The Birds and the Bees
Title: The Birds and the Bees
Fandom: Good Omens
Characters: Adam Young (an antichrist), Satan (a fallen angel), Mr. Young (a father), Pepper (a girl), Mary (a girl)
Rating/Warnings: PG-13, for...adult-ish situations and topics? Nothing explicit, though.
Disclaimer: Good Omens belongs to Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, not me, and I'm certainly not making any profit from this story.
Summary: In which the Antichrist gets caught in a rather embarrassing situation, and receives The Talk from two very different fathers…
The Birds and the Bees
In which the Antichrist gets caught in a rather embarrassing situation, and receives The Talk from two very different fathers…
Adam stared at his father. His father stared at him. Adam blushed and removed the bra that had somehow become draped over his head when his girlfriend had thrown it, and hastily handed it to her. He laughed uneasily.
“Well, at least you hadn’t come in a bit later. Then that might have been her other underwear,” he said. If he was going to go down in flames, he might as well do it with style.
“Adam!” Mary hissed indignantly from behind his shoulder, as she was hiding behind him to protect her modesty, or at least what was left of it. She was still unable to hold back a slightly hysterical giggle, though. Adam’s dad blushed and looked away.
Some dads would have just laughed and closed the door behind them, then congratulated their sons later. Mr. Young just wasn’t one of those dads. He did, however, back out of the room slowly, muttering something about taking the garbage out, happy places, and Mary being clothed and gone when he got back. Oh, and evidently he and Adam were going to have a Talk.
Adam sighed and reached his behind him, running his fingers through his girlfriend’s hair in what he hoped was a comforting manner.
“I s’pose you’d better go,” he said.
Adam looked determinately at the space just over his dad’s left ear. His friends had told him that The Talk was one of the most painful things he would ever experience, but at least their dads weren’t Mr. Young. Or the Devil, for that matter. He’d almost rather get The Talk from his real father. At least Satan’s ideas about acceptable relationship practices weren’t fifty years out of date.
His adoptive dad was as bad at keeping up to date as Aziraphale, though Adam supposed the angel had a better excuse for having a hard time keeping up with what was current, since he was actually older than time. Mr. Young was only fifty, but he acted like someone much older, smoking pipes and wearing suits on the weekends like he did.
In contrast, while Satan rarely visited earth except to see Adam (after they’d had a little chat about what were and were not acceptable demands to make of one’s son) , he liked to keep up to date when it came to the latest trends in sinning, and was surprisingly well-versed in contemporary human culture (1). Of course, he was evil, so his version of the sex talk would probably include something about virgin sacrifices and demonic orgies.
“So anyway,” his dad was saying, shifting his weight from foot to foot in an embarrassed way as he spoke, “the point is…the point is that AIDS is one of the leading causes of death for young people these days. I would hate to lose you in such a horrible and, er…pointless way. And I say pointless, because it’s preventable if you use…um, protection…”
Dad, I’m the Antichrist. I can’t get sick unless I want to, Adam tried saying. His dad just continued talking as if nothing had happened, though, so he assumed he hadn’t gotten up the courage or idiocy to say it out loud. And other people think the secrets they keep from their parents are big…
“…And besides. Um. Your mother wanted me to tell you that she really doesn’t want you to go to Hell, and you might if you go around…er, defiling young ladies all the time.”
Who refers to sex as ‘defiling young ladies’ these days? Adam thought, wincing a little in contact embarrassment (3). Even so, he was starting to feel a little sorry for his dad. He wasn’t as into religion as his mom was; in fact, he avoided going to church whenever he could get away with it. If he had failed to deliver this message, though, he would have faced disappointed looks and badly prepared meals for a week, and that was actually a big punishment for someone with his life.
Mum, I’m actually the Antichrist, so there’s no need to worry over my soul, since my soul’s already in Hell and it’s not all that bad, really.
His dad just kept talking, awkwardly and semi-inaccurately quoting several Bible passages that had to do with chastity and the sanctity of marriage. Adam assumed this was a clue that he hadn’t said that out loud, either. He sighed. Telling the truth would probably just get him a trip to the loony bin, anyway, even if having everything out in the open would be really convenient when it came to avoiding talks like this.
He gritted his teeth and bore it, resigning himself to pretending to listen until his father ran out of embarrassing things to say.
Right. This might take awhile.
***
(1) You didn’t become the leader of the first ever revolution by being a slacker, and though Satan was suppose to be The Embodiment Of All That Was Evil In The Universe, sloth was one sin that he’d never gotten the hang of. In fact, he was so up to date with human culture that he’d become a Queen fan in the seventies, and made sure everyone who left their music in the car for more than a fortnight was too, whether they liked it or not (2).
(2) Besides the wonderful increase in wrath this caused worldwide, the ‘Best of Queen’ curse had the added advantage of reminding Crowley that Beelzebub did, indeed, have a devil set aside for him. He still hadn’t quite forgiven him for that whole Apocalypse thing, even if he had promised his son that he wouldn’t hurt the demon too badly.
(3) Contact embarrassment was one of the lesser-known perils the damned faced when consorting with heavenly influenced beings. While Mr. Young wasn’t exactly heavenly, he had the kind of laid back, incorruptible personality that would have reminded Crowley horribly of the excruciating boredom he’d endured in Heaven, and that was almost as good.
