Collide, a good omens fanfic

Author's Notes: Much thanks go to my darling beta reader, Musegaarid, for being lovely and useful where I was not. This was originally written for ladyoneiros as part of the Antichristmas Challenge on LiveJournal. The elegant poetry in italics is "Choose Something Like a Star" by Robert Frost.

Also, this is slash, meaning male/male, meaning if you don't like that kind of thing, turn back now. Kthanks.

O star (the fairest one in sight)
We grant your loftiness the right
To some obscurity of cloud.

"He's changed it. He's changed everything."

"Hello, Crowley," Aziraphale says calmly to the dark figure that interrupts his reading as he storms in. The demon slams the door behind him with a loud noise that must have provided little satisfaction for his frustration, because he continues his rant without the faintest attempt at pleasantries.

"It's all different, all of it. Can't you feel it? St. James, the Ritz, the B - the Bentley... He's reached everything. It's all different," he repeats, and mutters to himself as he sets about helping himself to the brandy Aziraphale has out on the table nearby.

Aziraphale blinks. "I can feel it," he says matter-of-factly.

"Doesn't it bother you?" Crowley asks. Aziraphale wishes the demon wouldn't gesticulate so wildly with his brandy snifter quite so near the Edwardian first editions, but there is little opportunity in the space of the demon's rant for him to mention it. "Doesn't it bother you that you've got books in here that you've never even heard of, just because it fits some kid's idea of a bookstore?"

"Well. There've been some rather nice additions since - "

But Crowley snatches one of the thin paperbacks from a nearby shelf, reading with a dry contempt mastered over the past six thousand years, "Mr. Biggles Goes to Town?"

"Well, I'll admit, it's not exactly traditional - "

"Mr. Biggles, angel?"

"All right, so he perhaps he's changed a few things - "

But Crowley isn't listening. He's stormed over to where the radio is tucked away on a shelf in the back corner. It's covered in dust; Aziraphale rarely uses it, except when the odd urge for some Puccini can be fulfilled by an absent wave of his hand. In fact, it's been there so long that it likely shouldn't have a casette deck, but Crowley assumes that one finds casette decks on radios, and so now it has. He pulls a tape from his pocket, shoves it in, and pushes play with a vengeance. "Do you know what this is?" he demands of Aziraphale.

The angel tilts his head thoughtfully, listening as the first few baleful chords spill over the room. "A bit odd sounding, isn't it? Berlioz, perhaps?"

"The fucking Fantastic Symphony," Crowley says despairingly, managing to make it sound as though that's been the work's proper title all these years. "This has been in the Bentley for three weeks now. Three weeks! By all rights we should be hearing Freddie bloody Mercury right now. Everything's different." Crowley mutters a few choice expletives to himself as he flops theatrically into the chair across from Aziraphale's, removing his sunglasses to rub wearily at the bridge of his nose.

Aziraphale, not quite confident as to who or what a Freddie Mercury might be, sets his book aside and leans forward patiently, hands clasped primly in his lap. "And what is it exactly you wanted me to do about this, my dear?"

Crowley casts a sidelong glance at the angel, as though he suspects he's being patronized. Then he sighs, and holds out his glass in the angel's general direction. "Pour me another drink?"

Adam's dreams roil like the sea during a storm, ever changing, and he sometimes feels he could be lost in them. Reality is subject to a cosmic subconscious, and when he sleeps, each dream is a tiny microcosm, fully formed and ever ephemeral, subject to fluctuating whims. In rest, he stirs, and worlds collide; slip past each other, transition with fluid grace, past, around, through, like the crashing waves, until all are indistinguishable.

Adam's dreams are not unlike his waking world.

It will not do to say of night,
Since dark is what brings out your light.

The antique car parked in front of Jasmine Cottage has the touch of his powers sprinkled over it, a dusting of cosmic glitter that he thinks shines only for him. He can always tell with a twinge of guilt when he has changed things, changed people, even when they do not realize themselves.

