SNC: The Nose Knows (gennish, PG)
Title: The Nose Knows
Author: mad_maudlin
Fandom: Sanctuary
Rating: PG
Characters: Will, Henry
Genre: gen, but if you read it as preslash I am not going to stop you.
Summary: The less glamorous side of the Sanctuary's operations. Will can't help messing with Henry's head.
A/N: OH MY GOD I WROTE SANCTUARY FIC. I don't know if I feel giddy or unclean. I kinda blame infinitechevron for this.
The Nose Knows
By Mad Maudlin
Work at the Sanctuary is not all about slaying monsters or saving them. There isn't really that much life-affirming victory or heartwarming success. If they're very, very lucky, there's at least a punch line.
If they're not-and right now, Will was not-there are lingering odors and unreliable witnesses and a mass of dead ends. Or in this case, forty-two missing pets within six blocks of a club called Diesel. Clearly carnivorous, most likely nocturnal, possessing human intelligence and opposable thumbs, Magnus had declared while looking at the clipped-off remains of a chain leash. Like that actually narrowed anything down.
Take Henry and see what you can find, she'd told him.
At the moment, Will would be lucky to find Henry.
Diesel has a cookie-cutter industrial aesthetic, like every other cutting-edge-dance-club-in-a-warehouse-basement, and most of the patrons are uptown kids slumming it in the Old City, poseurs who couldn't afford someplace more expensive and couldn't get in any door with face control. At least, that was Will's conclusion within about three seconds of stepping inside. It was a blessing in some ways, because, as Henry pointed out in the parking lot, "We are not exactly the hippest dudes on the scene."
"I prefer to think of myself as 'classically cool,' actually," Will told him, and when Henry just looked at him with one eyebrow raised, he added, "Beside, how hard do you think it's gonna be to find a schnauzer-napping monster in a dance club?"
Famous last words, Zimmerman, right along with Let's split up to cover more ground. It wasn't as if the club was all that crowded, since it was weeknight and still early yet, but Henry must've been taking stealth lessons from Clara because the guy had vanished. And he was the one with the car keys. After the manager refused to admit the club even had video surveillance without a warrant, Will wasn't feeling up to a more thorough search of the interior, and they could just as easily come back in the daylight to search outside. So Henry could just reappear any moment and Will might be back in his own bed at a reasonable hour for once.
Or, you know, not.
There was a big semi-circular bar in the center of the dance floor, and Will leaned against it while dialing his cell phone. "Henry," he said when got to voice mail (again), "I know for a fact you have excellent hearing, so whenever you want to pick up is fine by me. Unless your phone is off, in which case I hate you and I'm going to tell Magnus you abandoned me." There was, of course, the slim chance that Henry had found their monster and was engaged in a life-or-death struggle with it, but Will was pretty confident that Henry was way scarier than anything that limited its diet to tabbies and terriers.
In his peripheral vision, he saw the bartender sidling up a moment before the guy cleared his throat. "Can I get you anything, sir?"
Will shook his head. "No thanks, I'm heading out as soon as I find my ride."
"The dude you came in with?" he bartender asked. He was a little younger than Will himself, with sandy hair that was long enough to hook behind his ears and a small gold stud in the left one. "I haven't seen him since you got here, sorry."
"That's fine, I just," he waved his phone vaguely. "Wish he'd pick up."
The bartender kept his eyes moving, focusing in on Will without letting the conversation monopolize his attention; a good skill for this line of work. "You got somewhere to be?" he asked smoothly, in an accent that put him as out-of-state. Grad student, maybe, or recent graduate. This could even be a second job.
"Not really, which is sort of the problem," Will admitted, rubbing at his itchy contact lenses. "I've been looking for something…"
"Besides your friend, you mean?" the bartender said, leaning a little closer. The club wasn't particularly well-lit, but even so, Will thought his pupils might've dilated a little even further. "Maybe I can help you out with that."
Oh. Oh. Will sense an opportunity. "Maybe," he said, drawing the word out a little. "I mean, probably not, which is nothing against you, but…you must spend a lot of time in this neighborhood, right?"
The bartender-nametag read Jude--shrugged. "I work here three nights a week, but I live over on Grandview."
Still in the Old City and near the artsy-fartsy neighborhoods around Greenfeld Park, so probably a grad student or someone in a creative field without a steady day job worth specifying. "That's a great area," Will said, leaning a little closer and smiling a little. "I've got a place just a couple blocks up Farrelly Street, and…this is gonna sound crazy…my dog ran away."
