30.10 - Adam Young from Good Omens

[psocoptera]

Adam asked them down to Tadfield for his thirtieth birthday. They'd been down before, occasionally separately, usually together; Adam had put on a bit of a party when he left uni, and before that, he'd used to ring and ask them to drop by when he was going to be babysitting the Pulsifer kids. Aziraphale could be counted on to keep an eye on the kids, and Crowley always had an interesting perspective on whatever Adam had been thinking about. [1] It seems like yesterday, Aziraphale thought, but then he'd thought the same thing the other day about the Enlightenment.

The Bentley had gotten into the habit of being a convertible when the weather was fair and closed-body when it was rainy. [2] It was a glorious August day and they trailed Rossini and Holst into the open air behind them all the way to Tadfield.

The Youngs were there, of course, and the Pulsifers, and Brian and Jer (who was not still called Wensleydale) and Pepper (who was still called Pepper), and Lou and Mark and Sunitha who were vaguely familiar from the post-uni party, and still other people whom Adam must have collected after that.

Adam himself was a good two stone heavier than they remembered him, and his thatch of golden hair was looking a bit depleted (and had perhaps pulled back to try to consolidate its remaining forces). His astonishingly open smile was, if anything, more infectious, and he was planted firmly at the center of the party the way poles are planted where their planets revolve, that is, he was at the center by definition.

Even Crowley had to blink when he saw him.

"Don't know about you, angel," he said under his breath, while they came in and Aziraphale greeted and handshook and hostess-gifted and all that. [4] "But it somehow never occurred to me that he might..."

"I know," Aziraphale admitted, blushing a little. "Shouldn't take anything for granted, but I just assumed he'd stop, something twenty-four, twenty-sixish."

Crowley, who styled himself just a hair enough past twenty-five for the assumption of debauchery without the slightest connotation of the late anythings, said nothing, but flicked one of Aziraphale's Pre-Raphaelite curls back from his forehead.

Adam had grinned at them when they came in and given them just the right amount of time to sort out drinks and plates of party food [5] before apparently deciding that they were the last of the guests and it was time for a welcome-and-thanks-all speech.

At least Crowley assumed it was a welcome-and-thanks-all speech, until it began to focus rather heavily on the girl standing next to him, whom Crowley hadn't even noticed. She was pretty enough, dark hair and eyelashes, and her bangles chimed softly while Adam held her hand. The speech meandered through her entrance into Adam's life, orbited around her recent history, spiralled down rather flailingly through her many virtues, and at the last minute pulled out of a flat spin to soar triumphantly into the announcement of an engagement.

Aziraphale's jaw dropped a little, but he still had enough presence of mind to stuff something in puff pastry into Crowley's mouth to muffle the involuntary hiss. The puff pastry agreeably disintegrated into insoluble papery flakes and Aziraphale dragged Crowley out by an elbow before any coughing or spitting could impinge on the buzz of congratulations around the happy couple.

"He what?!," said Crowley, when Aziraphale got them outside, "Can he do that? Ssshould he do that? What if they have kidsss? What would they even be?"

"My dear," Aziraphale said, "Do try to calm down. Marriage does not have to mean children, and don't give me that look, and even if it does they would probably just be human. He may just be human."

"Isss he?" Crowley said.

"Well," Aziraphale said, "I admit, I had rather thought at first he might just stay eleven forever. A boy and his dog, a summer that never ends..."

"Eleven's just as full of squirmy wants as six or fifteen, in it's way," Crowley said. He had finally pried the last of the puff pastry off the roof of his mouth - one of the less-sinful uses for the tongue - and gotten control of his speech again. Aziraphale was relieved, this was absolutely not the time and place for a conversation about squirmy wants to get sibilant. [6]

"I could never tell, during the Adolescent Years of Conning Me Into Babysitting While You Taught Him To Smoke And Don't Think I Don't Know About That, whether he was aging at a year per year because it came naturally, or because that was about how fast he wanted to grow up," Aziraphale continued.

"He is mysterious," Crowley murmured. "Almost... ineffable." Aziraphale glared at him, then looked up and coughed.

