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Circa 2019 A.D.
Los Angeles, CA
As Crowley strolled out the door and toward Ariadne’s car on that sunny Saturday morning, it occurred to him that when he’d made his plans for a couple weeks’ jaunt in Los Angeles, he hadn’t expected “spend a morning terrorizing the local homophobic bakery” to be on the itinerary. But now that that was how he and Ariadne were going to spend their Saturday … he couldn’t say he minded.
“Wait!” That was Aziraphale, hurrying out the door behind them with—that was a camera in his hands. An antique camera.[1] The type that needed actual film that had to be developed. “I need to get a picture of you two before you go.”
“A picture?” Ariadne asked, one eyebrow arching over her sunglasses, and—oh. Crowley could see why Aziraphale wanted a picture. Ariadne had opted to dress for this operation in what could only be called “androgynous business stylish” – slim-cut trousers, a smart suit jacket, silk button-up, shoes with just enough heel to be fashionable without compromising her ability to run if necessary. All in black.[2] And now – because they were outdoors and it was sunny – she was wearing sunglasses.
If Crowley hadn’t already strangled his impulse to say, Seriously, angel? because he had no desire to feed Ariadne’s gremlins, he would have come up with a much more creative way to kill said impulse. As it was, he settled for ambling over to Ariadne’s side and lightly putting an arm around her shoulders. “Just humor him. And be grateful that he didn’t pack the camera with the tripod and the birdie and the ten-minute exposure.”
Aziraphale brought the camera down enough to make a face at him in earnest. “Really, Crowley.”
Crowley beamed at Aziraphale. And thought he heard a faint click – like a camera shutter closing – except Aziraphale clearly hadn’t done it, and the only other person nearby was Dionysus, leaning in the doorway and fiddling with his mobile.
Ariadne was looking between the two of them with confusion even the oversized sunglasses couldn’t hide. Then she put an arm around Crowley in turn and smiled at Aziraphale, or maybe just the camera.
Aziraphale, who knew when not to push his luck, restrained himself to a single, “Say cheese!” before rapidly clicking the shutter. Very rapidly indeed – Crowley was surprised that the ancient camera had that much juice in it. It wasn’t long before he’d brought it down, smiling a little. “All right, I’m done. You two mind how you go, now.”
“Have fun storming the castle!” Dionysus called from the doorway in a creaky witch’s voice. Aziraphale rolled his eyes, but Ariadne laughed and blew Dionysus a kiss.
Crowley had barely sat down when his mobile buzzed; operating on autopilot, he checked it. It was a text from—Dionysus? But they hadn’t even pulled out of the drive yet …
Crowley opened the text to find several shots of him and Ariadne – all somehow from the same angle Aziraphale had been standing at, not Dionysus’s doorway angle – and a single line of text.
Thought you’d want these.
Crowley, because he was a grown-up demon not at all inclined toward sentimentality, did not have to gulp back a sudden wetness in his eyes. And he equally didn’t find the best picture and save it as his home screen.[3]
“Everything ok?” Ariadne asked, even as she flipped the radio on and the now-familiar strains of “Dad Rock” filled the car.
“Fine, fine,” Crowley said, shoving the phone back into his pocket in a way that was not at all hasty. And then he glanced sidelong at Ariadne.
When they’d planned this operation last night, all five of them – Ariadne, Crowley, Aziraphale, Dionysus, and Semele – crowded around the kitchen table with a few bottles of wine between them, Ariadne had been smiling, laughing, carefree in a way that went deeper than the wine. Now her shoulders were stiff, her back ramrod straight, and her grip on the steering wheel far tighter than necessary when driving on a quiet residential street in the middle of a sunny day.
Crowley’s eyebrows slowly lifted over the sunglasses.
“And you?” he asked.
She flinched. It was a tiny, almost unnoticeable thing if you weren’t watching closely, but Crowley was watching closely, and he noticed. But he didn’t say anything.
Ariadne swallowed and wriggled her shoulders like she was trying to relieve an itch she couldn’t quite scratch. “I’m fine.”
“Ah, of course you are,” Crowley said, nodding sagely. Given what “fine” had meant over the past few days, any sarcasm put into that statement could only be supposed to be fully intentional.
Ariadne’s flinch was a little more obvious this time. But still, Crowley said nothing. He’d spent far too many years coaxing humans into spilling their secrets not to know the value of a slightly awkward silence. And Ariadne, for all that she was about as human as the car they were driving in was a spaceship, was in some ways far closer to human than she was to angelic or demonic.
So he waited. And as he’d hoped, Ariadne tried to fill the awkward silence with words. “It’s—it’s dumb anyway. Just a silly question.”