Part two: Satan
Unfortunately, The Talk with his other father came much sooner than he expected or wanted it to.
Satan just materialized beside Adam as he was walking to Pepper’s house the day after The Incident. Adam, to his credit, didn’t start too badly when his father suddenly appeared beside him, but then again, he was used to it. To the Emperor of Hell, social courtesies were optional, at least for him, and he almost never gave forewarning of visits.
“I could feel your embarrassment from Hell yesterday, Adam. Whatever could have happened?” he asked in the innocent, slightly amused tone of someone who very well knew what had happened.
Adam rolled his eyes.
“What were you doin’? Spyin’ on me?”
Satan’s beautiful face, which looked a lot like Adam’s when he was in human form except a couple decades older and with glowing crimson eyes, stretched into something like a smile. His smiles were charming, but there was always something slightly empty about them. He’d gotten better at expressing amusement that wasn’t the result of somebody’s pain in the five years he’d known Adam, but not much. Immortal beings were a lot more impervious to change than mortal ones. Human years were like eye-blinks to Satan in comparison to the span of the rest of his life, after all.
“Well, you felt terrified, and as I knew nothing in the physical world could harm you if you didn’t want it to, I was naturally curious. So yes, I did spy. Bible quotes, Adam? Maybe I should hire him to torment adolescent souls for me.”
“Well, you’re out of luck. I don’t think he’s ever even jaywalked, so he’s probably not down for Hell.”
“How boring.”
Adam just shrugged. His adoptive dad was boring, but that was one of the things he appreciated the most about him, especially when he’d been around his real father for too long.
“So anyway, I’m here to add to your torture,” Satan said matter-of-factly. Adam glared. “What? It’s not like Young even gave you any practical advice-”
“Oh, that’s okay, really. I-I think I can figure it out on my own,” Adam said hastily.
“Oh believe me, you think you can, but then you’re trying to explain to them just why they were so bored when you obviously had a lot of fun-and then they want to know where the hooves came from.... It's really embarrassing when you're supposed to be the embodiment of evil and forbidden pleasure and all that, and then you can't even hold on long enough to--
“Stop! Please,” Adam said, mortified.
“What? Being handsome only goes so far with human women,” advised his father, who looked even more sadistically delighted at Adam’s horror than he did when he was using baby bunny rabbits for football practice (1), “though it definitely helps. If you can give them an orgasm or two-”
“Father-” Adam insisted.
“-you’ll be a lot more popular. Of course, it doesn’t matter as much if you're married to them already, because then being bad at sex will just be one of the many things they’ll want to fix about you, but if you’re sleeping around, you don’t want to get a reputation of being bad at it.”
Adam could only stare at him.
“…Did you just give me relationship advice from souls who were damned because they were selfish bastards who preyed upon delusional women? Pepper says the world’s full of ‘em,” he said with somewhat dazed amusement.
“Well, it’s not so much advice from them, as it is advice based on what they told me about their lives under torture. But yes.”
“Father, they’re damned.”
Satan gave him a slightly condescending look that said, well obviously.
“So am I. So are you.”
Adam raised an eyebrow.
“Did it ever occur to you that they might not give the best relationship advice, though?”
“Yes, but I have to encourage you to lead a life of sin and debauchery. It’s sort of my function in the cosmic scheme of things.”
“Sin and debauchery aren’t nearly as fun when you have parental permission, though,” Adam said patiently.
Satan made a noise of reluctant agreement. Seeing that profoundly pissed-off look on God’s usually benevolent face when he had declared war on Him had made falling worth it, really. That, and becoming the emperor of his own realm.
“Fine. You have a point. You’ll still want to take a look at this gift I got for you, though,” he said matter-of-factly, handing him a book that he’d materialized out of thin air.
Adam took it curiously, and went slightly red in both embarrassment and interest when he opened it to a random page.
“Right. Er…thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“…Can women really bend that way, though? I mean, I know I couldn’t bend that way.”
Satan leaned over to look.
“Oh believe me, they can. In fact, that’s one of my favorite posit-”
“Alright! Couldn’t you just give torturing me a rest, for awhile?”
His father gave him a sidelong glance.
“Why ever would I do that?”
Adam floundered, feeling desperate.
“If I banished you from Earth again, you’d lose face with your evil demon army!” he blurted.
Satan glared.
“Really,” he growled dangerously, no longer in such a good mood at the reminder of their first ‘meeting’. He was still slightly resentful that Adam’s powers were greater than his own while they were on Earth. He didn’t think it was quite fair that his son had the ability to banish him with the demonic powers he had given him.
“But look on the bright side,” Adam said hastily, sensing how quickly his father’s mood was plummeting, “you already did such a good job of tormenting me, that it’d be really hard to top it, anyway.”
“…I did, didn’t I?” Satan reluctantly conceded, offering him a slightly less thunderous scowl, which practically meant that he would almost be smiling at him in a minute or two.
“Those were some horrible details,” Adam said agreeably.
***
(1) They do have football in Hell, both American and European (2), though no matter where you’re from, your favorite team always loses.
(2) Demons have created their own variations of both games. They sometimes use real feet for authenticity’s sake, though heads are much easier to kick into a goal.