Happy Holidays, nomnomnim!
Title: The Way Things Should Be
Author: a edna_blackadder
Recipient: nomnomnim
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3,711
Disclaimer: Good Omens belongs to Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. No money is being made from this, and no copyright infringement is intended.
Summary: Adam doesn’t believe in messing people about, but when he likes people, he wants to make them happy.
Author’s Note: I was rather spoiled this year, with two prompts I was only too happy to write, and so of course I had to go and complicate things and try to get both of them in (and I’d have happily attempted the third, but being American I’d have had to research it). The result is odd. I hope it works. Thanks to sarcasticsra for the beta.
August
Aziraphale was bewildered. When Crowley had said, ‘Bring bread,’ he’d naturally assumed the bread was for the ducks. Instead, the demon was sitting, finely tailored suit and all, on the grass in St James’ Park, well away from the duck pond, with a picnic basket full of cold cuts, cheese and condiments. He was leaning against the trunk of a luxuriant tree, and he patted the ground next to him. ‘Hi, angel.’
Aziraphale sat down, a trifle warily. ‘Hello, my dear.’ Crowley passed him a napkin, on which he had scrawled something in black ink. ‘Act like everything is normal,’ Aziraphale read. Crowley groaned, and Aziraphale blushed as he noticed what was written under it: ‘And don’t read that out loud.’
‘Sorry,’ said Aziraphale. ‘Er...lovely weather, isn’t it, then?’ He forced a cheery smile, which only made Crowley look even more pained.
‘Never mind,’ said Crowley, but then, under Aziraphale’s glare, he visibly softened. ‘Sorry. My fault. I should have explained. Let me tempt you to some wine.’
Aziraphale hesitated. ‘Are we being watched?’ he asked, as quietly as he could.
Crowley started to shake his head, then seemed to reconsider the gesture, stopped, and settled for a shrug. ‘Not in the way that you’re thinking,’ he said, ‘but quite possibly, yes. That’s why I asked you here, actually. It’s an experiment.’
‘An experiment?’ asked Aziraphale, not at all sure he liked where this was going. ‘Would you be so kind as to explain what sort of an experiment this is?’
‘Well,’ Crowley began, and then stopped, in the manner of someone who has just realised that what he was about to say made a lot more sense in his head, and sharing it might be regarded as a bad move. Aziraphale counted the seconds, then smiled as Crowley shrugged and pressed on, just as Aziraphale had known he would. Aziraphale smiled. Crowley’s dogged persistence was just one of many things that Aziraphale loved about him, even as it was still odd to think of his feelings in such a term, one that was divine in theory but, in practice, felt uncomfortably human.
They had been very drunk, of course, when they’d kissed, one week after That Saturday, a single week in which they had spent more time together than ever before, bordering on every waking hour. Crowley had stopped by the bookshop, constantly, for no reason other than because he wanted to, and Aziraphale had welcomed his company. After six thousand years of the Arrangement and eleven years of working much more closely, that they should suddenly go back to living largely separate lives just because there was no longer an Apocalypse looming had struck both angel and demon, separately, as wholly unappealing, even as neither dared to articulate it. Until, of course, they had celebrated the First Week of the Rest of Their Lives by going through bottle after bottle until they had collapsed together in a fit of drunken contentment, each seduced by the other’s irrepressible smile into admitting what, as recently as that afternoon, they had not even dared to think. They were partners, they loved each other, and they belonged together.
They had agreed, without a word spoken, to take things at a snail’s pace. Crowley had referred to making the effort once and flushed deep red as he’d done so; the subject had made both him and Aziraphale uncomfortable because of how inescapably human it was. Humanity had undeniably changed them forever, but they were still a demon and an angel.
In effect, their relationship had not actually changed much at all. They went to the same places they’d always gone; the only difference was physical contact that, though perhaps only slightly increased in reality, felt exponentially so because of the intimate warmth between them, always present but now increased to a nearly palpable strength.
They had been doing their best to hold off on the physical contact in public. Since That Saturday, there had been no communication from Heaven or Hell thus far, but that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be, and neither Aziraphale nor Crowley wanted to provoke any. Apart from a rather short-sighted definition of ineffability and an even more short-sighted disregard for the wonders of Earth, there weren’t many things on which Above and Below agreed, but Aziraphale and Crowley knew that both would heartily disapprove of them, for equal and opposite reasons.
But their fears were beginning to seem unnecessary. The summer was nearing its end; they’d forgotten themselves on more than one occasion and nothing had happened. And the times they had forgotten themselves, it had been all too easy to do. Wherever they went-parks, museums, cafés, concerts-everything had always seemed just as it should be. It was almost idyllic.
It had made Crowley suspicious, as he had been explaining for the last five minutes. ‘It’s too neat,’ he concluded. ‘That’s why I asked you here. It’s supposed to rain today. Is it raining?’
