Without giving a fuck of rationality or good sense, without caring about the strangeness of the blonde's face or the confusion that was shown in those blue orbs that brought him lots of unexplored memories, the redhead just throws an atypical nervous smile before lashing the window of his balcony and flee tripping over with little dignity.
As soon as he got to his room, he dropped onto his bed as an intense headache reminded him that he was still drunk but now mixed with a jumble of memories that he found no explication.
"What the hell was that?" He asked himself with a last straw of consciousness before drowsiness made him fall into the deepest stage of sleep.
[…]
He looks for something desperately, something he doesn't know what it is but is too important to disappear among the burning flames and the scorching heat of a fire.
He feels the fear running through his veins until it becomes panic and his heartbeats against his chest in an almost superhuman way as he begins to throw pitiful sobs into the void.
"Aziraphale, Aziraphale!" He shouts almost to the beat of the flames and the paper fluttering almost with mocking parsimony in the catastrophe. "Aziraphale!" He shouts again, refusing to let his worn-out hope die.
Finally, he falls to his knees on the ground when he realizes that what he loved most has been taken by the fire. He feels his voice break by the lump that has formed in his throat, and although he does not admit it, bitter tears are running down his cheeks.
"Someone has killed my best friend!" he cried with his will broken into a million pieces, knowing that in that heartbreaking phrase there is a hidden truth, Aziraphale was not his friend, he was his... Everything.
"Bastards, you bastards all!" He yells into nothing but cursing everything. More sobs escape from his throat with mournful suffering.
He has lost everything, shattered into ashes.
"Aziraphale!"
That last painful plea awakens him from that overwhelming nightmare that looked like a distant memory.
He tries to calm his ragged breathing as he clings to his sheets in an attempt to stay grounded in reality.
He runs a hand over his face and realizes that he was sweat-drenched as if he had actually been in a fire although he knows that this is only the part of his nightmares.
When he finally feels enough strength to move his legs, he gets out of bed and moves almost like an automaton into his living room. He glimpses through the window of his balcony that that unusual encounter with his neighbor, the blond stranger, who is reading, oblivious to any movement other than the passing of the pages of his book.
"Aziraphale," he whispers, and that name feels so sweet and familiar in his lips as if he's meant to say that word from the moment he was born. "You seem to be quite a riddle," he murmurs, fascinated, like someone who finds a mystery worth solving, however difficult it may seem.
And what a coincidence! Crowley has never said no to a challenge.
[…]
He spent the whole morning looking at nothing, thinking about how to get to know more about the enigmatic blue-eyed man from whom he only knew his name.
When he was about to hit his head for some inspiration, an idea came to him that would have sounded ridiculous on some other occasion but, with boredom at its peak, seemed like the best idea ever conceived.
Tearing a sheet of paper from an old notebook, he made with professional accuracy a paper airplane and when he considered that his work was already done, he launched it, delighting for his accurate aim when the paper toy fell on the opposite balcony.
From that moment, any sheet of paper becomes the perfect tool for that amok plan that sounds more like a childish prank.
It only takes about thirty minutes for the blue-eyed blonde's balcony to be already flooded by several paper planes, so he launches one last plane and apparently that one was lucky, because it collides against the balcony window, calling the attention of his neighbor.
His neighbor's reaction was to suddenly drop the book he was holding while gasping in amazement, after all, it's not usual to find your balcony full of multiple paper planes.
He bends down and takes one of the several paper planes that surround him and after adjusting the reading glasses he was wearing; he reads the message that seems to be written between its folds.
"Meet me at the balcony"
It's not until that moment that he directs his eyes to the front and sees his neighbor with dark glasses watching him expectantly from his own balcony.
Crowley, meanwhile, just looks flabbergasted as his plan appears to have worked and a mischievous smile forms on the redhead's lips upon knowing his goal accomplished.
"Hi." Crowley greets him with unusual nervousness and the blonde waves his hand in greeting.
At that moment, Crowley forgets how to introduce himself or if he should apologize for yesterday's hit-and-run encounter, so he decides to improvise.
"Nice glasses," he says. "Are you an idiot, Crowley?!" He mentally chides himself and runs a frustrated hand down his face, blaming himself for his clumsiness.
Aziraphale just laughs and it's at that moment that Crowley can see his neighbor in detail, those blue eyes that didn't envy at all the most shining jewels, his reading glasses that fell gracefully through his nose, the blond hair that seemed to shine under the sun, that mouth that to his lustful side seemed too kissable, or his laugh, as smooth as silk that seemed to combine with the singing of the birds around him.
He just looked like an angel.
"My name is Crowley, and it seems we are balcony neighbors." He said with renewed confidence that Aziraphale laughter seemed to have injected into him.
"My name is Aziraphale." he introduces himself with such solemnity that he seems to be a gentleman of ancient times (and actually he does, with that anachronistic way of dressing that made him look like the last century but that, somehow, managed to fit perfectly to the 21st century) "But that's something that, apparently, you already knew."
Crowley tenses immediately, not knowing how to react to that correct accusation.
"How do you know my name?" The blond asked with a small curious smile.
Crowley just bit his lip without daring to answer the question. How to reply to a question to which even he couldn't find an answer? He smiled at him instead in an attempt at tense coquetry as he pressed his hands against the railing of his balcony, trying to control his agitation. "I have my methods." Was what he answered vaguely.
The blue-eyed only laughed, apparently, without fully believing the redhead's response.
"It looks like I'll be locked up here for a while, and you seemed like a very interesting person to talk to," he whispers to him in gallantry, but everything is thwarted by another small laugh from Aziraphale.
"Oh! Me being interesting..." he says, unable to believe it.
"I don't know why you doubt it, you really are." and unlike other times he's flirted, for the first time he's being honest.
Another laugh of Aziraphale, along with a shy smile and everything Crowley knows is no longer his because now everything belongs to Aziraphale, just like that, with a simple smile.
Because to him, that smile has completely caught him. That has now made Aziraphale more intriguing before his eyes.
What he doesn't know yet, is that he was already completely helpless.