Work Text:
All in all, Crowley is impressed.
The place is vast and cluttered, exactly the way he had pictured it from his many rewatches of dubious Regency films. Various knickknacks scattered about on tables or desks, not an inch of free wall among the several paintings. His footsteps are muffled on the thick carpet that, along with the drapes, give the room an oppressive feeling he can't shake loose, as if the still scent of centuries past lingered in the air. He turns to his side only to be met by yet another painting of a long dead noble staring at him over the line of a sharp nose.
"You like it?" Anathema asks, dragging him by the elbow. "Thought the trip would take your mind off things."
It does help.
It's been almost a month that he hasn't been able to sleep through the night, assaulted by pieces and shards of dreams that seem to wreathe their way under Crowley's skin. Vivid sensations where Crowley almost feels as if he's grasping at things that turn sand in his hands when he wakes up, frayed bits of images he's never able to hold. Faint, like the impressions of the brushstrokes of a watercolor painting diluted by water: blond hair, the curve of a round belly, manicured fingernails tapping on a desk. They're never long, these dreams, nor are they particularly scary, but whenever they end Crowley stays tucked in his bed, watching the cracks in the ceiling, feeling his heart seize in his chest. A painful sort of emptiness all around.
"Yeah, 's alright. Never been here before." He pushes his shades up to his hair. "Didn't even know they allowed these sorts of tours."
"Apparently the owner opened it to the public very recently after coming back from the States," Anathema says. "I just found out about it last week."
Crowley hums, dragging a finger along the edge of a lacquered table. "Where are we, exactly?"
"The countryside," she says with a smirk.
"Cheeky. I mean what's this room?"
"The drawing room, apparently."
On a nearby table he sees the polished glimmer of a pocket watch. It's in perfect condition for something Crowley suspects must have at least two hundred years tossed aside. The sweep of a feeling rises and twirls within him when he fixes his eyes on it. When he thinks of taking the pocket watch with him, of brushing a finger along its curve and feeling the cool, smooth metal under his pad, as if it was a familiar thing his skin craves to feel again. Carefully, he examines it up close, sees the piece has the words A. Z. Fell carved on it. Probably the former owner, and for a handful of seconds the walls get smudged, a dolly zoom of a moment, until he can almost see a broad, soft hand curling around the watch with infinite care. Crowley's fingers tingle to reach and grasp the mirage.
"How was your date?" Anathema asks then, cutting off the image.
Crowley shrugs, blinking a few times. "Alright."
"Just alright?"
"Yeah, I mean… I talked. He talked. Said goodbye. Don't think I'll see him again."
"Why?"
"Because," he says tersely. Anathema rises a brow over the line of her glasses, arms crossed around her chest, and Crowley knows his answer is about to turn into a full-down monologue. He fights the urge with a vicious bite of his cheek. "'Cause 'm not interested. He isn't-"
The word is coming up, Crowley can feel it clawing its way out but he shreds it behind his teeth, hides the flush of his face looking at a small mantlepiece.
"Ah," Anathema says. "Yeah."
She knows him well enough to read his disappointed silence. And it's ridiculous, really, there's no reason to feel like this. He's dated men, alright, several in the last couple of years but has never been able to shake off how wrong it feels when it ends. Tacky, short-lived affairs.
But soulmates aren't for everyone, even if that's what people choose to believe. Well, fuck. He isn't everyone.
Crowley forces the thoughts down with a furious swallow, ignoring the drifting graze of a thought that tells him his hopes aren't as crushed as he pretends them to be.
He closes the space to the other end, leaving Anathema behind admiring a collection of silver snuff boxes. He's half entranced by the display of the ceiling when the shimmering gleam of the frame of a painting calls his attention to a portrait almost concealed next to a mirror.
When he swings closer, it's with the pull of something tight at the bottom of his stomach. Steps taken inevitably forward.
Crowley can hear his own sharp intake of air.
