Happy Holidays, hoshi_ryo!
Dec. 29th, 2020 05:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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go_exchangeTitle: BewareBnB
Recipient: hoshi_ryo
Rating: Teen
Pairing: Aziraphale/Crowley
Warnings: Mild horror elements
Prompt/Request: Aziraphale & or / Crowley, the very awkward AirBRB rental that turns out to have a slight monster infestation and a tendency to slip through space/time like a TARDIS with busted steering & brakes (and also the door tends to get stuck), any rating. Worldbuilding, humor, crack, horror (especially classic horror & weird fiction), literary crossovers
Summary: I tried to do just that but with a little holiday flourish too. I hope you like it!
"Well, I appreciate the thought, my dear, but I'm not sure I understand exactly how this service works."
Crowley sighed, waving his impressively expensive new phone around, annoyed that it was going unappreciated. "Gig economy, Aziraphale. I have to say that for once I'm a little bit impressed with my home office. I only suggested that it was a good idea for people to hire themselves out to drive strangers around in their own cars - but there's actually an innovative thinker Downstairs. Bound to happen. Enough people are dying glued to their mobiles now to influence the aesthetics down there, I guess. As the kids say. So now, you can actually rent out a random person's house for a stay!"
"That seems rather...invasive and uncomfortable."
"Yes! Exactly! And it's led to a whole new round of, shall we say, entrepreneurship."
"Well," Aziraphale said, pouring himself another glass of wine. "I'm told by my people that we're supposed to approve of that. In a certain limited sense."
Crowley set the phone down for a moment and slithered his hand over Aziraphale's knee. "I know...we're not ready to make the...commitment yet. But, remember when we were three sheets to the wind the other night, and ?"
"Not really."
"No, I suppose you wouldn't. BUT. We were...we talked about getting a little cottage someday. Maybe near the sea. Away from all THIS - " Crowley waved his hand in a manner that was emphatic enough to suggest all of London, Heaven, Hell, anything that was not the two of them.
"Oh. Yes," Aziraphale said, flushing slightly pink and looking down. "I do remember that part. I thought it was a lovely idea."
Crowley smiled, and took a deep breath. He looked at Aziraphale's face - chastened, but open and hopeful. "Yes....well, I know we're not ready to, you know, take the plunge, as it were. But I thought....we might want to give it a trial run. For a few days. Because we can now." He pulled up his phone, after some digging, for it had sunk well and deep into the couch cushions. He swiped up and pulled up the picture. "Look!"
Aziraphale looked at the tiny thumbnail, squinting. "It looks pretty, but I can't tell-"
Crowley swiped again to show him more pictures. "It's brand-new construction, only about 300 years. It's got roses, and - " he licked his lips for a moment before delivering the coup de grace - "a library."
That was a risky gambit, because Aziraphale was inclined to be very picky, and if the "library" turned out to be a stack of cheap mass-market paperbacks, he would feel extremely deceived and probably sulk for another half-century. But Crowley had asked around, and there were indeed at least a few rare editions of semi-obscure fiction, and, he had been led to believe, a stash of art books that would have been very incriminating in the 19th century when they were printed. To him, that sounded like enough to go on, with some possible very pleasant side effects.
"But the owners - will they be there? Will we have to explain ourselves?"
"No, that's the glory of it, from Hell's point of view. An app that started out as a way for the desperate to take in boarders has now become another way for the well-off to get well-offer. Owners have a bigger house in the south of France, and a trendier one in London, wouldn't be caught dead in Sussex this season. It'll be all ours."
"Well, if they're as wicked as all that, I'm sure the village would benefit from a rare touch of Heavenly influence," Aziraphale said.
"They're not wicked - well, not the people anyway. Most of them, just trying to get by. You know how it is," Crowley said, although of course neither he nor Aziraphale really did.
So they packed up, and set out for a taste of the country life. With London in the Bentley's rear-view mirror, Aziraphale seemed to relax a little and settle down into the passenger seat like a brooding pigeon - though not, sadly, a passenger pigeon, those are extinct enough to be beyond even Crowley's revival powers.
"It's so green out here," he said.
"Yes," Crowley replied. "Some kind of chemical. Chlorophyll, I think it's called."
"So London is sort of ... chloro-empty?
"Oh husssshhhh."
***
The cottage, Crowley was pleasantly surprised to see, really did match the photographs. It was an old house of stone, with thatched roof and white fence, surrounded by a riotous garden of flowers that made Crowley's heart leap. Above it on a hillside, rolling grass went on as far as the eye could see, with the occasional windswept tree and a white dotting of sheep. When the wind blew from the east, it carried the scent of the sea.
