Happy Holidays, Aviss! (Part 2)
Title: A Three-Ply Cord
Recipient: aviss
Author: interrobam
Characters: Adam/Pepper, Brian/Wensleydale, Anathema, Newt, Shadwell, Madame Tracy, Mr. Young, Mrs. Young, Aziraphale, Crowley.
Rating: PG (one F-Bomb)
Author's Note: Boom surprise second fill!
Summary: Jasmine Cottage was awfully small-- and when occupied by a young couple, a semi-retired witch-finder, three voracious university students, a fortuneteller, Dog, Adam's parents, a middle aged bookkeeper that no one could remember having invited, and a flash twenty-something of similarly mysterious origin-- it was made even smaller.
“Hey.” Adam woke up to the feeling of Pepper's unkempt toenails digging into his thighs. Her back was flush to the side of the train, her arms crossed. Her head was tilted to the side, her cheek rested on the back of her seat. Her hair spread around the whole of her head. It formed a bloody, winding coastline against which the English countryside flashed. Apparently she had decided to forgo all of the leg room at the front of her seat in favor of stretching her lower limbs across the empty seat between them, curling her toes against Adam's legs.
Adam, who had awoken from his fold out tray with a rattling summons for air, coughed and grumbled.
“Our stop comin' up. Las' chance to abort mission,” Pepper said, half joking, unkempt eyebrows gone up. Adam yawned.
“Nope, s' traditional.”
“Anything that involves eating tofurkey ain't no traditional nothing.” Pepper scoffed, arching her neck to peer out the window. Adam played at wondering why she would say something like that: Pepper loved Christmas Eve at Jasmine Cottage just as well as the rest of the Them. He played at it, but not well. He knew this was her way of asking him if everything was okay.
“...Alright,” she continued “have it your way.”
“Pep,” Adam hesitated, licked his lip, “...it's gonna be fine.” She shrugged.
Of course Adam thought, all satire and sincerity of course I had to end up with Pepper. Rough around the edges Pepper who didn't quite know what to ask, how to navigate the foreign terrain of another person's feelings. Brian had an open genuineness that inspired reciprocation, Wensleydale was sensitive to distress and schooled in social niceties. Pepper was the awkward middle territory, self conscious, all impulse no control. Wensleydale might have taken him in like a math formula and spit out the answer. Brian might have pestered, nudged him open of his own accord. Pepper, for all of her wit and femininity, was a shark trying to carry a kitten by it's scruff.
Something about that was reassuring though. Adam liked hard surfaces, edges that catch your funny bone, frustration, tightness. Adam liked to test limits and get pushback. He could trust Pepper to misunderstand him sometimes, to but up against his opinions. He could trust stubborn, unbending Pepper to show him where his limitations lay. He watched her pretend not to watch him out of the corner of her eye until their train pulled into the station.
When they had gotten off at their stop, luggage in tow, they let Dog out of his kennel and met up with Brian and Wensleydale, who had come down from university a day earlier. They made the idle chatter of long time companions who none the less felt no danger of running out of things to say. As they got into the car to Tadfield Adam closed his eyes and leaned against the window of the car. The conversation of the other three grew dim, and he dreamed of the feeling of swimming in a dark lake whose bottom your toes cannot find. Black and glassy, still and deep.
The kind of lake that eats people.
Jasmine Cottage was awfully small-- and when occupied by a young couple, a semi-retired witch-finder, three voracious university students, a fortuneteller, Dog, Adam's parents, a middle aged bookkeeper that no one could remember having invited, and a flash twenty-something of similarly mysterious origin-- it was made even smaller. The most unscrupulous real estate salesman would blush to call it “cozy”: the fact was, it was cramped.
Adam coped well with this. The press of bodies, elbows knocking knees, curses and pardons forming a low buzzing soup of noise. It was that edge between his body and theirs, the fact that he could not trespass those boundaries, it felt like a heavy blanket in the winter. An poorly organized group hug. He had, with Anathema's blessing, invited his parents to the feast. Mr. and Mrs. Young, tired of Christmas Eves spent watching Adam scarf down a plate full of turkey in a matter of minutes and ask to be excused to visit his “friends,” had graciously accepted. They sat now on an oversized couch near the bookshelf, staring at Shadwell and regretting. His grubby Macintosh, to the Youngs, seemed in some ways an eldrich object that threatened to distort and dishevel all that which came too close to its gravity.
Shadwell was sulking in the corner, tin of condensed milk in one massive hand, mistrusting everything. Once in a while Madame Tracy would shuffle in from the kitchen and fluff the pillow resting against his back and ask him if he'd be needing anything, which marred his spiteful aura in brief bursts. The Youngs' reprieve was brief: she would be called back, or make her way towards the stove on her own, after a minute of this. Anathema was making a significant effort to “bustle about” an action she defined as “what one does when there are guests in your household and they aren't do anything to entertain themselves.” Newt, who had that morning attempted to preheat the oven and ended up nearly burning Jasmine Cottage to the ground, had left on Madame Tracy's orders to fetch a few forgotten ingredients at the store.
The Them moved, as they always did, as a crowd. This was a crowd of attitude, not action: even hundreds of kilometers from one another the Them walked as a crowd. They moved through Jasmine Cottage chatting, exploring, picking at things that did not need picking at. The only domain that was more of less off limits to them was the kitchen, where the party crashers and Madame Tracy were fiercely protecting their gastronomic creations.
Adam was no longer the only one who remembered the bookkeeper, who spent most Christmas Eves cooking and forbidding others from helping out, for what he was. As the Them had grown older and their memories had creeped into their minds, bringing skepticism and concern, he had ceased putting in the effort to keep them from remembering. He hadn't prodded them with these specters: the moments he had kept underfoot and out of mind for nearly ten years. He merely released them like a box of ill wills and saw how they flew.