Jude snorted. "Oh, man, no way."
"Yeah," Will said mournfully. "I was trying to get the trash out before pick-up and she just slipped right by me and into the street." Which was a concatenation of two or three actual cases, so he felt safe continuing, "A couple of my neighbors had their pets stolen, see, and I've been worried out of my mind…"
"What kind of dog is she?" Jude asked. Definitely interested if he'd keep track of dog pronouns.
"Pomeranian," Will extemporized. "You know the kind, thinks her bark counts more than her bite. Anyway, like I said, a couple of my neighbors lost their pets, too…I guess if you're not around here much, though, you haven't heard anything about it."
Jude shrugged. "I got some friends around here. One of 'em, some crazy broke the bars off her windows last week and the cat got out. She's pissed."
That would be Julie Cross, aged 23, and while she had blamed drug addicts and the military-industrial complex in the same sentence, Magnus had pointed out that the bars weren't cut through so much as bitten. Will revised down his guess at Jude's age but added mental double-underlines to the student part. "Dude, that's messed up," he said, to keep the conversation flowing. "I just wish there was something more we could do, you know? Like we had some hidden cameras or something."
Jude shrugged. "Boss has a whole bunch of 'em around this place, but I don't know if he keeps the tapes or not. Paranoid as fuck, that guy."
Which Will had guessed, but it was nice to get confirmation. "Yeah, and even if he did, what are we gonna say? 'Excuse me, sir, I lost my dog?'"
"Maybe if you threw in a reward…" Jude said with a smirk, and Will noted with approval how he reacted to the word we instead of I. They both laughed, but Jude added earnestly, "Actually, that might not be a bad idea-you know, the reward. Make up a poster and stuff."
"Oh, I don't think that works except in the movies," Will said, trying to get off the too-personal track. "Besides, I don't have any money for that."
"No, no, we don't have to say what the reward is," Jude said. "Just print 'reward' on the posters and when you find your dog, tell whoever that the reward is a job well-done."
He laughed at his own joke a little, and Will laughed along with him, until he noticed Jude get serious just before he felt a hand close on his shoulder. Henry had deigned to turn up, but for some reason he was looking at Jude with slightly narrowed eyes. "Hey," he said, drawing the word out a little. "Thanks for the eight million bitchy voice mails, man. I feel the love tonight."
"Maybe if some of us would answer our phones once and a while…" Will said.
"So I was a little busy," Henry said, then cleared his throat a little. "Trust me, I'll make it up to you."
"Make it up to me?" Will tried to turn around and move out of Henry's personal space, but surprisingly, Henry didn't remove his hand-instead, he slid it over a few inches so it was almost centered on Will's spine. Will glanced over his shoulder at him, and then at Jude, who Henry was still looking at. Jude smiled tightly and backed off a bit, looking a little…disappointed?
Oh, no. Oh, hell, no. "Henry…"
"Shhhh." Henry suddenly shifted his weight a little, so he was pressed tight against Will on one side, and bent his head so he could whisper intimately into Will's ear. "Let's get back to the car and call Magnus, 'kay?"
Jude was already moving off to other customers, but with one or two more backwards glances at them. Will sighed. "Fine, yes, let's go already. I was ready two hours ago."
Henry practically herded him away from the bar and didn't relax until they were outside the club. Then he let out a sigh like a popped balloon and said, "Dude, do you have any idea what that guy was doing?"
"Flirting with me, I hope," Will replied tartly, just for the satisfaction of seeing Henry's eyes pop out of his face. "I'd be a pretty bad profiler if I didn't recognize a come-on when I saw it, Henry."
"But," he spluttered, "you-wait a minute-"
"I was trying," Will said, "to find out anything more about our pet snatcher."
"So you flirted with him?" Henry asked, voice hitting a slightly screechy tone.
Will shrugged. "It kept the conversation going."
Henry looked so baffled-forehead furrowed, mouth hanging open a little, eyes wide-that Will almost felt bad winding him up like that. He would've felt bad if they'd left a couple hours ago. "Dude," Henry finally concluded. "What are you, Mata Hari?"
Will shook his head. "How'd you eve notice, anyway?"
"What, are you questioning my gaydar?"
"You were surprised about John Barrowman."
"Okay, point," Henry said, then tapped the side of his nose. "But in my defense, I can't exactly watch Torchwood in Smell-o-vision."
