Happy Holidays, notaspacealien!
Dec. 4th, 2016 03:10 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
goe-mod.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
go_exchangeRecipient: notaspacealien
Characters/Pairings: Aziraphale/Crowley
Rating: G
Word Count: 2,000
Warnings: None.
Notes: The prompt given was: Hellhounds and big black horses that strike sparks with their hooves aren't the only animals among Hell's ranks. I want to see/hear about all of Hell's menagerie, and some experience(s) Crowley, Adam, and/or Dog might have had with them. I very much hope this meets requirements, and that you have a very happy holiday season!
Summary: Something in the shadows softly growled…
Red eyes watched from the darkness.
Naturally cold-blooded, Crowley was used to conserving his energy, to moving as little and efficiently as possible, but even the slightest shift of his weight invoked the hackle-raising feeling of an intensified crimson glare. He took in a deep breath, letting it out slowly with the gentlest edge of a hiss.
Something in the shadows softly growled.
Indistinct shapes loomed in the darkness of the room. The gentle orange street light that bled through the windows did little more than allow him to curse in vaguely the right direction when he crept forward and immediately barked his shin. This was just – this was a terrible idea, frankly, but somewhere along the way he’d picked up the concept of responsibility, possibly at the same time as that unfortunate incident with the houseboat and the boa and the intervention of the Met’s finest. He’d unwillingly become the sort of person-shaped being that couldn’t leave things as Somebody Else’s Problem anymore, and for the last couple of years there hadn’t even been anyone else around to blame.
“Okay,” he muttered, more than halfway under his breath. “Okay, Crowley, we can do this.”
He tightened his hands around the handle of the net, knuckles blanched white from the force of his grip. The light buzzed and flickered to dim life when he smacked his palm against the switch, and he hurled himself forward towards the steady red stare, slamming the fishing net down ahead of him.
“Oh bless it,” he yelped as he overshot; his voice started a cacophony of terrifying yelps and yowls and ominously fluttering feathers that almost covered the scamper of tiny pink feet heading into the main room of the shop.
He’d never catch that bloody gerbil now.
*
‘Hounds’, the shop was called, and Crowley assumed the alliterative pre-modifier was implied.
After the disaster of the failed Apocalypse he’d been on Hell’s Nice List, and no mistake. Songs about Santa Claus didn’t apply here, not unless your concept of presents included a shovel and a shove in the small of his back. Berith’s grinning face was the last thing he’d seen before the door of the Infernal Stables had clanged shut behind him.
He’d never been good with horses. Turned out horses, though, were easy enough to deal with if you didn’t try to ride them, and managed to avoid their bloody great hooves. He’d even – once the odorous accumulation was cleared a little, once the natural gases had dissipated and the sparks struck by massive iron horseshoes had stopped setting everything on fire – been able to whistle while he worked.
That’d probably explained the shift to the zoo-like menagerie (and there is nothing so endearingly terrifying, Crowley discovered, as being slowly yet inexorably pursued by a demonic sloth). That’d lasted a couple of years; Crowley had been mauled, sexually harassed, eaten and regurgitated twice, but he’d still managed to find some small amount of satisfaction in his work. It wasn’t all bad. There was a tree full of evil monkeys, for instance, which managed to remind him of someone he used to know.
“After all,” he told the sloth, which was looking particularly natty in the undersized sunglasses Crowley had conjured up. “At least this way I don’t have to deal with humanity.”
Crowley Jr. … did absolutely nothing, actually, which Crowley chose to take as sage agreement.
It wasn’t like he disliked humans, of course. During his time on Earth he’d actually become rather fond of them. It was just that without the angel’s ameliorating effect – and without the bloody delightful expressions he used to make whenever one of them came into his shop – Crowley’s life just seemed far simpler without them. Which was probably why he’d been stationed up here post-haste, relegated to a cruddy little shop in Tooting Bec where he was tasked with rounding up and corralling whichever little imps had taken on an animal form and scuttled out the back gates to London for a jolly. It wasn’t that they weren’t capable of raising Hell in various kitchens and living rooms around the capital, it was just that Hell liked the extra indignity of making the humans pay for it first.
