Who's up for some between-series fluff? I had a rough concept for this about the same time that I wrote "My Soul's Corroded," as the titles come from the same song, but the plot didn't really gel until after Season Two dropped and combined with the D&D "Dire Gazebo" meme and Ray Bradbury's "The Lost City of Mars." (Eric doesn't appear in the fic, but I imagine that the disposable demon would also react much like his original story namesake.)
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a "Mature" rated first-person shooter must be in want of an online multiplayer full of immature thirteen-year-olds.
Adam's parents had made disapproving noises about the whole system, only grudgingly admitting the merits of platformers, puzzles, and virtual sports after much wheedling from him and Sarah. They would rather Adam spend most of his free time outside, working off his boundless energy, and for the most part, he was equally happy to do so, but when a chilly fall rainstorm kept the Them from their hideout in the old quarry, it was nice to get out the videogames and be able to ramble through another world with his friends without even having to leave the house.
Adam didn't know where the copy of Halo had come from. His parents certainly wouldn't have bought it, and his older sister and her boyfriend didn't have much cash to spend on presents. Still, the aliens and space marines piqued his interest, and the opportunity for more than four players online meant that the Them could take their gang to the digital age, testing their skills against teams all over the world. A good place to start, Adam reckoned, might be with a team who might or might not have given him the game in the first place. He pulled out the mobile he'd gotten for his last birthday to find a certain number, and texted Crowley to set up a match.
"I still don't understand why it's called a Halo if there aren't any angels in the game." Both of the otherworldly beings had forgone the sagging old couch. It was much more comfortable than the Brutalist monstrosity Crowley had lost with the his apartment, but the angel was determined to Engage with the game Warlock and his nanny had been sharing, and that meant a real console setup, not the miracled mobile hack and loveseat cushions that would either swallow angel and demon whole or otherwise distract Crowley from the screen with soft pressure against his thigh and shoulder. Crowley was seated crosslegged in the floor, too close to the giant boxy screen, and Aziraphale had thoughtlessly relocated the office throne and a side-table, filling the latter with a cornucopia of snacks and fizzy drinks.
The angel was uncertain about the controller and headset his partner had handed him, but Aziraphale had absorbed just enough of gamer culture to appreciate its emphasis on an abundance of finger foods. If the pizza was artisanal rather than a cheap delivery or microwavable and the chips steakhouse cut instead of Cool Ranch, he'd certainly gotten the right idea for the sweets, from homemade cake to a box of demonically provided chocolates to a sleeve of Doublestufs half-hidden under the rest of the spread. A good microbrewery small batch wasn't that out of the spirit of the thing, either. If asked, Aziraphale would have proclaimed that he didn't want to get unnecessary grease on Crowley's entertainment center.
"Don't wanna get too deep into the lore when we're just here to shoot things, but basically, 's set onna big ring-shaped space station thingy - ergo, Halo." Crowley flipped through the opening titles without waiting for anything to load, and booted up the character creation menu once he'd motioned Aziraphale to join in on the multiplayer screen. "Start button, angel," the demon reminded him, leaning back into a soft leg.
"Oh my! There's lore? I wonder how the technology compares to other speculative universes… I never realized that they'd adapted Niven's work to an interactive medium… Is that your avatar, Crowley? I never would have guessed that you'd pick such a lovely color," Aziraphale interrupted his first cautious amble into twenty-first century storytelling to coo over the shining armor the demon selected.
Crowley just rolled his whole face in exasperation. "Don't start; Pepper already called dibs on black." Neither he nor Pepper had put up nearly as much fuss as they pretended that they had when Adam picked shades of blue for the Them and Pepper took over the demon's signature color. If the antichrist wanted to avoid any stereotypical personal connection to hell, two could play at that game.
"It reminds me of your eyes."
"It'sss orange," Crowley insisted, to no avail. The hue was closer to that of sunlight on a dirty school bus than his neon fuck-shit-up construction crew vest, but the actual yellow was right there for comparison. "You oughta pick something on the red spectrum too; that's how we're marking teams. Warlock's in brown."
"Warlock will be joining us online as well? Oh goodness! This game just keeps getting better!" Aziraphale landed on a nearly demonic deep maroon without thought or comment. Crowley was secretly proud of him.
"Yeah, had to corrupt someone into tying up the server and beta-testing with me. He says this one has the best gear, so I sent copies to Adam and Book Girl and the Shadwells; figure loosing the sergeant on the internet oughta be good for a laugh." If a fair amount of Crowley's online gaming had been spent teasing laughter out of his American godson, that was between WarlrdHeelCrshr666 and NannyAAz1z1. He may have also offered the occasional history and science homework help in return for stories of the latest chaos the boy unleashed upon the debate team that Thaddeus had made him sign up for instead of mathletes. Not that Crowley wanted to encourage mathletes, but timing a stink bomb to go off right when it was Warlock's turn to present was just debating his dislike of public speaking by other means. "Anathema said she and her nerd might try to stop by, but you know how he is with technology. Adam tried to debug the amphibian, and Warlock still only came over the headset in broken, robotic Spanish. I don't even think it had a translation feature before Newt put it on. Brian claimed his color, though, so they'll be with us in spirit." Maybe Crowley still wanted a way to keep the hellspawn from saying everything directly to the antichrist and vice versa, but this was a cautious introduction that he'd arranged for his godsons.
"Well, of all the languages it could default to, at least it's one most of us understand." Crowley turned to give his partner a silent look. "I said understand, not speak regularly." The yellow eyes did not change in their fond exasperation. "Most of us. I can read it, even if I miss some of the modern spoken idioms."
