Chapter Text
So I peered through a window
a deep portal, time travel
all the love we unravel
And the life I gave away
New York City, January 8th, 2024
Hello angel,
long time no see. Well, long time no… write? Read? Whatever. I haven’t done one of these in a while. Remember when I used to write you every 15th of the month? Of course you don’t, that was rhetorical. But I do, I remember. I don’t know why I stopped, honestly, I blame it on the passing of time, as I blame many things on.
I am back now, you could say. I haven’t written to you in six whole months, that’s a new record. Not that I didn’t think of you in those six months, as pathetic as that sounds. Twenty three years, and I still think about you every time I see a bow tie, or a painting, or a cinnamon roll. I know it’s pathetic, utterly embarrassing, you can laugh.
I cannot tell you, in good conscience, that I still love you: no love can survive twenty three years of no contact, not even whatever we had going on. But you are still there, in the back of mind, lingering like dust in an attic opened a few times a year. You’re still there, barely out of reach, and if I hold out my hand I can touch you, I can hear you, I can smell you, and I feel something warm inside my chest. It’s not love, but it is definitely something: nostalgia, surely; regret, possibly. I don’t regret you, of course. I never could.
Ah, I got a little bit carried away. I’m a bit out of shape, you see, I haven’t written anything in months. It felt fair to try and end my slump by writing to you, as if your intangible presence would help me sort out the mess that my life has become. I know it’s selfish, and I know this is not real and the ‘you’ I’m writing these letters to probably doesn’t exist anymore, but it is about comfort, you see? You are the only part of my life that no one has tainted, spoiled, ruined. You only exist in my memories and for that you are safe, you are comfortable, you are peaceful. Just like you were when you were actually real.
See, that happens sometimes, the missing you. It’s not nearly as soul crushing as it was in the beginning, but it still happens. Especially around the holidays, Valentine’s Day, the beginning of Spring, in front of a Renaissance painting, in bakeries, whenever I see vintage cars. It’s hard not to remember everything, in those moments, and that is when I miss you.
It’s not painful, not anymore, more like bittersweet. Hell, a fuck ton more bitter than sweet, but you get the point.
I decided to write this letter today because I am back in the hospital. Just a routine check up, don’t you worry, but I hate this place. I am waiting for my doctor in his fancy office and the nurse who just escorted me here from the waiting room has blonde, curly hair and a really nice smile and, well, you can see where I’m going. It’s funny, and a little bit twisted, but I thought about you, suddenly and unexpectedly. With everything else going on, I didn’t have time to think about you, and now there you are, in the corner of my mind you’ve been living in for the past decades, demanding attention. Really, terrible timing.
I hate typing on my phone, dreadful thing, too many typos and too little space, this is a mess. Hell, let’s do this game: what would you ask me, if you were real?
'How are you, dear?’ (Do you still call everyone dear? I hope so. It was annoyingly endearing.) Well, let me tell you, I am not fine. I feel like shit most of the times, and my hip hurts like a motherfucker most days than not. Could be much worse, though, at least I’m walking.
‘Are you working on something?’ No, I am not. I haven’t been working on something for a very long time, and mercifully no one has given me shit for it, yet. ‘Yet’ is the key word there, let me tell you: a proper sword of Damocles, that word.
You know what you’d probably ask me? ‘Have you eaten anything?’ I can almost hear you, if I try hard enough, your exact cadence, your posh accent, you snob bastard. I have forgotten the exact shade of the colour of your eyes, but not your stupid enunciation and your perfect grammar. You should have been the writer.
Ah, I shouldn’t have written that, now my mind is spinning. You should have been many things. I am a selfish prick, as you probably remember, and the first thing I thought you should have been is mine. Thank God you will never read these letters.
Shit, doc’s here. I should tell you about him, sometime soon, he’s a bloody infant. You would have laughed.
It’s one of those days, I miss you.
Not yours,
C.
