already did at least three times,” the angel says quietly.
“We are not bloody letting it happen again,” Crowley says with grim determination. “So. I’ll still have to fix the rest of the larger cracks, because otherwise the shattering will pull itself apart. But I’ll have to do it very purposefully, leaving myself a path back into the present.”
“Is that going to be enough? You anchored us to Howling Rock when we were merely looking into Time, and now you are planning to walk into it. You’ve said yourself that it’s awfully confusing, so—is this really enough to get back?
“Look,” Crowley says, tracing the heavy ink marks of a pathway on the map. “These cracks are large enough to be stable. Here’s one that’ll reach us in several hours. ’S a solid way back.”
A chiselled line has lodged itself between Aziraphale’s eyebrows. “But—dearest. Once you start pulling the whole shattering closed, the specific pattern of the cracks we see here might change, mightn’t it? And if the pattern changes, you’ll be running against time in a veritable labyrinth.”
“The pattern could change, sure, but I’d still find the right cracks eventually. And if other ones formed instead, I’d be able to use those.”
“I see.”
“I am good at this,” Crowley says defensively.
“Dearest, I know,” Aziraphale says, the line between his eyebrows deepening. “I know you are, but I cannot help worrying—” And then, a sudden light comes into Aziraphale’s face, as if it has caught a stray sunbeam.
“A doorway!” he exclaims. “Crowley, couldn’t we make one? Couldn’t we make a truly stable pathway into and out of Time?”
“I… hm.” Crowley frowns, already weighing their options. Reality around them is brittle, yes: they could fissure it with a single well-placed tap. “That… is a good idea, angel. It’s very likely that we can.”
“A more dependable exit point would go a long way,” Aziraphale murmurs, turning towards the map. Crowley studies his profile, the stubborn curve of his nose, the dark shadows of his eyelashes against his cheeks. Commits the image to memory, as if it’s something he can take with him when he goes.
“But even with a doorway, finding your way back might be difficult,” Aziraphale says slowly. “And you are not going to be anchored to anything to remember when you are from. Not even to Howling Rock.”
“The Rock’s useless for this, angel. It would anchor me to a place, yes, but ’s not like I’m going to leave the place regardless. It won’t anchor me to the right time. ’S the same deal with any other anchors: there’s nothing with enough longevity or significance. But angel. I can do this. Really. ’S a good idea, with the doorway, it will help. And I’ll be fine.”
“Crowley,” the angel asks quietly, earnestly. “Couldn’t you anchor to me?”
“To… you.”
“Oh, but you could, couldn’t you? It’s not that different from what we did before. You could anchor to my consciousness, to my core, as they exist at this specific time. And then you would have a… safety line, if you will. A thread to follow when you return.”
“You are an angel,” Crowley says in agitation. “I’m a demon. And this connection, it works both ways, ’s like you’d be anchoring to me, and—”
“And do you think, after everything, that I would not? Or are you afraid that you will scare me away, unforgivable demon that you are?”
Aziraphale is looking at him with a challenge, daring him to persist. Crowley blinks, adjusting his understanding.
“You… would,” Crowley says slowly. “No, yeah, of course you would.”
“I’m glad you see that, my dear. So, what do we do?”
—
When Aziraphale lets Crowley in, there is no uncertainty to it, no unease.
Crowley is a soft shadow to Aziraphale’s midday glare; Crowley is relief. He is a night of revels and a guiding fire in the dark. When he reaches for Aziraphale, still hesitant even after everything, it feels like respite, like a promise, like the start of a celebration, like the first of the summer solstice fires.
Aziraphale can almost see those fires reflected in Crowley’s eyes when the demon’s dark lashes arc upwards.
“That,” Crowley says unsteadily. “That was—”
“Quite,” Aziraphale agrees breathlessly.
“Bloody Hell,” Crowley says, still looking at him wide-eyed. Then, he laughs. “Angel. You actually—you did—”
Aziraphale pulls him forward by the shoulders, kisses his forehead, the tip of his nose, the disbelieving curve of his mouth.
“I love you,” he tells the demon. “Please, you have to remember this. I love you. We’ll have to maintain our connection, I think—and I’m certain that remembering this will help. And another thing. You will be able to use my power now. You’ll promise me that you will actually do it, yes? Don’t hesitate even if it runs low. I’d rather you used my power and not your own, because I’m going to stay on this side, after all, and be quite safe while you walk through danger.”
“I will, angel, I will, I promise.” Crowley grins at him, cocky and self-assured. He gets up from the bed and pulls Aziraphale to stand alongside him; both of them turn towards the middle of the library: the perfect place for the doorway, they’d both agreed.
“I’ll have to be quick once I’m in there,” Crowley says. “Nothing can stay in the in-between for long, but you already know that. The real danger is getting stuck, of course; still, there’s no point in taking on more risk than we have to. And another thing… ‘Ziraphale, there are going to be side-effects. On this side, too, though I don’t quite know what they may look like.”
The angel nods. “I will manage. And we will hear each other, that should help. And…” He looks down at their joined hands; frees his, takes off his signet ring, weighs it in his palm. “I’d like to give you something of mine. This, though…” He bites his lip, considering. “Celestial metal. Might not be safe for you in the long run.”
Crowley watches him through lowered lashes.
“Ah,” Aziraphale says, and slips his signet ring back on as a new idea strikes him. “Well. This… might be a little silly, but…”
He reaches for his pocket-watch, holds it up on his open palm. It’s ticking, now, and the glass shield over its face is clear and unmarred.
“This,” Aziraphale says uncertainly. “I’m not sure if it will help you measure time, exactly, not where you’re going, but… will you take this?”
“Angel,” Crowley says softly. “Of course.” He gives Aziraphale a small crooked smile as he closes his hand over the watch. “See, ’s a good rule, the rule of three. You’ve given me, what, a way back to you, your power, and a pocket-watch? Pretty solid by how fairy-tales go.”
If I weren’t this useless in dealing with time, Aziraphale thinks, his heart contracting painfully, you wouldn’t have to be the one taking on all the danger.
“Do you know,” Crowley says lightly as the watch disappears into his trouser pocket, and he looks around the room, “the library will be a superb waiting spot. You’ll be able to pick up a book when you are bored with waiting.” He nods towards the disarray of books on the writing-desk, the last volume of Jane Eyre pressing down a corner of their map.
“As I have already read all of those books in their entirety, my dear, you will simply have to come back before I get bored,” Aziraphale says, managing to match Crowley’s tone.
Crowley smiles appreciatively—and brings Aziraphale’s hand to his lips. “Ready, angel?”
No, Aziraphale thinks. Not at all, not for this, but as much as I will ever be. “Yes.”
With a snap, Crowley cuts the outflow of their powers. The world around them quivers. Precise and controlled, Crowley reaches out to hit the perfect resonant note, the exact tension point of reality—and reality splits.
The doorway shudders open before them: a fracture, an impossible pathway into the very heart of Time.
“Right,” Crowley says, and for a moment, even he sounds unsteady. Then, he turns to look at the angel—and smiles at him: a heart-stopping, magnetic, dizzying smile. “See you back here soon, angel. Don’t get lost in a book.”
Don’t get lost in a book, Aziraphale’s mind echoes as Crowley lets go of his hand. The crushed morocco binding of Jane Eyre on the desk draws his gaze, and quite suddenly, Aziraphale remembers the mystical call he’d read about: a name on the wind, a summons cutting across space at a desperate time.
“Crowley,” he calls out, before he quite knows what he is about to say. The demon, only a half-step from the doorway now, pauses to look back at him, one eyebrow raised.
Aziraphale stumbles to explain. “Crowley, I just—I thought of something. In the light-room, yesterday, I—thought I heard you call out to me. And I’d started doubting it, but what if that was real? What if you were calling to me? From—the future? Or the past?”
Crowley inclines his head, thoughtful. “Could be, angel,” he says with an invincible smile. “So it’s a good thing you replied.”
And with that, he steps into Time.
Notes:
Music. Yes. For now, We Were There by Federico Albanese.
Also accepting bets on whether what they've just done was a good idea.
Chapter 10: In-between
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
It works. Some instinct wakes within Crowley as he nears the doorway, called forth by his intention to get elsewhere. The instinct directs Crowley’s steps: not straight, not through, but sideways, into the in-between.
The world shifts around him. He remains in the library, soft carpet under his feet—yet the library itself shifts out of physical space.
It’s like plunging underwater, except every wavering current is time. Crowley’s surroundings turn translucent, objects flickering in and out of existence as if they have not quite decided when they belong. A seascape on the wall is briefly a still life, then gone, then a seascape once more; the upholstery of a winged armchair is bright-new and also covered in dust.
Dizziness takes hold of him. The time-currents flood his senses, whisper against his skin, hum in his ears: flashes, overlayed images, echoes of sound and scent. To his right, a book about to tumble off a side table wavers among the ghostly reflections of itself overbalancing, falling—and briefly, Crowley feels like he might overbalance and fall himself.
He closes his eyes. Aziraphale is no longer in the room, not in any visible form, but his presence remains strong, as if the angel is holding the other end of a safety line wrapped around Crowley’s ribs.
“Crowley?” the angel asks—and his voice cuts through Crowley’s vertigo.
Crowley focuses on it. Holds on to it. Dispels the rest of his sea-sickness with an effort of will. “Angel. I’m through. ’S bloody weird.”
He gets relief in response, tinged with apprehension. “And how do you feel?”
“Let’s find out,” Crowley says, and opens his eyes.
The air—though this is neither aether nor air—is full of cracks. Small ones, mostly, although a large fracture shivers in one corner, spilling currents of displaced probabilities, odd whispers and snatches of song that snag at Crowley’s mind. He shakes his head to dislodge them. No, he thinks their way. Don’t even try.
“‘M going to close the smaller cracks first,” he tells the angel. Then, he sets to work: noting the places where the world thins, cataloguing the scuffs on reality’s surface, studying the blank spots that draw and hold his gaze. When he aims an experimental splash of power at them, they heal, easier and faster than he expected.
“It’s working, isn’t it?” the unseen angel asks him, voice bright with hope.
“Yes,” Crowley says, matching him. “It is, angel. Just as we thought.”
—
If Aziraphale closes his eyes, he can sense where Crowley is—in the same way that a blindfolded human would know a familiar room by its echoes, by the currents of air within it, by the changed feeling of space beyond its threshold. Crowley is walking downstairs—and into the past.
All Aziraphale can do in the meantime is wait.
It’s not a comfortable wait, despite the armchairs and the books that surround him. The gash in reality, incongruous in this room, keeps drawing Aziraphale’s gaze. It beckons him; it whispers to him, many-voiced. He tears his eyes away, looks towards the shelves, meets Robert Stevenson’s blank plaster stare, lets his gaze glide over familiar bindings. Even like this, seen out of the corner of his eye, the fracture pulls at him. It demands attention: like a bone needing to be set, like a wound needing to be dressed.
And Crowley—
Crowley has ventured out to heal the whole of the Shattering.
Pressing his thumb into the grooves of his signet ring, the angel tries to still his anxious hands.
The demon had been confident, persuasive, brave. Left alone now, however, Aziraphale feels the cold weight of dread gather around him. Yes, Crowley knew how to look into Time. Crowley knew how to counteract its interference. He knew how to pull closed the cracks. He is doing it now, somewhere in the time-storm, and every crack he heals brings them further out of danger.
But Crowley has never done this before. He’s never actually stepped into the in-between. The cracks have never existed before, or he would have already seen them. And if Crowley has never done this before, what dangers are there that he is unaware of? What unfathomable risks has Crowley taken on?
And all I could give him was an old pocket-watch: an absurd, useless bauble. Which he accepted graciously, but which carries no power—and cannot help him where he’s gone. Oh, merciful Lord. What use can it possibly be? What was I thinking?
There were so many questions I should have asked him—and then we ran out of time.
—
Crowley weaves through space as he weaves through time: across rooms and passages, up and down stairways. He keeps his wings out in case he miscalculates, stepping onto stones suspended in the distant future while he himself is a hundred years in the past. (Does it really work this way? He has no idea, but he’d rather not be taken by surprise.)
Presently, he is on the shore, in what must be relatively recent past—though he feels the pull of time in his back teeth, hears the echoes of the Cretaceous, tastes the oxygenation of the atmosphere changing across aeons. Above him, sunlight glints red off the Fresnel lens; reflections move along the panes of the light-room like a cool glass flame. Crowley gives the beacon a single incredulous look (really, this, this moment was what he half-remembered when they’d first stepped onto Howling Rock?), snaps to heal the cracks around him, makes sure that the time-currents are calming down—and steps further back.
More steps through time; more sutures. He imagines himself a needle, quick and iron-sharp—and he has to be quick: the probabilities are lapping at his mind like waters of a relentless river lap at stones. Are you sure? they whisper. Are you sure? So many ways your past might have gone, are you remembering the right one?
He is on the rocks during the blink of an eye when the lighthouse is built. Snatches of the builders’ songs follow him on the time-currents; one of them is, quite distinctly, Auld Lang Syne. Just before the demon walks into the next crack, an apprentice looks right at him and sees him, the youth’s face transforming into a mask of rapt horror.
Then, there is no lighthouse; Crowley is in a deeper and quieter past. Stone grows younger beneath his feet. As he walks across the isle that has already started ageing into Howling Rock, across the curving cavern-less plain of it, his foot slips, and he steps onto softer ground. Whipping around to see his shoe-print, he immediately sees, too, the probabilities that have seized it already, shifting the whole vortex of possible futures around a cavern that time will carve out of Crowley’s literal mis-step.
Right, Crowley thinks, holding still against a fresh wave of vertigo. Right. “‘Ziraphale, will you believe me if I say that the cavern is here on Howling Rock because of me?”
He can feel the angel’s presence, his warmth. He can very nearly feel the weight and turn of Aziraphale’s thoughts.
“We have already changed our own history,” Aziraphale says softly.
“Yeah.” Crowley shivers. “Yeah, angel, ’m afraid we have.”
—
They keep talking. Aziraphale can feel Crowley drawing on his power, is glad of it: every ounce he provides means less of the demon’s own power having to be spent.
He worries. Of course he does; he is a worrier, that’s half of what he is. Aziraphale does his best not to channel his anxiety to Crowley, not to distract the demon: Crowley needs to focus, to feel Aziraphale’s support and not any uncertainty that Aziraphale might feel himself.
