Happy Holidays, Irisbleufic!
A story with two bonus scenes/epilogues!
Title: Castles in the Sand
Recipient: irisbleufic
Author: miscellanny
Pairing: Brian/Wensleydale, Aziraphale/Crowley
Rating: G
Notes: “Are you yeti,” Brian warbled, “are you yeti for love, yes I am, are you?”
“I- told you,” Wensley grumbled, “it wasn’t a yeti!”
“I say we let him have it,” Adam said.
“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.” - Isaac Newton
As the Morris Traveller crested the hill, three pairs of hands in various states of repair anchored to bits of its wooden frame, nothing could be seen of the ostensible driver bar a pair of particularly battered soles. The barely-white rubber hatching suggested the sort of canvas trainers to be found in branches of Asda all over the country; the smear of what looked like nothing so much as dried blood was a little less pedestrian.
“I see a bad spoon a-rising,” threaded its way out of the driver’s side window, loud and tuneless and startling the cows, “I see trouble on the way-“
“Tenuous,” called one of the pairs of hands: thin, freckled, split nails, large plaster around the base of the thumb.
“It was a spoon!” the battered trainers protested.
“More a ladle,” the chubbier, paler hands said. There was a nasty burn across the back of one wrist, layered over others, healed. “Ads?”
The final pair of hands considered for a while. These hands were - well. Hand shaped. Emphatically so. They were precisely hand colour, too, with just the right length of nail. These hands could have modelled for Fairy, and no one would even think to question the lack of rubber gloves.
“I say we let him have it,” Adam eventually decided. “And let’s take a minute.”
The owner of the freckled hands - just about as long and thin, barely curved and mostly muscle - stood upright and swore loudly, bracing her hands in the small of her back and stretching backwards before bending fluidly forward and letting her arms hang. Pale and chubby just collapsed into an inelegant heap against the side of the Traveller, his sandy blond hair as sweaty a mess as he was.
Adam, looking just rumpled enough to be interesting, golden hair curling just so around his ears, ducked his head into the passenger side window.
“All right, Brian?”
Apparently-Brian, who was apparently driving despite having the driver’s seat as reclined as it was possible to recline and his feet on the dashboard, responded with a grin and a double thumbs-up. His washed-out jeans above the once-blue trainers were a gory mess, though, and there was sweat beading on a forehead that was startlingly greenish-pale against his brown hair.
“Wens?”
Wensleydale once got his survival badge at the Lower Tadfield Boy Scouts but had actually found the craft activity and DIY activity badges more useful, when it came to medical assistance and the limited resources they had. Mostly it was sellotape; sellotape was brilliant, and they all had practically permanent small hairless bands around their limbs where t-shirt bandages had recently been removed. He seemed reluctant to look this time, though, and took only a cursory glance before plumping hurriedly onto his backside, pulling off his glasses for a nervous polish.
“We’re best off finding a B&B for a couple of nights. I know,” he said tiredly, forestalling the girl’s opening mouth, “I know we can’t afford it, actually, but if we don’t get some properly boiled water and a couple of night’s sleep my legs are going to start dropping off, never mind Brian’s.” The words were casual but that was just the way they did things; worry was beating itself senseless against his tone like moths, like headlights.
“Don’t worry about me,” Brian called from inside the car. “I’m peachy. Peachlike. Full of fuzz.”
“We’ll find somewhere,” Adam said.
Wensleydale’s shoulders slumped a little. “Pepper?”
She didn’t even have to fish in her pocket. She’d always, in spite of herself, shown a tendency to be quite good at finances.
“Thirty two pounds thirty,” she said. When her mouth was closed it was tight at the corners. “And a half price voucher for Domino’s but it’s only valid on Thursdays.”
“Not the sort of place that’d have one anyway,” Adam said, looking steadily at Wensleydale. “But in the morning we can find a mechanic, or a taxi, a way of getting Brian to a hospital. We’ll find somewhere. Someone.”
Wensley hauled himself to his feet at Adam's unspoken command, automatically scuffing his foot until the hole in his left sock was more comfortably between his toes, setting his hands back against the frame of the Traveller. Pepper swore, long and creative, a colourful thread in the gloaming. Her hands were callused enough they ought to have struck sparks as she rubbed them together, put them back on the car.
“Ready?”
“Set.”
“Go,” Adam said, and it was almost as though the car rolled forward a little to oblige him, the going tough but just about manageable. The lights of the village weren’t too far away.
“Are you yeti,” Brian warbled, “are you yeti for love, yes I am, are you?”
“I - told you,” Wensley grumbled, “it wasn’t a yeti!”
“I say we let him have it,” Adam said.
***
"That shouldn't have worked."
Wensleydale spared Pepper a quick glare before going back to contemplating the distance between the kerb and the front door, between that and the room Adam had got for them. His back was hurting just thinking about it.
"Seriously," Pepper insisted, looking far angrier than Wensleydale wanted to deal with, "that actually shouldn't have worked. There's no way people accept 'odd jobs' as payment, not in real life, not anywhere outside of story books."
"There was a yeti," Wensleydale said, temper fraying. There was a weak cheer (too weak, Brian was never this quiet) from the front seat. "This is what you choose to question?"
"Yeah, but that's just - " Pepper bit her lip, bit her words back, turned on her heel and headed for the boot where she could take out her annoyance on the back packs and the camping stove. Wensleydale slumped back against the side of the car and released a slow breath.
They didn't talk about it. Of all the things they didn't talk about, this was the big one; that's just Adam, that's just the way it is, that's just Adam's imagination stretching out until it changes the world for a few hours, like the way it always did when we were kids. Only when they were kids the afternoons had always ended, the sun had gone down, the game had ebbed and drawn back and left them safely ashore with jam sandwiches and Penguin biscuits and a bit of harmless telly before bed. He'd always liked to watch documentaries, mostly about insects, liked to have the buffer of something undeniably real.
Only this was real.
It was a tall house, the Bed and Breakfast, and thin, with stairs marching up to the front door. The pavement on one side of it was fully three feet lower than the pavement on the other, and something about the slant of the hill made Wensleydale feel as though the house was far realer and more solid than where he stood, like it had been hammered down to anchor the road and the town against the gentle washing of the sea. Roses clambered up the front of it, pulling at the white paint and leaving unreadable maps, and behind the front windows, behind the modest net curtains was the warm yellow lamplight and gentle blue wash of an evening's harmless telly.
(And Adam had smiled just as warm, just as harmless, and spoken in a certain tone of voice that settled like a guiding hand against the back of Wensleydale's neck and he hadn't liked the look in the woman's eyes, the way she'd smiled and nodded, he hadn't liked it at all).
He rounded the front of the car, pulled open the driver's door, blanched and bit his tongue to keep a swear word in.
"All right, Brian?"
"All right, Wens."
He focused on the click of his knees as he crouched down beside the car, on tugging Brian's long arm around his neck. It was hard when things kept trying to grab his attention - the way Brian's t-shirt was dark with sweat, the wobble in his voice, the edge of teeth in his smile - but Wensleydale focused on hauling Brian upright and against his side.
"I'll take the bags up," Pepper said, with the tightly controlled fury that was always in her voice when one of them got hurt. Wensleydale wondered if they'd have to pay extra if Pepper ended up punching a hole in the wall again (and didn't wonder, chose not to wonder whether the woman would even notice). He propped Brian against the side of the car for a moment, long enough to slam the car door, then tugged him upright again.
You wouldn't think he could hold so much weight, Brian. He was a head taller than Wensleydale but lanky, like a stick insect, and keeping him upright across the pavement was a delicate shuffling balancing act. Wensleydale had always been built on stockier lines, but when he reached the bottom of the stairs he admitted defeat.
"Ups-a-daisy," Wensleydale said, shoving his shoulder into Brian's stomach and then straightening, holding onto the black iron railings until he was certain he wouldn't topple over. Brian groaned, from somewhere in the vicinity of Wensleydale's kidneys.
"I think I'm going to be sick," he said. Wensleydale huffed breathlessly, and pushed his glasses up his nose, and tried to remember what it was about stick insects he loved quite so much.
"In here," Adam said cheerfully, when they finally made it through the front door, and Wensleydale didn't so much as glance around before pushing straight through the door and heading for the closest bed. Brian's plaintive noises struck an odd harmony with the unhappy crunching of the springs as he bounced gently to a halt, and Wensleydale collapsed into an aching puddle at the foot of the bed.
"You two'll share that bed," Adam said, "and - "
"And what?" Pepper asked, the tone of her voice dangerous as she dumped her bag on the other bed.
"And I'll take the floor, actually," Adam said, injured.
"I could - " Wensleydale protested, half-hearted.
“You'll share with Brian,” Adam said, and Wensleydale scrambled onto the bed obediently, comforted by the firm tone of Adam's voice. Everything was okay when he sounded like that; Adam was good at taking care of things. Wensleydale could fall asleep safely, Brian radiating heat like a furnace against his back, and the passing plaintive wish for a little Attenborough before bed was safely quiet, and barely noticeable, and quickly sank under his dreams.
***
For Adam, it was usually more of an active decision when he went to sleep. He’d always liked it though, dreaming - the opportunity to do the things that people would normally notice, the things he couldn’t (wouldn’t, shouldn’t) get away with, the opportunity to scratch an ever-present itch.
This time he didn’t even notice he’d gone under until the gentle motion of seaweed caught the corner of his eye. Nothing about the blue-lit room had changed, at first glance, except that a continuous line of bubbles was escaping with Wensleydale’s snores, catching and trapping the line of orange light from the street lamp outside. Except the pale green cabbage roses soggily climbing the walls behind the head of Pepper’s bed had starfish nestled among their petals, and as Adam sat up and squirmed out of his sleeping bag (the hiss of nylon oddly muffled) the weight of water protested his movement.