‘There are dark clouds on the horizon,’ Aziraphale pointed out.
‘But not here,’ said Crowley. ‘Nothing but sunshine over our heads. Ideal weather for a picnic. If you were designing an advertisement for picnic baskets, you’d want an image exactly like this.’
‘Not exactly like this,’ said Aziraphale. ‘One could lose the ants, for a start.’ He winced as the offending insects, which had been crawling into their picnic basket since he’d sat down and probably before, curiously explored Crowley’s plastic wrapping.
Crowley shook his head. ‘No, ants are traditional at a picnic. I said ideal, not perfect. We have ants, which are a minor inconvenience, but the sort you wouldn’t feel right without. Ants at a picnic make it more interesting. Rain, on the other hand, would ruin it. Today, we’ve got ants, but it isn’t raining, despite the fact I just saw lightning across the pond. Besides,’ he added teasingly, ‘I thought you angels were supposed to love all God’s creatures.’
Aziraphale sighed. ‘So you’re saying you think that something, or someone-’ he broke off, suddenly realising which someone Crowley must suspect. Someone who would undoubtedly be in favour of ants at a picnic but opposed to rain, someone whose idea of the way things should be was grounded in brightly illustrated children’s stories, someone whose fierce love of his own corner of the world had shaped it to just that ideal. Crowley nodded. Across the pond a full-on thunderstorm was brewing. The storm clouds had extended themselves over the pond and towards Crowley and Aziraphale, but stopped abruptly about twenty feet away. Over their heads the sky was blue, and the sun was as warm as any August.
‘He might not even know he’s doing it,’ Crowley said thoughtfully. ‘And I suppose it’s hardly something to complain about, having an all-powerful being shielding us from all harm. I just wanted to know for sure, is all.’ He smiled, then leaned over and placed one hand on top of Aziraphale’s. Then he leaned in closer, lowered his voice to a whisper and said, in a tone that made the angel shudder in a most pleasant way, ‘It certainly explains why no one seems to have noticed anything. Now, how about that wine? As long as we’ve got our own personal island of summer, we might as well...enjoy it.’ Crowley punctuated this suggestion with a soft kiss, and Aziraphale beamed.
*
Forty miles away in Tadfield, Adam Young did indeed know what he was doing. Well, sort of, anyway. His conscious mind was focused on his role as the evil pirate captain in the Them’s latest game. He and Pepper were busy blowing holes in the enemy ship, also known as R.P. Tyler’s hedge, while Wensleydale and Brian served as look-outs.
Adam had Tadfield, and didn’t want any more of the world than he’d got. Tadfield would always have snow at Christmas and long hot Augusts, as long as Adam Young had anything to say about it, and the Them would always have the run of it, or as much of the run of it as they could have without actually running it and messing people about.
But there were some people, and some entities, whom Adam cared about, and considered his, who weren’t in Tadfield. Preferring to exalt in the thrill of pirates and spacemen and chasing rabbits with Dog and not doing what he was told whenever it could possibly be avoided, Adam left the humdrum business of looking after them to his subconscious mind. So, while Adam had not meticulously plotted out an isolated spot of warmth and sunshine in the middle of thunderstorm in central London, the tiny part of his mind that occupied itself with ensuring that none of his people met with boredom, dismemberment by the forces of Heaven and/or Hell, or picnics without ants was still Adam Young, who was never without a sense of humour.
But while Adam was not busying himself with actively dictating the mundane events of his friends’ lives, which he fancied rather fell under the category of messing people about and in any case was very boring, he was planning something.
Well, not yet. But he would be, as Aziraphale and Crowley would discover. When the time was right.
December
Anathema and Newt had sensibly decided to take their Christmas holidays early and avoid the rush. The couple had set off for Spain in mid-December and intended to be back in time to enjoy Christmas at home, not that Jasmine Cottage was especially warm, cosy, inviting or in any way ideal, apart from being home. Whatever Newt’s opinion of the occupation of professional descendant, he had to admit that being able to gloriously quit working as a wages clerk, courtesy of Anathema’s inherited fortune, was an advantage. Anathema, for her part, did not miss being a descendant, and was quite looking forward to starting work as a part-time lecturer at Norton Polytechnic. Pepper’s mother had recommended her for a post at the university after reading her thesis on history’s unsung inventors, and she had passed her interview easily.
If Anathema had chosen to continue being a professional descendant, she might have had an inkling of the significance of her current predicament. If she and Newt had read Further Nife and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, they would eventually have come across this passage: ‘And ye sharl have peace, goodwille towards menne, when Redde can not approche the Rainbow’s Ende.’
As it was, she knew that something was up. The airport, like all airports, was full of tense people radiating negative energy. Their thoughts swamped her, but at the moment, she was rather distracted by all the frantic beeping. She was waiting to go through security, and Newt had stepped through the metal detector.
