Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Wensley wasn't sure when he started to relax about Mr. Crowley.

He wasn't relaxed at first.  Mr. Crowley frightened him. Mr. Crowley had powers and supernatural stuff.  And also, when he first met Mr. Crowley he asked the demon why he was wearing dark glasses indoors in the evening. Mr. Crowley gave him a long look. "Do you know what happens to little boys who ask nosy questions?"

Wensley felt himself go pale and excused himself from the conversation as best he could.

He thought maybe it was later that his view started to change.  Mid-winter. There had been snow—there was always snow in January, in Tadfield—and Wensley was getting beaten in a snowball fight to the point where it wasn't fun anymore.  And then, all of a sudden, everything stopped.

Everything.

Not just Pepper, but the snowball she was throwing. Mid-air.

"You've got about a minute to handle Pepper before Adam gets up here," Mr. Crowley observed. He was leaning against a tree behind Wensley. "Can't time-stop him."

Wensley hadn't realized that the godfathers could appear behind a person whenever they wanted, and now that he did, he wished that he hadn't. "What?"

He got the distinct impression that Mr. Crowley rolled his eyes. "If you want to throw five snowballs at Pepper all at once, this is your chance to do it. Time is frozen."

"I don't," Wensley stuttered, "I wouldn't, that's not fair, and, and, what if the force of all those snowballs adds up and hurts her? What if I broke her neck? I can't—"

"You won't hurt her."

"How do you know?"

"Because I say you won't hurt her."

"That's not a logical reason, actually," Wensley said. "That's just, 'because I said so,' and Mum says that's only for children under a certain level of—"

He was arguing with a demon.

He was arguing with someone who could twist his muscles around, or send him walking in front of a car, or set him on fire as if he'd been doused in gasoline. Or worse.

His life might depend on throwing the snowballs just as he was told.

But Wensley still didn't know if Pepper would get hurt.

"Never mind," Mr. Crowley said, and snapped his fingers.

Pepper's snowball hit Wensley on the back of the head. He yelped and fell flat.

To Wensley's immense surprise, Mr. Crowley helped him up. "You're wet through."

Wensley abruptly realized that he was freezing.

"Better get you in, or you'll be no good for anything."

Wensley followed meekly enough back to Jasmine Cottage.  He wasn't quite sure what was going on.

He wasn't sure, until Mr. Aziraphale asked Mr. Crowley why on Earth he'd stopped time.

"Wensleydale was getting pummeled," Mr. Crowley explained.  "Thought I would even the odds a bit."

"It wasn't to make me do something bad?" Wensley blurted, struggling out of his coat.

Both the beings looked at him.

"Because that's your job, isn't it? To make people do bad things?"

“He’s retired,” Mr. Aziraphale said.

“Is that why you thought it would hurt Pepper?” Mr. Crowley asked.

Wensley hesitated, then nodded, stripping off his gloves.

“If you hurt Pepper by accident, that’s an accident.  If you hurt Pepper because I told you it was safe, that’s on me, not you.  Neither of those count. Besides, why would I want any of you hurt? What’s in it for me?  Take off your socks, too.”

Wensley had been hesitating on the socks because this was someone else’s house, and you didn’t go stripping off your shoes and socks in someone else’s living room.  “What’s in it for you, getting my socks off?” he asked.

This time, it was definitely an eye-roll.  Or rather, a roll of Mr. Crowley’s whole head, which clearly telegraphed an eye-roll.  “Because looking at you is making me chilled, and you have no idea how much I hate being chilled.  Socks off, chair by fire, now, or I’ll put frog spawn in your shoes.”

Wensley took his socks off.  “I think all the frogs are hibernating, actually.  Do frogs hibernate?”

“How should I know?  It’s his side that sends plagues of ‘em.”

“Former side,” Mr. Aziraphale murmured.

“And besides, that’s completely irrelevant to whether I can arrange for frog spawn.”

Wensley thought about it later.  Actually, he thought about it intermittently as Mr. Aziraphale got him cocoa, and the rest of the Them came in, and as he went home for dinner.

He wasn’t sure.   He wasn’t sure how he could be sure.  But it seemed an awful lot like Mr. Crowley had tried to do him a small favor, then backed off when Wensley had started getting frightened, then lightly bullied him into getting his feet warm.

As evil deeds went, it wasn’t.

That was when Wensley tried to stop being nervous, and started really paying attention.

§

"Adam?" Wensley asked.  "What would happen if you used your powers?"

It was early spring, and they were at the pond next to Hobart's Field, investigating the myriad possibilities inherent in mud. Adam had just mentioned the likelihood of hibernating frogs, and that made Wensley remember the conversation after the snowball fight.

Adam looked at the stick he was sinking into the mud rather than at Wensley.  "I have done, a bit," he said. "Just little things really. Like making sticks zigzag in the air for Dog.  He practically turns flips."

Even though he had raised the question, Wensley felt his throat tense.  "How do you know if you're . . ."

"I'm not," Adam said firmly.  "I'd know. Besides, Crowley says that they aren't going to bother me again.  As far as they know, I’m a normal kid.  Useless to them."

"You didn't know the first time," Wensley retorted.  "And besides. Could Mr. Crowley be lying?"

"Don't see what's in it for him," Adam said. "He'd like the world to stick around just as much as I would.  Maybe more, because without Earth he'd never see Aziraphale again, and he'd have to live with that."

Wensley was momentarily diverted. "Are they . . ."