Before he can gather together a reason to go and knock on the door, Anathema has opened it. She leads the way out onto the porch, holding the door for two gentlemen that Adam knows he has seen before: a rather plump blonde man who laughs merrily at something Anathema has said, and a thinner, more angular looking man dressed in black. His hands are shoved deep in his pockets, and he casts a distracted glance over the top of his dark glasses before turning his attention back to the others. Adam knows the man - no, the demon, he realizes, in the subtle, shifting way he knows things without really knowing them - has seen him.

They seem to have walked straight out of his past as casually as they walked out of the cottage door, from a dark place within him that he has, for years, kept carefully contained: memories he doesn't want; a part of him he can't bear to face.

Only Pepper has dared to ask him about it, and it is only by her timid question that he knows that it is true, that it is not something from one of his more turbulent dreams.

His throat had closed when she asked him, and tears stung the corners of his eyes. He wants more than anything to make them forget, to make them see him as their friend, and not as something darker that even he does not understand. But just as he has restrained himself in this, he had restrained his answer, and it was perhaps his neutrality on the subject that frightened her more than anything.

"It was nothing, Pep."

Nothing, and now he has come face to face with it, nothing walking out of the door to Jasmine Cottage and getting into a black car which seems to roar to life with little more than a thought. As he pushes his bicycle up the path to where Anathema is waiting, he can hear their voices.

"London, my dear?" comes the question, though it is not a question so much as a nudge in the right direction.

Adam glances at the other figure; in the rear view mirror, he can see nothing but the curve of dark glasses, but he knows the demon's eyes are on him. "Yeah," he answers the other - an angel, Adam knows now - and, running a hand through his dark hair in a rather distracted gesture, he shifts gears, and they are leaving.

Anathema greets him warmly, with a fond hand on his shoulder, but he doesn't look up at her until the car has wound its way down the meandering country road out of and out of sight.

Later that night, he dreams of a tall figure in dark glasses, and even he does not know why.

Some mystery becomes the proud.
But to be wholly taciturn
In your reserve is not allowed.

"I'm telling you, angel. There's something really odd about him."

"Well. We knew that, didn't we?"

A sound, with all the patience of Hellfire crackling. "No, I mean... really odd. He's not right, you know, not for the boss's son. He feels so... normal."

"Do you think" - fear, the kind of quiet, shivering fear that accompanies the unexplained - "that when he changed... things, he changed himself as well?"

Silence, then the kind of world-weary sigh that only comes with being older than the world one is weary of. "I wish I knew what it means for us if he has."

He doesn't mean to at first, doesn't mean to make it snow on the day of the big exam, or to make Pepper kiss him on his fifteenth birthday. But sometimes he can't help it, can't curb his desires enough to keep them from creeping out of his subconscious and into his reality.

Power pulses like blood through his veins, and sometimes he feels it is too much for his skin to contain.

He tells Crowley one day when he and Mr. Fell have come to visit again. The demon only smirks.

"And they thought you were bad when you were eleven," he says with a laugh. "I don't think either side is prepared for the Antichrist in puberty."

He doesn't think Crowley realizes it, but it's the first time the demon's used that title in his presence. They both know; both know the other knows. But it's strange to hear him say it so casually, and it brings a flush to Adam's cheeks.

Crowley does not fully understand - he's beginning to doubt anyone ever really will - but at least he knows, asks no explanations of him, and to Adam, that is strangely comforting. He finds himself wishing that Crowley and Aziraphale would come to Lower Tadfield more often.

Oddly enough, they're back within the month.

Say something to us we can learn
By heart and when alone repeat.

Steam rises in blinding billows, and damp, blond hair clings to his face. Adam scrubs his skin a little more harshly than necessary, perhaps, as though, were he to scrub hard enough, he could change everything about himself that he doesn't like: the way his nails are always short and ragged from anxious biting; the way he can't keep his eyes from betraying what he's thinking.

The way he changes everything with little more than a thought.

It's selfish, really, making of the world what he wishes. Other boys his age can't wish for their parents to buy them a car, can't expect their friends to always want to do just what they want to do, can't hope their teachers will forget about that unexpected quiz they've been planning and just end up telling stories from their own foolish youths instead; or rather, they can, but there is no guarantee.

When Adam wishes, it all too often becomes real.

