Happy Holidays, MODS!
Happy Holidays to All the Mods!
Title: Casting
Author: SecretWriter
Pairing: Aziraphale/Crowley (special appearances by Paul Bettany and Johnny Depp)
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. For non-commercial use exclusively.
No attempt to infringe on any rights held. No disrespect intended or implied.
Summary: Aziraphale and Crowley can barely discuss “it” with each other. How can they possibly chat about it with these guys?
Crossover RPF.
Author’s Thanks: My beta (all errors mine). The Mods.
Author’s Notes: A Tarot-inspired drabble series. Mostly one per card/image, with two doubles and a triple because A and C don’t play strictly by the book.
Advance apologies for any inadvertent interpretive imagery-mangling of Rider-Waite, Motherpeace, and (of course) Crowley.
0
Fool
“I can’t believe we’re doing this. The humans who read already think they're onto something."
"Yes, well." Aziraphale tried to look modest.
"You're failing miserably." Crowley sneered slightly. “And these two?” He returned to the center of his rant. “Playing occult book collectors? Astronauts returning changed from space? Monk assassins?” He spun in place before realizing it might no longer be the coolest expression of agitation since the century’d changed again. “They’ll know. At least suspect.”
“This is, if you consider it, why they’re top candidates for doing it in first instance. One of them was already cast before the schedule fell to pieces,” Aziraphale said. “Look at it this way. You’re … well-positioned to do … some damage, so - arguably at least - your supervisors can’t complain.”
He wanted to get a grip on this thing. He’d already heard some strange rumors about Hastur, Ligur, and Beverly Hills Polo Lounge brunch.
“Let’s see.” He consulted his calendar. “You’re at the Palm Court at the Plaza at 11:30.”
“No, you are.”
“What --?!” Aziraphale looked over his wire-rims and, after a pause, gave voice to the least poisonous of his rapidly sequencing thoughts. “How come you get the Ritz?”
“Because I like the phone more than you.” Crowley stuck his nose in the air. A pedigreed poodle had just finished its pedigreed mess before turning the corner on Central Park West. Aziraphale saw it first, and thrust out a warding arm, thumping Crowley squarely where his solar plexus would’ve been.
"Oof," Crowley grunted, mouth widening for a further stream of invective. He clamped it shut after jerking his eyes down to where his foot would’ve gone, and had to content himself with a yellow glare over top of his Cavallis.
Aziraphale bit down a dimpled grin.
"Watch it," he said.
1
Magician
2
High Priestess
“Well, you know, there’s … there’s ‘Legion’.”
Paul fiddled with espresso demitasses, muffins, oranges, his water glass, long hands moving, moving. His eyes, which grabbed people and objects when aimed at them, were cast down at some nonexistent spot on the tablecloth.
“Yes.” Crowley might have held his breath if he’d had some.
“And I’m an archangel there. And God’s lost faith in mankind and I haven’t. So I save everyone with wings and guns. Not sure what’s terribly different.”
Deep breath, from thin air. (Crowley filed it under filched oxygen, when he had to do it.)
“Well, I’m certainly looking forward to a brilliant performance. But here - well, you’ve read them.”
Paul nodded. “Hysterical. In a good way.”
“And given preference, you’ve tended to do more roles less … absolute? Where redemption - that is, from wherever the character starts - is maybe … questionable?”
The hands stopped moving. Crowley figured he’d leave that there.
“And this character - who outranks Michael, really - generally has a bit more invested in the dusty literary. Only brings out the flaming sword on extraordinary occasions. So it’s actually quite different. In a more subtle, complicated way, perhaps.”
The eyes looked up. And grabbed Crowley.
3
Empress
“Hollywood?”
“I’m sure you’ve heard the commentary, my buttocks entering the American market before me.” Munching. “Thought they’d edit that, actually.”
“Monk-assassin?”
