Happy Holidays, drwhoisginnyholmes!
Jan. 11th, 2024 07:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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go_exchangePairing: Aziraphale/Crowley
Rating: Mature
Summary: It's the late 1970s, there's NO FUTURE and ENGLAND'S DREAMING, or so they say, very loudly. Aziraphale and Crowley are both directed to infiltrate the London punk scene. As usual they succeed mostly in infiltrating each other.
Covent Garden hadn't always been the Place to Be. Soho's even shadier neighbour, draped over with an aura of sadness. It was such a pity - enough of the fine old architecture was still here, but slowly falling into the ruin of neglect that finally undramatically achieved what the Blitz had failed to accomplish.
What's to be done with a neighbourhood like that? What cities in sad days have always done - relied on the devious ingeniousness of humanity, to find a neglected space and fill it with activities unauthorised, unintended, and sometimes completely unimaginable to generations before, because you'd have to take a very deep dive to explain the centuries that built up to that young man over there's particular hairstyle.
If you wanted to go a little bit shallower, you could simply take at face value the story that Malcolm McLaren had been to New York City a few years before and been very struck by some sound and fashion he saw there - well, that's how the story is written anyhow. All it took was a little of the subversive lipstick glam of the New York Dolls, like if Bowie had a hangover so dire he'd slept on the street in the rain for three nights. Add Richard Hell's sneering swagger and spiky hair. Grind in the Ramones with a sound so completely irresistible and simple that even the kindest of humans happily chants along with "Beat on the brat with a baseball bat, oh yeah" like they were born to it, because that drumbeat and guitar chords are perfectly synchronized with a heartbeat that just wants to be done with polite repression for a few minutes.
Bring it across the sea to a generation that knows so deep in their bones how utterly, to-the-bone, nearly hopelessly, white-knuckle-fucked they really are by circumstances beyond any semblance of their control, and really, you need no supernatural explanation for why they'd be enamored of angry-sounding music and scandalous hairstyles.And indeed, there was no supernatural explanation.
There didn't need to be. Crowley didn't even try to claim he'd seen it coming, because he hadn't - although really, anyone who'd popped into Warhol's Factory a decade earlier because he thought the Campbell's soup can thing was so perfectly on the line between stupid and brilliant, and heard a blast of Warhol's unhinged house band, really should have.
(He'd make up for this later in the decades to come when CD jukeboxes were the rage in the hipster pubs, and any establishment that dared to include that Best Of was getting "Sister Ray" three times a night whether anyone paid to hear it or not)
But let's return to the late 1970s, when Crowley stalked the streets of Covent Garden as snakily as he could with his brand-new Vivienne Westwood bondage trousers creaking and squeaking like un-broken-in shoes.
And it wasn't his own handiwork as he sauntered past the milling crowds outside of the Roxy, all in various stages of sneer and pose, showing off their handwork - elaborate hair couture and sculpture in unnatural colours, makeup on all genders ranging from glamourous drag star to bruised and rotting corpse. The boots, the coats, the ripped-up and sharp spikes and nails, the dog collars and the polished cat claws.
You could hear the band from two blocks away, whoever they were. Crowley scanned the mosaic of half-darkened marquee and distressed collage of aged pasted flyers. Generation X. Crowley sighed. Nice try, but that's a phrase that'll never catch on. The Damned. Bit on the nose there, he thought uncomfortably. The Buzzcocks. Crowley raised an eyebrow so hard and fast he briefly dislodged his shades. Can't have that! Cock Sparrer and Penetration went even deeper. Almost certainly false advertising but you can't blame them for trying, Crowley thought.
One must swagger in, with a certain sense of style, not easy to refuse. He'd had an order from Down Below, uncomfortable, sent through his television set when he was watching Upstairs, Downstairs. For fuck's sake, Beelzebub. Not subtle. Not even on the Beeb. The Bee-bee-zeeeeee.
This generation wasn't going to be having with the hierarchies, whether upstairs or downstairs. He supposed he'd be willing to take credit for this movement if it was really upsetting the white-glove contingent that bad. Maybe even a commendation from Down Below? Crowley slithered on into the Roxy, bypassing the bouncers with a subtle hand gesture of in-group understanding. It hadn't been seen before but it was understood.
