Sweeter than Heaven, hotter than Hell - Jared/Jensen NC-17 [Part 1]

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It’s been about thirty years since Jared last saw Jensen.

That’s not really a big deal. They’ve gone decades, even centuries between meeting up before. Thousands of years worth of knowing each other can sometimes mean that you need longer absences, if only so you’ve got something interesting to say when you do end up in the same place and time.

If those absences have gotten gradually shorter and less frequent in the last millennium or two, usually with more drinking and overly loud laugher than discussing the Balance, then that’s not something Jared’s looking at too closely.

On any given day (and he’s been given a lot of them), Jared can’t put a name to his and Jensen’s non-relationship. There’ve been plenty of times when they couldn’t stand the sight of each other, when they’d felt every bit the implacable foes they’re meant to be. But after six thousand years you start thinking of the one consistent presence in the world as, if not a friend, then at least some kind of fond acquaintance.

They were friends, or at least not enemies, before Jensen’s Fall, and they’ve never really bought into the idea that they should be bitter enemies just because one of them declared that Heaven is “all pomp and no romp” (something Jared hadn’t understood until he’d seen what humans were getting up to after Eden, and it still took time for him to realise that it wasn’t a passing craze and they were just going to keep doing it), and that if he couldn’t have fun there, he’d find someplace where he could.

Turns out there’re some wicked parties in Hell. In every sense of the word, Jared’s willing to bet. Or would be, if gambling weren’t considered a sin. Still, he doubts Jensen had realised then that no matter how great the party is, you still have to show up at the office on Monday morning and get on with the job, hangover be (appropriately) damned.

Jared had never known an angel to Fall so… beguilingly. Which says a lot about Jensen, given that Lucifer had handed Jared his drink three seconds after the patterning of Creation, told him he “might as well finish it, kid” and then gave a jaunty two-fingered salute as he dropped from the Spheres to spend the next ten billion years as the Lord of Hell, Great Adversary, Prince of Darkness and leader of the war against Heaven, without even mussing his hair.

In his private thoughts, Jared suspects that those of them destined to Fall - or at least slip down, in the most contrived game of Chutes and Ladders ever - and join the opposition were given a little extra… well, let’s call it snark, in their ethereal makeup.

Not that he’d know. Demons aren’t exactly his crowd. They tend to look at angels the way you might look at the five year old brother of the guy passing the bong around at the party, who’s just stumbled in sleepily wearing his footie pajamas to see what all the noise is about.

Hell has never really interested Jared as a place. He knows what it’s like Below - it’s still ultimately God’s domain after all - and he’s long over being pissed about the whole rigged Rebellion thing, even if God’s method of appointing regional managers could use some serious revising.

But after Lucifer handed the keys over to Duma and Remiel, and decided that running a piano bar in LA with the Lilim was a much better use of his immortality, Jared figured it was probably best to stay away.

Remiel had always been the type to go for that sort of thing. He’d plucked the wings off a Cherub once, as part of some stupid game of escalating dares with Mammon, and then spent the next thousand eternities working in the Post Office as punishment. Some of the Holy Host still felt that had been too harsh.

Jared’s never met Duma, probably wouldn’t recognise him in a crowd, but he could’ve been part of the Upstairs furniture given how notoriously pious he was; never one to question or say no to anything.

But then piety doesn’t always do a lot of good in the long run either, Jared knows.

There’s nothing that special about Hell anyway, at least not from an angel’s viewpoint. It’s whatever the souls sent there think it should be; you expect fire and brimstone, and voila, you’re smoldering while some two-bit demon is jabbing you with a rusty steak knife. You want meat hooks and your skin peeled off over and over by chattering fiends of ash and bone, and that’s what you get. Humans punish themselves in ways demons - or angels - could ever hope to think of.

Heaven - or at least, the conceptualised Heaven that humans go to - is much the same; defined by your own desire and expectation. Hell is just… a less pleasant version; the opposite side of the chessboard, and one that Jared’s got no real desire to examine up close.

It has nothing to do with Jensen working there, doing whatever he does to earn his keep from century to century; tempting mortals and making deals, offering up multitudinous pathways to damnation. It really doesn’t. Hell just has too much politicking, no matter if it comes from the angels that govern it or the demons that operate it.

Politics, Jared’s always thought, is what happens when you combine two halves of the same coin that like to believe they’re different currencies.

Really, Eternity from either end of the spectrum just gets boring if you hang around long enough, which is why Jared’s been on Earth for so long in the first place. He can have a job and talk to people and carry out the will of Heaven in countless ways just fine without getting caught up in all the ritual the Host likes to indulge in.

Then again, he hasn’t spent much time around angels recently either. His social Venn diagram is more just him in the middle of a single circle, slightly overlapping with Mrs Caswell, who lives across the hall, frequently gets lost in her own stories and insists on calling him ‘Jim’ even though that’s not a name he’s ever had. It’s not ideal, but she’s got good intentions and she’s bound for Heaven so who is Jared to judge?

He trudges - as much as any angel is capable of trudging - into his apartment, slips out of his shoes and heads for the nearest soft-looking bit of furniture. In this case it’s the squishy lump of fabric and padding desperately trying to pass for an armchair, shoved into a corner and surrounded by at least five piles of books that shouldn’t be standing according to the rules of any reasonable kind of physics.