“Butch and scary in a long brown dress and open-toed sandals. But the ‘Inkheart’ fire-juggler? Different, cool for the kids - I really didn’t want them to see dad naked and, you know, whipping himself.”
“And now …?”
“Well, it’s a stupidly fortunate place, when you don’t have to do something - you can do something, because it’s interesting.”
“We - they - could shoot in New York,” Crowley managed.
“Parts of Park Slope? Probably much like Lower Tadfield, actually,” said Paul.
4
Emperor
“I wonder … would Madame Kidman be available for Ms. War.” Paul smiled. “We’ve worked together, ‘Dogville’ with Stellan … my character was tagged more than once as something from Neil LaBute’s œuvre.”
‘”You know LaBute?” Crowley balanced forward onto his chair’s edge.
“I met with him, about a part in … something … he’s notorious for writing vivid, morally bankrupt scumbags; I thought a bon mot set like ‘writing the end of the world can be funny’ would amuse him.”
“And?”
“Well you know he went to Brigham Young University,” said Paul, dumping too much sugar in his tea.
5
Hierophant
Crowley thought a slight topical shift in order, the better to mask choking back a raucous laughter fit.
“And … your ‘Darwin’ film is having trouble finding US distribution, is it?”
“I told a reporter Darwin was a good hero to have, in Jesus’ absence. I’m sure that had something to do with it.”
Crowley smothered another laugh. “Such grand classical roles, for a born-to-the-theatre kid.”
“Shakespeare and Chaucer were populists,” Paul said.
“And you seem … to read a lot.” Crowley tried not to fidget. It didn’t go with flash shades, really, especially if one wore them at brunch.
~* ~* ~*
6
Lovers
“Who are you again …?” Riveted headwaiters. Curving velvet basso. Curling white smoke following lines of stray dark bangs.
“Terry and Neil …” Ethics-dancing, Aziraphale wasn’t sure where this’d go if he had to lead.
“GNeil and Pterry.” Consonants bent affectionately. Mainlining coffee. Aziraphale marveled.
“If schedules can be untangled, apparently there’s studio interest, still.”
“Well, you know what’s good - beside my usual draw to the damaged - is the book’s doing awesomely, still. So nobody at Tracey’s office’ll be ticked ‘cause the character’s, you know, weird.” Johnny tilted down in his chair. Aziraphale found himself tilting the same general direction.
7
Chariot
He almost stared.
Leather jacket on shirt on shirt on shirt. Fedora crushed at an angle in the jacket’s pocket - were there two? Angles and long quirks of his fingers reflected in the jawline, in the neck. The rings and the tattoos with their molds of skulls and crosses and Guevara and the hair waterfalling in and out of his eyes and the ever-present cigarette, the dark, coughing, bourbon-underlined scent of the Gauloises.
And underneath, some quirked, generous, humming sense everything might be a massive joke on a grand, transpersonal scale.
Shadows and sparks behind the eyes, multiples of everything.
8
Strength
Nothing to go back to before, now
Nothing dark about the world anymore
Aziraphale half-sang to himself. He’d been heard anyway.
Well. He could be smoother about it. “What do you do, when you’re home, not working?”
Johnny smiled, instantly faraway. “We get up, make coffee, check if anything new’s grown in the vegetable garden, make breakfast for the kids.”
“If you spend lots of time creating the -“ present again - “the ‘we who are others’? Pouring energy into being ‘outside’? It’s good to have - space - to come inside.”
He slouched, mentally re-cocooning.
“I have that now. I didn’t before.”
9
Hermit
“So open.” Aziraphale smiled. “Keeps us away from you.”
Johnny added water to his coffee.
“Do you always do that?”
“Before French press, hillbilly rage. I was a MaxwellHouse kid. I’m thinking you already knew that though.” He glanced at the walls like he noticed his heroes’ murals missing.
“You know, I borrowed Hunter’s clothes to help make a character he’d be pleased with, and I would, truth about his gunpowders, brilliance, things he responded to.