It's hard for anyone to balance the person they are with the person they want to be; however, in Adam's case, it means quite literally balancing with the weight of the world on his shoulders. He knows what he is, knows that when Mr. Young tells his son good night, he's not looking at his true father. He knows the origin of the powers that so often get the better of him, and he knows what they were meant to do. Knows what he could do, what he could make others do, if he weren't constantly holding himself back.

It's a lot for a seventeen-year-old to take. The pressure pours over him like the hot water from the shower head, and he longs for release. One hand clenches across his abdomen, and he forces himself to take long, deep breaths of the humid air. There is still a tightness deep in his belly, so he lets his thoughts wander to something - anything - more pleasant.

A cascade of blond curls, perhaps, or alluring dark eyes.

But no, he knows who it is he's thinking of as he trails his fingers over the sensitive flesh of his inner thigh, knows what he wants when he slides a hand across his hip. Memories spill forth as he searches the receptive crevices of his own body: an angular jaw, dangerously flashing eyes, a reptilian smirk. Shuddering, he wraps one hand around his cock, his touch gliding, slick, up the hard shaft with the aid of soap and steaming water. His lips part at the tantalizing touch, mouthing one name that he dare not speak, for with Adam, words are not just words.

When Adam speaks, the universe listens.

His back arches against the shower wall, tile slick against his skin, and want turns to need seated deep in his abdomen; his hips jerk forward as he tightens his grip, quickens his pace, and the sound of his faint moans are distant, lost among the rush of water that is now thunderous in his ears. He is most vulnerable just before he comes, massed in feverish, shivering sensation, and desperate, even for his own touch. One minute more, and he is certain his legs will no longer hold him.

"Cr - Crow - unh," and he arches sharply, head cracking against the tiles behind him so that there are stars in his eyes when the need within him becomes too much, spilling over in wet heat on the back of his hand. Adam trembles, sated, but strangely unsatisfied.

There was a time he'd have said that he'd never leave Lower Tadfield, but it just doesn't feel right anymore. The air around him seems sickly, stale, as it might in a crypt: buried, hidden, overlooked by time.

Even the Antichrist cannot escape Time in the end.

Besides, he knows when he glances back at Jasmine Cottage in the rear view mirror that the town will still look the same when he comes back.

"Wait. He's what?"

"Going to university. Isn't that nice? He stopped by my shop the other day looking for some books. Quite a nice young man, really... my dear, why are you laughing?"

"All the knowledge in the universe at his disposal, and the kid's going to school."

The exam questions blur in his vision, and he tires of them. The real test for him is to wrack his own brain for an answer and not just to know, in the way that he feels he might know anything if he'd just open his thoughts wide enough.

He turns from that thought, firmly, and goes back to pondering the task at hand. The knowledge is there, yes, but he doesn't want it; he has a hard enough time with the abilities he can't seem to control now, not to mention opening the door on that darkness.

No, he thinks. No more. He's locked that door, double bolted it and made himself forget just where he might have thrown away the key. He's normal, wants to be normal, and if his marks reflect a normal student struggling through uni, then at least they're his marks.

He does all right, anyway, at some things. Social studies, psychology, literature. The patterns of people set down on paper. He likes it, likes the insight. Likes to understand what people can do and be and say when he knows he hasn't interfered.

He remembers remarking to Crowley in his first term that the only part of history he doesn't like is remembering the dates. The demon seemed to think that was amusing; Adam himself may still have been a youth, but the Antichrist was eternal.

"Maybe you should try that other system," Crowley had said. "The Common Era bit. Maybe it's just the BC and the AD that throw you off." And then he'd smirked, obviously thinking he was being clever. Adam had rolled his eyes.

Say something! And it says, "I burn."

Each of the Them has taken their own path, but the others come to visit him sometimes. Pepper, after making her first remarks about his dorm room looking worse even than Brian's, throws her arms around his neck in a display quite unlike her. "I've missed you," she whispers.

It's genuine enough, but Adam still feels a twinge of guilt. He wanted them to miss him; he wants to be sure they never forgot.