Luckily physics isn’t something Jared has to worry about unless he really wants to.

He collapses down into it, legs stretched out in front of him, resisting the urge to manifest a footstool just so he doesn’t end up using one of the stacks of books and newspapers again. He needs to change; he can feel all the places where his clothes are dusted with what could be flour and could be powdered sugar, patches of skin itching and sticky with icing or glaze or some other thing he’d failed to avoid.

He enjoys his job most days, it gives him a pleasant way to interact with people and steer the general flow of events to a more positive outcome (thwarting the occasional evil deed is a surprisingly common feat when working in retail), but he’s come to accept that he’s never going to enjoy the more messy aspects of the bakery. There must be something about angels that makes them fussy about being clean. Or Jensen’s right and Jared’s just obsessive all on his own, but since Jared isn’t technically supposed to agree with Jensen about anything, he’s ignoring the idea.

Running A Slice of Heaven suits him, as far as human professions go. He doesn’t sleep or get tired from ordinary physical work, so the early starts and long hours aren’t a problem, and there’s something satisfying about creating things that are designed to make people happy (the smell of fresh pastry drifting down the street has been known to dissuade even the worst tempered stockbroker and, on one memorable occasion, stalled a mugger in the line flowing out the door long enough for the cops to overtake him).

Plus he gets to wear a lot of white, which is still a comforting familiarity even now.

He leans back into the chair, breathing in the comforting smells of his overstuffed and slightly dusty apartment. There’s a stack of pans in the sink from yesterday’s experiments with a new kind of zest, the tap dripping slowly onto a metal tray. He could have them cleaner than new and neatly packed into a cupboard with a hand wave, but he knows he’d only spend hours feeling guilty for ‘cheating’. It’s a good thing he doesn’t really need to eat, since he thinks every dish he owns is currently piled and crowded ‘round the small sink like eager shoppers grasping for a bargain.

Looking to the small table on his side of the kitchen counter, he smiles at Gil, the goldfish he’s had for the last hundred and twenty-eight years. Jensen had won him at a World’s Fair, for no reason other than to stop someone else from winning him, and Jared’s held onto him ever since out of a kind of moral duty. But now that he’s gotten attached, and all the magic he’s used to keep the little guy going for so long, Jared can’t say he regrets it. Though he has thought about getting Gil a companion to share his bowl and small plastic castle with.

The last few rays of sunlight sneak above and between the slanted blinds, casting alternating bands of orange-yellow and deeper shade over everything, warm traces over Jared’s hands where they’re resting on the arms of the chair.

He’s probably needed somewhere, no doubt the opposition is busy meddling in human existence. There’ll be all those tiny acts that lead to bigger changes that humans are so ready to accept as luck or to write off as coincidence.

As he turns his head to look at the sun dropping behind the taller buildings and below the distant horizon, Jared cleans himself up from hair to clothes to fingertips, and wonders where Jensen is.

* * *

Jensen takes his place behind the mic, straddling the padded stool on the raised area of the floor, and flicks his eyes around the room almost leisurely. Almost.

The crowd, if you wanna call it that, is obscured slightly by the low lighting and film of smoke - and not all of it as legal as good old tobacco, which is a definite sign in his favour - but really, the room’s got nothing on any random location in Hell, and his eyes have long since learned to make do.

He widens the bowed V of his legs like it’s incidental, and if he’d been an incubus he’d be insufferably proud of himself for the tangible spike he feels from half a dozen of the patrons. Having so many choices when it comes to your outward form has become a kind of art in itself. Among some of them at least.

The guitar - one of his favourites, handmade by someone who sold his soul long before Jensen met him, and feeling more like an article of clothing after decades of use than any clothes he currently owns - sits across his denim-clad thigh as he leans in, the cigarette clinging to the corner of his lips rolling with the slight smirk he’s wearing.

It’s changed over the centuries, but very few things will make people open to those dark whispers in the backs of their heads the same way music will. The right emphasis, with the right audience, can inspire or provoke or arouse, sometimes all of the above at once.

One of the best things about humans, if you ask Jensen, has always been the miles they’ll take if you provide them the barest semblance of an inch.

Jensen’s always had a way with the right notes and the right words, spun together like twine. It’s occasionally gotten him noticed more than he should’ve allowed, and Jared still won’t let him burn those stupid paintings. Say whatever you want about ‘artistic merit’, Jensen hates the name Pan like few other things on this plane. And if he ever finds out who dreamt up the goat thing, well, Hell has a lot of vacant spots full of ambitious demons who know better than to ask questions.

Smoke trailing from the corner of his mouth, his fingers pluck the strings, and his voice licks out into the room like a serpent’s tongue, working into all the dark spaces. Words that sound like promises, indictments, and the ideas that haunt dreams and leave you wanting. Wanting things you can’t name and would be afraid of if you could.