So far he’d sold an infernal budgie to a house wife up from Portsmouth for the day, and a hellish rabbit to a small child who looked like it could compete with an imp in the mischief stakes. A teenaged goth from Romford had acquired a hamster that wasn’t actually technically damned at all, but had given Crowley a Hell of a nipping.
That was it. For three bloody months, that was the sum total of his interactions with the denizens of this stupid world. The rest of his time was spent feeding, cleaning, and dealing with all the other various necessaries, because when imps took a form they went all in.
So he’d taken up knitting. He’d developed an unfortunate liking for Jeremy Kyle - it was nice to know standards hadn’t fallen, in his absence. He’d considered reading for a moment or two, but none of the armchairs in the back room felt right, and the mesh-covered windows didn’t come near to the gently dusty ambience that he had somehow come to require.
Mostly, Crowley was bored. Bored. That was definitely the word for it. The feeling that something was missing, something important and central and annoying and plump. Boredom was most definitely what it was.
*
Crowley was attempting to work his needles around a particularly difficult winged lace, idly considering if dislocating one of his fingers would make the whole thing a little easier, when the obnoxiously loud door buzzer announced a customer.
He shoved his knitting under the counter – the tangles would occupy his evening at least – and prepared himself for the inanity of –
The level of ambient light really oughtn’t to allow for that golden gleam on his head. His eyes were the blue of an impossible depth of summer sky reflected in a glacial lake. His face emulated the symmetry of Hea- of Above, and the slight curve to his mouth hinted at every last thing Below.
“Oh,” said Crowley. “Shit.”
Adam at thirteen had none of the gangles that puberty usually inflicted. He was tallish and stocky and clear-complexioned. His voice, when he spoke, was warmly mid-range with nary a squeak or a boom to be heard. It was the sort of voice you couldn’t help but listen to, the sort that had you ignoring anything else, like the door into the shop easing open again behind him, for instance.
“Wotcher,” he said. “I found your gerbil.”
The imp was in positive ecstasies, cupped in that perfect hand. It wiggled and squeaked and closed its evil little eyes, although that did nothing to stop its pinpoint marksmanship when Crowley’s finger came in range. He didn’t even need to carry it, just let it hang from its sharp little teeth until he could shake its grip loose in the cage. Crowley slammed the door shut with a vindictive little snort and locked it with a 10mm knitting needle – and this time he was wise enough not to use bamboo.
“Thanks,” he said cautiously, and Adam shrugged, tapping his fingers idly on the side of a fish tank that was decorated with something Crowley could swear was an actual skull.
“Thought I’d come in and check up on the Forces of Darkness,” he said, and Crowley almost preened for a moment before the sarcastic tone filtered in. “Your replacement’s all Thees and Thous and Hasts and what have you, and you call that proper English? ‘Cos I don’t.”
“Well you are very young,” Crowley said, and then bit his tongue – less for answering back to the Antichrist and rather more because he’d sounded like he ought to be wearing a cardigan and battered slippers, and he’d be dea- inconveniently discorporated before he was caught dressing like the angel.
“And you’re proper ancient,” Adam said, unperturbed, “but at least you talk like you’re from this century, even if you do prob’ly capitalise your texts.”
(Crowley always had, if only because after the seventeenth repetition the essay on Declining Standards – which frankly he was all for - had got a little dull. Lately, though, he’d had no one’s number.)
“Well, fassscinating as this is,” Crowley said, losing control of his tongue in his nervousness, “did you – want anything?”
“I dunno,” Adam said vaguely. “Might see about getting you reassigned, ‘cos the trench coat and fedora combo following me about gets me funny looks on the rec grounds.”
Crowley groaned.
“I despair,” he said, “I really do. I don’t know why I even bother with sending those reports Downstairs, if they’re just going to rely on Film Noir to dictate their ideas of stealth.”
“Oh no,” said Adam cheerfully. “It’s not your lot.” He grinned, and picked up a cage full of stick insects that Crowley would swear hadn’t been there five minutes before.