Right now, Crowley is chasing the time-storm. Every time the demon heals a fracture, calming the currents around it, he has to step into a new passage, into fresh turmoil.
And Aziraphale, in the meantime, is facing a challenge of his own. Next to the angel, the open doorway twists and shudders, straining against the world. It whispers across all of Aziraphale’s senses. Newly aware of Time, Aziraphale cannot help catching the things it says.
Notes of colour; the octaves of the spectrum. Images, bright as stained glass. Hands and wings and feathers. A church. A fire: not Hell-fire, but Earthly flames that burn almost as deep. Then, an odd place, grey and dull, posters on mould-damp walls, one advising the passer-by not to lick them. Afterwards, a magic trick gone wrong—and at this point, the images split: the angel sees Crowley by his side, breathing life into a lifeless dove—and stands alone, the dove a limp weight over his open palm.
“The probabilities are spilling over,” Crowley says, apologetic. “That was one of the risks. You’re likely to see more of them, but just stay on your side of reality and you’ll be fine, yeah? ’S like looking into Time, but less controlled.”
Aziraphale rights himself, positions himself firmly in space and time. “These… probabilities. They must be what the human soothsayers use in their predictions?”
“Oh, I bet they are. No wonder most prophecy books get things horribly wrong.”
—
When the deep past is whole once more, Crowley starts forward. The tower rises before him again, diaphanous in the uncertainty of Time. The sun rolls across the sky, glinting off the spherical reflectors, off the curve of an old lens—and sparking on the newly installed Fresnel lens Crowley would have recognised in his sleep.
The demon mends reality, crack after crack after jagged crack. He redirects the time-currents to their proper places. Power flows through him, Aziraphale’s and his own so intertwined that he can barely tell them apart.
He sees the keepers. Many times, and sometimes, they see him, too: Miles, and Brown, and Steven who peers into the dark, holding the familiar journal across his stomach like a clumsy shield, like it can protect him from the thing that prowls in the shadows. Brown must be the one who keeps crossing himself—or is that Miles? Once, Crowley catches a glimpse of Aziraphale’s cloud-light hair. The angel is right in front of him, in the library, settled in one of the winged armchairs; Crowley is already reaching out, Aziraphale’s name on his lips, when the angel turns to him, severe and wide-eyed, and the demon staggers back, realising his mistake. This is not the right time.
A step. Another step. Crowley walks through space, through time shuffled like a deck of cards. He lingers outside the light-room in the gloaming, healing more cracks, and barely feels the rain. He sees Steven in the kitchen. The young man tenses, his nape likely prickling with Crowley’s presence, and slowly puts down a white porcelain cup painted with delicate gold swirls, placing it on the fourth stair of the narrow staircase before he turns to face the unseen danger.
“Who’s there?” he asks loudly, voice brittle and brave.
‘M sorry, kid, Crowley thinks at him—and pulls reality across like a curtain, hiding himself from view.
As Crowley walks on, the time-currents drag at him, bringing the flotsam of his own might-have-beens, of possibilities that did not come to pass. All of them catch at his mind. Some make him giddy (their waltz, when he danced with Aziraphale, was a heartbeat away from a kiss: did he know that?) Others send a shivery chill down his back (he could, he actually could have been trapped in the dusty tower, in a side-current of time: with no chance to find the angel, to warn him, to explain.)
Sometimes, the probabilities show him images that are still more disturbing. They suggest that things have gone wrong: that Aziraphale had never opened the hatch door; that the angel didn’t listen to him, did not believe him; that what Crowley is doing now is the last desperate bid to get the angel to safety, because nothing else has worked.
That he is too late.
“Aziraphale?” Crowley calls out every time, reaching for the safety line that leads back to the angel.
“I’m here,” Aziraphale responds without fail. “Crowley, dearest, how are you doing?”
“Fine. The probabilities are a nuisance,” Crowley says back, teeth grit—and, grabbing handfuls of his and Aziraphale’s power, throws them at the world. The cracks heal, the time-currents calm, the pooling time soaks back to where it belongs. Crowley works with the determination of an artist about to see the image on their canvas come alive, a storyteller whose hero stands before the gates of a long-sought city, a philosopher holding a key to the world.
He is getting closer with every healed fracture.
“Dearest,” the angel says, worried but trying to hide it. “I’ve been paying a lot of attention to your method of fixing the cracks. Would you consider heading back? Because, well, we could switch. I’m certain I will be able to repeat the steps now.”
“No, angel,” Crowley says. “But ’s fine, we’re fine, I’m at least a third of the way through.”
“My love. Please. I’d like to be of use, and… I hope you won’t be putting yourself at needless risk.”
“No needless risk.” Crowley smiles, knowing that the angel will hear it in his voice. “Angel, don’t worry. I’ll be home in no time.”
Yet his words, for all their lightness, settle leadenly into the currents of the place, the threads of probability wrapping around them like the silk of an enterprising mulberry worm.
I will be home in no time, Crowley obstinately informs the wavering world. There is no other option. I will.
—
“Any indications of what awaits at the origin?” Aziraphale asks Crowley, as business-like as he can manage to be. In the corners of his mind, probabilities flicker, incessant; he tries to keep his focus on other things.
“Hm,” the faraway demon muses. “There were a few further-reaching cracks. Some of them brought smoke. ‘M not sure it’s from the origin, precisely, but it did come from that direction… Oh, and I heard people arguing. Humans. Whatever’s going to happen will involve a fair number of them.”
“Is it still likely that this is a ritual of some kind?” Aziraphale asks cautiously. “Or is it something larger?”
“Dunno, angel. But ’s not the Big One, if that’s what you’re thinking. Far too contained for that. When I said a fair number, I meant dozens.”
It should be a relief that they are not dealing with the literal Armageddon—and yet the angel finds his hands clasped tighter. No, he did not really expect this to be the end of the world, but… what on Earth is it? What on Earth is Crowley walking towards?
“How are you doing with the probabilities, angel?” the demon asks in the meantime. “Still a lot coming your way?”
“Oh, Crowley, yes,” Aziraphale says quite honestly. “I’ve seen some truly dreadful ones.”
A pause on Crowley’s side.
“Let me guess, they involved us?”
“I—yes. I’d really rather not talk about them. Unless… Unless it’s important, unless I should…?”
“Nah, no, you don’t need to say anything. I’ve seen a fair few, too. But… So you know, angel, seeing them does not mean they’re real. There are going to be ghastly ones. There are going to be brilliant ones, too: time’s a great tempter, all kinds of things are possible in Time. Just don’t believe any of them. Terrifying or enticing, probabilities lie.”
Aziraphale nods, repeating this to himself.
Probabilities lie.
—
Crowley is on the shore again, and in front of him, the lighthouse is a tower of bones. No, not bones: it’s a metal structure, rough latticework of criss-crossed beams, platforms in mid-air connected by glinting ladders. As, in an eye-blink, day rolls into night, the light on the top of the ghostly lighthouse flares a brilliant, cold white that is not born of a flame.
The future is coming closer, but the past is not letting Crowley go. He sees one of the keepers, Steven, stumble across the crevices of Howling Rock, lured by the whispers of possibilities, a hair’s breadth away from stepping into a time-tear. Stay away, Crowley wants to shout at him, but it is already too late, and the fracture is closing behind Steven’s back, and all Crowley can do is twist reality even more, giving Steven a clear exit point, a destination to reach. He won’t be able to return him home, but all the same, he will be able to give him time, and hope, and choice.
In the middle of Howling Rock, the lighthouse rebuilds itself, seeming to solidify from the literal mists of time. The new tower is square and painted a bright white (sun-yellow, red, ochre: a superposition of shifting colour). Inside, it’s a warren of future and past. Crowley hears Steven argue with Miles, hears Brown tell both of them off. He hears other humans, too, whenever they are, and sees their flitting shadows. And then, he hears Aziraphale: the angel’s quiet words, shot through with pain. “Crowley,” Aziraphale says, and Crowley’s heart is set to shatter. “Crowley, why did you follow me here?”
I’d follow you anywhere, Crowley thinks, and barely catches himself before he says it out loud.
This is not the right time.
“Crowley?” the real Aziraphale speaks up then, a note of tension in his voice. “There was a disturbance in our connection just now, did you notice that?”
Was there? Couldn’t have been much, Crowley tells himself.
“I, uh… No? But ’s fine, angel, ’s fine, there are bound to be some disturbances, what with the storm.”
—
“‘M definitely getting closer to whatever happened,” Crowley says. “The humans have rebuilt the lighthouse. ‘Cept I can’t tell when I am right now, and that’s bloody annoying. The, uh, the end of the twentieth century? The beginning of the twenty-first? I should know this, and yet. Will you believe it, there’s just too much going on.”
Worry stirs within Aziraphale, never far from the surface of his mind. Crowley should really know when he is, shouldn’t he? And that hiccup in their connection… True, Aziraphale has no idea whether it means anything at all, and Crowley had insisted that their link can’t possibly be perfect as they are talking across a veritable ocean of Time…
Except Crowley didn’t notice the interruption. Crowley didn’t notice it at all.
When Crowley went bathing, he needed to constantly keep part of his attention on the currents, to make sure no stray wave could throw him against Howling Rock. He was exhausted when he returned. Surely the principle of what they are doing now is not very different? And surely both of them need to keep part of their attention on their connection to keep it from fraying?
“This is fascinating, angel,” Crowley speaks up in the meantime, animated. “‘M getting more glimpses of the future. The humans, they’re up to something, they’re bringing supplies. By the way, most everyone’s wearing trousers. Not a single crinoline in sight, not that those bloody things could have lasted. Seeing some uniforms, though.”
Focus, Aziraphale orders himself. It’s really best if you stop second-guessing everything and just focus on Crowley.
“Uniforms,” he repeats. “Are these… officers? Soldiers?”
“Nah, they’re plainer than that. Oh, and I can hear more conversations now. Something about… studies? Competition? Getting there first? I do wonder where these humans think they’re going.”
They have the answer before long.
“Experiments, angel,” Crowley speaks up, something changed in his voice. “They are talking about experiments. I—have a clue, now. I’m starting to wonder if these are natural philosophers gone wild.”
Natural philosophers gone wild, Aziraphale repeats to himself—and, without meaning to, looks at the bookshelf: at the Bible and the book on engineering, displayed proudly side by side.
—
Crowley can feel the future in his fingertips, on the tip of his tongue. The lighthouse around him has changed again. Having filled with shadows first, its rooms are now full of machinery: boxes upon boxes with long lines of digits and flickering lights. The machines hum on a frequency that makes Crowley’s skin crawl, and the time-currents around them thrash and pull, as if disturbed by the turbulent wake of a ship. Soon enough, a slow but inexorable understanding unfolds within Crowley.
The humans—
The humans are doing something to Time.
“My love,” the faraway angel starts speaking just as Crowley is about to tell him of this discovery. “Crowley. I’ve been thinking. You have to make sure to hold on to me as fast as you can, always keeping part of your attention on our link. We’ve never anchored to each other before, this connection may not be as stable as we’d like. Do you recall how, with the currents…”
With a tinge of impatience, Crowley reaches out to strengthen his hold on Aziraphale’s core.
“There, angel,” he tells him soothingly. “Yeah, I remember. ‘M good, we are good. I’ve got something more important, I’ve just found something out. The humans, they…”
The rise in human voices distracts him. The voices are spilling out of hairline cracks into the future—and Crowley hurriedly snatches these fragments out of the time-storm, arranges them into a sequence he can follow.
“We can absolutely do this,” the humans tell each other. And: “Nobody is going to care what it took if we get there first.”
Before long, larger cracks give Crowley glimpses of the speakers: the humans of the next millennium, loud and confident and evidently impervious to seeing past the surface of reality. None of them so much as frown at shadows; none of them notice him. Their machines, which have dipped into Time, keep agitating and disturbing it. “The supply is strong,” the humans say, voices bright.
These humans, too, must be seeking power. Just like their ancestors have done—but this generation is going about it with fresh gusto, having come up with a new and exciting way to impose their will on the world.
“Crowley? Crowley, they—what?”
Oh. Right. He was talking to Aziraphale. “Uh—”
“You said you found something out. The humans, you said, they…”
“They are doing this on purpose.” Crowley emphatically picks up the thread. ”’Ziraphale, I think they must be trying to harness Time.”
“Oh.” The angel goes quiet as he considers this. “Of course, that… that would make sense. They have been using the wind, and steam, and water…”
And Time, now. Of course they’d try to use Time.
Crowley walks on. As the humans prod and tap at their machines, the time-storm around him grows wilder and wilder: a churning, frothing thing. Every new section of the Shattering he steps into poses a fresh challenge; as he heals the cracks, the heavy time-waves drag at him, trying to pull him off course. Acrid smoke wafts towards him on the currents. His head is full of the howl of the sea.
More human voices arrive through the freshly forming cracks.
“It’s remote enough,” someone says doubtfully. A woman, Crowley guesses; her words and tone are eerily familiar. It takes him a few breaths to place the memory, and he starts when he succeeds: Was it really her that he heard in his not-quite-dream days ago?
“But distance isn’t the only risk,” she goes on. “I’ve looked through the plans. This change means cost-cutting a quarter of the system. A whole circuit. Who signed off on that?”
Good question, Crowley thinks, pulling the time-tear shut against his own wishes to keep listening. Ask more good questions. And bloody stop the thing while you’re at it, how about that?
Another time-tear brings still more conversation fragments.
“They should have consulted me. I’m a physicist, not a magician,” the same woman says haughtily. “How am I supposed to run any experiments under these conditions?”
Other humans stumble over each other to answer her; a wheedling voice suggests that with her expertise, the issue cannot possibly remain unsolved for long. Crowley, walking through the underside of Time, shakes his head at this hubris, at the tired story of overconfidence leading to disaster. This is what’s about to happen here, is it not?
But before long, the story twists.
“We may not be measuring all the effects,” the physics woman says, her haughtiness replaced by actual concern. “I know we are trying to hit the milestone, but we may not know all the risks, and cutting the testing period short is—”
“A decision we’ve already made,” a confident baritone informs her, as irritating as a knife on glass. “We ran multiple models, all of them converged. Mar, a word of advice. Think in perspective. Nobody is going to remember the runners-up, only the pioneers. It’s past time we start the harvester.”
Past time we start the what, Crowley thinks, looking around at the thrashing time, at the ghostly world, at the wavering sea beneath his feet, flattened against the bedrock far below. The humans have already disrupted Time beyond recognition, and now they are going to start the what?