"And also standing right behind us, isn't he," Crowley said with resignation.

Adam smiled at them almost shyly.

"It's been ages," he said. "Eight years?" He brushed a hand over his hairline. "Guess I have changed a bit." He looked at Crowley wryly. "Suppose I have your lot to thank for this, eh?"

Crowley groaned. "Everybody thinks that," he said mournfully.

"Actually," Aziraphale put in, "It's one of ours. Gazardiel came up with it, he had done skulls, after Minoxidel came up with hair. He, Him I mean, was all for it, I think He'd started rather missing bare heads, said He'd liked them the way He liked beetle carapaces, all shiny and smooth, but He'd been so taken with hair and had been putting it on all -" Aziraphale did not look at Crowley " - most of his favorite animals. So then Gazardiel came up with baldness, the idea was that it would be a cue that the hair phase was ending and it was time to show off the head - "

"What about women?" Adam asked, sounding fascinated.

"Haven't you ever noticed how women look really attractive with buzzcuts?" Crowley said. "I think He thought it would sort itself out."

Adam did not say anything about whether he had noticed this or what he thought of Crowley's particular perspective on the issue.

"Anyways," Aziraphale said, "It was going really well, monks all over were getting into the spirit, shaving their heads for Him - "

Crowley giggled.

"And then they came up with comb-overs."

"And really bad hats," Crowley chortled. "Anywhere a ball cap is worn where there is no ball, there am I."

"But hats can't be all bad," Adam objected. "There's fedoras. And turbans and things."

"Ineffable," Crowley said piously.

"Aha," Adam said, "I think that's about where I came in last time."

Crowley was suddenly deeply suspicious. He replayed the conversation mentally. They'd been Put At Ease as deliberately as he might lead temptation. He tensed back up just to be contrary.

"You don't like Julia," Adam said.

Aziraphale immediately went all loving-kindness.

"Oh, no, my dear," he reassured Adam, "She's a lovely young lady, charitable, modest... we wish her every joy. And you. But do you think this is right for you?"

"Do you think this is right for me?" Adam asked. He could have been pleading for advice or coolly testing them; he was impossible to read.

"Well..." Aziraphale stalled.

"The question is, what's your long-term plan here?" Crowley said. "Because I'm not really seeing how the ble- benefits of marriage might fit into it."

Adam blinked and now looked genuinely bewildered. "Well, I am thirty," he said, "Done with school, steady job... it didn't seem that nutty."

"But... what then," Crowley said. "You're going to just... be married? White picket fence? Job, kids... watch your kids grow up? Are you having us on?"

"Well, yes," Adam said, in the cautious tone of voice used with police and madmen. "Make a home, raise a family, try to live a good life, hope to see my great-grandchildren? No messing around?" The last question was suddenly sardonic. "I'd have thought that would meet with your approval at least," he said to Aziraphale, disconcertingly sincere again.

Aziraphale was looking at him with confusion and compassion. "Adam," he said, "Adam, are you going to die?"

"Not any time soon!" Adam said, sounding chipper. "But, well, eventually, doesn't everyone?" He looked at his audience. "Well, not you. But... humans. It's part of the Plan, right? The natural cycle, gives meaning to life. And then there's Heaven."

Aziraphale reached out with infinite compassion and touched Adam's hand. "Oh, Adam. You really are so human."

"You say that like it's a bad thing," Adam said. It was his testing voice again.

Crowley was wondering increasingly frantically just what the stakes were here. It was as if a vast penumbra of unnervingness was building up behind Adam's front of mortal sincerity. He looked reflexively at his watch and realized a little numbly that it still read the minute and second it had read when he'd defeated the last of the puff pastry. Before he could even process what that meant, his eyes had flicked to Aziraphale's, significantly down to his watch, and back.

There was something to be said for auld acquaintance. Aziraphale made the catch without missing a beat, and was never one to worry about stakes, only about Principle. And now he knew what he could say.

"Adam, death is one of theirs," Aziraphale said.

Crowley held his breath.

"It's a mercy," Adam said. "It's necessary."

Aziraphale touched Adam's hand again. His eyes were inhumanly clear.