Aziraphale wasn't terribly phased by this development, although Crowley was forever scowling and keeping the Them in his sight and pretending to hate being there. The demon periodically interrupted Aziraphale and Madame Tracy's gossip to pester them for something to do. At one point they surrendered a potato to him, and by the time he was done “peeling” it it was a third of it's original size and the shape of a naked mole rat. He had also dropped it on the floor a few times.
Aziraphale thanked him profusely, and when he wasn't looking fed it to Dog.
Adam's father was content to stay put until dinner was served. He sat on the overstuffed couch next to his wife and patiently read a sailboat manual. He did not own, nor expect to own a sailboat, but he was the kind of man who was in the habit of knowing how to operate various forms of transportation. Adam's mother occasionally spoke up to describe the cottage as “lovely” and “quaint.” Anathema loitered by the bookshelf, as far from Shadwell's suspicious glowers as possible, and wished Newt would come back to tag her out.
“Really though, it's wonderful to know that Adam's made so many friends,” Mrs. Young said in a soft voice she reserved for visiting neighbors and sharing family recipes. “I'm sure you've all been a lovely influence on him.”
“'Hors of Babalon an' southern pansies” Shadwell contributed under his breath, nursing his milk.
“Thank you Ms. Young” Anathema, unbattered, smiled. She was not one for entertaining guests. The Devices had always been a bit of a solitary lot, and when times came for them to interact with the outside world the Book usually had something of relevance to guide them. But Anathema stood Bookless before Mrs. Young, who looked like the one of those wives who actually followed the laundering instructions of clothing tags and had a way with cherry pies. Anathema felt that she, surely, understood what it meant to “bustle about.”
Tiring of the mess of bodies and breath inside, the Them moved outside into the back gardens. Adam looked back, through the window, at the family they had made. When he came back to his bearings he realized that the Them were standing in a line, arms crossed, and looking towards him.
“What's this about?” He puzzled, the muscles of his neck tensing.
“It's the Spanish Inquisition” Wensleydale said, deadpan.
“Oh Lay” Brian added. “That's Spanish for 'we've noticed you're in a rubbish mood'” he explained. The fact that Wensleydale didn't even attempt to correct him attested to the seriousness of the situation.
“I'm fine.” Adam cringed, looking back at the house and considering retreat.
“You ain't,” Pepper said, all teeth. “You think we'll believe that? Like we don't notice you sulking.”
“Is this 'n intervention?” he asked, laughing. “Like on the telly? Are you lot going to tell me how me bein' the Antichrist has 'affected you personally in the following ways'?”
“If that's how you want to do it.” Wensleydale, bypassing Adam's sarcasm completely, began counting off on his fingers. “One: You used your powers to make us forget the apocalypse for almost a decade.”
“B: You're never up to study sessions with me because you end up knowing all the answers on the test without trying” Brian added.
“We're not doing letters, we're doing numbers” Wensleydale interrupted.
“Square root of 6x over 4:” Pepper continued, to the bespectacled boy's chagrin “I keep catching you in nightmares and I don't know what to do on account of you can- you can make it real if you ain't careful.”
“Listen, I'm sorry-”
“Let us finish,” Wensleydale sighed. “Four: You've hurt our best friend... you've hurt yourself, ok? We can tell you haven't been doing well.”
“We don't like to see someone picking on our people.” Pepper shook her head. “And you've been picking on yourself.”
Adam hadn't been expecting this. He tried to laugh, it came out melted like plastic held over fire.
“Well, I mean, ain't I the son of the Devil or whatever? That's- it ain't a good sign for my character.”
“Last time I checked your dad was your dad, and he isn't a half bad man,” Brian nearly joked. “And you've already been a lousy Antichrist.”
“Maybe, that one time, but- but that's what I was made to do. Ending the world, that's the reason I exist. If I'm still here- if I'm still here can't it happen again?”
“We like you here.” Wensleydale smiled.
“Yeah,” Brian added.
“And I like being here, I mean, with you an' in Tadfield. But me being here, that could mean you lot not being here, could mean nothing being here, an'” he shook his head slowly “That's... I can't have that you know?”
“And how do you know it'll happen? How are your sure?”
“Most people...” Adam began, lost himself, recalled his point, “they get to choose what their life is all about. They decide, I don't have a choice”
“You told the bloody legions of heaven and hell to fuck off!” Pepper pointed out. “Call that anything but a choice, I dare you.”
“But what if I don't make that choice a second time? What if I mess up? I've done a lot of messing around with people, and most of the time I don't mean it an' I didn't mean it at all before I figured things out. If I try to stop it...” Adam closed his eyes. Toes so far from the bottom, water coming round the edges of his mouth, hard breathing. A lake that eats people.
“I'm afraid of what could happen,” he whispered “I try to help and it... comes out wrong.”
“Yeah, that's scary, we get that,” Brian allowed “but if we want to help with that, we need you to tell us about it.”
“But that's dangerous, I'm dangerous... I've messed up before, I nearly... the first time...”
“I ain't scared of you Adam.” Pepper said. “I've been scared before, but now I know what's up, and I still want... this.”
“We all do,” Wensleydale insisted. “We want to keep going, even if it hadn't been okay, even if it won't be okay in the future. We're worth it.”
“We ain't about to let you push us away.”
“We'll keep coming back we will,” Pepper added “We'll be right obnoxious about it, you won't get sleep.”
A silence followed, cold and comfortable, their breath making spirals and figures in the winter air.
“You think... you lot really think I'm a lousy Antichrist?” Adam asked, because he couldn't explain how he ached to be touched without making it sound sensual. His thoughts were raw and doughy, and Pepper leaned against him, curved her hand around to grasp his, shoulder pressing shoulder.
“You're a shit Antichrist Adam,” she said.
Brian, on his other side, moved next. His arm draped around Adam's shoulders, he grinned.