—
Crowley is getting distracted too frequently, Aziraphale thinks, trying to keep his gaze from straying towards the doorway into Time. The demon is intent on the future, on healing the injury that the humans have inflicted on reality, but his present seems to be an afterthought to him, and Aziraphale cannot keep his worry at bay.
“Crowley,” the angel insists. “Crowley, my dear, my dear—please, you have to remember to hold on to me.”
“Angel,” the demon answers him, faintly puzzled. “I am holding on. Not about to let go, am I? Practically my good luck charm, that’s what you are.”
No, Aziraphale thinks restlessly, his hands clasped. No. No. Even now, Crowley is talking about this too lightly. This is wrong.
Or… Or perhaps I am wrong?
And doubt rises in his mind, grappling with his worry.
Perhaps Crowley is talking about this so lightly because, unlike Aziraphale, he knows his way around Time, and knows where the real dangers lie. All this while, the demon has been confident, determined, intent. He’s moved forward with unyielding purpose, doing exactly what he set out to do. The world around Aziraphale is growing more stable by the minute, the storm outside is already lightening; Crowley is attuned to Time in a way Aziraphale has never been, so perhaps Aziraphale is simply seeing things as worse than they are? Perhaps he is spurred on by imaginary danger and nothing more?
Everything Crowley has done so far appears to have been exactly the right thing.
“There are machines here, angel,” Crowley tells him in the meantime. “One of them is apparently a blessed harvester. Your guess is as good as mine about what it’s supposed to harvest, but my money is on that bloody thing being what shatters Time. It all ends in fire and smoke soon enough, as far as I can see. The cracks go no further. ‘M thinking that this… harvester will catch fire when the humans get it going? Good riddance if it does.”
“Dearest, what are you planning to do once you get close to the origin of it all?” Aziraphale asks, his heart loud in his ears. “Are you going to try and prevent the humans from starting the machine?”
Crowley ponders this, silence stretching across their connection.
“No,” he says finally. “’S too much of a risk with—changing our own history. You know. We came to the lighthouse because of the cracks.”
“We… did, yes. I—yes.” Aziraphale swallows. “But does non-interference make this more dangerous for you?”
“Nah. My job’s a piece of cake. I’ll keep everything together until the Shattering, and then I’ll pull the unhealed cracks closed, and heal the backbone, and then I’ll get out, just as we planned. We’ll want to keep an eye on the future humans after, see that they don’t break things again, but—y’know. That’s won’t be on the books for a while.” The demon pauses and then adds in tones of deep fascination: “‘Ziraphale, this is remarkable. I had no idea humans were capable of anything like this.”
Oh, my dear, Aziraphale thinks, a powerful wave of fondness mingling with his apprehension and doubt. The humans are breaking their world, and you are excited even as you try to stay their hands?
Time moves forward, as slow and unstoppable as molten glass. Aziraphale waits, and as he does, more probabilities find their way to him from the shimmering gateway. He closes his eyes against them, tries to push them aside, focus all of his attention on the real Crowley. He tells himself that even though he cannot follow the demon into the in-between, not if he wishes to remain an anchor, he can and will do something of use.
In the unseen future, the humans’ relentless machines continue whipping up Time.
—
“I don’t think they’ve turned on their harvester yet,” Crowley tells his angel (a little hurriedly, in between the squalls of the storm). “Their machines are causing plenty of interference, but it’s still low-grade. ’S going to happen soon, though. I’m hearing the physics woman go on about postponing the launch, but I bet they’ll do it anyway.”
“Knowledge and power are the oldest temptations,” the angel answers quietly. “It really sounds like these humans hardly stand a chance.”
The angel is right, of course.
In the time-currents around Crowley, expectation is building like a held breath.
“What the hell has gotten into you, Mar? Five years of work going down the drain because you’re getting cold feet? Are you not paid enough? Did they withhold a promotion? For some of us, our whole careers depend on this, you know.”
Mar is the physics woman, Crowley remembers—and sure enough, she is the one to reply.
“I’m making sure we are following procedure,” she says tightly—and as Crowley readies to close the fracture, he catches the briefest glimpse of her, severe and straight-backed.
“Do you expect them to leave you in charge?” her invisible opponent says, bitter. “Investments will dry up if we don’t give them what they want. We can put a good spin on partial results, but on none at all? Mar, we have to do this. You know we do. Think of the rest of the group.”
Always a convenient excuse, Crowley thinks as he pulls the fracture closed, cutting off Mar’s reply. He steps into the next section of the Shattering, walks onwards in the fray of possibilities, amid echoes of conversations that filter through other cracks.
The humans are planning the launch. There is an undercurrent of unease in their discussions, but they helpfully remind each other about how much they have already sacrificed and achieved—and from time to time, the knife-on-glass voice rallies them, assuring them that the coming rewards far outweigh any possible risks. None of the humans consider the magnitude of the disaster they are inviting, or if they do, they never talk about it where Crowley can hear.
And disaster is coming, as-yet invisible but certain all the same. As Crowley walks through the underside of the world, he cannot escape hearing it: panicked shouts, hurried steps so much like those on a deck of a listing ship. Wailing starts, high-pitched and horrible and quite inhuman. Voices ring out with fear and then with outright terror.
“This should have worked.”
“Off, switch the fucking thing off!”
“They went and broke—what the fuck did they break? What the fuck is this?”
Run, Crowley tiredly thinks at the hapless humans. Drop whatever you are doing and bloody run. It’s too late for you lot, you’re in over your heads, you cannot fix this by yourselves. Leave your blessed machines to burn and run.
His and Aziraphale’s magic flowing through him in a fizzing stream, Crowley does the fixing for them—but this near to the root of the Shattering, it’s taking surprising amounts of power. Reality has thinned, is pulling apart underneath his fingertips; he has to take immense care as he weaves shut tear after tear. To add to that, the heavy time-waves threaten to unbalance him; it would be far too easy to lose one’s footing within this heaving, roiling mass of Time.
“Hold on,” Aziraphale tells him, steady and warm, somehow seeming to know when it’s needed most. “My dear, hold on.”
And it works, the anchoring works, managing to counteract the storm itself, to keep Crowley standing against the waves that carry the whole mass of Time behind them.
“Thankssss, angel,” Crowley says gratefully, and goes on with his work.
—
I am finally managing to be useful, Aziraphale reassures himself. I’m keeping Crowley steady in the time-storm, I’m making it easier for him to focus on the repairs; Crowley is listening to me, this is working, and better yet, we are nearly halfway done.
Yet worry still has Aziraphale in its stifling grip, and the probabilities that drift from the improbable doorway into Time do nothing to soothe him. There, beyond the threshold, the time-storm changes and shifts; the angel can feel its growing eerie pressure. He does not want to see the images that it brings, but does not appear to have a choice.
He sees himself close the door of the lighthouse, one last time, with a heavy heart: Crowley and he had both walked through it, and now, he has to leave alone.
He sees himself holding a single black feather, placing it reverently and sadly between the pages of a green-bound prophecy book.
He sees Crowley turn to him, haloed in sunlight, the short strands of his hair aglow. The demon laughs, careless and free, and extends his hand towards Aziraphale.
He sees a cup of hot cocoa, placed on his writing-desk by a familiar hand, slender fingers wrapping around a pair of white angel’s wings—and shivers with the sudden delightful knowledge of what those fingers feel like in his own wings: against his scapulars, over his coverts.
Then, he sees his bookshop, desolate and full of dust. At first, it’s steeped in ringing silence, and then a thread of music starts playing on... a phonograph, Aziraphale realises, tasting the unfamiliar word. The music is welcome, but it does nothing to lift the cloud that hangs over the bookshop, over London, over the whole of his domain, over him. He is alone. This is a future in which he is left quite alone.
And—all of these are their futures.
Crowley said not to trust the visions, Aziraphale tells himself sternly. Even if they feel very nearly real.
He tries to follow that advice. Yet how can he not be unbalanced by them?
In so many of the futures he sees, Aziraphale is alone. In so many, Crowley must have been unmoored, lost in the ocean of Time. Aziraphale is acutely, painfully aware that this risk is real (and yet, an unforgiving voice within him says, you let him go). They are both immortal in the human sense—their corporations do not age, can be remade—but there is no insurance against either of them losing their selves.
Every step of this journey is precarious, the angel thinks, his hands twining around each other. I haven’t done enough to keep Crowley safe. I am able to help him right now, yes, I am able to anchor him for the moment, but all of these futures are still possible. They may actually happen to us.
The merciless voice within him speaks up again. And yet you let him do this, it repeats. You let him go, taking on all the risk. He is doing all the work, and you… what use are you, Principality?
But—he said he has to be the one to do this. He said I didn’t stand a chance!
And you listened to him? He wanted to keep you safe. Of course he’d say that. He’d convince himself of it, too, tell himself that this is the only way, all in order to keep you safe.
But I do have to trust him. I cannot doubt him, not like I did before—
You don’t have to doubt him to know that Crowley can make a mistake.
—
By the time Crowley is close to the origin, he is at risk of remembering the names of at least half of the humans in the lighthouse. Of remembering their roles, too: the leaders and the pawns alike are working together, their concerns buried underneath signed forms as they march towards their future. Not one of them questions their direction aloud any longer; not one of them refuses to go on.
Sometimes, now, the humans manage to glimpse him. They reel back from the shadows, looking furtively side to side as if to make sure that their moment of weakness was unobserved. Once or twice, a jumpy human very nearly screams; Crowley hurries to smooth the surface of reality, hiding himself from view, and is surprised at how well that works: no questions are asked later, no rumours start.
He wonders if the future humans are too proud to admit to being unsettled.
He wonders if they’ve felt the whiffs of the acrid smoke.
He is getting tired. Only a little tired, he thinks defensively, it hardly ever interferes with healing the cracks—but the probabilities that swarm around him appear just a touch brighter, are a touch more difficult to distinguish from the real threads of events. Sometimes, he cannot resist watching them instead of suturing another tear—and once, he catches himself doing it only after Aziraphale gently asks: “My dear?”
It doesn’t matter. It’s not like he is about to turn around.
Because he has arrived.
The day when humans break Time is just another day. The summer solstice must be around the corner, Crowley thinks, squinting at the sun that crosses the ghostly sky. Almost nothing else sets the day apart: the humans’ machines have been agitating Time for long enough that Crowley has gotten used to the sickly feeling, the inhabitants of the lighthouse have gathered in the same rooms so frequently that another gathering is nothing of note… But the day’s conversations are different—and of course, Crowley does not miss the way all the probabilities have twisted around this point, its crystalline fragility, the fact that no cracks go beyond the next few hours, reaching into and crumbling the past alone.
Welcome to a minor Armageddon, Crowley thinks—and shivers despite the qualifier he’d taken care to use.
“Two hours until launch,” the helpful humans say in the time-currents. The lighthouse must have visitors: there are voices and faces in the crowds that Crowley does not recognise.
“One hour,” the humans say before long. “Hurry up.”
“There’s an hour of speeches first!”
“Mmmhmm, yes. Still, wrap this up.”
Soon enough, the humans, most of them dressed for the occasion, are packing into the cramped rooms and overflowing the stairs. Some have donned their uniforms; a few are wearing bright colours, even their hair as flamboyant as the plumage of macaws. The mood of the crowd is a buzzing, uneasy excitement.
Crowley watches the humans through the fissures in reality as if through a shattered mirror, taking care to miracle their gazes away from himself. “Fifteen minutes to launch,” the humans say. They are getting progressively more nervous as the time nears, though they don’t quite know why; instead, they avoid looking towards blank walls, into corners where they might see an odd shadow. They finally whisper questions about somebody smoking on premises.
A pair of humans, over by the far wall of what used to be the storage room, talk to each other under their breaths.
“It’s a historical moment. I wonder that they don’t have more press here.”
“They’ve been trying to keep the whole thing hush-hush until now, no?”
“Imagine tomorrow’s headlines, though. I wonder if our names will come up.”
So many temptations have gone so bloody well when people simply wanted their names to come up in history, Crowley thinks as he waits alongside them. Their perfectly mundane machine, the harvester (already powered on, as they say, though not yet ‘launched’), is already distorting the fabric of reality around itself, twisting and bending probabilities like a black hole, sinking impossibly deeper into the layers of the world. It’s profoundly wrong and, in its own unsettling way, no less impressive than the tower of Babylon.
And the humans have no idea what they have done.
There are speeches. There are refreshments, passed out, half-eaten, enjoyed or carelessly dropped to the floor.
Then, finally, a countdown starts, mechanical and upbeat.
“Ten,” the cheerful voice says, and tension in the room climbs up several notches. “Nine.”
“Mar doesn’t look happy,” one of the humans by the far wall whispers to her friend, pointing an irreverent finger to the front of the room.
“Eight,” the mechanical voice says brightly. “Seven.”
“Pffff. Never does.”
“Sure, but look.”
“Six. Five.”
“She’s high up, mate. It’s all politics. Not our problem.”
“Four. Three.”
The humans in the room have started chanting in unison with the countdown: a disarrayed, unsettling chorus.
“Two.”
“I wonder if we’re going to notice it when—”
“One.”
Time splits.
So does reality, cracking like a universe-sized egg, like all the ice in existence, like the glass of every window in the world. A nauseating twist goes through all of its layers, through every may-have-been and every probability at once. The world hiccups. Crowley bites down on his molars, holds on to his connection to Aziraphale, refuses to close his eyes.
“It’s happening, isn’t it,” Aziraphale asks from afar, voice shaky.
And oh bloody hallowed halls of Heaven, it is.
In the cramped lighthouse room, the humans have frozen in alarm. Crowley can only guess at what it feels like to them, this sudden universal fracture. Their minds are unlikely to process it, to be able to contain it all at once. This experience is far beyond their ken.
The world thins and multiplies. Each of the humans acquires ghosts trailing them, probabilities turned real, a multitude of versions of themselves repeating or contradicting their movements. They stare at the apparitions, wide-eyed and silent, their words smothered by the pressure of shock.
“Do you—are you seeing this?” somebody manages finally, grit in their throat.
Another human raises their hand, tries to touch the reverberating ghosts—and their shadows raise their hands, too, or stand stock still, or back away.
“What the fuck?” a human to Crowley’s right whispers.
“My head hurts,” says her neighbour plaintively.