After being in a hospital for a while, the antiseptic smell should not come as a surprise. And yet, the moment his nostrils fill with the smell of bleach and otherwise unspecified cleaning products, Crowley shivers.
As the door of this fancy office of this fancy private clinic swings open, he abruptly closes the notes app on his phone, making sure he's sent the file to his email address first. Why he does that is a mystery: he doesn’t even know what to do with that sappy, existential nonsense, it’s not like he can put any of it in one of his books, and it’s not like he’s going to send anything anywhere. Still, he has his special folder on his laptop, labeled ‘Personal do NOT touch’, in which files have been piling up for years and years. He even typed out the first letters he’d written by hand all those years ago, just so he could stash them in the same place.
It was nice to get it out, though, as always. And he misses pouring his heart out to a blank page, without worrying about editors and publishers and hypothetical movie adaptations. Those letters are his, and his only. The books, nowadays, are for others.
He’s ungrateful, and he is aware of it. The books are what paid his nice (and expensive) lifestyle, his extravagant flat in Manhattan, his writing retreats (read: paid holidays) in Italy, France, Portugal, and the vintage car. He starts, a sharp pain spreading from his leg all throughout his lower body. They also paid the surgeries, and the follow up appointments, and the rehab.
“Everything’s looking good, Anthony.” His surgeries were performed by a kid, much to Crowley’s initial worry. Everyone in his team assured him he was the best Orthopedic Surgeon in the East Coast, and that he was not as young as he looked. Crowley remembers the first time he saw the doctor, with his dirty blond curls and childlike enthusiasm, and he remembers how utterly fucked he felt. “What are you, fourteen?” He had barked, high on painkillers and sorrow. “I was fourteen when I graduated from Yale.”
That managed to shut him up for good.
He still looks just barely out of high school, in his opinion, but Crowley is on his feet, and he is standing and walking without assistance now, so the kid is actually good. Everyone else before Dr. Adam Young had refused to even take a look at his scans, let alone attempt a surgery; they all deemed his case as “hopeless”. The kid disagreed, of course.
Perhaps it was the recklessness of youth, perhaps it was a stroke of genius, Crowley doesn’t care. Dr. Adam Young promised him he would walk again, and now, a year after the accident, Crowley walks. He came here walking on his own two legs today. Nothing short of a miracle, some would say. Miracles don’t exist, though. Crowley walks because he has a bloody good doctor, and that’s it.
“How is the pain these days?” Adam asks him, once he’s done with his motor skills tests.
“Fine.” Crowley replies, way too fast. Another thing about Dr. Adam Young is that he hates lies, and he somehow manages to read right trough Crowley’s. “I want the truth, Anthony.”
What is he supposed to say? That he sometimes wakes up in the middle of the night in cold sweats, feeling like his leg is about to fall off? That he gets flashes of pain so sharp and so sudden and so intense he has to grip something hard, until his knuckles turn white?
“I’m managing.” He says, and that is true. “This is my life now, it doesn’t get better than this.” And that is another truth. Walking is enough, he can get through the pain. He sure as hell doesn’t want to get hooked on opioids, and Adam knows that perfectly well.
“I know where you stand on pain management medications.” The doctor starts, choosing the words carefully. “But I have to take into consideration your quality of life.”
Crowley laughs mirthlessly. “My quality of life is better than I thought I would ever get.” Better than I should ever get, he thinks, but doesn’t say.
Adam frowns, and Crowley realizes he is about to go on one of his rants about his psychological wellbeing. “I’m fine, Adam, really. I promise you, I can live with that.”
To convince him, he hops off the examination table and offers Adam a little dance, with a twirl and everything. His hip screams, but Crowley is really good at ignoring those screams.
His little charade earns him a little smile. “Fine, I’ll believe you.” Crowley grins, satisfied, but he has the feeling the conversation is not over. Adam gets up from his stool and circles his desk, full of books and folders but somehow still incredibly tidy, and sits on his chair. The view of the City behind his head is mesmerizing.