He wasn’t scared - he wasn’t sure he knew how to be - but he hesitated for a moment before crossing to the peeling, white-painted door. He knew they’d be safe here, catch Adam leaving them unsafe, but there was something about the restless movement of Brian’s head against the pillow that was tied to something in his chest and wouldn’t quite let him move.
"You’ll be fine here," he said, layering it with something implacable. "You’ll be fine until I get back." And he stepped forward quickly and turned the doorknob, yanked himself free on the threshold like that time with the length of string and Pepper’s wobbly tooth. (The tiny gap it left inside him filled with salt and iron).
Outside there ought to be a hallway. There ought to be awful china-patterned wallpaper and glossy brown skirting. Instead the pigeon holes with the keys were nailed to the inky black of a cave wall and the standard lamp’s fringing was swaying in invisible currents that led away from the front door. It looked impossible, that door. All of the furnishings were odd and out of place here, but there was something about the cage around the letterbox and the peephole in the centre that flipped the picture from unreal into (he wasn’t sure he knew how to - ) unnerving.
Come, something didn't say, from the depth of the darkness opposite the door. Come and see.
It was like a voice inside his head and he didn't like the way it spoke. He didn't like the way he recognised it, the way it sounded like when he talked to his friends. (It was different with them. He didn't make them. It was different because they were Them and they wanted to come, to come and see...)
Adam's hand shot out to grab the back of the grandma-chair that sat in the corner of the entrance-cave furthest from the door and he hauled himself to a stop.
"No," he said firmly and the word emerged, a barely audible bubble. "No," he said again. And he dug in his heels and pushed against the currents, forged through the water that tried to drag and pull and (come) beckon him back.
"I don't," he said, barely enough breath in it to bubble. "I don't do this to them, I don't I don't."
But you want to, the voice whispered to the base of his spine, and Adam shuddered and hauled open the front door and catapulted himself forward into the street outside.
The front door slammed with an almighty crash. It ought to have been impossible with the weight of water behind it, but when he rubbed his fingertips against the gently crackling paint they came away dry. Adam ducked and pulled open the letterbox, not sure what to expect, but there was nothing but the distant pounding of waves like a seashell held up to the ear, only it was in your head, it was never anywhere but in your head, the sound of the sea was in your head the whole time.
He stood, feeling dizzy, and lurched the few steps to the corner of the road where he ought to be able to see the distant sea. There was nothing. Not sea, not sand, not the emptiness of sky but an infinite nothing that hurt his eyes to look at. And he would have gasped, would have drawn breath to let out a cry of denial only he'd grown so used to the sea that out here he found he couldn't quite breathe...
***
Somewhere not too distant the sun was struggling above the tree line and putting a brave if pallid face on the day. It trailed its listless fingers over the splintering picnic table, passed briefly over the faded optimism of an ice-cream sign that ought to have been put into hibernation at least two months before, then lingered on the incongruously brightly-polished lines of a black 1926 Bentley that was one of only two cars in the roadside café’s car park. It was too bad that the laws of physics dictated it must finally move on, drag itself away, skimming over the off-white Ford and finally, reluctantly poking light in through the slatted blinds at the steamy window. The man sitting at the table there didn't even have the good grace to blink, but then, he was wearing sunglasses.
The air inside the café was warm and so thick you could practically drink it, and it was a decent bet that it'd taste better than the coffee. Crowley considered giving his drink another stir, just to be doing something, but the possibility that it would've congealed around the spoon made him reach across the table instead, laying thin fingers on the edge of the newspaper that sat there and tugging it towards himself.
"Don't even think about it," said Aziraphale, setting down his new cup of tea and plumping himself into the hard plastic chair opposite before snatching it back.
"D'you do that on purpose?" Crowley asked, scowling. "Do you wait for just the moment when you can catch someone out before pouncing?"
"Don't be ridiculous," said Aziraphale, slightly pink across the cheeks, and studied the clue to fourteen down with entirely unnecessary attention.
"You do, don't you? Stand to the side until temptation gets too much. Catch you stepping in early, providing some decent conversation so no one's forced to co-opt another man's Telegraph."
"I'd forgotten you were so paranoid,"Aziraphale said, airily.
"I'd forgotten you were so heavenly," Crowley said, snappier than he meant.
"No you hadn't." Aziraphale's voice was even, carefully so. "I wouldn't be here if you had." He folded the Telegraph with neat, precise movements, fussily smoothing the edges of it before sliding it into his battered satchel. All of the usually soft edges of him drew themselves in a little more crisply, even his awful toffee-brown overcoat projecting an air of hurt and disappointed distance. It was something about the lapels.
"Come on, angel," Crowley said. "You know I didn't mean it like that."
"It's perfectly fine," Aziraphale said. His chair grated against the floor in a long drawn-out screech. "It's not as though I'm under the illusion you brought me along for the company."
“But I did,” Crowley muttered too late to the still-steaming tea cup, after the glass door had already swung shut behind the angel. He scrubbed a hand through his hair and took an absent-minded sip of his coffee before leaving. It probably served him right.
Two days they'd been driving, and the proximity was starting to wear on them both. It showed itself in different ways of course. Aziraphale had become almost aggressively polite, prefacing practically everything with gentle endearments and manners. Crowley, for his part, had drawn in on himself and left spiky defences in his wake. It wasn't that he meant to hurt the angel, not exactly - it was self defence, was what it was. He needed something to act as a barrier between him and the way the angel could make him laugh. Always had.
Crowley slid into the cold leather seat and looked over.
"Angel," he started, but Aziraphale cut him off.
"Which way?"
Crowley sighed. "North," he said, and started the car.
Godparents, he had called them, long ago and far away. Crowley'd never been quite sure if the automatic flinch at the word had been psychosomatic or not, but the iron-filings feeling in the pit of his stomach definitely wasn't something he could brush aside. Adam was magnetic, even when he was playing at human, and as good as Crowley was at ignoring him there were times when it just wasn't possible. He'd laid it at the feet of tension and anxiety, that time with the almost-Apocalypse, but as Adam had grown it'd been harder to dismiss, and there were times when Crowley felt forced to up sticks and check in on him, for all the good it ever did. Mostly by the time he'd shown up it was all over bar the shouting, bar the occasional still-smouldering rubble, and he had no idea if Adam even noticed his presence. He'd had no idea if Aziraphale had noticed his absence, either. They'd been checking in on each other with a little more regularity (and wasn't that doing wonders for the uncomfortable feelings lodged somewhere in his chest-wall?) , but the angel had never mentioned. Not until this time, until Crowley had circled around to put his smart leather hold-all in the passenger-side foot-well and found it already occupied by somebody's feet.
"Sssorry," Crowley said, half under his breath, his tongue tripping over the word ever so slightly.
The angel huffed, and didn't say anything at all, but there was a gentle easing in the lines of him. Soon enough he'd pulled out the newspaper again and unfolded it from its severe lines. When he started tunelessly whistling between his front teeth and only managed a mildly disgruntled look after misspelling miscellaneous, twice, Crowley almost felt like laughing.
***
Pepper didn't wake up angry, and she found herself hating the lack of it.
Sometimes she felt like one of those cheap Burger Lord flying toys, the kind they'd had to stop giving away after all the corneal abrasions and temporary blindness. Sometimes she felt like her rubber band anger was so twisted up inside her that she was too far gone even to snap. It didn't feel snapped today, though; it felt loosened. Weakened. So it was an effort of will that made her shove up on her elbows, strands of red hair making a break for freedom from her plait, and glare at Adam.
"Well?" she barked.
She'd thought Adam was the only one up, bustling and unpacking and being efficient in that sickening way only morning people could manage, but it was Wensleydale who answered her. When she looked over at him he was lying on his back and staring straight up at the ceiling, his fingers just brushing Brian's in a way he'd never admit was deliberate.
"We're sure," he said, and Pepper was impressed at the lack of a tremor, "that yetis aren't poisonous, right?"
"Thought it wasn't a yeti,” Brian mumbled, barely audible, and Pepper watched Wensleydale's hand tighten into a fist.
"You," she said, fighting her way out of the duvet. "Bathroom. Now."
"I'm not leaving - " Wensleydale started, an unfamiliar angry note in his voice, and she was two steps closer to the bed before she'd even though about it, leaning over Brian to push Wensleydale's glasses, just shy of painfully, further up his nose.
"Not you, idiot," she said, and she wished her voice was better at the notes that meant fond. "Adam -"
"Going," he said, unnaturally compliant, and she followed on his heels. Nearly ran into his back, too, as he stopped on the threshold.
"Were you going to take a bath?" she asked, and they were close enough that she could feel his slight shudder against her skin.
"No," Adam said, more firmly than was needed. He reached over and yanked at the plug chain, careful not to touch the water, then did the same to the sink with a sharp jerking motion. He was still for a moment, then darted over to slam the lid of the toilet shut before sitting on it, like he was trying to keep something in.
"Ads?" she asked carefully, her adopted anger sliding too quickly through her fingers, but he tightly shook his head.
"It's nothing."
There was silence for a moment, bar the sound of something dripping and, distant, the ever-present crash of the sea. She let out a breath in time with it and Adam's head jerked up, his eyes meeting hers.
"You have to fix Brian," she said.
She expected him to look away. She expected him to lie to her, sure, because there wasn't a part of Adam that wasn't tangled with stories on some level or another, but she expected him to at least have the decency to be shifty about it. Not to stare her straight in the eyes.
"I can't," he said.
"Bollocks," she snapped back.
"Won't, then," he said. "I don't do things to you."
“Bollocks," she repeated. That was when he looked away, his eyes drifting down and to the side, fixed on the droplets falling from the sink's cold tap.
"I don't - it's not like that," he said softly, like he wasn't even talking to her, and she grabbed his chin and forced his face up, speaking through gritted teeth.
"You think we don't know?" Pepper said. "You think we don't agree? I mean - maybe Wensleydale's not so good at it, maybe he isn't always - but Brian'll agree to anything, and Wens'll always do what Brian does, and if you think I can't beat you with one hand tied behind my back, Adam Young..."