“I’m not sure it matters to anybody outside my family who I am. At the end of the day, it’s the work, I think.”
10
Wheel of Fortune
Aziraphale didn’t want to interrupt; he didn’t want to stop the rattling words, rippling images.
An exhale. “I almost didn’t get ‘Edward Scissorhands’ -- Tom Cruise was up for it apparently.
"The script, I thought it was one of the best, most amazing things I’d ever read, and at the same time I thought, ‘This will never come to me. Never.’”
His mind seemed to go lots of places all at once. Aziraphale figured he’d just follow along. “You and Tim have done … seven pictures together?”
Johnny nodded. “Maybe at the end of the day the part chooses you.”
~* ~* ~*
11
Justice
“It -- seems there’s a certain … mind attracted to …”
“Cocaine?” Paul said it. “Usually beancounters ask. Creatives …”
Now Crowley didn’t have to. “Scintillating, uproarious … Williams …”
“He was up for this, yes, before scheduling immolated?” Charm, menace, layered, a tenor Napoleon. “Must help knowing the type you want.”
“What -“
“Therapy.” Tea mellowed tone. “Good examples help. I kicked smoking when I caught Stellan imitating me with a pen.”
“No … cravings … left then?” Crowley could twirl and leap, or sulk down and order absinthe.
Paul smiled into a last cheese danish bite. “Love. Beer.”
12
Hanged Man
“I play guys, living in --“ Paul waved in circles - “strange peculiar hectic worlds where they want to get back to their families.” A beat, a laugh broken through another. “That’s … that’s what shooting feels like.”
“I read you described as twistedly ambitious.” Crowley didn’t read enough, but he’d lay it that way, meeting this Az … Paul guy. “Thing is, they were talking about early you, your acting. I’d say you’re the same now about being a family guy. So, which … you’d say it’s …?”
“The trick? Time the work so you don’t have to choose.”
13
Death
AWFULLY EARLY FOR YOU, ISN’T IT.
The words’ echoes ricocheted inside Crowley’s skull.
NOT GENERALLY MY AREA OF EXPERTISE. BUT I WOULDN’T WANT TO BE THE ONE BUSTED MEDDLING IN ONGOING HUMAN AFFAIRS.
Crowley struggled mightily for a blank face, so as not to startle Paul into a bolt-and-run.
“I didn’t think you were expected today,” he mumbled into his coffee. “My recall mightn’t be best under stress - but I really don’t even remember you being on the calendar.”
A pause.
PERHAPS IT’S THE OTHER RITZ.
“I won’t tell if you won’t.”
The hint of brimstone painting the air vanished.
14
Temperance
Having of course missed the whole exchange - at least on the ostensible level - Paul balanced his elbow on the table, chin on his wrist, near-still for once, phantom smile wafting across the table at Crowley.
“I do spend a fair amount of time wondering where it all went right.”
He leaned in again. “I always thought … that thing … that brings the balance, to make art, relationships … it’s always subtle … just whispering in your ear,
‘come closer’.”
Precipitously for a yellow-eyed being with such dash boots, Crowley teetered again on the very front edge of the chair.
15
Devil
Paul kept looking past Crowley's shoulder, like he was searching for something.
"Know what intrigues, sometimes? Projects showing people - humans - have choices … we have knowledge. And once we do, doing the good or evil, is up to us, yeah?"
He redirected his slightly stary blue attention to muffled crunches seemingly near Crowley, just under the teapot.
"What is that?"
Crowley tried to discreetly withdraw his claws from the gouges they made in the table's underside, bringing a hand out to smooth his hair's and forehead's aspects, like he couldn't be less interested in what he'd just heard.
~* ~* ~*
16
Tower
“I guess everybody has to go through that phase - you know, the one of experimenting with complete destruction?" Johnny smiled. "I think … when you get to a certain point, if you’ve made it that far, you have to know what you’re putting into the creative machine.”
“Patron saint of the lost.” Aziraphale smiled too.