“You're complete rubbish mate.”
“The worst Antichrist in the history of Christianity.” Wensleydale, after some hesitation, spread his arms to touch Brian and Pepper lightly on the arms, to make a circle out of them.
“Dog could run a better world's end,” Brian grinned, and Adam bore his teeth, laughing.
When they came back inside Newt had returned, the cooking had been deemed completed, and all of them piled around their place settings. The kitchen table had been pressed up against the nightstand, the coffee table had been put (to Aziraphale's horror) on stacks of books, and all of it covered with an old bedsheet. They had run out of “real” chairs and some had had to make do with couch cushions piled high or old chests on their side. The same had gone for plates, but the Them had volunteered to share one, sitting across from one another with their pickings in the middle so that no one had to eat yams out of a coffee mug.
Aziraphale insisted on grace, and Crowley insisted against it, and the Them looked up sheepishly from where they had already been picking food from their shared plate and stuffing it into their mouths with little pretense at chewing. Mrs. Young interjected that it was Anathema's choice, as the lady of the house.
“Oh just eat” Anathema said, and Newt moved his hand to her shoulder and squeezed it in support.
So they did, although Shadwell grumbled about not being able to trust anything made in a witches house and tried to convince Madame Tracy that the green beans she had made herself were poisoned and not to be consumed. She'd eaten them anyway, called him a silly man, and poked a forkfull towards his mouth until he relinquished and tasted them. Aziraphale and Crowley were still bickering over Grace between mouthfulls. Pepper started using her fork to swat away any of the Them who tried to get at their shared drumstick (Madame Tracy had insisted on a real bird in addition to a soy one, bless her), though at one point she allowed Adam some, and Brian and Wensleydale accused her of favoritism. Wensleydale got up to pour the Them drinks: milk for Adam and he, apple cider for Pepper, soda for Brian. He didn't think to ask them what they wanted, but it was in the same way he didn't ask himself what he wanted, and of course he turned out to be right. Dog ran around the table and between legs, stealing scraps when he could and begging for them when he couldn't. Mr. and Mrs. Adam chewed their own food slowly, and sporadically complimented Aziraphale and Madame Tracy for their cooking. Anathema and Newt leaned up against each other, smiled to see everyone more of less pleased. Newt leaned to his side to kiss Anathema on the temple, mutter an apology for abandoning her to seek out additional reserves of potatoes.
Afterward they all laid about on couches, repurposed kitchen chairs, the dusty rug. The Them had claimed the overstuffed couch for their own, laying over each other carelessly, chatting about everything and nothing at all. Pepper sneaking kisses with Adam, Brian with Wensleydale. Madame Tracy and Aziraphale had moved to the corner and begun fusing about the inconvenience of new technologies. Shadwell and Crowley, feeling neglected, began bickering about witches. Anathema and Newt yawned and made small talk with Adam's parents.
“This was grand,” Adam whispered, impulsively and without context, to everyone who may hear it. “This was really grand.”
~end
Title: The Invention of Gender
Recipient: aviss
Author: interrobam
Characters: Aziraphale/Crowley
Rating: G
Author's Note: Art history people please don't get mad at me, I tried.
Summary: Every hundred years or so one of them would end up a child shaped being. It was Aziraphale this time who, after an unfortunate encounter with a trigger happy bank robber, found himself nine years old with braids and too thick glasses that needed constant pushing up the bridge of her nose.
Every hundred years or so one of them would end up a child shaped being.
It was Aziraphale this time who, after an unfortunate encounter with a trigger happy bank robber, found himself nine years old with braids and too thick glasses that needed constant pushing up the bridge of her nose. Aziraphale thought bitter thoughts about whomever Up There was taking the whole “out of the mouths of babes” thing too seriously. As pleasant as the word of the Lord may sound in the lilting voice of a child, it was not worth the hassle it caused. Nine year olds weren't prone to owning dusty bookshops or getting drunk at the Ritz or meeting adult man shaped being in the park, which were the very things Aziraphale liked most about being corporeal.
With much bitterness she boarded up the windows of her bookshop, posting garishly colored, official looking notices about some problem with mold or vermin or what have you on the door. She put away her tweed jackets and soft leather shoes for school uniforms that went out of fashion in the fifties and shiny mary janes. She had neither the skill nor the attention to keep her braids neat or moisturized or close to her head, but going to a hairdresser alone would attract unwanted attention, and her hair found itself behaving.
She began meeting Crowley in libraries and playground, places where he could pass as a dashing single dad, perhaps an old cousin or young uncle. But Aziraphale liked having alone time too, and there were activities that Crowley had no interest in. Cut as she may the limitations of age, in the form of rules against unaccompanied minors and security guards who asked her if she knew where her mommy was, reared their hydra heads wherever she went.
Museums had no appeal to Crowley (“It doesn't make sense to show off a bunch of broken bowls and dusty rugs just because they're old. See if anyone would put a glass case over a chamber pot if they had had to use one.”) but Aziraphale found comfort in relaxing among the architecture of long dead civilizations. She would wander through the pale statues and stolen temples, a living relic among the dead, and recall events past. Some museums would let her stroll without so much as a glance, but her favorite had a strict policy: children under fifteen were to be accompanied by an adult at all times. It did not much matter that you were old enough to recite verse in the tongue that had been lost with the Tower of Babel; if you barely broke 130 centimeters and your face was still plump with baby fat they weren't about to let you in alone.
“You still owe me for that decade when you were twelve and I had to cover for you every time you got caught driving the Bentley.” Aziraphale, a middle aged curmudgeon in everything but flesh, pointed out, her fists shoved deep into the pockets of her skirt. Crowley rolled his eyes, guilty with the knowledge that he did, in fact, still owe her for that.
“Everyone glares daggers at me when we go out.”
“They won't as long as you remember that you aren't mean to be so intimate with me.”