There was darkness in his eyes when he looked back at her. Cold and deep and with the deceptive strength of ocean currents.
“I think," he said. "You agree."
He pushed to his feet then and shoved past her, making her stumble back. She swore as her hand splashed down into the sink, into the puddle of water that had collected there. She was quick going after him, though, was back in the room to see him look down at where Wensleydale lay and Brian sweated - no other verb could quite take precedence, when it came to Brian just now.
"Please," Pepper said. Maybe it was that, maybe it was the tremor in her voice and the way that he'd scared her, or maybe it was the way that Wensleydale relaxed back so readily against the pillows when Adam murmured that Brian'd be fine. Either way, she'd never heard anything that sounded so final as the door slamming closed behind him.
***
"Trust me," Aziraphale said, adjusting the angle of Crowley's tie and unnecessarily smoothing his shirt. The demon didn't move from where he was sprawled against the door of the Bentley, every line of him muttering resentful reluctance.
"Trust me, he says," Crowley complained bitterly. "I can practically feel myself burning up already."
"It's all in the name of right," Aziraphale said virtuously, and Crowley shoved himself upright and stuffed his hands in his pockets partly, the angel couldn't help thinking, to prevent Aziraphale from fussing with his tie again. He took a swift step backwards.
"That," said Crowley, frown deepening, "is exactly my point. Besides, it's not as though this disguise is going to get us anywhere. Do you get all your ideas from the Disney playbook?"
"I have no idea what you mean."
"We might as well be dressed as harmless old apple-sellers."
Aziraphale could feel the tide of pink marching relentlessly across his cheeks - there were things about human bodies that just drove him barmy - and he tightened his lips.
"I don't know what good you think it's going to do anyway," Crowley continued, looking down at his severe black suit and bringing a hand up to flick at the badge. Elder McGuffin, it said. Judas Priest: Defenders of the Faith.
"You know no one actually talks to the faith-pedlars?"
"Why else do you think I always have herbal tea in?" Aziraphale asked, a mite defensively. Crowley stared at him for a moment, then something in the line of his mouth softened, and Aziraphale carefully looked away.
"Of course you do," Crowley said.
Elder Badcrumble, Aziraphale’s badge said. Judas Priest: Sad Wings of Destiny. Crowley had insisted. Aziraphale picked at the tiny y.
"Look," he said, after an awkward moment. "This is the best we have at the moment. Do you want to have more of an idea what’s happening, or not?"
"I do," Crowley said, sounding chastened. He straightened his posture and his jacket, managing to project an air of almost righteousness that was only a little undermined by the sunglasses, the snakeskin shoes. "And I am grateful," he added after a moment, and it was far easier to turn to the front door of the Bed and Breakfast than it was to meet his eyes.
The brass knob turned easily under Aziraphale’s hand, the door temporarily forgetting that it was really supposed to be locked. The hallway looked rather as though the 1960s had settled into the ugly floral armchair in the corner and refused ever to leave. Aziraphale really thought that he ought to have felt more at home there, only there was something uncomfortably dank around the edges. Crowley nudged him over to the left hand side of the corridor, his jaw tight against his skin, and Aziraphale knocked lightly at the door.
"It’s about bloody time you came back," said a strident voice, the volume increasing as whoever it was approached the door. Aziraphale stepped backwards quickly as a young woman yanked it open. She was just a little shorter than he was, red-haired and red-faced and clearly furious.
"Er," said Aziraphale. Crowley leaned around his shoulder.
"We are harmless old apple-sellers," he said, straight-faced, and Aziraphale elbowed him in the stomach.
"Not today thank you," the young woman snapped, and she would have slammed the door again had Aziraphale not shuffled forward again, far enough that it closed painfully on one of his sensibly-laced brogues.
“Just a moment of your time,” he murmured, gently insinuating his shoulder into the gap, “don’t want to be a bother.” He made sure to layer his voice with all the gentle reassurance he could manage. Crowley crowded close, warm against Aziraphale’s back, and the angel considered elbowing him again - the first time had been more satisfying than he was really comfortable with - only his mind went entirely blank when Crowley’s breath brushed over his ear.
"He’s not here," Crowley said, and then they both stumbled helplessly forward as the door was yanked fully open.
"Who’s not?" the young woman said. "How d’you know? Where is he?"
"Pepper?"
A young man’s voice this time. Aziraphale looked over automatically and then almost went to avert his gaze - he didn’t think it was the sort of thing he was supposed to look at - before the situation clarified. The two young men were curled together, certainly, but there was sufficient clothing in place. One of the young men seemed in a dreadful state, his right leg a gory mess under his jeans, and the other was fretfully carding a hand through his hair. Aziraphale stepped forward automatically, then flinched back as the young woman - Pepper - darted in front of him, her teeth actually bared.
"I can help," he said. "I can help him."
"Pepper?" The young man on the bed said again, bordering on the panicked.
"He’s not here," Crowley insisted, and there was something uncomfortably close to desperate in the tone of his voice. "Angel, we need to go."
"You're not going near him," Pepper said.
"Yes he is," said the boy on the bed.
"Wensleydale - "
"I don't care." Wensleydale stood up, shaking like a leaf and with his hands curled into fists at his sides.
"But Adam - "
"I don't care about Adam," Wensleydale insisted, "not when it comes to Brian." He sounded determined and terrified in just about equal measure, and turned to face Aziraphale. "You swear you can fix him?"
Aziraphale nodded silently and sidestepped neatly around Pepper, who was audibly grinding her teeth. The heat was radiating off the boy, Brian, and Aziraphale tutted quietly and placed his hand on Brian's forehead.
"There," he said quietly, absently. "No harm done."
The rigid tension of Brian's body relaxed all of a sudden, his head turning sideways on the pillow, out from under Aziraphale's hand. Aziraphale had expected Wensleydale to react first, but it was Pepper who collapsed to her knees by the side of the bed, pulling aside the ragged remnants of Brian's gory jeans to find a wide pink scar that looked weeks healed.
"He's all right?" Wensleydale asked, sounding lost.
"He'll be fine," Aziraphale said, reaching out to squeeze the boy's shoulder gently. "He's sleeping it off."
"Speaking of off," Crowley said, grabbing the back of Aziraphale's coat and tugging none-too-gently, "we really must be. People to see, you know how it is - "
"You're going to find Adam," Pepper said, pushing herself to her feet. Aziraphale's agreement and Crowley's denial collided mid-air and fell into an uncomfortable silence on the carpet. Aziraphale could practically feel the demon's glare.
"Then you're not going without me," Pepper said, folding her arms implacably.
"Without us," said Wensleydale, standing firm at her side. Pepper gave him a sidelong look.
"What about Brian?"
"He's coming too."
"Give me strength," said Crowley.
"Give me two minutes," said Wensleydale.
And so it was that Aziraphale set off at the head of quite the most inelegant procession there had likely ever been: two ethereal beings, a valkyrie on the war-path, and a stocky youth pushing an invalid sprawled in a gently squeaking wheelbarrow.
"Imagine," he said softly to Crowley as they toiled along the winding path that led down to the booming sea, "what the world would be like if we were even remotely competent."
Crowley gave him a quick look, unreadable behind dark glasses.
"I'm not sure I want to." Aziraphale's stomach lurched as Crowley's fingers brushed his, tentative at first and then coming back to rest there. "I'm not sure I'd want to change anything," he said.
***
After hours, days, eternities of his brain boiling inside his skull, the sudden drop into cool clear water made Brian grin happy bubbles, his whole body going loose. There were voices above him, voices he knew, but they'd wait - it was easier by far to give in to gravity and let himself sink deeper, the water darkening around him.
He half knew he was dreaming, and he half knew he was not. So it made perfect nonsense that he came to a thumping jolting halt in an ugly old armchair fathoms under the sea, set square in the middle of a pool of standard-lamplight that glimmered off stones and shells and beach-glass, a battered mobile, a messaged bottle.
The water didn't like it that he pushed up to his feet, but there was something in his head that didn't belong there - faint echoes of a conversation from the mental equivalent of the next room.
Come, something whispered, rhythmic and shushing, almost hidden under the conversation he couldn't quite make out. Come and see.
It was Adam's voice he recognised first, of course. Conditioned to respond to it, to expect excitement and adventure and really wild things. Only the strangeness of it was that Adam was holding a conversation almost with himself, Adam and not-Adam, the second voice older and slyer and slickly oiled but still recognisable.
You made us, it said. You gave us shape.
"But I didn't mean to," Adam said, matter-of-fact. "Stands to reason it's not my fault if I didn't mean to."
But you could, it answered back, persuasion coiled around and through its Adam-voice. (Come, it whispered. Come and see). You've been painting dreams on the walls of the world when you could be living inside them.
"Those're just games," Adam said.
There was a rocky wall in front of where Brian stood, large enough to dwarf the crack in the base of it that could easily encompass a cathedral or two. He inched forward into the almost-blackness and almost-held his breath.
They don't have to be. It echoed, now, larger and older and more impossible than the world. The games could be everything. You could make them -
"I don't make Them," Adam snapped, whip-fast.
You could make them real, it continued, implacable. You could make real a game.
"No one gets hurt, in games," they said.
Their mingled voices slid like ice along the length of Brian's spine.
"Adam?" he said, his voice quavering.
"You'll be all right now, Brian," Adam said from directly behind him, and a yelp escaped Brian in a frothing roiling mass of bubbles that fought their way to the surface. He turned, the water dragging him slower as though he was mired in treacle; it felt unnecessarily dramatic, like the ending of a film.
"I am all right," he protested, automatic argument the way they always did, but whatever else he might have said was swallowed along with what felt like his tongue. Adam looked just like he always did, save for the way his hair waved like bladderwrack and kelp, save for the ink-black of his eyes from edge to edge. What little air was left in Brian's lungs escaped in a tiny involuntary moan. "They fixed me," he said, barely audible without the weight of breath behind it, and Adam's ink-eyes turned upward, turned angry.
