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unravels
Author:sadisticgrin
Title: Stompin’ at the Savoy
Rating: PG
Prompt: A/C or A&C: Pre-Arrangement, curiosity, plants, or present day, weapons, frustration. H/C or smut ok if you choose to write a relationship.
Notes: I did my best to include most of what you asked for. I hope I didn’t stray too terribly far from the prompt. There are a few historical notes in there and what, I’m sure, might be construed as a little too historically geeky and vague for anyone to possibly get, but I’ve done my best and hope you enjoy it anyway Unravels. May you have a very merry Christmas holiday and new year.
London, 1897A.D.
There was very little to be done, Crowley reflected with the sort of blasé attitude one acquired after a certain number of millennia on the job, about the whole ‘free will’ thing. It was almost a contractual agreement and, if nothing else, Down There certainly did it’s part to honor contracts. Crowley had met once a crossroads demon who had been very enlightening on the subject. Hell hounds, bastions of evil, and all that.
‘You can’t tinker with their free will though,’ she had said over two drinks in small pub. ‘It’s all about manipulation; you’ve got to make them think what you want is what they want and then you’re set. Besides,’ she straightened, clinking her glass briefly on the table. ‘Sometimes they’ll make it more interesting on their own.’
And, alright, manipulation was fine and all that but occasionally Crowley could go for a bit of trickery too - it wasn’t lying, he told himself. His sort weren’t really allowed to get into that, but a few omissions of the truth here and there and, really, who would be the wiser?
‘Nah then,’ said the man in the low doorway. Henry Pickett stood mostly in the shadow of the tenant apartment that didn’t belong to him. Crowley found it somewhat annoying for some unexplainable reason, perhaps because he got the feeling that Henry Pickett had never done anything illegal in his life and therefore had absolutely no reason to be slinking about; until now anyway, but that wasn’t exactly the point. ‘Yuh’ve come all tha way ta East ter trade me this 'ere pistohl fo' me grandaddy's ohl Galand? Blasted gun hain't worked going on eight yars.' Henry Pickett squint at him. 'Why're yah eyes ahl yellow?'
'Skin condition,' Crowley replied impatiently, holding the black powder pistol in his upturned palm. A few omissions of the truth and it wouldn't be lying necessarily if he didn't happen to explain the fine mechanizations involved with a primarily wooden black powder pistol to dear young Henry Pickett of Eastend London. And if the young man happened to, oh, go do terrible things with said black powder pistol and nearly get his own hands shot off in the process it wouldn't be lying so much as... Well, whatever it was, Crowley was fairly sure that Down There would give him enough approval for it to be satisfying on that low grade level. 'Do you want the trade or not, Mr. Pickett? I've business to attend to,' prompted Crowley, fingers itching.
Besides, he really rather fancied that Galand revolver. It would look good over his mantle or possibly simply tucked just so under the seat of the Daimler.
Henry Pickett frowned a little. It made his face look somewhat like a toad's, squashed around the eyes with his mouth drawn long across the width of his mouth. 'Ahlright,' he agreed at length, passing the Galand over in exchange for the pistol. 'Whot'd you say yahr name wahs?' He hesitated, a shifty mannerism coming into his face. 'In case ah need ahnooother fence in tha next day ohr sah...'
Crowley took the Galand and turned it over in his hands. 'Periander,' he told Henry Pickett, pocketing the Galand.
'Odd name,' Henry Pickett allowed, stepping aside to let Crowley back out of the small apartment. There was a cat sitting in the doorway which Crowley found himself obligated to step over with very little surprise. Not even certain associates of the underworld - or whatever they were calling it these days - could get a cat to move when it didn't want to.
'Good dah, Mr. Periander,' Henry Pickett said.
'Merry Christmas,' Crowley offered with a large smile as he stepped out into the hall and took his leave, eager to get back to the street.
*****
He paid the hansom driver and quickly made his way up the street and round the corner to where he'd left the Daimler parked - hadn't wanted to risk taking it down into Eastside, even if none of the car actually worked. One time; one time he'd gone and taken it and had come back to find half the paint chipped off and one of the wheel's gone missing and so help him he didn't need to be put through that sort of mess again. It had taken quite a bit of cleaning up and nearly four whole days to find a proper replacement for that wheel. It took far too much effort to keep a car going with only three wheels and besides, he'd had to suffer alone because Aziraphale made this face whenever he picked the angel up in the three wheeled '95 and Crowley had finally just decided that it wasn't work arguing and he wasn't going to take the Angel anywhere if it meant having him being all disapproving in the passenger seat.