It's the portrait of a man that he sees, eyes drawn by the art of a master to follow the viewer wherever they would go. Crowley's heart thuds behind his ribs, makes his blood rush in his ears. He watches the soft tufts of blond hair, of the kind Crowley believes would be easily dishevelled if someone would run fingers through it, tug to get a good feel of it. The artist's brushstrokes had defined a face with soft, generous lips, an upturned nose and round cheeks, but the eyes - storm-fraught blue - are the ones that catch Crowley's gaze like a magnet. Under the slanting light of the morning, they seem almost liquid, glowing alive. Crowley has to make an effort to draw breath. He traces the whisper-thin lines around the mouth, in the crinkles around the eyes, evidence that the artist has been skillful enough to show the man as more than a dead image. Part of who he was, etched in the picture. How he probably laughed, and a strange thought flits through Crowley's mind, wondering about the sound of it, of how it might have rang in his ears if he had been there to hear it. Crowley's taken by the sight, enough it takes him a minute to flick his eyes down to the cut of the clothes, the cream hue of the coat.
Enough that it isn't until Crowley takes a step back that the detail falls into focus. There, around the man's ring finger, the unmistakable mark of wings outstretched carved in the skin, much like the one Crowley sports in his own finger.
It's...
In a second, the ground becomes quicksand beneath him, the clasp of vines squeezing around his ribs that force his breath out in a painful sputter of air. Because this man, this man that is nothing but smeared painting on a canvas dried more than two hundred years ago, has the same mark… the same mark…
This man, long dead and buried, is no other than Crowley's soulmate.
He feels his muscles jolt at the idea.
It can't be. It surely can't.
He throws himself closer, presses his face forward until the only thing in his line of sight is the man's hand, the wings on it, and yes, there, clear as day, is a perfect replica of the same lines on Crowley's skin.
There's a mistake, of course. Here. Somewhere.
He could laugh. Or cry. Or perhaps a bit of both, but the only thing he does is blink against the sheer impossibility of it.
Because everyone knows soulmates are bound to find each other, eventually, bonded pairs never appear too far apart. Like a tide inexorably reaching the shore, two people with the same mark tend to orbit each other, bridging yards, miles.
But time isn't as easy to hopscotch over.
Even if it's nonsensical, Crowley had always entertained the idea of finding his soulmate, sharing their lives together and learning how special it really was to get to feel that connection. Unparalleled, as people say. But this… if this is real, it could only mean that there's no one out there waiting.
There had never been.
"Crowley? It's everything okay?" Anathema asks him, but he grasps only half the sentence, grunting as assent.
He can't tear his eyes away.
A hand wraps around his shoulder. "Crowley-"
"Look at the man's finger," he says. Gravelly. Mouth absolutely parched.
Anathema steps forward, inspecting the picture, until there's a soft noise of unbridled surprise.
"That's impossible," she says. "There must be some kind of mistake."
"Is there?" He has to brace against the wall. Unyielding and uncomforting in a moment like this. Hard, too hard. "Is there, really? Thought fate didn't make mistakes. You said so yourself. We all have soulmates waiting, yadda yadda ."
"Yeah, and now is the time when you choose to believe what I say? I thought you said that was rubbish ."
"Not really in the mood for technicalities, Ana." There, on the wall, is the proof of why he has always felt so much like straw tossed to the wind, a boat without an anchor.
In the logical recesses of his brain, he knows there are people all around the world who die without ever meeting their soulmates, even if technology is making this almost unheard of, nowadays. Ads being posted bridging gaps. Much as he had done, always without an answer. It had seemed pathetic to keep trying after the tenth time.
And he had wanted to believe that no matter thirty years had already passed in his life, he was going to find them. Out there. Later, rather than sooner.
Apparently he's wrong.
"C'mon." Anathema grabs him by the hand. "We need some answers."
She threads through the long corridors of this warren of a place, dragging Crowley along in a daze, until she reaches the entrance where a man stands on duty.
"Excuse me," she says.
The man turns to meet them. "Yes?"
"We need to speak with the owner of the house."
"Young lady, I'm afraid it's impossible, he's busy right now-"
"But he's here right?"
"Y-yes, but-"
"Then we won't go without talking to him. It's urgent and extremely important."
Through the fog of his shock, Crowley thanks that sharp edge in Anathema, relentless, which always gets her what she wants. He sees the man shrink under her gaze.
"G-give me a moment, please."
While they wait in the foyer of the manor, Crowley wonders about the man in the picture. If the walls that surround them saw him pass in a hurry, if the floor echoed the click of his boots while he disappeared through the long corridors, if the light bounced off his curls. He wonders if, just like him, he had searched for Crowley, the ghost of a person who never appeared, who was bound to never show up no matter how hard he looked.