Crowley sat up at that. “A silly question?”
“A stupid question, really—”
“There’s no such thing as a stupid question.” He said it quickly, decisively, and frankly instinctively.[4]
Ariadne shot a sidelong glance at him; then she looked at him properly with a thoughtful frown. “You … actually believe that.”
“Of course.” Crowley slouched in his seat, aiming for a casual pose that would suggest a casual feel. “You can’t get anywhere without asking questions. And if you’re asking questions, that means you’re trying to know things. Seeking knowledge – seems the opposite of stupidity, to me.”
“You haven’t heard my question,” Ariadne muttered to the windscreen.
“Try me.”
She squirmed again, then sighed. “Well—try not to laugh too hard,” she said, as if laughing was remotely on the agenda. “You—you pointed out, on Wednesday, at the bakery, when I said that—that assholes like the Sandersons ought to have a sign, that they had a cross in their kitchen.”
Crowley had absolutely no idea where this was going, but he nodded quite seriously anyway.
“And—and, you’re right, that is a sign, because … in this country – maybe not others, but definitely this country – the people who are most obviously and frankly obnoxiously aligned with Heaven—and I mean actual,” she pointed upward, “not, you know, a shortcut for saying ‘less terrible than average,’ tend to not be in favor of equality or mortals in general being anything other cis and straight.”
“Quite,” said Crowley, because he sensed a response was called for.
“And then—there’s you. And Aziraphale. And you’re both—guys?” There was clearly an implied question at the end of that, but before Crowley could quite determine what it was, let alone answer it, she’d gone on. “And when I—when I was in Eden, I saw—I saw Heaven. Sort of; it was complicated, but the thing is—I’m pretty sure that what I saw was fairly accurate, given who was showing it to me, and—I saw a bunch of angels, all lined up, and while I have no way of knowing whether they were all straight or not, they definitely weren’t all cis, and …”
Crowley bit down on his questions – mainly about Heaven, and what Ariadne might or might not have seen of it, because she’d said very, very little of what had happened to her in Eden, and—and that was fine. Or at least, it was fine that she hadn’t talked of it to him and Aziraphale, because they hadn’t exactly earned that sort of trust, had they? But he hoped with quiet desperation that she was talking about it to someone.
Biting down those questions took one thing, time, and that was enough for Ariadne to finally get to the point on her question. “And so I guess what I’m trying to figure out is—what gives?”
Crowley took a deep breath and nodded slowly. It would take him a minute to parse the question, he knew, and perhaps another to come up with an answer – but he could at least get things started on the right foot. “That’s a good question.”
Ariadne did a double take. “I’m sorry, what? That—that word soup was—”
“A very good question,” Crowley interrupted. “Which unfortunately calls for a question of its own. Do you want the long answer or the short one?”
She didn’t answer right away, gnawing on her lower lip. “… Can we start with the short answer and segue into more of a medium one if I need more context?”
He chuckled. “Sure. Short answer is—Heaven didn’t come up with those rules. Humans did.”
Whatever answer Ariadne had been expecting, it clearly wasn’t that. Her mouth fell open, and once again she shot him a hard, questioning look. “… Huh. Um. Why?”
“Blessed if I know,” Crowley answered with a shrug. “Humans have come up with a lot of things that no one in Heaven or Hell could have imagined in a million years. Most of which is lightyears better than what we could have come up with, granted, but unfortunately there’ve also been plenty of utterly shite ideas. Didn’t they do the same for your lot?”
She bobbed her head from one side to the next, clearly pondering that. “… True.”
“But that’s not what you’re really asking, is it?” Crowley asked, pulling his sunglasses down slightly to get a better look at her.
Ariadne gulped under the scrutiny, but she nodded.
“Then what do you really want to know?” he coaxed.
“It’s … it’s one thing if mortals create rituals and rules that—that might not be necessary, but that don’t go against who and what you are,” she slowly. “But … that crowd I saw in Heaven looked a lot less cis than any random group of humans I’ve ever seen. Although I could be really wrong about that …”
“You’re probably not,” Crowley replied. “But go on.”
She didn’t. Instead, she shot him a mute, enquiring glance, eyebrows slightly raised.
And all right, if that was how she was going to ask her questions, he could live with that. Even answer them. “Look … the thing with angels—and demons—is that most of us were created before things like gender and sex – as in male and female, and, yeah, as in bumping uglies – and sexuality were invented. So whatever boxes and labels humans come up with, they’re not necessarily going to fit us. They weren’t made for us. And most of us don’t see any reason to try to fit in them.”