Crowley loved New York City from the moment he stepped foot in it, two decades ago now. He had a degree in English and Creative Writing from the University of London, a ridiculously small amount of savings and a dream (and a fair amount of heartbreak, but that is en entirely different story), and the City gave him everything.
He was working as a barista in some godforsaken, soulless chain when he scored his first deal. Apparently, for some reasons Crowley ignores to this day, someone at Morningstar Publishers liked his draft and wanted to offer him an actual deal, actual money and an actual possibility of seeing his very own book on a shelf. Miracles don’t exist, but that came very close.
‘A tale of stars and succulents’, his debut novel, was a success. The New York Times called it an ‘instant classic’, and Crowley was skyrocketed into fame. More deals came after that, more books, some movies too. It stopped being fun after the fifth book, ‘Driving through fire and other remedies for a sore throat’: that was the last one of his books with an interesting title, something Crowley picked himself against the advice of his publisher, and the last book with a plot, characters, and twists that felt real, raw, captivating. The two works after that one were rubbish, he knows. A money grab, something crafted specifically for Netflix or some other industry shark. There was no passion, no fire in them, they were just stories: Crowley didn’t write stories, he wrote lives. And then there was the Accident.
Adam takes a deep breath before speaking again. “Anathema told me you don’t want to go to Connecticut.”
The sound Crowley makes can only be described as a growl. “Do I look like a Gilmore Girl to you?”
Anathema Device is Crowley’s agent, PA, and probably only friend. She’s from Malibu, of all places, but hates summer, and is a self proclaimed occultist who apparently sees auras and can hex people. She is annoying, caring, incredibly smart and never takes no for an answer.
“You do know she is right, do you?” Adam tries again. “You need to get away from this city.”
Anathema has been telling him to get away ever since he regained consciousness after the Accident. And his answer has always been the same: absolutely not. He is nothing without New York City, he can’t imagine living anywhere else, not anymore. He doesn’t know who he is without the chaos and the polluted air and the overflowing streets. Crowley and this city are now irreparably intertwined, and he cannot leave without bleeding.
(Immediately after the Accident, while high on morphine and hooked to too many machines to count, he thought of London, the first and last time he’d ever missed it. It wasn’t the city he was missing, though. He wrote a letter that day.)
Anathema wants to drag him to some small town in Connecticut to ‘reconnect with nature’ or some witchy shit like that. She says it would be greatly beneficial to his writing, that learning how to appreciate a quiet life will heal something inside him. Obviously, that is all a bloody lie: there is nothing inside him that can be healed with gazebos and coffee shops.
“I don’t, Adam, I like the City. My whole life is here, I do not need to run away from it.” He believes what he is saying, but he is aware that it sounds like a lie, and Adam notices too.
“It’s not about running away, it’s about a change of scenery.”
“Why are you even talking to Anathema about me?” Deflection and avoidance, Crowley’s best tricks. That’s what his therapist always says.
“Because we are on your team, in case you forgot.” Adam leans a bit forward, and lowers his voice. “We care about you.”
Why? Crowley wants to ask, but bites his tongue in time. Instead, he settles with a shrug, and a bitter: “I have way too many babysitters.” Another one of issues, as his therapist puts it, is the inability to believe people can actually care for him, not because they are legally required to or because he pays them to, but because they want to. It is an issue he is working on, but he hasn’t made much progress. So, as he usually does, he chooses aggression. “I don’t like people on my team to gossip behind my back.” He practically barks.
Adam is unfazed. “You know perfectly well that is not what we do.” He tilts his head. “You are a grown man, Anthony, you can do whatever you want with your life. We just want you to think about it.”
Bloody child prodigy who always knows how to handle him. And Crowley knows the witch waiting outside the door will bother him with the same damn thing. “If I promise to think about it, will you let me go?”
This earns him a real smile. “Only if you swear you’ll think about it.” He says, as he extends his pinky.
Crowley can’t stop the smile uncurling on his own lips. “Good Lord, you really are a child.”