It's a sick play of time and his stomach churns at the idea.
"What's this about?" an annoyed voice with a clear American accent says behind them. "I'm Gabriel Messenger, the owner."
Crowley turns around to see a bloke with a grey suit and square jaw stand there with a frown on his face.
"Nice to meet you," Anathema says. "My name is Anathema Device and this right here is Anthony Crowley. We've been touring through your house today and I gotta say, the collection is impressive."
"Thank you, but I don't see-"
"I'm the curator at the Pembroke Gallery in Derbyshire, and I was wondering if you could answer some questions about some paintings. Maybe in the future the Gallery could arrange a loan from you for an exhibition, which would be very convenient for you. Don't you think so?"
Crowley tries not to flinch at Anathema's lie.
"Ah," Gabriel's lips curl in a smile. "Yeah, that sounds nice. What do you guys wanna know?"
After an hour of interrogating Mr. Messenger, Crowley has learned that the man in the painting was Aziraphale Fell, Earl of Northumberland, cousin to Gabriel's ancestor, the owner of the manor. He had lived from 1728 to 1769, when he had died in his bed, with no heirs to claim the title and no spouse to mourn him, according to some letters from the collection of the house. Typhus, the letter had said and Crowley's heart patters on, painfully. There hadn't been any other bit of information regarding him, even if Crowley had googled him incessantly.
That night back in the nearby town, after a small dinner Anathema forces him to eat, he sneaks in his own bed, sheets cool on his skin and thinks about the day. About Aziraphale. About that soft, lovely face and pale curls. About the tilt of his mouth, the elegant angle of his shoulders. Something tells him the dreams that have plagued his mind until now are linked to this man, somehow.
It's strange that the name, the face of a person he hasn't met can rattle him like this, can have his body awake and riled up. Blood roaring in his ears. What's the worst that could happen if he keeps digging? What's the best outcome? It doesn't matter how hard he obsesses about the subject, no power in the world would bring the person of Aziraphale to the present. It's pointless to torture himself like this.
And why would he want that? What tells him that even if they had met, things would have flowed easily between them? Being someone else's soulmate doesn't erase the weight of one's life and sins and virtues.
It's true there's a certain affinity that makes any interaction less jagged, for what he had heard, but Crowley isn't as much of an idiot to let that brand of easy romantic propaganda to drill into his mind. He forcefully shuts down the words of the people he knows telling him that finding a soulmate is like finally seeing the world in its warm, golden splendor; that feels like resting after a long, tiring day. Like finally being able to breathe. He pointedly ignores that aching longing in the hollow of his chest he'd felt throughout his life.
Crowley doesn't need that. He doesn't need fate to dictate who should or shouldn't love. Which is fucking appropriate, because apparently that ship has sailed for him.
The night is calm and warm, and the mattress is soft and inviting. Crowley's legs feel heavy, lush with the exertion of the day, and he lets the tension of the last hours bleed out of him. He can feel the strain of the unknown bear on him, on his skin, and his lashes flutter shut, the smudged darkness of the room falling away.
A soft sigh. The hoot of an owl outside.
Crowley is in a brightly lit room, flowers adorning the sides of a desk where a man with golden curls sits, frantically writing a letter. The carpet underneath Crowley's feet is thick enough that Crowley's footsteps are barely heard, and he wonders, idly, if the man would be terribly cross if he finds an intruder in his home. Crowley clears his throat, but the quill in the man's hand moves swiftly and unbarred, as if he hadn't heard him. A loud sort of curiosity blares inside Crowley and he closes the space looking over the man's shoulder, knowing fully well it's not a thing he should be doing.
His eyes focus slowly on the words.
I'm afraid I've failed you this time, my darling. I haven't been able to find you. On quiet nights I wonder where you might be, in which bed you may rest and sleep, without me. We could have had a life together, but fate is a cruel mistress that has deemed it isn't our time to meet. Wherever you are I gift you a star, Vega, bright from my window as I write. Seek out to me, dearest, Altair in front of you, and forgive these silly attempts at talking to you even if I can't hear your voice, or see your face.
And perhaps, never will.
I feel myself grow ill as the hours pass and the physician has told me that I probably won't survive the winter.
I would have loved to have had the chance to hold your hand and watch the heather in bloom.