Brian screwed his eyes shut and clenched his fists, focusing and concentrating and then forcing his eyes open again, this time to the cold of a starlit sky, the uncomfortable metal line of a - what? - wheelbarrow across the back of his neck.
***
Adam terrified Crowley, he wasn't afraid to admit it. So he kept his eyes on the boy's body, lying so unnervingly still where they'd found it, just above the line of seaweed that marked the line of high tide. He ignored the thick 'Hey, Wensley' from the left of him, the soggy 'Hey, Brian' that followed it. Ignored the audible grins that were so close they were practically overlapping, and the clang and the protests as Pepper joined the welcome back.
He couldn't ignore, though, the gentle warmth of the angel's hand that slipped under the back of his impeccable suit jacket, that rested itself lightly against the small of his back, so he missed it when Adam's eyes flicked open and reflected the darkness of the night sky above. The boy folded himself upright too quickly for the eye to follow, anyway, even for those that were something other than human; when Crowley looked back at him he was standing, feet shoulder-width apart, solid and immoveable and something so very other than human.
"You shouldn't have fixed him," he said, something not-quite not-him tightly tentacle-wrapped around his voice.
Every instinct Crowley had was urging him to back away, back off, get in the Bentley and drive to the ends of the Earth and further, only the angel had moved his hand in preparation and Crowley wasn't going to let him do something stupid.
"Yes we should," he said instead, stepping forward, keeping Adam's focus on him. He felt Aziraphale snatching at the back of his jacket, and he stepped sideways slightly, making sure that he stayed safely in front. A quick glance to the left showed him that the three humans were standing, too, Pepper standing like a belligerent guard-mongoose in front of where Brian and Wensleydale leaned together, fingers entwined.
"I could have fixed him," Adam said, sounding petulant and childish.
"But you shouldn't," Aziraphale said from behind Crowley. "Not if you want to be human like them."
A laugh bubbled out of Adam, deep and gurgling and aeons too old for his face.
"Shouldn't?" he said, and all the hairs prickled to attention on the back of Crowley's neck. "Am I supposed to follow your orders? What exactly do you expect me to do?"
"What do you mean?" It was the girl saying it, Pepper. With her wild red hair and a graze on the crest of her cheekbone she looked like an ancient warrior queen. The ancient warrior queen, the one with the debated spelling and the chariot-spikes. Crowley couldn’t help a small nostalgic twitch to his mouth.
"What do you mean do?" she continued, folding her arms and glaring at Adam. "It wasn’t your fault."
"I can’t have you hurt," Adam said, plaintive and yet somehow immovable, like a woebegone mountain. "None of you," he hurried to add, looking at Brian and Wensleydale before his gaze returned to Pepper. "I don’t think I could help it, if any of you was hurt."
"Help what?" asked Wensleydale, his belligerence sliding easily into worry now that Brian was entirely safe, now he was helping the taller boy to stay on his feet. "Help what, Adam?"
"You know." It was Brian who said it, surprisingly, his eyes sharper than they had been all night. "We don’t talk about it, but you know what he can do."
"You could give the powers back," Crowley said. Adam’s eyes slid over to him, old and sly and deep enough to see the emotions that lurked there like krakens.
"Oh no," he said. "I don't think I can do that."
Crowley had a moment to truly feel helpless in the face of that glare, caught and swept up in it like small fry in ocean currents, before he was confronted with the back of the angel’s head. He drew in a quick breath that cut off suddenly in an undignified noise as Aziraphale reached back and fumbled for his hand, as warm plump fingers wrapped themselves firmly around his.
"Don’t."
"It’s always you, isn’t it?" Adam said, musing. "It’s fine until you come along. You two together, spoiling my fun."
"Adam, don’t." It was Wensleydale this time. His fists were clenched against his sides, and he looked impossibly solid against the cliffs that backed him.
"I could make you forget," Adam said.
Crowley took an involuntary step forward, shoulder to shoulder with the angel, angled a little towards each other as if they could hide their joined hands. Aziraphale’s fingers squeezed a little around his, the angel’s jaw tightening.
"This," Adam continued, implacable, "each other. Everything, really. You could go back to doing what you were supposed to be doing and leave me alone."
"Don’t," Brian said, leaning harder into Wensleydale’s shoulder.
There was something impossibly heavy in Adam’s last few words; any other time Crowley would have had a hard time looking away from him. Only Aziraphale had turned to face him, eyes catching his.
They’d been ice-blue once, those eyes, Crowley remembered. They’d been ice blue and burning with a hard and impersonal sort of compassion, reflecting the light of a flaming sword that turned every way and kept the way of the Tree of Life. Only she’d been expecting already, poor thing, and the first time Crowley’d heard Aziraphale’s voice his eyes had already been turning the freezing blue of melt-water.
He supposed it’d been a long time since he’d considered the colour of Aziraphale’s eyes, what with one thing and another, but now they were the sort of blue you’d compare to a summer’s day. They were the sort of blue that filled the world.
“Angel,” he said helplessly, "I - "
Aziraphale turned away.
Turned to Adam.
"Don’t," the angel said. His voice was high and tight and shaking a little; the only reason it hadn’t edged over into terrified was that the events of the last hour had caused a border dispute. "Please."
"I could," Adam said. "I could easy. You couldn’t stop me."
"We could," Brian said, and Crowley couldn’t help but notice that the boys seemed to be holding each other up now, leaning into each other in a way that was unselfconscious and entirely trusting.
"I could make you forget too," Adam said, stubborn. "I’ve done it before."
The punch came out of nowhere. Hard and unavoidable, scarred knuckles cracking across his chin so fast they seemed to drag silence behind them to fill the hole they had left.
"I could," Pepper said.
***
Everything that was in the beginning, was now, and ever would be Adam sank through the endless fathoms. Every increase of pressure throbbed in the angle of his jaw, the weight in his stomach pulling him ever faster downwards until he crashed to a halt on the bottom.
Come and see, something whispered, only all he could see was the way Wensley had paled at the sight of him, the anger that Pepper had never directed at him before. Come, it whispered, quieter, and he was starting to think it didn't sound like his voice at all, but like the empty rushing of waves. Powerful. Inhuman.
"No," Adam said.
But you could have everything, it pleaded, in the grating voice of sea against sand. You could have the eternity of an ocean of dreams.
"I could," he said.
He’d always liked it though, dreaming - the opportunity to do the things that people would normally notice, the things he couldn’t (wouldn’t, shouldn’t) get away with, the opportunity to scratch an ever-present itch. He'd liked building castles in the sky and filling them with people that'd never do anything he didn't want and wouldn't expect. He'd create impossible technology and fight unwinnable wars and then he'd wake up and Brian would make all the wrong sound effects for 'em, and Wensley would show him how his technology wouldn't work (with diagrams, usually), and Pepper'd pick apart his military strategy and gleefully explain in gory detail all the many ways he would've lost.
He could rule the world on his own, if he wanted. Have anything and everything he'd ever imagined. Only he'd rather have his feet on the ground and his head in the clouds, actually. He'd rather be under the sun building castles in the sand. With Wensleydale to supervise the structural support and pare down the edges of his wilder ideas until they fit together right, and Brian shambling over with an eye for the possibilities of ground down beach-glass and a scrap of bright paper for the flag, and Pepper waiting until it was done and perfect before rampaging through and demanding the next one be higher.
"I'd rather have Them," he said.
Adam closed his eyes and concentrated on the feel of the sea breeze on his face.
"Okay," he said, opening his eyes and sitting up, "I'm done." He clicked his fingers and the angel and demon, still interwoven at the fingers and holding on desperately tightly, disappeared in a gentle wash of light.
"They're - ?" Pepper asked, her voice stern and intractable.
"Not here," Adam said, getting to his feet and brushing off his hands. "Not gone," he added, protesting, when he saw the look on her face. "Home. Soho, I think."
"And you're - ?" Wensleydale ventured, hesitantly tightening his hand around Brian's in a way that made every part of the taller boy's body wear a little of his smile.
"Done, with all of it," Adam said. "Well... almost done."
The world behind his eyelids held the sound of the ocean within it, and he reached for it and caught it between his fingers. After all, a world with angels and demons didn't need to be stretched far to accommodate other things as well. It wasn't like he was changing much, not really, not badly, just makin' moats around his castles so some of the dreams of the endless ocean could get caught and stay and give them something to explore.
Adam opened his eyes again and let out a slow breath that carried a sound like receding waves.
"What were you doing?" Brian asked, curious and open and not scared at all.
Adam shoved his hands into his pockets and grinned a careless grin.
"Nothing much. Just addin' some prettier shells," he said.
***
"Thank you, Jack White, for the fibre optic Jesus that you gave me..."
"No. No way. Absolutely not."
"It shined so bright that I couldn't help believing it could save me, from vampires..."
"There is absolutely no way he can have that."
The Morris Traveller, battered and care-worn and barely repaired, straining through all the lines of it, crested the hill arguing with itself.
"They were vampires," the passenger seat said.
"I know they were vampires."
"It's an actual song," the back seat said happily.
"It is not," insisted the driver's seat. "There is no way that that is a song, right Ads?"
It was a cold night, crisp and sharp and all those other adjectives that justify the extra minutes captured under the softness of a duvet, but there was a hint of freshness in the air that was gently navigating it towards spring. Just for an instant though the cold sharpened, the moment froze, the world held itself still on the edges of a fathoms-deep winter.
"I dunno," said the passenger seat, with a casual air so perfectly nonchalant as to seem almost studied. "Seems a bit dodgy to me. What do you think, Wensley?"
"Me?" The back seat squeaked in a different voice (close enough, though, overlapping enough to be practically one thing).
"Your decision."
"Oh," said the back seat, "um, then I say we let him have it."
The world exhaled in a bright gust of laughter and the Morris Traveller picked up speed as it surfed down the other side of the hill, into the new world, and the new spring, and the endless sands of summer beyond.
The End
Happy Holidays, irisbleufic from your Secret Writer!