Crowley hunched his shoulders like a wounded feline, not at all pleased to be reminded of that night at the Ritz. Excited to have Aziraphale back on earth, he had quite forgotten about their apparently incompatible ages. He had leaned in to embrace her, only to be met with evasive maneuvers from the much more self aware angel and end up flat on his face on the floor.
“I was drunk.”
“And surely you can manage not to be drunk in the future.” Aziraphale scrunched up the muscles of her face in order to bring her heavy lenses back in front of her dark, critical eyes.
And that was that.
They met at the entrance of the museum that Friday, Aziraphale with a bounce in her step, Crowley with a scowl. They bought their tickets, and Aziraphale's shoes made clicking, telegraph sounds on the marble floor as she made her way to the wing where they kept their newest exhibits.
"They've got a lovely collection of stonework from around old Israel,” she began to chatter, knowing the way without need of a map, “you remember that place? It's been a while, the old kingdom hasn't been around since oh, a few thousand years hasn't it been? Yes I think that's right. You recall, I suppose, how the alphabet was just getting traction..." Crowley made noncommittal noises as Aziraphale babbled on, giving a reproachful look to a fork nestled on a velvet pillow. As they passed under the archway leading into the exhibit Aziraphale clutched her manicured fingers together and gazed starry eyed at the battered, dismembered statues.
The both of them had parts of their identities which the other, in full awareness of their hypocrisy, found a bit too human. In Aziraphale, to Crowley, it was this love of museums. The demon considered this room to be no different from the side of a curb loaded with oversized trash. It had better lighting, he'd give it that, but it was still a slapdash crowd of worn out objects left behind by their usefulness. It would be one thing if they still had the old shine, the old glory to them, but they looked more like they had been butchered and turned to jerky than carefully excavated and preserved.
Time, Crowley thought, what a bastard.
It was then that he noticed that Aziraphale has stopped talking, suggesting that he had been meant to be paying attention to some inane lecture (and that the angel had just now realized he hadn't been).
“Sorry, what was that again?”
Azirapahale cleared her throat, beckoning his attention, and began reading the placard next to one of the works.
“Look here: 'Relief Profile of Man, Possibly a Eunuch'” she crossed her arms, jerked her head towards another pedestal, “and then that: 'Standing Girl.'” Crowley leaned towards the indicated pieces, shook his head.
“See what I've been telling you? They can't even label them right. I'd rather remember the old kingdom as it was, thanks.” He straightened up, rolling his shoulders and peering around the room for more mistakes to pick at. Beside him Aziraphale sighed.
“My dear...” she began in that unfamiliar high voice (and he had just gotten accustomed to how low it had been in her previous shape) “I'm starting to get tired of everyone pretending there's only two genders.” Crowley, proud clinger-on to current fashion, owner of a bed described as minimalistic and a couch marketed as svelte, grasped for something to defend this new standard with. Perhaps it was the effect of being the older shaped being, but his motivation to taunt Aziraphale for not keeping with the times had been suffering of late.
“Yeah,” he admitted, “it's gotten old by now.”
“Why couldn't they have stuck with six?” Aziraphale huffed “Six was a good number: it gave us a nice variation didn't it? We could always stick with a nice neutral one, maybe have a go at some of the others if they struck us.” She wrinkled her nose. “I'm sick of going back and forth, same two pronouns.”
“It's not like they went away though, the other genders. People just changed the names for them. What is it now? Do they still use adrogynos these days?” Crowley asked, as if Aziraphale had any contact with contemporary culture beyond demanding it stay out of her bookstore.
“Perhaps the young people are using them, but the fact stands that a supposedly respectable museum is calling a saris a 'man' and a tumtum a 'girl.' And when I go through my papers to do my taxes, they still make me check boxes for 'M' or 'F'”
“They could at least give us an opt out,” Crowley admitted. “'check this box for “male” this other for “female” this third one for “transcendent being of eternal energy that thinks being stuck with only two genders to choose from is a load of rubbish”' or something.”
“It's frustrating,” Aziraphale muttered “Look at what happened with Gluck, and Publick Universal Friend.”
“Yeah, but that's mostly the west isn't it? There are still a lot of other places that have options to spare.”
“And the west had been imposing their genders on them, for decades it's been.” Aziraphale sighed.
“True...”
“There's nothing to do but wait, I suppose, for them to figure things out.”
“We could always give them a nudge.”
The angel considered this.
“We could.”
For the rest of their visit they ignored the placards and spoke of the many genders they had known: Aylonit, Hijra, Sadhin, Invert, Ninauposkitzipxpe, Waria, Man, Muxie, Mashoga, Kur.Gar.Ra, Sekhet, Tritiya-prakrti, Woman. Aziraphale preferred to move around more, she'd spent the last few incarnations alternating male and female. Crowley had spent the last several incarnations as a man, but he was considering switching so long as he didn't have to grow his hair out for it After all, although corporeal, hairstyles and clothing were the only bodily indication of their sex. The unnecessary skin beneath was smooth and featureless.
They discussed the ethics of nudging with the ease of people who have eternity to decide on action. They tried to avoid messing with alliances, opinions, implications. Although the both of them viewed human prejudices with distaste, they would only allow themselves to lead the horse to water. Forcing them to drink, though possible, was dangerous.
“We could always help the humans on our side,” Aziraphale posited, for after the Apoca-oops-nevermind-everyone-go-home they had begun to separate from “your side” and “my side.” They were amidst that rubble now, trying to find a third option, railing against multiple dichotomies. “They've been doing quite well, they could do it themselves in a few decades.”
“We've watched too many revolutions die to make us sure,” Crowley sighed, looked nostalgic.
“And just enough succeed to give us hope” Aziraphale said low, placing her hand in his.
They stood amidst the statues of lives past, among the defiant eyes and limbs and symbols of genders that, for all of the academy's efforts, would not be silenced. They smiled.
