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Shadwell’s family is cursed.
He thinks about witches, about things that burn in fire, and he thinks of flame-red hair falling over pale shoulders, bright as the ember on the end of his f—
He takes a drag and watches the man in drag light up the stage.
It’s 1969 in Soho, and Shadwell feels like he’s losing control.
He waits for Mr.Crowley to step out into the alley and crushes ash under his heel. Mr. Crowley is a man who senses the siren’s song of a deal to be struck, and his grin is wide and pleased and his lipstick has stained his lips a dark red.
“Lance Corporal Shadwell,” he says, and the way he draws out his name is laced with intent. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Shadwell shoves him back into a brick wall.
“Oi,” Crowley yelps, stumbles, the long line of his body pushing back against Shadwell’s stockier build, and Shadwell burns as he yanks Crowley into a kiss.
The change is immediate, the man matching his ferocity, pouring heat and teeth and a filthy little snarl into it as he pushes for control, and Shadwell can’t give it to him. He throws a hand up to fist in his hair, knocking Crowley’s sunglasses to the ground as he does and kisses him until the burning in his chest is from lack of air rather than fury.
Shadwell eventually pulls away, and Crowley’s grin this time is slower to grow, eyes shut as he flicks his tongue over his lips. “Do you know what you’re doing, Lance Corporal? Do you really want this?”
Shadwell’s odd, he knows he’s odd, knows it like he knows the pinky on his left hand is crooked, that it’s bent, that he’s bent-
“Yes,” he hisses, because of the rage that rumbles and cracks in his chest like a log coming to life, white-hot anger that needs an outlet.
Crowley’s legs are slotted with his, the column of his neck exposed, and there’s a dark freckle at the base of his throat that he wants to taste.
Crowley chuckles darkly as he opens his eyes. “That’s not what I meant.” Lidded gold eyes appraise him, and Shadwell can’t move.
None of his guides had warned him about the eyes.
Crowley's voice gets softer, sounding as lost as he feels, searching for something in Shadwell’s face. “What do you want?”
“I—” He can’t breathe. “You— you’re a—”
“Not a witch,” Crowley tilts his head. “So sorry to disappoint.”
“Hell you are,” he scoffs but he doesn’t move. Every instinct telling him to follow his training is ignored in favor of the warmth of the man's body, Crowley’s hands on the back of his neck, Crowley’s lipstick on his teeth.
“Getting warmer,” Crowley takes a moment to swallow, and grinds his leg up ever so slightly. “Answer the question, Malcolm.”
Shadwell is made of smoke and whiskey, stain-glass and neon, park benches and psalms and a thousand broken pieces stitched together, the burden of a secondhand curse weighted on his shoulders—
“I want this,” he says it like he would throw a punch, hard and angry and a little scared, rough and haunted. “I want—”
“Tell me,” came the temptation, the gentle brush of fingers in his hair. “Just one more time, just to be sure.”
“I want you,” he says, breath curling between them and the third affirmation ensnares him, his deal with the devil struck, candle-backlit eyes drawing him in, and Shadwell is so angry with himself he yanks Crowley’s head back and bites the base of his throat, and Crowley moans.
Shadwell wakes up hungover with an ache in his jaw and scattered memories, and the shame burns hot even in his cold shower.
Shadwell doesn’t see Mr. Crowley for the next thirty years.
He doesn’t see a lot of people in those years. Empty spaces where neighbors used to be, tent cities and shallow skin and 4 am vigils held under bridges. Mr. Crowley’s cheques stop coming altogether sometime in 1983. The club in Soho is raided. Shadwell blinks and it becomes a sandwich shop. Shadwell crosses himself when he walks by it.
The city moves on.
His knee gets twisted in a bar fight and he hobbles until it heals wrong. He picks pockets until he starts to stands out too much, his rugged youth fading. His couch surfing turns to shelters and hot food in church basements. He leans outside of cathedrals and listens to the organists play, knobbled fingers trying to find the half-remembered keys.
He takes money from a few key people, clients fading in and out as they catch on to his forged rosters. Mr. Fell is a client that stays, and Shadwell has never been capable of looking him in the eye— this holy man that was everything Shadwell had wanted to be.
Shadwell looks at the well-manicured hands across from his and imagines himself as Cain: envious that his Brother’s sacrifice is favored by God instead of his own. That he has to struggle just to keep his soul clean when this man seems to live comfortably in his duality of sin and repentance.
Shadwell’s uncle, and the second-to-last witchfinder, dies. Shadwell inherits a flat. He has a bed, and a shower, and lives a second-hand life surrounded by memorabilia, too tired to do anything but fall into a self-fulfilling prophecy and truly take over his uncle’s burden of Witchfinder Sergeant.
His new neighbor moves in two weeks later.
Tracy is a retired dancer and sidesteps when he asks what kind.
Two months later they learn they had similar circles in their youth, a few mutual friends.
He renounces the tramps, harlots, and fags of his youth, but regales her with tales of his misadventures with the very same. She tells him of gossip from her own background, tells him of her well-meaning scam involving witchcraft, and he is grudgingly impressed but dismisses it out of principle.
She purses her lips when he’s difficult, and her eyes crinkle when she tells him of a ridiculous client. He sputters and sneers and yells too much, and then one day in early spring she asks him if he would come with her to Miss Rosie’s grave, as she hasn’t been to visit her friend in ever-so-long.
The empty space before ‘friend’ is smooth, and it’s practiced, and he can’t help her because he’s never found the solution himself— but he can make her giggle when he dips into someone’s yard and nicks a bouquet of roses with a spry youth he hasn’t felt in years, making them flee down the street like schoolchildren.