They are moving, then, this whole mass of collected humans: rubbing their foreheads, pressing their hands to their eyes. Blinking as they look around in stunned disbelief.
“What the hell?” the plaintive voice comes again. “The walls, it’s like you can see right through to the sea, and those ships… what is this?”
In the complete absence of an earthquake, another human wobbles and nearly falls to the unmoving floor.
“This is fucking weird,” somebody in the corner whispers through barely moving lips.
“Fuck. We are hallucinating, aren’t we?”
“What, all of us?” another strained voice sounds out, a sharp edge of panic to it.
The world convulses, and then the first of the humans starts to scream.
Pandemonium breaks out, turning the humans into a fear-addled mob. In a wild push for the exits, they race down the steps, flailing and staggering away from the walls.
“There must be a chemical leak. I’m calling emergency services,” the knife-on-glass voice says, its owner having lost all of his confidence. “I’ve turned the machines off, but I feel—I feel—”
“It’s not a chemical leak,” the physics woman says from somewhere in the room, her voice tight. “Evacuate everyone.” A chorus of her own disquiet ghosts follows her, repeating variations of her words; some of them scream and one of them, Crowley thinks, might be talking through tears.
“We can’t just—”
“Everyone, James. Listen to me for once. Get them to the boats.”
Another tremor goes through the place: a crack opening up into the future.
“Uh, yeah, fine,” the man says, hurried. “I’ve killed the generator and tried to power down the harvester, but I, uh, I don’t think it worked. You’ll do it?”
“I’ll do it.”
If the man has any doubts, he keeps them to himself as he stumbles out the doors.
He is going to make it. There is not a trace of acrid smoke in the tower yet, and no fire. Whatever is supposed to kindle it hasn’t happened yet, and for now, the network of cracks widens unimpeded, the Shattering imposing itself on the world.
Imposing itself on the future, too. Crowley frowns, stopping his repairs to take a better look.
“My dear?” Aziraphale asks him cautiously.
“The Shattering. It… wasn’t supposed to affect the future, yeah?”
“We only saw it directed towards the past. Crowley, has… something gone wrong?”
“We must not have reached the apex yet. But there’s a human here trying to fix things. ‘M guessing she’s about to set off the fire.”
On the human side of reality, the physics woman is arguing with the machine, tap-tapping parts of it and swearing. “How are you doing this?” she asks it angrily, and the chorus of her many shadows echoes her words.
Crowley smoothes the cracks that shiver around the woman, buying her uninterrupted time to focus, and steps through to the next section of the Shattering. The cracks are still expanding into the future, but any moment now, they are going to stop. The physics woman is only to withdraw whatever power is still feeding her contraption, and the wild agitation of time will cease.
Except Crowley can see her swearing and sweating at once, banging her hand against the machine’s unyielding surface—and the cracks snake further and further into the future, widening and branching out.
He frowns.
“Angel, the cracks are not stopping.”
“The human is… not succeeding?”
“Nope,” Crowley says, biting the inside of his cheek.
The woman returns to tapping parts of the machine, too focused now to even swear, or to notice movement at the door to the room as two people stagger inside.
“Mar, the fuck are you still doing here? Everyone is gone, James is gone, get out!”
“I’m trying to stop this,” the woman says, not looking away from the machine. “The harvester’s still got power. It’s unplugged, the generator is dead, and it’s still going.”
A pause, the newcomers looking at each other.
“I don’t believe this. Mar, something is happening to the fucking floor. To the walls. To the sky outside. You have to get the fuck out before it gets worse!”
“You two go. I’ve got to keep trying.”
“What the—just get out! We’re not going to wait for you! There’s nothing you can do, nothing anyone can do!”
“I have to stay,” the woman says stubbornly, barely sparing them a glance. “I know a few things that might help.”
“Only a fucking miracle can help us now!” one of the newcomers shouts—and staggers as the floor beneath his feet buckles, another crack exploding through reality. The newcomers are thrown sideways across the doorway, pick themselves up, look wildly around the room—
And notice Crowley, who has been rather too preoccupied to make himself unseen.
“The fuck,” one of the humans breathes, lurching back and hitting the doorjamb with a crack. “Mar, who the hell is this?” The second human simply stares—and then, not even swearing any more, their eyes wide and terrified, both the newcomers scramble out of the room and down the stairs.
Crowley shutters the crack in front of him, pouring power into it as it tries to twist out from under his control, and steps into the next crack, forward through Time.
It gives him another view into the same room. Mar is still at the harvester, working with intense focus as the world decays around her. She might have looked around for whoever her colleagues had seen and shouted about, but if so, she’d long turned back towards the machine.
Except whatever she is doing seems to have no effect at all.
Right, Crowley thinks. Not good. I cannot afford to stand to the side.
So he looks at the machine. Really looks at it: past the folded metal and the opaque sheets of artificial glass, past the ribs of its structure into its latticework insides. He has no idea what he’s searching for, but there has to be something—
There.
Oh bloody hallowed halls of Heaven, Crowley thinks, stunned, as he stares at it. He should have known. He should have bloody known. Of course the humans would attempt to do just that.
The heartbeat of trapped Time is a pulsar within the machine, glowing at its very core and feeding its parts. Yes, the harvester must have had another source of power before—but it no longer needs it. It’s running on the power it’s extracting from Time itself.
Crowley balances on the underside of reality, his and Aziraphale’s power streaming from him in rivers as he holds together the fracturing world. The humans intended to do this. This is what they meant to harvest: the immense power of Time. And it has gone wrong, as such things do, and now the physics woman is trying to stop the Shattering without knowing what it is.
At the moment, evidently having given up on her other ideas, she is ineffectively trying to pry open the machine’s armoured side.
Crowley frowns as his mind catches on something in the picture before him.
“Aziraphale,” he says slowly. “There is still no smoke. The harvester is working on the power it’s taking from Time. And it’s working too bloody well.”
“Oh.” Aziraphale is silent for a moment, evidently gathering his thoughts. “Oh. I—see. And… the harvester needs to be stopped.”
“Yesterday. I wish this was more of a joke.”
On the human side of reality, the physics woman, desperate now, has taken a chair to the machine, but is failing to deal it enough damage—and the Shattering is gaining momentum as it grows through the world. Their chances of pulling it shut are dwindling: they could have done it when it was only affecting the past, but with the future being affected, too, Crowley won’t be able to hold it off for much longer.
This is not good. I don’t have proper human words to say how not good this is. Does she even stand a chance?
The physics woman, looking lost, has dropped the broken chair and lowered her hands. Several of her ghosts are screaming, their arms around their heads. There is still no fire, and no smoke. The harvester is agitating Time into a maelstrom, ruthlessly effective, and Mar is stepping back from it, step after step after helpless step.
“Does it look like the fire is about to start?” the angel asks Crowley, hope thin in his voice. “Is… is the harvester overheating, by any chance? Is the amount of power too much for it? Are there sparks? They are fallible and fragile, those human machines. Surely this one is a hair’s-breadth away from malfunction?”
“Only a bloody miracle can help them now,” Crowley whispers under his breath.
“C-Crowley?”
“Only a bloody miracle can help them now,” Crowley repeats louder, shaking his head in disbelief. “‘Ziraphale. I… I have to do more than we planned.”
“Crowley?” The angel’s voice is full of fear. “Crowley, are you talking about…”
“The fire. Yeah. Angel, this machine has to burn. And I bet I start that fire.”
“Crowley, are you going to—”
“Yes.”
“But—no, you cannot possibly! The interference—we don’t know what’s going to happen, surely there is no need for you to do this yourself—it’s just a matter of time for a spark to catch—”
“I… don’t think it’s headed the right way, angel,” Crowley says quietly. “I’ve been watching the machine. ’S too bloody effective at what it does, and I… don’t think we have a choice.”
“But—”
“’M sorry, angel,” Crowley says even softer. “Thing is, though, I’ve probably always done this. So it’s only a little bit longer, and after… I promise you I’m coming home.”
I’m coming home, Crowley repeats to himself, as if his resolve can burn the promise into the world.
And then—before he can change his mind, before the angel can object, before it’s too bloody late—he steps out into human time.
Notes:
To any geologists reading this, I’m sorry. In my defence, with a 6000 year old Earth all bets are off 😅
As an extra bit of reassurance: Aziraphale and Crowley will be fine! Both of them will be fine, and this fic has a happy ending!
Notes, in no particular order:
- At the start of the second decade of the 21st century, Crowley will be delighted to learn of lighthouse lamps being increasingly replaced by high-power LEDs. He's been wondering.
- The Eiffel Tower was completed in 1889. If the timing worked out better, the fisherman telling the story of a spiderweb lighthouse might have drawn his fanciful imagery from yet another source.
- Crowley might find the Carrington Event (the geomagnetic storm coming in 1859) eerily familiar, particularly the reports of a telegraph disconnected from the batteries and running on auroral current alone.For music, I do believe we've reached The Secret History—with a tinge of An Invincible Summer.
Chapter 11: Come Home
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Their link does not break. It goes unsteady and faint—Crowley’s voice is nearly lost, at times, in a chorus of ghostly echoes—but the link does not break.
Aziraphale, still reeling from the shock of Crowley stepping outside Time, sits down heavily in the nearby winged armchair, hands clasped tight.
Good Lord.
How… How does it even work, stepping into a time that is not one’s own? If they manage to leave the lighthouse, will Crowley be in the future twice? And if the probabilities are truly probabilities, always in flux, then… which future, exactly, has Crowley stepped to?
“Right, good, the physics woman has stopped babbling,” Crowley tells him through their link, as nonchalant as if they are exchanging telegrams across dozens of miles and not thoughts across hundreds of years. “We’re looking inside the harvester now. Have to untangle where the power’s going without setting off another Shattering.”
“Do you... still plan to set the machine on fire?”
“Well. Not plan to, exactly. But ‘m going to cut it off from the time-flow, yeah? And all the power it accumulated will have to go somewhere. All at once.”
“I… see. That… is bound to be rather destructive.”
“Mm. I’ll send the human off in an escape boat, though. At least this lot aren’t complete dunces, they have enough boats. She’ll be safe.”
And you? Aziraphale aches to ask. My love, what about you? Are you going to be safe?
He does not ask. Crowley will know how to protect himself. There will be a fire, yes, but a mere Earthly fire; it will be of no danger to his demon, an incarnate flame.
(Crowley will know how to protect himself. He will. Aziraphale has to ignore the probabilities that drift across the threshold to catch at his mind. Everything that Crowley planned so far has worked.)
All the same, the probabilities that close on Aziraphale are thrashing, violent things.
He sees himself letting Crowley try to close all the cracks, alone and unaided—and feels the last touch of their minds before Crowley’s is shattered forever.
He sees the demon step into a fissure that collapses behind him, locking him on the other side.
He sees a grey stone field (an airfield, whatever that means)—and he stands there with Crowley, but at the same time, quite alone.
And he sees, too, St James Park, and the demon, whole and hale, frowning at him over a bag of oats.
“You’re spoiling them, angel. They should provide for themselves.”
“Behold the fowls of the air,” Aziraphale says solemnly in response, gesturing at the eager ducks. “They sow not, neither do they reap, yet She provides for them. By, ah, the hand of Her faithful servant.”
(The demon rolls his eyes at that, but his lips quirk all the same, and he looks—beautiful, and exasperated, and fond.)
“You will stop time if you need to, dearest?” Aziraphale asks after all. “To make sure you are safe from the fire?”
“Mm, I will. For that, and to stay ahead of the human emergency crews. Wouldn’t want more humans to get caught up in this.”
The angel nods briefly, hands clasped together, the maelstrom of the future reaching for his mind.
—
Crowley is tired. The amounts of power he wields are immense: he is holding the Shattering back, he is keeping time still.
And yet it’s a fraction easier to breathe now. Outside of Time, fewer probabilities attack him—although some still do, stirred up by his work. Even as he runs up the stairs, fragments of possible futures and pasts whirl around him, twisted shards of different fates. He sees futures in which Aziraphale and he are apart (what we have couldn’t last, could it, Crowley thinks bitterly before he catches himself). He sees futures in which they are together—but he also sees arguments, sees himself walking away from the angel with heavy finality, sees Heaven and a column of fire.
Still, it’s easy enough to push the images away. He does just that as he strides to the nearest window. The physics woman is making her way steadily further from the lighthouse in a bright rescue boat. Good.
This means that the place is finally empty.
This means that it’s time to light the metaphorical match.
Barely pausing to look around, he clicks his fingers—and, with a rush of relief, releases time, stepping back into a waiting crack. On the human side of reality, the machine, rendered harmless, sends out a shower of sparks—and after a satisfying clap of an explosion, the place is engulfed by fire.
(“One miracle incoming,” he’d told the physics woman cowering in a corner as he stepped out into her world. “No need to thank me.”)
He balances on the underside of reality, precariously, as he pulls all of the future-bound cracks shut—and finally breathes out when they are gone.
He’s done it.
They’ve done it.
And now, things can finally go right.
“Aziraphale.” Crowley reaches for their connection. “Aziraphale, angel, it worked.”
It worked. Cracks are no longer snaking into the future; the crystalline tipping point has turned into just another moment in time, transient and leading to no disasters. Yes, there are still fissures to heal, still the backbone to pull closed—but Crowley can do all of that as he returns to his angel.
As he comes home.
“Angel?” he repeats.
A wave of relief from Aziraphale reaches him then, sharp notes of worry and joy in it. “My dear. Oh, my dear. You’ve made it through.”
“’Course I did,” Crowley says—and wild, absurd happiness bubbles up in him, making him as light as a buoy. “Told you ‘m brilliant at this.”
“You are,” the unseen angel says, a crack in his voice. “Oh, Crowley. You are.”
Crowley laughs, relieved and elated—and as he sets to work again, his task seems almost laughably easy. The time-waves, heavy though they may be, can hardly touch him now that the root of the Shattering is sealed. Sure, they will rage: any storm does before its fury is sucked out of it for good. But what harm can they cause him now?
He is almost home.
And as he heals the world around him, he remembers his many returns to the angel: over land, yes, but mostly over sea. Remembers his homecomings; remembers knowing the exact point when his journey would cease taking him away from Aziraphale and would became a journey to; the exact moment of crossing the apex of his trajectory.
As he works, the probabilities keep probing him (of course, bloody of course), looking for a way into his mind. So many of them speak of separation, of loss.
Buoyed up by his success, he sidesteps them.