~end
Recipient: aviss
Author: interrobam
Characters: Adam/Pepper, Brian/Wensleydale, Anathema, Newt, Shadwell, Madame Tracy, Mr. Young, Mrs. Young, Aziraphale, Crowley.
Rating: PG (one F-Bomb)
Author's Note: Boom surprise second fill!
Summary: Jasmine Cottage was awfully small-- and when occupied by a young couple, a semi-retired witch-finder, three voracious university students, a fortuneteller, Dog, Adam's parents, a middle aged bookkeeper that no one could remember having invited, and a flash twenty-something of similarly mysterious origin-- it was made even smaller.
“Hey.” Adam woke up to the feeling of Pepper's unkempt toenails digging into his thighs. Her back was flush to the side of the train, her arms crossed. Her head was tilted to the side, her cheek rested on the back of her seat. Her hair spread around the whole of her head. It formed a bloody, winding coastline against which the English countryside flashed. Apparently she had decided to forgo all of the leg room at the front of her seat in favor of stretching her lower limbs across the empty seat between them, curling her toes against Adam's legs.
Adam, who had awoken from his fold out tray with a rattling summons for air, coughed and grumbled.
“Our stop comin' up. Las' chance to abort mission,” Pepper said, half joking, unkempt eyebrows gone up. Adam yawned.
“Nope, s' traditional.”
“Anything that involves eating tofurkey ain't no traditional nothing.” Pepper scoffed, arching her neck to peer out the window. Adam played at wondering why she would say something like that: Pepper loved Christmas Eve at Jasmine Cottage just as well as the rest of the Them. He played at it, but not well. He knew this was her way of asking him if everything was okay.
“...Alright,” she continued “have it your way.”
“Pep,” Adam hesitated, licked his lip, “...it's gonna be fine.” She shrugged.
Of course Adam thought, all satire and sincerity of course I had to end up with Pepper. Rough around the edges Pepper who didn't quite know what to ask, how to navigate the foreign terrain of another person's feelings. Brian had an open genuineness that inspired reciprocation, Wensleydale was sensitive to distress and schooled in social niceties. Pepper was the awkward middle territory, self conscious, all impulse no control. Wensleydale might have taken him in like a math formula and spit out the answer. Brian might have pestered, nudged him open of his own accord. Pepper, for all of her wit and femininity, was a shark trying to carry a kitten by it's scruff.
Something about that was reassuring though. Adam liked hard surfaces, edges that catch your funny bone, frustration, tightness. Adam liked to test limits and get pushback. He could trust Pepper to misunderstand him sometimes, to but up against his opinions. He could trust stubborn, unbending Pepper to show him where his limitations lay. He watched her pretend not to watch him out of the corner of her eye until their train pulled into the station.
When they had gotten off at their stop, luggage in tow, they let Dog out of his kennel and met up with Brian and Wensleydale, who had come down from university a day earlier. They made the idle chatter of long time companions who none the less felt no danger of running out of things to say. As they got into the car to Tadfield Adam closed his eyes and leaned against the window of the car. The conversation of the other three grew dim, and he dreamed of the feeling of swimming in a dark lake whose bottom your toes cannot find. Black and glassy, still and deep.
The kind of lake that eats people.
Jasmine Cottage was awfully small-- and when occupied by a young couple, a semi-retired witch-finder, three voracious university students, a fortuneteller, Dog, Adam's parents, a middle aged bookkeeper that no one could remember having invited, and a flash twenty-something of similarly mysterious origin-- it was made even smaller. The most unscrupulous real estate salesman would blush to call it “cozy”: the fact was, it was cramped.
Adam coped well with this. The press of bodies, elbows knocking knees, curses and pardons forming a low buzzing soup of noise. It was that edge between his body and theirs, the fact that he could not trespass those boundaries, it felt like a heavy blanket in the winter. An poorly organized group hug. He had, with Anathema's blessing, invited his parents to the feast. Mr. and Mrs. Young, tired of Christmas Eves spent watching Adam scarf down a plate full of turkey in a matter of minutes and ask to be excused to visit his “friends,” had graciously accepted. They sat now on an oversized couch near the bookshelf, staring at Shadwell and regretting. His grubby Macintosh, to the Youngs, seemed in some ways an eldrich object that threatened to distort and dishevel all that which came too close to its gravity.
Shadwell was sulking in the corner, tin of condensed milk in one massive hand, mistrusting everything. Once in a while Madame Tracy would shuffle in from the kitchen and fluff the pillow resting against his back and ask him if he'd be needing anything, which marred his spiteful aura in brief bursts. The Youngs' reprieve was brief: she would be called back, or make her way towards the stove on her own, after a minute of this. Anathema was making a significant effort to “bustle about” an action she defined as “what one does when there are guests in your household and they aren't do anything to entertain themselves.” Newt, who had that morning attempted to preheat the oven and ended up nearly burning Jasmine Cottage to the ground, had left on Madame Tracy's orders to fetch a few forgotten ingredients at the store.
The Them moved, as they always did, as a crowd. This was a crowd of attitude, not action: even hundreds of kilometers from one another the Them walked as a crowd. They moved through Jasmine Cottage chatting, exploring, picking at things that did not need picking at. The only domain that was more of less off limits to them was the kitchen, where the party crashers and Madame Tracy were fiercely protecting their gastronomic creations.
Adam was no longer the only one who remembered the bookkeeper, who spent most Christmas Eves cooking and forbidding others from helping out, for what he was. As the Them had grown older and their memories had creeped into their minds, bringing skepticism and concern, he had ceased putting in the effort to keep them from remembering. He hadn't prodded them with these specters: the moments he had kept underfoot and out of mind for nearly ten years. He merely released them like a box of ill wills and saw how they flew.