"It has to be yours," Adam said. "I thought..."

"Pain and loss and fear," Aziraphale said softly. "That's not how we prefer to work."

"Don't forget sickness and senility," Crowley chimed in. He was a little amazed with how long he had managed to shut up. "I still can't believe they'll really give your side the credit for it," he said to Aziraphale, starting to rant a little in reaction to the not talking before. "Biggest damn P.R. campaign in eternity." He shook his head and turned to Adam. "See, Him - not Him, the Other One, your Father - there was War in Hea- before. And he struck a blow to the heart of creation." He spoke quickly, but without any glee "Azrael, the Shadow, he was only supposed to come for the little lives. The beasts and fishes and fowls. But not man, man made in the image, man who gave the names."

"Lucifer struck God where he was most vulnerable," Aziraphale whispered. "In his bright perfect Creation. He burned mortality into man-that-would-be so that to unmake it would be to unmake man entirely."

Adam listened, motionless.

"When God saw the Shadow upon man, He wept," Aziraphale continued. "And cast Lucif - "

"Yes, I think we know that part," Crowley interrupted. "So then there's this giant brainstorming meeting and they come up with the Afterlife and start paying off Natalie Babbitt to warp the minds of the youth and here we are."

"But how do you know it wasn't all part of the plan all along?" Adam asked.

"Oh, ineffable," Crowley sneered. "Look, you knew when you were eleven that Death was just like War and Pestilence. It was self-evidently one of the Worst Things That Could Happen. And then they get you twisted around - "

"He even said!" Adam cried out. "That it would destroy the world. And I thought, maybe, but I couldn't think of anything, and I figured I needed to be older, and meanwhile people have been dying and dying and dying and I told myself that it was okay and inevitable and natural and for the best really - "

He broke down sobbing in Aziraphale's arms. "I was going to do it too," he choked out. "Oh god I might still, I'm still aging, what if I can't stop? What if I can't stop?"

Aziraphale and Crowley exchanged glances over Adam's head. Humans. Their Antichrist was terrifying, but he was also rather endearing, in his way. And exasperating. Humans.

"Patience," Aziraphale said, rocking Adam a little. "Valor and diligence and generosity, but first of all patience. And temperance. And humility."

"Pride, greed, gluttony, and lust!" Crowley popped in. He knew it wasn't really helpful right now, but he felt obligated to keep up his side.

"Your, uh, predecessor," Aziraphale said, "Who came to sort out the Afterlife thing."

"He was done by thirty-three," Adam said morosely, still sniffling a bit. "I'm already thirty." "Yeah," Crowley said, "What do you want to bring him up for?"

"He studied for a long time," Aziraphale said. "He worked really hard on it, from a lot of different angles. Some of them seem really different, without the whole context."

"Some of them were just dead ends," Crowley muttered. Aziraphale studiously ignored him. Adam gave him a keen look.

"He had a lot more guidance," Aziraphale said. "Born into privilege," Crowley put in. "He had the Silver City working on defining the problem, testing possible solutions," Aziraphale continued. "What's dumber than one idiot?" Crowley quipped very very quietly. Adam grinned a little then snorted and coughed.

"Do you think I could?" he asked. "Do you think I should?"

"I think we concluded last time that people like us messing you around was not actually helpful," Crowley said with great restraint. Adam looked confused. "Oh, last time with you, not the other one."

Aziraphale reached around Adam to clasp Crowley's shoulder. "What my uncharacteristically self-effacing colleague means is that we can't possibly say." He blushed a little. "We've worked with and around and against mortality, but we've never actually had to confront it for ourselves."

"And we really don't want to!" Crowley put in hurriedly, before the gleam of a learning experience could even light in Adam's eye. He glared at Aziraphale. "Do not taunt happy fun Antichrist!", he mouthed.

"But you don't have to decide today," Aziraphale told Adam. "Think about it. Read. Talk to Anathema. Travel. Draw off our six thousand years of highly relevant experience without distracting us with overwhelmingly alarming changes to our comfortably settled lives." Crowley rolled his eyes. Aziraphale really needed further training in serving his own self-interests. [7]

"Oh, god," Adam moaned abruptly. "What about Julia?"

