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go_exchange2022-12-20 05:23 am
goe_mod) wrote in go_exchange2022-12-20 05:23 am
Entry tags:
Happy Holidays, irisbleufic!
Title: A Brief Stop, With Shopping
Author: Secret
Words: 2,243
Rating: PG
Author's note: Happy holidays, irisbleufic! I hope you enjoy it. Beta thanks to queerhedgehog.
Summary: Aziraphale, Crowley, and The Them explore the strange environs of the United States shopping experience.
***
Aziraphale eyed the massive car park with disfavor. A few scraggly trees poked up from islands between ranks of giant shiny trucks and beat-up sedans, but the whole of it shimmered with heat and the smell of exhaust and something sour. Crowley extricated the current corporation’s unnecessarily long legs from behind the wheel of the minivan and Adam popped open the back door, with his three little friends piling out after him with cheerful complaints about sore legs, hunger, and the need for a toilet.
“Half an hour do it?” Crowley asked. “Or longer, do you think?”
“How much longer could we need to use the facilities and choose a few snacks?” Aziraphale asked. “It’s not like they have a teashop on premises.”
“We’ll see,” Crowley said vaguely. “You don’t watch much American telly, do you?”
“No…?”
Crowley nodded. “Wal-Mart’s not much like M and S.”
“How would you know? You haven’t been in the US any more recently than I have.”
“They film reality shows in these things sometimes. I sent in a few reports about them. Somebody got trampled to death on their big shopping spree day in November a few years ago.”
“I’m sure that must be an exaggeration,” Aziraphale said sternly, sailing toward the doors in the wake of the young humans. It must at least smell better inside.
“It’s really not,” Crowley said. “Wal-Marts are lawless places.”
“It’s an oversized grocery,” Aziraphale said. “Do calm down.”
The automatic door slid out of their way, opening to a liminal space with a mess of trolleys on one side and some toy crane games and a water dispensing machine with five gallon jugs stacked six high along the wall.
Brian and Gruyère – no, that wasn’t right. It was some variety of cheese. Stilton? – probably – Stilton had each claimed a trolley and Brian had Pepper knelt up in the front of his like Boudicea in her chariot. Adam led the way through the inner set of doors, other shoppers detouring around him like he was a sheepdog splitting a herd. Aziraphale followed, with Crowley trailing all of them.
They emerged into a massive space. Aziraphale had expected two floors with how tall the building was, but it was all open up to the roof beams with fluorescent lights buzzing away quietly between them. The high emptiness of it rang in Aziraphale’s ears, until a PA system squawked for help with jewelry. Shelves of plastic tableware led toward a bin of deodorants on one side and serried ranks of tills marched away on the other.
An elderly human with a blue vest welcomed them and cast a jaundiced eye toward Pepper, then caught a glimpse of Adam’s bright grin and turned sunny.
“And you have a great time shopping,” they said to him, specifically, the rest of the party apparently fading into the background.
Adam agreed that he certainly would do that, and forged ahead like an explorer braving unknown wilds. Someday that innate charm was going to get him in trouble… though not likely anything more dangerous than the week of his eleventh birthday, so perhaps it wasn’t worth fretting over.
Aziraphale caught Crowley’s arm and they strolled in together, leaving the youngsters to their own perambulations.
They wandered through an excessive number of housewares, past a gaggle of blue-vested young men rearranging bottles and coffee mugs. Aziraphale tested the plushness of the towels, fingers sinking into blue-striped pile. Crowley picked up a chrome cup that was labeled a toothbrush holder. Why, Aziraphale couldn’t fathom. It wasn’t like either of them bothered with human hygiene rituals.
The youngsters had discovered the toy aisles and were exclaiming over the variety of Lego available. Adam had picked up an ice cream shop set and was pointing out flavors.1 Crowley set the toothbrush holder down beside a display of soft toys and started pushing buttons, so the teddys’ internal electronics ended up playing a chorus of alphabets slightly out of sync. Aziraphale grabbed Crowley’s sleeve and hustled them away, passing an irritable employee looking around for miscreants.