Now it was Will's turn to be surprised. "Are you saying you can smell gayness?"
Henry shrugged. "Well, I dunno, maybe it's pheromones or something. But ever since the last time Magnus changed my meds I can smell, you know, interest. Like get-in-your-shorts-and-deflower-your-ass interest." And before Will could comment on that, even in jest, Henry added, "'Course, I can also smell basement-full-of-dead-cats crazy, which is completely different, and I expect you to apologize for all those bitchy voice mails because our monster is totally living under the club."
Which meant they had to call Magnus, and probably arrange some enormously sketchy operation to access the club's surveillance tapes, and Will was not getting into bed at anything approaching a reasonable hour tonight. "Great," he said, not even bothering to fake enthusiasm. "You're a regular McGruff the Crime Dog."
"Oh, please," Henry said. "I am so much more badass that McGruff. I am at least a Rin-Tin-Tin. Possibly even Diefenbaker."
"Who?"
Henry unlocked the car and they called Magnus, who was pleased and enthusiastic and wanted to get to work immediately even when Will pointed out that skullduggery would be immeasurably easier by daylight. "We need to start planning now," she said. "Get back here as soon as you can."
"Yeah," Will said. "See you in a few." But when Magnus hung up he looked for a moment at the quiescent phone, then turned to Henry, who was drumming his fingers on the wheel in a rhythm Will didn't know. "You wanna stop somewhere for pizza or something?"
"Pizza?" Henry asked. "Thought Magnus just said-"
"I know what she said," Will said slowly, thinking unkind thoughts about coworkers with selectively preternatural hearing. "But inside you said that you were going to make up to me for not answering your phone."
Henry's eyes got big again, and he spluttered "I wasn't-I mean, I didn't-I-you-" before peering at him intensely. He may have even sniffed slightly.
Will rolled his eyes and reached down for the catch that reclined the seat. "Come on, we'll bring back take-away for everyone," he said as he stretched out.
"Right," Henry said, still sounding suspicious…but not exactly annoyed. Interesting. "Meaning I get the pizzas while you're playing Sleeping Beauty here?"
"I'll make it up to you," Will said, all innocent, and Henry just snorted as he started the car.
Author: mad_maudlin
Fandom: Sanctuary
Rating: PG
Characters: Will, Henry
Genre: gen, but if you read it as preslash I am not going to stop you.
Summary: The less glamorous side of the Sanctuary's operations. Will can't help messing with Henry's head.
A/N: OH MY GOD I WROTE SANCTUARY FIC. I don't know if I feel giddy or unclean. I kinda blame infinitechevron for this.
The Nose Knows
By Mad Maudlin
Work at the Sanctuary is not all about slaying monsters or saving them. There isn't really that much life-affirming victory or heartwarming success. If they're very, very lucky, there's at least a punch line.
If they're not-and right now, Will was not-there are lingering odors and unreliable witnesses and a mass of dead ends. Or in this case, forty-two missing pets within six blocks of a club called Diesel. Clearly carnivorous, most likely nocturnal, possessing human intelligence and opposable thumbs, Magnus had declared while looking at the clipped-off remains of a chain leash. Like that actually narrowed anything down.
Take Henry and see what you can find, she'd told him.
At the moment, Will would be lucky to find Henry.
Diesel has a cookie-cutter industrial aesthetic, like every other cutting-edge-dance-club-in-a-warehouse-basement, and most of the patrons are uptown kids slumming it in the Old City, poseurs who couldn't afford someplace more expensive and couldn't get in any door with face control. At least, that was Will's conclusion within about three seconds of stepping inside. It was a blessing in some ways, because, as Henry pointed out in the parking lot, "We are not exactly the hippest dudes on the scene."
"I prefer to think of myself as 'classically cool,' actually," Will told him, and when Henry just looked at him with one eyebrow raised, he added, "Beside, how hard do you think it's gonna be to find a schnauzer-napping monster in a dance club?"
Famous last words, Zimmerman, right along with Let's split up to cover more ground. It wasn't as if the club was all that crowded, since it was weeknight and still early yet, but Henry must've been taking stealth lessons from Clara because the guy had vanished. And he was the one with the car keys. After the manager refused to admit the club even had video surveillance without a warrant, Will wasn't feeling up to a more thorough search of the interior, and they could just as easily come back in the daylight to search outside. So Henry could just reappear any moment and Will might be back in his own bed at a reasonable hour for once.
