It was 10 o'clock on the next Monday morning and all of Ezra's talk of albums, old photos and Crowley's art the other day, had the man sifting through his own archive. Somewhere, there had to be something, any old work that has some spark of greatness in it. Some shard of his former self that would inspire him. That, or something he could blatantly plagiarize from his former self. That would be fine as well. As he scanned the pages, his eye fell on a photo Anathema had given him.

He remembered the day it was taken very well. Anathema had been nine years old and there was a career fair at her school. Her mother had been too busy with her job at the bank to give a presentation herself, and so Crowley, the only positive male role model left in the young girl's life, had been put to the task. It had been taken in the morning. It must have been, Crowley was still smiling, because that day had been the day he had learned just how terrible children can be…

"I don't know," a boy from Anathema's class had said. "Isn't art supposed to look like something?"

"Well, in a way, yes," Crowley had said, as he frantically dug through his mind to find an answer that would be satisfactory to two dozen nine to ten year olds. "Sometimes art can look like things we can see, but sometimes art can look like the way the artist feels."

"I bet you felt real ugly when you made this one. It's rubbish," another boy at the back had joked. All of the children laughed except for Anathema, who buried her face in her hands. Crowley never wanted to stand in front of a class ever again.

"Besides, you're probably a—"

That day had also been the day Anathema had learned the other F-word.

A few hours later, the two of them had sat in Anathema's mother's kitchen, waiting for her to come home.

The girl kicked her feet from where she sat on her chair, her chin rested in her hands as she looked at her uncle.

"I don't get it. They're usually not that mean," she mumbled.

"Yes, well, art has a long history of going underappreciated by the masses," Crowley said casually. He didn't lift his eyes from his sketchpad, nor did he look over the rims of his sunglasses. Partly because he wanted to make sure Anathema's portrait looked good*, partly because he didn't want the girl to see his eyes water.

(*It wasn't like he had anything to prove. Especially not to himself.)

"I meant to you. Personally," Anathema said sternly as she folded her arms over each other.

Crowley had been quiet for a moment, searching his mind again for the right words as he let his frustrations out as he translated the mass of curls on Anathema's head onto the page. "Some people just don't like things that are strange to them. Sometimes it's because we're artists, sometimes it's because we're boys who fall in love with boys, and they say that sort of thing to hurt us."

"No one had to go and say that! Besides, boys are really mean, I don't see how you can fall in love with them," she huffed. "I mean, except for you and the bookshop man. You two are acceptable."

There was an insinuation there that Crowley had chosen to ignore. "Anathema, you really are too wise for your age."

She always had been. Still was.

Just like people had always been unappreciative of arts, and always would be.

Inspiration be damned, spite had always been the best motivator for Crowley to do, well, anything. And so, before 11, an easel with a canvas was set up in the living room along with a palette and oil paints, the floor, plants and furniture were all covered in tarps, while Adam was parked on the floor wearing his pajamas from last night with a scrap of old wall paper and a set of finger paints in front of him.

Crowley had finished his sketch before he turned around to see how Adam was doing. The boy still stared at the paints and the wall paper, unsure of what to do with it. With a smile on his face, the man crouched down, dipped his fine oil paint brush in the fingerpaint and dragged it across the paper in hopes of provoking the boy. "You can do it, Adam," he encouraged.

Adam, in turn, raised a tiny hand, dipped it into the red paint and slapped it onto the paper. He giggled again.

"There we go. Have fun, buddy." He ruffled the boy's hair as he got back up and turned his attention to his own canvas, putting the base colours in place.

Once noon rolled around and it was time for Adam to eat his snack, Crowley turned back to where the boy had been sitting a little over an hour ago. 'Had been', being the key phrase, as the boy was nowhere in sight.

"Adam?" Crowley called as he walked around his black, leather chair. The tarps had small, brightly coloured smudges scattered over them. He heard the laughter of the small boy come from behind the sofa, and the closer Crowley came, the more colour drained from his face.

"Adam! My walls!" He cried. Pristine, white plaster was now covered in red and yellow handprints.

Adam turned to the man and gave him a satisfied smile.

"My walls look like a Jackson Pollock," Crowley whined as he took a long drag from his cigarette for dramatic effect, outside, leaning against the doorpost of the bookshop. The door of which was wide open, exposing both Ezra and Adam to his complaints. Lucy had explicitly forbidden him to smoke around Adam, but he needed this, dammit. He tried his best to look angry at Adam, who was still strapped into his stroller and was very much unaffected by the man's pathetic attempt at discipline. With a huff, he put out the remaining half of his cigarette against the outside wall of the bookshop and shoved it back into the pack before going back inside. "Just like your mum. No one can stay mad at that pretty face of yours."

"Well, I'm sure the painters were glad the tarps were already there," Ezra said as he sipped from his hot cocoa from where he stood behind the counter. Sure, it was lunch time, but customers had a tendency to always show up at the least opportune moments. If they showed up at all.

Crowley, on the other hand, begrudgingly fed Adam his lunch. "I guess… I'm sure they won't give me a discount for it, though."