Conversations get abandoned and drinks forgotten, eyes swinging between Jensen’s fingers as they coax sound from the guitar and his mouth as he doles out the song like a barter they don’t know they’ve entered into. The lyrics are never the same twice, and he doesn’t exactly take requests. In fact until he shows up, the clubs and bars and wherever else don’t even know they’ve booked him. But a quick check always shows his name, right where it’s supposed to be, in just the right handwriting and colour of ink to be reassuring. Humans rely way too much on things so easily altered.

The crowd is his, he can feel it. Suggestion flowing easily across the ether, and looking up through the dark fan of his lashes he just knows - the same way he knows where ley lines are, or how to See beneath the skin of things that walk the Earth but never touch it - which of them will spend their night drinking or fucking or stealing, as soon as they remember where they are and that yes that sounds like a good idea, doesn’t that sound like a good idea?

It’s easily done with people, because there’re so many options. Young people, old people, proud people, stupid people. Greedy people, desperate people. People who care too much and people who just think they do. Countless permutations that all amount to the same thing. He’s not standing at a Crossroads and he doesn’t need them to sign a contract in blood. Just give ‘em a nudge, and let them damn themselves.

Free will makes such a durable noose.

The song trails off, and with it the tendrils of power he’s woven out, dipping through the air and fading as they disperse, the final pluck of the strings humming longer than should be possible, if you had the presence of mind in that moment to notice.

Jensen slips to his feet in a sinus wave of easy grace, and even though there is no applause - there will be, but it’ll be sporadic and absent-minded, and followed immediately by the startling realisation that the stage has been empty for at least five minutes - he takes a slow, sarcastic bow and a final sucking drag of the cigarette before he drops it, and pulls the cool leather of his jacket across himself.

Stepping down, he snags an untouched whiskey sitting on the closest table, toasts the vacant stare of the guy sitting at it, and knocks it back on a rolling swallow.

“You’ve been a wonderful audience,” he drawls, setting the glass down and letting looseness fall over his shoulders, rocking on his heels and smiling to himself, tipping an imaginary hat. “Enjoy the rest of your evening.”

He strolls between the tables to the back, smiles again as he pauses to pat the teetering doorman on the shoulder, and slips out into the shadowy night, whistling faintly and enjoying the feeling of a dishonest day’s work well done. Being a demon might not’ve been his first choice for a job, but it still beat trying to make a career of Nothing At All.

He’s keeping an easy pace down the sidewalk, trying to make up his mind between one of those hot dogs that’ve never had any contact with a recognisable food product, and ducking into another bar to stir up some extra sin and getting a jump on his quota. He’s humming to himself, and there’s a smattering of stars gleaming down on him between the orange blush of the streetlights like baubles strung across a black canvas.

He’s adjusting the guitar case slung over his shoulder, tugging at his jacket as he walks, and that’s when he suddenly notices the change in the darkness surrounding him: shadows that aren’t really made of shadow; that subtle difference between empty space and space that just looks empty. There’s a hint of sulphur like the most awful perfume. It’s getting warmer.

There’s a stomach-dropping and unpleasant rush, like jumping from a height or stepping onto flat ground where you thought there was another stair, and then a silhouetted figure strolls out of a side street with a deceptively light tap of footfalls. It’s weirdly formless even with a humanoid shape, casting long and jagged shadows in eight directions like the wings of a great bat, and others like curved, pointed horns that stretch up the brick wall behind it.

“Jensen,” the not-quite-there figure says, in an accented and grating voice that makes Jensen’s teeth itch.

It’s an effort, but Jensen keeps on walking, stuffs his hands into the pockets of his jacket. He’d like to think he wasn’t being paranoid, but then a demon lacking in paranoia just means you were too naive to see them coming for you.

The inky, transcorporeal thing moves along with him, scrolling along but not really touching the ground, still echoing footfalls that are completely out of pace and rhythm like sharp clicks. Every streetlight it passes under gutters and dies like a torch in a gale. The stars above the streetlights hide themselves in gloom like frightened children under their beds.

Jensen just keeps walking, knowing he’s not getting off that easy, but still betting that navigating this plane is more taxing for this one that it is for him.

“I help you with something?” he mutters, not bothering to raise his voice since he doubts there are ears to hear him, trying to sound vaguely respectful but still not cowing or meek. Talking to any of the more… entrenched denizens of the Pit is a careful balance between forcing them to deal with you on your terms, and convincing them you aren’t stepping out of place.

‘Course, they might be inclined to discorporate you regardless, just for the entertainment value, but at least then you can get yourself assigned a new body from Human Resources with the knowledge that you put the effort in. Hell is never kind, but it’s much less kind to those who don’t learn to work the system to their own selfish advantage. It’d almost be Darwinian, if Darwin wasn’t up in Heaven somewhere, hopefully making studies of the chirping Cherubim like overgrown finches with no beaks.

“We’ve got a task for you, Jensen,” it says, the ‘s’ sounds pulled long and hissed, the consonants clipped and like stone scraping over stone, dry and harsh. It’s also got what Jensen thinks is a London accent.

“Sorry, I’m all booked up for the next millennium or two,” Jensen says, hating where this is going already. Anything that can journey topside and not stuff its true shape into a more human one has to be older than dirt and high on the food chain, and much less likely to be bartered with.