Or, you know, not.
There was a big semi-circular bar in the center of the dance floor, and Will leaned against it while dialing his cell phone. "Henry," he said when got to voice mail (again), "I know for a fact you have excellent hearing, so whenever you want to pick up is fine by me. Unless your phone is off, in which case I hate you and I'm going to tell Magnus you abandoned me." There was, of course, the slim chance that Henry had found their monster and was engaged in a life-or-death struggle with it, but Will was pretty confident that Henry was way scarier than anything that limited its diet to tabbies and terriers.
In his peripheral vision, he saw the bartender sidling up a moment before the guy cleared his throat. "Can I get you anything, sir?"
Will shook his head. "No thanks, I'm heading out as soon as I find my ride."
"The dude you came in with?" he bartender asked. He was a little younger than Will himself, with sandy hair that was long enough to hook behind his ears and a small gold stud in the left one. "I haven't seen him since you got here, sorry."
"That's fine, I just," he waved his phone vaguely. "Wish he'd pick up."
The bartender kept his eyes moving, focusing in on Will without letting the conversation monopolize his attention; a good skill for this line of work. "You got somewhere to be?" he asked smoothly, in an accent that put him as out-of-state. Grad student, maybe, or recent graduate. This could even be a second job.
"Not really, which is sort of the problem," Will admitted, rubbing at his itchy contact lenses. "I've been looking for something…"
"Besides your friend, you mean?" the bartender said, leaning a little closer. The club wasn't particularly well-lit, but even so, Will thought his pupils might've dilated a little even further. "Maybe I can help you out with that."
Oh. Oh. Will sense an opportunity. "Maybe," he said, drawing the word out a little. "I mean, probably not, which is nothing against you, but…you must spend a lot of time in this neighborhood, right?"
The bartender-nametag read Jude--shrugged. "I work here three nights a week, but I live over on Grandview."
Still in the Old City and near the artsy-fartsy neighborhoods around Greenfeld Park, so probably a grad student or someone in a creative field without a steady day job worth specifying. "That's a great area," Will said, leaning a little closer and smiling a little. "I've got a place just a couple blocks up Farrelly Street, and…this is gonna sound crazy…my dog ran away."
Jude snorted. "Oh, man, no way."
"Yeah," Will said mournfully. "I was trying to get the trash out before pick-up and she just slipped right by me and into the street." Which was a concatenation of two or three actual cases, so he felt safe continuing, "A couple of my neighbors had their pets stolen, see, and I've been worried out of my mind…"
"What kind of dog is she?" Jude asked. Definitely interested if he'd keep track of dog pronouns.
"Pomeranian," Will extemporized. "You know the kind, thinks her bark counts more than her bite. Anyway, like I said, a couple of my neighbors lost their pets, too…I guess if you're not around here much, though, you haven't heard anything about it."
Jude shrugged. "I got some friends around here. One of 'em, some crazy broke the bars off her windows last week and the cat got out. She's pissed."
That would be Julie Cross, aged 23, and while she had blamed drug addicts and the military-industrial complex in the same sentence, Magnus had pointed out that the bars weren't cut through so much as bitten. Will revised down his guess at Jude's age but added mental double-underlines to the student part. "Dude, that's messed up," he said, to keep the conversation flowing. "I just wish there was something more we could do, you know? Like we had some hidden cameras or something."
Jude shrugged. "Boss has a whole bunch of 'em around this place, but I don't know if he keeps the tapes or not. Paranoid as fuck, that guy."
Which Will had guessed, but it was nice to get confirmation. "Yeah, and even if he did, what are we gonna say? 'Excuse me, sir, I lost my dog?'"
"Maybe if you threw in a reward…" Jude said with a smirk, and Will noted with approval how he reacted to the word we instead of I. They both laughed, but Jude added earnestly, "Actually, that might not be a bad idea-you know, the reward. Make up a poster and stuff."
"Oh, I don't think that works except in the movies," Will said, trying to get off the too-personal track. "Besides, I don't have any money for that."
"No, no, we don't have to say what the reward is," Jude said. "Just print 'reward' on the posters and when you find your dog, tell whoever that the reward is a job well-done."