“I was living in Bela Lugosi’s mansion when I went to France to shoot the Ninth Gate.“
Aziraphale frowned, like he couldn’t remember. “Who … directed that?”
Johnny didn’t say anything, just looked straight at him while he let the shadows fall behind his eyes.
17
Star
“I read you said working with Tim again, after that, was like an exorcism.” Aziraphale poured them both more coffee to cover the remark’s charge. Waitstaff were all still busy falling over themselves with excitement anyway. Usele - he bludgeoned the thought.
“I did say that.” Hands in the hair, on the face, drawing a drag. “He's … very intelligent, very cultured. It was a - powerful experience, to work with him. We live from one confusion to another, you know? I probably don’t mean it the way it sounds.”
More smoke, like following clouds. “But I’ve said it more than once.”
18
Moon
Johnny suddenly halved the space across the table, not seeming to lean, or move; he was just - there.
It’s portrayal, not … incarnation, thought Aziraphale. George Jung cried when they brought him a print of ‘Blow’.
“You seem to have … read a lot. Lots of studio exec types … don’t.”
Oh, dear. “Well. Running about with authors, you know.”
Johnny got up. And threw that dark, skyblanket look at Aziraphale again.
“I should …”
“Do you need a lift?” What the devil. Aziraphale rolled his inner eyes hard at himself.
“They’ll bring the chopper. Thanks.”
“You have a …?”
19
Sun
"Bentley Chopper. Cypress Green." He shrugged into his jacket, a mage cloaking before disappearance.
He'd be breathless with actual lungs, Aziraphale figured.
"I would have figured you for a Ducati … or Harley."
Johnny swiveled back, mid-hypnotic swirl out the door.
"Maybe next lifetime."
Light winked off python-skinned boots. He vanished.
“Nice Boursalino.” Crowley appraised Johnny’s fedora’s brim as they swept past each other in the outer doorway. Johnny looked like he hadn’t heard.
“I’ve two just like it,” Crowley muttered. He swung over to Aziraphale’s table, sweeping fingers over the bill, which disappeared (with a small disapproving cough). “Well?”
20
Judgment
21
The World
“Chocolate and peanut butter.” Aziraphale sucked in his cheeks. Angels weren’t supposed to look smug.
“Steak and eggs.”
“Hydrogen and oxygen.”
“Fire and brimstone,” Crowley snickered. Aziraphale looked mild daggers at him. Crowley ducked a yet-unseen but plausible smite and rose with a flourish.
“Let’s go.”
They stood for a moment on the corner of Central Park West in the sun. Crowley cringed a bit, then shaded his shades.
“Do you think it’ll work?” Aziraphale fussed with a pocket-sized blessed-water vessel. (Rosaries usually didn’t quite pan out for his usages.)
Crowley strolled. “We’ve gotten away with it so far.”
“Well, it’s barely been a decade. It took millennia for TPTB to decide to tear it all down.” He sniffed. “And I’ve no memos at all about that 2012 thing. Have you - oh, never mind. I’ve seen your desk.”
“Hastur and Ligur’s fault.” Crowley looked wounded.
“They could have hardly made it worse,” Aziraphale snapped, then softened at Crowley’s face. “Sorry. I’m just … concerned.” He sighed, a bass flute’s note. “I’m sure I could use a nice glass of burgundy later, or several.”
"I thought you might.” Crowley, slowly first, then much faster, preened in his redemption, if it could be so called. "So I kept a reservation for the balance of the weekend."
"You used a -- credit card? With your name on it?" Aziraphale reeled a little more at this latest revelation.
Crowley rolled his eyes. "This is New York. They don't scrutinize cardholder ID if you use AmEx Black."
Because he preferred the cuisine at London’s Ritz, he told himself, with Escoffier alive, cooking without those - glutamates? - Aziraphale struggled to stop his dimples’ reappearance.
They refused to comply.
"I - have afternoon errands," he managed, hurrying to disappear before they conquered the balance of his face.