But he pinky promises nonetheless. Sometimes, he thinks about Adam Young, M.D., who became a board certified surgeon before the age of thirty. What kind of childhood did he have? He was probably writing essays while his peers were singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and that makes Crowley’s heart clench. Whenever he gets the chance, Crowley indulges in his childlike enthusiasm.
They say goodbye after the ridiculous scene, and Crowley leaves the office with his usual folder and some more recommendations.
Anathema gets up from the plastic chair in the waiting room as soon she spots him. No matter how many times Crowley tells her he doesn’t need her help walking anymore, she still offers her arm, and her support. He rolls his eyes, but locks their arms anyway.
“Why are you conspiring with my surgeon?”
She shoots him one of her infamous look from behind her thick glasses, but doesn’t say anything until the elevator doors close. “Why won’t you even think about it?”
“You can’t answer a question with another question.”
“You are insufferable.” Crowley smirks. He truly is.
Anathema Device is just as insufferable as he is, though. That is the only reason why she is the only person from Before the Accident who is still in his life.
“I don’t understand why you won’t even consider it.” She says, while they step out the elevator and into a lobby that smells like chemicals and unnatural cleanliness. Crowley feels nauseous, and hurries his steps to get outside faster, ignoring the complaints coming from his hip.
Once they are outside, Crowley breathes in the crispy air of early January. Well, to be honest, there is nothing crispy about the air in Manhattan. He breathes in some smog and the rather unpleasant, however peculiar smell of the sewer.
“Look at me, Nath.” He finally says. “Do I look like Laura Gilmore to you?”
Anathema laughs at that. “First of all, it’s Lorelai.” She frees her arm to look at Crowley directly, and he hopes she doesn’t notice his hiss at the sudden loss of support. “And I don’t want you to move there and open a coffee shop, Crowley. I want you to spend a month or two in peace, surrounded by nature.”
Crowley has heard this exact speech before, too many times to count. He heard this speech while he was laying on a hospital bed, only allowed to consume ice chips and too tired to protest; he heard this speech after yelling at his first physical therapist, a sweet girl he brought to tears after a single session; he heard it again on the floor of his apartment, after his second or fifth bottle didn’t help with the pain and the only contact in his phone who didn’t hate him was this woman.
Every single time, he said no. “Is it because I haven’t written anything in years?” He asks this time. He knows publishers will start asking, or rather demanding something from him. Everyone has been patient, After the Accident, but no one is patient forever.
Anthony J. Crowley, New York Times best selling author and pioneer of the new wave of thriller fiction, never went this long without producing something, a novel, a short story, even a damn script. Crowley, a forty five year old man who used to swear he would never lose his accent to America, has never had a writer’s block, but he also never was involved in a near death experience, a crash that could (and, frankly, should) have been fatal. But how long can he justify his inaction and stillness with his trauma? How long till everyone who’s waiting for him just moves on? His fans, his publishers, even Anathema won’t stay forever, no one does.
“Do you think I only care about your writing?” She replies finally, shaking him from his thoughts.
“It is what pays your bills.”
“My bills are payed by the Device’s Family Fund, you wanker.”
He can’t not laugh at that, despite everything. “You saying ‘wanker’ is literally traumatizing.”
Anathema comes from money, Crowley has always known this. Her family fortune is based upon a book of prophecies that became so popular in the 1980s it now pays for three or four mansions around the world, boarding schools for all of the Devices children and Anathema’s career as an agent for a failing author. This is what having the better version of Nostradamus as your great-great-great-great aunt gets you in this world and in this economy.
“Crowley.” Anathema gets serious again. “I know you don’t believe me, but I know it will do you some good.” Some good, she says. It’s not that Crowley doesn’t believe her, it’s just that he doesn’t want to. It is sad, perhaps, but it seems that there is nothing in this universe that can motivate him anymore. All he wants to do is survive, day by day, let time pass and hope it doesn’t hurt too much at the end. Christ, perhaps he should ring his therapist.