Or rather, Newt had attempted to step through the metal detector. The moment he had put his foot under it, it had short-circuited with a minor but dramatic explosion that had sent him flying backwards. He had landed none too gracefully on his bottom, and he and Anathema looked likely to be landing in handcuffs fairly soon. The security forces had questions, which were less questions and more panicked, shouted accusations. Newt’s Spanish wasn’t up to the task of defending himself, and Anathema, who had dodged her foreign language requirements with courses in Middle English, could not help him.
The line got longer. The other metal detectors were discovered to also be suddenly, inexplicably out of order. Travellers cursed in Spanish and English. Flights were delayed.
A striking red-haired woman stood behind Anathema and Newt. To the men, she was striking because she was beautiful. To Anathema, she was striking because she had the most negative aura of them all, and also because Anathema was certain that she had seen her somewhere before, though her mind was engulfed by a fog every time she tried to remember where.
Everyone wants to put on a show at Christmas, and Carmine Zuigiber had intended to turn a minor territorial dispute into a full-blown war between two major European powers that, in her opinion, had both been much more fun in the 16th century. Red had never had trouble getting through airport security. The metal detectors always went haywire, but she always managed to slip away while the guards fought over who got to pat her down.
Tonight, though, she wasn’t going anywhere. Worse, her weaponry had been rendered defective after the young man currently under fierce interrogation had accidentally bumped into her in line.
When it became clear that the problem would not be sorted out, War had no choice but to leave in a fury. And after she left, the guards’ supervisor appeared and informed Newt and Anathema, in perfect English, that they were free to go, and would be upgraded to first-class seats as an apology for the inconvenience.
The first-class seats came with personal televisions. Newt’s didn’t work. He didn’t mind, as he was too busy being enormously relieved not to have been arrested.
When Newt and Anathema arrived home, later than expected, they found a note taped to their front door. The note was short and to the point. It read, ‘Christmas Day,’ in Adam’s unmistakeable handwriting.
*
Aziraphale and Crowley also received an invitation. Unlike Anathema and Newt, they had never seen Adam’s handwriting, but they recognized it all the same.
The invitation was taped to the door of Aziraphale’s bookshop, and Aziraphale found it mid-morning, while opening his shop embarrassingly later than usual.
Over the past autumn, he had learned to sleep, at Crowley’s insistence. Aziraphale had tried sleep once, in the 17th century, but he hadn’t taken to it in the slightest. That, he knew now, as he trudged back upstairs towards a still-sleeping Crowley, was because he had tried it alone.
Aziraphale reached his sparsely furnished, newly-existent bedroom and drew back the curtains, allowing sunlight to flood the room. Crowley stirred, then blinked, then sat bolt upright and groaned, clutching his head.
‘What’s wrong, my dear?’ asked Aziraphale, with real concern. It was hardly the first time he had seen Crowley react to a wake-up call with something rather less than enthusiasm, but it was the first time that waking up had ever appeared to make him physically ill.
Crowley shook his head. ‘I think I may have forgotten to sober up last night. Is this what a hangover feels like? And if it is, why in somebody’s name do they continue to drink?’
Aziraphale couldn’t help chuckling softly. If looks could kill-and in Crowley’s case, they probably had-he would have been lying on the floor. Crowley began to wince, but Aziraphale put up a hand. ‘My dear, why don’t you let me do it?’
‘Huh?’ asked Crowley, stopping mid-wince.
‘I’m an angel,’ Aziraphale reminded him, climbing into bed next to him as he did so. ‘If I do say so myself, healing is something that we do rather well.’
Crowley smiled. It sounded nice, and it felt, as he quickly discovered, even nicer, as though a wave of comfort emanated into his body, gently expelling all illness and injury. From now on, he decided, if he ever so much as stubbed his toe, he would come to Aziraphale first. Aziraphale would certainly become exasperated with this very quickly, but that would just be part of the fun. ‘Thanks, angel,’ he murmured, closing his eyes as he did so.
Aziraphale began to absent-mindedly stroke Crowley’s hair, but then stopped, remembering that he had woken him up for a reason. ‘Adam wants to see us,’ he said, and he passed Crowley the note.
‘Christmas Day,’ Crowley read, and then he smiled a particularly snakelike smile. ‘Well, I guess that means you won’t be going to church, and I won’t be sabotaging ovens.’ The angel shook his head reprovingly, but before he could attempt to maintain some façade of righteously offended holiness, Crowley continued, ‘What the Antichrist wants, the Antichrist gets. What time do you think he wants us there?’
‘Somehow,’ said Aziraphale, ‘I think we’ll arrive when we’re wanted, regardless of when we depart.’
*
Aziraphale was proven right. It was a truly ineffable traffic jam. Newt and Anathema also arrived when they were wanted, although they achieved this by simply asking Adam when that would be. It had turned out to be one o’clock in the afternoon, which was when Adam thought he stood the best chance of getting away. You had all the excitement of opening presents on Christmas morning, and then you had the afternoon free to play with your new toys until it got late enough for guests to start arriving for Christmas dinner.