Later, she cleans the cuts the thorns had left on his hands and tells him how much her Miss Rosie had hated roses, but thought that occasional bouts of mischief were good for the soul. Shadwell suggests stealing tulips next year, and is suitably overwhelmed when her laughter holds tears.
They are relics from a missing generation, and her flame-red hair catches in the light. Shadwell’s cursed. He finds himself picking up trinkets for her, bobbles and knick-knacks she would like. He’s cursed. He turns 50 and his memory gets worse. She brings him tea in the morning before her appointments, and they share Sunday dinner on her day off.
After thirty years, he gets a call from a Mr. Crowley. A Mr. Crowley has a need for his services. A Mr. Crowley appears in his life and says he found his business card in the middle of his late father’s belongings. Shadwell doesn’t believe that such a man would’ve had children, but this Mr. Crowley is the spitting image of his father.
Shadwell loses time whenever he meets with him, staring at the tendons of the younger man’s neck, the tattoo at his temple, at the freckle at the base of his throat that he remembers tasting with startling clarity. He stares at the dark lenses and tries desperately to remember what Crowley’s eyes had looked like. He fumbles, accidentally knocking over the salt at the table, and the memory slips through the cracks.
Another decade goes by. Then another.
His routine is broken one summer week when Pulsifer answers his ad.
Shadwell loses a handful of days in the summer of 2019, and it feels like he’s losing control again— but Tracy is there, and things are different and hope sits strange in his chest.
They move to the country. Newton Pulsifer and his witch invite them to their cottage once a month. Fell and Crowley are there. As are neighborhood ruffians that take the cottage by storm. He isn’t sure why exactly they are all there, but he is content to let the group swirl around him, settling himself in an armchair every time.
The weather is getting colder, and darkness falls on the cottage one such day, prompting the children to leave earlier than usual.
Light and movement spill from the kitchen, warm spices floating through the air as Fell and Device crowd over the stove. Laughter crashes through the walls, the porch light outside flickering like a neon sign as Tracy and Crowley share a cigarette, huddled together. He can see them through the window, and he watches as Crowley tilts his head back to blow out smoke, exposing a bruise at the base of his throat, and it’s so intimately familiar—
“Mr. Shadwell?”
Newton offers him a mug of mulled wine and he grunts his thanks as he takes it, the heat making the joints in his knuckles throb. He goes back to staring through the window at the smoke twisting up into the night air.
“I used to know his father,” he says, strangely perturbed.
Newt turns his head to follow his gaze, and when he speaks its an octave higher. “Mr. Crowley?”
Shadwell grunts.
Newt makes a series of faces that are an apparent attempt to not look panicked. “His. His father? Are you sure?”
Shadwell hunches further into his chair and decides he doesn’t have the energy to figure out what’s got the boy so wound up this time.
“Have you ever been cursed, laddie?” He finds himself asking, and is even more surprised to find that the boy nods, apparently relieved by the change in topic.
“I didn’t really know to call it that until recently, but yes.”
Shadwell was fairly confident they were talking about different things, but that was also something he was used too in most conversations anyway.
“How do you handle it boy, knowing that you’re damned for Hell?”
Newt no longer stutters when these things are asked of him, but his eyebrows do come together. “I don’t actually think that’s related to my curse.”
Shadwell harrumphs into his mug. “It’s related all right.”
“Do... you think you’re cursed, Mr. Shadwell?” Newton asks, not unreasonably.
“All witchfinders are cursed,” he mutters as he sips. “Because of our proximity to witches.”
They hear laughter from outside, high and bright.
“Is your curse,” Newt offers after a moment, “a bad thing?”
That is enough to shake Shadwell out of his mood, and he scowls. “What’re you on about?”
“Your curse,” Newt says again. “Being around witches. Is it a bad thing?”
He has moved to the country. He has sold his uncle’s flat and donated his things. He takes walks with Tracy on his arm, and has a cane for his leg, and he has fixed up the pipe organ in the local parish and plays it during service.
“No,” he admits, “It’s not. Not at all.”
The wine is warm and soothing on his tongue, and it’s odd to say it, odder still that he feels melancholic from it. It’s a weight that has been lifted from his shoulders, but it’s replaced by a stone in his stomach the size of fifty wasted years and heavy with survivor’s guilt.
Mr. Crowley is staring at him through the window.
Shadwell suddenly remembers what he would find if he lifts up those glasses.
Shadwell looks away, into the kitchen where the latest season of the Great British Bake Off was being discussed. He does not remember how old Mr. Fell is supposed to be.
He sets down his mug, and watches as his left hand trembles.
He looks up, and Crowley is sitting where Newt was supposed to be. He smells like smoke.
“Mr. Crowley,” he croaks, and feels decades younger. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Crowley’s smile is slow and easy, and he pushes his glasses up to the top of his head. “Malcolm. Everyone’s heading home. Your lady awaits.”
“But I— I’m—”
“I know,” Crowley says, and the gold band on his finger matches his eyes. “It’s alright.”
Shadwell stares. “What do I do now?”
“What do you want?” Crowley asks, and it sounds a lot like you can tell me.
“I don’t want anything to change.” He admits, and he has never felt older.
“You’re exactly the same as you’ve always been,” Crowley says. “Liking both didn’t stop you from falling in love.”
“Then why do I feel so different?”
Crowley’s smile is gentle. The touch to the back of his hand careful as he gets the tremors in his left hand to still. His voice is soft. “Maybe you finally broke that curse of yours.”
Tracy calls for him from the other room. Crowley slides his glasses back on.
“Go home, Malcolm.”
He does.