He is almost home. Yes, he is tired, so much so that he is not seeing things quite right—his own hands seem less substantial to him against the strengthening colours of the world—but that does not matter: the worst part is over and done with. Dark probabilities whirl around him, yes, but a multitude of others glitter with promise. So many of those are glimpses of his and the angel’s futures—and they are brilliant, hopeful things.
He looks at those.
He tells the angel of them, too. Describes the kisses he sees Aziraphale and himself share in the back of the angel’s bookshop and a waltz he sees them dance, barely noticing when the music stops. A picnic, dappled sunlight lighting up Aziraphale’s hair.
Yet to his surprise, Aziraphale is not swept up by the same elation.
“Angel?” Crowley asks, faintly puzzled. “Aren’t you curious? Don’t you want to know?”
“I… do, my dear. Very much so. It’s just that… I’d rather walk into our real future alongside you. I’d rather live it, not dream it.”
“Yeah, ‘course, but aren’t these fun?”
A hesitation on the angel’s side.
“Crowley. I am still seeing probabilities, too. So many of them scare me. You yourself have said we are not to trust any of them, and… Dearest, I just want you to come back.”
“I am coming back!” Crowley insists. “’S what I’m doing! This is just a bit of sightseeing on the way, yeah? No sense in passing up opportunities.”
“Crowley. Oh, my dear.” Aziraphale is sounding more and more distressed. “Please. I—I think you are getting distracted. I think you are affected by Time. There are still cracks going into the past, there’s still a length of the backbone to pull closed. Even I can sense how wild the currents are around you. The danger is far from over. Please.”
And the angel’s distress cuts through Crowley’s giddiness like nothing else could.
Huh, the demon thinks, sobering up with effort, looking at the power that streams through his translucent fingertips and then at the time-storm, powerful yet deceptive in its allure. Giving in to even the happiest of probabilities right now would be like falling asleep in a drift of soft snow, cold through and through, having believed its promise of warmth.
“R-right,” Crowley says. “No, yeah, angel, you’re right. ’Sss not over. I—yeah. I’ve ssnapped out of it. Thanksss.”
He shakes his head, runs an unsteady hand through his hair, forces himself to think.
This was close. But he is fine now. He’s fine.
Yes, the world around him is brightening, the probabilities getting more and more vivid, the enticing and the terrifying ones alike.
Yes, he is tired. Heavy-limbed, his muscles aching even though he isn’t using them, not really: there is nothing physical in the in-between.
But he is fine. He knows what he is doing, especially now that Aziraphale has pulled him out of his bubble of overconfident giddiness. It was a wise thing to do, it worked, and the angel won’t need to worry about anything else.
“I’m fine,” he tells Aziraphale, self-assured and convincing. “And you, angel? How are thingsss with Jane Eyre?”
—
Crowley isn’t fine, Aziraphale thinks, worry writhing in his gut like a tangle of ghostly snakes.
(You let him do this, they hiss just below the edge of hearing. How could you have let him do this, you useless thing?)
Crowley isn’t fine, and he still has such a terribly long way to go. Aziraphale can no longer even attempt to take on any of the danger: Crowley is too far from home.
I will not be able to take a full breath until Crowley is back.
The angel does what he can. He keeps track of where Crowley is in Time; he keeps hold of their link and reminds his demon to do that, too.
While he does that, Crowley—his beloved Crowley—tells him of more probabilities, not seeming to realise that he is doing it despite having decided not to.
Aziraphale tries to guide him away from them, as gently as he can. Heart pounding, he asks Crowley to remember their actual past, without quite knowing what prompts him to do this. Fear, yes: fear of their present having changed despite Crowley’s efforts, fear of divergences creeping in. Crowley had been wary of divergences, had said that they are a sign of their present decaying; uneasily, Aziraphale acknowledges to himself that he wouldn’t know what to do if he actually found their present splintering still.
He is lucky, however. They are lucky. He finds no divergences.
He does, however, find something else, unsettling enough to turn his hands bloodless and ice-cold.
Crowley forgets. More than once, Crowley forgets—or seems not to care. “Oh yeah,” he says easily when they talk about their meetings throughout history. “I don’t recall what happened afterwards. ’S that important?”
“Try to remember,” Aziraphale begs. “Please, my love.” Please. Don’t forget, you can’t forget. Don’t forget us.
“Sure, ‘Ziraphale,” Crowley says, puzzled and uncertain. “If you like?”
And then, he tries to remember their past in earnest. Every time, he succeeds, recovering the same memories that Aziraphale is holding on to: of their meetings at the Theatre, at La Scala, at the Globe; of the Pharos of Alexandria; of the monastery by the sea. His memories are all there, all whole: surely Aziraphale can unclasp his twined hands?
This probably means that I’m letting my worry run away with me, the angel tells himself. That I am distracting and alarming Crowley for no reason.
Perhaps the demon was briefly affected by stepping out into the future, and by using as much power as he did to stop the Shattering at its source. Perhaps he is recovering, has already done so. He certainly sounds more lucid—although he still tries to tell Aziraphale about the exciting and tempting probabilities in their future and past.
And hearing Crowley describe a different past still sets off all of the alarms in Aziraphale’s mind.
“My dear,” the angel asks every time, though he is loath to do it: this is bound to douse some of Crowley’s curiosity, to take away some of the demon’s joy. “My dear, you do recall that this is not what happened, yes?”
“’Course,” Crowley says, a trace of impatience in his voice. “Sure, yeah, we’ve been through this. Angel, come on! You’re no fun.”
Aziraphale bites his lip. “I’m sorry, my dear.”
“Nah, not what I mean. ’S just, it’s fascinating, isn’t it, everything that could have been?”
Aziraphale swallows and nods, the knuckles of his twined hands turning white.
He keeps Crowley talking. He holds on to their connection, diverts power to it, builds it up, time and time again reminding Crowley to do the same. Crowley is tired; he’d slept for mere hours, and to a being accustomed to days and weeks of repose, this must be nothing at all. Crowley is not asking for help, is not acknowledging his exhaustion, but… is he seeing things clearly? Is he recovering, or has he taken a step deeper into the labyrinth of Time?
The future, for both of them, is vast, and dangerous, and unknown. Presently Crowley talks about the possibilities with lighthearted ease, almost as if he already considers their future theirs—and yet it cannot even start until Crowley is back, and safe.
The demon is walking back into the past through the fractures, healing the shattered world as he goes. The healing is working. Already, the rain is pattering at the windows instead of drumming at them, and the sky beyond the glass is lightening. The lighthouse must be so much closer to the regular flow of time, yet Aziraphale can still feel, beneath the surface of the world, a branching jagged gap, the backbone that must be closed.
So Aziraphale makes it simpler for the demon to deal with it. He widens the river of power streaming towards Crowley, making it flow as free as a song. He holds their safety line. He reminds Crowley of their true past—and tells him, time and time again, that he is loved, and valued, and awaited.
As he should have been telling him for six thousand years.
—
Crowley, stepping through the labyrinth of Time, sees the keepers. All three of them: Steven, and Miles, and Brown. Miles drops a contraband bottle of rum to the floor when he glimpses Crowley, and it shatters, glittering on the stones. Face rigid with shock, the man himself staggers backwards into another crack, and Crowley has barely any time to twist reality around the keeper, taking him safely to the other side.
As with Steven, he does his best to remember when Miles has stepped to.
Crowley is tired. He can barely feel his fingertips, numbed and worn thin by the constant outflow of power. His movements are becoming sluggish and clumsy at the exact point where they should be scalpel-sharp.
And Aziraphale—
Aziraphale, for some reason, resists looking at the happier probabilities that Crowley sees. Why is that, Crowley asks himself—but the answer eludes his grasp, replaced by a startling thought.
He has been telling the angel of their may-have-beens. Of kissing on thresholds, in palace nooks, in spare rented rooms. Of all the times when their trajectories took them within inches of collapsing towards each other. Of sweat and breathlessness and bliss.
And each time Aziraphale answered him, he sounded almost pained.
Why could that possibly be?
What if the angel no longer… recognises this? What if Crowley has changed their past? He’d changed it at least once before, didn’t he, walking across the isle. He’d been weaving in and out of time like a shuttle in an unravelling tapestry, careless and bold.
What if Aziraphale has never said the things he said?
What if last night never happened like Crowley remembers it?
Or what if… what if Aziraphale had never opened the hatch door? Had never reached out to him? Had never held him, heedless of Crowley’s soaked clothes, looking horrified and ill at what he had done?
The time-currents around Crowley have turned to ice.
“My love,” the real Aziraphale says then—and, with a sharp inhale, Crowley closes his stinging eyes.
No, he tells himself vehemently. No, that was real. My memories are true.
Bracing himself, he goes on. Brown stumbles upon him in the cracks—and Crowley flings him to the other side, too, sneezing from the ferocity of the man’s prayers.
He tells Aziraphale of having done that, and hurries to close more cracks.
It should be easier by now, he thinks, light-headed, trying to chase off the probabilities that swarm around him. Shouldn’t it? I am so close to home.
But the gaps, still wide, requite yet more power—and more care. He has to patch them up not only with his and Aziraphale’s magic, but with the weight of his expectations, nudging and forcing probabilities into place.
He is tired. It’s exhausting work.
I have to move faster, he tells himself. To get back to the angel. I know how to do this, I’m fine, I just have to finish the healing before Time starts to affect me. And I should not worry the angel: Aziraphale might do something rash if he thinks I’m not fine.
He narrows his focus. Just heal the next crack, and the next; just get through it.
He works, and works, and works.
Lighter images, the teasing and tempting ones, become fewer and farther between; both the may-have-beens and the has-beens turn darker. They must reflect his tiredness: there is nothing unusual in that. No soothsayer worth their salt would be surprised by it.
Some of the may-have-beens are exquisitely painful. In one, Aziraphale calls him a traitor; in another, the angel looks outright Heavenly, ready to blaze with the cold Divine light.
But that didn’t happen, Crowley tells himself in consternation. I never saw him like that. And it won’t happen, we are on our own side. I could talk to Aziraphale at any point. We were talking moments ago, I was telling him about bringing Brown through!
Yet despite his hurried self-assurances, the feeling of wrongness is growing through his bones.
He should call out to the angel. He does not. Pausing in the middle of the library, surrounded by shifting shadows, he stands still as the icy currents of probabilities flow around him, nudge at him, attempt to pull him along.
Surely the angel would answer if Crowley spoke to him right now? Surely he would warmly say ‘dearest’, ‘my dear’, ‘my love’?
And yet you dare not call out, the familiar, mocking voice within him speaks up again. Do you know why? Because deep down you are certain that this time, you aren’t going to get a response. Things have gone wrong. You’ve lost him. He’s gone, and you don’t want to break your sweet delusion that he is still waiting for you somewhere.
No, Crowley thinks, closing his hands into fists. No, that’s not true. I haven’t lost him. I’m simply seeing possibilities, same as before, and possibilities lie.
And—yes, of course, that was precisely what he needed to remember: possibilities lie.
He shakes the delusion off. Aziraphale isn’t gone: if Crowley looks within himself, he can sense the warmth of their connection, that safety line reaching to him across time.
He knows the way home.
Yet he still does not call out. I will not do this, he tells himself. He should not alarm his angel; Aziraphale has been on tenterhooks this whole time, there is no point in stoking his worry; it would in fact be an irresponsible thing to do. And… the angel is bound to be disappointed by Crowley failing to deal with the last few cracks by himself. For all that Aziraphale’s eventual disappointment in Crowley is inevitable, there is no sense in hurrying it along.
Besides, Crowley is fine.
The demon directs more power to the cracks, smoothing them over until the surface of reality is as still as water in a well. The currents around him slow and calm down, just like they are supposed to do.
I simply have to fix the rest of the Shattering and come back, Crowley tells himself obstinately. I can manage that.
He finds the next passage, steps through it into the library’s past, pulls reality closed after himself—and then startles and stares.
There is dust on every surface. Cracks are going through the tall mirror, through the glass of the table-clock. The tattered upholstery of the winged armchairs resembles nothing so much as grey velvet.
Doubt writhes in the corners of Crowley’s mind again, as insidious as writhing shadows. He has seen this before. He has been here before, and Aziraphale was indeed gone.
“Aziraphale?” Crowley cannot help whispering as he looks around.
He is not here, his inner voice tells him, insouciant. Remember? He called you a traitor and never spoke to you again.
No. No, this is not how it went. We were talking moments ago. He is waiting for me by the doorway into Time. This is not how it went!
“Crowley? Dearest?” Aziraphale asks him through their connection, distant but undeniably real, snapping Crowley out of his addled thoughts. “My love, is everything fine? Only you’ve gone so quiet. And I cannot sense as much from you as I could before.”
Hah! Take this, Time, Crowley thinks with renewed force. Aziraphale is waiting for me. Of course he is!
“I—yeah,” he tells his angel gratefully, kicking away the remnants of probabilities. “‘M in the library now. Lotsss of dust. D’you know, I think the humans will abandon the lighthouse for quite a few years before our century is out. Or is it the next century?”
He goes on talking fast in his relief, and all the while, his heart hammers wildly: just the after-effects of his lapse, he tells himself, not much to that. He will simply have to do better next time. It’s embarrassing, isn’t it, how close the may-have-beens have come.
Once again setting his mind to the task at hand, he starts pulling more cracks shut—and before long, fewer than a half-dozen remain. He enumerates them: the still-open sections of the backbone, a large fissure that reaches crosses from the past into the future, and several smaller fissures, one of them a gateway back to the library and the waiting angel. Though the time-currents still fight against Crowley, trying to drag him off his feet, journey’s end is in sight.
You, Crowley thinks, studying the largest fracture through narrowed eyes. We need to deal with you first.
He starts pulling it closed. It’s a complex, jagged tear, crossing more than a hundred years—and it resists him. Broken may-have-beens flare brighter, whispering against Crowley’s mind as he struggles to connect the tear’s ragged edges. To his dismay, the edges don’t quite come together, don’t match—as if a swath has been taken out of the world, leaving him with insufficient fabric. Which is absolute nonsense: Crowley’s imagery of threads and fabric and glass and cracks is simply a way for his mind to impose order on his senses, none of it is real.
(But the world has been damaged, a sober part of Crowley observes. This may require more care.)
Still, he yanks on the fracture, impatient and annoyed. He is so close to home now that his heart beats like the drum of a marching band. Home, he thinks, exhaustion making his head and limbs leaden. Home. I just want to go home.