Crowley snagged a long green foam tube as they passed a display box of them and curled it up to tuck it under one arm. Aziraphale eyed it narrowly, but Crowley just grinned.
Some minutes later they both stood staring at a display of televisions, each approximately the size of Aziraphale's shopfront.
"Why haven't I got a television that big yet?" Crowley mused. "I definitely ought to. With extra HDs."
"Where would you put it?" Aziraphale asked. "Where would anyone put one that size? And what's an HD anyway?"
"It's a thing," Crowley said vaguely. "Measures how many pores you can see on the actors' noses or something. I could put it in front of the kitchen, maybe. Just expand the space a bit."
"You'd block the light to your nepenthes," Aziraphale pointed out.
Crowley conceded. "Maybe the bedroom."
"Aren't they bad for sleep?"
"What do you mind? It's not like it matters to you," Crowley said.
Aziraphale hmphed.
"Because you don't sleep," Crowley added hurriedly, a flicker of scales shading briefly across both cheeks.
"Anyway, I don't think it'd fit in the minivan with everyone," Aziraphale said.
"I suppose I can always have one sent over from the Internet. Then moving it will be somebody else's headache," Crowley mused. "That ought to be good for some low-grade frustration."
“That’s really not necessary anymore, you do recall.”
Crowley shrugged. “Like you don’t slip a random blessing into the postbox or spread general beneficence around a queue once in a while. Oh look, books.”
Aziraphale looked over hopefully and there were indeed several shelves of recent best-sellers and popular children’s titles. “Ah…”
“Well, you wouldn’t expect them to carry any really unique books, would you? It’s not that sort of store.” Crowley started digging in a bin of DVDs marked at $3.99. Aziraphale sighed and looked over the titles, in case they had something at all engaging to take on the road. Evelyn Waugh had gotten a little tedious around Illinois, especially with Pepper’s commentaries on colonialism over the angel’s shoulder, and they had several hours more to go today.
Aziraphale had flipped through five titles with no luck, tucking them back on the shelf absently, and was examining The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin with cautious optimism when Crowley made a satisfied noise. Aziraphale turned to see that the bin had been arranged into towers of DVDs, apparently sorted by title, with the green tube winding between them all like a giant serpent coiling through a city.
“All the good ones are at the very bottom of the stacks,” Crowley said, radiating smugness. “The rest of them are a wilderness of Nicolas Cage and video game adaptations.”2
“And the foam tube?”
“Oh, the pool noodle? It’ll collapse the stacks on the first person who tries to remove it. Are you buying that book?”
Aziraphale sighed. “Yes. Are you through inciting mayhem? You're the most lawless element in this whole store."
“It’ll only be a minor ruckus at worst,” Crowley said, looking pleased. “Not like I did it with the dishes or the weightlifting dumbbell things over in sport.”
They paused at the clothing section when Aziraphale slowed, tempted by a display of green-and-blue tartan. Picking at a loose thread on one of the ‘wool’ suiting sets, Aziraphale grumbled, “These seem very shoddy craftsmanship.”
“Craftsman nothing. They’re made by some poor bugger getting paid pennies somewhere with a sewing machine they were only half-trained on.”
“I suppose,” Aziraphale said. “It’s a pity people have to waste their money on six of these instead of one solid piece of clothing. I have a coat that’s lasted for seventy years now.”
Crowley nodded. “Fast fashion really did take off. Too bad Downstairs never understood it. I think Pollution got a modeling deal or something off of Shein.”
“What in the world is Shein?” Aziraphale asked.
“Oh, they make clothes out of toxic waste that get thrown away after two wears or something, I don’t know the details.”
Aziraphale shuddered. “I think I’ve had enough capitalism for the day. Can we go?”
Crowley stretched, shoulders cracking in an entirely unnecessary way, and snagged a few packs of stockings, submitting to Aziraphale’s grasp once again with a halfhearted show of reluctance. “Got to hit the grocery first and get the kiddies some nibbles.”
The quiet boy (not Stilton, what was it…? Gloucester? No, too Shakespearean.) was making his way through the soft drinks aisle, examining twenty-five different varieties of flavored fizzy water. Brian poked the nose of his trolley around the corner and called, “Oi, Wens, come see the snacks! They’ve got crisps from Mexico here!”