"Pretty sure," Adam said, "yeah."

"An angel and a demon, is that allowed, though?"

"I don't expect they give a toss," Adam said.  "Aziraphale says it used to be illegal for two men. He said that a very good friend had to go on trial for it.  He wrote plays or something. I don't think it was Shakespeare . . ."  He dug up some sort of sprouted reed with his stick and pulled it out of the mud, white feathery roots and all.

"If you planted that upside down," Wensley wondered, "do you think the white bits would turn into green bits?"

Adam shrugged, flipped the plant in his hand, and began chiseling a hole.

"I suppose," Wensley allowed, "if people didn't break bad laws, there wouldn't be Robin Hood."

"I should ask them if they knew Robin Hood.  Crowley knew that lady pirate that Pepper likes, that Gran-somebody."^[1]

Wensley was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "I hadn't read anything with magic in it since September."

Adam was momentarily diverted from hole-digging. "Why?"

Wensley shrugged uncomfortably. "I was re-reading one of the Harry Potter books, and they started talking about how muggles can’t see Dementors, and I started to feel all choked and horrible.  It was—” He didn’t think he could describe the feeling. Nightmarish, strangling, as if he could hear Adam’s all-wrong voice roaring smile! and making it happen, as if the beautiful soft cushion of time between then and now had been burned away and he was back there, maybe he had never left, maybe he'd only had a desperate dream that he left—  “Really bad,” Wensley summarized. “So I locked the book in the drawer and started reading nonfiction. I read a lot of nonfiction anyway, and every time I thought I was starting to miss it, I thought about—I didn’t miss it that much.  But the other day I went and read some Percy Jackson and it wasn’t that bad. ”

Adam was eyeing him with concern.  “That’s good.”

“So I was starting to think.  I know I had a bit of a wobble, back in September when you rubbed away that scrape on my knee, but maybe I’m better now.”

The moment in September had been when Wensley and the others found out that Adam still had powers.  In retrospect, Wensley—hadn’t reacted well. Shaking fit was closer, in fact.  Since then, Adam had been scrupulous about not using powers in Wensley’s presence.

“I’ve thought a bit,” Adam admitted.  “About things we could do if you were okay with it.  But you’d all have to be okay with it.”

Wensley’s heart was beating fast.  “What sort of things?”

Adam stuck the plant into the mud upside down and then scooped mud around it.  “F’rexample,” he said, “if we shrank down small enough, the bugs would be the size of horses and we could figure out how to ride them.”

Wensley considered that one.  “That sounds really dangerous.”

“Yeah.”

“We’d need swords or something.”

“Yeah,” Adam said, in the tone of an Adam who anticipates eventually getting what he wants.

“And if we fell off a flying bug, we’d plummet to our deaths.”

“We’d have to make parachutes,” Adam said.  “I’ll bet at that size we could make them out of tissue paper.”

“How do you know it’ll even work?  Have you ever tried shrinking someone?”

“That’s the thing, though,” Adam said.  “If I can picture it working, I can make it work.  It’s not like there’s a secret code to work out, like if there were words and I could say the words wrong and we could end up purple or exploded.  It all comes out of my head.”

Wensley abruptly recalled Mr. Crowley in the snow.  Because I say you won’t hurt her, he had said.

Wensley couldn’t have hurt Pepper because that wasn’t the way Mr. Crowley had decided the time-stop would work.  It hadn’t been because-I-said-so.   It had been an explanation.  It just hadn’t happened to be a very understandable explanation.

Wensley filed that information away, and addressed himself to the question of grasshopper rodeo.  Which was extremely dangerous and ill-advised and they definitely shouldn’t.

Definitely.

Chapter Text

“You what,” Miss Device said, in the voice of a grown-up who was trying not to have a crisis.

“Adam shrunk us down to mess about with bugs and Brian got bit by a spider and Adam healed the puncture wounds but now Brian is having trouble moving and we need to fix him up properly and we’re not sure how,” Wensley said, very rapidly.

“Right.  Right. I’m calling Mr. Crowley’s cellphone.  Don’t do anything stupid.   Anything—else stupid.”  Miss Device pulled out her mobile.  Wensley noted absently that it was a different one than last month, which meant that Mr. Pulsifer had got too near it again.

Wensley bent over Brian.  Adam had his fingers on Brian’s neck, where you could feel the pulse, and was frowning.  Wensley wasn’t sure which worried him more—the idea that the frown was concentration, which implied there was something about Brian’s pulse that needed concentrating on, or the idea that the frown meant there was something wrong.

Wensley, unfortunately, knew how spiders paralyzed and captured their prey.  He read a lot of nonfiction.

Behind him, Wensley could hear Miss Device’s hasty explanation.

Pepper was wiping bluish spider blood off her sword with a paper towel.  Pepper was the hero of the hour, and they all knew it. “Y’think,” Brian slurred out heavily, “issdead?”

“I don’t think it’ll last that long without that big eyeball,” Pepper said.

Miss Device made a startled sound.  And then Mr. Crowley was next to Wensley, reaching down to touch Brian where he lay on the sofa.

Wensley expected an immediate reaction, like what happened on TV when they yelled, “Clear!” and used those electric shock things.  Nothing happened.

Mr. Crowley looked up.  “Adam.”

Adam looked guilty.

“Stop imagining that there’s enough poison to affect him at this size.  Start envisioning it as enough to raise a small welt. You set the rules when you did the size-change.  You get to change the rules whenever you want.”