"It's beautiful," Aziraphale said.
"Well, try to sound a little less shocked," Crowley said, grinning.
The Bentley's engine tinked happily as it sat in the driveway.
Inside, the cottage was a very picture of snugness and comfort. It had none of the sleek modern aesthetic Crowley usually preferred, but for this place, that seemed right. At least the kitchen was very smartly outfitted - not that Crowley knew how to use anything in it, but then, he'd never needed to. Sleek black matte at least made him feel a little more in his element.
A gasp from another room, and then a happy sort of giggle. With a smile, Crowley went to see what had made the angel so happy.
He was in the library, of course. "To be honest, Crowley, I thought these were probably the sort of dreadful fake books that people buy in matched sets to make other people who also don't read think they're smart. Or maybe even worse...abridged editions." He gave a little shudder. Crowley braced himself for another monologue on this subject, but it wasn't coming. "But they aren't! They're real! Oh, I haven't taken one out yet. But I can smell them. An angel knows these things!"
"I imagine anyone who's run the same bookshop for three hundred years also might, angel or not," Crowley said.
Aziraphale started to reach for a particularly beguiling volume in dark red before Crowley stopped him. "Uh-uh. Didn't you say anticipation makes everything better? I think it's time for lunch, don't you? And maybe a walk through the garden?"
Something about those books made him a little uneasy. Not just the usual threat of losing Aziraphale's attention completely for months at a stretch. There was something that pinged his demonic senses as just a tiny tad spooky. Normally, he was all in favour of spooky. But this wasn't really the kind that he liked. Not the kind he was used to.
***
Crowley blinked rapidly, more often in a few moments than he had in the prior decade. Certain that something must have come loose in his brain somehow, he shook his head several times. Then he got up his courage and opened the curtain again.
The listing had promised an "ocean view." (Which had been a bit of a stretch). He was sure they hadn't meant this.
The window was filled with a brightly colored coral reef, with tall trees of kelp swaying gently in the current. A rather large clownfish bumped up against the glass and regarded Crowley with the same kind of wide-eyed, mouth-gaping curiosity that he must be showing in his turn to it.
Wavy tentacles drifted by from some large creature that was mercifully outside of Crowley's limited line of vision.
He nearly jumped out of his skin when a dark, handsome man appeared out of virtually nowhere and said, "Remarkable, isn't it? It's a privilege to live down here among these fascinating creatures, far from the pretensions and cruelties of men."
Crowley didn't know if ravenous and grotesque sea creatures were capable of pretension, but cruelty certainly seemed to be in their wheelhouse. The clownfish was devoured by a shark before his eyes.
The interior of the room looked very different than it had before. Great wheels and gears in brass and steel aligned the walls. It was cutting edge tech for a century and a half ago, and it looked very very new. "I spared no expense in the outfitting of my ship. Men of the world would kill for this knowledge. I don't intend to let them."
"Who are you?" Crowley asked.
"Oh, no one."
“That’s...that’s all right then. Think I’ll just go to bed. Carry on.” Crowley tried to make a smooth exit, but a slim little tentacle curled up from the floor, wrapped around his ankle, and tripped him.
When he’d recovered his wits, the cottage looked normal again. He just thought he heard a lapping of waves.
***
Aziraphale caught a handsome burglar in his bedroom.
Do not think for a moment that he didn't consider all the possibilities before he remembered that the normal human reaction would be fear, so he decided to perform that.
"Excuse me, SIR!" he demanded, and if he temporarily manifested a form with enough wings and eyes and fire that would justify saying "be not afraid," and if he in fact did that, well, it was just an instinct and he was startled.
"Oh, I'm so very sorry," said the intruder, tall and lanky with fetching black curls. "I'm from the security firm. Just testing out your safe, you understand. We want all our customers to be secure. It's far too easy to break into your - um..." A Regency silver snuffbox dropped from his sleeve as Crowley appeared in the doorway. "Just a demonstration, never mind. Hello, I'm AJ!"
"So am I," Crowley said, displaying too many teeth that were too sharp.
The handsome cracksman hissed at a corner. "Get out, Bunny."
A nervous little pastiche of a man slinked out of the shadows and nearly tripped on them.
"Please pardon my partner," the alleged AJ said, having astutely picked up on a certain vibe that Aziraphale and Crowley had yet to fully pick up on themselves. "He grew up in the closet, he's still very insecure. You're gentlemen of the world, I can tell. Text me when you're back in London and you want the best seats for a cricket match. Ciao!" He blew a kiss and was gone.
Aziraphale counted the silverware. The number did not match. One fork upended itself and ran away on its four little tines like half a spider.
