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go_exchange2021-12-28 05:37 am
goe_mod) wrote in go_exchange2021-12-28 05:37 am
Entry tags:
Happy Holidays, hsavinien!
Title: “Turkish Delight”
Recipient: hsavinien
Author: Sekret!
Rating: General Audiences
Word Count: 2188
Characters: Aziraphale & Crowley, Adam, Brian, Pepper, Wensleydale, random original characters, and a very brief appearance by Dog.
Warnings: N/A
Notes: A combination of two prompts: A bit of an adventure with the Them, and Aziraphale & Crowley somewhere and somewhen. Just the sort of thing I like to see in a prompt!
Summary: It’s Brian’s birthday, and Adam - of course - knows somewhere to go that will be much better than some old funfair.
Turkish Delight
***
“But why don’t I get to choose where we’re going to go for my birthday?” asked Brian with more than a hint of a whine in his voice. He was twelve years old now, which was possibly too old for whining, but it was most definitely not too old for the St. Giles funfair, and his mum had said she’d drive all four of them down later this morning.
“Because I’ve planned somewhere brilliant for us to go, and not somewhere naff….” Brian was just about to protest that his choice wasn’t at all naff, when Adam continued, “...like a funfair.”
Why was Adam always so certain he knew what the Them were thinking? How was he always right when he knew what the Them were thinking? Somewhere at the back of Brian’s mind was a little tickle that meant he knew the answer to both those questions, but he pushed that tickle down and just asked, “Will there be ice cream where we’re going?”
“Of course!” said Adam. “It’s not a birthday without ice cream.”
“Fine then,” Brian grumbled. “Where are we going to go?.”
“We’re going to Turkey.”
Pepper stopped petting Dog and frowned. “Are we going to just pretend to go to Turkey, because if we’re going to pretend to go to Turkey we could start pretending to go now and still be back in time to do what Brian wants later.” The truth was that Pepper was no great fan of kiddy rides and greasy food, but she had recently developed a strong sense of fair play and egalitarianism.
“We’re going to proper Turkey.”
“Istanbul?” asked Wensleydale. “Istanbul is more than 3,900 miles away. If we bicycled there, we wouldn’t arrive until after my birthday, actually.”
“We’re not bicycling to Turkey,” said Pepper, "are we, Adam?”
“Of course not,” he agreed. “We’ll just…go there, right after I send Dog home.”
Dog trotted off obediently, and as soon as his wriggly back end disappeared through the hedges, the Them shivered a bit as a sudden gust of air came out of nowhere, and all at once, they found themselves standing on a cliff face beside a black and white lighthouse.
“Huh,” said Pepper.
“Huh,” Brian and Wensleydale concurred.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
While Şile's town square was not bustling at the moment, neither was it entirely deserted. Two men, both of whom had been visiting the coastal town for the past three days, were seated at a small cafe table beneath the spreading branches of a sycamore tree.
The first man, intent on ignoring the coffee his companion had ordered for him earlier, was dressed in many layers of unrelieved black - trousers, shirt, tie, waistcoat, and jacket - all entirely inappropriate for the unseasonably hot afternoon, which was threatening to top 100°F. His shoes - which Deniz, the young server at the small cafe, believed were also inappropriate, although he couldn’t have said in what precise way - were sharp pointed and high heeled…and appeared to be made of snakeskin.
The second gentleman wore a cream-coloured, silk embroidered kaftan, wrapped with an old-fashioned kuşak. He was most assuredly not ignoring his sweet, strong tea or the assortment of pastries that sat before him.
“Are you certain I can’t interest you in just a small piece of baklava, my dear? The baker has a particularly deft hand with the yufka leaves.”
“No,” said the first man. “I’ll leave the sampling of sweets to you.”
“But what would you like to do? You haven’t made a single suggestion since we arrived.”
“I’m not the one who said we needed to be here, Aziraphale. And you still haven’t said what we’re doing here in Turkey, sitting in the square all day. Do you know, I haven’t been able to tempt anybody since we arrived.”
“Well,” Aziraphale said with a smirk, “then I suppose I must be doing my job, mustn’t I?”
“Aziraphale.”
“Oh, don’t go on about it, Crowley.” the angel said, then paused to lick honey off his fingertips. “I haven’t the faintest idea why we need to be here either; I just know we do. So…baklava?”
The demon huffed in exasperation, then pushed his unused cloth napkin across the table. “Fine…hand it over.”
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Crowley hadn’t taken a single bite of the pastry when the server approached the table.