“In exchange for the gerbil,” he said. “It’s for a friend’s birthday. I’m hoping, given where they’ve come from and all, they’ll accidentally set something on fire.” And with that he was gone, the awful blart of the buzzer like a signal that allowed all the bones of Crowley’s back to relax as one; he melted into an uncomfortable puddle on the floor.
“Bloody Nora,” he said.
“Really, my dear,” said a familiar voice.
*
There was, in fact, a trench coat. There was a copy of the Telegraph, with the crossword half-filled in.
“There’s connotations to fedoras nowadays,” Crowley said helpfully, just for the extra moment’s grace before he clambered to his feet.
Aside from the ridiculous outfit, the angel looked just the same as he always had. Flustered, and faintly annoyed, and still somehow like – like that feeling you get when you take your shoes off at the end of a bloody long day. It was a ridiculous thought and Crowley blessed it immediately, banished it back to whatever subconscious height it’d fallen from.
“’Hounds’,” Aziraphale said, gesturing vaguely at the front window. “I assume the alliterative pre-modifier is implied?”
Something squirmed, warm and squishy, in Crowley’s stomach. It was probably, he told himself, gas.
“Been a while,” he said. “’Course, now you’re top thwarter.” He cleared his throat and looked out of plate glass windows that could really do with a clean. “High profile gig in Waterloo, last I heard.”
“Ah,” said Aziraphale uncomfortably. “That. There was an incident with a – it really doesn’t bear repeating I’m afraid, my dear. It was agreed by all parties that I’d probably be better off in Soho, back in my little shop.”
“I miss that shop,” Crowley said without thinking.
“I’m sure it misses you too,” Aziraphale said, and Crowley turned to watch incredulously as his ears flushed a most incredible shade of pink. He leaned forward, resting his hand on the smeared glass of the counter.
“Angel –“
“Anyway, since I’m here,” Aziraphale said, his voice steady and sensible and quite belied by the red of his cheeks, “and since you’re finally back, I’ve been having a little problem that I’d appreciate your assistance with.”
“Oh?” said Crowley.
“I appear to have a mouse problem,” he said, shuffling forward. “Infernal, I’m sure. And you know me, quite helpless. One little squeak and I’m shrieking on a chair.”
“Mmhmm,” said Crowley, who had once seen Aziraphale stop a rampaging Doberman with nothing more than the force of his disappointed glare.
“I’d very much appreciate it if you could come and have a look,” Aziraphale said. Crowley felt a gentle brush of warm skin against his fingers and he looked down as Aziraphale’s fingers wrapped carefully around his.
“Well, you know me,” he said, “I’m a wonder with animals,” and he gently squeezed the angel’s fingers back.
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(no subject)
Date: 2016-12-04 11:34 pm (UTC)The ending - perfect.
(no subject)
Date: 2016-12-05 12:41 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-12-05 02:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-12-05 01:07 pm (UTC)And the end was so cute !
Thank you for sharing!
(Hem. There are a lot of exclamation marks in my comment lol)
(no subject)
Date: 2016-12-08 08:05 pm (UTC)-ImprobableDreams900
(no subject)
Date: 2016-12-09 04:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-12-20 01:57 am (UTC)Awwww This Is Sooo Cuteee!! Well I'll Be Cautious With Sloths from Now On And Also I'm Not Sure How Did You Imagine It But, In My Head, whe Crowley Realizes It IS Aziraphale. And And They Look At Each Other !!! The Staressss The Stares! :) I Liked It A Lot!
(no subject)
Date: 2016-12-22 01:27 pm (UTC)Damn, that ending was sweet! <3
(no subject)
Date: 2016-12-22 02:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2017-01-09 05:15 am (UTC)The sheer hilarity starts there, and it just doesn't stop. Imagining infernal rodents is just innately funny; mice and gerbils are so cute.
Thanks so much for participating, and Happy New Year! <3
(no subject)
Date: 2017-01-10 01:53 am (UTC)BEST.