It had been a rather miserable four days, Crowley reflected. He'd gone to see one play and it had been absolutely miserable without Aziraphale there to ho and hum. Crowley found the theatre rather boring when there was absolutely no small victories to be won and no cheerful chattering from the right side of the car afterwards.
'That Oscar Wilde chap,' Aziraphale had said once. 'He writes rather charmingly, don't you think my dear?'
With the Galand in his pocket, Crowley stepped up into the Daimler and set it to running, pulling his cap down low over his forehead and pausing to glance at his watch. Blessed Henry Pickett had gone and made him late. Crowley made a small, irritated noise and told himself he was not feeling the cold of the open air as the Daimler puttered away from the curb and up the center of the road, slipping through traffic in a way that probably shouldn’t have been possible.
*****
St. James Park was what Crowley secretly imagined Hell to look like should it have ever frozen over. It wasn’t quite unpleasant, but there was a feeling of cold and ‘I’d really rather be somewhere else right now, if at all possible’ permeating through it during the winter time. The look of it made it somewhat more difficult to continue Ignoring, Thank You Very Much the chill of the air. The Daimler puttered to a halt and Crowley stood with both hands on the wheel, overlooking the park expectantly and ignoring the slightly numb quality of his face. He forced his nose from turning red in the cold and smoothed back the hair at his temples as he looked over the winter-drenched park. He spotted him sitting on a bench not far away and leapt from the Daimler, features settling into a morbid expression as he advanced on Aziraphale’s position.
Crowley halted five steps away, hands at his sides and a worried expression putting a heavy crease between his eyebrows. Aziraphale stood up and said, quite clearly and with an admirable about of forgiveness, ‘You’re late.’
‘You’re wearing tartan,’ Crowley retorted, eyeing the edges of the waistcoat that peeked out from under the angel’s coat. ‘What did I tell you about wearing things half a century too late?’
Aziraphale’s features soured and he smoothed a hand down his front. ‘Prince Albert was very fashionable, I’ll have you know. Tartan is popular.’
‘Prince Albert,’ Crowley said with a note a resolution. ‘Is also dead. Along with whatever fashion trends he may have set in the mean time.’ He steered Aziraphale toward where the Daimler was parked.
‘Bother,’ the angel grumped, climbing up into the car. ‘You’re just sore because you didn’t get that war your side would have liked. I told you, Crowley, we had nothing to do with it. I tell you, if we’d known the man was quite so diplomatic, I imagine we might have done a good deal more with him. -Where are we going anyway; the wire you sent didn’t exactly say much. And what on earth were you doing in Eastend exactly?”
Crowley sat down, pulling his coat round himself tighter. He sniffed against the cold an refused to wipe his nose. “I’ve gotten us reservations at the Savoy, angel - now stop asking questions at least until we get there. It’s too cold for this.’
Aziraphale brightened and straightened a touch. ‘The theatre or that lovely hotel?’
‘The hotel,’ Crowley answered. The Daimler sputtered to life again, roaring a little and thump-thump-thumping into gear.
‘I hear their supper is excellent,’ Aziraphale reflected absently, choosing to ignore the suspicious lump in Crowley’s coat pocket for the time being.
*****
The pie was delicious and only marginally ruined by the fact that Aziraphale chose to breach certain subject right in the middle of it. Crowley set down his fork and looked at him, shifting a little where he sat. The band in the room was playing carols which Aziraphale had immediately commented on upon arrival but seemed to have forgotten halfway between the dinner course and ordering dessert.
‘I said,’ Aziraphale repeated. ‘What have you got in your pocket?’
‘A Galand revolver,’ Crowley said at length, reaching for his glass of wine.
‘A Galand revolver?!’ The angel quickly dropped his voice, leaning slightly forward over the table. ‘Crowley, you didn’t go to Eastend to get a gun did you? Where on earth did you get it?’
‘I traded for it,’ Crowley remarked, quite cheerfully considering the circumstances. ‘It didn’t work, so I gave the man something that did.’
Aziraphale moaned and took a stricken large bite from his Christmas pie. ‘Crowley,’ he said when he was quite finished chewing in that morose, disapproving way. ‘Crowley, it isn’t as if the city isn’t violent enough - did you really need to go any help it along by giving someone a gun?’
‘He needed to rob a few people,’ Crowley explained with a shrug. Aziraphale made a loud choking sound.
‘Are you alright, sir?’ asked one of the waiters, pausing at the table.
‘He’s got a gun and intends to rob a few people?!’ Aziraphale snapped back at Crowley, a touch unbalanced and perhaps a bit too loudly.
