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Adam groans and tries to blink the phone screen into focus. Ando is licking his feet. It tickles.
Missed calls (7) Dr Pepper (PhD)
The buzzing begins again, Adam stabs at the screen. "Adam, you absolute -!" Pepper’s familiar voice bursts through the speaker, already sounding dangerous, "Get out of bed, the world needs fixing."
Adam lets out a sigh and blinks. His hangover refuses to move. "Must be Tuesday."
"It's Saturday," says Pepper on a sigh, "these big things always happen like that. On Friday night, or Saturday morning, so by Monday you've more or less come to terms with it, which is why you need to get up now."
Adam is very good at not coming to terms with other people's vision of reality.
Ando lets out a small whine, and okay, Adam would happily come to terms with his dog's reality. He experiments with trying to work out which angle is, for want of a more relativistic word, up.
"Switzerland has disappeared," says Pepper. "Would you happen to know anything about that?"
Adam casts a bleary glance around his bedsit. "I haven't got it," he croaks, and wiggles his toes. They feel crusty. Ando lets out a soft bark, because Adam is clearly in a bad way.
"Are you sure?” Pepper persists. “Switzerland, Adam! Not one of your random bike heists. A whole country!"
"Who invaded?" Adam catches hold of Ando's collar and leans into the dog’s fur for dear life. He feels the dog’s tail thumping on the sheets, in time with his heartbeat.
"No, I mean actually gone. Like, you drive over the border from Italy and pfft, there you are in Germany kind of gone. Like it - like it never even existed!" From anyone else this would sound slightly hysterical. From Pepper it sounds patronising.
"And this is my fault because?" Adam peels off last night’s socks and leaves them in a sad, wilted pile on the floor.
Pepper’s delivery softens slightly. "I just thought, it's the kind of thing that only you could manage to do. Are you sure you didn't, you know, really want to go on holiday to Switzerland? Somehow? Like that time when we were kids."
Pepper is the only one of the old gang that ever refers to that summer, and she does it constantly. Adam is not sure why; he was fairly sure he’d decided they were all better off forgetting. Yet Pepper has somehow made it her job to constantly jog Adam's memory. Adam supposes he only has himself to blame.
"I think," Adam says, "if it'd'en actually me, there'd be less of the no more mountains and more of the purple cows everywhere."
Pepper lets out a slightly horrified gurgle that suggests she may have some mental gymnastics still to do so she can accept this as true whilst also Being Right. "Have you got another one of your migraines?"
"Not exactly, doc," mumbles Adam, "more of a hangover. The world is definitely," he squints out between heavy eyelids. "Hanging over me."
There is an impolite pause on the other end of the line.
"Pull yourself together," says Pepper finally. "This is clearly important. Like, cosmically important."
"Says who?" Adam opens his eyes long enough to watch the universe roll thirty-two degrees to the left.
Pepper fires back, "Says me!"
Adam gets up. Carefully.
***
It is extremely tricky, if not practically impossible, to make a grown man eleven again 1. For a start, shrinking your body down to size and removing a whole dollop of hormones and body hair poses all manner of problems, and the synaptic pruning of the brain is kind of a one-way street. But apart from that, it just isn't easy to be straightforward in a way that letting the summer go on forever could be, not when you now have a mortgage and technically only four weeks’ leave per year.
Adam is aware enough of these facts to chafe against them, and takes Ando out for a walk down toward the park to clear them out of his mind.
By the time he has succeeded he has gone almost three-quarters of the way round the park for the third time, and at this point he remembers that he has never really harboured any particular feelings toward Switzerland beyond a short-lived yearly fascination with Ski Sunday 2.
"Hello," says someone at close range, inconveniently. "Sorry to bother you, but..."
Adam looks up and says, "Sorry, what?"
He finds himself caught by a bright smile and worried brown eyes. Adam recognises them instantly, and then two seconds later fails to place them at all.
He gives his head a little wobble and knocks a few brain cells back together. Aha!
"Found you!" says Adam, without stopping to think.
“Yes,” says Jesus. “You have.”
***
"I don't remember ever having one of these before," says Honestly-I’d-Rather-You-Called-Me-Joshua (Josh for short), grimacing as he takes another sip of one of the coffees Adam had purchased from the (very) overpriced kiosk.
"Serves you right for being a fisherman," Adam says affably. He had bought two for each of them because there was an inexplicable BOGOF offer3.
"Carpenter," Joshua corrects. He seems a little dazed. "Wait, I don't think I'd mentioned-"
"What you should've been, is a goatherd," Adam explains helplessly. “In the mountains. Where the coffee grows.”