But then she is taking his hand and urging him to show her the campus, and the moment is past. Before long, she's sipping coffee from a paper cup and grinning at him with a spark in her eyes that he remembers from their childhood. "This place is great," she says, taking a seat on a bench and patting the spot next to her.

Adam sits obediently; the bench is colder than the chill autumn air around them, but he doesn't complain. "It's a'right, yeah."

"I'd say it was more than all right. You were raving about it when you came home this summer."

"Oh," he says, followed by, "Sorry."

"Don't be sorry," she chides, hitting him playfully on the shoulder. "You're happy here. I'm happy you're happy here." He stays quiet as she sips her drink, so, with a sly sideway glance, she asks, "Girlfriend?"

To his horror, Adam flushes. "Not... exactly."

"Oh." She grins. "Boyfriend?"

The red in his cheeks is now roughly the same color as the scarf around his neck. "What? No."

She shrugs, but he can see her smirking as she turns back to her coffee.

It's late on a Wednesday night, and there's nothing on. He must be losing his touch, Crowley thinks; not even the reality shows amuse him tonight. People were facing their worst fears: heights, rats, enclosed spaces, jumping off things into vats of jam, all for the slim promise of monetary reward. It's vile, disgusting, the worst of human nature on display; it's perfect, and all he can do is sniff and sip at his third rum and coke.

There's a knock on the door. Unexpected, but even more so when he opens the door to reveal a presence he should have sensed a mile away. Literally.

"Adam. What're you doing here?"

"I - er, well..." The kid is stammering, and looks away quickly. It is only after a moment or two that Crowley realizes he has answered the door in nothing but a pair of black silk boxers.

"Oh," he says. Who would have figured the Antichrist for a prude?

With a gesture, he is fully clothed and quirking an eyebrow at Adam's flushed face and troubled expression. "... Adam?" he asks, suddenly unsure. Perhaps it is the other's pervasive aura, the kind that seems to creep upon you until you don't care about anything except the boy in front of you.

Blue eyes meet his with the distinct unease of one who has, perhaps for the first time, no idea what is going on. "Can - can I come in?"

But say with what degree of heat.
Talk Fahrenheit, talk Centigrade.
Use language we can comprehend.

Adam knows that he makes Crowley uneasy. He sees it, a self-consciousness that the demon is hardly used to feeling, layered beneath casual movements. The demon would let him in, pour him a drink. Let him spill his heart out and then fall asleep on the mint-condition white couch. Crowley is a demon, and more than any mortal, more even than Aziraphale, sees through Adam as though his whole being were molded of paned glass. But even this demon would do anything he wanted.

He shudders with the thought.

"You cold?" Crowley asks, just returning from the kitchen with two identical drinks at hand. He gives one to Adam, who smiles; Crowley, quite naturally a being of warmth, of heat, did not seem to realize that even in the dead of night, his flat remained about ten degrees warmer than usual, and with the lush foliage that decorated the otherwise clinically plain flat made it seem like nothing so much as a terrarium made life-size.

"'m fine, thanks."

It seems odd to impose, but he cannot help himself. It's been too long with just his thoughts, just dreams of the lithe movements, the strangely beautiful reptilian eyes, and the smirk that makes Crowley look more human than anything infernal.

Something catches in his throat. He feels oddly dizzy, as though all the blood in his head suddenly realized it had a prior engagement somewhere distinctly lower down in his body, and tries to bury the feeling in his drink. He wants Crowley, but that is not enough. He wants Crowley to want him, without his interference. It burns in him, most unpleasantly.

"You all right, kid?"

Adam realizes that once again, his eyes have betrayed him. He shoots Crowley a wry glance, desperate to disguise welling emotions. "I'm not a kid, you know," he informs the demon blithely. "I'm twenty-two." He wants to go on about how he lives on his own, how he's nearly earned a degree, and already has a job interview lined up that seem quite promising, but Crowley is laughing, and suddenly, without letting down his carefully crafted illusion, the demon looks every bit his age of six thousand years.

"All right, Adam," he says, putting careful emphasis on the change in address. "What's on your mind?"