When Anathema looks at him this way, though, with her big, brown eyes all pleading and fond, he almost believes he can do something good again. ‘Almost’ is the key word. “This City will do me some good, too. It’s all she ever did.”
“No, it’s not.” She replies immediately, the fondness gone and replaced by fierceness. “This city scrubs you clean, when you’re not even dirty to begin with, and then spits you out again.” Californians have an ancestral hate for the Big Apple, one of the many American quirks Crowley came to understand in the past twenty three years.
“You will never move on if you don’t put some distance between you and this place.”
What if Crowley doesn’t want to move on? There is something about pain that becomes familiar, even comfortable after a while. Moving on would mean more bleeding, more straining, and Crowley isn’t strong. Crowley is just tired.
When he was in university, he had this Professor for his Creative Writing course, who other students often deemed various degrees of insane. Crowley adored him, obviously, as much as he could be irritating on his worst days. “If you want to make something valuable,” he used to say, “you need to ask yourselves every single question you can think of. Push, push and push until you are satisfied with the answers you come up with.” That changed Crowley’s life, other than his writing. One thing about his books is that readers reach the end thoroughly satisfied, because all of their questions have been answered, implicitly or not.
It has been a while since Crowley has applied this logic to his own life. Why? Why is he so tired? And of what? And why does he feel like he’s asleep even when he is awake? Why is he so stubborn, all the time? Why does he never listen to anyone? Someone else asked him these questions, forever ago. He thought he had answers, back then, but now he thinks he was wrong.
“Take me home.” He says to Anathema, still waiting for her reply. “If you want me to think about this, I need my couch.” He tries to go for lighthearted, but comes across as strained. Anathema sees right through him, but decides to call the car anyway.
“You usually tell me you’ll think about it just to shut me up.” And, well, it is true.
There is something different today. Crowley absentmindedly touches his phone in his back pocket, remembering the words he wrote a few hours ago.
Someone told him, forever ago, that his biggest fear was growing old and looking back at the past full of regrets, and realizing he lived his life as a passerby.
(“I don’t think that will happen to you, angel.”
“How can you be sure?”
“I’ll be there to make sure of it.”)
What is he doing with his life, if not living it as a passerby? Suddenly, he’s thinking about a book. Not really a book, actually, because it is not a story, but a life: “The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath”. He remembers a diary entry from 1963, because he read and underlined the passage so many times he stained the page, almost ruining it forever: “Still, when I wake up, I feel as if I were rising from a grave, gathering my moldy, worm-riddled limbs into a final effort.”
These are too many questions, too many thoughts, and he really needs to lie down.
He doesn’t say another word as they wait for the Uber. As the car makes his way through Manhattan’s usual traffic jam, his own mouth acts before his mind can counterattack. “Tell me why Connecticut.”
Anathema doesn’t reply immediately, she just looks at him with that terrible intense look only she can master, and Crowley shivers. “My grandmother met my grandfather there.” She finally whispers, averting his gaze. “He used to have a diner in this small town, Granny fell in love with both the place and the owner, and the rest is history.” She lets out a small laugh, and Crowley’s own lips curl into a smile.
“My mom lived there before settling to California, while my Grandparents stayed in the house all their lives, and me and my brothers visited every summer. I spent my best summers in that town, and when Granny, well,” a pause, and if Crowley were a better person he would reach out and put a hand on her shoulder. He doesn’t move. “The house is in my name now.” She manages after a few seconds. “Granny knew how much that place meant to me, so she left me the house.”
They sit in silence for a few minutes, as the chaos of honking and sirens outside acts as a sort of creepy lullaby. It is such a stark contrast, the sweetness of Anathema’s story and the cruelty of life happening in the City outside.
“Do you want to know what she wrote in her will?” She suddenly asks, in the kind of tone that doesn’t expect a reply. Crowley still nods, somehow unable to utter a single word.