At the appointed time, Adam put aside the life-size robot he had been building and sneaked down to the basement, where he carefully removed a bottle of wine and placed it in a bag. It was for the others. Adam wasn’t allowed wine, and while he ordinarily considered any rule’s existence reason enough to break it, in this case his eleven-year-old tastebuds trumped his rebellious spirit. That didn’t mean he didn’t get a thrill out of taking the wine, of course. It was like stealing a pirate’s treasure chest.
He placed it in a picnic basket, along with sandwiches he had stayed up to make the night before. They should have gone off, hidden in his room for hours, but they were still fresh. They were rather squashed, however. Packed sandwiches should be squashed. Everyone knows that.
Newt and Anathema stood awkwardly near the quarry entrance, up to their knees in snow that the weather forecasters had repeatedly insisted just wasn’t in the cards this Christmas. They waved at Adam, then turned as a vintage Bentley, which Anathema thought she recognised, screeched to a halt. Then she knew she recognised it, when its occupants emerged. ‘Adam?’ she asked quizzically, as Crowley and Aziraphale approached them, looking equally confused.
Adam smiled. ‘Come and see,’ he said, and he led his confused friends inside. ‘Seems to me,’ he said, when they were seated upon the crates, the angel sitting as far forward as possible, ‘that you’re all gettin’ on well enough, ‘cept for one thing.’
‘Oh?’ asked Newt, who wasn’t sure what else to say.
‘It’s all very well, bein’ joined at the hip like you are,’ Adam went on. ‘But it’s a bit boring, innit, bein’ jus’ two people all the time. Seems to me you’re pretty happy, but you’d be happier, wouldn’t you, with a few friends in your lives. Specially on Christmas Day. ‘S’not right, bein’ alone on Christmas. It’s just a suggestion,’ he added diplomatically, ‘I wouldn’t want to make you do anythin’ you didn’t want. But I know my life would be a lot less interestin’ if Pepper an’ Wensley an’ Brian weren’t around. So I thought maybe you could all just sit here an’ talk for a while.’
Aziraphale, Crowley, Anathema, and Newt all looked at one another, all thinking along the same lines. Anathema had had a few friends at university, but none of them close. Growing up in a walled-in environment of family secrets and things that the other children could never be made to understand, she had always been solitary. Newt also had a few friends, but he’d always had a feeling that they felt sorry for him in a general sort of way, which made him uncomfortable. Throughout history, Aziraphale and Crowley had separately had tea with thousands of notable artists, writers, musicians, theologians, scientists, heroes, villains, politicians, and everything in between. Some of them were even still living. But even in moments of drunken sincerity, they had been playing roles. Even the most impressive names on their combined list would have fainted if they’d known who their companions really were.
All four of them were simultaneously trying to come up with a way to articulate this without mortally embarrassing themselves in the process when, suddenly, there was a knock in the air. Not at the door, for there was no door, and not exactly a knock, for you couldn’t have a knock if you didn’t have a door, but a sudden, isolated push of air in the vicinity of the entrance, such that it functioned as a knock. AM I LATE? came a voice in their heads.
Adam grinned. ‘You’re right on time.’
The seven-foot skeleton had to duck quite low to enter the quarry. Crowley took in the sight of Death gingerly contorting himself in order to fit into a children’s hide-out, at the invitation of the Antichrist, to attend what seemed to be a summer’s picnic in the middle of winter with himself, Aziraphale, a madwoman with a bicycle, and her flustered companion, and he began to laugh. And then Aziraphale and Anathema were laughing too, and seconds later Newt joined in, a bit nervously at first.
‘See?’ said Adam. ‘You’ll all get on just fine.’
Aziraphale felt it was rather impolite, all of them laughing like this, and tried to get a hold of himself. He looked down, and as he did so, he saw an ant crawl past his foot. He smiled down at it, then looked up at Adam. ‘Yes,‘ he said, ‘I do believe we will. Thank you, Adam.’
‘Yeah,’ said Crowley, who didn’t want to be outdone, but was still trying to regain control of himself, ‘thanks. For everything, I mean.’
Newt wasn’t sure what ‘everything’ meant to Crowley, but he had a feeling, from the way Crowley had said it, that he himself probably had something specific to be very thankful to Adam for, even as he couldn’t think how that might be. ‘Thank you, Adam,’ he said, hoping that Adam would know what he meant, if he had not simply lost his mind.
Adam did know. ‘Course,’ said Adam. ‘Couldn’t have the Spanish Inquisition gettin’ you, could I?’
Anathema suppressed a chuckle. She couldn’t think how it might be true, either, but she could sense Adam’s power, and his love, and she knew that it was true. ‘We couldn’t ask for more.’