“Deniz?” said Aziraphale,” is there something we could help you with?”
“Please, sirs, would one of you distinguished gentlemen be a doctor by chance, because three very young men have just arrived and they appear to be in need of a doctor of medicine, and our town's doctor, so unfortunately, will be seeing patients in Ağva for some days now - he is a very dedicated doctor, you know - and the three young men are quite agitated, so perhaps they cannot wait until….”
Certain that if he didn’t intercede, the boy’s explanation could go on all day, Crowley said, “Is one of them injured or in pain?”
“I do not believe so, sir,” said Deniz, “although the young man with the flame-coloured hair - much like yours, sir, although not so striking, was speaking very angrily, and…oh dear, the three young gentlemen appear to have joined us. Shall I ask them to leave, or….”
“Mr Fell?”
Aziraphale startled at the use of a name he had only just considered employing as a nom d'emprunt, The speaker was no young man, despite the trousers and the short red hair, but rather a young girl, and Aziraphale was quite certain he had never seen her before.
“Everything’s fine, Deniz. You can leave these young, er…people in our charge, and we’ll see if we can assist them.
The three youngsters kept silent just until Deniz disappeared into the tiny kitchen, and then all three spoke at the same time.
“Oh dear!” said Aziraphale.
“Anyway,” the red haired girl said, after taking a deep breath, “it’s not as if Adam can really get hurt, at least not for long, but still…he’s unconscious, and Wensleydale thought…”
“Actually, Pepper thought,” said Wensleydale, “that we should see if the lighthouse keeper was home, and he wasn’t, but his wife…”
“Her name is Ismihan,” Brian interjected.
“...she doesn’t speak English, but she helped us bring Adam into the house, and then said doctor over and over until we ran off to find a doctor, and here we are!”
“Children,” said Aziraphale, “I’m afraid neither of us are doctors, but we can certainly try to…”
“Of course you’re not doctors,” Pepper said. “You’re better than doctors! You’re supernatural.”
Aziraphale glanced at Crowley, who had no more idea what was going on than Aziraphale did. “Dear girl, you appear to have us mixed up with somebody else.”
“Are you going to pretend we weren’t all together when the world was going to end?”
“Let’s pretend we don’t remember anything of the kind,” Crowley said. “When, exactly, did all this take place?”
Pepper frowned. “How can you have forgotten about….”
“What century?”
“Twentieth, of course.”
“Ah,” said Crowley. “That explains it. None of this has happened yet. Mr Fell and I don’t know who you lot are because we haven’t met you yet. Your unconscious friend, whoever he might be, seems to have taken you back in time.”
“Oh,” said Pepper quietly.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
The lighthouse keeper's wife, Ismihan, had the disposition of someone born to the nursing profession, which is to say that when Aziraphale, Crowley, and the three children arrived to see whether Adam had awoken, Ismihan - frying pan firmly in hand - refused to move an inch from her still unconscious charge and was somehow able to cast a suspicious eye at both men at the same time.
"What is your business with these children? Have you told them that you are Şile's doctor? If you did, it is a wicked falsehood."
"Of course not, ma'am. I am a learned man from England, and I know many secrets of the healing arts."
Crowley rolled his eyes. If anything, Ismihan looked even more suspicious now than she had two minutes ago.
"What he means to say," Crowley drawled," is that he's used to handling low men who've been knocked out in bar fights."
"Ah," Ismihan said, nodding her head. "This, I believe. I shall leave you with the boy, but I will not be far away. Please speak to the children in their English and say that if they are thirsty, I should like to introduce them to our goats."
As soon as Ismihan left the room, Aziraphale sat beside the strange boy on the little couch. He took the boy's hand in his own, but dropped it a second later.
"This is no ordinary human boy," he whispered to Crowley. "One of your lot, I fear."
Crowley frowned. "I was just about to say that I felt something distinctly angelic from this Adam. I'd suggest you wake him before the lady of the lighthouse decides we've taken too much time, and then...well, then we'll decide what comes next."
Aziraphale tried to wake the boy.
It should have been an easy task, regardless of whether the boy was human, angel, or demon, but after five minutes with no hint of success, he turned to Crowley.
"I have no idea why I can't bring him back to consciousness, but this is more than a one-being job, I'm afraid."
"So what you're saying is you need me."
"Crowley."
"Oh come on, Aziraphale. Don't be such a killjoy."
Aziraphale sighed.
