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Anthony awoke, impossibly cold.
A reach toward his love, the sweep of a searching hand against that of a woollen, knitted blanket. Though his grasp remained empty, and the covers below had long grown cold. How strange.
Only then, did he peer between the cracks. Even still, he could not see, for the sun had yet risen behind the blinds. How impossibly strange.
An exasperated groan, and a languid twist of his spine, a shared endeavor toward his alarm clock.
His husband was quite the early riser, while Anthony remained the night-owl of the pair; this much was evident. However, he was a tad unsure of where three after midnight lay upon such a scale. Whose territory was this? Neither, he concluded swiftly. They should both still be in bed, limbs tangled by one another, their hearts a synchronized rhythm against that of pittering rainfall.
From below the layers upon layers of fabric and wool, out the man slithered. Barren and bereft of his typical routine, Anthony was nothing but a creature of habit. Years of placed bricks built a home, and if one brick were to miraculously disappear from all existence, the home would topple. And Anthony quite liked his home — and by metaphorical association, his routine — upright.
Where the hell was he? A better question: why was he not there with him? What could possibly entertain that daft man at such an hour?
Well. That’s it, then. Anthony had just made it his personal mission to drag him back to bed. Even if physical measures were brought into question.
Clad in patterned pyjama pants and adorned by fuzzy slippers alike, the man trudged from their shared bedroom. Not quite shared any longer, it appeared by the likes of it. For, apparently, it was quite all right to abandon your partner in the midst of the night. Abhorrent, obscene, the very idea.
How unfair, as Anthony rubbed the skin of his arms, but a desolate means of warmth. How unfair, how he’d been abandoned, tossed to the cold. How unfair— Oh. It seemed as though he'd forgotten his glasses; he’d realized in his endeavors for a light switch. Gah, buggard. Well, he’d blame his husband for that one, as well.
Despite his absolutely horrid vision, Anthony needn’t glasses to traverse his own home. Their home, which they’d resided in for the better half of a decade. Every nook, every cranny. Every fray of the carpet, every bulb with a slight flicker. Every book and every plant. Every stoop of their steep stairs that Anthony clambered downward. Which was the very reason why, Anthony wondered, he — his husband, his lifelong partner — thought it was quite all right of him to simply renounce their decades-long routine. His slippers met the last stair with an audible mumble of displeasure.
But, oh. Asa, Asa, Asa. The name repeated behind his eyes, upon the tip of his tongue, a mantra of his love. How gorgeous that man was, through weary eye and blurred focus. Even just the shape of him, seated there, upon their couch, surrounded by their things. Anthony was terribly irate with him, but oh, how terribly handsome he was.
“Oh! Hello, dear, what are you doing up at this hour?”
The man raised his cup to his lips — by all means the ugliest piece of china in the history of all things porcelain; white, strangely tall, and a pair of wings in place of a handle — still steaming from the kettle.
“I could be asking you the very same.” Anthony sauntered vaguely toward that handsomely plump figure. And as he drew nearer, the clearer that image grew.
Toussled from sleep, that daft head of blonde had near grown white in the time he’d known Asa. Though he was sure his own had begun to grow much the same. A bittersweet moment, before he soon returned to his rampage of ire.
Anthony situated himself upon the couch. Or, perhaps, for lack of a better word, threw himself backward upon the cushioned surface, limbs strewn about every which way.
Asa began, with a click of his tongue, “I awoke from the silliest of dreams, and, well— I found myself unable to fall back asleep, I’m afraid!” Upon instinct, an engraving of a years-long habit upon his muscle, Asa wrapped a careful arm around Anthony’s shoulders.
Anthony still had not forgiven him. No, of course not. Anthony Crowley was no easy man. If either of them were easy, it would be Asa, most certainly.
But Anthony was cold. So very cold, while Asa ran warm even in the dead of winter. There was only so much math one man could do.
