Candy Writes

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The first thought that ran through Crowley’s head as he looked up (and up) at the tall and glowering demon before him, arms crossed and eyes a-flicker, was that he must be able to get out of whatever it was that he’d done without realizing somehow. (Actually, it was Oh sssshit!, but that wasn’t nearly as specific.)

“Hi, Hastur, can I he—” he began, and was subsequently slammed into the wall behind him. Tiny outcroppings of stone dug into his back, and he blessed the prevalence of “natural” architecture in Hell. There was certainly something to be said for sheetrock when it came to the list of Favorite Materials to Be Violently Pushed Against.

“You’re coming with me tomorrow,” Hastur snarled, fangs bared. He gave the shoulder he’d pinned the junior demon another grind into the rock and balled his other fist tighter into Crowley’s collar, dragging him up close to his face, which while not a comparatively horrible sight, he was much more comfortable with when it was as far away as possible. Behind him, Ligur crossed his arms and nodded smugly. When did Ligur show up? Was this some kind of privileged-demon-nobility hazing? Was he going to keep his earlobes? “You’re meeting me at the entrance gates after the last bell. And you’d best show up if you know what’s go—healthy for you, right? Or I’ll come find you, and you don’t want me to have to do that.”

Numbly, Crowley nodded. He would have been mad to do anything but, even though he was sure he was signing himself up for some kind of deep and enduring pain. Why him? Why now? The Duke hadn’t even so much deigned to trip him in Pandemonium’s hallways after the debacle that had been Armageddidn’t (as some of the younger demons waggishly referred to it). Of course, he’d been in the dungeons for much of that time as far as Crowley understood. Time off for go—suitably compliant behavior, apparently, which itself was a sort of miracle considering who they were talking about. Oh Satan, had he been saving it all for this moment? Over a decade of bottled-up revenge plots, paranoia and rage? He couldn’t accept. It was suicide.

“Of course. Yeah. Sure. Um, no offense meant, of course, Hastur, but could you possibly watch the suit? It’s one of my nicer ones, and I was really hoping to get through the day without some kind of, uh, fabricide—”

Hastur released him, looking disgusted, and scrubbed his hand unsubtly on the leg of his trousers. “You’d just better be there, is all. You and me have unfinished business, Crowley. Tomorrow that changes.”

Oh ssssssshit. “Yes, Duke Hastur. Of course. Not a problem. Nooooope. Happy to serve. Nothing like taking care of business, eh? Haha.”

He hoped the Duke would leave then (and take his friend with him; Ligur was eyeing him with an air that suggested he was thinking how charming Crowley’s innards would look as a bolo tie), but instead Hastur stuffed his hands in his pockets and glared at the ground before flicking his eyes up from Crowley’s shoes to his hairline. Shoulders hunched, he almost looked defensive. Shouldn’t Crowley be the one cowering?

“Wear something nice.”

What?

As the mismatched duo turned and loped away, muttering between themselves in urgent tones, Crowley shuddered and, out of a need to do something that wasn’t shaking, glanced at his watch. He’d added the date to it as well as the twenty-one capitols, and at a thought it swam to the forefront of the clock face.

13 February. That meant something—he slapped his brain around in hopes that it would spell things out for him. 13 February. Right. It wasn’t a holiday, ugh, no… but that would make tomorrow 14 February.

14 February.

St. Valentine’s Day.

Every morning it’s the same, more or less, except that there really isn’t any such thing as morning in Hell.

For a place in which time does not pass, there is a surprising amount of routine. Or perhaps not so surprising, considering the nature of the place; routine is proverbially soul-killing, and that is, of course, rather the point.

Hastur likes routine, as much as he actually likes anything. He likes the security (as far as there is any in Hell), the sameness; knowing what is expected of him as clearly as he knows the miles of rock stand stalwart between him and the noisy, troublesome, fast-moving shallow world above, where the junior demons fetch and carry.

Aziraphale likes routine. What was taken for granted in Heaven—common courtesy, really, as easy as breathing—seems to be a challenge for most beings here on Earth, but he’s always gotten along fine. There’s nothing simpler. Of course, considering he’s self-employed and beholden to no one on this planet, what constitutes “routine” is rather free-form, but there are little habits he likes to stick to all the same. Always the same cup. Always the shelves dusted in the same order (when he bothers to dust them, that is). Always the same.

And at half past eleven, on the dot, always the same lanky shadow slipping through his door without bothering to set the bell a-ring.

“I’m looking to buy a book.”

Always the same line, too. It’s like a code by now, although depending on the tone and the expression of the one delivering it those six simple words could mean almost anything. The angel looks up, and then up a bit more, at the sharp thin face hovering above his paperwork-strewn-counter. There isn’t as much distance between them as one might expect, though it’s exaggerated by the demon’s defensive stance: straight, tense, like the tail of a scorpion ready to strike. He wears his long dark coat open, a fortress wall between the two of them.

“That is what most people come into a bookstore for, my dear.”

“I’m not most people,” says Hastur, and leans down to dig his elbows into the once-polished countertop. It takes him a while. “And I know you, you old feather duster. You’re never going to sell me so much as a pencil smudge.”

“Oh, money,” says the angel dismissively. “It’s always seemed a bit sordid to me, really. Back ho—in Heaven we… well, we weren’t really supposed to desire specific objects, you know. But every now and then we’d barter if there was something that was just too delightful. It worked much better, I think.”

“Bartering is just a fancy way of playing games with pretty trinkets. You and I are both a bit old for that, I reckon.” Hastur shifts his weight just so, almost imperceptibly. “What say we forget about the bargaining and go for a straight trade—”

Paper flies. The angel’s hands lock around each wrist, tightening, with perfectly smoothed nails digging into very specific spots until both butterfly knives clatter to the ground, forms and ancient bills drifting down almost sheepishly over and around them. Hastur hisses and lunges forward again, and a dizzying moment later sees bright flashes as the back of his skull crashes into the nearest wall, plump fingers around his throat. His skin sizzles and he convulses, gagging on his own hiss as it drops to a guttural growl.

“Oh, no, dear. Have you forgotten already? You may be higher in the overall scheme of things, but you’re still much more susceptible to the divine than I am to the infernal.” Aziraphale shakes his head, genuinely disappointed. “I thought you’d gotten over the whole violent ambush matter already, I really did.”

“You know what I’m here for,” the demon grits, tearing at the deceptively soft hands. Aziraphale lets him go, looking patient, and he scuttles back, one sharp-nailed hand to his throat. “Always the same, innit? Always the ruddy same, you little—”

Aziraphale stops the word behind his lips. He is fast enough to lean forward, scoop the back of the Duke’s neck down to his level and raise himself just far enough, as lightly as if standing on a wisp of cloud; smooth lips brush bared fangs, catching the lips that snarl back from them and drawing them toward each other again with just a hint of bite hooking in. The fight’s out of Hastur in a moment. He goes to his knees like everything below them has suddenly turned to butter under a lamp and the angel follows him, bending low and keeping the lightest of contact as the skin beneath his glows, heating white. Aziraphale smiles and strokes away a string of unkempt hair, tapping a light kiss between throat and jaw and eliciting a reluctant little bite of a moan as there, too, burns. “There, my good man, that’s better… I knew you’d come round eventually. You always do, dear…”

Let the rest fade into a trickle of small sounds: shifts, pushing aside books, perhaps even a satisfied and very British chuckle. It’s nothing out of the ordinary, nothing to stand dumbstruck by.