He entertains the thought of manifesting himself somewhere far away, another continent in another hemisphere, somewhere with a lot of souls to blot him out. But chances are he’s already tethered down by the same Power that this one’s using to bend reality around himself. Plus the last time he’d tried ducking the infernal overlords, he’d been relegated to taking minutes at Dark Council meetings as punishment.

There’s a whoosh like standing by the tracks as a train passes, and then the thing’s in front of him, looming tall and broad and disconcertingly amused. Two more streetlights go out, one of them exploding and raining glass with a tinkling like wind chimes. He’s showing off.

“You aren’t getting a choice here, Jensen,” he tells him. “You don’t obey, then you can be… persuaded.” The last part’s said with a distinct relish that makes Jensen think this one wants him to say no, just for the pleasure of making him say yes after a bit of bloodshed and agony.

Time to change tactics then.

He drops his hands by his sides, bows his head just enough to be deferent, and smiles with teeth like rows of daggers.

“And whom am I being addressed by?” he asks, like he wants the right name to say with the perfect simpering inflection, like a good little minion who’ll paint his master’s Name in the blood of the damned.

There’s a chuckle that spools through the air and digs under the beds of Jensen’s fingernails, a careless flick of Power like entitlement. “Agares,” the thing says. “Grand Duke of Torment and Commander of Legions. Teacher of the Profane and Bringer of Destruction.”

Well shit, he thinks. Grand Dukes of Hell don’t cross over just to deliver the mail and hand out assignments. He can almost feel his chances of weaselling out of whatever this is dwindling to less than an ice cube’s chance in… well.

“I uh…” He swallows, mentally running through questions that won’t result in the ground opening up and devouring him. “How can I serve?” he asks in the most hoity toity form of Hellspeak he knows, feels it slip from his tongue like oil and a thousand curses.

With any luck (if you’re definition of luck is as warped and pessimistic as a demon’s) someone Upstairs has noticed that Agares has left Hell. The angels might not come down to the game board for anything Jensen and his ilk do, but middle management like a Grand Duke of Torment is a whole different set of problems.

Or, if not the Choirs of Heaven themselves (which is probably for the best, given how pro-smiting some of them can be), then at least one particular halo-toting ‘baker’ who owes Jensen at least a few favours. And a nice lunch. Jared’s supposed to be preventing this sort of stuff from ever happening, last Jensen checked. Too much time making bread and not enough time maintaining their little balancing act, the slacker.

“You’ve been chosen,” Agares says, sounding not entirely thrilled. Lower demons being promoted is never good for any of the ones already above them. The firing process in Hell is pretty literal. It’s also very pointy. “The ultimate war is coming. The End of Days will soon be here, and you’re to report to the First Legion to fight with us. You can bring any weapons and take on any form you wish. Refreshments will be provided. No tennis shoes.”

Even though he can’t see it - and wouldn’t want to anyway, given the perverse and distorted horror it’s likely to be - Jensen is pretty sure the Duke’s smirking.

Jensen swallows, and hates that his palms are sweating too much to blame on the way the air is drying up and getting warmer. Every human for miles is going to have persistent nightmares for weeks and not know why, and good luck trying to stay in a good mood on this street ever again. The road rage is sure to be epic at the very least.

Assuming there’s anywhere left of this plane, and any people to sleep or drive on it, of course.

“Sounds great,” he says, trying for upbeat and not even managing the occult equivalent of it. “When…” He swipes a hand over his face, sweat pricking his upper lip. “When’s the big day?”

“Thursday,” Agares says, around a grin that even mostly inexpressible without a recognisable mouth, is still unnerving. “Heaven’s got a bit of a soft spot for Thursdays, and we couldn’t miss the chance to really ruin it for them. Now, I will have your answer to this summons, Jensen, demon of Hell.”

Thursday. Two days. Two days until the world comes to an end.

“Okay, sure,” Jensen makes himself say, because he’s fresh out of choices, and in the tone of someone who really needs to be going. The tone invented for awkward encounters in supermarket aisles, with that one friend you wouldn’t wish harm on, but would really prefer if their existence became completely detached from yours forever. “I guess I’ll uh… go soak an axe in virgin’s blood. Sharpen my knives on the bones of nuns. Defrost the freezer, that sort of thing. I’ll see you on the field of battle at the appointed time.”

“Excellent.” The shadows roiling around everywhere pause abruptly, such a glaring absence of movement that Jensen’s almost convinced Time’s been suspended, and he’s trapped in his shape like a conscious statue. Then with a quaking and clanging groan like compressing a school bus sideways into a toaster, Agares dissolves into the ambient nothingness, taking the hints of brimstone and the balmy temperature with him.

The streetlights click and buzz back to luminous life, save for the shattered one that fritzes almost apologetically. Jensen waves a hand and the new bulb gleams orange in its restored casing. Minor acts of disobedience, he tells himself. The stars reappear, and a dog howls in the next street over.

Jensen lets out a slightly shaky sigh as he pulls out his cell phone, a sleek black device that runs on something you could almost call electricity, and houses one of the most interesting lists of contacts you’re likely to see, for the ten or so seconds you’d get before it melted your eyes in their sockets. And forget about the voicemail. You don’t wanna know about the voicemail.