“… Oh,” she said, in a way that made it clear that she halfway understood but didn’t fully get it. But before Crowley could clarify more, she had another question. “But—but still, why? Why would they make things harder on themselves when they had to deal with humans? You—your lot clearly used to talk directly to humans, a lot, why not just tell them to knock it off? Or …” She worried her lower lip and asked, “Or was it—was it not Heaven? Was it …?” She pointed down.
Crowley laughed. “Oh, Hell absolutely encouraged the Heaven out of every phobia we could find. Homophobia, transphobia, aphobia, biphobia, you name it, Hell was all for it. But not because we cared either way. It was just another way of encouraging humans to be shitty to each other.”
“Ok,” she said, nodding slowly.
“But it wasn’t just Hell. Heaven didn’t come up with those phobias, but they encouraged them just as much as Hell did.”
“But—why?”
And that was the question, wasn’t it? Crowley sighed, trying not to squirm and trying not to think of another redheaded ethereal/occult being who had had a lot of questions that had started with why. “If you want the full answer, you’d probably have to go to Aziraphale. He wasn’t consulted on policy, but he’d be better able to explain the ins and outs of their thinking than I would.”
That was in no small part because Aziraphale really didn’t talk about what Heaven was thinking when it came to their more terrible moves. Crowley still wasn’t sure whether Aziraphale had been leery of sharing too much intelligence with the Enemy or it was just too painful to bring up. Logic would say it was the former, but his knowledge of Aziraphale tilted the scales rather heavily toward the latter.
“However, if you want a guess—” Crowley came to a sudden stop—but only because the car was stopping, and not for a red light.[5] “Oh.”
“We’re here,” Ariadne said unnecessarily – unnecessarily because the bakery was right there, Crowley could see it, and he certainly hadn’t forgotten what it looked like. “Um …”
Something in the way her hand darted nervously up and down the shoulder strap of her seatbelt, the pursing of her lip, asked the question even if she couldn’t quite put it into words. Crowley forced a small smile. “We can continue this once we get inside, if you like.”
Ariadne exhaled in more senses than just the physical. “That—that would be good. If you’re cool with it. But in the meantime …” She smirked. “Shall we raise some hell?”
Crowley laughed. “Oh, we shall.”
Their first stop, once they got out of the car, was the trays of biscuits, cakes, and pies arrayed in the shop’s front window. Normally, on seeing such a decadent display, Crowley’s first instinct would be to size up the wares and decide which ones would be used to tempt the angel when. Now, however, he simply turned to Ariadne, one eyebrow raised in silent invitation.
Ariadne made a sweeping gesture, and the baked goods disappeared – boxed up, blessed with preserving spells, and sent to one of the city’s larger LGBT+-friendly homeless shelters. This was a large enough and complicated enough bit of magic that Crowley was able to get a taste of her power at work. There was a glimmer of the clarity of purpose often found in the most awesome[6] angelic work, and more than trace of the fuck you found in demonic power, and beyond that … her power tasted of warm spring rain, felt like the first glimmer of stars in the twilight, sounded like the beating heart of an empty stage haunted by the ghosts of performances past.
No wonder no angel or demon had ever guessed what she was. Ariadne’s power was like nothing that had ever come out of Heaven or Hell.
And good fucking thing, too.
With the baked goods boxed up and sent off, Ariadne raised an eyebrow at Crowley. His turn now.
The magic he needed was much less complicated – a simple manifestation, the sort of thing he could and sometimes did do in his sleep. One finger-snap later, and the empty trays now displayed a tasteful array of butt plugs. Emphasis on tasteful – each one had a base decorated with a representation of a baked good, from biscuits and croissants to slices of pie, chocolate cake, and, because Crowley could not resist a pun when the opportunity for one arose, cheesecake.
They exchanged glances and nodded once, serious as two spies about to make off with the Soviet Union’s latest nuclear submarine plans. Then they went in.
Once in the bakery, Crowley tasted the air out of habit. It was much the same as it had on Wednesday: baking bread, cooling cakes, coffee from the little café on the right side of the shop, and the sour milk smell of prejudice. He probably should have said something about that on Wednesday, but, well, humans were prejudiced against so blessed much that he hadn’t thought it worth mentioning. He should have known better.
Ah, well. Too late now. He exchanged another quick glance with Ariadne, saw her nod, and then headed to the left half of the bakery, while Ariadne took the right. The shop was already crowded with customers, but no one noticed them – and no one would, either.
Crowley’s mission was straightforward. On his side was several displays, mostly of pastries and biscuits, but also one of different syrups and toppings that would go delightfully with a slice of chocolate cake or a bit of tiramisu.