A.Z Fell.
An unbearable ache digs into Crowley's heart, a suffocating despair that tangles, rises and blows open inside him, all of him caught off-guard by the intensity of it, by how strange and out-of-body it feels.
Crowley sees the pale hint on the man's cheeks, the way his eyes, dim and weak blue, look across the room at a lost spot at the other side of the wall, his mouth twitching in a rueful smile. The winged mark Crowley knows so well, engraved on his ring finger. Crowley's heart squeezes at the thought of Aziraphale, because he knows without a glimpse of a doubt this is Aziraphale traipsing alone in this house. Waiting for an inevitable end. Crowley launches forward, tries to command his body to move, to hold him, to ask him a question just to enjoy the way his voice flares aloud, but he's pinned in place. Forced to watch as Aziraphale disappears behind a door. As always, out of his reach.
He wakes with a startled gasp, shirt soaked in sweat, a hand reaching forward towards the empty expanse of his room, where there's nothing, nothing at all. His lungs sting with the need to breathe. It had been a dream, only a dream. His mind falling through the hope of seeing this particular man, again.
Kicking the covers away, he sits, sinking his nails into the heart of his palms. How different his life might be if he knew Aziraphale was out there waiting for him, how different Aziraphale's life would have been if Crowley had made an appearance in it. Perhaps he wouldn't have died in his forties. Perhaps he could have enjoyed the gleam of quiet afternoons sitting on a chaise next to Crowley. Perhaps now, in this life, Crowley could have hoped to get home only to see him and enjoy the simple gesture of hands bundled together with someone he loved.
It was only a dream, if different from the ones he's had until now. Only the result of spending so many goddamn hours fixating on a dead end. He rubs the curve of his chest, hard, pressing, trying to ground his thoughts with the movement, trying to bat away the painful ache behind his ribs.
He won't squander his life like this. Living in this suspended disbelief of all hope, waiting for the impossible to happen. And what exactly is he expecting?
There's a life he's already built and this changes nothing. He won't chase stupid daydreams that are meant not to become anything more than disappointments.
When the morning comes, he pleads to Anathema not to talk about it ever again.
It's been almost six months and life carries on. Dreams fall back into blurred emotions that make Crowley wake up always hours before dawn unable to remember anything, to pull at the strands of it. Worse now in the outcome of being able to name what lies beyond them. He doesn't get to see the man- Aziraphale again, not as vividly as that time on the countryside, but he knows the memory is worming into his mind, becoming a neurosis he can't escape from. That name always ready at the tip of his tongue whenever he sees his couch empty and mourns for the presence of someone he hasn't met. For the soft, comforting shape of a body that will never share this place with him.
Work, as always, is a blessed escape.
Friday has come around the corner and he hurries along the sidewalk to meet Anathema for some sort of gallery opening she has been excited to attend. A collectionist's treasure of paintings, never shown before, open to the public.
He ties his cashmere overcoat tight around him and saunters inside the building, spotting the long velvets of Anathema's skirts from a yard away.
"Hey," he says, tapping her shoulder. "So, what did you drag me into this time?"
"Oh shut up. Don't fuss. You're gonna like it. There are lost Monets, Durers, Goyas and even a Da Vinci." She whistles. "Fancy."
"Mmm. Sounds interesting. Where to?"
"There, just around that corner for starters."
This time, he drags her with him, because he isn't about to get lost in the middle of all these people.
The paintings are alright, if he has to say it, lots of interesting stuff to admire from behind a plexi glass. With a wine glass in hand, Crowley focuses on the art, not giving one iota of his attention to the hubbub of the people around. He hears Anathema prattle on and on about ridiculous details of every single piece of the collection, and he allows it, because teasing her about this particular hyperfixation is only going to spectacularly backfire on him later, when he's deep down into his gardening books and shares something with her, he knows.
The hours have come and gone in a tranquil spread, and perhaps he will be able to sleep tonight, but then Anathema gasps loud enough to draw Crowley's eyes to the single point she's watching on the wall.
The Da Vinci.
And… it's- it's him , Crowley, right there . Or someone who looks eerily similar. A bloke with dark glasses and a black doublet, holding an apple and the edge of a book.