"You do like those stories about dashing criminals, don't you, angel?" Crowley said, wiggling his eyebrows.
Aziraphale huffed a bit. "It's not what you're thinking, Crowley. I'm sure Mr. Raffles has never ripped a bodice in his whole life."
"Better ask Bunny about that," Crowley said, slithering away.
***
The knock at the door was harsh and persistent, and the loud shouting voices gave Crowley the heebie-jeebies. He'd seen mobs before. He really really didn't like them.
"Answer the door, please!" Aziraphale said crisply. Crowley took a deep breath, and he did.
The group of revelers was smaller and happier than they'd sounded, their cheeks and noses red from more than the cold. But the leader of the procession...couldn't really be said to have either. Crowley gaped for a moment at the disorienting spectacle of a sharp white horse's skull, decorated with ribbons and bells, with cloth ears on its crown and glass baubles in its eye sockets. It took him a bit too long to realise that it was hoisted on a pole, held by someone draped in a white sheet beneath.
One of them stepped forward and started to, Crowley supposed someone else might say, sing.
This is a rap battle
And you're going to lose
Sing us a song
Or we'll take all your booze
Crowley pondered this request and went nearly blank. Finally, he started to sing, "The old grey mare, she ain't what she used to be..."
"RUDE" yelled the crowd, surging forward.
"For fuck's sake," Crowley growled, gathering an armload of empty wine bottles. With a hissing incantation and a gesture that was more arcane-looking than strictly necessarily, Crowley refilled them all and handed them out.
As the happy revellers marched away, the horse-skull-head turned around and regarded Crowley with its red glass eyes, which swivelled unnervingly in its sockets.
"Diolch," it said, in a voice that was clearly not coming from the human in the sheet.
"What bizarre individuals," Crowley said incredulously after they had gone, presumably to terrorise the next unsuspecting cottage with their equine necromancy.
"They're not bizarre, my dear, they're just Welsh," Aziraphale said.
"What are they doing in bloody Sussex, then?"
"Oh. OH." Aziraphale's hand flew up to his mouth. "That might have been my doing, I'm afraid." He went into the library and returned with a volume of Dylan Thomas stories. "Couldn't resist a reread of 'Child's Christmas,' you know. I never miss it."
"Is there a big bloody dead horse skull in it?"
"Not that I can recall."
***
They were just sitting around enjoying the calm evening - with several bottles of wine that were never depleted because they didn't have to be - when Aziraphale noticed something disturbing about the walls.
"I say, were they that colour before?"
"Think you're a bit in your cups, aren't you?" Nonetheless Crowley gave a glance, peering with closer attention than he had before - though he had to confess he was a little blurry. "Oh...I see what you mean. They weren't quite so..."
"Moist," Aziraphale concluded, with a flinch that suggested the very word disgusted him.
"Almost...meaty," Crowley said, getting up to look closer.
A little creature that might have been a rodent of some type - might have once been a rodent but now was largely a rodent skeleton - seemed to skitter away and hide under a kitchen cabinet. As Crowley approached the wall, he also became aware of something very unpleasant going on with his feet. Or beneath them. There was a revolting springiness, and a bit of a tendency to squelch.
The wall had gone purplish-red, and, he was afraid, pulsating. Foolhardily, he reached out to touch -
And then the walls began to contract. To press together - the wet ceiling to sink and the floor to rise. 'GET OUT!" Crowley yelled to Aziraphale, and the angel lost no time. Strands of tissue like gristle tried to hold the door shut, but they were no match for an angel and a demon's combined terrified force.
When they burst through, out into the empty air, gasping for breath, the landscape had changed. There were great grey and brown trees, and above them the dark blue edges of shadowy mountain ridges.
A man sat on a rock, with a silver-stringed guitar. When he spoke, he sounded ever so very American. "Reckon you found yourselves a gardinel," he said. "Take a look back there."
The house had changed dramatically - it was an ancient wooden shack fallen to ruin.
"Didn't you see the bones?" the man asked. "Anyway. Can't rightly tell why they're called that. They're hungry eatin' creatures, disguise themselves like an old cabin, prey on the weary traveller. Can't say for sure as I can fix it, but I'll try my best." He took out a book from his pack - the Long-Lost Friend, it said - and he started to strum his guitar while he chanted odd words. Halfway through the second verse, the house had returned to its picturesque cottage roots.
"Should be safe to go back in," he said.
Aziraphale stepped forward. "Well, I have to say, thank you very much, Mr....?"
"Just call me John," the man said.
Crowley was starting to get a prickle at the back of his neck that suggested what might be the right thing to do. "Do you want to come in, John? We don't have a lot of food but we have wine."