On to the Epilogues!
Title: Castles in the Sand
Recipient: irisbleufic
Author: miscellanny
Pairing: Brian/Wensleydale, Aziraphale/Crowley
Rating: G
Notes: “Are you yeti,” Brian warbled, “are you yeti for love, yes I am, are you?”
“I- told you,” Wensley grumbled, “it wasn’t a yeti!”
“I say we let him have it,” Adam said.
“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.” - Isaac Newton
As the Morris Traveller crested the hill, three pairs of hands in various states of repair anchored to bits of its wooden frame, nothing could be seen of the ostensible driver bar a pair of particularly battered soles. The barely-white rubber hatching suggested the sort of canvas trainers to be found in branches of Asda all over the country; the smear of what looked like nothing so much as dried blood was a little less pedestrian.
“I see a bad spoon a-rising,” threaded its way out of the driver’s side window, loud and tuneless and startling the cows, “I see trouble on the way-“
“Tenuous,” called one of the pairs of hands: thin, freckled, split nails, large plaster around the base of the thumb.
“It was a spoon!” the battered trainers protested.
“More a ladle,” the chubbier, paler hands said. There was a nasty burn across the back of one wrist, layered over others, healed. “Ads?”
The final pair of hands considered for a while. These hands were - well. Hand shaped. Emphatically so. They were precisely hand colour, too, with just the right length of nail. These hands could have modelled for Fairy, and no one would even think to question the lack of rubber gloves.
“I say we let him have it,” Adam eventually decided. “And let’s take a minute.”
The owner of the freckled hands - just about as long and thin, barely curved and mostly muscle - stood upright and swore loudly, bracing her hands in the small of her back and stretching backwards before bending fluidly forward and letting her arms hang. Pale and chubby just collapsed into an inelegant heap against the side of the Traveller, his sandy blond hair as sweaty a mess as he was.
Adam, looking just rumpled enough to be interesting, golden hair curling just so around his ears, ducked his head into the passenger side window.
“All right, Brian?”
Apparently-Brian, who was apparently driving despite having the driver’s seat as reclined as it was possible to recline and his feet on the dashboard, responded with a grin and a double thumbs-up. His washed-out jeans above the once-blue trainers were a gory mess, though, and there was sweat beading on a forehead that was startlingly greenish-pale against his brown hair.
“Wens?”
Wensleydale once got his survival badge at the Lower Tadfield Boy Scouts but had actually found the craft activity and DIY activity badges more useful, when it came to medical assistance and the limited resources they had. Mostly it was sellotape; sellotape was brilliant, and they all had practically permanent small hairless bands around their limbs where t-shirt bandages had recently been removed. He seemed reluctant to look this time, though, and took only a cursory glance before plumping hurriedly onto his backside, pulling off his glasses for a nervous polish.
“We’re best off finding a B&B for a couple of nights. I know,” he said tiredly, forestalling the girl’s opening mouth, “I know we can’t afford it, actually, but if we don’t get some properly boiled water and a couple of night’s sleep my legs are going to start dropping off, never mind Brian’s.” The words were casual but that was just the way they did things; worry was beating itself senseless against his tone like moths, like headlights.
“Don’t worry about me,” Brian called from inside the car. “I’m peachy. Peachlike. Full of fuzz.”
“We’ll find somewhere,” Adam said.
Wensleydale’s shoulders slumped a little. “Pepper?”
She didn’t even have to fish in her pocket. She’d always, in spite of herself, shown a tendency to be quite good at finances.
“Thirty two pounds thirty,” she said. When her mouth was closed it was tight at the corners. “And a half price voucher for Domino’s but it’s only valid on Thursdays.”
“Not the sort of place that’d have one anyway,” Adam said, looking steadily at Wensleydale. “But in the morning we can find a mechanic, or a taxi, a way of getting Brian to a hospital. We’ll find somewhere. Someone.”
Wensley hauled himself to his feet at Adam's unspoken command, automatically scuffing his foot until the hole in his left sock was more comfortably between his toes, setting his hands back against the frame of the Traveller. Pepper swore, long and creative, a colourful thread in the gloaming. Her hands were callused enough they ought to have struck sparks as she rubbed them together, put them back on the car.
“Ready?”
“Set.”
“Go,” Adam said, and it was almost as though the car rolled forward a little to oblige him, the going tough but just about manageable. The lights of the village weren’t too far away.
“Are you yeti,” Brian warbled, “are you yeti for love, yes I am, are you?”
“I - told you,” Wensley grumbled, “it wasn’t a yeti!”
“I say we let him have it,” Adam said.
***
"That shouldn't have worked."
Wensleydale spared Pepper a quick glare before going back to contemplating the distance between the kerb and the front door, between that and the room Adam had got for them. His back was hurting just thinking about it.
"Seriously," Pepper insisted, looking far angrier than Wensleydale wanted to deal with, "that actually shouldn't have worked. There's no way people accept 'odd jobs' as payment, not in real life, not anywhere outside of story books."
"There was a yeti," Wensleydale said, temper fraying. There was a weak cheer (too weak, Brian was never this quiet) from the front seat. "This is what you choose to question?"
"Yeah, but that's just - " Pepper bit her lip, bit her words back, turned on her heel and headed for the boot where she could take out her annoyance on the back packs and the camping stove. Wensleydale slumped back against the side of the car and released a slow breath.
They didn't talk about it. Of all the things they didn't talk about, this was the big one; that's just Adam, that's just the way it is, that's just Adam's imagination stretching out until it changes the world for a few hours, like the way it always did when we were kids. Only when they were kids the afternoons had always ended, the sun had gone down, the game had ebbed and drawn back and left them safely ashore with jam sandwiches and Penguin biscuits and a bit of harmless telly before bed. He'd always liked to watch documentaries, mostly about insects, liked to have the buffer of something undeniably real.
Only this was real.
It was a tall house, the Bed and Breakfast, and thin, with stairs marching up to the front door. The pavement on one side of it was fully three feet lower than the pavement on the other, and something about the slant of the hill made Wensleydale feel as though the house was far realer and more solid than where he stood, like it had been hammered down to anchor the road and the town against the gentle washing of the sea. Roses clambered up the front of it, pulling at the white paint and leaving unreadable maps, and behind the front windows, behind the modest net curtains was the warm yellow lamplight and gentle blue wash of an evening's harmless telly.
(And Adam had smiled just as warm, just as harmless, and spoken in a certain tone of voice that settled like a guiding hand against the back of Wensleydale's neck and he hadn't liked the look in the woman's eyes, the way she'd smiled and nodded, he hadn't liked it at all).
He rounded the front of the car, pulled open the driver's door, blanched and bit his tongue to keep a swear word in.
"All right, Brian?"
"All right, Wens."
He focused on the click of his knees as he crouched down beside the car, on tugging Brian's long arm around his neck. It was hard when things kept trying to grab his attention - the way Brian's t-shirt was dark with sweat, the wobble in his voice, the edge of teeth in his smile - but Wensleydale focused on hauling Brian upright and against his side.
"I'll take the bags up," Pepper said, with the tightly controlled fury that was always in her voice when one of them got hurt. Wensleydale wondered if they'd have to pay extra if Pepper ended up punching a hole in the wall again (and didn't wonder, chose not to wonder whether the woman would even notice). He propped Brian against the side of the car for a moment, long enough to slam the car door, then tugged him upright again.
You wouldn't think he could hold so much weight, Brian. He was a head taller than Wensleydale but lanky, like a stick insect, and keeping him upright across the pavement was a delicate shuffling balancing act. Wensleydale had always been built on stockier lines, but when he reached the bottom of the stairs he admitted defeat.
"Ups-a-daisy," Wensleydale said, shoving his shoulder into Brian's stomach and then straightening, holding onto the black iron railings until he was certain he wouldn't topple over. Brian groaned, from somewhere in the vicinity of Wensleydale's kidneys.
"I think I'm going to be sick," he said. Wensleydale huffed breathlessly, and pushed his glasses up his nose, and tried to remember what it was about stick insects he loved quite so much.
"In here," Adam said cheerfully, when they finally made it through the front door, and Wensleydale didn't so much as glance around before pushing straight through the door and heading for the closest bed. Brian's plaintive noises struck an odd harmony with the unhappy crunching of the springs as he bounced gently to a halt, and Wensleydale collapsed into an aching puddle at the foot of the bed.
"You two'll share that bed," Adam said, "and - "
"And what?" Pepper asked, the tone of her voice dangerous as she dumped her bag on the other bed.
"And I'll take the floor, actually," Adam said, injured.
"I could - " Wensleydale protested, half-hearted.
“You'll share with Brian,” Adam said, and Wensleydale scrambled onto the bed obediently, comforted by the firm tone of Adam's voice. Everything was okay when he sounded like that; Adam was good at taking care of things. Wensleydale could fall asleep safely, Brian radiating heat like a furnace against his back, and the passing plaintive wish for a little Attenborough before bed was safely quiet, and barely noticeable, and quickly sank under his dreams.
***
For Adam, it was usually more of an active decision when he went to sleep. He’d always liked it though, dreaming - the opportunity to do the things that people would normally notice, the things he couldn’t (wouldn’t, shouldn’t) get away with, the opportunity to scratch an ever-present itch.
This time he didn’t even notice he’d gone under until the gentle motion of seaweed caught the corner of his eye. Nothing about the blue-lit room had changed, at first glance, except that a continuous line of bubbles was escaping with Wensleydale’s snores, catching and trapping the line of orange light from the street lamp outside. Except the pale green cabbage roses soggily climbing the walls behind the head of Pepper’s bed had starfish nestled among their petals, and as Adam sat up and squirmed out of his sleeping bag (the hiss of nylon oddly muffled) the weight of water protested his movement.
He wasn’t scared - he wasn’t sure he knew how to be - but he hesitated for a moment before crossing to the peeling, white-painted door. He knew they’d be safe here, catch Adam leaving them unsafe, but there was something about the restless movement of Brian’s head against the pillow that was tied to something in his chest and wouldn’t quite let him move.