Adam gulped, nodded, and closed his eyes, concentrating hard.

“Thingthassbetter?” Brian slurred, and then added, “Thass def’nitely better.”

Mr. Crowley straightened up.  “Good. You can make yourself perceive the insides of him, just to be sure he’s all cleaned up.  Might take a moment or two to learn the trick of it, though.”

“Wouldn’t it be better,” Miss Device said coldly, from behind them, “to train Adam sometime when his friend isn’t in danger?”

Mr. Crowley turned and regarded her.  Wensley wondered if he should try to speak up in Miss Device’s defense.  Would Mr. Crowley hurt her? “Actually,” he began, in a small voice.

“One on one, without calling on outside sources of power,” Mr. Crowley said finally, “Adam is stronger than my former superior.  My ultimate superior, not my immediate one.  If he decides there’s a problem, how am I supposed to make there not be a problem?  Actually what?” The last sentence was directed at Wensley.

Wensley realized who Mr. Crowley’s ultimate superior had to be, and swallowed.  “I was just wanting to know the same thing,” he said, as steadily as he could.

“Now you do.”

Wensley nodded.

Brian sat up.  “I think you fixed it,” he said.

“Good,” Miss Device said, “because, without your parents involved, I think it’s my job to point out how incredibly stupid that was—”

“I’ve got to go,” Wensley said, “actually.”  And fled.

He was most of the way down the lane when he saw Mr. Crowley ahead of him.  Wensley’s heart jumped.  He still wasn’t used to appearing-out-of-nowhere stuff, and it reminded him nastily of What Happened Then.  He stopped. Mr. Crowley came towards him with that weird swagger-y walk, and stopped a little ways away.

There was a silence.

“Why did you run?” Mr. Crowley said, after a moment.

Wensley looked away.  “It was my fault.”

Mr. Crowley snorted incredulously.  “You don’t think Adam had just a bit to do with it?”

“Yes,” Wensley said miserably, “but I was the one who dropped my sword.”

Mr. Crowley regarded him for a moment more.  Wensley thought, to his surprise, that Mr. Crowley’s expression was faintly sympathetic.  “Mad notion, relying on swords anyway,” he said finally. “Might be humanity’s first tool.  That doesn’t make it the best. Humans are clever, that’s the thing.  Full of ideas. Next time you have to see off a giant monster,” he produced a box from somewhere mysterious and handed it to Wensley, “use clever ideas.”

Wensley looked at the box.  It was labeled in Chinese.

Frowning, he opened it.

And then closed it hastily again as he realized he was holding a box of definitely illegal Chinese firecrackers.

“Need to find a lighter yourself, though,” Mr. Crowley remarked.  “I’ve never carried one. When you get one, give me a call. I’ll show you how to use the firecrackers.  Best to practice with a thing before you use it in an emergency. Just because I do everything at the last minute, doesn’t mean you should.  You’re not the type.”

Wensley wasn’t sure if that last was supposed to be insulting or not.  “You’re not going to tell me never to let Adam shrink me and never to do stupid stuff?”

“Ever since the business with Eve,” Mr. Crowley said, “humanity’s default setting is, ‘Ooh, what does this button do?’  It’s in your blood. I could tell you not to do stupid stuff, but then you wouldn’t come to me for help when you get hurt doing it, and what good is that?  Which reminds me, I’d better give you my mobile number.” He apparently felt that this was too much niceness in one go, because he added, “And if you ever call me for no reason, I’ll put live, angry badgers in your loo.  Stacks of ‘em.”

Wensley got out his mobile, opened his contacts, and stopped.  “It’s already in there.”

“I said I’d give it to you.”

“Thanks,” Wensley said.  “Really. Thanks for—”

“Shut up.”

§

The Them were supposed to meet at Jasmine Cottage in the afternoon, after Adam finished writing lines after school.^[1]   Wensley was just as glad that none of them were there yet.  He was on the edge of tears, and it was over something stupid, and he didn’t want them to know.

The godfathers and Miss Device were there, though, gathered in the back garden, at the table underneath the cherry tree.  Mr. Aziraphale quickly asked Wensley what was wrong, which made the tears spill over, which meant that Mr. Aziraphale had to give Wensley a handkerchief.

“We had to read a poem in Mr. Broward’s class,” Wensley explained miserably.

“I feel that way about poetry,” Mr. Crowley observed.

“You do not,” Mr. Aziraphale objected.  “You used to adore Shakespeare.”

“I like Shakespeare because he never met a thing that couldn’t be improved with a filthy pun.  That’s not the same as some dull bastard jawing on and on about daffodils.”

“It wasn’t about daffodils,” Wensley said, “it was about stars.”

Mr. Crowley didn’t say anything.

“It was Mr. Broward’s favorite poem.  He brought it in especially to present to the class, because it wasn’t in our books because it’s American and they don’t have as much American stuff.  It was called ‘When I heard the learn’d astronomer.’^[2] And then he talked for a while about how right the poem was, about how facts and figures and science saps the magic out of everything, and I argued with him, and he said that I was the sort of little boy who puts pins in butterflies and never cares that I’m killing them and I think I’m going to get a bad mark.”

“That’s not fair!” Miss Device said.  “I don’t know anything about astronomy.  But a teacher should never treat a student like that.”