He presses two on the speed dial (one being a direct line to a goblet of tainted blood sitting on a demon’s dining room table), and waits.

The connection rings and rings, and Jensen almost takes to exploding streelights himself as he taps his foot and grumbles under his breath about absent-minded Celestials who may as well not even have a phone.

There’s a tap, and Jensen almost speaks, before an automated recording jumps in and makes his heart sink to somewhere near his feet. Good thing he doesn’t really need it. The sound’s a little muffled, which Jensen takes as a sign that Jared still hasn’t gotten over his distrust of wireless technology (no matter how many times Jensen’s told him that humans came up with that one all by themselves), and was either holding the phone at arms length like something poisonous that might bite him, or he’s using the oldest form of telephonic device he could find that doesn’t involve tin cans and a length of string.

“Hello, uh, this is Jared and I’m… I’m away? Oh right, I’m not home! That’s it. So leave a message, and I’ll call you back when I am. Home, that is. Uh. Bye.”

There’s a painfully prolonged shrill beep that Jensen uses to swear creatively into the mouthpiece, hoping it’s actually the machine beeping and not Jared thinking that’s what you’re supposed to do. Jensen still cringes when he remembers that army of trumpet players. Jared’s good at lots of things, but giving music lessons should never, ever be considered one of them.

“Jared, it’s me,” he says as soon the machine picks up, trying not to rush the words. “I don’t know if you’ve heard from your side yet, but we’ve got a major issue of the apocalypse variety. We’ve got days, Jared, just days, and we need to… to do something. I don’t know.” He takes a breath, tips his head back toward the sky and tries to think. “But we can’t let them tear this place down, and it won’t take ‘em long to realise we’re not exactly playing by the rulebook. Whatever you’re doing, leave it and get outta dodge okay? No miracles or impeding sin where you might get noticed. And call me the moment you get this.”

He ends the call with a vindictive stab of his thumb on the reddest button (they’re all red), and turns on a heel back toward where he’d left his car.

Bitter unmerciful Satan how he hates a ticking clock.

* * *

It’s two o’clock in the morning, and Jared’s puttering around his kitchen in drawstring pants and an old sweater, making hot chocolate on the stove. It’s an indulgence, but he’s spent decades perfecting the recipe, and it’s one of the most popular items at the bakery so he feels justified, if not Righteous.

Jensen might’ve had a point when he said Jared took up his human line of work for all the taste testing he gets to do.

The record player on the counter’s playing music that technically falls under Below’s jurisdiction, since they got everyone except Elgar and Liszt, but there are some lines that Jared will cross in the name of relaxation. He’d been out from ten until midnight ministering to the sick at a nearby children’s hospital, so he thinks he’s mostly covered on listening to Rachmaninoff now he’s home.

He’s stirring gently and adding the occasional touch of nutmeg or cinnamon, trying to get the balance just right. He’d only managed what he’d consider to be the ‘perfect’ hot chocolate once, about sixty years ago, and he’d been so excited he never paused to write down exactly what he’d done. The pitfall of confections is always the way they warp Time, until you can’t fathom how the box is so suddenly empty or where the mountain of wrappers came from.

Angelic memory may be broader and have greater depth than human memory, but holding onto every single fact over the stretch of thousands of years is still too much to ask for. Though if he’d had a choice, Jared would’ve gladly lost his entire memory of the Spanish Inquisition in favour of his more spur-of-the-moment recipes. Nobody needed to remember that much detail about the Spanish Inquisition. It won’t help you expect it any better.

Gil’s swimming happily around his bowl, which at the moment has four cookbooks propped open on top of it, since Jared ran out of counter space a half hour ago, and some flecks of inventively concocted and miracled-up fish food floating in it. His kitchen may be a useful culinary laboratory, but it’s not exactly overrunning with excess work surfaces. He might consider moving, if he wasn’t such a ‘homebird’ (Jensen’s term, applied after that place in London had basically burned down with Jared still inside it. It’d taken him weeks to get all the ash out of his hair, but he’d saved his books and most of his record collection). Plus it would hardly be fair to Gil at this point; Jared can’t even move the bowl without his aquatic friend sulking in his castle for days.

The apartment’s being lit partially by the antique lamp on the table in the rough centre of the room, and partly by another kind of light, that to the outside observer would seem like a kind of sunlight glow ringing Jared’s head and flowing faintly from his skin as he works, almost a golden afterimage.

Finally satisfied that he’s got the drink to as close to perfect as it’s going to be this time, and jotting down a couple of changes for the batch he’s going to make when he heads to the bakery later, Jared pours the aromatic mix into a large, slightly chipped mug and carries it to his favourite armchair, flicking an unnaturally large ball of lint off the seat with a stray thought. There’s been the occasional moment when Jared’s thought the dust bunnies in his apartment had somehow acquired sentience. He might’ve checked once or twice. The results were inconclusive.

He’s got a few hours before he has to be anywhere, and there’s a manuscript of Keats’ he’s wanted to look at since he found it at a dealer’s last week. It would’ve cost him a pretty big sum if the owner hadn’t owed Jared for averting a robbery once. It’d been a pair of misguided teenagers thinking they could make off with some of the more occultist material. It wouldn’t have done them any good, since Jared routinely checks bookshops all over for anything with more than a scrap of Power that could become an issue.