"You’ll be fine here," he said, layering it with something implacable. "You’ll be fine until I get back." And he stepped forward quickly and turned the doorknob, yanked himself free on the threshold like that time with the length of string and Pepper’s wobbly tooth. (The tiny gap it left inside him filled with salt and iron).
Outside there ought to be a hallway. There ought to be awful china-patterned wallpaper and glossy brown skirting. Instead the pigeon holes with the keys were nailed to the inky black of a cave wall and the standard lamp’s fringing was swaying in invisible currents that led away from the front door. It looked impossible, that door. All of the furnishings were odd and out of place here, but there was something about the cage around the letterbox and the peephole in the centre that flipped the picture from unreal into (he wasn’t sure he knew how to - ) unnerving.
Come, something didn't say, from the depth of the darkness opposite the door. Come and see.
It was like a voice inside his head and he didn't like the way it spoke. He didn't like the way he recognised it, the way it sounded like when he talked to his friends. (It was different with them. He didn't make them. It was different because they were Them and they wanted to come, to come and see...)
Adam's hand shot out to grab the back of the grandma-chair that sat in the corner of the entrance-cave furthest from the door and he hauled himself to a stop.
"No," he said firmly and the word emerged, a barely audible bubble. "No," he said again. And he dug in his heels and pushed against the currents, forged through the water that tried to drag and pull and (come) beckon him back.
"I don't," he said, barely enough breath in it to bubble. "I don't do this to them, I don't I don't."
But you want to, the voice whispered to the base of his spine, and Adam shuddered and hauled open the front door and catapulted himself forward into the street outside.
The front door slammed with an almighty crash. It ought to have been impossible with the weight of water behind it, but when he rubbed his fingertips against the gently crackling paint they came away dry. Adam ducked and pulled open the letterbox, not sure what to expect, but there was nothing but the distant pounding of waves like a seashell held up to the ear, only it was in your head, it was never anywhere but in your head, the sound of the sea was in your head the whole time.
He stood, feeling dizzy, and lurched the few steps to the corner of the road where he ought to be able to see the distant sea. There was nothing. Not sea, not sand, not the emptiness of sky but an infinite nothing that hurt his eyes to look at. And he would have gasped, would have drawn breath to let out a cry of denial only he'd grown so used to the sea that out here he found he couldn't quite breathe...
***
Somewhere not too distant the sun was struggling above the tree line and putting a brave if pallid face on the day. It trailed its listless fingers over the splintering picnic table, passed briefly over the faded optimism of an ice-cream sign that ought to have been put into hibernation at least two months before, then lingered on the incongruously brightly-polished lines of a black 1926 Bentley that was one of only two cars in the roadside café’s car park. It was too bad that the laws of physics dictated it must finally move on, drag itself away, skimming over the off-white Ford and finally, reluctantly poking light in through the slatted blinds at the steamy window. The man sitting at the table there didn't even have the good grace to blink, but then, he was wearing sunglasses.
The air inside the café was warm and so thick you could practically drink it, and it was a decent bet that it'd taste better than the coffee. Crowley considered giving his drink another stir, just to be doing something, but the possibility that it would've congealed around the spoon made him reach across the table instead, laying thin fingers on the edge of the newspaper that sat there and tugging it towards himself.
"Don't even think about it," said Aziraphale, setting down his new cup of tea and plumping himself into the hard plastic chair opposite before snatching it back.
"D'you do that on purpose?" Crowley asked, scowling. "Do you wait for just the moment when you can catch someone out before pouncing?"
"Don't be ridiculous," said Aziraphale, slightly pink across the cheeks, and studied the clue to fourteen down with entirely unnecessary attention.
"You do, don't you? Stand to the side until temptation gets too much. Catch you stepping in early, providing some decent conversation so no one's forced to co-opt another man's Telegraph."
"I'd forgotten you were so paranoid,"Aziraphale said, airily.
"I'd forgotten you were so heavenly," Crowley said, snappier than he meant.
"No you hadn't." Aziraphale's voice was even, carefully so. "I wouldn't be here if you had." He folded the Telegraph with neat, precise movements, fussily smoothing the edges of it before sliding it into his battered satchel. All of the usually soft edges of him drew themselves in a little more crisply, even his awful toffee-brown overcoat projecting an air of hurt and disappointed distance. It was something about the lapels.
"Come on, angel," Crowley said. "You know I didn't mean it like that."
"It's perfectly fine," Aziraphale said. His chair grated against the floor in a long drawn-out screech. "It's not as though I'm under the illusion you brought me along for the company."
“But I did,” Crowley muttered too late to the still-steaming tea cup, after the glass door had already swung shut behind the angel. He scrubbed a hand through his hair and took an absent-minded sip of his coffee before leaving. It probably served him right.
Two days they'd been driving, and the proximity was starting to wear on them both. It showed itself in different ways of course. Aziraphale had become almost aggressively polite, prefacing practically everything with gentle endearments and manners. Crowley, for his part, had drawn in on himself and left spiky defences in his wake. It wasn't that he meant to hurt the angel, not exactly - it was self defence, was what it was. He needed something to act as a barrier between him and the way the angel could make him laugh. Always had.
Crowley slid into the cold leather seat and looked over.
"Angel," he started, but Aziraphale cut him off.
"Which way?"
Crowley sighed. "North," he said, and started the car.
Godparents, he had called them, long ago and far away. Crowley'd never been quite sure if the automatic flinch at the word had been psychosomatic or not, but the iron-filings feeling in the pit of his stomach definitely wasn't something he could brush aside. Adam was magnetic, even when he was playing at human, and as good as Crowley was at ignoring him there were times when it just wasn't possible. He'd laid it at the feet of tension and anxiety, that time with the almost-Apocalypse, but as Adam had grown it'd been harder to dismiss, and there were times when Crowley felt forced to up sticks and check in on him, for all the good it ever did. Mostly by the time he'd shown up it was all over bar the shouting, bar the occasional still-smouldering rubble, and he had no idea if Adam even noticed his presence. He'd had no idea if Aziraphale had noticed his absence, either. They'd been checking in on each other with a little more regularity (and wasn't that doing wonders for the uncomfortable feelings lodged somewhere in his chest-wall?) , but the angel had never mentioned. Not until this time, until Crowley had circled around to put his smart leather hold-all in the passenger-side foot-well and found it already occupied by somebody's feet.
"Sssorry," Crowley said, half under his breath, his tongue tripping over the word ever so slightly.
The angel huffed, and didn't say anything at all, but there was a gentle easing in the lines of him. Soon enough he'd pulled out the newspaper again and unfolded it from its severe lines. When he started tunelessly whistling between his front teeth and only managed a mildly disgruntled look after misspelling miscellaneous, twice, Crowley almost felt like laughing.
***
Pepper didn't wake up angry, and she found herself hating the lack of it.
Sometimes she felt like one of those cheap Burger Lord flying toys, the kind they'd had to stop giving away after all the corneal abrasions and temporary blindness. Sometimes she felt like her rubber band anger was so twisted up inside her that she was too far gone even to snap. It didn't feel snapped today, though; it felt loosened. Weakened. So it was an effort of will that made her shove up on her elbows, strands of red hair making a break for freedom from her plait, and glare at Adam.
"Well?" she barked.
She'd thought Adam was the only one up, bustling and unpacking and being efficient in that sickening way only morning people could manage, but it was Wensleydale who answered her. When she looked over at him he was lying on his back and staring straight up at the ceiling, his fingers just brushing Brian's in a way he'd never admit was deliberate.
"We're sure," he said, and Pepper was impressed at the lack of a tremor, "that yetis aren't poisonous, right?"
"Thought it wasn't a yeti,” Brian mumbled, barely audible, and Pepper watched Wensleydale's hand tighten into a fist.
"You," she said, fighting her way out of the duvet. "Bathroom. Now."
"I'm not leaving - " Wensleydale started, an unfamiliar angry note in his voice, and she was two steps closer to the bed before she'd even though about it, leaning over Brian to push Wensleydale's glasses, just shy of painfully, further up his nose.
"Not you, idiot," she said, and she wished her voice was better at the notes that meant fond. "Adam -"
"Going," he said, unnaturally compliant, and she followed on his heels. Nearly ran into his back, too, as he stopped on the threshold.
"Were you going to take a bath?" she asked, and they were close enough that she could feel his slight shudder against her skin.
"No," Adam said, more firmly than was needed. He reached over and yanked at the plug chain, careful not to touch the water, then did the same to the sink with a sharp jerking motion. He was still for a moment, then darted over to slam the lid of the toilet shut before sitting on it, like he was trying to keep something in.
"Ads?" she asked carefully, her adopted anger sliding too quickly through her fingers, but he tightly shook his head.
"It's nothing."
There was silence for a moment, bar the sound of something dripping and, distant, the ever-present crash of the sea. She let out a breath in time with it and Adam's head jerked up, his eyes meeting hers.
"You have to fix Brian," she said.
She expected him to look away. She expected him to lie to her, sure, because there wasn't a part of Adam that wasn't tangled with stories on some level or another, but she expected him to at least have the decency to be shifty about it. Not to stare her straight in the eyes.
"I can't," he said.
"Bollocks," she snapped back.
"Won't, then," he said. "I don't do things to you."
“Bollocks," she repeated. That was when he looked away, his eyes drifting down and to the side, fixed on the droplets falling from the sink's cold tap.
"I don't - it's not like that," he said softly, like he wasn't even talking to her, and she grabbed his chin and forced his face up, speaking through gritted teeth.
"You think we don't know?" Pepper said. "You think we don't agree? I mean - maybe Wensleydale's not so good at it, maybe he isn't always - but Brian'll agree to anything, and Wens'll always do what Brian does, and if you think I can't beat you with one hand tied behind my back, Adam Young..."
There was darkness in his eyes when he looked back at her. Cold and deep and with the deceptive strength of ocean currents.