“The poem was mostly against astronomy,” Wensley explained, and pulled it up on his mobile to show her.  “But I like astronomy.  Every star, every star has a bunch of numbers attached, and they aren’t just there for show, they tell you things.  Apparent magnitude. Absolute magnitude. Declination. Distance. Apparent magnitude is how bright it looks from Earth, and absolute magnitude is how bright it really is, and declination—I don’t have a telescope, I don’t mess about much with declination.  And, and that’s not all, there are types of stars, the mnemonic is ‘Oh be a fine girl, kiss me,’ and it goes from O types which are huge and blue to M types which are tiny and red, and . . .”  And it was fiddly and complicated, just the sort of science that Wensley liked.

Miss Device made to pass the mobile around to Mr. Aziraphale.  He waved her off. “I remember the poem. I don’t suppose it occurred to Whitman that art and science aren’t mutually exclusive.  I remember—well, it’s rather sordid, but Michelangelo wouldn’t have been able to carve the brilliant human forms he became famous for if he hadn’t crept into graveyards and done dissections.  That’s science, informing art. And as for the stars, the angels who created them—I never knew any of the real masters, many of them joined the Other Side just because of how it fell out—but I did once talk to someone who had helped make some very small stars, and they told me more about fluid dynamics than I ever thought an angel could know.”

"And,” Wensley said, reclaiming his phone, “there are a lot of things we wouldn’t even know about without science.  I mean, there’s this.” He googled, and tapped on the first image.  “They had to put a telescope in space to know what it really looks like, and imagine the maths that took.”

Miss Device made an admiring noise at the image.  “I’ve seen pictures of that before, I think. What is it exactly?”

“NGC 6543.  It’s called the Cat’s Eye Nebula.  They don’t have anything to do with planets, but they call them planetary nebulas because—”

“Serpent’s Eye Nebula,” Mr. Crowley said.

He sounded funny.  Slightly choked. Wensley looked up sharply, realizing suddenly that Mr. Crowley hadn’t said anything since Wensley said which poem it was.

“Actually,” Wensley said carefully, “they really do call it the Cat’s Eye Nebula—”

And then Mr. Crowley was inches away from him, holding onto his shirt, fast enough that Wensley barely saw the lunge.  “Ssserpent’sss.  Eye. Nebula,” he hissed, and then let go of Wensley and rushed out of the garden.  Leaving his chair knocked over on the grass behind him.

Mr. Aziraphale looked between Wensley and Mr. Crowley several times, mouth slightly open, and then said, “Excuse me, I think I had better—”  He righted the chair and then he was gone, following the fleeing demon.

Wensley sat for a moment, waiting for his heart to stop pounding.  It took a while. “I did something wrong,” he said, in a small voice.  “Didn’t I.” And he had no idea what it was.

“I’m . . . not sure,” Miss Device murmured, staring after the godfathers, and then shook herself.  “No. No, Wensley, you didn’t do anything wrong.  At worst, you tread on a sensitive topic that you didn’t even know was there.  And as for your teacher, I don’t think it’s his job to tell anyone how they should be appreciating beauty, much less to accuse one of his students of ruining it.  I admit I don’t have any direct experience in this sort of thing—I was homeschooled—but . . .” She shook her head. “What an ass."

That was when Pepper and Brian came into the garden, and Miss Device hastily changed the subject.

§

A few days later, Wensley was in Adam’s garden with the Them, peering at a bug through a magnifying glass and wondering how dire it would look if it was bigger and he was smaller, when someone dropped something on the grass beside him.  A poster in a packing tube. “For you,” Mr. Crowley said shortly, and stalked off.

Wensley shook the poster out of its protective cover and unrolled it.

It was a big print of the Hubble photo of—of NGC 6543, and it had the words Serpent’s Eye Nebula across the top.  In the bottom corner, in white, was the squiggly symbol that Mr. Crowley had tattooed on his face.

“Look after that,” Mr. Aziraphale said, from right above Wensley.  “It’s unique. And I imagine very valuable, if the humans had any way to assess its value.”

Wensley frowned at the poster.  It was pretty—NGC 6543 was one of his favorites—but . . .  “They sell these at most science museums.” Only the title was Cat’s Eye Nebula, but he wasn’t about to say those words.  Not after last time.

“Probably,” Mr. Aziraphale agreed, “but that’s the only one that’s ever been signed.”

Wensley wasn’t sure what he meant by that.  “D’you think it’s too valuable to put on my wall?”

“I think he would be insulted if you didn’t,” Mr. Aziraphale said.

Chapter Text

“This is the first time we’ve ever had the police called on us,” Adam whispered, in awed tones.

Wensley wasn’t sure if he was proud or appalled.  He had gone up into Hog Back Wood, alone with Mr. Crowley, to practice throwing the Chinese firecrackers.  But the thing about the Chinese firecrackers was, they were loud, and before long that brought Adam and Pepper and Brian sneaking through the woods to find out if anyone had got a gun and was shooting at anything, and after that—

Well, Hog Back Wood wasn’t exactly full of police.  But there were several.

“You don’t have to whisper,” Mr. Crowley said, in normal tones.  “They’ll ignore us.”

“What were you doing with those?” Brian asked, peering into the half-full box of firecrackers.

“Setting them off, stupid,” Pepper told him.

“I was thinking,” Wensley admitted, “if we ever run into another spider, you know, like we did that one time, a couple of these would see him off pretty quick.”

Pepper looked somewhat disgruntled to have her role as Primary Swordsperson undermined.  “It’s her,” she said, “all the really big spiders are female.”

