Title: 29 Things you Might or Might Not have Known about Nicholas Angel
Fandom: Hot Fuzz
Character/s:Like in the film, + one or two
Word Count (chapter/total): 1,800
Rating: G, I think
Summary/Warnings: Title says it.
29 Things you Might or Might Not have Known about Nicholas Angel
1. He never knew his father. Nine months after a graduation party, Katherine Angel gave birth to her son, and called him Nicholas, because she thought that's what the boy she'd spent that night with was called.
2. Nicholas' mum worked two jobs to support them, so he spent his days with his aunt Jill and uncle Derek in Highgate.
3. Nicholas came home early from his first day of primary school. Another boy in class smeared pink paint in Nicholas' platinum blond hair, and called him Nicky Princess.
4. When Nicholas was five, his mum got stranded in North London. Derek let Nicholas ride in the front seat of the police car to go pick her up, and on the way, they were flagged down by a woman. She was crying, because she'd accidentally locked her keys in the car with her baby in the back seat.Watching Derek rescue that woman's baby from the car, Nicholas decided that he wanted to be a police officer, too.
5. The winter had been unusually cold, and what started out as a typical cold turned into pneumonia. Nicholas spent over a month in hospital, and lost nearly a stone. The doctors said afterward that Nicholas might have trouble ever gaining weight as he grew older.
6. When Derek was arrested, Nicholas refused to go to his aunt Jill's for any reason. His reluctance put a distance between them that he never got over.
7. Worried at how easily Nicholas seemed to get ill, his mum enrolled him in judo lessons. She thought the exercise would do him good, and it gave him something place to go after school so he didn't have to sit alone in their run-down flat.
8. Nicholas was raised Catholic. He and his mum didn't necessarily go to Sunday mass like they should have, but they did pray. Nicholas especially prayed when his mum was hospitalized with spinal meningitis. For the first time ever, he deliberately missed school, not leaving his mum's bedside. But she still got worse, no matter how much he prayed, and despite everything the doctors had done. Two days before Nicholas' twelfth birthday, his aunt Jill took him home to live with her and Derek.
9. Nicholas never forgave Derek for being arrested. He refused to to listen to anything the man said, which inevitably lead to arguments, sometimes of the screaming variety. One evening while Jill was at work, Derek made to swing at Nicholas, but he had underestimated Nicholas' training, and ability to duck. When Nicholas swung back, he connected with Derek's jaw. Derek used the incident as an excuse to send Nicholas off to a boarding school, and Nicholas gladly obliged.
10. The summer Nicholas was sixteen, he met a girl through a friend. Like most teenagers, they didn't take very long at all to get physical. Six weeks into summer holidays, she told him that she was pregnant. Nicholas was prepared to quit school and start working to support her and the baby, but less than a week later, she stole her dad's credit card and went to a clinic in South London. She and Nicholas never spoke again.
11. Nicholas never returned to Jill and Derek's house after he turned eighteen. After graduating from school, he stayed with a friend during the weeks when he applied to every and any university he could find information on. He was accepted into the University of Kent at Canterbury, and immediately made the trip to visit the campus and get settled in. Anything that was left behind with his aunt and uncle was forgotten about, as he set out to start over on his own.
12. Nicholas' first attempt at living on his own failed spectacularly. He had trouble focusing on keeping good marks, and paying bills on time, and eventually ended up moving in with another first year, who was also from London. Unlike Nicholas, who was going through the whole thing on scholarships and any money he could scrape together, Travis' parents were putting him through university, which made the prospect of moving in with him very likable.
13. During his final year at Kent, Nicholas came very close to not being able to graduate. He had run out of funding, and short of taking out a loan that he'd never be able to pay off, had no foreseeable way of coming up with tuition. Just as he had given up, and begun packing his things to return to Jill and Derek's with his tail between his legs, an envelope with a cashier's cheque for the remainder of his tuition was delivered. There was no return address, but he recognized the handwriting on the front of the envelope, and knew that it was Derek's way of telling him not to come back.
14. After Nicholas graduated, he stayed in Canterbury for a year, working odd jobs for experience. The longest job he took lasted seven months, doing night security for the library on campus. The shortest job he took lasted three hours, stocking shelves at Tesco.