Aziraphale wasn't terribly phased by this development, although Crowley was forever scowling and keeping the Them in his sight and pretending to hate being there. The demon periodically interrupted Aziraphale and Madame Tracy's gossip to pester them for something to do. At one point they surrendered a potato to him, and by the time he was done “peeling” it it was a third of it's original size and the shape of a naked mole rat. He had also dropped it on the floor a few times.
Aziraphale thanked him profusely, and when he wasn't looking fed it to Dog.
Adam's father was content to stay put until dinner was served. He sat on the overstuffed couch next to his wife and patiently read a sailboat manual. He did not own, nor expect to own a sailboat, but he was the kind of man who was in the habit of knowing how to operate various forms of transportation. Adam's mother occasionally spoke up to describe the cottage as “lovely” and “quaint.” Anathema loitered by the bookshelf, as far from Shadwell's suspicious glowers as possible, and wished Newt would come back to tag her out.
“Really though, it's wonderful to know that Adam's made so many friends,” Mrs. Young said in a soft voice she reserved for visiting neighbors and sharing family recipes. “I'm sure you've all been a lovely influence on him.”
“'Hors of Babalon an' southern pansies” Shadwell contributed under his breath, nursing his milk.
“Thank you Ms. Young” Anathema, unbattered, smiled. She was not one for entertaining guests. The Devices had always been a bit of a solitary lot, and when times came for them to interact with the outside world the Book usually had something of relevance to guide them. But Anathema stood Bookless before Mrs. Young, who looked like the one of those wives who actually followed the laundering instructions of clothing tags and had a way with cherry pies. Anathema felt that she, surely, understood what it meant to “bustle about.”
Tiring of the mess of bodies and breath inside, the Them moved outside into the back gardens. Adam looked back, through the window, at the family they had made. When he came back to his bearings he realized that the Them were standing in a line, arms crossed, and looking towards him.
“What's this about?” He puzzled, the muscles of his neck tensing.
“It's the Spanish Inquisition” Wensleydale said, deadpan.
“Oh Lay” Brian added. “That's Spanish for 'we've noticed you're in a rubbish mood'” he explained. The fact that Wensleydale didn't even attempt to correct him attested to the seriousness of the situation.
“I'm fine.” Adam cringed, looking back at the house and considering retreat.
“You ain't,” Pepper said, all teeth. “You think we'll believe that? Like we don't notice you sulking.”
“Is this 'n intervention?” he asked, laughing. “Like on the telly? Are you lot going to tell me how me bein' the Antichrist has 'affected you personally in the following ways'?”
“If that's how you want to do it.” Wensleydale, bypassing Adam's sarcasm completely, began counting off on his fingers. “One: You used your powers to make us forget the apocalypse for almost a decade.”
“B: You're never up to study sessions with me because you end up knowing all the answers on the test without trying” Brian added.
“We're not doing letters, we're doing numbers” Wensleydale interrupted.
“Square root of 6x over 4:” Pepper continued, to the bespectacled boy's chagrin “I keep catching you in nightmares and I don't know what to do on account of you can- you can make it real if you ain't careful.”
“Listen, I'm sorry-”
“Let us finish,” Wensleydale sighed. “Four: You've hurt our best friend... you've hurt yourself, ok? We can tell you haven't been doing well.”
“We don't like to see someone picking on our people.” Pepper shook her head. “And you've been picking on yourself.”
Adam hadn't been expecting this. He tried to laugh, it came out melted like plastic held over fire.
“Well, I mean, ain't I the son of the Devil or whatever? That's- it ain't a good sign for my character.”
“Last time I checked your dad was your dad, and he isn't a half bad man,” Brian nearly joked. “And you've already been a lousy Antichrist.”
“Maybe, that one time, but- but that's what I was made to do. Ending the world, that's the reason I exist. If I'm still here- if I'm still here can't it happen again?”
“We like you here.” Wensleydale smiled.
“Yeah,” Brian added.
“And I like being here, I mean, with you an' in Tadfield. But me being here, that could mean you lot not being here, could mean nothing being here, an'” he shook his head slowly “That's... I can't have that you know?”
“And how do you know it'll happen? How are your sure?”
“Most people...” Adam began, lost himself, recalled his point, “they get to choose what their life is all about. They decide, I don't have a choice”
“You told the bloody legions of heaven and hell to fuck off!” Pepper pointed out. “Call that anything but a choice, I dare you.”
“But what if I don't make that choice a second time? What if I mess up? I've done a lot of messing around with people, and most of the time I don't mean it an' I didn't mean it at all before I figured things out. If I try to stop it...” Adam closed his eyes. Toes so far from the bottom, water coming round the edges of his mouth, hard breathing. A lake that eats people.
“I'm afraid of what could happen,” he whispered “I try to help and it... comes out wrong.”
“Yeah, that's scary, we get that,” Brian allowed “but if we want to help with that, we need you to tell us about it.”
“But that's dangerous, I'm dangerous... I've messed up before, I nearly... the first time...”
“I ain't scared of you Adam.” Pepper said. “I've been scared before, but now I know what's up, and I still want... this.”
“We all do,” Wensleydale insisted. “We want to keep going, even if it hadn't been okay, even if it won't be okay in the future. We're worth it.”
“We ain't about to let you push us away.”
“We'll keep coming back we will,” Pepper added “We'll be right obnoxious about it, you won't get sleep.”
A silence followed, cold and comfortable, their breath making spirals and figures in the winter air.
“You think... you lot really think I'm a lousy Antichrist?” Adam asked, because he couldn't explain how he ached to be touched without making it sound sensual. His thoughts were raw and doughy, and Pepper leaned against him, curved her hand around to grasp his, shoulder pressing shoulder.
“You're a shit Antichrist Adam,” she said.
Brian, on his other side, moved next. His arm draped around Adam's shoulders, he grinned.
“You're complete rubbish mate.”