"Is it-" He's breathless, of course he is, life shouldn't be a constant of surprises at this level. "Is-"
For how she's gaping, Anathema seems to think the same. "Holy shit, dude."
"Fuck, fuck . Is it real?"
"Pretty fucking much."
"What- what do you know about this one?" He asks in a rush of air.
"Not much. There's not a lot of info being so old. Private commission. Circa 1500, nothing else. That's all the leaflet said."
"Is it-" Crowley mutters again, because he can't wrap his head around the idea.
"It can't be," Anathema says.
And yet there, on the ring finger, clear as day, Crowley can see the mark of wings so similar to his that for a moment the focus of the room fades, and he only sees the man in the drawing looking back at him through the centuries. Through a vast expanse of time that stretches like a taunt with things he doesn't know.
Will never know.
He pushes Anathema aside, and stumbles out of the room, hailing a taxi as an afterthought.
He needs a drink. Fuck. More like a whole bottle of whiskey. And perhaps the answer won't be at the bottom of a glass, but Crowley would give anything to stop thinking. To stop entertaining flashes of questions for things that have no answers. The drink burns his throat when it goes down, but he swallows it all, gobbles up the rise of that sour thing that creeps up, searing his neck. Who was that person? Was it really him? Is this even possible? He's thrown back to myriad shows and books about the improbable concept that life isn't a single opportunity. Could this be it?
When he lands on his bed, his grasp on the tumbler going slack, he has already drunk enough that the buzz of the city fades, his heart pounding from the sheer confusion of it all.
The glass slips from his hand like a dead weight, and he doesn't care even if the whiskey stains the rug. Sleep clings to his lashes, pushes them shut, and he can't tell where his legs bend or his arms stretch, his body a line of unmoored numbness that sails adrift...
He's sitting at a small table, the round shape of an apple filling his hand. It's ripe for a bite, he thinks, but he won't do it, won't move, his other hand curling around the sharp corner of a bound book. Crowley's looking forward, and he feels the corner of his mouth drawn up in a smile that tries by all means to be nonchalant and enchanting.
"Do stay put, dear," a man says and Crowley finally fixes his gaze on him. On the gentle lines around his mouth and his eyes. "I'm almost finished."
"Eh, I don't understand what you're trying to accomplish here, Leonardo." His own voice comes rasping out of his mouth. It's his, Crowley can tell as much, but he has no control over the words. "It's not as if this is going to help me find them, though I appreciate the effort."
"If I manage to include it in my next exhibition, perhaps someone might see it," Leonardo says. "Perhaps someone might recognize that mark of yours. It's better than putting you on display like a dead chicken at the market, is it not?"
Crowley scoffs. "Oodles better, I would say."
"Then shut up and let me do my job," Leonardo says and Crowley can hear the smirk in the words.
The silence fills with the scratch of charcoal over paper, but Crowley's heart hammers, pulses in his throat.
"Why do you care?" He asks and he's grateful, because in the crevice of his conscience there are still doubts that know no peace.
Leonardo says nothing for a moment, until the charcoal stops moving. "Because a life without love isn't a life at all and I want to believe that time stays long enough for those who use it. There's still time for you, if you try."
Crowley doesn't answer, and his heart trips a little with a hope that feels foreign. A hope that he has never harbored here and now.
He blinks against the warm glow filtering through the windows, until the space vanishes in a daze, and Crowley startles awake with a thrum in his head and his heart beating brutally in his throat.
Dreams hadn't been as pervasive as this one that follows him through the day, punctuated with the incessant beeps of Anathema's messages that he won't answer. Not yet. He won't talk about this if he can help it.
Eventually the weather warms.
It's been almost four weeks and Crowley is almost past that abject hope that is almost as poisonous as the vicious reality of knowing he is alone.
He'll wade through that feeling. He has a whole life ahead of him to wrestle it into submission.
Crowley's starting new habits, borrowing books from the library to fill the spaces of the nights he spends quietly in his flat. It's a new one today. Some sort of Shakespeare's works analysis with new evidence dug from within some diaries recently found.
He leans back against his Tenreiro sofa, a glass of wine dangling from a hand and reads through the pages. He reaches a section about Hamlet and he's about to skip it - not really a fan of it, him - when his eyes swivel down to a sentence that punches him in the solar plexus.