As if he’d been a lizard, who never once felt the warmth of their sun, Anthony settled in. He collected his limbs into a neat ball — arms to his chest, and his knees as well, while his slippers lay abandoned against the carpet. And with his face, burrowed in the crook of his husband's neck, now pleasantly warm, he spoke, “Ngk, do tell, angel.”
“That’s the thing! I was one!”
Maybe, just possibly, Anthony was an easy man, he thought dismally. Without a glance, without even peering open his eyelids, heavy by sleep or lack thereof, Anthony could plainly see that smile. He need neither sight nor eyes to see it. The crinkle in the corner of his eyes, where crows rest their feet. The folded line from his lips to his nose, etched from years of practice. Oh, and those dimples. He’d never forget those dimples.
And it seemed as though it were quite infectious. Terribly so, as Anthony fought back that pull of his lips. “Oh, yeah?” The words murmured into Asa’s neck were soft, impossibly so.
“Yes! And you were a demon!”
Anthony snorted, “Must be your subconscious telling you just how darn terrible I am to you. Aren’t I? Just terrible?”
Asa cradled the crown of his head with one hand, as if Anthony were just as delicate as the porcelain within the other. As if he were quite possibly the most precious thing in the universe. Fingers danced, intertwined between the curls of red, and Anthony is sure there is no purer love than the one he bestows upon him.
Anthony was an easy man; an unavoidable fact, no matter how he denied it, for he had long since grown limp in the arms of the other man.
“Oh, quiet!” Asa swat the back of his head as though he were some ill-tempered animal. It was a gentle, meaningless thing. Though, nothing would ever stop Anthony’s dramaticism. This much was evident, with the hiss he exclaimed in place of a proper response.
“Terrible, you are.”
Anthony hummed, “Fine, fine. Do carry on.”
“No, you’ve embarrassed me,” whined Asa, who had just placed his mug against the side table with an audible clink.
Anthony was not one to beg. He did not plead, and yet, “Please? You know how I love your stories.”
“Well… Alright.”
Asa’s voice had that way about it, as it always had, when he’d begun to tell a story. Fiction, or non. Of his own endless creativity, or a retelling of something that had occurred that very day. It was always the same. His voice rose an octave, intensified, as his brain worked to choose the right words, worked to pull them from his own personal dictionary. And quite extensive that dictionary was, he must say. Even he had to look up a new word once in a while. He swore, sometimes, that Asa must have one of those silly daily word calendars from which he learnt these.
While Anthony was a scholar, Asa was a poet. Both held expertise in their own areas.
Just thinking about them, their love, and their own individual lives, the warmth of appreciation swelled within him — for them, for each other, and the life they had built. Anthony sighed, as contentment flooded him. With pricked ears, he listened in, just about as intently as anyone could listen.
“I was an angel with some peculiar name, though, I cannot for the life of me recall what it was. Oh, well— hmm, perhaps it started with an A? Maybe a Z somewhere?” Asa waved his free hand, “Unimportant, regardless. Though your name remained much the same— Crowley, plenty demonic enough already.”
That earned him a laugh, to which he mirrored.
“Quit it! I’m trying to explain!”
Anthony mumbled a most sincere apology.
“And, well. I was tasked with guarding the Eastern Gate, while you had been tasked with tempting Eve to the apple. You were a serpent, though hereafter, you were a demon? You looked exactly like yourself, anyway, with wings, black as anything.” Asa paused, briefly, “You do know what the Eastern Gate is, yes?”
“Asa,” Anthony hummed, “You seem to have forgotten, we both have significant religious traumas. Only, you insist upon collecting various kinds of Bibles while I prefer to bury my trauma deep down where no one will ever find it.” He lifted his head, only just, to kiss the side of Asa's neck, as though it had been a sort of apology for his jest. “Yes, I know what the Eastern Gate is.”
“They’re not just any Bibles, they're misprints! Antiques! They're… worth something, I presume!” Asa mumbled, as though to plead his case.
“And let me guess, you had a sword, flaming as anything?”
“You wouldn’t have to guess if you quit interrupting me!” A pause, and Asa continued, “... But, yes, I had a sword. And I— I gave it away!”
“You what?”