Crowley at last turned back to the multiplayer lobby screen. "Yeah, that about covers any language, coming from you," he teased Aziraphale, reaching up without looking to pilfer a chocolate biscuit. "Fortunately, that's gonna be Newt's problem, not ours, unless he really screwed the pooch." One familiar code later, both of their headsets were filled with the chattering bravado of teenagers, fortunately without any wonky translators on the bookshop end. Crowley was capable of making a plan that didn't bite him in the arse, at least by the end.
"Hurry up, you two! We've got a mission to destroy every blue witch we see!" It was the sergeant, of all people, who acknowledged them first. "We're sure he's not one of 'em?" Shadwell asked his wife in what was probably supposed to be an off-the-mic undertone. Which "he" he was referring to was a coin toss. "Swear I counted four nipples once."
"You were trying to match Mister Crowley and Mister Fell drink for drink, Mister S," Tracy reminded him. "I'm surprised you didn't see six of them."
Shadwell might have been able to put away a respectable amount back in the sixties, but he'd spent the next four decades mostly building up a tolerance to condensed milk. Aziraphale said it wasn't funny to encourage drinking contests, but he'd been smiling over those video meetings with the newly retired couple, too, once Tracy and Crowley egged him into installing the software on the ancient bookshop filing computer. The former madame and medium was a saucy little minx, batting helpless oversized eyelashes and insisting that they'd barely gotten to know any of their new neighbors around the bungalow; it would be such a relief to have digital meetings with Aziraphale and Crowley even if they couldn't come in person, and wouldn't you know that there was another darling little seaside cottage up for sale just down the bend if former angels and demons were also in the market for a little love nest? Crowley needed the drinking contest with her husband after that cattle prod of a nudge.
"Yes, well, I believe we're all on the same team. Where are you located, again? Have you seen Warlock or the Pulsifers yet?" Aziraphale bulled forwards despite somehow having inverted his controls, equally eager to hear from the kids and avoid any conversations involving nipples and a demon who might be as red in the face as the angel's avatar.
"We're by the gazebo," Tracy told him, and Crowley could feel five adolescents suddenly twitch on their trigger buttons.
"A gazebo? Where?"
"Mrs Shadwell's in bright yellow; I think I see her over by that covered bandstand."
"Maybe it's behind the bandstand."
"I'mma shoot until it comes out of hiding!" The other kids might or might not understand Warlock, but they certainly understood the fifty rounds rapid at the inoffensive terrain cover.
"Actually, I think a gazebo is a type of bandstand, or at least a garden feature…" Wensleydale offered over the sudden combined red and blue team firing line. He was shooting too, though.
"Just see if we can knock it down! Camping it is a perfectly legitimate strategy!" Adam insisted.
"Why are you firing upon the gazebo? Is knocking down buildings part of the game objectives?" Aziraphale asked.
"Usually it's capturing the other team's flag, but you've gotten me curious, too," Crowley admitted.
"Oh, don't play dumb, Nanny! You flinch whenever you mention the gazebo at the park. I don't know what it did to you, but we're not going to let one attack you in the game."
Crowley didn't know whether to glow with pride or cringe in embarrassment. His hellspawn was too observant sometimes. This was why he'd been so reluctant to introduce him to Adam.
"You were hurt by one, and when Warlock and I started talking, we figured he'd get the story out of you and I would figure out how to help."
The demon very carefully kept his face turned towards the screen. He didn't know if Aziraphale had added up these blessed little over-observant, overprotective troublemakers and invitations to Alpha Centauri yet. "Isn't that messing with people?" Crowley asked to keep the feelings out of his voice and posture. From the way the angel wiggled against his back, he wasn't entirely successful.
"Helpin' friends isn't messing with people," Brian piped up. "That's just standard saving the world."
That was more warming than one demonic heart could take in a single sitting. "Well, while you're wasting ammo on unalterable background pixels, I have a blue flag to hunt down…"
"Hah! There's Red Team pride!" the sergeant crowed, and Crowley wasn't even that upset when Tracy, the yellow traitor, turned on Crowley to help the Them, leading to nearly everyone ganging up on the orange avatar. Aziraphale had stuck by Crowley until his character had gotten shot down. The flags ended up in the gazebo, side by side, and somehow, that felt like as much of a victory as Warlock laughing at Crowley with the Tadfield kids.
"So how are you doing, Jim?"
He still wasn't sure that Gabriel had figured out that the controller did anything. As far as Crowley was aware, the purple avatar hadn't moved.
"That person in black beat me to death with my own skull. That doesn't seem physically possible." The amnesiac archangel sounded more bemused about Pepper's personal brand of violence than anything else. "And humans - like me - have designed ways to experience their most violent possible demise over and over again? For fun?"
Crowley shrugged, still fighting a slightly bloodthirsty smirk. "There's versions with better graphics and augmented VR. But sometimes seeing you die over and over can be therapeutic." It was almost worth letting him into the bookshop for the monthly Tadfield Halo tournament. The kids could use a new target, now that Aziraphale was getting better at aiming instead of relying on the energy sword and noob tube.
Gabriel carefully set down the controller, as if he expected it to bite him. "I think I need a long walk."
"Don't leave the shop, dear." Crowley didn't even remember or care which team had been assigned Gabriel; it was just as nice to follow Pepper's example himself, and Aziraphale kept quiet about the friendly fire. He wasn't sure if he was comfortable with Aziraphale letting Gabriel go wandering off with only an absent reminder, but as long as it didn't come back on his angel, Crowley didn't see the problem with making "Jim's" head explode.
"We'll get you used to mortality someday," Crowley called after Gabriel in one last gleeful parting shot.