As successful as the play was, it's possible to read the rather fair complaints the Bard had over the lackluster response to the script by one R. Burbage. In words of a letter addressed to one, Mr. Aziraphale Fell, 1601, he notices-
Crowley almost bends over the book, swapping a glance over the name that seems to haunt him since that wretched day at the manor.
This time there's room for a bit of logical denial. Surely, it must be someone else. Crowley snaps the book shut, tosses it on the coffee table. The beginning of a headache creeps at the back of his skull and his hand lingers over the bottle of whiskey before deciding to switch to water.
He drinks from it, starving. How common can the name be? Not so much, now. Christ. People have less fear of God in their veins, nowadays, to prevent them from christening their babies with something so blatantly religious. But in the past, who knows? The last name doesn't escape Crowley.
He lays back on his bed that feels too empty, too wide. He doesn't want to believe it's the same person, but he can't convince himself to accept it isn't. What does this mean, exactly?
Staring at a dead point in the wall, Crowley's brain surfs through a haphazardly arranged stack of conclusions. Bits of information that must have formed at the back of his mind when he wasn't looking.
It's as if Aziraphale and he had been forced to tour time alone. Cyclical appearances, bound to never cross paths. For some reason, fate has denied them this over and over and over. Pushing their presences in this world decades - centuries - away from each other. And each time the blank slate gets refilled with the same hopes and fears and it's vicious, really. What kind of bastard plays such a game?
Through the window, Crowley can see when the sun melts into the line of the buildings, splashing in burgundy before it becomes dark.
He feels as if he has run a marathon. When his head hits the pillow, he falls asleep without delay.
The grass in front of him is as green as the leaves in the trees, and when he looks around Crowley can see a throng of people with clothes that are far outdated. Top hats, gloves, canes, frock-coats and dresses that reach the floor in severe blacks and gentle cream hues.
He moves a hand before his own eyes and finds it gloved, the feel of a cane between his fingers with a snake at the top end. This is St. James Park. He recognizes the pond, recognizes the ducks. But he can't pinpoint the feelings that bursts inside him while he stares silently over the shrubbery. A burning in his chest, a desperate, aching longing. When he slides his hand into his pocket he finds a folded paper there. With bated breath, Crowley tugs it open, eyes skimming over the words, over the writing that it's his very own.
I dreamed about you again today, angel. Saw your gorgeous face focused on a book, those natty little glasses of yours falling down your nose. A different era this time, but your face never changes. I keep looking for you, travelling all around, and I wonder if I'll ever get to meet you. My sister Bea keeps telling me that I ought to marry, soulmate or not, to "fraternize" at least, but I can't bring myself to do it. Is it possible to love the memory of a person I haven't met? I see the world around and the only thing I think about is how much I want to experience it with you, to know you, the composite image of all you hold close. Did you dream of me? Do you?
Am I ever going to see you? Hear you say my name?
The scribbled note stops there and suddenly Crowley gasps for a breath he doesn't need, the point of his focus melting on the pavement when he thrashes, only for his eyes to open wide, wetness prickling at the corner of his eyes.
Dark, dark all around.
He can't keep living like this. In this edge of a world that is and another that exists only in the blurred, unassailable space of his mind. Dreams, memories. It doesn't matter, nor does it make a difference.
Crowley needs to excise this from him, from within, not knowing if it's even possible. What can he gain to keep on living with the ghost of images that only remind him how alone he's supposed to be?
He traipses to the shower, letting the searing hot water wash away the sweat, the ache, the tears that he doesn't acknowledge. He won't acknowledge.
By the time the night creeps into dawn, he has come to a decision.
The manor looks as impressive as it was the first time. Crowley makes his way to the room, harboring a swarming rush of emotions that render his innards to slivers.
His heart hammers in his chest when he reaches the portrait. The beautiful image of Aziraphale Fell hangs in front of him with a smile that will never fade. Crowley clenches his teeth, keeps at bay the vicious, sour taste grating at the back of his throat. Because he knows, he positively, absolutely knows what's going to be different this time. In every single iteration he had been able to feel the red-hot pulse of his own hopes, unquenched, even when hoping was an absurd, ludicrous thing to expect. It had been there in every dream.
Crowley worries his lip between his teeth, lets his head fall between his shoulders, and releases the thread that had tied to him the idea of open arms at the end of the day to press into, and hold and kiss and breathe in a shared life. The imperfect way of fitting together in a familiarity that would know no bounds.