He needs power. More power to close this stubborn thing, to impose his will upon the world.
You can’t win against me, he informs the crack. You can’t stop me. Don’t even try.
“Crowley, dearest,” the faraway angel says, careful. “Are you… dealing with a significantly larger tear than before? Only, this is a lot of power that you are pulling. Are you quite certain it requires this much?”
“’S fine, angel, I’m almost done,” Crowley says through his teeth—and lets go of the collected power all at once, throwing it at the fracture.
The fracture shudders, and then the power recoils.
Crowley is not prepared for this. He is already turning away, confident in his success, when the wave of raw power catches him. The world around him fractures anew, spiderweb cracks going across reality like the seeds of another Shattering, and then, Crowley is stumbling backwards, flailing, beating his wings as he falls through non-existence, though the octaves of the spectrum, through seconds, memories, years, as he tries to grab hold of reality he is falling through, uselessly, throwing his power at it with the singular purpose of arresting its unravelling, of holding it together because another Shattering would be a catastrophe, one caused by him,
and probabilities close over him like the waters of the Arctic Ocean,
and something snaps in his chest.
He comes to on the stairs, on the dark spiral stairs; below him are the echoes of the sea. Slowly, he gets up, and then his hammering heart reminds him that things have gone wrong. He spins around urgently, disoriented, his memories an indistinct haze, and settles on the idea of going upwards. Reaching for the handrail, he walks up the first three steps and then starts running towards the distant daylight.
Why is he here?
He does not know when he is, only where he is. The spiral stairs, the lighthouse: he’d dreamt of this place, or—he’s been to it. As he runs up, the light shifts around him again, flittering firelight to the deepest night. More probabilities catch at him, the currents of Time whispering half-truths and outright lies into his ears.
Why is he here?
Home. He was going home, wasn’t he? Yet he no longer remembers where home is, and there is a gaping, terrifying silence in his chest.
Upwards, he repeats to himself, dazed. I lost something as I fell. What have I lost?
The answer comes to him when he reaches the oil-room, surfacing up from the murk of his thoughts—and he staggers under the suddenly very real weight of his wings.
The safety line. The angel. When is he? Aziraphale, he was looking for Aziraphale—
Why would you look for him? the probabilities whisper. He’s left you here, he’s gone away. He’s never believed you, demon that you are.
This is not how it went, Crowley hisses, but shards of doubt are already lodging themselves, sharp and merciless, under his skin. He believed me, Crowley insists nevertheless, fear rising. We are doing this together, he is waiting for me in our own time. He believed me, he did not care that I am a demon, he—
Are you going to say that he cares about you? Listen to yourself. How long ago have you fallen into this delusion?
He does care. He does he does he does he does, Crowley argues, jaw locked, and has to grab on to the bannister to avoid stumbling on the narrow wooden stairs.
He stumbles.
Really, the world tells him, drily amused. Wishful thinking much? He told you to never talk to him again.
He didn’t. This is not how it went.
Denial is a natural reaction to rejection.
Straightening, rubbing his aching palms, Crowley has to pause, lean against the wall, catch the breath he does not need and certainly does not need here.
He can keep arguing, yes. But what if, his traitor mind asks him, what if that other voice is right?
What if all this while, he’d been caught in a probability, in a may-have-been?
And the more Crowley thinks about it, the more chilling certainty closes around him, constricting his chest.
His memories. All of his memories. Are any of them true?
Because this… was rather an unlikelihood, wasn’t it, for everything that ostensibly happened in the last few days to be real. Aziraphale reaching out to him, Aziraphale actually kissing him, telling him all the things Crowley had no right to hear. It had to be a delusion, a side-current of time Crowley had accidentally waded into and refused to leave. Oh, but of course, (Crowley wants to laugh), of course (no, this isn’t laughter, though his shoulders are shaking with it)—how likely was it in the first place? How likely, for an angel, to decide, within the span of days, that a demon could be loved?
He pushes away from the wall, swaying under the force of the time-currents that seem to be growing stronger. Or—is it him, is he losing his strength?
I won’t think of this. I just have to finish healing the Shattering and find my way back.
He runs upwards, helping himself along by great wing-beats, though his wings are terribly constricted in the narrow space. One of his primaries catches an unlit oil-lamp, sends it clattering across the floor. Crowley stumbles upwards and onwards, through the kitchen, through the sleeping-quarters, to the library once again. In the middle of the library, he spins, looking for something he’d already forgotten, and then a stack of books on the writing-desk reminds him that, incongruously, he is looking for a doorway into, or rather out of, Time.
Why would there be one? he asks himself, perplexed. What a silly thought.
Yet at that, memories stir within him again, stubborn and alive. There had been a doorway into Time. There had been, and it’s supremely important, because they made it themselves, the two of them, he and someone else. The someone else, the brilliant, wonderful someone else—
Time, his tangled thoughts echo, straying from their path. My time is running out. My mind can no longer hold against the possibilities. I’ve walked into Time, and it has affected me worse than I expected, and I’ve lost something, I’ve lost…
Panic grips him as he struggles to remember what he has lost and comes up short.
He scrambles up the narrow stairs to the light-room, then, searching for whatever it was he’d lost, but just as he reaches the top, another time-wave crashes into him, dragging him elsewhen, and for an endless instant, all is glass and light and the flashing of the lens, red-white-red-white-red again, and there is nowhere to run, and he’s lost, he’s lost—
Aziraphale.
His wings overbalancing him, Crowley staggers across the light-room floor, bright pain blooming where his shoulder hits the plate glass. “Aziraphale!” he calls out desperately, uselessly, no longer believing in a response, grasping at the memory and trying to hold it to him. “Aziraphale! Where are you—I cannot—”
No response comes.
—
“Crowley!” Aziraphale is calling, teetering on the threshold of Time. This cannot be happening, this isn’t happening; this has to be an illusion, a probability, one of the nightmare ones. “Crowley!”
But the anchor chain has broken, and the only response he gets is gaping, awful silence.
The last thing he’d sensed from the demon was shock. It echoes in Aziraphale’s own mind, scatters his thoughts. Crowley must have been tired, so terribly tired, and he’d misjudged one of the very last cracks, and something had gone horribly wrong, and—
And nothing could be more terrifying than this absolute silence.
Swaying on the threshold of Time, Aziraphale can barely think. He had known that their desperate attempt could easily go wrong, and he still let Crowley walk into Time. He let the demon risk himself, sacrifice himself, and now—
And now, all that remains is for Aziraphale to step into Time, too.
Yet some vestige of understanding holds him back. He will be lost if he steps into Time like this, panicking, unprepared, and he will be of no use at all to his beloved demon. He won’t be able to find Crowley or to assist him.
But if he doesn’t step into Time after his demon, then… what is he to do? Crowley would know the answer, but Crowley isn’t here, and that is rather the point, isn’t it, and—
Aziraphale doesn’t manage to complete the thought.
He’d failed Crowley. Had failed him again, worse than ever; he’d let him walk into danger and had left him there.
And of course he’d failed Crowley. He’d never been a proper angel, he’d never been a proper anyone. Useless and weak, he could not even protect the humans in the Garden; the other angels have wondered about that, whispering in Heaven’s echoey corners. Aziraphale could not be what Heaven needed him to be, and while he was coming to terms with that, he could not be what Crowley needed him to be, either.
What Crowley needs him to be, right now.
The angel is half-aware that, in the library filled with the lashing of rain and the howling of the wind, there’s another sound, a human sound, a keening coming from him: his mortal body’s response to the searing loss.
And then, the probabilities he’d been trying to hold at bay attack him, the darkest of the futures closing around him like the waters of an ancient flood, and he feels every loss at once, every way he’d failed his demon and will fail him forevermore,
and he no longer knows when or where he is, and no longer knows himself.
—
No, Crowley thinks, and then he’s running down the narrow stairs to the library, towards the sleeping-quarters below. No, I won’t let go of these memories. Aziraphale is somewhere out there, waiting for me. He cares for me. He did not abandon me. Whatever the may-have-beens claim, he believed me, and opened the bloody door.
Yet with every step, his thoughts tangle more. Crowley’s surroundings, so familiar and yet so strange, don’t help him hold on to his own story. He’d been here before, he knows as he pauses on the familiar steps to the sleeping-quarters. He had sat on these steps, had tried to talk sense into the angel. And he failed: Aziraphale, steadfast in the teachings of Heaven, had refused to listen, had opened the hatch door only to tell Crowley to leave, once and for all, the cold overtones of Heaven drowning out his own voice. To leave, or else—and Crowley, chilled to his core by the Heavenly light in Aziraphale’s face, knew that the angel meant every word.
Back in the wavering Time, the demon blinks, pulling his wings around him, for protection or for warmth. No, he says to himself tentatively, as if testing that he can still wield the word. No, he repeats again, gathering anger and strength. No, this is not how it went. I refuse to believe this. This was a possibility, and a remote one. This was not what Aziraphale actually did, not who he was.
Are you sure? the may-have-beens whisper sadly. They nudge him to remember more: the way Aziraphale reached out to him, there at the bottom of the stairs, and, instead of pulling him close, pushed him away with a blistering blessing. It was a warning shot, an “I mean it”, an order to stay away; Crowley had stumbled against the wall, and all Aziraphale did was turn on his heel and walk back upstairs.
Do you remember how that hurt?
Do I? Crowley asks himself, the shock of Aziraphale’s touch echoing through his skin. Did that happen? No, this is not even remotely what happened, this is not—
But the denial saps his remaining strength. Numb, he leans against the wall for support, slides with his back along it down to the narrow steps, folds his wings forward to shut out the world, draws up his knees.
Aziraphale. Aziraphale. He’s lost—
There is something in the pocket of his trousers. An unusual weight, a shape like a flat round stone: large enough to be annoying, completely out of place. Puzzled, Crowley stretches his leg, fishes for the object in the narrow pocket, brings it out.
A chain trails after it, glittering in Time’s shifting light.
Crowley stares.
Oh, he thinks. Oh.
It’s not a stone. Of course it’s not a blessed stone.
It’s Aziraphale’s pocket-watch. The one he teased the angel about; the one they fixed together; the one Aziraphale gave to him on the threshold of Time out of worry, and hope, and desperate love.
And love.
Bloody hallowed halls of Heaven, Crowley thinks, and a wave of elation and hope rises within him, his true memories clawing their way back. This was real. All of this was real.
Was it? the may-have-beens hurry to suggest, insidious and coy. Or perhaps you simply conjured this pocket-watch in your attempt to stay deluded?
But instead of listening to them, Crowley gets up, exhausted yet more obstinate than ever, and closes his fingers around the carapace of the watch.
Aziraphale had talked about Crowley’s hope. The angel had been impressed by it, impressed by Crowley himself—and though the time-currents will attempt to take his memories away before long, Crowley vows to fight back with everything he has until then, bloody well making a weapon out of his hope.
“Aziraphale,” he calls, sending a signal out into the vastness of Time. “Aziraphale! I know you are there. Can you hear me? We need to find each other, angel. I… I’ve made a mistake. I’ve slipped, I don’t know when I am.”
The call dissipates, losing momentum too soon. The demon reaches to steady himself against the bannister with one hand, his wings slumped behind him, and clutches the watch in his other hand, setting his nails against its unyielding glass. He is not able to aim his call, does not know where the doorway is, has no idea where he himself is in time. He’s lost his anchor.
But not my hope, he thinks defiantly. I haven’t lost my bloody hope.
“Aziraphale. Aziraphale, can you hear me?” he calls again—packing all of his hope and almost all of his remaining power into the entreaty. “Angel. Where are you?”
And this time, the call catches, launching itself through Time.
Answer me, Crowley thinks in its wake, standing up straighter. Answer me, answer me, answer me. You have to answer me. I refuse to believe that we have lost.
The pocket-watch ticks in Crowley’s hand, a small beating heart, counting out seconds or years.
Answer me, Crowley demands of the world—
And then the answer comes.
It is not at all what Crowley expects.
“Here, I’m here,” the angel says, distant but distinct, in a tone so familiar that Crowley chokes on startled laughter.
Because he knows exactly where this answer is coming from. He’d heard it before, with the angel standing next to him in the light-room. Back then, he had demanded to know exactly who Aziraphale was talking to—and now, he has to press the back of his hand to his mouth to stifle fractured laughter.
Of course. Bloody of course. Aziraphale was talking to him.
This means that it was all real. This is proof that my impossible past is true.
But the angel’s response, though it corroborates all of Crowley’s memories, is not enough to help him find his way back. Crowley cannot use it to orient himself: it doesn’t originate in the right time, doesn’t come from the right moment in Aziraphale’s mind.
Still.
Wrung out as he is—even his wings appear ghostly against the brightening world—Crowley resolutely faces in the right direction, the pocket-watch ticking in his hand.
“Aziraphale. Aziraphale. You are there, I know you are. I’ve slipped. I don’t know the way back. Angel, I need your help. Find me, hurry, I don’t think I can hold on for much longer. I’d flip my flag upside down if I had one, I’d send up a column of smoke, I’d light a signal flare. Too bad I have nothing but my hope.
Yet I still have this bloody hope.
I haven’t sealed the cracks. You are not safe, not yet, I’m so sorry, I failed to keep you safe.
I need your help. I should have told you. Find me, angel. Find me. Turns out I cannot do this alone.”
—
The waves still crash against the tower, reverberating through the floors below, though the crashes come less frequently than before. Outside the lighthouse’s walls, the wind hisses and wails.
Aziraphale, his eyes closed, stands in front of the doorway into Time.
No, he tells himself with rising determination: finding himself again, building himself up from the scattered shards. No, I cannot fall apart. I cannot give in to shame and fear. Crowley is brave, he has always been brave, and he trusted me, and I will not let him be lost in Time. I have to find him. I have to bring him back.
A familiar, scoffing voice speaks up within him then. Aziraphale, it says in Gabriel’s haughty tones. Even you should understand that this is impossible.
Aziraphale reflexively stands up straighter, his lips compressed—and the voice goes on. Your demon is lost in time. What exactly are you planning to do? You have already failed in all of your duties. Not, the voice adds nastily, that anything else could have been expected from the likes of you.
But in response, standing straight and still, Aziraphale thinks only: No.
And ignores the voice when it flails in indignation.
Something within him is changing. Has changed.