Two minutes later, they both found themselves sitting in the cold again. Crowley gripped the Daimler‘s steering wheel tightly with both hands. ‘Well,’ he said finally. ‘That could have gone worse.’
Aziraphale’s breath misted on the cold night air and he looked thoroughly ashamed of himself. ‘It wasn’t the HMS Jupiter plowing through the London bridge,’ he conceded. ‘I supposed that means we won’t be going there for a while.’ Which was a shame - that pie had been quite lovely.
‘No,’ Crowley agreed, shooting the hotel a glance over his shoulder. ‘Not until someone either forgets what we look like or conveniently dies anyway.’
‘Crowley--’
‘I’m joking.’
The silence that fell between them was punctuated by a murmur from the inside of the Savoy, the faint rumble of Christmas melodies seeping out through the glass windows. Finally,
‘You know,’ Crowley said, sitting back and loosening his grip on the steering wheel. He did not look at Aziraphale. ‘Black powder pistols are highly unreliable. I’ve seen a few people get their hands taken right off. Particularly when something’s gone wrong with the barrel. Like a crack.’
Aziraphale shot him a long look and Crowley started the Daimler.
*****
London, 2004A.D.
‘Merry Christmas,’ Crowley said as he shoved the thin square package into the Aziraphale’s hands. The angel blinked back at him for a moment, dimwitted and sloughed over with alcohol before his features suddenly cleared and sobered. Crowley simply leaned back in his chosen chair in the back room of Aziraphale’s bookshop, content to keep the edge of intoxication as he knit his fingers over his lap and waited.
Aziraphale ripped the paper from the package, blanking a moment before he flipped the record over to read the back. ‘Crowley, what is --?’ He stood, hesitated, and then dug about for the record player collecting dust under a sheaf of papers. He couldn’t find the power cable, but put the vinyl down and setting the needle down anyway.
Ella Fitzgerald, soft and smooth, singing Stompin’ at the Savoy. Aziraphale smiled and Crowley chuckled faintly as he let his chair rock forward to sit on all four of its legs again.
unravelsAuthor:
sadisticgrinTitle: Stompin’ at the Savoy
Rating: PG
Prompt: A/C or A&C: Pre-Arrangement, curiosity, plants, or present day, weapons, frustration. H/C or smut ok if you choose to write a relationship.
Notes: I did my best to include most of what you asked for. I hope I didn’t stray too terribly far from the prompt. There are a few historical notes in there and what, I’m sure, might be construed as a little too historically geeky and vague for anyone to possibly get, but I’ve done my best and hope you enjoy it anyway Unravels. May you have a very merry Christmas holiday and new year.
London, 1897A.D.
There was very little to be done, Crowley reflected with the sort of blasé attitude one acquired after a certain number of millennia on the job, about the whole ‘free will’ thing. It was almost a contractual agreement and, if nothing else, Down There certainly did it’s part to honor contracts. Crowley had met once a crossroads demon who had been very enlightening on the subject. Hell hounds, bastions of evil, and all that.
‘You can’t tinker with their free will though,’ she had said over two drinks in small pub. ‘It’s all about manipulation; you’ve got to make them think what you want is what they want and then you’re set. Besides,’ she straightened, clinking her glass briefly on the table. ‘Sometimes they’ll make it more interesting on their own.’
And, alright, manipulation was fine and all that but occasionally Crowley could go for a bit of trickery too - it wasn’t lying, he told himself. His sort weren’t really allowed to get into that, but a few omissions of the truth here and there and, really, who would be the wiser?
‘Nah then,’ said the man in the low doorway. Henry Pickett stood mostly in the shadow of the tenant apartment that didn’t belong to him. Crowley found it somewhat annoying for some unexplainable reason, perhaps because he got the feeling that Henry Pickett had never done anything illegal in his life and therefore had absolutely no reason to be slinking about; until now anyway, but that wasn’t exactly the point. ‘Yuh’ve come all tha way ta East ter trade me this 'ere pistohl fo' me grandaddy's ohl Galand? Blasted gun hain't worked going on eight yars.' Henry Pickett squint at him. 'Why're yah eyes ahl yellow?'
'Skin condition,' Crowley replied impatiently, holding the black powder pistol in his upturned palm. A few omissions of the truth and it wouldn't be lying necessarily if he didn't happen to explain the fine mechanizations involved with a primarily wooden black powder pistol to dear young Henry Pickett of Eastend London. And if the young man happened to, oh, go do terrible things with said black powder pistol and nearly get his own hands shot off in the process it wouldn't be lying so much as... Well, whatever it was, Crowley was fairly sure that Down There would give him enough approval for it to be satisfying on that low grade level. 'Do you want the trade or not, Mr. Pickett? I've business to attend to,' prompted Crowley, fingers itching.