“All right, see her off.  It’s like video games.  Some characters, you don’t set up with a sword.  Some characters, you max out their mana and have them do fireballs.  I’m the fireball type.”

“Like a black mage,” Brian added.  “Pepper’s the fighter, you’re the black mage . . . does that make Adam the white mage?   Because he’s the only one who can heal?”

“I’m not going to be the stupid white mage,” Adam said.  “I’m a red mage if I’m anything.”

“It’s just sexism, thinking white mages are stupid,” Pepper told him.

“Is not, it’s because you can do without them if you bring enough potions.”

“Is too.”

“Mr. Crowley,” Wensley said, “what are you doing?”

Mr. Crowley held the firecracker up and snapped his fingers, making a small, steady flame flare up from his thumb.  “You have eyes,” he said. “What does it look like?”

He lit the firecracker and threw it to land two yards behind the policewoman in the rear.

When you took people who were half expecting a gun and then exploded something behind them, you got a lot of running around and shouting.  Mr. Crowley was grinning as he watched it. So was Adam.

“I’m going home,” Wensley said abruptly.  He set off at a run, wondering if the police would spot him as soon as he got away from Mr. Crowley.  They didn’t.

He kept running.  He wasn’t entirely sure why his stomach was churning, or why his throat was trying to close up, it was just—the police, the police were helpless even to see what was messing with them, and there had been real fear under all that frenetic energy, and—

Adam stepped out from behind a tree.

“Don’t do that!” Wensley yelled.  He stopped, fists clenched, panting.  With a shock, he realized that his body was preparing to fight Adam.   Adam, who was impossible to fight—Adam, who he didn’t even want to fight, because Adam was his best friend.

Adam looked shocked.  “Wensley?”

“Don’t do that!   You just—you just stepped out, when—”  His throat closed.

“What?  When?”

“When you went all wrong,” Wensley whispered.

“Oh.”  Adam looked upset, and sat down on a rock.  Wensley wasn’t completely sure that the rock had been there before Adam decided to sit on it.  Normally, that would be sort of cool. Right now, it just made his stomach twist more.  “Didn’t remember that,” Adam admitted. “That must’ve been when I worked out I could go anywhere in Tadfield, but I wasn’t even thinking about it, there was so much— all those mad things crashing together in my head.”  He patted the rock beside him.

Wensley stood still for a moment, just to make extra sure that he didn’t have to come and sit down—not that Adam would, and he felt bad about even thinking it, but—but.  Then he shuffled over slowly and sat. “Go anywhere in Tadfield,” Wensley repeated.

“Yeah.  I think it’s like a teleport, only no smoke or bang or leaving a hole in the air or anything.  Aziraphale and Crowley don’t call it that, though.” Adam fiddled with a leaf. “I think most supernatural beings can do it, but only if they really know a place.  Or can see it.  That’s why the Horsemen had to ride to Tadfield, but Aziraphale can go anywhere he likes in Soho."

"Could you get into people's houses?" Wensley asked.

"Well, your house, definitely. I've been in your room enough.  But I'm not going to. Unless it was on fire or something."

Wensley nodded.  Saying thank you would be weird, and make it sound like Adam not teleporting into his room was a sort of favor, when actually you oughtn't to teleport in on people.

"What do you need us to do?" Adam asked.

"What?"

"To make you not get upset."

"I don't know," Wensley said. "I don't even know why I did that. It’s not as if anyone ever threw fireworks at us.  It's just, them being scared. It sort of reminded me that there are supernatural people and then there are things to push about, and I'm not supernatural."

Adam looked shocked.  "I wouldn't!"

Wensley looked down at the ground. "I know," he muttered.  "It's stupid."

"Would it help if we promised that you’ll always see us? When we're around, I mean."

Wensley thought about it. "Might help," he allowed.  "I don't think they'll promise that, though."

“I’ll talk to them,” Adam said.  “Even if they won’t promise forever, they’ll probably promise for now.”

§

“You have a choice to make,” Mr. Crowley said, without preamble, putting an enormous bag down on Miss Device’s dining table.

“Choice?” Wensley said.  “What choice?”

Mr. Crowley unzipped the bag.

“Is that a telescope?”  It was a lot thicker than the telescopes that Wensley imagined using in his back garden.  As big around as his head, at least.

“No, it’s a pineapple.  What does it look like?”

Mr. Crowley had a very low tolerance for what he considered stupid remarks.  “What’re you doing with a telescope?” Wensley said, earning another that-was-a-stupid-remark look.  “I mean, why did you bring it here?”

“Do you want to see Saturn or not?”

Wensley’s heart leapt.  “I want to see Saturn.”

“Then you have a problem.”

That was a twist in the conversation that Wensley hadn’t expected.  “What problem?”

“Adam says you don’t want your perception tampered with.”

And that prompted the opposite of Wensley’s heart leaping, a sort of internal lurch.  “I don’t,” Wensley said, “actually.”

“And there’s no way I’m going to adjust a telescope in a field at night wearing dark glasses.  You see? Problem.”

He was, Wensley thought, in delicate territory.  “If you made your eyes invisible, wouldn’t that make it more frightening?”  What would invisible eyes look like?  Holes? Blank skin?

“It’s not making them invisible.  You just—wouldn’t notice them. Forget to think about them every time the subject came up.”  He studied Wensley. “It wouldn’t hurt,” he added, in a tone that was very nearly gentle. “And it wouldn’t stop you from perceiving anything else.  I honestly have no interest in hurting you. Nothing to gain by it. Potentially quite a bit to lose.”