"You." He doesn't look up, knowing his eyes will likely give away his secret if he does, but he doesn't have to, to see the way the demon blinks in surprise. "I've just... been thinking about you, is all," he adds, trying to keep a casual element to his voice as he leans back against the sticky leather of the couch.

Schooling himself, he risks a quick glance at the other. Without the dark glasses to hide it, Adam can see the calculation in Crowley's narrowed eyes as the demon gazes at him. For one moment, one silent hitch in his breath, Adam fears that Crowley will figure him out, will turn him away. But then, the intensity of his gaze is gone, and all the demon says is, "... Huh."

They both sip their drinks.

"... the Antichrist?"

"Yes, angel. The Antichrist. Prince of Darkness, Spawn of Satan. The Beast, the Dragon. Adam."

"... Kissed you?"

"Yes, angel."

"Well. Er. Oh. And what did you... do. About it?"

"I didn't do anything. Believe it or not, they didn't include anything in the Good Little Demon's Handbook about what to do when Lucifer's offspring snogs you. I just... let him. He eventually got embarrassed and left in quite a hurry."

"Poor dear."

"Oh, I'm all right. Could use another drink, though."

"I meant Adam."

"Oh."

Tell us what elements you blend.
It gives us strangely little aid,
But does tell something in the end.

The kid just changes people.

Crowley has begun to wonder if eve Adam fully knows, or at least understands: the Antichrist's powers stem from something ancient, something older than time, and Crowley suspects even Adam doesn't quite realize the extent of the influence he has, the way the world around him bends and bows to his thoughts.

He'd been meant to destroy that world, after all. The fact that he hasn't really only seems to have complicated things.

He catches sight of Adam through the window, an aura so strong he's surprised the mortals strewn around him can sit so calmly in his presence. The kid looks somber, even scared as he stares down into the bottom of his glass. Crowley wonders why.

After all, the demon can sense the boundlessness of Adam's power, but even he does not go untouched by it.

And steadfast as Keats' Eremite,
Not even stooping from its sphere,
It asks a little of us here.
It asks of us a certain height.

It is poetry, the way Crowley moves inside him. The rhythm of his thrusts, the meter measured out in breathless moans; praise recited against bare skin. It is the stuff of fantasy made substance, every passing whim and burning desire recorded on his flesh as he grasped the headboard to keep himself from trembling. He is filled, words brimming up behind his teeth and spilling out into abandon; for the rest of the world has melted away, and he sees nothing but velvet darkness of the insides of his eyelids.

Crowley bites him when he comes.

The wet warmth wells within him, and Crowley presses close against his bare back, flesh to trembling flesh, sinking his teeth into the Antichrist's shoulder blade when he reaches his peak. Deft fingers play him harder in Crowley's fervor, urge Adam to join him as he comes and comes.

But when Crowley shudders against him, sated, Adam finds his thirst has not yet been quenched; his hardness yet aches against the demon's touch, and he longs for Crowley to fill the emptiness in him once more. The demon, however, seems to have his own solution as he carefully nudges Adam's thighs apart, seeking receptive flesh. With a soft kiss at the juncture of his neck, Crowley urges Adam to lie on his back before settling himself between his knees.

Something catches in Adam's throat at the sight of Crowley suspended above him. "You don't have to," he says hoarsely, though he longs to watch his length disappear past those lips, to thrust into that mouth with the same ardent enthusiasm Crowley has shown.

The demon smiles. "I want to."

So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far,
We may choose something like a star
To stay our minds on and be staid.

Adam breathes a sigh of content, Crowley's body nestled against his. The demon has drifted off to sleep; in rest, his habitual breathing has stopped, giving him the still of death, but he is warm where their bodies meet in wanton disregard. Adam touches the demon's face, a light caress as he studiously watches the play of light and shadow across the other's serene expression. He wonders what dreams might drift placidly through that pallor of sleep if he were not keeping Crowley carelessly leashed by his own desires.

He wonders if Crowley would have had him if he had not wanted Crowley first.

The lights of the city cast lurking shadows in the night, and the Antichrist sleeps.

And be staid.

Aziraphale closes the book with a crinkle of crisp pages, setting it thoughtfully aside.