Anathema clears her throat. “My dearest Anathema, to you I leave my slice of Eden. May it bring you and the lost souls you’ll find along your path healing and peace.”
Crowley doesn’t say anything, and Anathema breaks the silence again. “Don’t know if you noticed, but all the women in my family are witches.”
He lets out a mirthless laugh at that. “Thought you preferred ‘occultist’.” Anathema hums in agreement, before Crowley speaks again. “Do you think I am a lost soul you found along your path?”
He is not hurt, not really, he kind of fits the description. It’s just hard to be around people who recognize how broken he actually is.
Anathema, someone who never lies, is perhaps the most difficult person to be around and yet, he can’t imagine his life without her. “I do, actually.” It stings less than Crowley thought it would. “I’m just trying to honor Granny’s wishes.”
This time, Crowley lets out a proper laugh. “How gracious, Miss Device.”
Somehow, they already reached their destination, and Crowley’s building is just outside the car. Usually, after an appointment, he bolts out of the car (as fast as his hips allow him) and spends a day or two in isolation, trying (and failing) to write something, anything, and then ending up watching hours of trash television.
Today, he doesn’t move, he doesn’t even reach for the car’s handle.
(“And what if you won’t?”
“I will.”
“We’re so young, Crowley. You can’t be sure of that.”
“Fine, you’re being impossible. How about ‘I would really like to be there to make sure you’re actually living and not losing your soul in your family’s fancy law firm’?”
“That does sound very nice.”
“Just nice?”
“Rather lovely.”)
“Send me some pictures of the house, maybe.”
“Are you serious?”
Crowley thinks about it. “Yeah.” A hand comes up to the side of his face, and he almost takes off his sunglasses before ultimately deciding against it. Anathema will know he is serious either way, he doesn’t need an headache. “I am.”
Anathema’s house in New Dawns, Connecticut, looks just like you would imagine a house in New Dawns, Connecticut, to look like. There is a beauty, and a warmth, in those white walls and forest green shutters that can only belong in a small town.
There is a garden, too. In the pictures Anathema sent him the garden is not in bloom: the trees are naked and the ground is painted with red and yellow and brown leaves, and it doesn’t look sad, which doesn’t make any sense. Crowley doesn’t like fall, and he certainly doesn’t find falling leaves and trees changing colour poetic, because there is nothing poetic about dying (he remembers it all too well).
Yet, this garden looks the opposite of dead. It is the most alive thing Crowley has seen in months, hell, years even. Way more alive than whatever it is that stares back at him in the mirror, anyway.
He wonders how long it’s been since his feet have felt something under than concrete under them, how long it’s been since he felt a leaf crushing under his sole. It’s been a long time, as he loathes Central Park and all the tourists and all the happy people taking strolls. Gosh, he is such a pathetic excuse for a human being, avoiding human contact at all costs and then complaining about having maybe two friends. (One friend, he only has one friend, and she is on his payroll. The other one only exists in his head.)
The windows in his penthouse are the reason he bought it in the first place: big, outrageously big, facing West so that the sun doesn’t wake him the morning and he can watch the sunset in the evening. He loves the sunset in New York, he loves watching how the golden hue paints the skyscrapers and how the city lights up before his eyes. It makes him feel so alive, all that life below him, all that noise that never stops. At least, it used to.
Now, as he sits on his couch with his phone in one hand, a glass in his other and pictures of a garden blooming despite the fall, he is not sure the view that’s unfolding before his eyes is making him feel alive. He’s not even sure when it is the last time it has made him feel like something at all.
It is comfortable, of course, it gives him a sense of security. It’s everything he has known for more twenty years, after all.
Everything he has ever called home, probably, since he’s been away from the Motherland for so long he has started to forget how the wind feels and how the accent of his people sounds like. (That is a lie.) He has never missed it, though. He never missed his family, since it never felt much like a family, anyway. Hell, he missed one thing and one thing only, no point in denying it. It’s not like he can do much about it.