The music was raw and angry, and for good reason. Terrible time to be young and trying to get a life going - but give them respect, they were doing their best. What exactly was he supposed to be doing here?
Oh, apparently a spot of thwarting, because there was someone he had not yet expected to see here. Bless his heart.
Aziraphale was leaning up in a far corner, a notebook in his hand and a very dated tweed cape over his shoulders. "Oh! Oh Crowley!" he said.
"Yesss, it's me," Crowley said. "What news do you have? Why are you here?"
"I was...it was suggested...I should get out of the bookshop once in a while. There are so many of these young folks in Soho, after all. They say the best record shops are near me! So I thought I ought to come see what they were so excited about."
"I don't know if this is really your kind of social scene," Crowley said, a little bit sadly. "Don't imagine they're doing the gavotte much."
"Please. I'm not quite that far behind. I'm fully aware of the existence of be-bop."
The crowds were pressing in, and most of them looking askance at Aziraphale, with fairly good reason.
And yet.
Crowley took a moment to really study Aziraphale's face, and the angel's eyes were really ridiculously roaming all over the place. All over him.
"This is a new style for you, Crowley," he said.
It was, of course. His hair shaved on the sides and spiked up - the humans used gel if they could get it and glue if they couldn't, but he just used force of will. A good leather jacket was always in style, but for the first time it was in fashion for it to be worn and torn and safety-pinned together. He'd never worn jeans so tight before and had to admit he liked the way they fit, and those Doc Martens boots really felt sublime on his feet.
(Doc Martens didn't make snakeskin boots. That was his own body's contribution.)
"I haven't seen you since that Bowie show in '73, angel. How are you doing?" His voice was low and soft.
"Oh, I suppose I'm alright," Aziraphale says. "One does one's best. I have to admit, that I was sent here to investigate, and I am not all that certain what I'm supposed to be doing. The last time I went round the clubs, I was told by my neighbours in Soho this was the done thing? Am i wrong?"
Aziraphale's long hair, very tight bell-bottom trousers, and platform shoes were, in fact, remarkably wrong for the moment, and yet Crowley could not bear to say so.
"One does one's best," Crowley said, with a smug little chuckle because he was, after all, a flash bastard.
I am the fly, I am the fly, I am the fly in the ointment
I can spread more disease than the fleas
Which nibble away at your window display ("I Am the Fly," Wire)
It really had come down to Beelzebub, daring to burst into Crowley's hi-fi radio set yet again, overriding an especially lovely song by a lady singer whose name he wouldn't catch again for several years yet.
the world izzz weird now, Crawly. We have more opportunitiezzz to wreak havoc now than ever before, do you not get it? Report, pleazzze, we shall watch.
"Yes, Lord Beelzebub, yes. It's true. It's terrible to be a young person in Britain now, of course. You could always come up though. Don't rely on me only, check on me if you must. If you're lucky you might inspire a song some day."*
There was only a long suffering hiss on the radio, and the music had changed to, of all things, Queen. Not stylish.
They were so hidebound down there, Crowley thought. But surely someone was starting to get the picture? You'd think a bunch of rebel angels wouldn't be so caught up in tradition, but it didn't take much for the complacency to set in.
We've always done it this way, they said. No you bloody well haven't, he thought. But what was the point of pushing the argument? It would be nice to be left alone for a change.
The next time Crowley saw Aziraphale at the Roxy, things were very different. A week, a month, given change? He couldn't be sure.
There was something about the cut of his old tartan trousers that almost wasn't an assault on the eyes compared to the styles around him. Then it hit Crowley - of course. That 1940s retro look has almost come round again. Not teddy, not mod. Count on Aziraphale to manage to be fashionable completely by accident. Or perhaps he'd done a little sleight of hand and manipulation of his own, to turn the tables a little bit in his favor. It was either that or humiliate himself at that Vivienne Westwood's shop Sex, and that was hardly a place for angels to rush in where fools fear to tread.