"Look," he says, voice cracking like a reed. He’s speaking to a painting. Christ . "It was never going to work between us, angel. I go too fast for you, or- or- you for me, and you keep missing our stops. I wanted to believe time was on our side but I can't keep doing this." He swallows a gulp that scorches him, runs a hand through his shock of dark red hair. "It might've been nice to meet you- get to see you smile for real. Hear you say my name. Some time. Perhaps one day."
The space seems to hold a breath.
"Or- or perhaps now," a strange voice says behind him, oddly wavering.
When Crowley turns around, the tug at the pit of his stomach is overwhelming enough that he almost trips over his own feet.
The eyes that look back at him shine with recognition.
"Anthony, isn't it?" Asks tentatively the man standing in front of him, and Crowley can see the way those storm-fraught blue eyes gleam. Rose-gold hue in his hair when the light strokes the curve of his head, of his cheek. "I- I dreamed of you. Of this place."
The inexorable steps he takes forward have Crowley blinking rapidly against the sight of him. Because Crowley has either gone mad or- or Aziraphale is finally here, talking to him, and his voice is a soft lilt unlike anything Crowley has heard before.
"I'm sorry for making you wait," he says, closer. So close there's only a hand-breadth of a space between them. "I saw you here in my dreams, in this house, talking to me, like this. I've been looking for you."
"It isn't possible," is Crowley's first reaction over the riot of his heart, words slightly airy, panicked and frantic. " I've been looking for you. Posted ads- a whole lot of crap and pictures of my mark to see if you replied and you never did-"
"W-well, I'm not that good with technology, never thought of looking there, and the mark, our mark-" Aziraphale's words trail off, and he raises a hand, an offering for Crowley to touch him, shows him the wings on him, "I don't know how to say this, but I did remember. Every time. Every life. I remembered that I couldn't find you. I remembered your face in countless dreams…"
" What ?" Crowley's mouth falls slack watching the smile from Aziraphale that is pure light. Pushing away the fog of that realm where dreams had been everything he had had.
"For better or worse, I wasn't able to forget what I had learned, and it grew to be this constant ache-" Aziraphale closes his eyes, his mouth tilting unhappily. "This time around I was afraid of not finding you… but most of all I was terrified of finding you. Finally." He closes the space between them, and Crowley can feel the warmth of him through his cream coat. "Because you see," that broad, strong hand takes Crowley's fingers, "I'm foolishly and utterly in love with you." Crowley can't breathe, struggles to draw air. "And I couldn't bear the thought of- the thought of-" Aziraphale looks down, bites the words back.
The contact is a blessed spot of sensation and in the short span of a moment Crowley can feel how real Aziraphale's words are, so strong it makes Crowley want to smile to the walls, to bounce on his feet, to open his arms, and hold and kiss and breathe in a shared life.
Crowley wants to live as if everything before had been nothing but a trial run. This is the real deal.
"I-" Crowley squeezes Aziraphale's hand. "You're here. You're real."
"Very," Aziraphale says.
And when he presses his mouth to Crowley's, soft lips sliding with a tingle of a breath, the pile of memories of past lives unravel in the recesses of Crowley's mind.
There's more. So much more. Troves of sequences where they never met. Places forgotten on Earth where Crowley had lived alone and had dreamt and dreamt of Aziraphale. When he had learned to love him without even seeing him.
He had been wrong, Crowley thinks while Aziraphale digs his fingers through his hair, pulls him closer by the waist, because he had never been alone, he had loved his soulmate despite time playing against them.
And this. This moment. This first, tentative touches of both of them finding their bodies, their heartbeats, is nothing else but resuming a love that started in- in- Rome, with dreams of a man in a white toga. Or perhaps far far back.
Crowley doesn't care. He has Aziraphale now and he kisses him not wanting to let go, until his lips pulse, until he can taste salt on his tongue from tears that are shared, probably.
"I love you, fuck, I love you," Crowley breathes, delirious, clings to Aziraphale's arms even harder.
"I've missed you, my heart," Aziraphale says. "Oh, Lord, I can't believe you're finally here."
Crowley has a life to convince Aziraphale he's home, they both are.
Because he knows, he's positively convinced that time stays long enough for those who use it.
And they are.