Crowley snapped a few times. The pastries and biscuits suddenly acquired much more interesting and suggestive shapes; he was particularly proud of how he’d arranged the eclairs. And while the bottles of syrups and sauces didn’t look too different at a casual glance, a closer examination would reveal that the contents were now the sort that didn’t interfere with the body’s natural pH levels and cleaned up relatively easily.
His half of the mission accomplished, he began to turn around, and—
“Oh, hello,” Crowley murmured, pulling his sunglasses down a little to make sure he was seeing what he thought he was seeing. And he was. Right in the middle of the large metal sculpture spelling out Love in obnoxious script (complete with a cross in the middle of the O) was a certain chapter and verse: John 3:16.[7] Because that’s what Heaven – or humans – or maybe even She – thought love was. Sending some poor sap down to bear the brunt of the consequences of a game you made up, to suffer the penalty you decided under the rules you wrote – instead of, say, doing it yourself. Or even changing the rules – that, again, you made up – so nobody had to be put through Hell on earth at all.
Come to think of it, Her modus operandi really hadn’t changed much in the past two thousand years …
Crowley closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and shook himself. He didn’t have time for that right now. Better to concentrate on the mission at hand … like …
He smirked and snapped his fingers, and John 3:16 morphed into 2 Samuel 1:26.[8] It was a bit of a tight squeeze on the sculpture, and perhaps something from the Song of Songs would have gotten the point of love across more clearly, but Crowley knew of fewer verses that made the veins on homophobes’ heads pop quite like this one did. So 2 Samuel 1:26 it would have to be.
That taken care of, he turned around, scanning the shop for Ariadne. He found her slipping out of a door marked “Employees Only.” She sensed his scrutiny and flashed him a thumbs-up. Then she looked down, frowned, and gestured away the flour that clung to her black ensemble.
Crowley glanced around the right side of the shop, nodding once as he saw that the pastry displays on her side of the shop had undergone a similar transformation as those on his – if anything, her side was a little less tasteful and a little more … well, Roman, a group of people who’d known how to have a good time if any ever had. The right side also had what was once a display of cookbooks that “inspired” the proprietors of the bakery. There were still cookbooks, but Crowley rather doubted these were the cookbooks that had inspired the homophobic bakers – especially since one of them was The Joye of Snackes,[9] open to the recipe for Strawberry Wobbler, complete with a full-page color photograph of that very dish. Crowley couldn’t recognize the rest of them at this distance, but one of the closed ones featured a mostly naked woman on the cover, her modestly only preserved by strategically placed pastries, so he assumed they were all variations on the same theme.
With all of that taken care of, there was just one thing left to do: snag one of the tables in the café section and wait for the fun to start.
Ariadne was way ahead of him on that, having already plunked herself down in a chair. So Crowley sauntered over and slid into the seat beside her. “Any problems?”
“Nope,” Ariadne said, taking her sunglasses off and carefully polishing them. “I probably could have dressed in drag and done the hula, and nobody would have noticed.” Her eyes sparkled just before she put her sunglasses back on. “Even here.”
Crowley smirked and snorted. “Truly a miracle.” He glanced at the counter where coffee and the sorts of pastries that were meant to be eaten here were sold, then nodded to it. “Do they sell anything drinkable?”
Ariadne’s eyebrow arched over the sunglasses. “You want to give them your money?”
“Who said anything about giving them money?”
“Ah.” She nodded. “Their lattes aren’t half bad – but nobody comes here for the coffee.”
Crowley nodded and snapped his fingers. A latte in one of the bakery’s branded cups appeared in front of Ariadne. Another branded cup appeared in front Crowley, this one with his usual coffee order.[10] “So. Where were we?”
“Where were—oh! Um … you were going to tell me why you think Heaven allowed …” Ariadne jerked her head toward the pickup counter, where Homophobic Baker was once again manning the register. “People to be like that?”
Crowley snorted. “It’s not a question of allowing; it’s a question of encouraging … and. Well.”
He leaned back, stretching his legs as far in front of him as they’d go – not quite manspreading but definitely snake-spreading. “I told you this was all guesswork, right?”
“You did.”
“Right. So here’s the thing … humans’ sexuality and their gender identity have zero bearing on where they end up after they die. But, if humans think they’ve all-but-earned a one-way ticket Downstairs based on who they love or their mental gender not matching their bits, they’ll be much less likely to do things that will earn them that ticket. Or so the geniuses who come up with Heaven’s policies would think.”
Ariadne arched an eyebrow. “Have any of them actually met a mortal?”