Wensleydale! That was it. Aziraphale tutted internally. Crowley let go and headed for a display of neon-frosted cupcakes in the middle of the aisle, and Aziraphale turned a corner right into a hand truck stacked with flats of eggs.
It wasn’t a crash. It was too gooey to be a crash. It was a combined cacophony of small sloppy crunches piled on top of each other and multiplied by the squawk of horror from the employee behind the hand truck, her hijab and vest spattered with bits of shell and yolk, and the gurgle as Aziraphale tried to inhale in shock and yelp in dismay at the same time.
The hand truck hit the linoleum with a clang and launched its remaining burden up in a graceful arc for a final, splattering coda.
Crowley was beside Aziraphale then, with Adam and his friends crowding around, and Aziraphale wasn’t sure whose miracles were whose, but the splatters on Aziraphale's face and dreadful damp heaviness weighing down the angel's shirt were gone. Brian helped get the hand truck back upright, Pepper side-tracked an oncoming manager with an imperious question about chocolates, and Wensleydale nodded along with great concentration at the young woman who suddenly and inexplicably did not have a fantastic mess all over the floor and herself to deal with. Adam’s fingers barely brushed her sleeve and her confusion subsided.
“That was a lucky miss,” Crowley said brightly. “Almost had an accident there, angel. You ought to watch where you’re going.”
“I don’t like this place,” Aziraphale said, glowering. “Crowley, please purchase this. With actual money. I will be waiting in the minivan.” Crowley took the book, patted Aziraphale gingerly on the shoulder, and pointed toward the exit.
“Thank you,” Aziraphale said, and marched back out into the car park.
The minivan wasn't too warm, because Aziraphale expected it to be cool inside. Aziraphale turned on the radio and Debussy's "You're My Best Friend" picked up in the middle of the chorus as the angel fussed with the seatbelt.
America was a trial and Wal-Mart seemed particularly American. Aziraphale missed the bookshop and the ducks in St James Park and tea that wasn't served cold and too-sweet, but Adam had asked them to come along and he didn't ask for much, really.
The driving part wasn't so bad. Crowley was quite good at finding restaurants when it wasn't one of the youngsters' turn to pick. (Aziraphale had miracled a few hamburgers into something more edible in the last few days when it was Brian's turn. The young man had a particular gift when it came to finding the greasiest fast food available.) Wensleydale had proved quite good at map reading, and Pepper was developing her intimidation skills. Adam's aura was…still quite active, though he rarely put his power to any use.3 It made travel run more smoothly than it ought, as people wanted to please him. Some bits of the United States were rather nice to visit, really, though Aziraphale couldn't imagine living here long term. Flying over the Black Hills with Crowley, with the young people stargazing below, had felt like a memory come around again.
Aziraphale sighed, then looked up at the sound of the doors. Crowley sidled in and handed over the book and a stack of chocolate bars. Pepper climbed in the back with Brian, piling plastic shopping bags between them and started squeakily opening crisp bags. Wensleydale slid into the middle seat and patted Aziraphale's arm. "Got you a spare handkerchief in case there's any stray mess," he said, passing up a crisp-folded square of cotton. Aziraphale nodded thanks. He was a nice young man. Adam climbed in after, settling what looked like the ice cream Lego set on the floor between his legs.
"The shop girl is all right," he reported. "And only one of the eggs tried to hatch until I reminded it that it hadn't been fertilised, so it could have been worse. You feeling better?"
"You know," Aziraphale said, "I think I might be. Thank you all."
***
1 They had visited a lot of ice cream shops on the trip so far. Adam was partial to Superman ice cream, probably because it was bright yellow, red, and blue. Brian had latched onto Mississippi mud pie, Wensleydale liked maple walnut, and Pepper ate pastel pink strawberry cheesecake and glared at everyone preemptively about it. Aziraphale could be tempted to a dish of rum raisin, and Crowley chose coffee when it was available and coconut when it wasn't.