‘Happy Christmas,‘ said Adam cheerfully.
Author: a edna_blackadder
Recipient: nomnomnim
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3,711
Disclaimer: Good Omens belongs to Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. No money is being made from this, and no copyright infringement is intended.
Summary: Adam doesn’t believe in messing people about, but when he likes people, he wants to make them happy.
Author’s Note: I was rather spoiled this year, with two prompts I was only too happy to write, and so of course I had to go and complicate things and try to get both of them in (and I’d have happily attempted the third, but being American I’d have had to research it). The result is odd. I hope it works. Thanks to sarcasticsra for the beta.
August
Aziraphale was bewildered. When Crowley had said, ‘Bring bread,’ he’d naturally assumed the bread was for the ducks. Instead, the demon was sitting, finely tailored suit and all, on the grass in St James’ Park, well away from the duck pond, with a picnic basket full of cold cuts, cheese and condiments. He was leaning against the trunk of a luxuriant tree, and he patted the ground next to him. ‘Hi, angel.’
Aziraphale sat down, a trifle warily. ‘Hello, my dear.’ Crowley passed him a napkin, on which he had scrawled something in black ink. ‘Act like everything is normal,’ Aziraphale read. Crowley groaned, and Aziraphale blushed as he noticed what was written under it: ‘And don’t read that out loud.’
‘Sorry,’ said Aziraphale. ‘Er...lovely weather, isn’t it, then?’ He forced a cheery smile, which only made Crowley look even more pained.
‘Never mind,’ said Crowley, but then, under Aziraphale’s glare, he visibly softened. ‘Sorry. My fault. I should have explained. Let me tempt you to some wine.’
Aziraphale hesitated. ‘Are we being watched?’ he asked, as quietly as he could.
Crowley started to shake his head, then seemed to reconsider the gesture, stopped, and settled for a shrug. ‘Not in the way that you’re thinking,’ he said, ‘but quite possibly, yes. That’s why I asked you here, actually. It’s an experiment.’
‘An experiment?’ asked Aziraphale, not at all sure he liked where this was going. ‘Would you be so kind as to explain what sort of an experiment this is?’
‘Well,’ Crowley began, and then stopped, in the manner of someone who has just realised that what he was about to say made a lot more sense in his head, and sharing it might be regarded as a bad move. Aziraphale counted the seconds, then smiled as Crowley shrugged and pressed on, just as Aziraphale had known he would. Aziraphale smiled. Crowley’s dogged persistence was just one of many things that Aziraphale loved about him, even as it was still odd to think of his feelings in such a term, one that was divine in theory but, in practice, felt uncomfortably human.
They had been very drunk, of course, when they’d kissed, one week after That Saturday, a single week in which they had spent more time together than ever before, bordering on every waking hour. Crowley had stopped by the bookshop, constantly, for no reason other than because he wanted to, and Aziraphale had welcomed his company. After six thousand years of the Arrangement and eleven years of working much more closely, that they should suddenly go back to living largely separate lives just because there was no longer an Apocalypse looming had struck both angel and demon, separately, as wholly unappealing, even as neither dared to articulate it. Until, of course, they had celebrated the First Week of the Rest of Their Lives by going through bottle after bottle until they had collapsed together in a fit of drunken contentment, each seduced by the other’s irrepressible smile into admitting what, as recently as that afternoon, they had not even dared to think. They were partners, they loved each other, and they belonged together.
They had agreed, without a word spoken, to take things at a snail’s pace. Crowley had referred to making the effort once and flushed deep red as he’d done so; the subject had made both him and Aziraphale uncomfortable because of how inescapably human it was. Humanity had undeniably changed them forever, but they were still a demon and an angel.
In effect, their relationship had not actually changed much at all. They went to the same places they’d always gone; the only difference was physical contact that, though perhaps only slightly increased in reality, felt exponentially so because of the intimate warmth between them, always present but now increased to a nearly palpable strength.
They had been doing their best to hold off on the physical contact in public. Since That Saturday, there had been no communication from Heaven or Hell thus far, but that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be, and neither Aziraphale nor Crowley wanted to provoke any. Apart from a rather short-sighted definition of ineffability and an even more short-sighted disregard for the wonders of Earth, there weren’t many things on which Above and Below agreed, but Aziraphale and Crowley knew that both would heartily disapprove of them, for equal and opposite reasons.
But their fears were beginning to seem unnecessary. The summer was nearing its end; they’d forgotten themselves on more than one occasion and nothing had happened. And the times they had forgotten themselves, it had been all too easy to do. Wherever they went-parks, museums, cafés, concerts-everything had always seemed just as it should be. It was almost idyllic.
It had made Crowley suspicious, as he had been explaining for the last five minutes. ‘It’s too neat,’ he concluded. ‘That’s why I asked you here. It’s supposed to rain today. Is it raining?’
‘There are dark clouds on the horizon,’ Aziraphale pointed out.