“What do you think?”
She whistled, shook her head, and took a long sip of her latte.
“And that’s the charitable interpretation,” Crowley went on, which made Ariadne do a double-take.
“The charitable interpretation?!”
“Yeah. The other interpretation …” Now it was his turn to squirm. “Heaven … let me put it like this. They claim to be all about Love, but they don’t understand it, not one little bit. And if they had it their way, humans would only mate – and I use that word deliberately – when it was time to continue the species.”
Her head tilted to one side. “Are you …” she started—and stopped very abruptly. She looked away, invisible walls going up even as her lips pursed together.
Crowley blinked—but he didn’t flinch, didn’t wince, because even if he had fucked this up, now was not the time to appear upset. “You doubt me?” he asked with a glittering smile, one that not only allowed argument but that bloody well encouraged it.
She didn’t answer right away, instead sipping her latte. “Well—Aziraphale knows a thing or two about love, I’d guess.” And before Crowley could say, He’s the exception, she went on. “Samael too. And some of the other ones – the ones who’ve eaten the apples – they seem to get it. And …” She turned the latte in her fingers, watching the slowly revolving cup and not looking at him. “Well, not understanding sex isn’t the same thing as not understanding love. You would not believe some of the questions I’ve been texted. And—and maybe, even if, you know, the higher-ups—”
“That is a terrible pun, I will have you know,” Crowley said drily, “but do continue.”
Ariadne paused, snorted, and raised her cup to him. “Touché. Anyway. Even if the jackasses in charge don’t get love, clearly individual angels do – but they don’t get sex. At least, the ones who are blowing up my phone sure don’t. So … if even they don’t get it … then the ones higher up the food chain don’t have a chance, right?”
“They wouldn’t,” Crowley agreed softly. “Heaven is not big on physical pleasure of any kind. Probably wouldn’t have even given those nerve endings to humans if the eggheads over in Intelligent Design hadn’t done the maths and realized reproduction wouldn’t happen without them.”
Something in that sentence made Ariadne sit up, eyebrows arched impossibly high over her glasses, and stare at him. Stare at him fiercely enough that Crowley had to resist the urge to look himself over and try to figure out if he’d spilled something or gotten spinach stuck between his teeth. “… What?” he finally asked.
“Intelligent. Design?” she repeated.
“Well, yeah. That was the department in charge of the whole human project—and, well …” He waved a hand vaguely. “Biology, you know?” Frowning, he took a long sip of his coffee. “Though I never did figure out how the platypus got so buggered up. Asked around a lot Down Below – figured anyone involved in a cock-up of that scale had to have Fallen – but nobody ever fessed up.”
“Still. Intelligent Design?” Ariadne shuddered. “Do you have any idea how annoying the people who push that crackpot theory are?”
“Crackpot theory? They’re not even wrong!”
Her response was simply to raise an eyebrow at him in a way that all but forced Crowley to reconsider that statement in light of the angels – and for that matter, the demons – he knew. “I mean, yes, they’re wrong that there was any intelligence behind the design, but—they’re not wrong that it was designed. Come on, didn’t your lot take their own crack at Creation?”
“Prometheus and Epimetheus,” Ariadne nodded. “Repopulating Greece after the Titanomachy. Prometheus spent so long dithering over how to create humans that Epimetheus used up all the gifts of the gods on various animals before he had a working prototype.” She shot him a sidelong glance. “Not much intelligence or design there if you ask me.”
Crowley chuckled. “Still. ‘Intelligent Design’ is closer to what actually happened than whatever Mr. Darwin came up with.”
“That is not wrong,” she said—and suddenly sat up, gaze going across the room and sliding her sunglasses slightly down her nose to better look over them. She nudged him. “I think the Sandersons are about to face the wrath of their customers.”
“Eh?” Crowley asked, tracking her gaze—and grinned.
A woman was marching over from the front window display, holding tight to the hand of a little boy who appeared about six or seven. The boy was looking around curiously, but the mother was looking in one direction – toward the counter – with bloody murder in her eyes.
Crowley chuckled and snapped once to make sure they’d hear every word of the conversation.
Homophobic Baker was smiling the smile of the retail worker who could spot trouble at fifty paces but who had no escape. “Mrs. Quattrocchi! How can I—”
The angry woman slammed a butt plug down on the counter with enough force to crack it. “What the hell is this?!”
Homophobic Baker’s jaw fell. “I—ma’am! This is a family establishment!”