Josh beams at him, without any understanding whatsoever. "Do you have any goats?"
The last vestiges of Adam's hangover vanish. Ugh. He has got a migraine. He keeps on staring at Josh - whose smile does not falter - until that vanishes, too.
"Thanks," says Adam, feeling a sudden surge of affection that he normally directs at dogs and fairness in general, not usually towards people he’s barely met.
"Oh, gosh," Josh says back, perplexed. "I didn't mean you to - you noticed? You’re – even better than I thought."
Adam grins, wickedly.
***
"And he's called Another-Dog. ‘Cause I used to have Dog, but he wasn’t a replacement dog, he's another dog. Ando for short."
Josh has relaxed a lot since Adam explained that Ando was naturally friendly. It didn't matter that this was not exactly the truth, Ando only being naturally friendly when Adam was feeling the same way, but Josh seems happy to focus on trivialities as long as Adam is.
"Anyway," says Adam, inconsequentially. "Have you heard about Switzerland?"
Josh politely shook his head.
"Country," says Adam helpfully. Lots of mountains. Like, since the thirteenth century. If you count in centuries," he adds thoughtfully. "Or countries, even. Tribes, nations, armies, walls."
Joshua brightens for a moment. "The United Nations! I was meant to - oh." He pats at his pockets, looking comically upset.
"Hmm," says Adam, "So, you were meant to do something with the United Nations, and suddenly Geneva zips out of existence and takes the rest of the country with it. Seems suspicious."
Joshua looks absolutely crestfallen, and Adam shouldn't laugh, but he does anyway.
"I'm not blaming you!" he says, reasonably. "You don't strike me as someone who goes around taking stuff away from people, that's more, you know..."
Joshua finally looks like he's getting a grip on Adam's meaning, but it just makes him look sad. Ando whimpers.
And Adam decides, then and there, that he is absolutely done with either of them being sad. "Right," he declares. "We need to sort this out."
"I don't think -" Josh begins, and then stifles a small smile, "Oh."
"Yes," says Adam. "You, Je- Jehoshua, need a goat, and I, Adam, am going to make sure you get one."
"Adam?" Joshua looks awestruck, "are you, that is to say -" He stops and takes a deep breath.
Adam takes the opportunity to say, "I'm very good at getting what I want, so I have to be careful what I want, you see."
Joshua looks momentarily envious, not in in the kind of way that should remind everyone that he is human after all, but in the kind of way that suggests that a few other of the deadly sins are queuing up and will follow soon.
Adam just grins wider.
***
"Wait," says Joshua, "I recognise this - I came this way."
"Well, obviously," says Adam, "we're following a trail. Ando can sniff anything out."
They are standing outside a bookshop. Adam has never been inside; there had once been a very good coffee shop across the street, but now the windows are dirty, the paintwork peeling and all the lights gone out.
For that matter, the bookshop looks the same way.
Adam feels vaguely irritated, rather like an itch he can’t quite find the right place to scratch.
"But I need to get the book!" he says pointedly to the door. “A big, very important one.”
Joshua looks at him sidelong. "There's a place I know down this street that's open. They're friendly, too. We could ask there?"
Adam glares at the door again. The door stands unmoved.
"I don't think there's anyone home," says Joshua, retreating back into quiet and miserable. "Only the nice one, and he was sleeping in the alley out the back, and I couldn't make him feel even the slightest bit better."
Adam puts his hand in Joshua's and squeezes. "There. Feel better?"
Joshua squeezes back.
***
The nice one has also disappeared from the alley, so Adam decides to give the World a ten-minute time-out to think about what it is doing to him and lets Josh lead him and Ando into the cafe. The sign on the door says Dogs Welcome, which is good, considering there’s still nine minutes left of the break to go.
"Hello again, Harry the Fisher!" Joshua greets a man in the corner, steering Adam over. "I've brought a friend, I think he might understand about looking for the Lady better than I do."
Harry looks up, glances between Adam and Josh's faces, and makes a face.
"Who said anything about ladies?" says Adam incredulously, his mind still on books.
Harry guffaws. Ando barks. The television in the corner flickers twice and then the screen bursts into a pile of angry static.
"The cards," says Joshua, waving his free arm toward the table. The staticky noise subsides somewhat, although the picture continues to snow. "It’s important. Can you show him, please?"
After three rounds of watching Joshua miss the Queen every time, Adam sighs and said, "Right, my turn."