Humans manage to get into enough trouble as it is without magic being involved, and Heaven’s policy on witchcraft, while not as… harsh, as some religions decided to go with, is still based around an ounce of prevention being worth the pound of flesh. And the increased soul traffic when it inevitably gets screwed up or polluted with man-made prejudice. Then there’s what the other side might do with some of the things scattered around the globe.

There’s a reason the bedroom of Jared’s apartment is entirely full of shelves sitting behind a deceptively strong door, and sealed with enough wards to keep out not only the supernatural, but anyone with even the slightest hint of mal intentions. The building could crumble into rubble, and Jared’s allocated room of dangerous objects would still be left standing. Which might take some explaining, he admits, but it’s still better than the alternative, which would probably resemble handing an entire armoury over to a group of chaotically-minded and especially bored children. As if there’s not enough of that going on already.

He’s most of the way through his first mug of sweet, rich chocolate, and so engrossed in the manuscript that he doesn’t notice at first when the room starts to get brighter. Since he’s gifted with extremely good vision anyway, he reads another five whole pages before the added illumination drags his attention away from the yellowing paper with its fine, ink-blotted text, and the fascinating notes scribbled in its margins.

Standing and placing his mug down next to Gil’s bowl, he heads to the middle of the room, where a bluish glow is slowly edging out the warm lamplight like a tide encroaching on the beach.

Jared frowns as he switches off the lamp, and follows the light to the reasonably empty patch of carpeting between the bedroom door and the living/dining room. There’s a pulsing circle of white light standing out against the worn-flat carpet, like a safety jacket caught in the path of a car’s high beams. Around the inside of the circle, fine, delicate symbols are forming from nothingness, getting bolder and brighter along with the circle as the bluish hue fills the apartment.

Titling his head at an uncomfortable angle, Jared realises the symbols are distressingly, painfully familiar.

“Oh. Well shit,” he says, unthinkingly, when with a low, buzzing resonance that reminds Jared of the time he’d spent with Faraday, the room abruptly floods with a much more pervading and immaterial glow, like being steeped in warm water, floating weightless even though he can feel the carpet beneath his sock-clad feet and under his toe where it’s sticking through a hole he hasn’t gotten ‘round to darning yet.

The light is pure white, giving off a disarming feeling of contentment like a patch of sunlight streaming through a windowpane. It seems to fill the room and focus on him at the same time; radiance and a spotlight both.

And then comes the Voice, full of Power and a kind of careless, self-assured importance.

Jared tries to keep down the belaboured sigh. He’s only vaguely successful.

“Jared,” the great Voice says, with a subtle hesitation, and an undertone like that’s not the name going though its mind. That it’s actually thinking of a very different, much older and longer name, that Jared still cringes when he thinks of. The kind of name that once could’ve burned the air and curled flame against the blade of a sword, a sword Jared ‘misplaced’ for a very good reason.

“Uh, speaking?” he acknowledges with a wince, hoping the source of the Voice can’t see him, but feeling deep down that it probably knows what he’d had for breakfast every Sunday in 1460, and the title of every album he’s bought since the Renaissance. The Metatron’s always been the nosey type.

“It has been some time,” the Voice intones, as though the Voice of God and Messenger of the Host has ever cared about Time or bothered with idle pleasantries. Or any pleasantries at all. “The War is upon us, Jared.” Again that hesitation, like his old Name is mocking him. Jared’s heart clenches, his stomach twisting up. “The reckoning of Creation; the Final Judgement as mandated by the Lord. You are being… recalled.”

“Recalled? ” he bursts out before he can help it, and the light brightens almost unbearably for an instant that lasts forever, a physical pressure behind his ribs, choking off his words. Capricious asshat.

In the background, he thinks he can hear his phone ringing.

“Are you refusing an order?” There’s a rumble in the question, like an ever increasing slide of rocks down a mountain, and Jared’s the poor bastard standing at the bottom peering up and pondering about whatever that approaching dust cloud might be.

“No, no of course not,” he’s quick to assure, sucking in a breath when the band around him eases its grip. “I just--I didn’t know I was on a specific mission, so I-”

“You serve the cause as part of the Host of Heaven. You will obey,” Metatron tells him, with less uncertainty than any disembodied form of speech should be capable of. Then again, almost bored now, indolent: “You are being recalled. You’d better pack light. Very light.”

Jared looks around his apartment, feels his brain do a pointless skitter-jump over everything in sight, as though he’s just won a vacation in a giveaway and his cab’s waiting downstairs to take him to the airport. Clothes? No, it’ll just be sanctified armour and smiting weapons. Toothbrush? Physical form reduced to the wrathful fire of the Lord, raining judgement from on High, ergo no corporeal teeth.

Jensen’s old argument about not holding onto things is starting to make a depressing amount of sense.

Jensen.

“What about my uh… my counterpart?” he asks, squinting at the guessed source of the beam of Holy Light above his head.

“Not our concern,” Metatron says, with a shrug so audible Jared has no trouble picturing it. “The Pit can deal with their representative however they like. The Fallen don’t deserve our consideration.”