If this particular brand of healing was being performed for an audience, there would certainly have been a series of mystical symbols written on the boy's body, seven minutes of chanting, a musical interlude, and a ritualistic laying on of hands, but as there was no audience - and as Aziraphale and Crowley were...what they were - working together, the angel and the demon thought at Adam for no more than the space of a breath, and in the very next breath, Adam had sat up and was saying,"Uncle Aziraphale! Uncle Crowley! Thanks ever so much. See you in...well, that would be telling, wouldn't it?"
Aziraphale and Crowley shivered a bit as a sudden gust of air came out of nowhere, and then they felt nothing.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
"Would the gentleman care for something else to drink?" asked Deniz.
"You know," said Aziraphale, "I think we're fine."
"It has been a pleasure serving you, sirs."
"Thank you, Deniz."
The young man left their table, and Aziraphale placed all the silver coins he'd acquired in Turkey on the table as a gift for Deniz.
"I take it we're going to leave now," said Crowley.
"Indeed. I thought, there was a reason that you and I were meant to be here, but it's been almost four days now, and I can't think of anything out of the ordinary occurring."
"Just one of the mysteries of existence?"
"One of the mysteries, indeed."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
"Thank you, Adam. You were right...this day was brilliant. I mean, except for the part where you were knocked out by an eagle, but the rest of the day was smashing."
"I liked Ismihan," said Pepper. "I thought she was brave."
"I liked the goats," Wensleydale said. "Did you know that goats were one of the first animals to be tamed by humans and were being herded 9,000 years ago?"
Adam tilted his head to the side in thought. "Do you think I should ask my parents for a goat for my next birthday?"
"Wouldn't Dog be jealous," Pepper asked.
"I s'pose you're right."
As the Them neared Brian's house, they saw Brian's mum outside by the car.
"Just in time, children. If we go to the St. Giles' fair now, there will still be time to stop for ice cream on the way back. Is everybody ready to go?"
The Them smiled ...they were always ready to go.
Recipient: hsavinien
Author: Sekret!
Rating: General Audiences
Word Count: 2188
Characters: Aziraphale & Crowley, Adam, Brian, Pepper, Wensleydale, random original characters, and a very brief appearance by Dog.
Warnings: N/A
Notes: A combination of two prompts: A bit of an adventure with the Them, and Aziraphale & Crowley somewhere and somewhen. Just the sort of thing I like to see in a prompt!
Summary: It’s Brian’s birthday, and Adam - of course - knows somewhere to go that will be much better than some old funfair.
Turkish Delight
***
“But why don’t I get to choose where we’re going to go for my birthday?” asked Brian with more than a hint of a whine in his voice. He was twelve years old now, which was possibly too old for whining, but it was most definitely not too old for the St. Giles funfair, and his mum had said she’d drive all four of them down later this morning.
“Because I’ve planned somewhere brilliant for us to go, and not somewhere naff….” Brian was just about to protest that his choice wasn’t at all naff, when Adam continued, “...like a funfair.”
Why was Adam always so certain he knew what the Them were thinking? How was he always right when he knew what the Them were thinking? Somewhere at the back of Brian’s mind was a little tickle that meant he knew the answer to both those questions, but he pushed that tickle down and just asked, “Will there be ice cream where we’re going?”
“Of course!” said Adam. “It’s not a birthday without ice cream.”
“Fine then,” Brian grumbled. “Where are we going to go?.”
“We’re going to Turkey.”
Pepper stopped petting Dog and frowned. “Are we going to just pretend to go to Turkey, because if we’re going to pretend to go to Turkey we could start pretending to go now and still be back in time to do what Brian wants later.” The truth was that Pepper was no great fan of kiddy rides and greasy food, but she had recently developed a strong sense of fair play and egalitarianism.
“We’re going to proper Turkey.”
“Istanbul?” asked Wensleydale. “Istanbul is more than 3,900 miles away. If we bicycled there, we wouldn’t arrive until after my birthday, actually.”
“We’re not bicycling to Turkey,” said Pepper, "are we, Adam?”
“Of course not,” he agreed. “We’ll just…go there, right after I send Dog home.”
Dog trotted off obediently, and as soon as his wriggly back end disappeared through the hedges, the Them shivered a bit as a sudden gust of air came out of nowhere, and all at once, they found themselves standing on a cliff face beside a black and white lighthouse.
“Huh,” said Pepper.
“Huh,” Brian and Wensleydale concurred.
While Şile's town square was not bustling at the moment, neither was it entirely deserted. Two men, both of whom had been visiting the coastal town for the past three days, were seated at a small cafe table beneath the spreading branches of a sycamore tree.