"Well, that's right kind of you. Don't mind if I do."
When they stepped back into the house, it was very much once again the cozy cottage. They put John up for the night in the guest bedroom, after he'd played them a remarkable set of songs neither had heard before, and in the morning he wasn't there, although Aziraphale and Crowley had been up all night and never saw him leave.
***
Crowley got an alert on his mobile that was no sound or ringtone he'd ever programmed in, or indeed even heard before.
The message was ostensibly from the cottage's very modern owners, but inexplicably in the style of a telegram from a century ago.
STAYING IN FRANCE STOP. DON'T WANT THE COTTAGE ANYMORE. WILL SELL VERY CHEAP STOP.
Crowley showed the text to Aziraphale. They both made a show of taking several deep breaths.
"It is very nice.... when it's not..."
The odd and eldritch sound again.
WATCH OUT FOR THE NEIGHBOURS STOP. THE OLD GAY COUPLE WITH THE BEEHIVES STOP. THE TALL SKINNY ONE IS VERY NOSY STOP.
"Well," Aziraphale said carefully. "You did worry that you'd be bored outside of London. I don't think we've been very bored, do you?"
Crowley was just thinking of his sleek black matte credit card. He had no real idea how much a cottage cost, but he thought it would be a really long time before Hell noticed the expense invoice.
While he pondered, they both noticed a weird sound in the library. Aziraphale went to investigate first - that being his territory - and Crowley close behind, almost ready to reach out for his hand.
"OOK!" came the sound again. There was a strange creature there - Crowley was just about to call it a monkey, and then felt a sort of virtual slap to his head advising him against it. It was clearly an ape of some sort, with long orange fur and a surprisingly sensitive face. With gestures, the creature pointed to the long bookshelves and pointed at Aziraphale, and then back again.
"Oh," the angel gasped. "Oh, I think I understand now." He looked at the strange beast. "I think - I think I might recognise you. Is this a portal to L-Space?"
The ape nodded emphatically.
"And you were absolutely framed, weren't you?" Aziraphale asked. "Dupin was, as the young people say, I think, 'full of it,' no orangutan would murder like that, isn't that true? You're a Librarian!"
The orangutan hopped up and down happily. "OOK." Then he gave a grunt and lurched away through the bookshelves, and the small room that the library had originally seemed to have become vast, as he went. So much bigger on the inside. Bookshelves seemed to stretch for miles.
"Oh, Crowley," Aziraphale sighed. "If we could, maybe?"
"As you wish," Crowley said, having already typed in all but one number of that credit card.
It was weird, but it was now home.
Happy Holidays, Hoshi_Ryo, from your Secret Writer!
Recipient: hoshi_ryo
Rating: Teen
Pairing: Aziraphale/Crowley
Warnings: Mild horror elements
Prompt/Request: Aziraphale & or / Crowley, the very awkward AirBRB rental that turns out to have a slight monster infestation and a tendency to slip through space/time like a TARDIS with busted steering & brakes (and also the door tends to get stuck), any rating. Worldbuilding, humor, crack, horror (especially classic horror & weird fiction), literary crossovers
Summary: I tried to do just that but with a little holiday flourish too. I hope you like it!
"Well, I appreciate the thought, my dear, but I'm not sure I understand exactly how this service works."
Crowley sighed, waving his impressively expensive new phone around, annoyed that it was going unappreciated. "Gig economy, Aziraphale. I have to say that for once I'm a little bit impressed with my home office. I only suggested that it was a good idea for people to hire themselves out to drive strangers around in their own cars - but there's actually an innovative thinker Downstairs. Bound to happen. Enough people are dying glued to their mobiles now to influence the aesthetics down there, I guess. As the kids say. So now, you can actually rent out a random person's house for a stay!"
"That seems rather...invasive and uncomfortable."
"Yes! Exactly! And it's led to a whole new round of, shall we say, entrepreneurship."
"Well," Aziraphale said, pouring himself another glass of wine. "I'm told by my people that we're supposed to approve of that. In a certain limited sense."
Crowley set the phone down for a moment and slithered his hand over Aziraphale's knee. "I know...we're not ready to make the...commitment yet. But, remember when we were three sheets to the wind the other night, and ?"
"Not really."
"No, I suppose you wouldn't. BUT. We were...we talked about getting a little cottage someday. Maybe near the sea. Away from all THIS - " Crowley waved his hand in a manner that was emphatic enough to suggest all of London, Heaven, Hell, anything that was not the two of them.
"Oh. Yes," Aziraphale said, flushing slightly pink and looking down. "I do remember that part. I thought it was a lovely idea."