Not once in all his years on Earth has Jared surrendered to the temptation of telling someone to proverbially shove it. He’s thinking of changing that policy right now. It’d probably be worth the demotion, and maybe even the discorporation; they’re clearly snatching him anyway, so the time it’d take for them to materialise him a new body could help.

That’s definitely his phone ringing.

“I can understand that,” he says, trying his best to be diplomatic. “But shouldn’t there be a meeting? These things have to be mutually agreed upon, right? Wouldn’t want the ranks of the Host showing up and the Legions of Darkness not knowing about it. Think how awkward that could be.”

“They are aware of the situation,” the Voice of God says, and Jared’s thoughts are a dizzying mess of useless ideas as he tries to think of something - anything - that could delay his reporting to Heaven long enough to contact Jensen. Jared knows they could work out some kind of arrangement between them, but that kind of manipulation is much more Jensen’s skillset than Jared’s. He can’t do this on his own, that’s why they’re both on Earth to begin with.

“Your time is up, Jared,” Metatron booms like he’s reading off a scroll. Jared wouldn’t be surprised if he was.

“I-I suppose I’m ready,” he says, reluctantly. Or means to say, since the moment he goes to form the words there’s a sharp tugging sensation that starts somewhere above his shoulders, and an awful rush as the light carries him through the membrane of the world in a violent squeeze that makes Jared think he finally understands that ‘camel through the eye of a needle’ business. His ears pop, his sense of up and down become meaningless, and he feels himself become detached from the cloying grip of space-time, surrendering himself to another, more arcane, sort of ‘physics’.

Then everything is shapeless, profoundly unphysical, and all that’s left behind is an empty apartment even more strewn with books and random objects than it was before, one very confused, perturbed goldfish, and a blinking light on the circa 1998 answering machine.

* * *

Jensen pulls up outside his building with a screech of rubber on the unsuspecting pavement, the Cadillac’s rear end fishtailing slightly with a rolling lurch.

He pats a still-damp palm on the dashboard, murmuring an apology. Jensen’s typical distaste for speed limits and road safety aside, he’s usually at least careful with his own car.

On the passenger’s seat, his phone’s display remains stubbornly blank, free from calls or messages. He’d tried Jared twice more on the way over, leaving increasingly imaginative curses on the angel’s machine between dire warnings and what he suspects was some really poorly disguised concern. Nothing. He’d even risked calling a few of his more sympathetic contacts in the occult circles (also known as the ones who owe him the most, or the ones who’ve screwed him over recently enough to still fear his ever-creative reprisal). But they’re either more in the dark on whatever Hell’s planning than he is, or they’ve been told to keep their mouths sewn shut for fear of… well, having their mouths actually sewn shut, he supposes.

Leaving the car unlocked and door half open, safe in the knowledge that anyone who tries stealing it will get a seriously nasty surprise, he climbs the stairs to his loft two or three at a time, sometimes shedding the laws of gravity altogether and reappearing on a different floor, agitated enough for the full demonic horns and tail to be visible. Soon he’s striding purposefully down the narrow corridor that reminds of an underground Mayan passageway - one of the really good ones that were designed to flood and stop people escaping alive - until he’s standing in front of the wide metal sliding door with its intricate locks that recede as he approaches, sigils flaring and vanishing as the protections let him pass.

Jensen’s lived in a lot of cities, in a lot of countries, and every time he ends up somewhere new he always takes the time to find a place he really likes. His infernal duties take him all over the world, but he’s come to appreciate the human vice of creating somewhere you’re glad to come back to. And if nothing else, it’s a good security bunker.

The loft’s tastefully decorated, partly because Jensen’s never agreed with Jared’s sentimental little compulsion to collect all kinds of random human things, and partly because he’d felt obligated after Hell went to all the trouble of inventing interior design in the first place. Of course the humans had to go and one up them with home makeover television shows, but that’s the order of things in The Creator’s universe.

Hell gave up ever trying to be as fiendish as humanity around the time the first caveman clubbed his neighbour over the head for no reason other than he had a temper, and then proceeded to rob him. Jensen remembers standing with a group of demons, milling around watching the whole thing and looking puzzled and vaguely disturbed, until they’d just shuffled back to Hell with consoling talk of going fire-skating to take their minds off things.

The floor is hardwood, and there’re modern and incomprehensibly designed chairs tucked beneath sparse, gleaming marble worktops. The kind of chairs that look pretty, but will leave you with bruises in unlikely places if you were dumb enough to try sitting on them for more than a fraction of a second. There’s a widescreen plasma television mounted on the wall that gets every cable and satellite channel on Earth, plus a few extras, and speakers that could blow out a pane of glass from a mile away. Jensen’s never used any of them, but that’s the principle of modern living as he’s given to understand it; have more, use less, and be as smug about it as you can.

True to that idea, the loft has three staircases, two of which go nowhere, and an unnecessary amount of abstract art that Jensen has barely ever looked at, because surely that was the artist’s intent.

A single, shiny red apple sits in the middle of his otherwise empty fruit bowl.

