#i lend out my crowley copy because it’s my good copy because for whatever reason crowley copies were harder to find than aziraphale copies

[anthonycrowley]

everyone remind me not to lend out my crowley copy again my best friend had it so long she gave it back to me as one of my christmas gifts

[aziraphallist]

the yoke of inauspicious stars

Inspired by this tweet.

*

Crowley’s drunk when it happens. Story of his life, right? He should stop drinking so much.

Except he doesn’t know, at the time, the trouble it will cause. Not just him. The trouble it will cause, in general. More trouble than he ever cared to cause intentionally. (See also: the story of his life.)

He’s with Aziraphale, obviously. That’s probably the root of the problem. It’s—he’s losing track, now, of how many years it’s been, how the humans are counting these days. Though maybe that’s the drink. It’s, what, four thousand years since he sheltered under Aziraphale’s wing on the wall of Eden, watching the first rainfall. Crowley’s been in love with him for all of them. 

Humanity has always loved storytelling. Crowley appreciates each new stride forward, as a rule; stories are knowledge, and Crowley has, historically, always come down in favor of knowledge. It remains to be seen, though, where he stands on the issue of literature.

Aziraphale, sitting in a tavern in Rome, could not be more pleased. Careful to keep his cup far from his prize, he pushes a scroll across the table, practically vibrating with joy.

Crowley concentrates very hard on not feeling jealous that a simple inanimate object can provoke this reaction when he himself cannot. “What’s this, then?”

“Metamorphoses.” Aziraphale says it the same way he will one day say crepes. “Book four. Ovid. I’ve been waiting for a chance to get my hands on a copy, you know.

“Book four?” Crowley repeats, taking the scroll without really intending to. He unrolls the first few inches.

“Of fifteen,” Aziraphale confirms, and Crowley spends a moment wondering anachronistically when humanity will get around to inventing editors. “But this one’s my favorite so far. Oh, do read the second one, there, that’s the best one.”

Crowley can read, though his eyes aren’t exactly designed for it. He can coax them into submission for brief stretches, but it’s taxing, and he doesn’t want to sober up. He hands the scroll back. “You read it to me, if you like it so much.”

This is his second mistake. Third, if he counts the alcohol. Fourth, if he’s feeling particularly uncharitable with himself and tacks on the fact that he, a demon, gave his incredibly stupid heart to an angel four thousand years ago.

But he’s drunk. He almost can’t help himself. He knows it doesn’t mean anything if Aziraphale acquiesces. He merely likes the poem and wants to share it. His capitulation has nothing to do with Crowley except as a captive audience; Crowley has long known Aziraphale likes to hear himself talk.

It certainly doesn’t take much cajoling for him to start reading this one, which begins:

When Pyramus and Thisbe, who were known

The one most handsome of all youthful men,

The other loveliest of all eastern girls—

In the many years to come Crowley will hear a thousand stories like this. In years to come he’ll think back on these verses and think they’re so simple, that so few lines can’t convey the depth of emotion of a play or a novel or a film. But those years are still to come and this is the first love story he’s ever heard, read to him in the voice of the being he has loved hopelessly for more than four millennia. And it speaks directly to him.

He finds himself leaning forward, wine forgotten, as Pyramus and Thisbe whisper to each other through the shared wall of their homes, make a plan to defy their families. His heart, heedless of its own irrelevance, beats a steady pulse in his throat, the story lending it optimism, a borrowed maybe one day. For a brief, absurd moment, the air tastes like freedom.

His fingers clench into fists when Thisbe encounters the lioness. Relax when she escapes. But when the lioness tears at her dropped veil, a pit of ice forms in his chest. His palms sweat; his hands feel weak. Horror makes him pale as Aziraphale reads on, oblivious to the crisis happening two feet in front of him.

“Now Pyramus had not gone out so soon as Thisbe to the tryst; and, when he saw the certain traces of that savage beast, imprinted in the yielding dust, his face went white with fear.” Aziraphale’s voice is steady; he doesn’t even look up. Crowley’s heart thinks he is discorporating. “But when he found the veil covered with blood, he cried, ‘Alas, one night has caused the ruin of two lovers! Thou wert most deserving of completed days, but as for me, my heart is guilty! I destroyed thee!’”

Despite his every effort, a pitiful, animal sound thrashes out of Crowley’s throat. Literature might be new, but Crowley is a suspicious bastard, and he knows how to hurt people. It’s his job. He knows exactly how this story will end.

The way it must end. The way any story like this would end.

Theirs too, provided Aziraphale could ever love him. And for that aching, horrified moment, Crowley finds himself fiercely glad he doesn’t.