Crowley smiled, and took a deep breath. He looked at Aziraphale's face - chastened, but open and hopeful. "Yes....well, I know we're not ready to, you know, take the plunge, as it were. But I thought....we might want to give it a trial run. For a few days. Because we can now." He pulled up his phone, after some digging, for it had sunk well and deep into the couch cushions. He swiped up and pulled up the picture. "Look!"
Aziraphale looked at the tiny thumbnail, squinting. "It looks pretty, but I can't tell-"
Crowley swiped again to show him more pictures. "It's brand-new construction, only about 300 years. It's got roses, and - " he licked his lips for a moment before delivering the coup de grace - "a library."
That was a risky gambit, because Aziraphale was inclined to be very picky, and if the "library" turned out to be a stack of cheap mass-market paperbacks, he would feel extremely deceived and probably sulk for another half-century. But Crowley had asked around, and there were indeed at least a few rare editions of semi-obscure fiction, and, he had been led to believe, a stash of art books that would have been very incriminating in the 19th century when they were printed. To him, that sounded like enough to go on, with some possible very pleasant side effects.
"But the owners - will they be there? Will we have to explain ourselves?"
"No, that's the glory of it, from Hell's point of view. An app that started out as a way for the desperate to take in boarders has now become another way for the well-off to get well-offer. Owners have a bigger house in the south of France, and a trendier one in London, wouldn't be caught dead in Sussex this season. It'll be all ours."
"Well, if they're as wicked as all that, I'm sure the village would benefit from a rare touch of Heavenly influence," Aziraphale said.
"They're not wicked - well, not the people anyway. Most of them, just trying to get by. You know how it is," Crowley said, although of course neither he nor Aziraphale really did.
So they packed up, and set out for a taste of the country life. With London in the Bentley's rear-view mirror, Aziraphale seemed to relax a little and settle down into the passenger seat like a brooding pigeon - though not, sadly, a passenger pigeon, those are extinct enough to be beyond even Crowley's revival powers.
"It's so green out here," he said.
"Yes," Crowley replied. "Some kind of chemical. Chlorophyll, I think it's called."
"So London is sort of ... chloro-empty?
"Oh husssshhhh."
***
The cottage, Crowley was pleasantly surprised to see, really did match the photographs. It was an old house of stone, with thatched roof and white fence, surrounded by a riotous garden of flowers that made Crowley's heart leap. Above it on a hillside, rolling grass went on as far as the eye could see, with the occasional windswept tree and a white dotting of sheep. When the wind blew from the east, it carried the scent of the sea.
"It's beautiful," Aziraphale said.
"Well, try to sound a little less shocked," Crowley said, grinning.
The Bentley's engine tinked happily as it sat in the driveway.
Inside, the cottage was a very picture of snugness and comfort. It had none of the sleek modern aesthetic Crowley usually preferred, but for this place, that seemed right. At least the kitchen was very smartly outfitted - not that Crowley knew how to use anything in it, but then, he'd never needed to. Sleek black matte at least made him feel a little more in his element.
A gasp from another room, and then a happy sort of giggle. With a smile, Crowley went to see what had made the angel so happy.
He was in the library, of course. "To be honest, Crowley, I thought these were probably the sort of dreadful fake books that people buy in matched sets to make other people who also don't read think they're smart. Or maybe even worse...abridged editions." He gave a little shudder. Crowley braced himself for another monologue on this subject, but it wasn't coming. "But they aren't! They're real! Oh, I haven't taken one out yet. But I can smell them. An angel knows these things!"
"I imagine anyone who's run the same bookshop for three hundred years also might, angel or not," Crowley said.
Aziraphale started to reach for a particularly beguiling volume in dark red before Crowley stopped him. "Uh-uh. Didn't you say anticipation makes everything better? I think it's time for lunch, don't you? And maybe a walk through the garden?"
Something about those books made him a little uneasy. Not just the usual threat of losing Aziraphale's attention completely for months at a stretch. There was something that pinged his demonic senses as just a tiny tad spooky. Normally, he was all in favour of spooky. But this wasn't really the kind that he liked. Not the kind he was used to.
***
Crowley blinked rapidly, more often in a few moments than he had in the prior decade. Certain that something must have come loose in his brain somehow, he shook his head several times. Then he got up his courage and opened the curtain again.
The listing had promised an "ocean view." (Which had been a bit of a stretch). He was sure they hadn't meant this.
The window was filled with a brightly colored coral reef, with tall trees of kelp swaying gently in the current. A rather large clownfish bumped up against the glass and regarded Crowley with the same kind of wide-eyed, mouth-gaping curiosity that he must be showing in his turn to it.
Wavy tentacles drifted by from some large creature that was mercifully outside of Crowley's limited line of vision.