‘But not here,’ said Crowley. ‘Nothing but sunshine over our heads. Ideal weather for a picnic. If you were designing an advertisement for picnic baskets, you’d want an image exactly like this.’
‘Not exactly like this,’ said Aziraphale. ‘One could lose the ants, for a start.’ He winced as the offending insects, which had been crawling into their picnic basket since he’d sat down and probably before, curiously explored Crowley’s plastic wrapping.
Crowley shook his head. ‘No, ants are traditional at a picnic. I said ideal, not perfect. We have ants, which are a minor inconvenience, but the sort you wouldn’t feel right without. Ants at a picnic make it more interesting. Rain, on the other hand, would ruin it. Today, we’ve got ants, but it isn’t raining, despite the fact I just saw lightning across the pond. Besides,’ he added teasingly, ‘I thought you angels were supposed to love all God’s creatures.’
Aziraphale sighed. ‘So you’re saying you think that something, or someone-’ he broke off, suddenly realising which someone Crowley must suspect. Someone who would undoubtedly be in favour of ants at a picnic but opposed to rain, someone whose idea of the way things should be was grounded in brightly illustrated children’s stories, someone whose fierce love of his own corner of the world had shaped it to just that ideal. Crowley nodded. Across the pond a full-on thunderstorm was brewing. The storm clouds had extended themselves over the pond and towards Crowley and Aziraphale, but stopped abruptly about twenty feet away. Over their heads the sky was blue, and the sun was as warm as any August.
‘He might not even know he’s doing it,’ Crowley said thoughtfully. ‘And I suppose it’s hardly something to complain about, having an all-powerful being shielding us from all harm. I just wanted to know for sure, is all.’ He smiled, then leaned over and placed one hand on top of Aziraphale’s. Then he leaned in closer, lowered his voice to a whisper and said, in a tone that made the angel shudder in a most pleasant way, ‘It certainly explains why no one seems to have noticed anything. Now, how about that wine? As long as we’ve got our own personal island of summer, we might as well...enjoy it.’ Crowley punctuated this suggestion with a soft kiss, and Aziraphale beamed.
*
Forty miles away in Tadfield, Adam Young did indeed know what he was doing. Well, sort of, anyway. His conscious mind was focused on his role as the evil pirate captain in the Them’s latest game. He and Pepper were busy blowing holes in the enemy ship, also known as R.P. Tyler’s hedge, while Wensleydale and Brian served as look-outs.
Adam had Tadfield, and didn’t want any more of the world than he’d got. Tadfield would always have snow at Christmas and long hot Augusts, as long as Adam Young had anything to say about it, and the Them would always have the run of it, or as much of the run of it as they could have without actually running it and messing people about.
But there were some people, and some entities, whom Adam cared about, and considered his, who weren’t in Tadfield. Preferring to exalt in the thrill of pirates and spacemen and chasing rabbits with Dog and not doing what he was told whenever it could possibly be avoided, Adam left the humdrum business of looking after them to his subconscious mind. So, while Adam had not meticulously plotted out an isolated spot of warmth and sunshine in the middle of thunderstorm in central London, the tiny part of his mind that occupied itself with ensuring that none of his people met with boredom, dismemberment by the forces of Heaven and/or Hell, or picnics without ants was still Adam Young, who was never without a sense of humour.
But while Adam was not busying himself with actively dictating the mundane events of his friends’ lives, which he fancied rather fell under the category of messing people about and in any case was very boring, he was planning something.
Well, not yet. But he would be, as Aziraphale and Crowley would discover. When the time was right.
December
Anathema and Newt had sensibly decided to take their Christmas holidays early and avoid the rush. The couple had set off for Spain in mid-December and intended to be back in time to enjoy Christmas at home, not that Jasmine Cottage was especially warm, cosy, inviting or in any way ideal, apart from being home. Whatever Newt’s opinion of the occupation of professional descendant, he had to admit that being able to gloriously quit working as a wages clerk, courtesy of Anathema’s inherited fortune, was an advantage. Anathema, for her part, did not miss being a descendant, and was quite looking forward to starting work as a part-time lecturer at Norton Polytechnic. Pepper’s mother had recommended her for a post at the university after reading her thesis on history’s unsung inventors, and she had passed her interview easily.
If Anathema had chosen to continue being a professional descendant, she might have had an inkling of the significance of her current predicament. If she and Newt had read Further Nife and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, they would eventually have come across this passage: ‘And ye sharl have peace, goodwille towards menne, when Redde can not approche the Rainbow’s Ende.’
As it was, she knew that something was up. The airport, like all airports, was full of tense people radiating negative energy. Their thoughts swamped her, but at the moment, she was rather distracted by all the frantic beeping. She was waiting to go through security, and Newt had stepped through the metal detector.