Besides, he really rather fancied that Galand revolver. It would look good over his mantle or possibly simply tucked just so under the seat of the Daimler.
Henry Pickett frowned a little. It made his face look somewhat like a toad's, squashed around the eyes with his mouth drawn long across the width of his mouth. 'Ahlright,' he agreed at length, passing the Galand over in exchange for the pistol. 'Whot'd you say yahr name wahs?' He hesitated, a shifty mannerism coming into his face. 'In case ah need ahnooother fence in tha next day ohr sah...'
Crowley took the Galand and turned it over in his hands. 'Periander,' he told Henry Pickett, pocketing the Galand.
'Odd name,' Henry Pickett allowed, stepping aside to let Crowley back out of the small apartment. There was a cat sitting in the doorway which Crowley found himself obligated to step over with very little surprise. Not even certain associates of the underworld - or whatever they were calling it these days - could get a cat to move when it didn't want to.
'Good dah, Mr. Periander,' Henry Pickett said.
'Merry Christmas,' Crowley offered with a large smile as he stepped out into the hall and took his leave, eager to get back to the street.
He paid the hansom driver and quickly made his way up the street and round the corner to where he'd left the Daimler parked - hadn't wanted to risk taking it down into Eastside, even if none of the car actually worked. One time; one time he'd gone and taken it and had come back to find half the paint chipped off and one of the wheel's gone missing and so help him he didn't need to be put through that sort of mess again. It had taken quite a bit of cleaning up and nearly four whole days to find a proper replacement for that wheel. It took far too much effort to keep a car going with only three wheels and besides, he'd had to suffer alone because Aziraphale made this face whenever he picked the angel up in the three wheeled '95 and Crowley had finally just decided that it wasn't work arguing and he wasn't going to take the Angel anywhere if it meant having him being all disapproving in the passenger seat.
It had been a rather miserable four days, Crowley reflected. He'd gone to see one play and it had been absolutely miserable without Aziraphale there to ho and hum. Crowley found the theatre rather boring when there was absolutely no small victories to be won and no cheerful chattering from the right side of the car afterwards.
'That Oscar Wilde chap,' Aziraphale had said once. 'He writes rather charmingly, don't you think my dear?'
With the Galand in his pocket, Crowley stepped up into the Daimler and set it to running, pulling his cap down low over his forehead and pausing to glance at his watch. Blessed Henry Pickett had gone and made him late. Crowley made a small, irritated noise and told himself he was not feeling the cold of the open air as the Daimler puttered away from the curb and up the center of the road, slipping through traffic in a way that probably shouldn’t have been possible.
St. James Park was what Crowley secretly imagined Hell to look like should it have ever frozen over. It wasn’t quite unpleasant, but there was a feeling of cold and ‘I’d really rather be somewhere else right now, if at all possible’ permeating through it during the winter time. The look of it made it somewhat more difficult to continue Ignoring, Thank You Very Much the chill of the air. The Daimler puttered to a halt and Crowley stood with both hands on the wheel, overlooking the park expectantly and ignoring the slightly numb quality of his face. He forced his nose from turning red in the cold and smoothed back the hair at his temples as he looked over the winter-drenched park. He spotted him sitting on a bench not far away and leapt from the Daimler, features settling into a morbid expression as he advanced on Aziraphale’s position.
Crowley halted five steps away, hands at his sides and a worried expression putting a heavy crease between his eyebrows. Aziraphale stood up and said, quite clearly and with an admirable about of forgiveness, ‘You’re late.’
‘You’re wearing tartan,’ Crowley retorted, eyeing the edges of the waistcoat that peeked out from under the angel’s coat. ‘What did I tell you about wearing things half a century too late?’
Aziraphale’s features soured and he smoothed a hand down his front. ‘Prince Albert was very fashionable, I’ll have you know. Tartan is popular.’
‘Prince Albert,’ Crowley said with a note a resolution. ‘Is also dead. Along with whatever fashion trends he may have set in the mean time.’ He steered Aziraphale toward where the Daimler was parked.
‘Bother,’ the angel grumped, climbing up into the car. ‘You’re just sore because you didn’t get that war your side would have liked. I told you, Crowley, we had nothing to do with it. I tell you, if we’d known the man was quite so diplomatic, I imagine we might have done a good deal more with him. -Where are we going anyway; the wire you sent didn’t exactly say much. And what on earth were you doing in Eastend exactly?”