He nearly jumped out of his skin when a dark, handsome man appeared out of virtually nowhere and said, "Remarkable, isn't it? It's a privilege to live down here among these fascinating creatures, far from the pretensions and cruelties of men."
Crowley didn't know if ravenous and grotesque sea creatures were capable of pretension, but cruelty certainly seemed to be in their wheelhouse. The clownfish was devoured by a shark before his eyes.
The interior of the room looked very different than it had before. Great wheels and gears in brass and steel aligned the walls. It was cutting edge tech for a century and a half ago, and it looked very very new. "I spared no expense in the outfitting of my ship. Men of the world would kill for this knowledge. I don't intend to let them."
"Who are you?" Crowley asked.
"Oh, no one."
“That’s...that’s all right then. Think I’ll just go to bed. Carry on.” Crowley tried to make a smooth exit, but a slim little tentacle curled up from the floor, wrapped around his ankle, and tripped him.
When he’d recovered his wits, the cottage looked normal again. He just thought he heard a lapping of waves.
***
Aziraphale caught a handsome burglar in his bedroom.
Do not think for a moment that he didn't consider all the possibilities before he remembered that the normal human reaction would be fear, so he decided to perform that.
"Excuse me, SIR!" he demanded, and if he temporarily manifested a form with enough wings and eyes and fire that would justify saying "be not afraid," and if he in fact did that, well, it was just an instinct and he was startled.
"Oh, I'm so very sorry," said the intruder, tall and lanky with fetching black curls. "I'm from the security firm. Just testing out your safe, you understand. We want all our customers to be secure. It's far too easy to break into your - um..." A Regency silver snuffbox dropped from his sleeve as Crowley appeared in the doorway. "Just a demonstration, never mind. Hello, I'm AJ!"
"So am I," Crowley said, displaying too many teeth that were too sharp.
The handsome cracksman hissed at a corner. "Get out, Bunny."
A nervous little pastiche of a man slinked out of the shadows and nearly tripped on them.
"Please pardon my partner," the alleged AJ said, having astutely picked up on a certain vibe that Aziraphale and Crowley had yet to fully pick up on themselves. "He grew up in the closet, he's still very insecure. You're gentlemen of the world, I can tell. Text me when you're back in London and you want the best seats for a cricket match. Ciao!" He blew a kiss and was gone.
Aziraphale counted the silverware. The number did not match. One fork upended itself and ran away on its four little tines like half a spider.
"You do like those stories about dashing criminals, don't you, angel?" Crowley said, wiggling his eyebrows.
Aziraphale huffed a bit. "It's not what you're thinking, Crowley. I'm sure Mr. Raffles has never ripped a bodice in his whole life."
"Better ask Bunny about that," Crowley said, slithering away.
***
The knock at the door was harsh and persistent, and the loud shouting voices gave Crowley the heebie-jeebies. He'd seen mobs before. He really really didn't like them.
"Answer the door, please!" Aziraphale said crisply. Crowley took a deep breath, and he did.
The group of revelers was smaller and happier than they'd sounded, their cheeks and noses red from more than the cold. But the leader of the procession...couldn't really be said to have either. Crowley gaped for a moment at the disorienting spectacle of a sharp white horse's skull, decorated with ribbons and bells, with cloth ears on its crown and glass baubles in its eye sockets. It took him a bit too long to realise that it was hoisted on a pole, held by someone draped in a white sheet beneath.
One of them stepped forward and started to, Crowley supposed someone else might say, sing.
This is a rap battle
And you're going to lose
Sing us a song
Or we'll take all your booze
Crowley pondered this request and went nearly blank. Finally, he started to sing, "The old grey mare, she ain't what she used to be..."
"RUDE" yelled the crowd, surging forward.
"For fuck's sake," Crowley growled, gathering an armload of empty wine bottles. With a hissing incantation and a gesture that was more arcane-looking than strictly necessarily, Crowley refilled them all and handed them out.
As the happy revellers marched away, the horse-skull-head turned around and regarded Crowley with its red glass eyes, which swivelled unnervingly in its sockets.
"Diolch," it said, in a voice that was clearly not coming from the human in the sheet.
"What bizarre individuals," Crowley said incredulously after they had gone, presumably to terrorise the next unsuspecting cottage with their equine necromancy.
"They're not bizarre, my dear, they're just Welsh," Aziraphale said.
"What are they doing in bloody Sussex, then?"
"Oh. OH." Aziraphale's hand flew up to his mouth. "That might have been my doing, I'm afraid." He went into the library and returned with a volume of Dylan Thomas stories. "Couldn't resist a reread of 'Child's Christmas,' you know. I never miss it."