“The worst Antichrist in the history of Christianity.” Wensleydale, after some hesitation, spread his arms to touch Brian and Pepper lightly on the arms, to make a circle out of them.
“Dog could run a better world's end,” Brian grinned, and Adam bore his teeth, laughing.
When they came back inside Newt had returned, the cooking had been deemed completed, and all of them piled around their place settings. The kitchen table had been pressed up against the nightstand, the coffee table had been put (to Aziraphale's horror) on stacks of books, and all of it covered with an old bedsheet. They had run out of “real” chairs and some had had to make do with couch cushions piled high or old chests on their side. The same had gone for plates, but the Them had volunteered to share one, sitting across from one another with their pickings in the middle so that no one had to eat yams out of a coffee mug.
Aziraphale insisted on grace, and Crowley insisted against it, and the Them looked up sheepishly from where they had already been picking food from their shared plate and stuffing it into their mouths with little pretense at chewing. Mrs. Young interjected that it was Anathema's choice, as the lady of the house.
“Oh just eat” Anathema said, and Newt moved his hand to her shoulder and squeezed it in support.
So they did, although Shadwell grumbled about not being able to trust anything made in a witches house and tried to convince Madame Tracy that the green beans she had made herself were poisoned and not to be consumed. She'd eaten them anyway, called him a silly man, and poked a forkfull towards his mouth until he relinquished and tasted them. Aziraphale and Crowley were still bickering over Grace between mouthfulls. Pepper started using her fork to swat away any of the Them who tried to get at their shared drumstick (Madame Tracy had insisted on a real bird in addition to a soy one, bless her), though at one point she allowed Adam some, and Brian and Wensleydale accused her of favoritism. Wensleydale got up to pour the Them drinks: milk for Adam and he, apple cider for Pepper, soda for Brian. He didn't think to ask them what they wanted, but it was in the same way he didn't ask himself what he wanted, and of course he turned out to be right. Dog ran around the table and between legs, stealing scraps when he could and begging for them when he couldn't. Mr. and Mrs. Adam chewed their own food slowly, and sporadically complimented Aziraphale and Madame Tracy for their cooking. Anathema and Newt leaned up against each other, smiled to see everyone more of less pleased. Newt leaned to his side to kiss Anathema on the temple, mutter an apology for abandoning her to seek out additional reserves of potatoes.
Afterward they all laid about on couches, repurposed kitchen chairs, the dusty rug. The Them had claimed the overstuffed couch for their own, laying over each other carelessly, chatting about everything and nothing at all. Pepper sneaking kisses with Adam, Brian with Wensleydale. Madame Tracy and Aziraphale had moved to the corner and begun fusing about the inconvenience of new technologies. Shadwell and Crowley, feeling neglected, began bickering about witches. Anathema and Newt yawned and made small talk with Adam's parents.
“This was grand,” Adam whispered, impulsively and without context, to everyone who may hear it. “This was really grand.”
~end
Title: The Invention of Gender
Recipient: aviss
Author: interrobam
Characters: Aziraphale/Crowley
Rating: G
Author's Note: Art history people please don't get mad at me, I tried.
Summary: Every hundred years or so one of them would end up a child shaped being. It was Aziraphale this time who, after an unfortunate encounter with a trigger happy bank robber, found himself nine years old with braids and too thick glasses that needed constant pushing up the bridge of her nose.
Every hundred years or so one of them would end up a child shaped being.
It was Aziraphale this time who, after an unfortunate encounter with a trigger happy bank robber, found himself nine years old with braids and too thick glasses that needed constant pushing up the bridge of her nose. Aziraphale thought bitter thoughts about whomever Up There was taking the whole “out of the mouths of babes” thing too seriously. As pleasant as the word of the Lord may sound in the lilting voice of a child, it was not worth the hassle it caused. Nine year olds weren't prone to owning dusty bookshops or getting drunk at the Ritz or meeting adult man shaped being in the park, which were the very things Aziraphale liked most about being corporeal.
With much bitterness she boarded up the windows of her bookshop, posting garishly colored, official looking notices about some problem with mold or vermin or what have you on the door. She put away her tweed jackets and soft leather shoes for school uniforms that went out of fashion in the fifties and shiny mary janes. She had neither the skill nor the attention to keep her braids neat or moisturized or close to her head, but going to a hairdresser alone would attract unwanted attention, and her hair found itself behaving.
She began meeting Crowley in libraries and playground, places where he could pass as a dashing single dad, perhaps an old cousin or young uncle. But Aziraphale liked having alone time too, and there were activities that Crowley had no interest in. Cut as she may the limitations of age, in the form of rules against unaccompanied minors and security guards who asked her if she knew where her mommy was, reared their hydra heads wherever she went.
Museums had no appeal to Crowley (“It doesn't make sense to show off a bunch of broken bowls and dusty rugs just because they're old. See if anyone would put a glass case over a chamber pot if they had had to use one.”) but Aziraphale found comfort in relaxing among the architecture of long dead civilizations. She would wander through the pale statues and stolen temples, a living relic among the dead, and recall events past. Some museums would let her stroll without so much as a glance, but her favorite had a strict policy: children under fifteen were to be accompanied by an adult at all times. It did not much matter that you were old enough to recite verse in the tongue that had been lost with the Tower of Babel; if you barely broke 130 centimeters and your face was still plump with baby fat they weren't about to let you in alone.
“You still owe me for that decade when you were twelve and I had to cover for you every time you got caught driving the Bentley.” Aziraphale, a middle aged curmudgeon in everything but flesh, pointed out, her fists shoved deep into the pockets of her skirt. Crowley rolled his eyes, guilty with the knowledge that he did, in fact, still owe her for that.
“Everyone glares daggers at me when we go out.”
“They won't as long as you remember that you aren't mean to be so intimate with me.”