“A family establishment?” she shrieked, and Crowley quickly snapped another miracle to allow them to hear her just a little less. It didn’t help that the rest of the shop had quieted down, everyone staring at the scene at the cash register. “Is that what you have to say for yourself? Tell me, Mr. Sanderson, in what universe does a family establishment have these,” she lifted the butt plug and waved it in the air, “on display in the front window?!”
Naturally, every person in the shop turned to the front window display in unison – well, almost everyone. Crowley and Ariadne kept their eyes on the angry human, the little boy, and of course, Homophobic Baker.
Homophobic Baker was the most entertaining to watch by far – he’d turned quite an amusing shade of pale as he stared at the new and improved front window. His mouth moved up and down and his Adam’s apple bobbed several times, all with no sound escaping at all.
Which gave the six-year-old his opportunity. “Mommy,” he tugged on the woman’s sleeve, “Mommy, can I have one of those?”
“Sweetheart, not now, Mommy’s busy—”
“Only you said I could have a treat if I was good, an’ I’ve been good—”
“Maybe in a little while, but right now Mommy has to—”
“—an’ I just want one of the chocolate frosting thingies. The ones that look like a wee-wee.” And with that, the little boy pointed to the éclair display Crowley had been so proud of.
Angry Woman turned.
So did Homophobic Baker.
Crowley beamed.
Angry Woman screeched. “What the fu—fudge is wrong with you?” she demanded. And without another word, she grabbed the little boy’s hand and marched him out of the shop.
The last thing Crowley heard from the pair of them was the boy whining, “But Mommy, I wanted a—” before the door shut.
Homophobic Baker was left. Well, him and everyone else in the shop. And as Homophobic Baker looked around, it was as if the scales had fallen from his eyes. First his face went white, then red; then he took a deep breath and began to bellow, “JO-SEPH—”
Ariadne leaned forward and made a complicated gesture. Crowley sat up straight, because if he was feeling that right, that—there was some Time manipulation in there—
A pimply adolescent human stumbled out from the back, clutching something in his hand. “DAD!”
“Joseph,” Homophobic Baker started, “if I find out that you are responsible for this—this travesty—”
“Dad, LOOK!” said Pimply Adolescent – and now it was his turn to slam something on the counter.
A quick, discreet snap ensured that the thing was slammed down at an angle he and Ariadne could see. And when Crowley saw it, he almost burst out laughing.
It was a wedding cake topper – but not just any wedding cake topper. Instead of a generic bride and a generic groom, two little grooms stood on the counter.
“Ah, so they found your little surprise,” he said, smiling with more than a hint of pride.
“Damn right,” Ariadne said. “Not letting the kid take the blame for this.”
Homophobic Baker blinked down at the wedding cake topper. “… Ok. Ok. Maybe—maybe something just got mixed up in our last order.” He rubbed his temple like he was warding off a headache. “Just throw it out, and—”
“They’re all like that! Every one in the supply closet!”
“… What?” Homophobic Baker gasped.
“Here! I’ll show you!” Pimply Adolescent reached into the pocket of his apron, and, though none of these cake toppers should have fit in there, he pulled out in rapid succession another pair of grooms (this one mixed-race), three pairs of brides in various racial configurations, a bride and groom that featured the more “masculine” figure dressed in the gown and the more “feminine” one dressed in the tux, three threesomes (one set of grooms, one set of brides, and one set with two grooms holding up a bride), and finally a set of five figures of indeterminate gender expression and biological sex. “No regular couples at all!”
“You sure about not letting the kid take the blame?” Crowley murmured.
“He’s young. He could get out of the house and improve,” Ariadne murmured back. “I’m not saying it’s likely, but, you know, it’s possible.”
“EXCUSE ME!” shouted another customer, pushing his way to the fore of the shop. “What the hell is this?” He was waving a bottle of chocolate syrup, one of the ones Crowley had switched.
Homophobic Baker barely glanced at the bottle, or maybe he just couldn’t focus, given how Irate Customer was waving it about. “Uh, that’s chocolate syrup. Sir, if you’ll just give me a moment, I’ll be right with—”
“Chocolate syrup?! LOOK AT IT!” Irate Customer didn’t give Homophobic Baker much choice in the matter, shoving the bottled practically into his nose. “You think I can put THIS on my kid’s ice cream?!?!”
“Oh, that’s hardly fair,” Crowley said to Ariadne sotto voce. “It’s perfectly edible.”
“Not on ice cream it’s not,” Ariadne said with feeling.
Crowley just stared at her, eyebrows arching perhaps higher than they’d ever been.
“It’s not like we—look,” she explained, “we were having a pool party, Dionysus decided to whip up some death by chocolates, except we ran out of regular chocolate syrup, so we decided to break into the other stash,” she turned a bit red, and frankly so did Crowley, “and … well.” She shuddered. “Let’s just say we spent the rest of the night drinking margaritas.”