He thinks about what Anathema said about the place bringing healing and peace: going back to England wouldn’t bring him healing or peace, that he is sure of. Why would that small town in Connecticut, though? Writing has always been the only thing that ever gave him some kind of peace, the only thing that could quiet his thoughts for a while, ever since he was a boy and wrote about knights and dragons on his school notebooks. And now that he doesn’t write anymore, save for those random and useless unsent letters, he is restless.
The problem is that very time he opens a new file, he is filled with enormous dread. The panic rises just at the sight of a blank page, and despite his therapist’s best efforts, he doesn’t know why. Therefore, he just stopped trying altogether, and now he doesn’t want to try anymore.
“It’s probably a trauma response.” Dr. Eve had said, and Crowley had rolled his eyes, because that was her answer for every single one of his issues. “Don’t you worry, we will get through this.”
She always uses ‘we’ when talking about his problems, as if he isn’t the one who had to and has to push through every day without falling apart, as if it hasn’t been bloody years since he’s written anything. She is a very nice woman, and a really good therapist, but sometimes Crowley grows so annoyed with her he has to storm out of meetings and ignore her calls for a few days. He apologizes, usually. When Anathema forces him to, at least.
Speak of the devil. His phone lights up in his hand, and he lets a few seconds pass before he picks up. “Hello, witch.”
“Did you see the pictures?” The witch ignores him and gets straight to the point. “What do you think?”
Well, isn’t that a question. What does Crowley think? Crowley is not sure. The pictures made him think about a lot of things. “It’s surprisingly pretty.”
He is met with an offended sound at the other end of the line. “Surprisingly? Did you think Granny didn’t have taste?”
He chuckles at that, just a little but enough to know Anathema is probably smiling. “Granny would forgive me.”
“She would, you know? Probably wouldn’t have baked you a cake, but she would’ve read your cards.” And Crowley can perfectly picture an older version of Anathema displaying tarot cards on a table in a house full of crystals.
After a few beats of silence, Anathema asks the inevitable question. “So?”
Crowley looks at the City burning with life outside his window. Perhaps he is burning too, with something that is certainly not life. Grief, pain, boredom?
It’s been a cloudy day, so the sunset is not golden. It’s just light grey turning into a darker grey, that will inevitable turn into a pitch black sky, without any stars. You can’t see the stars from Manhattan, for obvious reasons, and Crowley is taken aback by this thought. He hasn’t thought about the lack of stars in years, and to think he dedicated his first novel to them. He wanted to be an astronomer, when he was a kid: he borrowed every book about stars and planets he could find in his elementary school’s library, and stayed up night after night reading everything about them. He probably was the only eight year old in London who knew what Alpha Centauri was.
(“Crowley, have you completely lost your mind?”
“Why? I thought you were a romantic.”
“It’s literally November, and it’s bloody freezing out there!”
“I will keep you warm.”
“You fiend.”
“C’mon, angel. Let’s go stargazing.”)
“Can you see the stars from there?” He finds himself asking, surprising the both of them.
Anathema is quick to reply anyway. “Yeah, lots.” Crowley can hear the smile in her voice. “My grandpa used to take me on stargazing dates when I was little.”
Crowley’s lips curl into a small smile as well. Seeing stars again sounds really nice. It’s something he didn’t know he wanted to do before he heard he had the possibility of actually doing it.
“Two months.” He says, before the image of a sky full of stars slips his mind. “What do you say? Til winter ends, and then when the Spring comes…” He doesn’t finish the sentence, but he doesn’t need to, as Anathema is already squeaking in his ear.
“Oh, shit are you serious? Are you actually saying yes?”
“Do not make me regret this.” Another squeak forces him to put some distance between the phone and his head. “And stop yelling, Jesus Christ.”
“Can’t, I am too happy.” She sounds so sincere Crowley feels a surge of emotion in his chest.
At least he made his only friend happy. This may be a terrible idea, but at least he has done something good for the only person from Before who stayed for the After.