"Is there a big bloody dead horse skull in it?"
"Not that I can recall."
***
They were just sitting around enjoying the calm evening - with several bottles of wine that were never depleted because they didn't have to be - when Aziraphale noticed something disturbing about the walls.
"I say, were they that colour before?"
"Think you're a bit in your cups, aren't you?" Nonetheless Crowley gave a glance, peering with closer attention than he had before - though he had to confess he was a little blurry. "Oh...I see what you mean. They weren't quite so..."
"Moist," Aziraphale concluded, with a flinch that suggested the very word disgusted him.
"Almost...meaty," Crowley said, getting up to look closer.
A little creature that might have been a rodent of some type - might have once been a rodent but now was largely a rodent skeleton - seemed to skitter away and hide under a kitchen cabinet. As Crowley approached the wall, he also became aware of something very unpleasant going on with his feet. Or beneath them. There was a revolting springiness, and a bit of a tendency to squelch.
The wall had gone purplish-red, and, he was afraid, pulsating. Foolhardily, he reached out to touch -
And then the walls began to contract. To press together - the wet ceiling to sink and the floor to rise. 'GET OUT!" Crowley yelled to Aziraphale, and the angel lost no time. Strands of tissue like gristle tried to hold the door shut, but they were no match for an angel and a demon's combined terrified force.
When they burst through, out into the empty air, gasping for breath, the landscape had changed. There were great grey and brown trees, and above them the dark blue edges of shadowy mountain ridges.
A man sat on a rock, with a silver-stringed guitar. When he spoke, he sounded ever so very American. "Reckon you found yourselves a gardinel," he said. "Take a look back there."
The house had changed dramatically - it was an ancient wooden shack fallen to ruin.
"Didn't you see the bones?" the man asked. "Anyway. Can't rightly tell why they're called that. They're hungry eatin' creatures, disguise themselves like an old cabin, prey on the weary traveller. Can't say for sure as I can fix it, but I'll try my best." He took out a book from his pack - the Long-Lost Friend, it said - and he started to strum his guitar while he chanted odd words. Halfway through the second verse, the house had returned to its picturesque cottage roots.
"Should be safe to go back in," he said.
Aziraphale stepped forward. "Well, I have to say, thank you very much, Mr....?"
"Just call me John," the man said.
Crowley was starting to get a prickle at the back of his neck that suggested what might be the right thing to do. "Do you want to come in, John? We don't have a lot of food but we have wine."
"Well, that's right kind of you. Don't mind if I do."
When they stepped back into the house, it was very much once again the cozy cottage. They put John up for the night in the guest bedroom, after he'd played them a remarkable set of songs neither had heard before, and in the morning he wasn't there, although Aziraphale and Crowley had been up all night and never saw him leave.
***
Crowley got an alert on his mobile that was no sound or ringtone he'd ever programmed in, or indeed even heard before.
The message was ostensibly from the cottage's very modern owners, but inexplicably in the style of a telegram from a century ago.
STAYING IN FRANCE STOP. DON'T WANT THE COTTAGE ANYMORE. WILL SELL VERY CHEAP STOP.
Crowley showed the text to Aziraphale. They both made a show of taking several deep breaths.
"It is very nice.... when it's not..."
The odd and eldritch sound again.
WATCH OUT FOR THE NEIGHBOURS STOP. THE OLD GAY COUPLE WITH THE BEEHIVES STOP. THE TALL SKINNY ONE IS VERY NOSY STOP.
"Well," Aziraphale said carefully. "You did worry that you'd be bored outside of London. I don't think we've been very bored, do you?"
Crowley was just thinking of his sleek black matte credit card. He had no real idea how much a cottage cost, but he thought it would be a really long time before Hell noticed the expense invoice.
While he pondered, they both noticed a weird sound in the library. Aziraphale went to investigate first - that being his territory - and Crowley close behind, almost ready to reach out for his hand.
"OOK!" came the sound again. There was a strange creature there - Crowley was just about to call it a monkey, and then felt a sort of virtual slap to his head advising him against it. It was clearly an ape of some sort, with long orange fur and a surprisingly sensitive face. With gestures, the creature pointed to the long bookshelves and pointed at Aziraphale, and then back again.
"Oh," the angel gasped. "Oh, I think I understand now." He looked at the strange beast. "I think - I think I might recognise you. Is this a portal to L-Space?"
The ape nodded emphatically.
"And you were absolutely framed, weren't you?" Aziraphale asked. "Dupin was, as the young people say, I think, 'full of it,' no orangutan would murder like that, isn't that true? You're a Librarian!"
