03. aggressive. go - ca

It is a general fact accepted among the police stations of Britain that the streets, on particular nights – such as Tuesdays – and at particular times – eight to two a.m. – are very dangerous to be on. Universal patrol cars could be implemented, an entire breed of sleepless policemen developed, their only purpose in life to write out tickets and march the roads like many schools of ants with high-powered weapons, and the roads would still be dangerous to play on.

There was something about the dark that brought out the worst in everything that resided in the middle ground.

Rats scuttled in the dark; spiders spun their rainbow webs; humans prowled and preyed on humans. The darkness hid it all, and left it for the horrified light to find – the body of a murdered woman, face down in a puddle of glass and needle-thin grass, the ripped-apart body of an alley-cat feasted on by a crow, and multitudinous webs that danced with dewdrops and sun-beams. Yes. What generations of humans had been trying to hide – what perversions they avoided – came out at night to play like wicked, wicked children.

It was foolish for celestials to be afraid of the night, and Aziraphale had never been foolish. But, then again, he'd never been pressed up against an alleyway wall so covered with mildew and moss, it felt like a Brazilian forest, with a blade kissing a thin red line into his neck. All those perversions and hidden things had come out to play, and the first puppet they had picked had been the angel.

The boy was not evil; he knew that. What he was, was lost. He needed his help – Aziraphale could see it, hidden underneath the rolling eyes, in the spittle-drenched mouth, the hatpin lips that caught on words like a sewing machine catching on thicker fabric. He was tall and narrow, like an elastic band, and he smelled like an entire year's worth of filth. His clothes were grubby shreds, clinging to him. He looked ancient, vulgarly out of date.

In today's modern age of cheap, affordable clothing, cheap food, cheap services, you didn't expect to see poverty or madness as though you'd stepped right into the fourteenth century. Just a few steps away, there was a swanky car; a high-rise building. A road down from this, there was a soup kitchen, and this boy still looked as the textbook illustrations in history classes painted the people of pre-Revolutionary France and Russia.

"I'll gut you," he hissed, a low and malevolent sound, like white noise and dragging feet, "I-I-I-I swear to G-G-God I'll g-g-gut you."

"My dear boy, God is ha-"

The blade pressed deep, and his words snapped shut. The boy giggled, a thin line of pinkish drool gliding down the corner of his carved mouth – Aziraphale's fingers twitched with the urge to wipe it away, and to offer him a change of clothing, while he was at it, but he could not speak. He could move, maybe, but it wouldn't be without damage.

"A-Are you l-laughing at me?" He hissed. Aziraphale tried to shake his head. "Are you l-l-laughin-laughing at me!?"

His back twitched against the wall, pressed so hard against brickwork, he could feel the imprints in his bones. Words spun in his head, carousel-like and dizzying, and the angel couldn't think of what he was supposed to say. What he was supposed to do. How he was supposed to act. This was a new situation to him, and he didn't want to hurt the youth.

But someone had other issues.

"I would be careful," whispered the shifting darkness at the mouth of the alleyway, the black lit up by a single glowing point, "how hard you presssss that blade."

The boy jerked in panic, and the knife moved away from his neck. Where there had once been a dumpster, crudely shoved so as to block the mouth of the alleyway, there was a man – tall, not very broadly built, clearly unarmed. He had a cigarette between his teeth, and the smoke pushed off from the tip in twisting curls, like the boy's bedraggled hair.

The voice that had seemed to hiss, like air being let out of a pressurized tire, had come from him.

The boy was unmoved.

"Y-Y-Y-You ge-ge-get any cl-cl-closer, and I s-s-s-swear..." The boy jerked the knife hard against Aziraphale's neck. A strip of skin peeled away, as though removed by acid, scraped off by the serrated edge of your rudimentary kitchen knife. The Food Network channel, decided the angel, holding his useless breath in to keep from moving, was not going to remain one of his favourite channels.

Crowley was smiling. It wasn't a smile Aziraphale had seen before. When Crowley smiled, it was soft and mocking, but decent, honest. And this smile was the smile of the things in the night that humanity tried to forget; the smile of something that inhabited a man, and made him chop his child up into so many small little pieces. If he had ever done anything demonic in his life, it would be standing there, smiling that smile, with his sharp eyes exposed and the smoke from his cigarette flaring.

He'd kill him in a heart-beat.

It was written in his very position. And maybe the child read that, somewhere between the twirling, curling smoke, the rippling, unmoving smile – maybe he saw his own death in those reflective golden eyes, maybe he saw what Crowley would do to him if he moved that blade one more time; and Crowley could guarantee that he saw incorrectly.

What he would do to him was too magnanimous, too dark, to be seen in his eyes.

"Drop it," ordered the demon, very softly, very quietly. "And let him go. Now."

The boy swallowed, but tried to maintain his bravado. After all, creepy men were just that; creepy, but men, human. The one standing by the dumpster could hardly leap tall buildings in a single bound or, indeed, just a few feet to stand by him. He certainly wouldn't be quick enough to clip the knife from his hand, and he – had he just moved?

In the blink of an eye, it seemed like the distance between them had halved, and he was standing much, much closer than he had before.

And he was smiling, smiling, smiling, in a way that said 'I am going to rip you to shreds, and enjoy it'.

"Didn't you hear me?" the man flicked the cigarette into the nearest trash bin; flames shot up, inferno in a glass (or, in this case, in a bin) as though the bin had been filled with gas and cleaning detergents and all those other brightly-coloured bottles that came with a 'Keep away from fire' label. "I said drop it."

"G-g-Get back!"

The man against the wall was speaking, whispers of some language that he didn't know, but the other one didn't pay attention. Hot metal sizzled, and the burn of it slid down the boy's hand. Whether from the flames behind him, or the stare that Crowley was giving him, the knife blade had liquefied down to the hilt, leaving him unarmed, vulnerable, easy to everything that smile promised.

"I ssssssaid..." Crowley leaned in close – every lash countable, and the twist of his mouth neither humorous nor angry – "boo."

The boy took off like a bullet, screaming. The flames died down with each pattering footstep, until he couldn't be heard of any longer.

Quietly, Crowley turned to the not-quite-pleased Aziraphale and pressed his hand to the stinging cuts on his neck. "Gotta be careful around these parts, angel," he said conversationally, as though he hadn't just pushed every horrible thought he could think of into the child's mind, "you're a prime target the way you look now. Like some middle-aged businessman with a lot of cash."

"That was horrible of you," Aziraphale said. For once, it wasn't joking. "You shouldn't tease humans so, Crowley. They're already twisted enough."

Crowley smiled. And, again, there was something off about his smile. In front of Aziraphale's eyes, he tilted his head back to the cloud-covered sky and said, as though challenging, "... who said I was teasing?"