Harry nods, shuffles and deals the cards. Adam is still holding on to Josh's hand under the table, mostly because Joshua is clinging on like his life depends on it, so he has to let go of Ando's collar with the other hand for a moment to tap the card on the left.
Harry turns over a two of spades. Ando growls and Adam's hand shoots back to the collar. "He doesn't like losing," he explains to Harry, very reasonably.
Harry licks his lip nervously, and shrugs.
"Again," says Adam, letting slip a slight hint of malevolence. He feels Joshua shudder, and tightens his grip reassuringly. Not your turn yet.
This time, he nods toward the card on the right. Harry turns over a four of diamonds.
"Hang on…" Harry begins uncomfortably, picking the other two cards up and staring at them.
"Again!" Adam repeats, ever more urgent.
"Please," chimes in Joshua. Adam blinks over at him. Joshua squeezes his hand back. Be good.
Harry is still staring at the cards.
"Come on," says Adam, "it doesn't really matter what the other two are, does it?"
"Must've mixed them up," mutters Harry, putting the three cards back into a pile and mixing them. He pauses, then deals them face-up.
Two tens and a Queen.
"See!" Adam says, perking up. "We're getting the hang of this."
Harry gives a well-what-can-you-do shrug, turns the cards and mixes them one more time.
Adam says to Josh, "You've got to put your finger on it," and Josh lifts up his free hand and says to Adam, "Which one should I choose?"
Adam is already glancing back across the road toward the bookshop. "Doesn't matter."
The television splutters into life again to announce that all contact has been lost with Canada, but nobody is paying much attention, so a moment later it goes back to snowing again. The screen is starting to frost over.
Joshua turns over the Ace of Hearts.
"What the hell!" yelps Harry, and flips the other two cards.
Two Queens.
"I like my rules better," says Adam mildly. "Aces high."
"How," says Harry, and he sounds awed. "How the hell -"
"Come on," says Adam to Josh, and the two of them stand up. Not quite in synch, but getting closer.
"Sorry," Joshua apologises, and Adam isn't sure which of them he's speaking to, exactly. "You see, I'd sort of fallen out of the habit."
Adam suddenly feels like those large, brown eyes that hold an almost puppyish expression might have been just a little bit of a trap. The realisation makes him feel unaccountably unbalanced, and itchy, and very, very alive.
"Are we ready for the bookshop?" Joshua asks, and he is speaking all to Adam now.
Adam, just to make a point, says, "You would have made the whole pack into Ladies."
He discovers a moment later that Joshua is capable of the brightest shit-eating grin he has ever seen.
"Come on," he says mildly. "The Lion shall lie down with the Lamb."
"Goat," corrects Adam, because he is nothing if not competitive.
***
"I need a map!" Adam yells through the letterbox. There hadn't been a letterbox there a moment ago, but it was more satisfying to yell through that than a very solid door. “In an encyclopaedia! Spelled with an ash!"
"Oh, mannnn," Joshua slurs delightedly. Or maybe he said manna? The wind is whipping up; Adam can hear the noise as it whistles down the street, but the bookshop is sheltering them perfectly. Ando is whining, pressing himself against Adam's leg.
"We could just try the door," he says to Josh, helpfully, because Josh still seems to need the hint, and Adam still needs to feel in control. It's starting to feel very hot, this wind. He's going to have to shout. "Open the door!"
"Listen!" whispers Joshua, ignoring the wind completely, "I think – I think there’s something very important going on in there!"
“If you ask me,” Adam yells, “all the important stuff is happening out here.”
Behind them, the world starts to fall away.
"Jesus!" Adam groans, and does what he thinks anyone should do at the End of the World. He leans over, grabs Joshua by the chin, and kisses him.
***
The earth doesn’t move so much as it vanishes, but it takes Adam and Josh a long time to notice their feet have been moved through the door into the bookshop. Paradoxically, it also takes them no time at all.
They break the kiss when someone nearby clears their throat with an ostentatious a-hem. Adam steels himself when Josh flinches back, which at least gives him an opening to throw his shoulder in front of Josh, glance up, and instantly dissolve into feelings of exasperation.
"Ugh," he says childishly. "Dad!"
Behind him, Joshua lets out a gasp of horror. "Mum!"
The two beings sitting in the middle of the bookshop raise their eyebrows in harmonious union.
Josh mutters something, then tries to insert himself in front of Adam, and there is a brief tussle in which neither give in until they end up propped shoulder to shoulder. Adam stifles the urge to stamp his foot, wonders why he's bothering, then remembers he is a grown adult and he can stamp his feet if he feels like it. He feels Joshua's fingers go slack in his, and grasps hold of his hand tighter, in both desperation and warning.