“Gave it away! To Adam and Eve! They were in the midst of escaping, anyway. And I thought, well, she was expecting already— and there were vicious animals out there!”
“‘Course you did!” Anthony could not help the laugh that escaped him.
Asa huffed, “My, I tell you, my subconscious’s image of you is not much far off from the real you. You— Crowley— gah, you know what I mean— made fun of me much in the same way.”
“Oh, that's just gold.”
“No! Was not, as you say, gold!” Asa shook his head, reached for the mug once more, and helped himself to an audible sip. “Anyway,” he cleared his throat. Just as he always had, just when he’d gotten to the “good part” of a story. “We were sworn enemies, obviously. But we kept meeting, every couple of centuries or so. We couldn’t help it. It was like— a magnet, I the positive, you the negative, north and south, polar opposites— we couldn’t help but come back to each other, time after time.” He trailed off. Was that a hint of whistfullness, burrowed in the spaces between his words?
A lump swelled at the very back of Anthony’s throat. He swallowed it down as quickly as it had risen. “That's… dreadfully sweet, angel.” His voice was quiet, too much so. Though if he spoke any louder, he was afraid it would break. He wasn’t quite sure why.
“Isn’t it?” Asa sighed, a far-off noise. “It would be, more so, if we hadn’t continuously mucked things up!”
“Mucked things up?”
“Yes!” Asa exclaimed, “I’d do the bad thing, you’d do the good. While it was meant to be quite the opposite, indeed! It gets a bit fuzzy toward the end, but there was a prophecy, I believe? The birth of the son of Satan, and the coming of the End Times?” Another sip, “As I said, all a tad fuzzy.”
“Sounds a lot like us,” Anthony snort, “Accident-prone.”
“Because we are human. Accidents are in our very DNA. But them— they’re angel and devil, they’re not made to make mistakes. They’re just made to—“
“Go along with their own sides, best they can?”
“Hmm, I hadn’t thought of it like that. Sounds quite… lonely. No wonder they kept searching for one another,” Asa shrugged, “albeit subconsciously.” Another sip, “But they weren’t like us, at the very same time.”
Anthony hummed an inquisitive noise, a quiet encouragement to continue.
“They had to leave each other. Can’t seem to remember why, though…”
“Well, that answers that. They’re nothing like us,” Anthony kissed the underside of Asa’s cheek.
“Whatever do you mean?”
Another peppered kiss, “You’re not going anywhere, and neither am I. You’re stuck with me.” And another.
Asa gave a pleased hum, “Indeed.” An absent-minded breath, and he continued. “But I just cannot stop poring over them.”
“How long have you been up, angel?”
“Better half of two hours, give or take.”
“Hmm,” Anthony began. He’d shifted in his spot now, and thus, finally lift his head from his dear husband’s shoulder. Tired eyes met much the same, and he continued, “Sounds to me like you should get back into writing.”
“What?” Asa near gasped, as though Anthony had just omit the most scandalous of things, “How ridiculous! I haven't written since— Oh, my… Since my college years!”
“Bah!” Anthony waved a hand, as his knees fell from his chest, “So what? You’re just a tad rusty, is all. Throw a little oil to the machine, and she’ll run just fine.”
“Well, I suppose…” Asa hummed. Anthony could see it now, as he bit the inside of his cheek. A nasty habit, one he swiftly ceased with the palm of his hand, flat against the skin there, “But… what if people don’t like it?”
What came next was nothing less than the truth: “Like it? Angel, if anyone likes it, just a quarter the way I love you, they'll adore it.” The pad of a lithe thumb against the corner of Asa’s lips softened that furrowed brow.
“You really think?”
“‘Course I do. I love you, and I love your stories. I cannot possibly be the only one.” Anthony then shrugged, “Even if it doesn't take off, I know someone out there will adore it just as much as you and I. At least then we’d both be published authors— successful or otherwise.”
As though a sudden light brightened behind his eyes, Asa perked up, “Right! That's it, then! I think I may!”
“Oh, delightful.”