I know, now, that what seems impossible may not in fact be such. Heaven itself had unwittingly provided proof of that; they had told him what demons were supposed to be, what Crowley was supposed to be, and it shouldn’t have been possible for them to be as wrong as they were… yet they were wrong.
(They have been wrong in more than just that, the angel goes on to think—and, startled, staggers back from the thought.)
Finding out that Heaven had been wrong was a shock, one that threw everything Aziraphale knew and believed into doubt. And yet—
Yet there are still things Aziraphale knows with granite-solid certainty.
He knows that he is a guardian. A principality. A protector.
And he knows that Crowley is his to protect.
His demon, lost in Time. Crowley surely cannot hear him now—they have not been in contact since their link broke—but Aziraphale calls to him nevertheless.
“My dear,” he says. His words have the weight of a vow; they bolster him up and give him new strength. “My dear, hold on. I am looking for you. I promise you that I am going to find you, come what may.”
You promise, do you? Gabriel’s voice within him scoffs, habitually cruel. Time is limitless. Your demon is a speck in the vastness, insignificant except in your mind. You are never going to find him, and it’s your fault he is lost.
It is, Aziraphale thinks, letting the mocking words wash over him, acknowledging them and letting them go. Yes, it is my fault he is lost. It is my fault, too, that when he came to the lighthouse, all I did was mistrust him, and suspect him, and hurt him. And he forgave me for all of that the moment I asked, and believed in me, and—and I am not going to abandon him now. He is somewhere out there. He needs me. I am going to get him home.
Dream on, the voice scoffs, though it sounds taken aback by Aziraphale’s resolve. You have no idea how to do any of this. Crowley didn’t even trust you to try.
Crowley was protecting me. And now, it’s my turn to protect him.
You have no idea what you’re doing.
No, Aziraphale concedes, speaking into the blankness behind his eyelids. No, I do not. But I know what I’m not going to do. I am not going to spend my time arguing with… whatever you are, my shame or my fear. Because you are not important. He is.
And with that, the angel opens his eyes.
The probabilities he’d been managing to keep at bay lunge at him, all at once, every waiting future: the ones in which Crowley comes back and the ones where he is lost in Time.
Aziraphale sees them. Sees himself in them. All of them, superimposed, are staggeringly real.
He sees himself calling Heaven for help, finally reaching his kind through the lightening rain. He sees merciless angels arrive in droves to crudely seal off the rest of the Shattering, closing the door into Time with Crowley still on the other side.
He sees himself standing against the Shattering alone, spending every ounce of his fading power, crumbling on the doorstep: a useless soldier in a battle already lost. The gateway collapses, he and Crowley on different sides of it, and horrible certainty closes over the angel: it is through his fault that Crowley is forever trapped in Time.
And yet, he also sees himself reaching for Crowley. Reaching for him, and finding him. He sees their link restored, sees them hold on to each other across the vastness of Time. Sees Crowley stumbling out of the doorway and into his arms, time-worn and exhausted, but brilliantly present and alive.
Because this is possible, too. In the multitude of futures, there are futures in which he gets Crowley back. Where, when everything is done, they have won, and sunlight catches the prisms of the Fresnel lens, making the glass spark with sharp rainbows. Where Crowley turns to him at the top of the lighthouse, the stubborn curl sweat-damp and plastered against his forehead, his grin infectious and wide. “‘Ziraphale,” the demon says, still half in disbelief, tipping Aziraphale’s head back to kiss him. “Aziraphale, angel, this bloody worked!”
Right now, Aziraphale is at the inflection point. The futures crowd his senses, are a dizzying vortex in his mind; there are far too many of them, and he cannot control them well enough to see anything he might take as advice. (The human soothsayers have never, with one exception, managed that either.)
Yes, there are futures in which he finds the demon. But do they require a different past?
No, he thinks then. No. He is poised on the threshold, a multitude of paths unfolding in front of him, and there are paths among them that will take him to the future he needs. He just has to choose the right path.
To choose it, or perhaps to make it, he thinks suddenly, his heart striking bell-like in his chest. Crowley had asked him, more than once in the first tense days at the lighthouse, whether he had changed reality by the weight of his expectations. Both of them are capable of that, of course they are—although, depending on the scope of the change, Aziraphale may need power he doesn’t usually wield.
Power he doesn’t usually wield. The angel frowns, looking into the storm beyond the gateway. Time is limitless, yes; if he has to trawl through oceans of it to find his demon, he is going to need the power he does not usually wield.
And…
He is capable of getting it. “Trust me,” he’d told Crowley not long ago. “I can stand my ground. There is a lot we are authorised to do when conditions call for it.”
He had spoken true. He’d been trying to convince the demon that he could stand against the multitudes of Hell; that Hell couldn’t have him, not easily, and could not ambush him. That he could invoke the power to defend himself, to defend his domain, to use in a Holy War: the power to be summoned in the time of need, a terrifying well of strength he can call upon.
He needs it now.
This is my time of need, he informs the world, resolute. I am calling upon my power. Two tasks lie before me: I have to stop this place from shattering, and I need to find him. To find Crowley. He is a demon, yes, I am searching for a demon, for a literal thing of Hell—and not to fight him, but to protect him and keep him safe.
Because the side that claimed him does not define him.
And because this is what I am for.
We are not in a Holy War. Yet I would want to protect him in a Holy War, too, whatever it took. I have never been more certain.
This is what I am for.
He stands on the threshold, his heart in his throat, his hope a burning, lucent thing, and waits for the world’s response.
(Will I Fall for this? he cannot help asking himself. For this presumption? For intending to use my power, supposed to repel and vanquish demons, to search for and protect one of their lot?
There is still fear in the thought of Falling, millennia-deep.
Yet fear is not what matters.)
Please, Aziraphale asks the world. Asks Her, fervently, though She is as silent as ever. Please. If I must Fall, let it be after I find him. After I bring him back, after he is safe. Crowley cannot, must not be a sacrifice. He is brilliant, and fire-bright, and kind. He is a guardian. A light-keeper, a protector of humanity—and however much he denies it, he has been one for six thousand years. It has taken me too long to understand this.
Crowley has stepped into Time to hold the world together, to save the humans from themselves. My battle is to keep him safe in turn, and I do not know how to find him, not yet, but I am absolutely certain that this is what I’m for.
I invoke my power.
A heartbeat. Another, the world echoing with Aziraphale’s words.
And then the world responds. The power comes; great waves of it fill the angel, called up by his appeal, by his intention to go to battle. He is filled by the blinding heat and light of suns.
It’s overwhelming. It’s disorienting, too. The power he has called forth is enough to vanquish the armies of Hell; his corporation can hardly contain it. He has to use it—or direct it outwards before it’s too late, before his still-human form becomes a supernova, collapsing in on itself.
Except he cannot just send it out. Not like this, not in this searing wave. He has to transform it, make it a means to find Crowley and not hurt him. To make it a—signal, something that will reach the demon through time.
Oh, Aziraphale thinks then. A signal. Something to reach through Time.
With startling clarity, he sees the lighthouse in his mind’s eye. Sees the beehive of the Fresnel lens collecting the light, focusing it, directing it outwards; sees Crowley shutting the brass-framed door.
His collected power must become light. Because if he cannot find Crowley, if he cannot sift through the vastness of the in-between quickly enough, he can make sure that Crowley finds him.
He can become a lighthouse: burning, if he must, across all of Time.
“Crowley,” he calls, and his own voice sounds strange to him, the collected power singing within it like rivers, like the current flowing through telegraph wires, like a chant. “Crowley, my dear. I think… I think you might need to find me.”
And the power within him rises, dissolving away other thoughts. There’s only Aziraphale’s intention, now, beacon-bright, and his determination to bring Crowley back, to fix what must be fixed.
Crowley will not be lost at sea, Aziraphale informs the world. This will not be.
He collects his power, and focuses it, and flares it out—
And becomes the lens.
Time lights up.
The whole universe of possibility is illuminated, flooded with brilliant light.
“Crowley,” the angel calls, letting the call propagate through time.
And then, he sees him. Crowley is indeed a speck in the vastness, but to Aziraphale, he is the most important thing in the world. The demon is turning his way; is looking at him; is reaching out to him, tentative, across the currents of time—and as they touch, the gaping silence in Aziraphale’s chest is filled.
“Aziraphale,” Crowley whispers: exhausted, triumphant, relieved, his voice sliding into awe. “Aziraphale, bloody Hell, what have you done—what are you?!”
Yet something in Aziraphale’s mind is sounding an alarm. He is looking at Crowley, now, is really seeing him—and the demon is not quite hale. Crowley’s form is insubstantial, shot through with probability; Time has grabbed on to him, is unspooling his essence to steady itself.
This—
This must not be.
“Crowley, my love, you must come back.”
In response, Crowley laughs: giddily, teetering on the edge of wild disbelief. “Angel. You... You are magnificent. You are a bloody lighthouse. But I, I cannot go back yet. There are tears we must fix. I can see them again, now that I have your power. ‘M almost done. They’ll rend this place apart if I leave them be, so I have to do it. But we have plenty of power now, yeah? We have—so much. Sso ‘m going to do this. ‘M going to go into those cracks. The one I sslipped on, I’ve got to get that one.”
And as Aziraphale watches, Crowley unfolds his wings.
No, Aziraphale thinks—and narrows his attention on the last of the cracks, the ones Crowley is grasping his way towards. They must be fixed, yes, in order for Time and reality to become whole.
But the angel sees the probabilities that cluster around them. He sees Crowley, exhausted and worn thin, diving into them with unwavering determination—and does not see him return. Looking into the future with a multitude of faces, through a multitude of eyes, he still does not see Crowley emerge, as if the probabilities insist that, should Crowley attempt to fix any more time-tears, he will do it at the expense of his own self.
The demon is too tired, too dizzy, too unsteady to finish what they started.
He must come back.
“No,” Aziraphale says, trying to keep his voice as human as he can, though the power still sings out through it, changing its cadence. “Crowley, you cannot walk in there. You cannot do this, the danger to you is too great.”
“I have to, angel! ’S going to unravel again, ’s already unravelling—so I have to—you know I do—so I’ll just do it and then—”
Crowley inches towards the cracks, step after stubborn step.
And Aziraphale, looking into Time, sees the future that this is leading to, reflected in the probabilities that swirl around the demon: the probabilities that Crowley can evidently no longer see.
If Crowley steps into the depth of the Shattering right now, he will never come back out.
No, the angel thinks, each of his thoughts the resonant peal of an enormous bell. No. This must not be.
“Crowley,” he says aloud, and the same bell reverberates in his words. “Come home.”
“I…” Crowley wavers, still looking towards the cracks as the currents of Time and probability pull at him. “I have to—”
Not enough, Aziraphale thinks. Not—enough.
And when he speaks next, he throws the whole of his power behind the call: a counterweight, a burning light.
“Come home.”
The call launches. It bores into Time, crosses possibilities, resounds through the future and the past. Aziraphale sees S.P. raise his head from his journal, his eyes unfocused, an echo of the appeal on his lips. “Come… home,” the keeper whispers, dazed, before setting his pen to the page. Aziraphale sees the future, unfamiliar keepers exchange terrified looks as they cross themselves fervently, their eyes wide. He sees the lighthouse builders at Howling Rock freeze in awe and shock as they hear a voice on the wind. (“Did you—did something tell us—to abandon this? To go home?” “Merciful Heavens. I heard that, too.”)
“Come home,” Aziraphale repeats, and the demon stills, and sways back, and finally, finally steps away from the crack.
“Please. Come home,” Aziraphale repeats a final time, much softer, something painful twisting in his chest. The demon is looking his way. He is listening, now, and Aziraphale reaches out to him, as gently as he can, to lead him back out of the shifting in-between.
Crowley reaches back.
And, guiding him, pulling him through the twisting threads of possibility, Aziraphale also looks at the remainder of the Shattering. Crowley is right, of course he is: these cracks have to be healed, or the world will once again pull itself apart.
So, splintering off a part of his immense power, Aziraphale aims it at the cracks, just like he has seen Crowley do.
It works. Most of the cracks, trivial and transient, are easily fixed by the weight of Aziraphale’s expectations, by the amount of power the angel wields. Reality hurriedly moulds itself whole to avoid disappointing him.
Yet one crack still resists. The last crack before the backbone, it’s wide—and too complex to respond to raw power and will.
This is the crack that Crowley had been trying to wrangle when he slipped.
And this crack requires care. It requires finesse, and Aziraphale still cannot, by himself, weave probabilities precisely enough to patch it, to merge it into the rest of reality without wrinkling, to heal it once and for all.
So he locks it. He feeds it power, flash-freezes it, encases it in amber: it will be stable for centuries, or as long as it needs to be. Until they can get to the other side of it, both of them, and seal it properly. Until Crowley can stand alongside him, until they can do it right.
It will hold until they come back.
The crack sealed, Aziraphale returns the whole of his attention to Crowley.
“Come home,” he whispers to him again, a sting in his eyes, his voice once again his own, and holds out his hand.
Crowley is at the door. He is thin and worn, yes, but more solid every moment, with every step. His hand still outstretched in invitation, the angel heals the backbone behind the demon’s back—and Crowley looks at him wide- and wild-eyed.
“I—Aziraphale, you have—I—how are you doing this?!”
Aziraphale has no time for an answer. Crowley is on the threshold, stumbling back inside—and the angel catches him. He pulls the last crack shut, collapses the doorway into Time, and then, thankfully, his power drains away, leaving him sweating and shaky and weak—but the demon is in his arms.
He holds Crowley for a limitless time, too afraid to speak. Afraid that the demon isn’t fully back, that something irreparable had happened to his mind. Crowley had been forgetting so much, had been struggling in a spider’s web of probabilities. It’s possible, isn’t it, that Aziraphale was too late, that Crowley’s mind could not hold under the pressure, that Crowley won’t remember—
Crowley kisses him.
“You remember,” Aziraphale whispers as, breathless, they emerge from the kiss. His voice is unsteady no matter how much he wills it not to shake. “You remember, my love? You remember us?”
Crowley stares at him.
Oh no, Aziraphale thinks, cold to the tips of his fingers. Oh no, he does not remember, that was instinct, he—
“Aziraphale. Honestly. You’ve got a personal demon now,” Crowley says hoarsely, though the corners of his mouth are curling upwards. “You signed up for this. I did warn you. You can’t say I did not.”
And, as Aziraphale sags with relief, Crowley kisses the tips of his ears, the bridge of his nose, his temples, his hair.