Ando runs off behind a bush.
Adam doesn't stop to wonder why half the bookshop has turned into a garden. "Why is it always you?" he says to the Devil.
Satan regards him with slight bafflement. "Last I remember," he says, "you were telling me that I'm not your father."
"Oh," says Joshua beside him, steady and marvelling. Adam feels another full body shiver run up his arm. He takes a deep breath and interlocks their fingers. Josh brushes his thumb against Adam's.
"Boys," says the other being in the other chair, disapprovingly. Adam gets the distinct impression that is her default tone. He ignores it.
"Look," he says. "I've - I know you've been hanging around. That time at the rugby match. And at the laundrette. And at that really weird party. And I - I tolerated it! Because I thought we'd agreed, no burning things up!"
Satan looks abashed. "I thought I'd at least got you fooled with the party disguise."
"I would know you anywhere," Adam says with temerity. "I'm not an idiot."
“It was fancy dress, you know,” Satan asides to God. “Went as the Batman.”
God’s lips twitch.
"You are both absolutely unbelievable!” Adam bursts out. “I suppose you thought I wouldn’t notice that you’re burning everyone and everything up again. What is your problem? Do you think now I've grown up I'd forget that you promised?"
Joshua makes another mildly horrified noise.
"Sorry," Adam mutters, shooting Joshua the shortest of glances, "Also: found your Lady, right?"
He can't quite tell, but he thinks Josh is still, somehow, smiling.
“You have,” God acknowledges. “You both have. But I never promised anything.”
"Ugh, you’re even worse!” Adam spits out, unable to stop himself. “Giving with one hand and taking away with the other - what’s your deal, anyway? You so loved the World that you sent your only son, blah blah blah, and he was nice, but we weren’t good enough for him, so you killed him off, and then you sent him again, but this time you made up your mind to kill us all before you even brought him back – what?” Joshua was plucking ineffectually at Adam’s sleeve. “Not a great way to treat your Son, is it? Have you spent any time with him at all in the past two thousand years? You haven’t even given him a chance. Have you even got to know him? He’s… he’s subversive, and annoying, and he breaks all the rules, and he knows Everything, and he’s got the most wonderful eyes. And you just want to…to get rid of him. Just when I’ve met him. It’s not fair!”
The being in white is examining Adam rather like he's a piece of Ando's excrement turned up on her shoe. Her tone is mild. "Oh, dear. Dear. Who said anything about fair?"
“You’re both terrible parents,” Adam says forcefully. “We’re disowning you both. Again,” he added, purely for Satan’s benefit. “Leave Joshua alone. He’s mine now.”
“Adam!” Joshua exhales, thrilled.
“I mean, he’s ours. But mine too. Whatever. Go away and be horrible in some other universe. We’re keeping this one. You may have started it off, but it’s humans who’ve put all the work in.”
"Mum," Josh says again, beseechingly. "It's - I can't be the Way, the Truth and the Life if there is no life. And this is Adam. Who isn't any of those things, yet he's all of them, and more."
Adam rolls his eyes. Josh's mum rolls her eyes harder. Adam can't help but feel the tiniest ember of mutual respect. He buries it deep inside himself.
"My Son," says Josh's mum4. "I've taught you better than this. You are meant to resist temptation. I’m afraid,” she pauses briefly, the better to weigh what comes next in the balance, and find it wanting, “you’ve brought all of this upon yourself."
Adam starts counting to ten, and somewhere around two-and-a-bit changes it to three.
Josh gives a little shrug. "Actually," he confesses, like it had all been an unfortunate accident and nothing to do with the fact that Adam had been a homing beacon of ungodly light all along, "I tempted him."
That shining light winks out. The room drains itself of sound. "What?" Adam says, into the void.
Joshua gives him the silliest, sappiest smile, and holds up the Ace of Hearts.
"You," Adam says adoringly, through gritted teeth. "You're so -"
There's a commotion to the side of them and an angel and a demon stumble out of the trees, gasping in breaths. They are also holding hands.
"We've come to a decision," states the angel.
Adam looks over and is horrified to recognise the two of them. "No, no, no! Not you as well!"
"I beg your pardon," says the angel, haughtily. The detached, floating part of Adam that had noticed the eye roll also notices the tear tracks on the angelic cheek.
"Adam?" says the demon. "Jesus!" He sounds shaken.