“Because it would make Adam angry,” Wensley said.  Adam, who Mr. Crowley had once said was stronger than Satan.

“That’s one reason.  Also Aziraphale likes you.”

“Would it honestly hurt me to know what your eyes look like?  What would happen?” Wensley thought of a question that had nagged at him for some time.  “When we first met, you asked me if I knew what happened to little boys who ask nosy questions.  And I don’t, actually. What does happen?”

“That was the second time we met.”

“What?  Oh, because—on the air base.”  Wensley didn’t remember everything that happened on the air base.  Some images were never going to leave him, like the soldiers collapsing because Adam said so, or Pepper getting the flaming sword, or anything to do with Famine—especially Famine’s Teeth, which had touched some fairytale-deep part of Wensley’s brain and told him that when people told stories about evil witches cooking up Hansels and Gretels or evil wolves chasing Little Red Riding Hoods, what they were actually telling stories about was this, something that lurked in the deepest and darkest of winters and came for the children.  But other things about the air base were faded, like exactly what Miss Device and Mr. Pulsifer had been doing there, or what went on between the time that Death spread his wings and Adam’s father drove up. He didn’t remember much about Mr. Aziraphale and Mr. Crowley. But he remembered—thought he remembered— “So were you messing with my thoughts back then? At the air base?”

Mr. Crowley was silent for a long moment.  “Wasn’t even thinking about it,” he admitted finally.

“But it didn’t hurt me.  I don’t even remember being frightened!”

“It has nothing to do with you,” Mr. Crowley said.  “This is about me. And what I want.”

“You want to mess with my head—because you just don’t want me to know?”

“Exactly.”

Wensley felt a spark of ire in his chest.  “That’s pretty selfish, actually.”

“Think about who you’re talking to, actually.”   The imitation was mocking.

Wensley stood up, shoving back his chair.  “Well—I don’t agree, then! And I don’t have to look at Saturn!  Or I can look on the internet, which will give me better pictures than your stupid telescope!”

Mr. Crowley zipped the bag up again, concealing the telescope.  It had an air of finality to it. “Oh, I’m sure. Enjoy not seeing for yourself.”

Chapter Text

Adam was the only one who came out with Wensley to watch the lunar eclipse.  Brian’s parents said that he couldn’t be up too late because they were going somewhere the next morning, and Pepper had some sort of project of her own.  They went down to Hobart’s Field and took a blanket, and lay on the blanket companionably while they waited for the moon to turn red.

“I think it’s a little orange along the edge,” Wensley said.

“I think that’s just the clouds.”

Wensley was quiet for a moment.  “You could get to other planets,” he said, “couldn’t you.”

Adam breathed out.  “I dunno. I could make a spaceship that works, easy enough.  But I don’t know about the in-between stuff. If there’s radiation that I don’t know about, does it not affect us because I don’t know about it, or does it kill us because I didn’t think about stopping it?”

“The Van Allen belts,” Wensley recalled.  “That’s one reason people on the internet don’t think America landed on the moon.  Do you think they landed on the moon?”

“Oh, definitely.  Crowley wouldn’t spend so much time messing with the conspiracy theorists if the conspiracy was true.”

This seemed logical to Wensley.

“He managed to get a few people to decide that the moon was a hologram,” Adam added, “and he’s so proud of himself that you wouldn’t believe.  What I don’t get is, what would be cool about the moon being a hologram? If the moon was a Death Star, or some sort of kill satellite where you had to do things when the moon isn’t in the sky or get zapped . . . wouldn’t be fun as a game, but I ought to write that book.”  He thought about it. “With moon ninjas.”

“I ought to write that conspiracy theory,” Crowley said, from right next to Wensley.

Wensley didn’t levitate, because he wasn’t Adam, but he certainly felt like he left the blanket for a moment.  “Wha— when did you get here?”

“Moon as a hologram.  And you’re wrong. The reason it’s cool is because it makes no sense.  All the governments of the world collaborating to beam a big white thing into the sky, for no reason, and I got humans to believe that.”

“Big orange thing, now,” Wensley said.  “It’s definitely getting orange on that edge.”

Wensley noticed that Mr. Crowley was wearing his dark glasses.

“I didn’t know you were in town,” Adam said.

Mr. Crowley was quiet for a moment.  “I can get to a few places in Tadfield, now,” he said.  “Been here enough. That’s how I got to Jasmine Cottage when Brian was hurt.  I don’t want to use the phone lines if I can help it.”

“You can travel through phone lines?”

“Don’t try it.  For one thing, it’s too easy to get stuck, and for another thing, I’m not sure you can.  You’re made of atoms.”

“Wait, you aren’t?” Adam said.

Mr. Crowley shook his head.  “Infernal matter. Just like celestial matter, but not so much up itself.”

“Mr. Crowley,” Wensley interrupted slowly, “can you see?  With those on?”

Mr. Crowley turned his head to look at Wensley.

“I mean, I guess you came out here because of the astronomy, but it’s not fair to you if you can’t actually look at things.  I can—I can just look straight up. Not look at you. I’ll swear not to look at you when you have your glasses off.” He thought about it.  “I thought you weren’t even going to do the astronomy. Thought you were cross with me.”

The last bit came out small.

“When did you start caring about my good opinion?” Mr. Crowley said.

“I don’t know,” Wensley admitted.  The thought of Mr. Crowley as a—friend?  Was that even the right word? It had crept up on him, familiarity replacing fear.