~* ~* ~*
Title: Casting
Author: SecretWriter
Pairing: Aziraphale/Crowley (special appearances by Paul Bettany and Johnny Depp)
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. For non-commercial use exclusively.
No attempt to infringe on any rights held. No disrespect intended or implied.
Summary: Aziraphale and Crowley can barely discuss “it” with each other. How can they possibly chat about it with these guys?
Crossover RPF.
Author’s Thanks: My beta (all errors mine). The Mods.
Author’s Notes: A Tarot-inspired drabble series. Mostly one per card/image, with two doubles and a triple because A and C don’t play strictly by the book.
Advance apologies for any inadvertent interpretive imagery-mangling of Rider-Waite, Motherpeace, and (of course) Crowley.
0
Fool
“I can’t believe we’re doing this. The humans who read already think they're onto something."
"Yes, well." Aziraphale tried to look modest.
"You're failing miserably." Crowley sneered slightly. “And these two?” He returned to the center of his rant. “Playing occult book collectors? Astronauts returning changed from space? Monk assassins?” He spun in place before realizing it might no longer be the coolest expression of agitation since the century’d changed again. “They’ll know. At least suspect.”
“This is, if you consider it, why they’re top candidates for doing it in first instance. One of them was already cast before the schedule fell to pieces,” Aziraphale said. “Look at it this way. You’re … well-positioned to do … some damage, so - arguably at least - your supervisors can’t complain.”
He wanted to get a grip on this thing. He’d already heard some strange rumors about Hastur, Ligur, and Beverly Hills Polo Lounge brunch.
“Let’s see.” He consulted his calendar. “You’re at the Palm Court at the Plaza at 11:30.”
“No, you are.”
“What --?!” Aziraphale looked over his wire-rims and, after a pause, gave voice to the least poisonous of his rapidly sequencing thoughts. “How come you get the Ritz?”
“Because I like the phone more than you.” Crowley stuck his nose in the air. A pedigreed poodle had just finished its pedigreed mess before turning the corner on Central Park West. Aziraphale saw it first, and thrust out a warding arm, thumping Crowley squarely where his solar plexus would’ve been.
"Oof," Crowley grunted, mouth widening for a further stream of invective. He clamped it shut after jerking his eyes down to where his foot would’ve gone, and had to content himself with a yellow glare over top of his Cavallis.
Aziraphale bit down a dimpled grin.
"Watch it," he said.
1
Magician
2
High Priestess
“Well, you know, there’s … there’s ‘Legion’.”
Paul fiddled with espresso demitasses, muffins, oranges, his water glass, long hands moving, moving. His eyes, which grabbed people and objects when aimed at them, were cast down at some nonexistent spot on the tablecloth.
“Yes.” Crowley might have held his breath if he’d had some.
“And I’m an archangel there. And God’s lost faith in mankind and I haven’t. So I save everyone with wings and guns. Not sure what’s terribly different.”
Deep breath, from thin air. (Crowley filed it under filched oxygen, when he had to do it.)
“Well, I’m certainly looking forward to a brilliant performance. But here - well, you’ve read them.”
Paul nodded. “Hysterical. In a good way.”
“And given preference, you’ve tended to do more roles less … absolute? Where redemption - that is, from wherever the character starts - is maybe … questionable?”
The hands stopped moving. Crowley figured he’d leave that there.
“And this character - who outranks Michael, really - generally has a bit more invested in the dusty literary. Only brings out the flaming sword on extraordinary occasions. So it’s actually quite different. In a more subtle, complicated way, perhaps.”
The eyes looked up. And grabbed Crowley.
3
Empress
“Hollywood?”
“I’m sure you’ve heard the commentary, my buttocks entering the American market before me.” Munching. “Thought they’d edit that, actually.”
“Monk-assassin?”
“Butch and scary in a long brown dress and open-toed sandals. But the ‘Inkheart’ fire-juggler? Different, cool for the kids - I really didn’t want them to see dad naked and, you know, whipping himself.”