Aziraphale and Crowley exchanged glances.

"Remember our six thousand years of highly relevant experience?" Crowley said. "It's really not relevant here."

Adam looked at them wild-eyed, with just a touch of "come on, is that the best you can do?"

"Patience?" Crowley tried. "Um... punctuality? Chastity?" He looked to Aziraphale beseechingly. Aziraphale squeezed his hand. "I'm impressed you even tried," he said. "But I would think more... faith and courage."

"Um?" Adam said.

"You're going to have to talk to her if you're going to have any kind of real partnership," Aziraphale said. "Truthfully."

"Also pride, sloth, and lust!" Crowley burst in. "If you're not comfortable, crazy to jump her bones, eager to show her off, it's not worth it. But if you are..."

Adam grinned at them. "Is that how you two manage it," he said. Aziraphale blushed a deep rose. Crowley figured in for a penny, in for a pound, and ran the tip of his tongue around Aziraphale's ear.

"We've really got to be getting back to London," he said blandly. Aziraphale deepened to crimson.

Adam cleared his throat. "Actually, I sort of. Ahem."

"We don't mind the time bubble," Aziraphale said faintly. "But I always get headaches if I try to live more than a day per day, and I do like to be adjusted by midnight, it just seems tidier."

"He balances his checkbook, too," Crowley confided in a tone of horror.

"Well, come back soon," Adam said. "Really, you'd better not wait another eight years. We might not be getting any older, but none of us are getting any younger either."

He popped the time bubble and Aziraphale promised frequent visits. Frequent on a human timescale, even. Crowley promised a really glorious evening of drinking if Adam could make it up to London. Adam promised that he would not act on any existential insights he reached without politely warning them first.

As they left, Aziraphale thought Adam looked just a bit balder.

****
[1] Even when it didn't involve any seven deadlies.

[2] It had originally been closed and stayed that way, but Aziraphale liked sunshine, and Crowley liked the way Aziraphale squinched his eyes and tipped his head back in the sun, and Adam had had an eleven-year-old boy's eye for classic cars [3] and had restored the Bentley as an uneasy superposition of features, trusting Crowley's attention to fill in the details right. Crowley's imagination had promptly said "convertible" and his memory had said "closed" and the Bentley had gone along obligingly. Crowley was privately amused that Aziraphale could get into a closed car for a drive and then bask rooflessly and obliviously if the sun came out; he had a bet with himself that he'd upgrade to a flying car before Aziraphale ever noticed.

[3] Which is to say, he still thought a really good car was one that transformed into a robot.

[4] Aziraphale always remembered to bring wine. He didn't even need to cheat and whisk it up out of nowhere when he got there, he actually had it with him when he left to go. This would have disgusted Crowley except that it meant that Aziraphale always remembered to bring wine.

[5] Aziraphale was always pleased when the Four Basic Food Groups were still practiced at parties, namely Things In Puff Pastry, Things Speared On Toothpicks, Things Wrapped In Bacon, and Cheese. They'd had Things Speared On Toothpicks in ancient Sumeria. They'd had Things Speared On Toothpicks in Heaven. It just wasn't the same Things. He'd had some awkward moments in civilizations who had lost the art of Pastry or Toothpicks or, tragically, Cheese, trying to figure out whether he was at a party or not. He'd explained this once to Crowley who had laughed for a minute straight and then suggested several other entirely less polite criteria for a party, after which Aziraphale had never brought it up again, but sometimes saw Crowley smile when a previously-lacking Things In Bacon tray made an appearance.

[6] But he made a mental note to reconvene later.

[7] Crowley's training to date had largely focused on his better serving Crowley's interests, but as it happened there was a certain amount of recursion involved.

****
I knew I was in trouble when I had to wrestle Aziraphale and Crowley just to get them to the damn party; they could have stayed in that Bentley for *paragraphs*. The voices are still off in spots, many of them are the spots where I kicked them back onto the plot. I know the footnotes are awkward in this format but there had to be footnotes, especially as they let me keep the backstory about the Bentley.