2 As is always the case in discount DVD bins.
3 He hurt to look at sometimes, with a hint of the grief of millennia in the corner of his smile, just like Yeshua had had.
Author: Secret
Words: 2,243
Rating: PG
Author's note: Happy holidays, irisbleufic! I hope you enjoy it. Beta thanks to queerhedgehog.
Summary: Aziraphale, Crowley, and The Them explore the strange environs of the United States shopping experience.
***
Aziraphale eyed the massive car park with disfavor. A few scraggly trees poked up from islands between ranks of giant shiny trucks and beat-up sedans, but the whole of it shimmered with heat and the smell of exhaust and something sour. Crowley extricated the current corporation’s unnecessarily long legs from behind the wheel of the minivan and Adam popped open the back door, with his three little friends piling out after him with cheerful complaints about sore legs, hunger, and the need for a toilet.
“Half an hour do it?” Crowley asked. “Or longer, do you think?”
“How much longer could we need to use the facilities and choose a few snacks?” Aziraphale asked. “It’s not like they have a teashop on premises.”
“We’ll see,” Crowley said vaguely. “You don’t watch much American telly, do you?”
“No…?”
Crowley nodded. “Wal-Mart’s not much like M and S.”
“How would you know? You haven’t been in the US any more recently than I have.”
“They film reality shows in these things sometimes. I sent in a few reports about them. Somebody got trampled to death on their big shopping spree day in November a few years ago.”
“I’m sure that must be an exaggeration,” Aziraphale said sternly, sailing toward the doors in the wake of the young humans. It must at least smell better inside.
“It’s really not,” Crowley said. “Wal-Marts are lawless places.”
“It’s an oversized grocery,” Aziraphale said. “Do calm down.”
The automatic door slid out of their way, opening to a liminal space with a mess of trolleys on one side and some toy crane games and a water dispensing machine with five gallon jugs stacked six high along the wall.
Brian and Gruyère – no, that wasn’t right. It was some variety of cheese. Stilton? – probably – Stilton had each claimed a trolley and Brian had Pepper knelt up in the front of his like Boudicea in her chariot. Adam led the way through the inner set of doors, other shoppers detouring around him like he was a sheepdog splitting a herd. Aziraphale followed, with Crowley trailing all of them.
They emerged into a massive space. Aziraphale had expected two floors with how tall the building was, but it was all open up to the roof beams with fluorescent lights buzzing away quietly between them. The high emptiness of it rang in Aziraphale’s ears, until a PA system squawked for help with jewelry. Shelves of plastic tableware led toward a bin of deodorants on one side and serried ranks of tills marched away on the other.
An elderly human with a blue vest welcomed them and cast a jaundiced eye toward Pepper, then caught a glimpse of Adam’s bright grin and turned sunny.
“And you have a great time shopping,” they said to him, specifically, the rest of the party apparently fading into the background.
Adam agreed that he certainly would do that, and forged ahead like an explorer braving unknown wilds. Someday that innate charm was going to get him in trouble… though not likely anything more dangerous than the week of his eleventh birthday, so perhaps it wasn’t worth fretting over.
Aziraphale caught Crowley’s arm and they strolled in together, leaving the youngsters to their own perambulations.
They wandered through an excessive number of housewares, past a gaggle of blue-vested young men rearranging bottles and coffee mugs. Aziraphale tested the plushness of the towels, fingers sinking into blue-striped pile. Crowley picked up a chrome cup that was labeled a toothbrush holder. Why, Aziraphale couldn’t fathom. It wasn’t like either of them bothered with human hygiene rituals.
The youngsters had discovered the toy aisles and were exclaiming over the variety of Lego available. Adam had picked up an ice cream shop set and was pointing out flavors.1 Crowley set the toothbrush holder down beside a display of soft toys and started pushing buttons, so the teddys’ internal electronics ended up playing a chorus of alphabets slightly out of sync. Aziraphale grabbed Crowley’s sleeve and hustled them away, passing an irritable employee looking around for miscreants.
Crowley snagged a long green foam tube as they passed a display box of them and curled it up to tuck it under one arm. Aziraphale eyed it narrowly, but Crowley just grinned.