“Crowley,” Adam said, sounding as if he were feeling his way through the sentence, “why don’t you want to take your glasses off around Wensley?”

“Think about it,” Mr. Crowley advised.  “It’ll come to you.”

“Your eyes are cool, though.”

Of course Adam would know, Wensley realized with startlement.  He remembered everything that happened at Armageddon.

Adam could have just told him.  Saved Wensley the uneasy wondering.

“I don’t care if they’re cool, I don’t want people to see them,” Mr. Crowley said.

“You let me see them.  When you came and found me for the first time in October, you took your glasses off.”

“That’s different.”

“How is it different?” Adam demanded, sitting up.  “What’s different between Wensley and me?”

He got one of those looks.

Adam set his jaw.  “I’m a human person just like Wensley is.  I’m not an angel or a demon or anything. So if you’re going to treat Wensley like that, you’d better treat me the same way.  Because we’re the same.”

“Treat Wensley like what?  I’m just keeping my privacy.  My decision. My choice.”   Choice came out a little bit hissed.

“I’m not going to treat you differently,” Wensley said.  “I can swear to that, if you want. Is that what used to happen, before glasses?  People would run you out of town with pitchforks, or something? Were pitchforks invented before glasses?”

“Don’t ever offer to swear something to a demon,” Mr. Crowley said.  “A contract with me has weight.”

“Okay, but I’m still not going to treat you differently.”

“Just forget about it and look at the moon.”

Wensley was going to go on arguing, but he was diverted by the sight up above.  “Oh, wow, look at the moon.”

The orangey color had crept across a significant portion of the moon.  “That’s Earth’s penumbra,” Wensley remarked, after a long moment. “The partial shadow.  We’re not going to see what the full shadow does, not tonight.” He remembered himself and cringed inwardly.  “Only I don’t have to talk about it if it makes people feel sick.”

“Are you still worrying about that blessed poem?” Mr. Crowley asked rhetorically.  “Don’t. It’s rubbish. Percy Poet thinks you can make a star without knowing the proper ratio of hydrogen to helium?  Or a planetary nebula without knowing the ratio of helium to trace gases? Ridiculous. He’d end up with a brown dwarf at best, and a boring brown dwarf, not one of the streaky purple ones with the megastorms."

"It's still difficult for me," Wensley admitted, "thinking everything was made only six thousand years ago.  It doesn't make sense."

"You've lived in reality for almost twelve years now and you still expect it to make sense?   Granted, you spent the first year or so being damp and cross at everything, but still."

“So the angels helped with the stars?” Adam asked.  “Was that back when you were an angel?”

There was a pause.  “Long time ago,” Mr. Crowley said finally.

“Did the angels help with other things?  Whose fault is the platypus?”

“Yes, and how should I know?  Over twenty million celestial beings back then, and life forms weren’t even my department.”

Wensley wondered if he should ask what Mr. Crowley’s department had been. 

§

“You wanted to know what happens to little boys who ask nosy questions?”

This time, they were practicing throwing firecrackers without lighting them.  Mr. Crowley wasn’t sure it was very good practice, but Wensley didn’t want another Police Incident.

Wensley was collecting the firecrackers he had pitched.  “I don’t actually think you’d do anything too horrid to me,” he said, over his shoulder.  “Maybe it’s stupid. I’m more methodical than I am clever, anyway.”

He turned around to surprise a peculiar expression on Mr. Crowley’s face.  “Methodical can be clever,” he said, for all the world as if he were trying to reassure Wensley.  Then, as if being too nice rankled, “And clever can get you in trouble. Eve was clever. Too new to know what clever was, but always touching things, tasting things, climbing trees to see what was at the top.  What happens to little boys who ask nosy questions is, sometimes people answer them.”

“You know,” Wensley said, “in the dark, I don’t think any of us could see your eyes.”  He thought about it. “Unless they glow. Or unless they’re mouths or something.”

“You have an overactive imagination,” Mr. Crowley told him.

Chapter Text

“Saturn,” Brian opined, “looks like Saturn.   I mean, you don’t expect to just look through a telescope and see something all Saturn-looking.”

They were in Hobart’s Field in the middle of the night, and Brian had finally got permission to come with them.  Of course, it didn’t hurt that it was Saturday. Mr. Crowley had set up the telescope, and all of the Them, plus Mr. Aziraphale, had taken their turns peering through it.

Mr. Crowley gave Brian a look.  Pepper beat him to, “What else would it look like, a pumpkin?” which was probably more or less what Mr. Crowley was opening his mouth to say.  He shut it again, disgruntled.

“I know what he means, though,” Wensley said, feeling as if he had to defend Brian.  “When you just look up there, you see a dot. You get used to taking it on faith that the dot is really a Saturn-shaped thing.”

Mr. Aziraphale was sitting on the blanket with the picnic basket.  Either there was a huge, downright unlikely number of deviled eggs in the basket (along with pork pies and sandwiches and quite a number of sweet treats that Wensley had got to first, in the interest of getting some), or Mr. Aziraphale was eating all the deviled eggs.  Or both.

Mr. Crowley had his glasses off.  So far, Wensley hadn’t figured out what was so unusual about Mr. Crowley’s eyes.

He had taken the glasses off to adjust the telescope.  By that time, Wensley’s eyes were adjusted to the dark, and he could see fairly well.  And Mr. Crowley’s eyes just looked dark. He could see slivers of pale iris around the huge pupils, like a solar eclipse, but not the color.  Maybe the color was what was unusual about them?