“Ah. Lesson learned,” Crowley said, nodding wisely.
“Lesson learned.”
Hoping to move on from this conversation as fast as possible, Crowley cast another glance around the bakery. Irate Customer still held most of Homophobic Baker’s attention, and he was holding up the line, which was all to the good. The customers not in line had discovered the altered displays by now, and once they picked their jaws off the floor, most were edging toward the exit. Even the ones who seemed to be taking the creative and interesting pastry shapes in good fun were heading toward the exit empty-handed, because Hell knew they weren’t going to be able to get cashed out anytime soon.
There was, however, one person in the shop who was smiling. Looking at her phone, it was true – but only after she’d taken in Crowley’s altered “Love” sign. Crowley couldn’t help a small chuckle.
“What?” Ariadne asked, and he gestured to the sign.
Ariadne leaned forward, then she drew the sunglasses down her nose to see better. “Does that—what does that say? Two—Samuel?” She blinked, squinted, leaned farther forward.
“Second Samuel 1:26,” Crowley said, taking pity on her.
Her eyebrows arched – and then her mobile was out of her purse, her thumbs tapping away. “Huh,” she said after a long moment. She looked up, eyebrow arching and a mischievous smile on her face. “Anthony J. Crowley, did you change that sign to say, ‘love is love’?”
“I most certainly did,” he replied. “’Bout the only thing She,” he pointed upward, “and I agree on.”
“And that makes three of us,” Ariadne said. She drained the rest of her latte. “Would you say that our work here is done?”
Crowley looked around the bakery one last time. Irate Customer was only getting irater, and the bakery was only getting emptier. “You know, I think I would. Shall we pick up lunch for everyone before going back?”
“I think so. There’s a Japanese place not far from here that does amazing bento boxes. Sound good?”
“Sounds like music to Aziraphale’s ears,” Crowley said. They waited only for Ariadne to place the order via an app on her phone before getting up.
Crowley was last through the door, but as he began to step out, he hesitated … and deciding to give in to Temptation, half-turned and executed a lightning-quick upward snap.
Ariadne froze and looked over her shoulder. “What did you—”
“AAAAAAAIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!”
Ariadne practically ran back to the door and poked her head in. Crowley obligingly held it open for her, smirking as she caught sight of the tentacles waving from the kitchen and let her jaw fall.
“One last little gift,” he said by way of explanation. “An upgrade to their industrial mixers.”
She turned to him, exasperation and amusement warring on her face. “So we’re doing eldritch abominations now?”
“Now?” Crowley asked, gasping, putting one hand over his heart and putting the other arm around her shoulders before he could talk himself out of it. “Ariadne, Ariadne. You’ve been to the ethereal plane. You’ve seen our true forms. What are we if not eldritch abominations all the time?”
Ariadne threw her head back and laughed, looking for a second just like Aziraphale when he forgot himself enough to really let go. “Ok, you win. So. Sushi?”
“Sushi,” Crowley agreed – and with his arm still around Ariadne’s shoulders, together they walked to the car, panicked, screaming bakery customers stampeding out the door in their wake.
All in all, Crowley thought, not bad for a morning’s work.
Some Months Later
Breadsmith was no more.
As Ariadne leaned against her car, her gaze fixed on the old Breadsmith sign coming down and the new one being installed in its place, she found herself conducting a post-mortem.
What, she wondered, had killed Breadsmith? Had it been the numerous health department, cephalopod expert, and CIA investigations of the mixers-turned-abominations, none of which had turned up anything conclusive? Had it been the tasteful array of butt plugs in the front window display that simply would not leave, no matter how many times the Sandersons took them out and no matter how many baked goods were put in their place? Or perhaps was it the supply closet of LGBT+ and poly wedding cake toppers, not a cis and straight couple to be seen among them? Or maybe it was the curse on the ovens that led to every single pastry that came out to be … intriguingly shaped?
Or was it the sudden sale of the building that housed the bakery, followed by the landlord tripling the rent?
Whatever the final nail in the coffin had been, one thing was inescapably true: Breadsmith was as dead as a doornail. The Sandersons had cleared out, taking what they could of their equipment and their recipes and their tacky décor. Rumor was that they had tried to find new premises in the city, but mysteriously, no one would rent space to them.[11] So the Sandersons were gone, shaking the dust of LA off their feet.