Or rather, Newt had attempted to step through the metal detector. The moment he had put his foot under it, it had short-circuited with a minor but dramatic explosion that had sent him flying backwards. He had landed none too gracefully on his bottom, and he and Anathema looked likely to be landing in handcuffs fairly soon. The security forces had questions, which were less questions and more panicked, shouted accusations. Newt’s Spanish wasn’t up to the task of defending himself, and Anathema, who had dodged her foreign language requirements with courses in Middle English, could not help him.
The line got longer. The other metal detectors were discovered to also be suddenly, inexplicably out of order. Travellers cursed in Spanish and English. Flights were delayed.
A striking red-haired woman stood behind Anathema and Newt. To the men, she was striking because she was beautiful. To Anathema, she was striking because she had the most negative aura of them all, and also because Anathema was certain that she had seen her somewhere before, though her mind was engulfed by a fog every time she tried to remember where.
Everyone wants to put on a show at Christmas, and Carmine Zuigiber had intended to turn a minor territorial dispute into a full-blown war between two major European powers that, in her opinion, had both been much more fun in the 16th century. Red had never had trouble getting through airport security. The metal detectors always went haywire, but she always managed to slip away while the guards fought over who got to pat her down.
Tonight, though, she wasn’t going anywhere. Worse, her weaponry had been rendered defective after the young man currently under fierce interrogation had accidentally bumped into her in line.
When it became clear that the problem would not be sorted out, War had no choice but to leave in a fury. And after she left, the guards’ supervisor appeared and informed Newt and Anathema, in perfect English, that they were free to go, and would be upgraded to first-class seats as an apology for the inconvenience.
The first-class seats came with personal televisions. Newt’s didn’t work. He didn’t mind, as he was too busy being enormously relieved not to have been arrested.
When Newt and Anathema arrived home, later than expected, they found a note taped to their front door. The note was short and to the point. It read, ‘Christmas Day,’ in Adam’s unmistakeable handwriting.
*
Aziraphale and Crowley also received an invitation. Unlike Anathema and Newt, they had never seen Adam’s handwriting, but they recognized it all the same.
The invitation was taped to the door of Aziraphale’s bookshop, and Aziraphale found it mid-morning, while opening his shop embarrassingly later than usual.
Over the past autumn, he had learned to sleep, at Crowley’s insistence. Aziraphale had tried sleep once, in the 17th century, but he hadn’t taken to it in the slightest. That, he knew now, as he trudged back upstairs towards a still-sleeping Crowley, was because he had tried it alone.
Aziraphale reached his sparsely furnished, newly-existent bedroom and drew back the curtains, allowing sunlight to flood the room. Crowley stirred, then blinked, then sat bolt upright and groaned, clutching his head.
‘What’s wrong, my dear?’ asked Aziraphale, with real concern. It was hardly the first time he had seen Crowley react to a wake-up call with something rather less than enthusiasm, but it was the first time that waking up had ever appeared to make him physically ill.
Crowley shook his head. ‘I think I may have forgotten to sober up last night. Is this what a hangover feels like? And if it is, why in somebody’s name do they continue to drink?’
Aziraphale couldn’t help chuckling softly. If looks could kill-and in Crowley’s case, they probably had-he would have been lying on the floor. Crowley began to wince, but Aziraphale put up a hand. ‘My dear, why don’t you let me do it?’
‘Huh?’ asked Crowley, stopping mid-wince.
‘I’m an angel,’ Aziraphale reminded him, climbing into bed next to him as he did so. ‘If I do say so myself, healing is something that we do rather well.’
Crowley smiled. It sounded nice, and it felt, as he quickly discovered, even nicer, as though a wave of comfort emanated into his body, gently expelling all illness and injury. From now on, he decided, if he ever so much as stubbed his toe, he would come to Aziraphale first. Aziraphale would certainly become exasperated with this very quickly, but that would just be part of the fun. ‘Thanks, angel,’ he murmured, closing his eyes as he did so.
Aziraphale began to absent-mindedly stroke Crowley’s hair, but then stopped, remembering that he had woken him up for a reason. ‘Adam wants to see us,’ he said, and he passed Crowley the note.
‘Christmas Day,’ Crowley read, and then he smiled a particularly snakelike smile. ‘Well, I guess that means you won’t be going to church, and I won’t be sabotaging ovens.’ The angel shook his head reprovingly, but before he could attempt to maintain some façade of righteously offended holiness, Crowley continued, ‘What the Antichrist wants, the Antichrist gets. What time do you think he wants us there?’
‘Somehow,’ said Aziraphale, ‘I think we’ll arrive when we’re wanted, regardless of when we depart.’
*
Aziraphale was proven right. It was a truly ineffable traffic jam. Newt and Anathema also arrived when they were wanted, although they achieved this by simply asking Adam when that would be. It had turned out to be one o’clock in the afternoon, which was when Adam thought he stood the best chance of getting away. You had all the excitement of opening presents on Christmas morning, and then you had the afternoon free to play with your new toys until it got late enough for guests to start arriving for Christmas dinner.