Crowley sat down, pulling his coat round himself tighter. He sniffed against the cold an refused to wipe his nose. “I’ve gotten us reservations at the Savoy, angel - now stop asking questions at least until we get there. It’s too cold for this.’
Aziraphale brightened and straightened a touch. ‘The theatre or that lovely hotel?’
‘The hotel,’ Crowley answered. The Daimler sputtered to life again, roaring a little and thump-thump-thumping into gear.
‘I hear their supper is excellent,’ Aziraphale reflected absently, choosing to ignore the suspicious lump in Crowley’s coat pocket for the time being.
The pie was delicious and only marginally ruined by the fact that Aziraphale chose to breach certain subject right in the middle of it. Crowley set down his fork and looked at him, shifting a little where he sat. The band in the room was playing carols which Aziraphale had immediately commented on upon arrival but seemed to have forgotten halfway between the dinner course and ordering dessert.
‘I said,’ Aziraphale repeated. ‘What have you got in your pocket?’
‘A Galand revolver,’ Crowley said at length, reaching for his glass of wine.
‘A Galand revolver?!’ The angel quickly dropped his voice, leaning slightly forward over the table. ‘Crowley, you didn’t go to Eastend to get a gun did you? Where on earth did you get it?’
‘I traded for it,’ Crowley remarked, quite cheerfully considering the circumstances. ‘It didn’t work, so I gave the man something that did.’
Aziraphale moaned and took a stricken large bite from his Christmas pie. ‘Crowley,’ he said when he was quite finished chewing in that morose, disapproving way. ‘Crowley, it isn’t as if the city isn’t violent enough - did you really need to go any help it along by giving someone a gun?’
‘He needed to rob a few people,’ Crowley explained with a shrug. Aziraphale made a loud choking sound.
‘Are you alright, sir?’ asked one of the waiters, pausing at the table.
‘He’s got a gun and intends to rob a few people?!’ Aziraphale snapped back at Crowley, a touch unbalanced and perhaps a bit too loudly.
Two minutes later, they both found themselves sitting in the cold again. Crowley gripped the Daimler‘s steering wheel tightly with both hands. ‘Well,’ he said finally. ‘That could have gone worse.’
Aziraphale’s breath misted on the cold night air and he looked thoroughly ashamed of himself. ‘It wasn’t the HMS Jupiter plowing through the London bridge,’ he conceded. ‘I supposed that means we won’t be going there for a while.’ Which was a shame - that pie had been quite lovely.
‘No,’ Crowley agreed, shooting the hotel a glance over his shoulder. ‘Not until someone either forgets what we look like or conveniently dies anyway.’
‘Crowley--’
‘I’m joking.’
The silence that fell between them was punctuated by a murmur from the inside of the Savoy, the faint rumble of Christmas melodies seeping out through the glass windows. Finally,
‘You know,’ Crowley said, sitting back and loosening his grip on the steering wheel. He did not look at Aziraphale. ‘Black powder pistols are highly unreliable. I’ve seen a few people get their hands taken right off. Particularly when something’s gone wrong with the barrel. Like a crack.’
Aziraphale shot him a long look and Crowley started the Daimler.
London, 2004A.D.
‘Merry Christmas,’ Crowley said as he shoved the thin square package into the Aziraphale’s hands. The angel blinked back at him for a moment, dimwitted and sloughed over with alcohol before his features suddenly cleared and sobered. Crowley simply leaned back in his chosen chair in the back room of Aziraphale’s bookshop, content to keep the edge of intoxication as he knit his fingers over his lap and waited.
Aziraphale ripped the paper from the package, blanking a moment before he flipped the record over to read the back. ‘Crowley, what is --?’ He stood, hesitated, and then dug about for the record player collecting dust under a sheaf of papers. He couldn’t find the power cable, but put the vinyl down and setting the needle down anyway.
Ella Fitzgerald, soft and smooth, singing Stompin’ at the Savoy. Aziraphale smiled and Crowley chuckled faintly as he let his chair rock forward to sit on all four of its legs again.
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-25 10:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-27 08:01 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-28 07:48 am (UTC)There are so many other wonderful moments in here - Aziraphale making the face over Crowley's manipulation of the three-wheeled car, Crowley fixing himself up handsomely and then putting on his 'morbid' face to meet him, the hint for the angel toward the end that Crowley's not quite as evil as he pretends. And now I'll have to look up that Ella Fitzgerald tune asap. Any chance that their expulsion from the Savoy was what originally caused them to seek friendlier dinners at the Ritz?
Thank you again - lengthy, plot-driven A/C is exactly my favorite sort of gift. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-28 07:36 am (UTC)