Crowley hunched his shoulders like a wounded feline, not at all pleased to be reminded of that night at the Ritz. Excited to have Aziraphale back on earth, he had quite forgotten about their apparently incompatible ages. He had leaned in to embrace her, only to be met with evasive maneuvers from the much more self aware angel and end up flat on his face on the floor.
“I was drunk.”
“And surely you can manage not to be drunk in the future.” Aziraphale scrunched up the muscles of her face in order to bring her heavy lenses back in front of her dark, critical eyes.
And that was that.
They met at the entrance of the museum that Friday, Aziraphale with a bounce in her step, Crowley with a scowl. They bought their tickets, and Aziraphale's shoes made clicking, telegraph sounds on the marble floor as she made her way to the wing where they kept their newest exhibits.
"They've got a lovely collection of stonework from around old Israel,” she began to chatter, knowing the way without need of a map, “you remember that place? It's been a while, the old kingdom hasn't been around since oh, a few thousand years hasn't it been? Yes I think that's right. You recall, I suppose, how the alphabet was just getting traction..." Crowley made noncommittal noises as Aziraphale babbled on, giving a reproachful look to a fork nestled on a velvet pillow. As they passed under the archway leading into the exhibit Aziraphale clutched her manicured fingers together and gazed starry eyed at the battered, dismembered statues.
The both of them had parts of their identities which the other, in full awareness of their hypocrisy, found a bit too human. In Aziraphale, to Crowley, it was this love of museums. The demon considered this room to be no different from the side of a curb loaded with oversized trash. It had better lighting, he'd give it that, but it was still a slapdash crowd of worn out objects left behind by their usefulness. It would be one thing if they still had the old shine, the old glory to them, but they looked more like they had been butchered and turned to jerky than carefully excavated and preserved.
Time, Crowley thought, what a bastard.
It was then that he noticed that Aziraphale has stopped talking, suggesting that he had been meant to be paying attention to some inane lecture (and that the angel had just now realized he hadn't been).
“Sorry, what was that again?”
Azirapahale cleared her throat, beckoning his attention, and began reading the placard next to one of the works.
“Look here: 'Relief Profile of Man, Possibly a Eunuch'” she crossed her arms, jerked her head towards another pedestal, “and then that: 'Standing Girl.'” Crowley leaned towards the indicated pieces, shook his head.
“See what I've been telling you? They can't even label them right. I'd rather remember the old kingdom as it was, thanks.” He straightened up, rolling his shoulders and peering around the room for more mistakes to pick at. Beside him Aziraphale sighed.
“My dear...” she began in that unfamiliar high voice (and he had just gotten accustomed to how low it had been in her previous shape) “I'm starting to get tired of everyone pretending there's only two genders.” Crowley, proud clinger-on to current fashion, owner of a bed described as minimalistic and a couch marketed as svelte, grasped for something to defend this new standard with. Perhaps it was the effect of being the older shaped being, but his motivation to taunt Aziraphale for not keeping with the times had been suffering of late.
“Yeah,” he admitted, “it's gotten old by now.”
“Why couldn't they have stuck with six?” Aziraphale huffed “Six was a good number: it gave us a nice variation didn't it? We could always stick with a nice neutral one, maybe have a go at some of the others if they struck us.” She wrinkled her nose. “I'm sick of going back and forth, same two pronouns.”
“It's not like they went away though, the other genders. People just changed the names for them. What is it now? Do they still use adrogynos these days?” Crowley asked, as if Aziraphale had any contact with contemporary culture beyond demanding it stay out of her bookstore.
“Perhaps the young people are using them, but the fact stands that a supposedly respectable museum is calling a saris a 'man' and a tumtum a 'girl.' And when I go through my papers to do my taxes, they still make me check boxes for 'M' or 'F'”
“They could at least give us an opt out,” Crowley admitted. “'check this box for “male” this other for “female” this third one for “transcendent being of eternal energy that thinks being stuck with only two genders to choose from is a load of rubbish”' or something.”
“It's frustrating,” Aziraphale muttered “Look at what happened with Gluck, and Publick Universal Friend.”
“Yeah, but that's mostly the west isn't it? There are still a lot of other places that have options to spare.”
“And the west had been imposing their genders on them, for decades it's been.” Aziraphale sighed.
“True...”
“There's nothing to do but wait, I suppose, for them to figure things out.”
“We could always give them a nudge.”
The angel considered this.
“We could.”
For the rest of their visit they ignored the placards and spoke of the many genders they had known: Aylonit, Hijra, Sadhin, Invert, Ninauposkitzipxpe, Waria, Man, Muxie, Mashoga, Kur.Gar.Ra, Sekhet, Tritiya-prakrti, Woman. Aziraphale preferred to move around more, she'd spent the last few incarnations alternating male and female. Crowley had spent the last several incarnations as a man, but he was considering switching so long as he didn't have to grow his hair out for it After all, although corporeal, hairstyles and clothing were the only bodily indication of their sex. The unnecessary skin beneath was smooth and featureless.
They discussed the ethics of nudging with the ease of people who have eternity to decide on action. They tried to avoid messing with alliances, opinions, implications. Although the both of them viewed human prejudices with distaste, they would only allow themselves to lead the horse to water. Forcing them to drink, though possible, was dangerous.
“We could always help the humans on our side,” Aziraphale posited, for after the Apoca-oops-nevermind-everyone-go-home they had begun to separate from “your side” and “my side.” They were amidst that rubble now, trying to find a third option, railing against multiple dichotomies. “They've been doing quite well, they could do it themselves in a few decades.”
“We've watched too many revolutions die to make us sure,” Crowley sighed, looked nostalgic.
“And just enough succeed to give us hope” Aziraphale said low, placing her hand in his.
They stood amidst the statues of lives past, among the defiant eyes and limbs and symbols of genders that, for all of the academy's efforts, would not be silenced. They smiled.
~end