“And now …?”
“Well, it’s a stupidly fortunate place, when you don’t have to do something - you can do something, because it’s interesting.”
“We - they - could shoot in New York,” Crowley managed.
“Parts of Park Slope? Probably much like Lower Tadfield, actually,” said Paul.
4
Emperor
“I wonder … would Madame Kidman be available for Ms. War.” Paul smiled. “We’ve worked together, ‘Dogville’ with Stellan … my character was tagged more than once as something from Neil LaBute’s œuvre.”
‘”You know LaBute?” Crowley balanced forward onto his chair’s edge.
“I met with him, about a part in … something … he’s notorious for writing vivid, morally bankrupt scumbags; I thought a bon mot set like ‘writing the end of the world can be funny’ would amuse him.”
“And?”
“Well you know he went to Brigham Young University,” said Paul, dumping too much sugar in his tea.
5
Hierophant
Crowley thought a slight topical shift in order, the better to mask choking back a raucous laughter fit.
“And … your ‘Darwin’ film is having trouble finding US distribution, is it?”
“I told a reporter Darwin was a good hero to have, in Jesus’ absence. I’m sure that had something to do with it.”
Crowley smothered another laugh. “Such grand classical roles, for a born-to-the-theatre kid.”
“Shakespeare and Chaucer were populists,” Paul said.
“And you seem … to read a lot.” Crowley tried not to fidget. It didn’t go with flash shades, really, especially if one wore them at brunch.
~* ~* ~*
6
Lovers
“Who are you again …?” Riveted headwaiters. Curving velvet basso. Curling white smoke following lines of stray dark bangs.
“Terry and Neil …” Ethics-dancing, Aziraphale wasn’t sure where this’d go if he had to lead.
“GNeil and Pterry.” Consonants bent affectionately. Mainlining coffee. Aziraphale marveled.
“If schedules can be untangled, apparently there’s studio interest, still.”
“Well, you know what’s good - beside my usual draw to the damaged - is the book’s doing awesomely, still. So nobody at Tracey’s office’ll be ticked ‘cause the character’s, you know, weird.” Johnny tilted down in his chair. Aziraphale found himself tilting the same general direction.
7
Chariot
He almost stared.
Leather jacket on shirt on shirt on shirt. Fedora crushed at an angle in the jacket’s pocket - were there two? Angles and long quirks of his fingers reflected in the jawline, in the neck. The rings and the tattoos with their molds of skulls and crosses and Guevara and the hair waterfalling in and out of his eyes and the ever-present cigarette, the dark, coughing, bourbon-underlined scent of the Gauloises.
And underneath, some quirked, generous, humming sense everything might be a massive joke on a grand, transpersonal scale.
Shadows and sparks behind the eyes, multiples of everything.
8
Strength
Nothing to go back to before, now
Nothing dark about the world anymore
Aziraphale half-sang to himself. He’d been heard anyway.
Well. He could be smoother about it. “What do you do, when you’re home, not working?”
Johnny smiled, instantly faraway. “We get up, make coffee, check if anything new’s grown in the vegetable garden, make breakfast for the kids.”
“If you spend lots of time creating the -“ present again - “the ‘we who are others’? Pouring energy into being ‘outside’? It’s good to have - space - to come inside.”
He slouched, mentally re-cocooning.
“I have that now. I didn’t before.”
9
Hermit
“So open.” Aziraphale smiled. “Keeps us away from you.”
Johnny added water to his coffee.
“Do you always do that?”
“Before French press, hillbilly rage. I was a MaxwellHouse kid. I’m thinking you already knew that though.” He glanced at the walls like he noticed his heroes’ murals missing.
“You know, I borrowed Hunter’s clothes to help make a character he’d be pleased with, and I would, truth about his gunpowders, brilliance, things he responded to.
“I’m not sure it matters to anybody outside my family who I am. At the end of the day, it’s the work, I think.”