“Anthony Crowley, you are going to love New Dawns so much you’ll have to beg me to make you come back here.” Anathema finally says, all giddy and giggly.
Crowley groans: “God you are so annoying, I can’t believe I said yes.”
And it downs on him that he actually agreed to go to New Dawns, Connecticut for two whole months. He runs a hand through his hair, which is now shorter than he ever kept it, and realizes this is either a terrible decision or a really good one. He wants to laugh at that thought, because isn’t that just how every decision work? Either it brings you Heaven or it brings you Hell, since he doesn’t believe in an in-between. He had a taste of Hell, and he really hopes New Dawns tastes better.
(He definitely doesn’t think about the fact that he made this particular decision on the very same day he wrote another one of those letters. He won’t think about that.)
At least there’s nothing dangerous in Connecticut, beside Anathema Device and her hexes (yes, she actually hexes people, it’s a whole thing), and she is on his side. It’s not like coffee shops, gazebos and bookstores can do him much harm, right?
In his ear, Anathema is blabbering about departures details and whatnot, but Crowley only regains his focus by the end of her speech. “Pack your things, ginger. Wheels up in two days.”
He doesn’t know wether to comment on the ‘ginger’ (his hair is copper, thank you very much) or on the ‘wheels up’ (she watches too many crime shows), so he just sighs dramatically.
“Do not make me regret this, Nath. I mean it.”
“Oh, trust me, you won’t.”
New York City, September 15th, 2000
Happy anniversary, angel.
You coward. You bastard. You idiot. I don’t think I ever hated anyone more than I hate you right now.
You know, the City sucks ass, and I hope you’re happy about this. My apartment is not an apartment, just some shoebox in the middle of nowhere with an awful roommates who smells like death, and I make coffee every day for posh bastards that remind me of you.
Fuck, that was a lie. They do not remind me of you at all.
The worst thing is, if you were there, you would make this better. I know you’d find a way to decorate the shoe box to make it look almost nice; you would hang your drawings everywhere, and your books, too, and your stupid weird mugs. Are you still drawing?
I haven’t heard from you since June. I haven’t seen you since June. I still see your face every time I close my eyes, but every day you are more blurry, the exact shade of blue of your eyes is getting harder to remember. At least I can still hear your voice, your laugh, and other things too, when I get desperately sad and lonely and horny as well.
I know I was a bastard when I didn’t answer your calls, I’m sorry about that. I didn’t think you would stop calling so soon. I picked up the courage to calling you back in July, and found out you changed your number. What an absolute bloody bastard you are.
It’s them, isn’t it? They got you back, finally, now that my terrible influence isn’t there to tempt you away anymore. I bet you started working at the firm. I bet you’re the best they’ve ever had. Please tell me you didn’t stop drawing and painting and creating things, don’t let them take that away from you too. You are the most talented artist I have ever fucking met, have I ever told you that?
I am drunk, by the way, if you couldn’t tell. The wine is horrible and your hedonistic ass would retch at the mere smell. We were supposed to be celebrating today, together, but I am alone, so I am getting drunk, alone, in this shithole. I miss you so bad. I’m sorry I didn’t pick up the phone sooner. I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you. I’m sorry I ran.
I bought you a ring, you asshole. And I know you would have said yes, to that.
Planned out the whole thing.
What are you doing, tonight? I hope you’re getting drunk as well, on something better than whatever I’m drinking. I hope you’re thinking about me, and I hope you’re crying as well and I hope you’re drawing something. I hope you’re drawing me.
I still love you, obviously. I don’t think I’ll ever stop. I mean, I think eventually the pain will subdue and I won’t think about you every waking minute of every single day, but I don’t believe I will ever be able put my love somewhere else. What a fucking tragedy, and it’s your fault.
I hate you so much.
Happy anniversary.
I love you.
C.
I guess sometimes we all get
some kind of haunted,
some kind of haunted
And I never think of him
except on midnights like this