“I think," he said. "You agree."
He pushed to his feet then and shoved past her, making her stumble back. She swore as her hand splashed down into the sink, into the puddle of water that had collected there. She was quick going after him, though, was back in the room to see him look down at where Wensleydale lay and Brian sweated - no other verb could quite take precedence, when it came to Brian just now.
"Please," Pepper said. Maybe it was that, maybe it was the tremor in her voice and the way that he'd scared her, or maybe it was the way that Wensleydale relaxed back so readily against the pillows when Adam murmured that Brian'd be fine. Either way, she'd never heard anything that sounded so final as the door slamming closed behind him.
***
"Trust me," Aziraphale said, adjusting the angle of Crowley's tie and unnecessarily smoothing his shirt. The demon didn't move from where he was sprawled against the door of the Bentley, every line of him muttering resentful reluctance.
"Trust me, he says," Crowley complained bitterly. "I can practically feel myself burning up already."
"It's all in the name of right," Aziraphale said virtuously, and Crowley shoved himself upright and stuffed his hands in his pockets partly, the angel couldn't help thinking, to prevent Aziraphale from fussing with his tie again. He took a swift step backwards.
"That," said Crowley, frown deepening, "is exactly my point. Besides, it's not as though this disguise is going to get us anywhere. Do you get all your ideas from the Disney playbook?"
"I have no idea what you mean."
"We might as well be dressed as harmless old apple-sellers."
Aziraphale could feel the tide of pink marching relentlessly across his cheeks - there were things about human bodies that just drove him barmy - and he tightened his lips.
"I don't know what good you think it's going to do anyway," Crowley continued, looking down at his severe black suit and bringing a hand up to flick at the badge. Elder McGuffin, it said. Judas Priest: Defenders of the Faith.
"You know no one actually talks to the faith-pedlars?"
"Why else do you think I always have herbal tea in?" Aziraphale asked, a mite defensively. Crowley stared at him for a moment, then something in the line of his mouth softened, and Aziraphale carefully looked away.
"Of course you do," Crowley said.
Elder Badcrumble, Aziraphale’s badge said. Judas Priest: Sad Wings of Destiny. Crowley had insisted. Aziraphale picked at the tiny y.
"Look," he said, after an awkward moment. "This is the best we have at the moment. Do you want to have more of an idea what’s happening, or not?"
"I do," Crowley said, sounding chastened. He straightened his posture and his jacket, managing to project an air of almost righteousness that was only a little undermined by the sunglasses, the snakeskin shoes. "And I am grateful," he added after a moment, and it was far easier to turn to the front door of the Bed and Breakfast than it was to meet his eyes.
The brass knob turned easily under Aziraphale’s hand, the door temporarily forgetting that it was really supposed to be locked. The hallway looked rather as though the 1960s had settled into the ugly floral armchair in the corner and refused ever to leave. Aziraphale really thought that he ought to have felt more at home there, only there was something uncomfortably dank around the edges. Crowley nudged him over to the left hand side of the corridor, his jaw tight against his skin, and Aziraphale knocked lightly at the door.
"It’s about bloody time you came back," said a strident voice, the volume increasing as whoever it was approached the door. Aziraphale stepped backwards quickly as a young woman yanked it open. She was just a little shorter than he was, red-haired and red-faced and clearly furious.
"Er," said Aziraphale. Crowley leaned around his shoulder.
"We are harmless old apple-sellers," he said, straight-faced, and Aziraphale elbowed him in the stomach.
"Not today thank you," the young woman snapped, and she would have slammed the door again had Aziraphale not shuffled forward again, far enough that it closed painfully on one of his sensibly-laced brogues.
“Just a moment of your time,” he murmured, gently insinuating his shoulder into the gap, “don’t want to be a bother.” He made sure to layer his voice with all the gentle reassurance he could manage. Crowley crowded close, warm against Aziraphale’s back, and the angel considered elbowing him again - the first time had been more satisfying than he was really comfortable with - only his mind went entirely blank when Crowley’s breath brushed over his ear.
"He’s not here," Crowley said, and then they both stumbled helplessly forward as the door was yanked fully open.
"Who’s not?" the young woman said. "How d’you know? Where is he?"
"Pepper?"
A young man’s voice this time. Aziraphale looked over automatically and then almost went to avert his gaze - he didn’t think it was the sort of thing he was supposed to look at - before the situation clarified. The two young men were curled together, certainly, but there was sufficient clothing in place. One of the young men seemed in a dreadful state, his right leg a gory mess under his jeans, and the other was fretfully carding a hand through his hair. Aziraphale stepped forward automatically, then flinched back as the young woman - Pepper - darted in front of him, her teeth actually bared.
"I can help," he said. "I can help him."
"Pepper?" The young man on the bed said again, bordering on the panicked.
"He’s not here," Crowley insisted, and there was something uncomfortably close to desperate in the tone of his voice. "Angel, we need to go."
"You're not going near him," Pepper said.
"Yes he is," said the boy on the bed.
"Wensleydale - "
"I don't care." Wensleydale stood up, shaking like a leaf and with his hands curled into fists at his sides.
"But Adam - "
"I don't care about Adam," Wensleydale insisted, "not when it comes to Brian." He sounded determined and terrified in just about equal measure, and turned to face Aziraphale. "You swear you can fix him?"
Aziraphale nodded silently and sidestepped neatly around Pepper, who was audibly grinding her teeth. The heat was radiating off the boy, Brian, and Aziraphale tutted quietly and placed his hand on Brian's forehead.
"There," he said quietly, absently. "No harm done."
The rigid tension of Brian's body relaxed all of a sudden, his head turning sideways on the pillow, out from under Aziraphale's hand. Aziraphale had expected Wensleydale to react first, but it was Pepper who collapsed to her knees by the side of the bed, pulling aside the ragged remnants of Brian's gory jeans to find a wide pink scar that looked weeks healed.
"He's all right?" Wensleydale asked, sounding lost.
"He'll be fine," Aziraphale said, reaching out to squeeze the boy's shoulder gently. "He's sleeping it off."
"Speaking of off," Crowley said, grabbing the back of Aziraphale's coat and tugging none-too-gently, "we really must be. People to see, you know how it is - "
"You're going to find Adam," Pepper said, pushing herself to her feet. Aziraphale's agreement and Crowley's denial collided mid-air and fell into an uncomfortable silence on the carpet. Aziraphale could practically feel the demon's glare.
"Then you're not going without me," Pepper said, folding her arms implacably.
"Without us," said Wensleydale, standing firm at her side. Pepper gave him a sidelong look.
"What about Brian?"
"He's coming too."
"Give me strength," said Crowley.
"Give me two minutes," said Wensleydale.
And so it was that Aziraphale set off at the head of quite the most inelegant procession there had likely ever been: two ethereal beings, a valkyrie on the war-path, and a stocky youth pushing an invalid sprawled in a gently squeaking wheelbarrow.
"Imagine," he said softly to Crowley as they toiled along the winding path that led down to the booming sea, "what the world would be like if we were even remotely competent."
Crowley gave him a quick look, unreadable behind dark glasses.
"I'm not sure I want to." Aziraphale's stomach lurched as Crowley's fingers brushed his, tentative at first and then coming back to rest there. "I'm not sure I'd want to change anything," he said.
***
After hours, days, eternities of his brain boiling inside his skull, the sudden drop into cool clear water made Brian grin happy bubbles, his whole body going loose. There were voices above him, voices he knew, but they'd wait - it was easier by far to give in to gravity and let himself sink deeper, the water darkening around him.
He half knew he was dreaming, and he half knew he was not. So it made perfect nonsense that he came to a thumping jolting halt in an ugly old armchair fathoms under the sea, set square in the middle of a pool of standard-lamplight that glimmered off stones and shells and beach-glass, a battered mobile, a messaged bottle.
The water didn't like it that he pushed up to his feet, but there was something in his head that didn't belong there - faint echoes of a conversation from the mental equivalent of the next room.
Come, something whispered, rhythmic and shushing, almost hidden under the conversation he couldn't quite make out. Come and see.
It was Adam's voice he recognised first, of course. Conditioned to respond to it, to expect excitement and adventure and really wild things. Only the strangeness of it was that Adam was holding a conversation almost with himself, Adam and not-Adam, the second voice older and slyer and slickly oiled but still recognisable.
You made us, it said. You gave us shape.
"But I didn't mean to," Adam said, matter-of-fact. "Stands to reason it's not my fault if I didn't mean to."
But you could, it answered back, persuasion coiled around and through its Adam-voice. (Come, it whispered. Come and see). You've been painting dreams on the walls of the world when you could be living inside them.
"Those're just games," Adam said.
There was a rocky wall in front of where Brian stood, large enough to dwarf the crack in the base of it that could easily encompass a cathedral or two. He inched forward into the almost-blackness and almost-held his breath.
They don't have to be. It echoed, now, larger and older and more impossible than the world. The games could be everything. You could make them -
"I don't make Them," Adam snapped, whip-fast.
You could make them real, it continued, implacable. You could make real a game.
"No one gets hurt, in games," they said.
Their mingled voices slid like ice along the length of Brian's spine.
"Adam?" he said, his voice quavering.
"You'll be all right now, Brian," Adam said from directly behind him, and a yelp escaped Brian in a frothing roiling mass of bubbles that fought their way to the surface. He turned, the water dragging him slower as though he was mired in treacle; it felt unnecessarily dramatic, like the ending of a film.
"I am all right," he protested, automatic argument the way they always did, but whatever else he might have said was swallowed along with what felt like his tongue. Adam looked just like he always did, save for the way his hair waved like bladderwrack and kelp, save for the ink-black of his eyes from edge to edge. What little air was left in Brian's lungs escaped in a tiny involuntary moan. "They fixed me," he said, barely audible without the weight of breath behind it, and Adam's ink-eyes turned upward, turned angry.