At the appointed time, Adam put aside the life-size robot he had been building and sneaked down to the basement, where he carefully removed a bottle of wine and placed it in a bag. It was for the others. Adam wasn’t allowed wine, and while he ordinarily considered any rule’s existence reason enough to break it, in this case his eleven-year-old tastebuds trumped his rebellious spirit. That didn’t mean he didn’t get a thrill out of taking the wine, of course. It was like stealing a pirate’s treasure chest.
He placed it in a picnic basket, along with sandwiches he had stayed up to make the night before. They should have gone off, hidden in his room for hours, but they were still fresh. They were rather squashed, however. Packed sandwiches should be squashed. Everyone knows that.
Newt and Anathema stood awkwardly near the quarry entrance, up to their knees in snow that the weather forecasters had repeatedly insisted just wasn’t in the cards this Christmas. They waved at Adam, then turned as a vintage Bentley, which Anathema thought she recognised, screeched to a halt. Then she knew she recognised it, when its occupants emerged. ‘Adam?’ she asked quizzically, as Crowley and Aziraphale approached them, looking equally confused.
Adam smiled. ‘Come and see,’ he said, and he led his confused friends inside. ‘Seems to me,’ he said, when they were seated upon the crates, the angel sitting as far forward as possible, ‘that you’re all gettin’ on well enough, ‘cept for one thing.’
‘Oh?’ asked Newt, who wasn’t sure what else to say.
‘It’s all very well, bein’ joined at the hip like you are,’ Adam went on. ‘But it’s a bit boring, innit, bein’ jus’ two people all the time. Seems to me you’re pretty happy, but you’d be happier, wouldn’t you, with a few friends in your lives. Specially on Christmas Day. ‘S’not right, bein’ alone on Christmas. It’s just a suggestion,’ he added diplomatically, ‘I wouldn’t want to make you do anythin’ you didn’t want. But I know my life would be a lot less interestin’ if Pepper an’ Wensley an’ Brian weren’t around. So I thought maybe you could all just sit here an’ talk for a while.’
Aziraphale, Crowley, Anathema, and Newt all looked at one another, all thinking along the same lines. Anathema had had a few friends at university, but none of them close. Growing up in a walled-in environment of family secrets and things that the other children could never be made to understand, she had always been solitary. Newt also had a few friends, but he’d always had a feeling that they felt sorry for him in a general sort of way, which made him uncomfortable. Throughout history, Aziraphale and Crowley had separately had tea with thousands of notable artists, writers, musicians, theologians, scientists, heroes, villains, politicians, and everything in between. Some of them were even still living. But even in moments of drunken sincerity, they had been playing roles. Even the most impressive names on their combined list would have fainted if they’d known who their companions really were.
All four of them were simultaneously trying to come up with a way to articulate this without mortally embarrassing themselves in the process when, suddenly, there was a knock in the air. Not at the door, for there was no door, and not exactly a knock, for you couldn’t have a knock if you didn’t have a door, but a sudden, isolated push of air in the vicinity of the entrance, such that it functioned as a knock. AM I LATE? came a voice in their heads.
Adam grinned. ‘You’re right on time.’
The seven-foot skeleton had to duck quite low to enter the quarry. Crowley took in the sight of Death gingerly contorting himself in order to fit into a children’s hide-out, at the invitation of the Antichrist, to attend what seemed to be a summer’s picnic in the middle of winter with himself, Aziraphale, a madwoman with a bicycle, and her flustered companion, and he began to laugh. And then Aziraphale and Anathema were laughing too, and seconds later Newt joined in, a bit nervously at first.
‘See?’ said Adam. ‘You’ll all get on just fine.’
Aziraphale felt it was rather impolite, all of them laughing like this, and tried to get a hold of himself. He looked down, and as he did so, he saw an ant crawl past his foot. He smiled down at it, then looked up at Adam. ‘Yes,‘ he said, ‘I do believe we will. Thank you, Adam.’
‘Yeah,’ said Crowley, who didn’t want to be outdone, but was still trying to regain control of himself, ‘thanks. For everything, I mean.’
Newt wasn’t sure what ‘everything’ meant to Crowley, but he had a feeling, from the way Crowley had said it, that he himself probably had something specific to be very thankful to Adam for, even as he couldn’t think how that might be. ‘Thank you, Adam,’ he said, hoping that Adam would know what he meant, if he had not simply lost his mind.
Adam did know. ‘Course,’ said Adam. ‘Couldn’t have the Spanish Inquisition gettin’ you, could I?’
Anathema suppressed a chuckle. She couldn’t think how it might be true, either, but she could sense Adam’s power, and his love, and she knew that it was true. ‘We couldn’t ask for more.’
‘Happy Christmas,‘ said Adam cheerfully.