He doesn’t have a computer, even though he’s been responsible for some of the more diabolical aspects of recent computing technology, including but not limited to Internet Explorer, keys that take up space on keyboards but either do nothing, or should never be pressed under any circumstances, the Blue Screen of Death (originally the Red Screen of Death, until someone in Hell’s PR department pointed out that humans would probably be extra infuriated by a more neutral colour), terms and conditions that might look like English, but are in fact a very well disguised form of Hellspeak that will damn you in perpetuity if you read them fully (Jared came up with making sure nobody ever, ever did, and Jensen still mocks him for encouraging people to lie), and tumblr. Jensen is still waiting for Downstairs to fully appreciate the Infernal value of tumblr.

They’re probably still pissed that the angels got away with Apple so easily, when it’d taken Hell’s best ‘people’ years of sweat and blood (not their own, thankfully) to get Microsoft on their side. Or they’re still horrified by the apps. Only humans could’ve come up with apps.

Passing the well-stocked (and equally underutilised) kitchen, with its sophisticated chrome appliances (so complicated they designed the people who built them, in a kind of postmodern causality paradox), Jensen glances at the large, irregularly-shaped and multifaceted clock on the wall. It’s one of the few things in his loft that he cares about, with its various, ornate hands showing the time wherever Jensen is, and the Infernal Time in every Circle of the Pit; which is usually either six seconds and six minutes past six (a joke that Jensen thinks has really gotten old now, especially since Lucifer’s retired from the place), or exactly twelve in the AM, since none of the demons Below know how to set the corresponding clock in their particular Circle.

Thank the Devil they’d never got VCRs Downstairs. Another example of where humanity’s ingenious cruelty had surpassed Hell’s own.

Right now though, all the hands say the same thing. Every one of them’s pointing towards the cursive, slightly glowing letters that read ‘ALMOST UP’, having already slipped past ‘RUNNING OUT’, ‘TIME TO PANIC’ and ‘SELL YOUR STOCKS IN MICROSOFT’.

He mutters a sour-tasting, stinging blessing under his breath when he sees how close the hands are to sliding onto ‘GAME OVER, INSERT COIN’, and heads for the bedroom to get what he rushed here for.

The bedroom, in Jensen’s opinion, is the pinnacle of his living arrangement, in that he’s got no need for a bedroom at all, which makes it the most decadently wasteful room in the whole loft. His bed is a large, artfully carved wooden one, with a mattress so comfortable that angels would forsake every cloud in Heaven for it.

Currently, it’s being taken up by Jensen’s cat, Cat.

It’s maybe not the most imaginative name, but since Cat had been waiting regally outside the door the day Jensen took the keys from his hoodwinked landlord (who’s conveniently forgotten to ask Jensen for rent even once in the last six years) and has, on more than one occasion given Jensen looks that would have Hellhounds whimpering and hiding behind Cerberus’ legs, Jensen assumes he doesn’t mind. Or she. Jensen’s never really worked up the courage to check. He’s guessing Downstairs sent him (or her) for some reason, given the fact that she (or he) comes and goes without a cat flap or so much as an open window. He’s also never seen the sleek white animal eat or drink anything. There’s probably an extra law of thermodynamics that describes Cat’s existence.

He doesn’t even know how they came to be sharing the loft. Cat’s just always been there, and that’s the way it is. Jensen tries to take his (or her) continued presence as Hell’s tacit approval. A little nod to his good work, since cats had been his idea in the first place. Probably some Dark Council member’s idea of a joke.

Jensen’s probably prouder of cats than anything else he’s contrived on Earth. Any creature that can reduce humans into simpering, cooing balls of embarrassing and unintelligible language, while at the same time being completely apathetic and sometimes outright hateful of the existence of every living thing, are well worth the award Jensen had gotten for them back in Egypt.

Modern humans can claim ownership and domestication all they like, but you’ll never see a cat feeding them.

She (or he) gives Jensen a disdainful look as he crosses the room to a large painting of a certain lady, which would today be considered the original, if poor Leonardo hadn’t gotten into trouble with the woman’s husband over it. He takes it down, revealing the gunmetal grey safe he’d had built into the wall.

The tumblers spin smoothly as he inputs the combination - the date of Beelzebub’s deathday, since he forgot just once about four thousand years ago and is still apologising for it, which never would’ve happened if it wasn’t a number with so many zeros - and tugs the heavy, sigil-embossed and magic-reinforced door open.

“Okay,” he says, giving Cat a quick glance as his (or her) glossy tail swishes in carefully meditated rage at having her (or his) nap disturbed. “You’d better clear out,” he says, not knowing if Cat can understand him, but suspecting there’s more behind those frosty blue eyes than average feline intelligence. “Doubt you’ll wanna be around for whatever happens next.”

There’s a low, unbroken grumble that seems to emanate from everywhere at once, filling the space and all the space beyond, before Cat stretches and leaps from the bed with grace that moves beyond animal and slides squarely into preternatural. Jensen gets one last long look, before he (or she) trots out of the room with an elegant swipe of tail, like a shark moving in open water.

He doesn’t bother going to let the animal out. It’d either be pointless or considered condescending.

Turning back to the contents of the safe, Jensen takes a slow, steadying breath, and does his best not to flinch as he reaches in.

This part is never enjoyable.

Part 2