The first man, intent on ignoring the coffee his companion had ordered for him earlier, was dressed in many layers of unrelieved black - trousers, shirt, tie, waistcoat, and jacket - all entirely inappropriate for the unseasonably hot afternoon, which was threatening to top 100°F. His shoes - which Deniz, the young server at the small cafe, believed were also inappropriate, although he couldn’t have said in what precise way - were sharp pointed and high heeled…and appeared to be made of snakeskin.
The second gentleman wore a cream-coloured, silk embroidered kaftan, wrapped with an old-fashioned kuşak. He was most assuredly not ignoring his sweet, strong tea or the assortment of pastries that sat before him.
“Are you certain I can’t interest you in just a small piece of baklava, my dear? The baker has a particularly deft hand with the yufka leaves.”
“No,” said the first man. “I’ll leave the sampling of sweets to you.”
“But what would you like to do? You haven’t made a single suggestion since we arrived.”
“I’m not the one who said we needed to be here, Aziraphale. And you still haven’t said what we’re doing here in Turkey, sitting in the square all day. Do you know, I haven’t been able to tempt anybody since we arrived.”
“Well,” Aziraphale said with a smirk, “then I suppose I must be doing my job, mustn’t I?”
“Aziraphale.”
“Oh, don’t go on about it, Crowley.” the angel said, then paused to lick honey off his fingertips. “I haven’t the faintest idea why we need to be here either; I just know we do. So…baklava?”
The demon huffed in exasperation, then pushed his unused cloth napkin across the table. “Fine…hand it over.”
Crowley hadn’t taken a single bite of the pastry when the server approached the table.
“Deniz?” said Aziraphale,” is there something we could help you with?”
“Please, sirs, would one of you distinguished gentlemen be a doctor by chance, because three very young men have just arrived and they appear to be in need of a doctor of medicine, and our town's doctor, so unfortunately, will be seeing patients in Ağva for some days now - he is a very dedicated doctor, you know - and the three young men are quite agitated, so perhaps they cannot wait until….”
Certain that if he didn’t intercede, the boy’s explanation could go on all day, Crowley said, “Is one of them injured or in pain?”
“I do not believe so, sir,” said Deniz, “although the young man with the flame-coloured hair - much like yours, sir, although not so striking, was speaking very angrily, and…oh dear, the three young gentlemen appear to have joined us. Shall I ask them to leave, or….”
“Mr Fell?”
Aziraphale startled at the use of a name he had only just considered employing as a nom d'emprunt, The speaker was no young man, despite the trousers and the short red hair, but rather a young girl, and Aziraphale was quite certain he had never seen her before.
“Everything’s fine, Deniz. You can leave these young, er…people in our charge, and we’ll see if we can assist them.
The three youngsters kept silent just until Deniz disappeared into the tiny kitchen, and then all three spoke at the same time.
“Well, actually, it’s Brian’s birthday, and he wanted to go to a funfair, but Adam had a different idea and all of a sudden, Adam magicked us here, and…”
“I’m only twelve. I’m still allowed to enjoy funfairs, but…”
“The point isn’t about whose birthday it is. Boys, I swear.…”
“...the point is, the first thing we did was explore Şile Kalesi - Kalesi means castle, actually - and it was brilliant. Did you know that the castle is a thousand years old? And eventually we decided to find ice cream, but…”
“...don’t get things out of order. First we got to go to a castle and we swam in the Black Sea, but then I said, I really want some ice cream, and Adam said that was okay, and five minutes later…”
“....we took a detour back to where we’d arrived and we were chasing each other around the lighthouse….”
“...and out of nowhere, a white-tailed eagle flew by and clipped Adam with one of its wings, and now he’s unconscious.”
“...and out of nowhere, a white-tailed eagle flew by and clipped Adam with one of its wings, and now he’s unconscious.”
“...and out of nowhere, a white-tailed eagle flew by and clipped Adam with one of its wings, and now he’s unconscious.”
“Oh dear!” said Aziraphale.
“Anyway,” the red haired girl said, after taking a deep breath, “it’s not as if Adam can really get hurt, at least not for long, but still…he’s unconscious, and Wensleydale thought…”
“Actually, Pepper thought,” said Wensleydale, “that we should see if the lighthouse keeper was home, and he wasn’t, but his wife…”
“Her name is Ismihan,” Brian interjected.
“...she doesn’t speak English, but she helped us bring Adam into the house, and then said doctor over and over until we ran off to find a doctor, and here we are!”