10
Wheel of Fortune
Aziraphale didn’t want to interrupt; he didn’t want to stop the rattling words, rippling images.
An exhale. “I almost didn’t get ‘Edward Scissorhands’ -- Tom Cruise was up for it apparently.
"The script, I thought it was one of the best, most amazing things I’d ever read, and at the same time I thought, ‘This will never come to me. Never.’”
His mind seemed to go lots of places all at once. Aziraphale figured he’d just follow along. “You and Tim have done … seven pictures together?”
Johnny nodded. “Maybe at the end of the day the part chooses you.”
~* ~* ~*
11
Justice
“It -- seems there’s a certain … mind attracted to …”
“Cocaine?” Paul said it. “Usually beancounters ask. Creatives …”
Now Crowley didn’t have to. “Scintillating, uproarious … Williams …”
“He was up for this, yes, before scheduling immolated?” Charm, menace, layered, a tenor Napoleon. “Must help knowing the type you want.”
“What -“
“Therapy.” Tea mellowed tone. “Good examples help. I kicked smoking when I caught Stellan imitating me with a pen.”
“No … cravings … left then?” Crowley could twirl and leap, or sulk down and order absinthe.
Paul smiled into a last cheese danish bite. “Love. Beer.”
12
Hanged Man
“I play guys, living in --“ Paul waved in circles - “strange peculiar hectic worlds where they want to get back to their families.” A beat, a laugh broken through another. “That’s … that’s what shooting feels like.”
“I read you described as twistedly ambitious.” Crowley didn’t read enough, but he’d lay it that way, meeting this Az … Paul guy. “Thing is, they were talking about early you, your acting. I’d say you’re the same now about being a family guy. So, which … you’d say it’s …?”
“The trick? Time the work so you don’t have to choose.”
13
Death
AWFULLY EARLY FOR YOU, ISN’T IT.
The words’ echoes ricocheted inside Crowley’s skull.
NOT GENERALLY MY AREA OF EXPERTISE. BUT I WOULDN’T WANT TO BE THE ONE BUSTED MEDDLING IN ONGOING HUMAN AFFAIRS.
Crowley struggled mightily for a blank face, so as not to startle Paul into a bolt-and-run.
“I didn’t think you were expected today,” he mumbled into his coffee. “My recall mightn’t be best under stress - but I really don’t even remember you being on the calendar.”
A pause.
PERHAPS IT’S THE OTHER RITZ.
“I won’t tell if you won’t.”
The hint of brimstone painting the air vanished.
14
Temperance
Having of course missed the whole exchange - at least on the ostensible level - Paul balanced his elbow on the table, chin on his wrist, near-still for once, phantom smile wafting across the table at Crowley.
“I do spend a fair amount of time wondering where it all went right.”
He leaned in again. “I always thought … that thing … that brings the balance, to make art, relationships … it’s always subtle … just whispering in your ear,
‘come closer’.”
Precipitously for a yellow-eyed being with such dash boots, Crowley teetered again on the very front edge of the chair.
15
Devil
Paul kept looking past Crowley's shoulder, like he was searching for something.
"Know what intrigues, sometimes? Projects showing people - humans - have choices … we have knowledge. And once we do, doing the good or evil, is up to us, yeah?"
He redirected his slightly stary blue attention to muffled crunches seemingly near Crowley, just under the teapot.
"What is that?"
Crowley tried to discreetly withdraw his claws from the gouges they made in the table's underside, bringing a hand out to smooth his hair's and forehead's aspects, like he couldn't be less interested in what he'd just heard.
~* ~* ~*
16
Tower
“I guess everybody has to go through that phase - you know, the one of experimenting with complete destruction?" Johnny smiled. "I think … when you get to a certain point, if you’ve made it that far, you have to know what you’re putting into the creative machine.”
“Patron saint of the lost.” Aziraphale smiled too.