And good fucking riddance, Ariadne thought, checking the time on her phone. She was supposed to meet Dionysus at their lawyer’s office later to finish drawing up the agreement that would transfer ownership of the building that had once housed Breadsmith to a co-op consisting of its longest-tenured tenants. After all, using the power of the free market to make the streets safe for the LGBT+ crowd was one thing, but the last thing she or Dionysus needed was to start investing in real estate. And now that they’d found a nice young couple from craft services to pick up where Breadsmith had left off, it was time for Ariadne and Dionysus to stop investing in real estate.
That nice young couple was standing across the street from Ariadne, watching as their new sign went up. Their arms were around each other’s waists, and as Ariadne watched, Miguel leaned in and kissed Travis’s cheek.
From what the rumor mill – and Ariadne’s own interviews with the couple – had to say, Travis and Miguel been only too happy to open an explicitly queer-friendly bakery with an adult twist. While the display of butt plugs would have to go – too many complaints from the neighbors – and the mixers confiscated by the CIA had been replaced with tentacle-free models, they were keeping many of the “innovations” that had driven the Sandersons out of business. The intriguingly shaped pastries were sure to be a hit at bachelor and bachelorette parties as well as other more risqué gatherings, and the inexhaustible supply of LGBT+ and poly cake toppers would make them one of the more popular wedding bakeries in town. Even the chocolate body paint would be staying, although it would be supplemented with more traditional syrups that actually paired well with baked goods.
They would be successful. Ariadne had enough favors to cash in with enough movers and shakers in this town to make it happen. And if that wasn’t enough, Hestia had been kind enough to send her a few charms to stick in all the ovens. After all, Crowley, Ariadne, and a certain Someone in Eden weren’t the only ones to believe that love was love and that love ought to be celebrated.
All that was left to do was—there.
Travis had pulled Miguel into a kiss, a real one, his new-minted wedding ring glinting in the sunlight, but Ariadne wasn’t paying attention to that. She was too busy holding her phone up and snapping a quick picture of the bakery sign, now properly installed, and forwarding that photo to one of the few phone numbers she had that were important enough for speed dial.
Despite the time difference between her and the recipient, the response was practically instantaneous. Pride Bakery, eh? I like it. One of the Seven Deadlies, Pride.
Ariadne smirked, shook her head, and texted back, And it’s, you know, PRIDE. Followed by a rainbow emoji.
Yes, I am aware, came the reply. And a few seconds later: Aziraphale wants to know if you’ll be getting the dinner rolls from there next Thanksgiving or if we’ll get to bake again.
That made Ariadne swallow hard and wipe her eyes – good thing she’d invested in lots of waterproof mascara since Thanksgiving. His choice. But we need to buy something from them next time you guys come to town.
Perhaps on the Saturday after the big day?
LOL. Sounds like a plan.
When no response was immediately forthcoming, Ariadne put her phone into her pocket and turned to climb into her car – but not before looking over her shoulder one last time.
Taking a deep breath, she gathered power to herself, closed her eyes, and snapped the fingers of both hands.
Yes, Pride Bakery would succeed. One way or another.
She’d make sure of it.
[1] Antique, in this instance, being understood to be Crowley’s definition of antique – which could outpace even the greediest tech companies’ idea of appropriate speeds for planned obsolescence. Although somehow his car was exempt from this measurement.
[2] Dionysus had taken one look at the ensemble and had immediately started whistling the Mission Impossible theme. And then he’d had to duck before Ariadne swatted him.
[3] By the same token, his post-Armageddon’t lock screen absolutely was not a candid shot taken of Aziraphale lounging in his favorite armchair reading a book – complete with a hideous hand-knitted afghan thrown over his lap, a mug of cocoa at his elbow, and those ridiculous glasses he didn’t need perched on his nose.
[4] There were, of course, such things as stupid people and people who refused to learn – but even the questions those poor souls asked were not inherently stupid.
[5] Ariadne was on the whole quite tolerant of red lights. Crowley wasn’t sure whether to be heartily disappointed or to grudgingly admit that the last thing any of them needed was for her to be courting another discorporation.
[6] In the original sense of the term.
[7] “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” (New King James Version)
[8] “I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan;
You have been very pleasant to me;
Your love to me was wonderful,
Surpassing the love of women.” (New King James Version)
[9] Ogg, Gytha. The Joye of Snackes. Ankh-Morpork, Goatberger Publishers.
[10] “Black as my soul,” in Crowley’s words, or “strong enough to wake up an elephant and thick as tar sludge” in Aziraphale’s.
[11] Rumor had it that one would-be landlord had told them, “Maybe your religion says you can’t bake a cake for a gay couple. Well, mine says that I can’t rent a shopfront to homophobes. Now get the hell out of my office.”