Crowley had decidedly mixed feelings about thinking of Aziraphale and Sex in the same sentence, in any context. But once an unwelcome idea has established itself in the old reptile brain (technically the entirety of Crowley's brain), any attempt to banish it head-on has the effect of only rooting it deeper. And this was a battle he'd been fighting since that charming little bathhouse in Pompeii. (Shame about that)
Aziraphale was never quite comfortable going out among the youth, never had been - but now he felt called. Something about the energy of the moment in Soho inspired him. The record store on the corner of his shop was doing booming business in imports and small labels.
Let the young people have this awkward thing. It had been so hard since the war. London was still so damaged, and there just wasn't much for them. But since the Sixties, something had changed. Something that wasn't going to ever quite go back to the way it had been before.
Crowley had something to do with it, he was certain. Was he supposed to thwart?
Thwart what, exactly? It was already just using up his low-grade miracle capacity to carve a force-field around himself to ward off the worst of what the lads appeared to call "gobbing."
He'd felt the unpleasantly harsh white light of Gabriel's signature - oh, he hated that, especially in the bookshop, where it faded the ancient ink and flattened out the warm glow of his precious gaslight and candles. It could even curdle the cream in his tea if it landed in precisely the wrong spot.
Yes, he probably should have told Crowley he was on a mission, but it really hardly counted as that. Really just a matter of reconnai-- renoc - surv-- observation. And reporting, of course. Selectively so.
The music was fierce tonight - the band onstage seemed transported, hardly aware of the walls vibrating around them. Guitar strings were broken, spit and bottles flying, and at the heart of the storm an odd sense of - not calm exactly, no never that, but rightness. As though everyone in the room were somehow in exactly the right place at the right time.
Hell can do that, but it's a lie. Heaven can do that but...
He looked at the wild young faces with teeth bared, ecstatic, their lean bodies in their artfully torn rags flailing at each other.
Did he dare to finish that thought?They did it, themselves, this time. The humans, turning rage into art. Quite remarkable really, even though...
"Well, I'll be damned again, look at you!" said a familiar voice in his ear, cutting through the din.
Aziraphale turned to see Crowley in his spikey leather jacket and with the studs in his pierced ears gleaming, and just a hint of forked tongue flicking between his lips. Aziraphale wasn't sure quite what to say until Crowley gestured at his eyes. "That...shouldn't suit you at all but it does."
"Oh, that," Aziraphale said. "That Bromley girl, Susie I think her name is? The, err, witchy-looking one? I let her take one of those eye brushes to me. She was so insistent, I could hardly refuse..."
Crowley managed a laugh that was part bark and part hiss. "You got Siouxsie Sioux to do your eyeliner?"
"Well, she's very good at it!"
"Oh yesssss she is," said Crowley, and his gaze lingered so long it blew completely through plausible deniability. Aziraphale finally had to break the stare by glancing down at the floor, and when he got a good look at the floor he wished he hadn't. He looked up at Crowley again, who still hadn't blinked. "Don't mind me, I'm just freezing this image in my mind for all eternity."
"So...you like it?"
"I'm having a virtual stew of very complex emotions, angel."
Aziraphale's face felt hot, no doubt from the close cramped club and the steam of sweat all around him, or perhaps quite a bit more than that, and it was the spirit of wild liberation that prompted him to lean in and ask Crowley a question he would never be able to take back. "So are those bondage trousers just for show?"
"I have to admit they have been," Crowley said with a snakey smile. "Honestly look at these spotty kids, how much real action do you think they see?"
"I saw quite a bit going on the alleys on my way here, I have to say. You missed it? One of them had three people. It's not all anarchy and rage, my dear, there is free love as well. At least reasonably-priced love."
"Well, it's alright for them. I would have thought a room at the Ritz was more your speed."
The look that flickered across Aziraphale's face was very much like something a human writer might have described as devilish. "That's the charm of it, my dear. A little bit of the Ritz wherever I am."
Anything Crowley might have said was drowned out in the roar of the crowd as a guitar fed back in a horrific piercing way, and the audience seemed to like that.
And Crowley had to admit he liked the way Aziraphale took hold of his sleeve and turned him about to pull him close. My badness, are those plump angel fingers with black nail polish tugging at his belt? They absolutely were, there was no chance of denying it now.
With a sliver of a greasy little miracle, Aziraphale pulled them through the propped-upon back door, their occult/ethereal matter passing easily through the throng of eager young punks going the other way to rush the gates without paying.