He laughed at his own joke a little, and Will laughed along with him, until he noticed Jude get serious just before he felt a hand close on his shoulder. Henry had deigned to turn up, but for some reason he was looking at Jude with slightly narrowed eyes. "Hey," he said, drawing the word out a little. "Thanks for the eight million bitchy voice mails, man. I feel the love tonight."
"Maybe if some of us would answer our phones once and a while…" Will said.
"So I was a little busy," Henry said, then cleared his throat a little. "Trust me, I'll make it up to you."
"Make it up to me?" Will tried to turn around and move out of Henry's personal space, but surprisingly, Henry didn't remove his hand-instead, he slid it over a few inches so it was almost centered on Will's spine. Will glanced over his shoulder at him, and then at Jude, who Henry was still looking at. Jude smiled tightly and backed off a bit, looking a little…disappointed?
Oh, no. Oh, hell, no. "Henry…"
"Shhhh." Henry suddenly shifted his weight a little, so he was pressed tight against Will on one side, and bent his head so he could whisper intimately into Will's ear. "Let's get back to the car and call Magnus, 'kay?"
Jude was already moving off to other customers, but with one or two more backwards glances at them. Will sighed. "Fine, yes, let's go already. I was ready two hours ago."
Henry practically herded him away from the bar and didn't relax until they were outside the club. Then he let out a sigh like a popped balloon and said, "Dude, do you have any idea what that guy was doing?"
"Flirting with me, I hope," Will replied tartly, just for the satisfaction of seeing Henry's eyes pop out of his face. "I'd be a pretty bad profiler if I didn't recognize a come-on when I saw it, Henry."
"But," he spluttered, "you-wait a minute-"
"I was trying," Will said, "to find out anything more about our pet snatcher."
"So you flirted with him?" Henry asked, voice hitting a slightly screechy tone.
Will shrugged. "It kept the conversation going."
Henry looked so baffled-forehead furrowed, mouth hanging open a little, eyes wide-that Will almost felt bad winding him up like that. He would've felt bad if they'd left a couple hours ago. "Dude," Henry finally concluded. "What are you, Mata Hari?"
Will shook his head. "How'd you eve notice, anyway?"
"What, are you questioning my gaydar?"
"You were surprised about John Barrowman."
"Okay, point," Henry said, then tapped the side of his nose. "But in my defense, I can't exactly watch Torchwood in Smell-o-vision."
Now it was Will's turn to be surprised. "Are you saying you can smell gayness?"
Henry shrugged. "Well, I dunno, maybe it's pheromones or something. But ever since the last time Magnus changed my meds I can smell, you know, interest. Like get-in-your-shorts-and-deflower-your-ass interest." And before Will could comment on that, even in jest, Henry added, "'Course, I can also smell basement-full-of-dead-cats crazy, which is completely different, and I expect you to apologize for all those bitchy voice mails because our monster is totally living under the club."
Which meant they had to call Magnus, and probably arrange some enormously sketchy operation to access the club's surveillance tapes, and Will was not getting into bed at anything approaching a reasonable hour tonight. "Great," he said, not even bothering to fake enthusiasm. "You're a regular McGruff the Crime Dog."
"Oh, please," Henry said. "I am so much more badass that McGruff. I am at least a Rin-Tin-Tin. Possibly even Diefenbaker."
"Who?"
Henry unlocked the car and they called Magnus, who was pleased and enthusiastic and wanted to get to work immediately even when Will pointed out that skullduggery would be immeasurably easier by daylight. "We need to start planning now," she said. "Get back here as soon as you can."
"Yeah," Will said. "See you in a few." But when Magnus hung up he looked for a moment at the quiescent phone, then turned to Henry, who was drumming his fingers on the wheel in a rhythm Will didn't know. "You wanna stop somewhere for pizza or something?"
"Pizza?" Henry asked. "Thought Magnus just said-"
"I know what she said," Will said slowly, thinking unkind thoughts about coworkers with selectively preternatural hearing. "But inside you said that you were going to make up to me for not answering your phone."
Henry's eyes got big again, and he spluttered "I wasn't-I mean, I didn't-I-you-" before peering at him intensely. He may have even sniffed slightly.
Will rolled his eyes and reached down for the catch that reclined the seat. "Come on, we'll bring back take-away for everyone," he said as he stretched out.
"Right," Henry said, still sounding suspicious…but not exactly annoyed. Interesting. "Meaning I get the pizzas while you're playing Sleeping Beauty here?"
"I'll make it up to you," Will said, all innocent, and Henry just snorted as he started the car.