“Now the gods have changed the ripened fruit which darkens on the branch: and from the funeral pile their parents sealed their gathered ashes in a single urn,” Aziraphale concludes with a veritable sigh of satisfaction, and sets the scroll aside, only now to gauge his audience’s reaction. “I—Crowley? Are you crying?”

Crowley is not crying. Crowley is furious. Even if his face is wet. Tears of rage don’t count. “Who,” he says, over the screaming beat of his heart, “who would write such a thing?”

Aziraphale frowns at him, leaning closer across the table. “I told you. The author’s name is Ovid—”

“No,” Crowley cuts in, slashing a hand across his face, “Never mind, I don’t mean who, I don’t care who, I mean why? What’s wrong with these humans? Is this what they left the garden for?”

Whatever is happening on his face, it’s enough to alarm Aziraphale, who moves his chair closer still. “Crowley, you’re not making sense.”

“I mean, what’sss the point of it?” There are a thousand different things wrong with this story, a thousand reasons Crowley feels the need to slink into the desert and shed his skin, find a rock and crawl under it for the next fifty years, and he can articulate none of them. Something is boiling inside him, threatening to spill over if he can’t take the lid off the pot, but he doesn’t even know where the fire is. “Four thousssand years practicing free will and they’re no better at it than we are! Worse, even, here they are just, just taking it for granted—”

A line of consternation appears between Aziraphale’s brows. “But it’s not about free will—”

Crowley laughs bitterly. “Everything is about free will, angel.” He thumps a hand over the scroll. “That bit at the end? Where the gods change the mulberries and their parents sssseal their ashes in a single urn. That’s what free will gets them in this bloody poem.”

“For goodness sake, Crowley, it’s poetic!” He draws back, searching Crowley’s face. He’s not only surprised, he’s bewildered. Because of course he is. Because he has no idea Crowley has been breaking his heart over him since the invention of rain. Because he doesn’t see their story paralleled in this one at all. “I thought you’d understand.”

“Poetic doesn’t make you any less dead,” Crowley snaps. Belatedly he remembers the wine and quaffs the rest of his cup, barely tasting it above the ash-and-sulphur burn of rage on his tongue. He ought to give it up. Walk it off. Next time he sees Aziraphale, fifty or seventy or a hundred years from now, he’ll have forgotten all about this.

But that will be fifty or seventy or a hundred years from now. And even here, sore, angry, hurt, even laid bare, Crowley cannot bear to deprive himself of a single moment. “The author,” he begins.

“Ovid,” Aziraphale supplies.

“Whatever.” Crowley inhales unnecessarily through his nose. “The author has free will too, yeah? So he’s writing this poem. Two young people fall in love in defiance of the rules.” Oh, he’s skirting trouble here; if Aziraphale sees him—but then Aziraphale’s been drinking too. “He could do anything he wants. They could get away together. Their parents could change their minds. Thisbe could catch Pyramus before he falls on his own blessed sssword.” He clenches his teeth. The hiss is starting to get away from him. “For that matter, Pyramus could investigate a bit further than a bloody veil before he decides to off himself!”

He punctuates this last with his fist against the table, and Aziraphale jumps. Good.

“But no,” Crowley continues. Bitterness leaches into his words like lead, urged on with the liberal application of alcohol. “Free to give the story any ending he likes, he chooses this one: as punishment for daring to choose each other over family, over rules, the lovers perish.” He scoffs, wishes his cup full again, takes a swig.

“But they’re together in death!” Aziraphale protests. “And the gods grant Thisbe’s last wishes. I think it’s a very romantic notion, to die for love.”

“Maybe if your death would mean the survival of your beloved!” Crowley ripostes, swaying a bit in his seat, furiously willing himself to believe he’s never personally considered that particular inevitability. Because yes—that’s it, that’s what’s getting to him. “But this—to romanticize dying for love, for no reason—it’s deplorable.”

Crowley would do it. He’d fight like heaven not to have to, he’d pull out every last miracle he has. He would do it with very little regret. But calling the idea romantic is an unconscionable sin.

Aziraphale sighs, but it’s fond, the irritation fading from his countenance and leaving behind a trace of softness around his mouth. “Oh, of course you would be a pragmatist.”

Crowley almost chokes on the irony.

It’s pure bad luck that the tavern barmaid walks by just then, and bad luck that Crowley’s so deep in his cups, and worst of all that he’s just suffered through Aziraphale reading him a poem that might as well be called “What Would Happen To Us.” Because what comes out of his mouth next has the force of untethered power behind it, and it changes her life, and Crowley’s, irrevocably. “Might just as well choke to death on lovesickness, if they like suffering so much,” he mutters, mulish.

The barmaid pauses on her way past, then seems to shake herself.

The next morning she’ll wake with rosepetals spilling from her lips, that ache in her chest turned physical.

It will be another thousand years before the same happens to Crowley.

He gets a commendation for it.