Some minutes later they both stood staring at a display of televisions, each approximately the size of Aziraphale's shopfront.
"Why haven't I got a television that big yet?" Crowley mused. "I definitely ought to. With extra HDs."
"Where would you put it?" Aziraphale asked. "Where would anyone put one that size? And what's an HD anyway?"
"It's a thing," Crowley said vaguely. "Measures how many pores you can see on the actors' noses or something. I could put it in front of the kitchen, maybe. Just expand the space a bit."
"You'd block the light to your nepenthes," Aziraphale pointed out.
Crowley conceded. "Maybe the bedroom."
"Aren't they bad for sleep?"
"What do you mind? It's not like it matters to you," Crowley said.
Aziraphale hmphed.
"Because you don't sleep," Crowley added hurriedly, a flicker of scales shading briefly across both cheeks.
"Anyway, I don't think it'd fit in the minivan with everyone," Aziraphale said.
"I suppose I can always have one sent over from the Internet. Then moving it will be somebody else's headache," Crowley mused. "That ought to be good for some low-grade frustration."
“That’s really not necessary anymore, you do recall.”
Crowley shrugged. “Like you don’t slip a random blessing into the postbox or spread general beneficence around a queue once in a while. Oh look, books.”
Aziraphale looked over hopefully and there were indeed several shelves of recent best-sellers and popular children’s titles. “Ah…”
“Well, you wouldn’t expect them to carry any really unique books, would you? It’s not that sort of store.” Crowley started digging in a bin of DVDs marked at $3.99. Aziraphale sighed and looked over the titles, in case they had something at all engaging to take on the road. Evelyn Waugh had gotten a little tedious around Illinois, especially with Pepper’s commentaries on colonialism over the angel’s shoulder, and they had several hours more to go today.
Aziraphale had flipped through five titles with no luck, tucking them back on the shelf absently, and was examining The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin with cautious optimism when Crowley made a satisfied noise. Aziraphale turned to see that the bin had been arranged into towers of DVDs, apparently sorted by title, with the green tube winding between them all like a giant serpent coiling through a city.
“All the good ones are at the very bottom of the stacks,” Crowley said, radiating smugness. “The rest of them are a wilderness of Nicolas Cage and video game adaptations.”2
“And the foam tube?”
“Oh, the pool noodle? It’ll collapse the stacks on the first person who tries to remove it. Are you buying that book?”
Aziraphale sighed. “Yes. Are you through inciting mayhem? You're the most lawless element in this whole store."
“It’ll only be a minor ruckus at worst,” Crowley said, looking pleased. “Not like I did it with the dishes or the weightlifting dumbbell things over in sport.”
They paused at the clothing section when Aziraphale slowed, tempted by a display of green-and-blue tartan. Picking at a loose thread on one of the ‘wool’ suiting sets, Aziraphale grumbled, “These seem very shoddy craftsmanship.”
“Craftsman nothing. They’re made by some poor bugger getting paid pennies somewhere with a sewing machine they were only half-trained on.”
“I suppose,” Aziraphale said. “It’s a pity people have to waste their money on six of these instead of one solid piece of clothing. I have a coat that’s lasted for seventy years now.”
Crowley nodded. “Fast fashion really did take off. Too bad Downstairs never understood it. I think Pollution got a modeling deal or something off of Shein.”
“What in the world is Shein?” Aziraphale asked.
“Oh, they make clothes out of toxic waste that get thrown away after two wears or something, I don’t know the details.”
Aziraphale shuddered. “I think I’ve had enough capitalism for the day. Can we go?”
Crowley stretched, shoulders cracking in an entirely unnecessary way, and snagged a few packs of stockings, submitting to Aziraphale’s grasp once again with a halfhearted show of reluctance. “Got to hit the grocery first and get the kiddies some nibbles.”
The quiet boy (not Stilton, what was it…? Gloucester? No, too Shakespearean.) was making his way through the soft drinks aisle, examining twenty-five different varieties of flavored fizzy water. Brian poked the nose of his trolley around the corner and called, “Oi, Wens, come see the snacks! They’ve got crisps from Mexico here!”