“Children,” said Aziraphale, “I’m afraid neither of us are doctors, but we can certainly try to…”
“Of course you’re not doctors,” Pepper said. “You’re better than doctors! You’re supernatural.”
Aziraphale glanced at Crowley, who had no more idea what was going on than Aziraphale did. “Dear girl, you appear to have us mixed up with somebody else.”
“Are you going to pretend we weren’t all together when the world was going to end?”
“Let’s pretend we don’t remember anything of the kind,” Crowley said. “When, exactly, did all this take place?”
Pepper frowned. “How can you have forgotten about….”
“What century?”
“Twentieth, of course.”
“Ah,” said Crowley. “That explains it. None of this has happened yet. Mr Fell and I don’t know who you lot are because we haven’t met you yet. Your unconscious friend, whoever he might be, seems to have taken you back in time.”
“Oh,” said Pepper quietly.
The lighthouse keeper's wife, Ismihan, had the disposition of someone born to the nursing profession, which is to say that when Aziraphale, Crowley, and the three children arrived to see whether Adam had awoken, Ismihan - frying pan firmly in hand - refused to move an inch from her still unconscious charge and was somehow able to cast a suspicious eye at both men at the same time.
"What is your business with these children? Have you told them that you are Şile's doctor? If you did, it is a wicked falsehood."
"Of course not, ma'am. I am a learned man from England, and I know many secrets of the healing arts."
Crowley rolled his eyes. If anything, Ismihan looked even more suspicious now than she had two minutes ago.
"What he means to say," Crowley drawled," is that he's used to handling low men who've been knocked out in bar fights."
"Ah," Ismihan said, nodding her head. "This, I believe. I shall leave you with the boy, but I will not be far away. Please speak to the children in their English and say that if they are thirsty, I should like to introduce them to our goats."
As soon as Ismihan left the room, Aziraphale sat beside the strange boy on the little couch. He took the boy's hand in his own, but dropped it a second later.
"This is no ordinary human boy," he whispered to Crowley. "One of your lot, I fear."
Crowley frowned. "I was just about to say that I felt something distinctly angelic from this Adam. I'd suggest you wake him before the lady of the lighthouse decides we've taken too much time, and then...well, then we'll decide what comes next."
Aziraphale tried to wake the boy.
It should have been an easy task, regardless of whether the boy was human, angel, or demon, but after five minutes with no hint of success, he turned to Crowley.
"I have no idea why I can't bring him back to consciousness, but this is more than a one-being job, I'm afraid."
"So what you're saying is you need me."
"Crowley."
"Oh come on, Aziraphale. Don't be such a killjoy."
Aziraphale sighed.
If this particular brand of healing was being performed for an audience, there would certainly have been a series of mystical symbols written on the boy's body, seven minutes of chanting, a musical interlude, and a ritualistic laying on of hands, but as there was no audience - and as Aziraphale and Crowley were...what they were - working together, the angel and the demon thought at Adam for no more than the space of a breath, and in the very next breath, Adam had sat up and was saying,"Uncle Aziraphale! Uncle Crowley! Thanks ever so much. See you in...well, that would be telling, wouldn't it?"
Aziraphale and Crowley shivered a bit as a sudden gust of air came out of nowhere, and then they felt nothing.
"Would the gentleman care for something else to drink?" asked Deniz.
"You know," said Aziraphale, "I think we're fine."
"It has been a pleasure serving you, sirs."
"Thank you, Deniz."
The young man left their table, and Aziraphale placed all the silver coins he'd acquired in Turkey on the table as a gift for Deniz.
"I take it we're going to leave now," said Crowley.
"Indeed. I thought, there was a reason that you and I were meant to be here, but it's been almost four days now, and I can't think of anything out of the ordinary occurring."
"Just one of the mysteries of existence?"
"One of the mysteries, indeed."
"Thank you, Adam. You were right...this day was brilliant. I mean, except for the part where you were knocked out by an eagle, but the rest of the day was smashing."
"I liked Ismihan," said Pepper. "I thought she was brave."
"I liked the goats," Wensleydale said. "Did you know that goats were one of the first animals to be tamed by humans and were being herded 9,000 years ago?"
Adam tilted his head to the side in thought. "Do you think I should ask my parents for a goat for my next birthday?"
"Wouldn't Dog be jealous," Pepper asked.
"I s'pose you're right."
As the Them neared Brian's house, they saw Brian's mum outside by the car.
"Just in time, children. If we go to the St. Giles' fair now, there will still be time to stop for ice cream on the way back. Is everybody ready to go?"
The Them smiled ...they were always ready to go.