"I told you!" says Adam, giving into temper. "I told all of you! I don't need people swooping in to save me. Us! None of us need that! We just need to be left alone so we can get on with - with trying not to mess things up. In peace, more or less!”
“Oh,” says Joshua. “Sorry – not sorry?”
“I didn’t mean you,” said Adam in a fond rush. “You’re one of the Us. You’re on Our Side.”
"But," says the angel, looking despairingly over at God, "We'd just decided – we’ve chosen -"
"I'm so glad you found him," Joshua cuts in smoothly, extending his free hand out toward the demon. "Thank you for mulling over the question until we got here. I think I know what to do now. Adam wants a tree. Don’t you, Adam? A book, made out of an ash tree." He stares toward the garden, and gives a delighted, joyful smile. "And I'm a carpenter."
He gives their joined hands a slight tug. Adam stumbles, then lets himself be pulled along. He says, to no-one in particular. "An encyclopaedia. Of life. With everything in it. Spelled properly."
The angel says, "Oh, you mean with an aesc?"
The demon counters, heavy on sibilance, "Aziraphale. With a spell.”
Adam puts his hand into his pocket, and draws out the two cards. Queens of Hearts.
“I think these are for you,” he says to Crowley.
***
The garden isn't pretty. For a start, it's got too many books in it to be a proper garden. Adam can't help thinking it's very unfair, to show books where they came from and trees where they may end up, removed from nature. It's just a way for all parties to feel aggrieved.
And still, he wants. And he wants a book. The Book. A new The Book.
The Tree is easy to find. It’s nestled in a sea of bluebells, and covered in tiny white flowers, a blanket of stars.
Joshua starts to disentangle his fingers, and Adam resists.
"I suppose we just have to trust they won't just end it all out there," he muses. "While we're in here."
"They can't," Joshua says simply. "They’ll say they did, but they won’t." He lifts a finger and pokes it, gently between Adam's eyes. "You’re my trump card.”
“Give that here.” Adam swipes it out from between Joshua’s fingers, and looks. It’s just an ordinary playing card. Creased, with a dog-eared corner.
“I played you,” Joshua said gleefully. “And we won.”
Adam shakes his head. "Pep's going to absolutely loathe you!" And then laughs. "And after that she'll love you."
“The point is," says Joshua, caressing the shimmering bark, "she will get to choose."
"Yes," says Adam, who is absolutely not starting to feel jealous of a tree, "Choosing All The Things is exactly the sort of thing she always does."
Joshua smiles at him. Adam feels his glare sliding off his face, vanquished. "I think," he waves his free hand at Josh's free hand, to see if he wants to do something more useful with it than feel up a tree, "we’re – sort of - cousins? Technically?"
"Yes," says Josh, leaning against the Tree now and staring up to where, in the higher branches, a black bird is fluting a cheerful greeting in anticipation of a new dawn. "But that's humanity, isn't it? Everyone's related to everyone else. All linked together."
Adam gives up trying to coax Josh away from the Tree and steps in close, instead. "There'll be an awful lot to write," he says.
Joshua waves away the concern. "We just have to start it off, and the rest will write itself. Everyone will write their own bit. Whatever they want. Nothing written for them."
"Fine," says Adam, leaning his head against the trunk, hearing it thrum with all the souls and secrets stashed within, "but I think I'd better do the map. You get on with redeeming - y'know, everything else."
Joshua reaches round the tree, and Adam stretches out his other hand. And, thus encircled, they teach the Tree to become the Book.
A goat bounces out of the undergrowth once they've finished, herded by Ando, who barks happily.
Josh gives Adam his very best I-can't-believe-I-gave-you-that-card-back look. Adam matches that with his stellar expression-of-smug-satisfaction.
And then they walk back into the bookshop, where the angel and the demon and two rather overbearing parents - and beyond that, the rest of the world - are waiting for them.
- There is a school of thought that asserts many grown men have never actually aged past the age of eleven, but none of those men are in this story.
- Dry January has a lot to answer for.
- At least, inexplicable to anyone but Adam, who doesn't really have anyone these days to point out how winning the lottery weekly just should not happen - Pepper doesn’t count. (Adam had eventually given up buying tickets every week because he'd become annoyed at the amount of paperwork he had to do each time he donated the entirety of his winnings to charity. It was enough to drive a man to drink.)
- Obviously Adam knows that Joshua’s mum has a Name, but the small part of him that isn't furious at her is absolutely losing at finding the first thing Josh is doing is taking him to meet his parent.