Brian screwed his eyes shut and clenched his fists, focusing and concentrating and then forcing his eyes open again, this time to the cold of a starlit sky, the uncomfortable metal line of a - what? - wheelbarrow across the back of his neck.
***
Adam terrified Crowley, he wasn't afraid to admit it. So he kept his eyes on the boy's body, lying so unnervingly still where they'd found it, just above the line of seaweed that marked the line of high tide. He ignored the thick 'Hey, Wensley' from the left of him, the soggy 'Hey, Brian' that followed it. Ignored the audible grins that were so close they were practically overlapping, and the clang and the protests as Pepper joined the welcome back.
He couldn't ignore, though, the gentle warmth of the angel's hand that slipped under the back of his impeccable suit jacket, that rested itself lightly against the small of his back, so he missed it when Adam's eyes flicked open and reflected the darkness of the night sky above. The boy folded himself upright too quickly for the eye to follow, anyway, even for those that were something other than human; when Crowley looked back at him he was standing, feet shoulder-width apart, solid and immoveable and something so very other than human.
"You shouldn't have fixed him," he said, something not-quite not-him tightly tentacle-wrapped around his voice.
Every instinct Crowley had was urging him to back away, back off, get in the Bentley and drive to the ends of the Earth and further, only the angel had moved his hand in preparation and Crowley wasn't going to let him do something stupid.
"Yes we should," he said instead, stepping forward, keeping Adam's focus on him. He felt Aziraphale snatching at the back of his jacket, and he stepped sideways slightly, making sure that he stayed safely in front. A quick glance to the left showed him that the three humans were standing, too, Pepper standing like a belligerent guard-mongoose in front of where Brian and Wensleydale leaned together, fingers entwined.
"I could have fixed him," Adam said, sounding petulant and childish.
"But you shouldn't," Aziraphale said from behind Crowley. "Not if you want to be human like them."
A laugh bubbled out of Adam, deep and gurgling and aeons too old for his face.
"Shouldn't?" he said, and all the hairs prickled to attention on the back of Crowley's neck. "Am I supposed to follow your orders? What exactly do you expect me to do?"
"What do you mean?" It was the girl saying it, Pepper. With her wild red hair and a graze on the crest of her cheekbone she looked like an ancient warrior queen. The ancient warrior queen, the one with the debated spelling and the chariot-spikes. Crowley couldn’t help a small nostalgic twitch to his mouth.
"What do you mean do?" she continued, folding her arms and glaring at Adam. "It wasn’t your fault."
"I can’t have you hurt," Adam said, plaintive and yet somehow immovable, like a woebegone mountain. "None of you," he hurried to add, looking at Brian and Wensleydale before his gaze returned to Pepper. "I don’t think I could help it, if any of you was hurt."
"Help what?" asked Wensleydale, his belligerence sliding easily into worry now that Brian was entirely safe, now he was helping the taller boy to stay on his feet. "Help what, Adam?"
"You know." It was Brian who said it, surprisingly, his eyes sharper than they had been all night. "We don’t talk about it, but you know what he can do."
"You could give the powers back," Crowley said. Adam’s eyes slid over to him, old and sly and deep enough to see the emotions that lurked there like krakens.
"Oh no," he said. "I don't think I can do that."
Crowley had a moment to truly feel helpless in the face of that glare, caught and swept up in it like small fry in ocean currents, before he was confronted with the back of the angel’s head. He drew in a quick breath that cut off suddenly in an undignified noise as Aziraphale reached back and fumbled for his hand, as warm plump fingers wrapped themselves firmly around his.
"Don’t."
"It’s always you, isn’t it?" Adam said, musing. "It’s fine until you come along. You two together, spoiling my fun."
"Adam, don’t." It was Wensleydale this time. His fists were clenched against his sides, and he looked impossibly solid against the cliffs that backed him.
"I could make you forget," Adam said.
Crowley took an involuntary step forward, shoulder to shoulder with the angel, angled a little towards each other as if they could hide their joined hands. Aziraphale’s fingers squeezed a little around his, the angel’s jaw tightening.
"This," Adam continued, implacable, "each other. Everything, really. You could go back to doing what you were supposed to be doing and leave me alone."
"Don’t," Brian said, leaning harder into Wensleydale’s shoulder.
There was something impossibly heavy in Adam’s last few words; any other time Crowley would have had a hard time looking away from him. Only Aziraphale had turned to face him, eyes catching his.
They’d been ice-blue once, those eyes, Crowley remembered. They’d been ice blue and burning with a hard and impersonal sort of compassion, reflecting the light of a flaming sword that turned every way and kept the way of the Tree of Life. Only she’d been expecting already, poor thing, and the first time Crowley’d heard Aziraphale’s voice his eyes had already been turning the freezing blue of melt-water.
He supposed it’d been a long time since he’d considered the colour of Aziraphale’s eyes, what with one thing and another, but now they were the sort of blue you’d compare to a summer’s day. They were the sort of blue that filled the world.
“Angel,” he said helplessly, "I - "
Aziraphale turned away.
Turned to Adam.
"Don’t," the angel said. His voice was high and tight and shaking a little; the only reason it hadn’t edged over into terrified was that the events of the last hour had caused a border dispute. "Please."
"I could," Adam said. "I could easy. You couldn’t stop me."
"We could," Brian said, and Crowley couldn’t help but notice that the boys seemed to be holding each other up now, leaning into each other in a way that was unselfconscious and entirely trusting.
"I could make you forget too," Adam said, stubborn. "I’ve done it before."
The punch came out of nowhere. Hard and unavoidable, scarred knuckles cracking across his chin so fast they seemed to drag silence behind them to fill the hole they had left.
"I could," Pepper said.
***
Everything that was in the beginning, was now, and ever would be Adam sank through the endless fathoms. Every increase of pressure throbbed in the angle of his jaw, the weight in his stomach pulling him ever faster downwards until he crashed to a halt on the bottom.
Come and see, something whispered, only all he could see was the way Wensley had paled at the sight of him, the anger that Pepper had never directed at him before. Come, it whispered, quieter, and he was starting to think it didn't sound like his voice at all, but like the empty rushing of waves. Powerful. Inhuman.
"No," Adam said.
But you could have everything, it pleaded, in the grating voice of sea against sand. You could have the eternity of an ocean of dreams.
"I could," he said.
He’d always liked it though, dreaming - the opportunity to do the things that people would normally notice, the things he couldn’t (wouldn’t, shouldn’t) get away with, the opportunity to scratch an ever-present itch. He'd liked building castles in the sky and filling them with people that'd never do anything he didn't want and wouldn't expect. He'd create impossible technology and fight unwinnable wars and then he'd wake up and Brian would make all the wrong sound effects for 'em, and Wensley would show him how his technology wouldn't work (with diagrams, usually), and Pepper'd pick apart his military strategy and gleefully explain in gory detail all the many ways he would've lost.
He could rule the world on his own, if he wanted. Have anything and everything he'd ever imagined. Only he'd rather have his feet on the ground and his head in the clouds, actually. He'd rather be under the sun building castles in the sand. With Wensleydale to supervise the structural support and pare down the edges of his wilder ideas until they fit together right, and Brian shambling over with an eye for the possibilities of ground down beach-glass and a scrap of bright paper for the flag, and Pepper waiting until it was done and perfect before rampaging through and demanding the next one be higher.
"I'd rather have Them," he said.
Adam closed his eyes and concentrated on the feel of the sea breeze on his face.
"Okay," he said, opening his eyes and sitting up, "I'm done." He clicked his fingers and the angel and demon, still interwoven at the fingers and holding on desperately tightly, disappeared in a gentle wash of light.
"They're - ?" Pepper asked, her voice stern and intractable.
"Not here," Adam said, getting to his feet and brushing off his hands. "Not gone," he added, protesting, when he saw the look on her face. "Home. Soho, I think."
"And you're - ?" Wensleydale ventured, hesitantly tightening his hand around Brian's in a way that made every part of the taller boy's body wear a little of his smile.
"Done, with all of it," Adam said. "Well... almost done."
The world behind his eyelids held the sound of the ocean within it, and he reached for it and caught it between his fingers. After all, a world with angels and demons didn't need to be stretched far to accommodate other things as well. It wasn't like he was changing much, not really, not badly, just makin' moats around his castles so some of the dreams of the endless ocean could get caught and stay and give them something to explore.
Adam opened his eyes again and let out a slow breath that carried a sound like receding waves.
"What were you doing?" Brian asked, curious and open and not scared at all.
Adam shoved his hands into his pockets and grinned a careless grin.
"Nothing much. Just addin' some prettier shells," he said.
***
"Thank you, Jack White, for the fibre optic Jesus that you gave me..."
"No. No way. Absolutely not."
"It shined so bright that I couldn't help believing it could save me, from vampires..."
"There is absolutely no way he can have that."
The Morris Traveller, battered and care-worn and barely repaired, straining through all the lines of it, crested the hill arguing with itself.
"They were vampires," the passenger seat said.
"I know they were vampires."
"It's an actual song," the back seat said happily.
"It is not," insisted the driver's seat. "There is no way that that is a song, right Ads?"
It was a cold night, crisp and sharp and all those other adjectives that justify the extra minutes captured under the softness of a duvet, but there was a hint of freshness in the air that was gently navigating it towards spring. Just for an instant though the cold sharpened, the moment froze, the world held itself still on the edges of a fathoms-deep winter.
"I dunno," said the passenger seat, with a casual air so perfectly nonchalant as to seem almost studied. "Seems a bit dodgy to me. What do you think, Wensley?"
"Me?" The back seat squeaked in a different voice (close enough, though, overlapping enough to be practically one thing).
"Your decision."
"Oh," said the back seat, "um, then I say we let him have it."
The world exhaled in a bright gust of laughter and the Morris Traveller picked up speed as it surfed down the other side of the hill, into the new world, and the new spring, and the endless sands of summer beyond.
The End
Happy Holidays, irisbleufic from your Secret Writer!
On to the Epilogues!