“So, I’ve Got A Question,” Adam Said Slowly, In The Way Aziraphale Had Come To Quite Nearly Dread.

“So, I’ve got a question,” Adam said slowly, in the way Aziraphale had come to quite nearly dread. It meant the boy had been thinking, which was a very good thing, of course; but it also meant the question was likely to be of the uncomfortably acute sort that adults of all kinds, human, angel, or demon as they might be, disliked having to answer. The sort that made one feel rather like, well, Adam, the first one, right after the bite of apple but before he’d found himself a convenient leaf.

Quite precisely, Aziraphale set his book aside and slipped his spectacles from his nose, folding in their temples and tucking them with care into the pocket of his jacket. In the cottage’s kitchen, he could hear Crowley bustling about, putting together the tea things; oh, they could always miracle up an afternoon tea, yes, but Aziraphale did think it was so much nicer to have the real thing. And wasn’t it lovely that Crowley agreed?

He smiled at the boy, who was, after all, not quite exactly human. (Oh, they’d handled the thing with his father, of course, but had anyone taken the mother’s heritage – or even her identity? – into account?) “Yes, Adam?” he prompted.

“Right. Only, you’re an angel, right?” said Adam, his mop of muddy-gold curls flopping over his ears in a way which made Aziraphale’s fingers itch for scissors.

“If that’s your question, young man…” Aziraphale said, trailing off in that slightly forbidding way common to schoolteachers of a certain ilk the world over.

“No. I mean, yes. Sort of?” Adam said. “Only, there’s these magazines, the ones Anathema reads? She lets me read them too, when she’s done with them, and there’s this one that’s all about angels….”

“Ah,” Aziraphale sighed. “You mustn’t believe everything you read just because it’s been written down, Adam,” he said, well aware of the irony. “People do write the most astonishing tosh at times.”

“The magazine said there were sorts of angel,” Adam continued, a bit stubbornly. “What sort are you?”

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