As much as he adored his husband — his stories, and his antics — Anthony also quite enjoyed his beauty sleep. While he was overjoyed by the fact that Asa would begin to write again, he was also thoroughly delighted to return to their shared bed.
And, he assumed, that they were about to do very much that, as the pair stood in unison. Until — wait — why was Asa heading away from the stairs? What — in the blazes?
“Angel?” Anthony barked as the image of his husband grew blurrier and blurrier, the further he padded through the home. Much like a dog begging for table scraps, “What’re you doing?”
Asa had turned a corner, now, and Anthony could no longer see even the vaguest image of him, “Angel!”
A moment, filled by the noise of various, distant shuffled noises, and Asa swiftly returned — what was that he was holding now?
“I must get to writing, dear boy!”
Oh, Lord. Oh, dear God, no.
“You’re not thinking of using that blasted thing, are you?” Anthony hissed, though beneath harshness, a playful tone remained, “You’re a lunatic!”
It was, exactly as he last remembered it, exactly what he’d thought it to be: Asa’s decades-old typewriter. An antique, as he had so eloquently described it. However, over the course of their relationship, Anthony soon learned that Asa frequently called anything old and very much beyond the point of use "antique."
“I will! And I am!” Asa situated the wretched thing against the coffee table, and himself back upon the couch.
Anthony would not stand for this. He loomed above his husband, with the most severe face he could muster, “Angel, it is now nearly four past, and I have grown quite tired.”
“Then head to bed without me, my dear,” Asa began, unfazed, stubborn, “I must begin, while it’s all still fresh in my mind!”
No matter how he loathes to admit it, desperate times call for desperate measures, and thus, “I cannot sleep without you— the whole bloody reason why I came downstairs in the first place.”
“Then, by all means, sleep on the couch beside me, dear boy!”
Anthony hissed, and yet, he found himself seated once more. “But that thing screams blue bloody murder every time it’s used.” He wasn't sure just when his head had come to rest, against Asa’s thigh, while his gangly legs dangled off the armrest.
“I’ll try my best to keep it down, love.”
“You’d better,” Anthony grumbled.
Asa hummed. Though not a hum of his usual sort. It dipped toward the end, a downward, saddening curve.
“What is it, angel?”
“Well… only thinking of logistics, and all.” Asa began, as he ran paper through the busted old thing, “I’ll have to flip one of their genders. Hmm, Aziraphales, possibly— that’s the name I’ve decided.”
“Why would you have to do that?” Anthony’s eyes snapped open, a furrowed glare toward his husband.
“Logistics, as I said. It is… substantially difficult for a novel surrounding such— queer ideals— to succeed. To even be picked up in the first place!” Asa sighed, “Doing so will just make things easier, I’ve concluded.”
Anthony shook his head in disbelief, “Hold on, just a moment— you’ll be doing none of that.”
“But—“
“No, none of that,” he waved a dismissive hand, “Why write a story that you don’t want to write? You change their gender— it’s just not them anymore.”
“Well—“
“Are you ashamed of us?”
Asa gaped, “Why, of course not! What a terrible thing to ask!”
“Then you shouldn’t be ashamed of them,” Anthony said, and promptly shut his eyes. “Stop worrying about what people might think. People need a story like ours, angel. Like theirs. The people who are ashamed to be themselves. People who need a little push to accept who they are.”
“I hadn’t… thought of it quite like that.”
“Now you have.” Anthony sighed, turned his head, until his cheek met the warm body below. Muffled, his words came now, “And I’d better have a beautiful prologue with wonderfully queer angels and demons to read with coffee by morning.” Unsure of when his eyes had closed, each word was slower than the last, “Compensation for the impending exhaustion.”
A quaint laugh, an idyllic moment, “Of course, dear boy. Sleep well, now.”
And, besides the incessant clicking of a machine strewn long past its extinction, Anthony very much had slept well.
Anthony could not stay mad at Asa. Not for very long. Irritation would be forgotten by morning, replaced solely by a swell of admiration. For all he was, for all they were.