The orangutan hopped up and down happily. "OOK." Then he gave a grunt and lurched away through the bookshelves, and the small room that the library had originally seemed to have become vast, as he went. So much bigger on the inside. Bookshelves seemed to stretch for miles.
"Oh, Crowley," Aziraphale sighed. "If we could, maybe?"
"As you wish," Crowley said, having already typed in all but one number of that credit card.
It was weird, but it was now home.
Happy Holidays, Hoshi_Ryo, from your Secret Writer!
(no subject)
Date: 2020-12-31 06:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-01-01 04:39 am (UTC)It's a nice area, really. Very scenic, pretty safe...and actually a rainforest.
Also, you can get a collection of the short stories for free online--Baen Books offered it on one of the free CDs and the images are around. Getting the novels is significantly harder.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-01-01 06:49 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-01-04 08:16 pm (UTC)You used to be able to get Who Fears the Devil reasonably priced on Kindle but I can't find it now.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-01-01 04:27 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-01-04 07:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-01-02 04:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-01-04 07:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-01-02 07:44 pm (UTC)Also I liked the style and the humour of the story.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-01-04 07:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-01-04 03:43 am (UTC)“Aziraphale seemed to relax a little and settle down into the passenger seat like a brooding pigeon” Aw :)
CHLOROEMPTY Aziraphale I love you (and this pun, secret author!)
From the first description I want to stay there so bad!!! Let’s see how I feel once the fun begins…
Love Aziraphale being delighted about the REAL books :D And by smell, of course. Book smell is important!
UNDERWATER!?
Ok I think I recognize Raffles here? Haven’t read it but I’ve seen it on tumblr. So now I’m wondering if the first was also from a book! I LOVE this idea.
Ooh I do hope the bee couple is Holmes and Watson…
I adore Crowley buying the cottage before Aziraphale even says he wants it because he just KNOWS. This is wonderful :D Once the reveal is up, would you mind telling me what some of the references were? Or is that just part of the mystery?
(no subject)
Date: 2021-01-04 05:41 am (UTC)If you like them, try the Arsine Lupin stories too. (In French, if you can read French; the English translations vary, for multiple reasons. Some of the older translations are out of copyright, but they cannot be expected to necessarily be faithful as modern translations as it was more acceptable to cut material to make it more acceptable to the audience that would be reading it; Christine in Phantom of the Opera is...a lot less likable if you read the French version, I'm told.)
(no subject)
Date: 2021-01-04 05:59 pm (UTC)Ooh, a gentleman detective :D I'll add him to my list! I'd like to try reading French, because I did take classes in it for years, and I watch youtube videos in French to practice, but I've never been sure if I could actually read a book that wasn't meant for learners. But maybe this is the opportunity to do that :)
(no subject)
Date: 2021-01-04 07:43 pm (UTC)The underwater passage is an homage to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne. The dark handsome man is Captain Nemo (which does mean "no one") in Latin.
Yes, that's Raffles & Bunny, the gentleman thief and his lovestruck sidekick. As enjoyable as the stories are in and of themselves, they're even more fun when you know that E. W. Hornung was Arthur Conan Doyle's brother-in-law and if you think there's a little bit of Holmes & Watson parody in there you would be 1000% correct.
The horse-skull procession is just an absolutely gratuitous Mari Lwyd appearance, because Mari Lwyd makes everything better. This is a real Welsh tradition, though I don't believe it is is mentioned in Dylan Thomas's "A Child's Christmas in Wales."
As Hoshi-Ryo said, the man with the guitar is Silver John/John the Balladeer from Manly Wade Wellman's stories, set in the North Carolina mountains. The gardinel is also one of his creations. He was really good at inventing new cryptids that really feel like lived-in folklore.
The bee couple is indeed Holmes and Watson. BUT. They are not actually part of the L-Space madness. They've really just been there all along, for well over a hundred years by now. How are they still alive? ROYAL BEE JELLY! (As in Neil Gaiman's story A Case of Death and Honey)
Of course the orangutan is the Librarian from Discworld, and L-Space is the dimension that connects all libraries and all literary realities. The reference to him being framed and the detective Dupin who's full of it, is a reference to Edgar Allan Poe's story The Murders in the Rue Morgue.
(And what Crowley really means when he says "As you wish" is a nod to The Princess Bride. :D)
(no subject)
Date: 2021-01-10 09:01 pm (UTC)Traditions all over the world really are great XD
Excuse me Manly Wade Wellman is an incredible name and he sounds like a really interesting writer, too!
OH WOW excellent extra Holmes and Watson lore, I love it!
The Princess Bride :D Can't believe I missed that. Again, this was wonderful :D