They collapse on the carpet, holding on to each other: a tangled, elated heap. Aziraphale’s eyes smart with tears.
“Crowley. I’m—I’m so sorry. I, I didn’t even explain, I didn’t know—I saw the probabilities and had no idea what else to do, I knew I had to stop you, I—”
“Shhhhh,” Crowley says into his hair. “Shhhh. Angel. ‘M here. I need a bit of time to understand what happened, yeah? I trust you, though, I trust you, what you did was right.”
“I—I’d never want to force—”
“Shut it,” Crowley says, and kisses him again.
After they once again surface for breath, they lie side by side on the carpet, hands linked, both of them staring at the water reflections shivering on the white domed ceiling. The sky beyond the windows is bright blue, filled with light; Aziraphale hadn’t even noticed it when the rain had stopped.
“‘Ziraphale,” Crowley says wonderingly. “Angel. I’m bloody in love with you. Did you know that? ‘Cause I bloody didn’t for six thousand years.”
“I... You—did say that, yes. And I—”
“I know,” the demon says, a shadow of awe crossing his face. “Right.” He starts scrambling to his feet. “We must be back in our own time. D’you want to go check?”
“How would we… where would we…” Aziraphale starts, but Crowley, already on his feet, holds out his hand.
“Upstairs. Where else?”
He pulls the angel up and after him: towards the stairs, through the light-room where the edges of the prisms catch the sun, breaking it into sharp rainbows, and onwards to the balcony.
They stand side by side at the railing, in the sunlight and the wind.
The sea below them is green glass. Ships glide across it, schooners and steamers and fishing boats, too, their crews as busy as ants. A supply boat, still quite a distance away, has set course for Howling Rock.
“We are home,” Aziraphale whispers.
“We are. Angel, it bloody worked,” Crowley says, still hoarse, wind tugging at the bright strands of his hair. He turns to grin at the angel. “You’ll have to tell me how you did it. That last bit in particular. There was a crack where the edges didn’t fit together. It needed care, and I wasn’t thinking straight by that point, so I tried to force it. How did you fix it?”
“Oh,” Aziraphale says, his heart falling. “Crowley, I… I didn’t. I couldn’t fix it. I froze it. I made it safe, but it’s still there. And we, we can’t even reach it now. One side of it is in our past, but we’ll have to come back to it from the other side, from the future. And…” the angel trails off, abruptly horrified. “I... oh no. Crowley, I don’t remember when the other side is. I… might remember a range? A rough range? We aren’t done, we will have to come back to try and get it properly closed, perhaps come back multiple times if we cannot get the moment right, I am so sorry—”
“We… will have to come back,” Crowley repeats, his face unreadable.
“Yes. Oh, I’m so dreadfully sorry, my love. Without you, I simply didn’t have the skill to do it properly, so I’m afraid I’ve rather made a mess of things—”
But Crowley’s lips are twitching, and then, he starts to laugh, unrestrained, shaking his head in disbelief.
“My dear?” Aziraphale asks in alarm, once again worried for the demon’s mind. “My dear, why are you…”
“Aziraphale,” Crowley says, and holds Aziraphale by the shoulders, looking into his face with the widest grin the angel has seen yet. The demon’s amusement is real, unclouded by fear. “Aziraphale. Of course we’ll have to come back. You saw us yourself, angel. We did.”
Notes:
We have arrived! I hope you had fun on the way.
I would be delighted to see you back tomorrow for a short epilogue, which may answer one or two unanswered questions but is mostly about breathing out. More thank-yous and heartfelt acknowledgements will follow that, but for now: thank you, dear readers. You are the best.
And here is the music for the finale:
Perseverance by Michele McLaughlin
Care by Robot Koch
Wunder by Oskar Schuster (The clocks. Do you hear the clocks?)
Plus, as a bonus:
Marlene by Oskar Schuster, complete with hints of interference.
(Good luck, Mar. You can still do better.)
Chapter 12: Epilogue
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
“Feels like we are rather irreverent pilgrims, coming back to this place.”
“Mm. Or vacationers, returning for the summer holidays.”
The hull of the sailboat creaks; wavelets splash under its keel; a lazy wind plays with the lowered sails.
“For the record,” Aziraphale says, producing a boater hat from a battered hatbox, “I don’t at all agree with you about this boat belonging in a museum.” He tilts the hat in his hands, runs his finger thoughtfully along the tartan ribbon.
Crowley gives him a sidelong look. “Remind me again where you got it from?”
“A private collection, dearest, and that’s quite beside the point. What I mean is, the construction is hardly different from a modern boat’s.”
“I... Angel, when have you last been on a modern boat? And ‘m pretty sure this one predates your protégé’s grandmother.”
“Lovely woman, by the way. But dearest, you must agree that we have to make him feel as at home as we can. It only makes sense to arrive in a boat he would recognise.”
“Mm.” Crowley sighs. “Yeah, well. We’ll just have to convince him to ignore the rest of the world.”
“He’ll learn. We’ll help him,” the angel says, undaunted. “Humans are remarkably adaptable. And admit it, you just wanted that other boat, the one that looked like a particularly infernal contraption.”
“I admit nothing,” Crowley says, stretching out his legs and looking up into the high summer sky. “Anyway, what’s that story? The Van Winkle one. Waking into a changed world. Our friend ’s going to have it rather worse than that, ’s quite the time-jump.”
“Quite,” Aziraphale agrees, watching the lighthouse in the distance.
Seagulls swoop over the waves. Minute by minute, the air brightens.
Crowley turns to look at his angel, limned by the morning sun, his pale hair aglow. “It was… remarkable, wasn’t it,” he says quietly. “Everything that happened to us here. A few days changing everything after six thousand years.”
The angel smiles, still looking into the distance, and then catches Crowley’s gaze. “You must know that the change was six thousand years in the making.”
“Yeah. ’S just—angel, you never wavered. You signed up to have a personal demon, and that was that. We didn’t even know about Armageddon yet, didn’t know we’d get through it. It was desperately dangerous at times, yet you—”
“Never pretended not to love you? Never again kept aloof? Dearest, I couldn’t have done that any more than you could, not after everything we’ve been through. And—yes, if the circumstances were different, if I realised I loved you at a different time, one not as fraught… I might have gone away for months, maybe years, to come to terms with my feelings. It had simply not been an option.”
Crowley sits up, level with the angel. “Well,” he says, reaching to push back Aziraphale’s wind-tousled hair. Then, he takes the absurd boater hat out of the angel’s hands to set it over Aziraphale’s curls at an outrageously modern angle. “I’d obviously never complain. But I’d wondered, back then, that you said you loved me, and were not afraid.”
Aziraphale looks at him, thoughtful. A seagull cries out; another one answers it.
“But I was afraid, Crowley,” the angel says finally, softly. “I was dreadfully afraid. It just—the fear wasn’t what mattered most.”
—
“’S fortunate that I packed a picnic,” Crowley says. “Looks like this might take some time.”
He brings it out: fruit, cheeses, biscuits; bite-size sandwiches from one of Aziraphale’s favourite bakeries; a bottle of wine.
They eat, unhurried. Crowley nibbles at the grapes, absently watching the flight paths of gulls and gannets in the distance—but as Aziraphale opens his eyes after tasting a croissant with blackcurrant jam, he finds Crowley looking at him, openly hungry even after all these years.
“’S good?” the demon asks, a corner of his mouth curling upwards.
“Oh, scrumptious. Thank you, my love.”
A shiver goes through Crowley at the words. The demon grins.
“Now that brings back more memories,” he says. “D’you know, I could stop time right now, and we wouldn’t miss the kid no matter what.”
“Tempting. But we are still on a boat.”
The sun hasn’t moved from its place in the sky and the birds have noticed nothing when the boat reasserts itself in time and space, both of its occupants adjusting their clothing.
“Well,” Crowley says approvingly as Aziraphale reaches out to re-tie the demon’s ostentatious necktie. “’S certainly useful that you no longer have to budget your miracles.” He catches Aziraphale’s hand just as the angel is about to withdraw it and kisses his open palm. “Back then, by the way… Were they ever on your case for—using as much power as you did? ‘Cause you practically went supernova, didn’t you.”
“I… believe they did notice. But even Michael could not argue with the necessity of closing off the Shattering.”
“Still a wanker. But at least not wrong about that.”
Aziraphale smiles at his demon, fondly, and looks towards the lighthouse again. “When we do get to the last crack… How much power will we need to heal it, do you think?”
“Oh, I bet not all that much. It was never about pure power, right? Always about patience and finesse. And we won’t have to step inside it.”
“Do you… have a sense of how close it is now? You still cannot see it under the surface of Time, can you?”
“Nah. ’S hardly surprising, though. The future is notoriously difficult to predict, I want to know how Agnes had managed it. But anyway, yeah, that crack ’s definitely closer now. Won’t be long.”
“I suppose we will just have to try again, then. With our next most likely guess.”
“Yeah.” Crowley squints at the distant tower.
And then, he snaps his head back, suddenly both excited and amused.
“O-oh. Actually, angel, I have another idea. We should just go in there at about the right time and start kissing. You know. Like you saw us do.”
“Crowley,” Aziraphale says slowly. “I… may not be as experienced as you are with how time works, but I hardly think it works like that.”
“Oh sssure.” Crowley’s smile turns glittering and magnetic. “Sure, yeah. Maybe it doesn’t. Or maybe we’ll have to do it half a dozen times before it works. The downside of which would be… let me check… more kissing.”
“Well,” Aziraphale says, amused despite himself. “When you put it like that.”
—
A fish splashes, and then a few of its scaly companions emerge from the green depths, following each other in a twisting line and launching into a synchronised swimming routine.
“Really, my dear,” Aziraphale says. “Do leave the natural world alone.”
“You’re no fun,” Crowley says accusingly, settling back and snapping his fingers. “I’ve always said.”
They wait for a while longer, each absorbed in his thoughts.
“Thank you,” Aziraphale says suddenly.
Crowley, who’d settled down for a comfortable bask, the sun hot against his skin, opens his eyes. “Mm? For what?”
“For—forgiving me, back then, for panicking and shutting you out.”
“‘Ziraphale. Really. I knew what Heaven was. I knew what they were doing to you for centuries, I knew what you were up against. And should I also remind you that that day was, very definitively, when you’d first gone against Heaven?”
“Still—”
“Nuh-uh,” Crowley says, raising a finger. “And see, you picked up on me haunting you. You weren’t wrong, ’s the thing. You thought that I had something to do with what was happening at the lighthouse, that I was behind it somehow, and I was, wasn’t I? So ’s really no wonder you were so disturbed. You are brilliant, angel. Magnificent. Have always been. ’S just… Back then, you were often too afraid to remember that.”
The angel blinks and briefly looks away as Crowley, emphatic, goes on.
“We were in a paradox, angel. ’S not often that one of those happens. All considered, I think we did remarkably well.”
“Thank you,” Aziraphale says quietly—and reaches for Crowley’s hand.
In a while, another fish splashes, approaching the boat of its own accord.
“Oh, hello,” Crowley tells it. “’S a pollock,” he informs Aziraphale. “A very seasonable fish, good for it.”
The angel smiles. “Do you think we should—keep an eye on them? On the humans, when they start building the new lighthouse and bringing those machines in?”
“Mm. I think we’ll have to. Especially later, after the fire. Because I bet that even after their first experiment explodes, they’ll have lots of plans and ideas, and plenty of hubris. We can find that physics woman, Mar. Get her to spill the beans on what they were trying to do.”
Aziraphale nods. “That sounds very sensible, my love.”
They fall silent as they study Howling Rock with its abandoned lighthouse, populated by nothing but birds.
“Are you sure this is the right day?” Aziraphale asks after a time.
“Am I ever? The weather’s good, though. We could go for a swim.”
“Ah.” The angel looks at the shore where a young man has appeared from behind the lighthouse and is circling its base unsteadily, squinting against the sun. “There he is. The crack is already closed behind him, isn’t it?”
“Mhmm.” Crowley clicks his fingers to get the boat moving in the direction of Howling Rock. “Yeah. Right, we’re in business. So we just… pick him up and explain things? Perhaps get him drunk, if he’s up to that? You go talk to him first. He might not recognise me dressed like this, but—y’know. ’S not very pleasant to have your nightmare jump out at you in broad daylight.”
By the time they get closer, Steven has once again disappeared on the other side of the lighthouse, likely searching for a way back in.
“You better go make sure nothing falls on his head,” Crowley suggests.
“Not to worry, dearest. It’s quite structurally safe for the moment, I’ve already made sure.”
“Right. Well. I’ll wait for the two of you here.”
Birds wheel around the tower. Water gurgles in the cracks of the rock, filling a network of rivulets. The wind carries salt.
Aziraphale gets out of the boat, stepping gingerly onto the surface of the water, ready to make his way towards the flat sandstone shore over the shallow waves.
“Back in a tick.” He smiles at Crowley—and, before he goes, bends down to the demon and kisses him, right there under an open sky.
Notes:
Music-wise, let's conclude with Oskar Schuster, Valtameri (which, translated from Finnish, means “ocean”—and if that is not appropriate, I don’t know what is).
I love, love, love the typewriters weaved into and continuing the story.The biggest thank-yous go out to Anti_Kate, for being a wonderful beta and an inspiration, and to my dear dear friends at Flight Control, who have been an absolute joy and who made writing this fic the best of adventures.
(Also. My hubris in setting out to write a serialized time paradox story? Immense.)
Thank you to everyone who’s followed this story, and a particular thank you to everyone who’s left comments or got in touch to share the way the story affected them. I cannot overstate this: it really does mean the world. 🤍🤍🤍
This fic started with the title, a few images, and a mood. The title comes from these stage directions in the Season 1 script: “Crowley puts down the phone. Then he smiles like a lighthouse burning or a TV quizmaster.” It is also inspired by the haunting (and true) story of the Eilean Mòr lighthouse, where three keepers had mysteriously disappeared in 1900.
Oh! And I nearly forgot: it is also inspired by Signaling Through the Flames by The American Dollar, this specific version from Ambient One where you can absolutely hear a lighthouse (as long as you wear stereo headphones).
The description of light pollution in Chapter 2 was very directly inspired by The Time Traveller's Guide to Regency Britain (you can see why I didn’t disclose my sources in Chapter 2 😅).
Three cheers for liminal spaces.
Also, for a wonderful short fic set in another liminal place, may I recommend in this liked but not loved place by CaffeineChic?
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