He wasn’t about to bring it up.  “Can we see the Serpent’s Eye Nebula?  I mean, is it up?”

There was a long silence at that.  “It doesn’t look like the Hubble photos through this telescope,” Mr. Crowley said finally.  “Why’re you interested in it?

“It’s one of my favorites,” Wensley explained.  “Even before you got me that poster.”

“Come over here, then.  The computer does most of the work for you, on this telescope, but I want you to know how to work it anyway.”

§

Mr. Crowley didn’t bring the telescope for the Perseid meteor shower, of course.  Telescopes were useless for meteor showers.

The moon was bright, unfortunate for meteor viewing, but, as Mr. Crowley said, it couldn’t be helped.  (Wensley wondered if Adam could have helped it, but decided to keep that notion strictly to himself.)  Mr. Aziraphale’s picnic basket contained, as usual, more than it could possibly contain.  Brian was already wearing a certain percentage of his strawberry tart when Wensley helped himself to one.

“It’s the Swift-Tuttle Comet,” Wensley said.  “It sort of sheds as it goes, and we get meteors.  Were comets meant to shed?  I mean, were comets put together with the thought that a planet would go by and get meteors?  Or is it just an unplanned side effect?”

“How should I know?” Mr. Crowley said.  “Comets weren’t my department.”

“Oh.”  Wensley thought about it.  “What was your department?”

“It would say something about creation,” Mr. Aziraphale cut in hastily, “if somebody’s error could create something as beautiful as a meteor shower.  When you think about it, the universe is full of lovely errors.”

“And commonplace, unlovely screw-ups,” Mr. Crowley countered.

“Perhaps.  But, like beetles, I don’t think there would be as many of them about if there wasn’t something . . .”  He waved his hands.

“Don’t say ‘ineffable.’”

“I wasn’t going to!” Mr. Aziraphale protested unconvincingly.

“Up there!” Brian yelled, pointing.

By the time Wensley looked at the spot, there was nothing.

“Well, it was up there,” Brian protested.  “It went by too fast. By the time I said ‘up there,’ it was gone.”

“At least we know there are meteors,” Pepper commented, putting her hands behind her head.

“Should be plenty,” Mr. Crowley said.  “The Perseids are a good shower.”

Several moments later, Wensley was the one to shout, “There’s one!” and realize that there was no point in saying it, because the meteors were faster than a syllable.  Just a streak of light. A rock, or maybe ice, immolating itself in Earth’s atmosphere, and if you weren’t looking in exactly the right direction, you’d never know.

There was a metaphor there, but he wasn’t sure for what.

"It doesn't matter," Wensley said suddenly.

"What doesn't matter?" Mr. Crowley asked.

"Whether you ever let us see your eyes properly, or tell us what your department was.  I mean, we're still your friends. And friends get to tell each other to shove off, sometimes.  So, if I say anything—ask anything—"

“Believe me, I have never had a problem telling people to piss off and mind their own business.”  But he sounded slightly strangled.

“Okay,” Wensley said.  “That’s good.”

They were silent for a moment.

“Wensley,” Mr. Crowley said finally, “you like stars.  How do you feel about miracles, these days?”

"I'm getting used to it with Adam, anyway," Wensley said. "We've done some wicked cool stuff."  It was a serious question, so he gave it serious consideration. “I don’t think I’m afraid anymore.  I used to be, but not now.”

“Hmm.”  Mr. Crowley stood up and looked at the sky.

“Crowley?” Mr. Aziraphale said inquiringly.

“Just wait.  It takes patience, this sort of thing.”  He didn’t look away from the place the meteors were radiating from, in Perseus.  “Just like nebulas. Or temptations. You don’t rush . . .”

A meteor streaked out from Perseus.  Mr. Crowley’s arm shot up, inhumanly quick, and the meteor disappeared.  And suddenly there was something brilliantly incandescent in his hand.

Wensley was at exactly the right angle to see the light contract Mr. Crowley’s pupils into thin black lines.  In yellow eyes.  His first thought was, cat’s eyes.   But they hadn’t shone in the darkness, and anyhow— Ssserpent’sss .  Eye .  Nebula .

A number of things collided in his head, such as the way Mr. Crowley always talked as if he had known Eve, and how fast he moved when he really wanted to, and the poster.  The only print in the universe, he suddenly realized, that had been signed by the artist.

“You,” Mr. Aziraphale said, sounding amused, “are a show-off .”

“You love it,” Mr. Crowley said scornfully, closing his hand around the white-hot meteor.  The glow died.

“Yes, I suppose I do, at that.  You’re also being very kind.”

“No, I’m really not.”

“Sweet?”  There was a certain mischief in the way he said it.

“Shut up.  I am being terrifyingly sadistic right now, and don’t you forget it.”  He knelt back down to where Wensley was sitting. “Because,” he said to Wensley, taking his shocked hand and putting a perfectly cool, pea-sized meteor in it, “no-one will ever.  Ever .  Believe you.”

Mr. Crowley was the original Serpent, and he had designed the Serpent’s Eye Nebula, and he had just caught Wensley a meteor, out of the actual sky, because he thought Wensley would like it.

Mr. Crowley wouldn't say "I'm your friend too."  But he would let dramatic gestures say it for him.

The Them clustered around to look at Wensley’s treasure.  Wensley just stared into his cupped hands, completely without words.