Wensleydale! That was it. Aziraphale tutted internally. Crowley let go and headed for a display of neon-frosted cupcakes in the middle of the aisle, and Aziraphale turned a corner right into a hand truck stacked with flats of eggs.
It wasn’t a crash. It was too gooey to be a crash. It was a combined cacophony of small sloppy crunches piled on top of each other and multiplied by the squawk of horror from the employee behind the hand truck, her hijab and vest spattered with bits of shell and yolk, and the gurgle as Aziraphale tried to inhale in shock and yelp in dismay at the same time.
The hand truck hit the linoleum with a clang and launched its remaining burden up in a graceful arc for a final, splattering coda.
Crowley was beside Aziraphale then, with Adam and his friends crowding around, and Aziraphale wasn’t sure whose miracles were whose, but the splatters on Aziraphale's face and dreadful damp heaviness weighing down the angel's shirt were gone. Brian helped get the hand truck back upright, Pepper side-tracked an oncoming manager with an imperious question about chocolates, and Wensleydale nodded along with great concentration at the young woman who suddenly and inexplicably did not have a fantastic mess all over the floor and herself to deal with. Adam’s fingers barely brushed her sleeve and her confusion subsided.
“That was a lucky miss,” Crowley said brightly. “Almost had an accident there, angel. You ought to watch where you’re going.”
“I don’t like this place,” Aziraphale said, glowering. “Crowley, please purchase this. With actual money. I will be waiting in the minivan.” Crowley took the book, patted Aziraphale gingerly on the shoulder, and pointed toward the exit.
“Thank you,” Aziraphale said, and marched back out into the car park.
The minivan wasn't too warm, because Aziraphale expected it to be cool inside. Aziraphale turned on the radio and Debussy's "You're My Best Friend" picked up in the middle of the chorus as the angel fussed with the seatbelt.
America was a trial and Wal-Mart seemed particularly American. Aziraphale missed the bookshop and the ducks in St James Park and tea that wasn't served cold and too-sweet, but Adam had asked them to come along and he didn't ask for much, really.
The driving part wasn't so bad. Crowley was quite good at finding restaurants when it wasn't one of the youngsters' turn to pick. (Aziraphale had miracled a few hamburgers into something more edible in the last few days when it was Brian's turn. The young man had a particular gift when it came to finding the greasiest fast food available.) Wensleydale had proved quite good at map reading, and Pepper was developing her intimidation skills. Adam's aura was…still quite active, though he rarely put his power to any use.3 It made travel run more smoothly than it ought, as people wanted to please him. Some bits of the United States were rather nice to visit, really, though Aziraphale couldn't imagine living here long term. Flying over the Black Hills with Crowley, with the young people stargazing below, had felt like a memory come around again.
Aziraphale sighed, then looked up at the sound of the doors. Crowley sidled in and handed over the book and a stack of chocolate bars. Pepper climbed in the back with Brian, piling plastic shopping bags between them and started squeakily opening crisp bags. Wensleydale slid into the middle seat and patted Aziraphale's arm. "Got you a spare handkerchief in case there's any stray mess," he said, passing up a crisp-folded square of cotton. Aziraphale nodded thanks. He was a nice young man. Adam climbed in after, settling what looked like the ice cream Lego set on the floor between his legs.
"The shop girl is all right," he reported. "And only one of the eggs tried to hatch until I reminded it that it hadn't been fertilised, so it could have been worse. You feeling better?"
"You know," Aziraphale said, "I think I might be. Thank you all."
***
1 They had visited a lot of ice cream shops on the trip so far. Adam was partial to Superman ice cream, probably because it was bright yellow, red, and blue. Brian had latched onto Mississippi mud pie, Wensleydale liked maple walnut, and Pepper ate pastel pink strawberry cheesecake and glared at everyone preemptively about it. Aziraphale could be tempted to a dish of rum raisin, and Crowley chose coffee when it was available and coconut when it wasn't.
2 As is always the case in discount DVD bins.
3 He hurt to look at sometimes, with a hint of the grief of millennia in the corner of his smile, just like Yeshua had had.