Outside by the bins it was a sultry night and London's light pollution bounced off the low-hanging clouds for its grey-purple glow. It reflected in Aziraphale's eyes, and he looked stormy with his smile as he pressed Crowley against the crumbling brick wall.
"We're going to get in so much trouble," said Crowley, and he couldn't keep the raw delight out of his voice.
"You sound...excited," Aziraphale said, his voice low as Crowley pulled him in close. Together, like this, their bodies seemed to slot together as though they'd been made for the purpose.
"Do you know why they're like that?" Crowley said as Aziraphale nuzzled at his neck. "It's because they think they're about to die."
"Your pillow talk needs work, my dear," Aziraphale muttered. He took a soft, light bite of Crowley's throat and the demon made a most remarkable noise. Delicious. Crowley's hands sank below Aziraphale's jacket and gripped generous handfuls.
"I'll save that for when we get our room at the Ritz," Crowley said, and for a moment there was no more talking as he slid his slithery snake tongue between Aziraphale's lips, dancing with him there.
"I mean it," he said later, panting as they ground together, desperate to wring as much pleasure from the friction as they could without any awkward disrobing miracles happening unplanned. "They think Armageddon is coming and they're very pissed off about it. What if they're right? What if the end of the world is coming, and if we don't cause it but they do?"
"What if the end of the world is coming?" Aziraphale panted, gasping, clutching at Crowley's creaky leather. "How should we spend our last days here?"
"Like this, just like this," Crowley cried as his knees buckled in his climax.
"OI, GET A ROOM," yelled a crowd of punks about to push into the club, throwing coins at them. There was no real malice in it. Just some humans to what they thought were fellow humans, dancing with themselves on the thin crust over the Underworld, ready to crack open at a push of a button in Moscow or Washington, and London in between, drowning in flames by the boiling river.
"Something to be said for fatalistic hedonism, I suppose," said Aziraphale, discreetly reaching into his trousers to wipe himself with a handkerchief. Crowley took a long, deliberately obscene lick of his hand.
"Don't let them hear that upstairs," Crowley said, kissing him again.
"Don't let them see you kiss me downstairs."
"None of their bloody business. Nobody heard, that band's too loud."
"The Ritz next time, then?"
"If there is a next time."
We made it on a Ballroom Blitz
I took his arms and kissed his lips
He looked at me with such a smile my face turned red
We booked a room into the Ritz
Oh oh oh oh
He gives me head
("Jet Boy Jet Girl", Elton Motello)
(no subject)
Date: 2024-01-12 04:32 am (UTC)I must admit I laughed out loud at that, as well as the Siouxsie Sioux cameo. Well-done!
(no subject)
Date: 2024-01-13 07:08 am (UTC)Loved this
Date: 2024-01-12 10:43 am (UTC)Re: Loved this
Date: 2024-01-13 07:11 am (UTC)Aziraphale and Crowley were the worst special agents ever, from their bosses' point of view. :D
(no subject)
Date: 2024-01-13 10:15 am (UTC)Here it is, all the songs referenced and many more:
London Calling to the Underworld playlist
(no subject)
Date: 2024-01-18 04:20 am (UTC)I’m so sorry, I’m not going to be able to quote every good line in this, because I’m a few paragraphs in and so far it’s been ALL of them.
I don’t know enough about punk but this is making me want to listen to all of it
Crowley watching “Upstairs, Downstairs” XD And the Beebeezee omggg
“but he just used force of will” I also believe this is what David Tennant does. But this reads more like book Omens to me, and this is genuinely how I used to headcanon Crowley’s hair (sort of—swooping back in the shape he wants in a way that SHOULD require gel, but doesn’t, for HIM, and ridiculously soft because of that)
“And this was a battle he'd been fighting since that charming little bathhouse in Pompeii. (Shame about that)” Example of the kind of whirlwind of a sentence that just shows what being immortal does to a person XD The smashing down of emotions (and inability to hide ALL of your thoughts from yourself) is so GOOD
“A little bit of the Ritz wherever I am.” HOO BOY
“Nobody heard, that band's too loud.” Love this line
This was great! A little heartbreaking but full of hope, too :)