"What got you painting anyway?" Ezra asked. "I thought you were still in the process of sketching."

"I am. But a bunch of nine year olds were mean to me once so I painted out of spite," he stated simply.

Ezra choked on his cocoa. "What?"

It was quiet for a moment before Crowley decided it would probably be a good idea to elaborate. "It was for the career fair for Anathema's class and my sister was too busy, so I went and gave a presentation in her place. But then a kid said my painting looked like nothing and another said it was rubbish and then another called me the F-word, so I almost cried in front of a class full of pre-teens," he said flippantly, though could almost start crying from embarrassment again. If only he'd never mentioned the painting in the first place.

"Well, children can be quite vicious," Ezra concluded. "Though I'd have to say, a ten year old calling a grown adult a 'fucker' in the middle of a classroom sounds quite outrageous."

Crowley almost laughed. Had his mood not been this sour, he probably would have. In the ten years he had known Ezra, he had never heard the man swear. Not even so much as an 'oh gosh dangit'. 'Fucker', on the other hand sounded alien coming from his mouth.

"The other F-word, Ez," he said. "Six letters. Your witch was burned on them. Can't miss it." The tone he tried to assume was casual, but heartbreak was oozing through the cracks.

"Oh dear. That's painful," the other man mumbled.

Crowley cast his glance down at Adam, who stared up at him with his big, blue eyes. "That was the very first time I saw Anathema look at me with pity, and all I knew was that I never wanted that to happen ever again. So I went and got my job as a P.A. for a big multinational's marketing director who would one day give me a baby to look after. And that's my tragic Batman villain backstory," he all but sighed.

An uneasy silence fell over the two of them. Over the years, Crowley had gotten used to putting on an air of confidence around colleagues, family and what few friends he had. He wasn't used to putting himself into a vulnerable position like this. He didn't look at Ezra, because he knew the other man would look at him the same way Anathema had all those years ago.

"I can't believe it. That happened eight years ago and this is the first I hear about it? Even after I asked why you got your job?"

Crowley didn't need to look at Ezra's face to hear the frown on it. He inevitably grew irritable.

"I don't particularly enjoy talking about it, you know. I knew that if I told you, you would look at me the way you're looking at me now. We can't all follow our dreams, Ez. I'm perfectly happy doing the work I do with the people I work with, even if that means I have less time for my creative ventures."

A shorter, yet more uneasy silence fell over them. Adam looked from one man to the other as he nibbled on his dry cracker.

"What did you paint to spite a bunch of nine year olds?" Ezra asked, breaking the silence.

"Nothing. It looked like shit anyway so I asked the painters to paint over it," Crowley lied, casually waving his hand.

"My dear, please—"

"Did you get anything interesting from the grimoire? Memoire. Whatever," he asked, verbally grabbing the subject by the shoulders, forcefully turning it around a full 180 degrees and pressing on against his better judgement.

Ezra frowned. He was very… empathic. Anyone who had been with Ezra for longer than five minutes knew that. He tended to be much more in tune with people's feelings than the people experiencing said feelings in the first place.

And here Crowley was, frantically running back and forth between hiding a wall to hide his feelings behind and letting them out by means of molotov cocktail. But for whatever reason, the Ezra seemed to have given up. And Crowley felt infinitely worse about himself.

"Well, I have to say it will be very useful. I'll probably have to take the story in a different direction to make it more accurate, but you know I like a good challenge," Ezra said, forcing a smile. It wasn't nearly as striking or beautiful as his genuine smiles. It didn't fill him with warmth and joy. It just hurt.

"I'm sorry," Crowley said. "I shouldn't have gone off like that."

"You definitely should have," Ezra insisted. "Talking about your feelings might hurt at first, but it's definitely better for you in the long run."

Crowley rolled his eyes but there was no malice. "You really are too good for this world, angel." It took him a second to realize what had just come out of his mouth.

"I'm sorry, but did you just call me 'angel'?"

Why. Why on God's green Earth had he said that? He'd been all over the place for the entire day, and now he had to come up with an excuse.

"Anthony, are you alright?" Ezra asked sternly.

"No. I mean, yes. I mean, you've been calling me 'dear' since Saturday, so I would think a nickname for you would only be fair."

"Uhuh…" escaped Ezra. Whatever happened, Crowley didn't want to acknowledge that the man's soft cheeks had grown slightly pinker. Stubbornly, he pinned it down to their natural rosiness.

Still, he choked on the breath he was taking. He cleared his throat and got up. He couldn't deal with this. Not right now. He had to clear his head. A brisk walk would do it, he figured, away from the shop as fast as his legs would carry him.

"Well, I think the painters are probably just about done and Adam here is in desperate need for a bath. Paint in his hair and ears, you know. I should go," Crowley pressed on as he got up and took the bag of crackers from the tray in front of Adam. It was still half full and the boy made an uneasy sound when the food of him disappeared into the diaper bag.

"Crowley, dear, I—"

"I'll see you again tomorrow."