“I was living in Bela Lugosi’s mansion when I went to France to shoot the Ninth Gate.“
Aziraphale frowned, like he couldn’t remember. “Who … directed that?”
Johnny didn’t say anything, just looked straight at him while he let the shadows fall behind his eyes.
17
Star
“I read you said working with Tim again, after that, was like an exorcism.” Aziraphale poured them both more coffee to cover the remark’s charge. Waitstaff were all still busy falling over themselves with excitement anyway. Usele - he bludgeoned the thought.
“I did say that.” Hands in the hair, on the face, drawing a drag. “He's … very intelligent, very cultured. It was a - powerful experience, to work with him. We live from one confusion to another, you know? I probably don’t mean it the way it sounds.”
More smoke, like following clouds. “But I’ve said it more than once.”
18
Moon
Johnny suddenly halved the space across the table, not seeming to lean, or move; he was just - there.
It’s portrayal, not … incarnation, thought Aziraphale. George Jung cried when they brought him a print of ‘Blow’.
“You seem to have … read a lot. Lots of studio exec types … don’t.”
Oh, dear. “Well. Running about with authors, you know.”
Johnny got up. And threw that dark, skyblanket look at Aziraphale again.
“I should …”
“Do you need a lift?” What the devil. Aziraphale rolled his inner eyes hard at himself.
“They’ll bring the chopper. Thanks.”
“You have a …?”
19
Sun
"Bentley Chopper. Cypress Green." He shrugged into his jacket, a mage cloaking before disappearance.
He'd be breathless with actual lungs, Aziraphale figured.
"I would have figured you for a Ducati … or Harley."
Johnny swiveled back, mid-hypnotic swirl out the door.
"Maybe next lifetime."
Light winked off python-skinned boots. He vanished.
“Nice Boursalino.” Crowley appraised Johnny’s fedora’s brim as they swept past each other in the outer doorway. Johnny looked like he hadn’t heard.
“I’ve two just like it,” Crowley muttered. He swung over to Aziraphale’s table, sweeping fingers over the bill, which disappeared (with a small disapproving cough). “Well?”
20
Judgment
21
The World
“Chocolate and peanut butter.” Aziraphale sucked in his cheeks. Angels weren’t supposed to look smug.
“Steak and eggs.”
“Hydrogen and oxygen.”
“Fire and brimstone,” Crowley snickered. Aziraphale looked mild daggers at him. Crowley ducked a yet-unseen but plausible smite and rose with a flourish.
“Let’s go.”
They stood for a moment on the corner of Central Park West in the sun. Crowley cringed a bit, then shaded his shades.
“Do you think it’ll work?” Aziraphale fussed with a pocket-sized blessed-water vessel. (Rosaries usually didn’t quite pan out for his usages.)
Crowley strolled. “We’ve gotten away with it so far.”
“Well, it’s barely been a decade. It took millennia for TPTB to decide to tear it all down.” He sniffed. “And I’ve no memos at all about that 2012 thing. Have you - oh, never mind. I’ve seen your desk.”
“Hastur and Ligur’s fault.” Crowley looked wounded.
“They could have hardly made it worse,” Aziraphale snapped, then softened at Crowley’s face. “Sorry. I’m just … concerned.” He sighed, a bass flute’s note. “I’m sure I could use a nice glass of burgundy later, or several.”
"I thought you might.” Crowley, slowly first, then much faster, preened in his redemption, if it could be so called. "So I kept a reservation for the balance of the weekend."
"You used a -- credit card? With your name on it?" Aziraphale reeled a little more at this latest revelation.
Crowley rolled his eyes. "This is New York. They don't scrutinize cardholder ID if you use AmEx Black."
Because he preferred the cuisine at London’s Ritz, he told himself, with Escoffier alive, cooking without those - glutamates? - Aziraphale struggled to stop his dimples’ reappearance.
They refused to comply.
"I - have afternoon errands," he managed, hurrying to disappear before they conquered the balance of his face.
~* ~* ~*