15. Nicholas didn't immediately go to academy upon returning to London. At first, he doubted becoming a police officer, and worried about any stigma that might come with being related to Derek. However, he realized that he really didn't want to do anything else, and being a security officer didn't make him feel like he was really doing any real justice.
16. When Nicholas met his first partner, he nearly hugged him. Travis had never expressed any desire to be a police officer during their time in Kent, yet there he was. While he was glad to see a familiar face around the station, he was a little hurt that Travis had never even mentioned this aspiration.
17. Travis had been the one to introduce Nicholas and Janine. She was pretty, worked in forensics, and was completely terrifying at times. He did love her, and wanted to spend the rest of his life with her, but he couldn't bring himself to get physical with her. He told her that he wanted to wait until after they were married. He never told her that he couldn't bear the prospect of bringing a second life into the world when he'd failed so miserably at the first.
18. He and Travis were both up for the same promotion. While Travis had been in the service longer, Nicholas had more experience, and everybody knew it. What nobody knew, and what Nicholas later found out, was that Travis had landed the promotion by way of sexual bribe. Nicholas decided that if that's what was needed for a promotion, he would gladly remain a PC until retirement, and never gave another thought to getting the stripes he'd duly earned.
19. Breaking up with Janine had been the single most devastating event of Nicholas' adult life. He knew she was miserable around him, and decided that he'd rather see her happy with someone else than resenting him every evening. He tried countless times to figure out a way to get back together with her, but gave up completely when he heard through the grapevine that she'd actually started seeing someone else.
20. The prospect of moving out to Sandford wasn't one that he was completely annoyed at. He didn't particularly have many things to move, and he did always want to go out to the country, but he knew it was everybody's way of getting rid of somebody none of them particularly liked.
21. He hated Danny Butterman, and not just for the obvious reasons. He was loved by everyone, had a great relationship with his father, and probably never struggled through anything more complicated than a Cornetto wrapper. Most of all, he hated that Danny went out of his way to be friendly with him.
22. Nicholas didn't really think that Martin Blower and Eve Draper were murdered. Blower had a nasty driving record, and both were over the legal limit for driving, but Nicholas was bored with Sandford and was sick of swans. He wanted something to do, and sadly, something to do was something Sandford lacked.
23. Going to the pub with Danny was the first time Nicholas had ever gotten drunk. He'd spent his time in school focusing on his marks, and not enough time focusing on being young. He didn't actually like the lager they were drinking, but it was the first time he'd really enjoyed himself since before university.
24. When Danny had pretended to stab Nicholas that night under the castle, Nicholas was not acting. He couldn't act to save his life, but he was glad that Danny could. The sheer shock of seeing Danny with that knife, driving it into his chest simply sent Nicholas into shock, and he passed out before he hit the ground.
25. Nicholas did not want to become an inspector. He fought against it, trying to convince London to send in someone more qualified. After weeks of fighting and arguing with Inspector Partridge, someone was finally sent in from Dover. Less than a week later, he promoted Nicholas to inspector, and returned to Dover without warning.
26. Once every three or four months, Nicholas would sit down to try to write a letter to Jill and Derek. About once a year, he'd almost get brave enough to call. After a Google search, he managed to find Jill's email address through a blog she'd apparently started and immediately forgotten about. Somehow email seemed easier; less personal, almost. He used his station email, and was surprised when she responded by the time he checked his email the next morning. It took him several hours to get up the nerve to read what she had to say, and then immediately phoned for a taxi to take him to the train station in Buford Abbey.
27. Nicholas never got the chance to apologize to Derek, or say any of the other things he should have probably said, but never had the bollocks to come out and say. He stayed in London long enough to help out Jill, and go to the funeral. He left for Sandford the day after the funeral, spending the day-long trip filling out paperwork on an old clipboard he'd managed to wrangle up at the train station.
28. Nobody said anything as Nicholas cleared out his office, carefully packing everything into boxes. He had promoted Tony to inspector, and resigned all in the same moment. He wasn't sure what he was going to do with himself, but he knew policing was not on the agenda. As both he and Danny put the boxes in the back of Danny's new Mini, Nicholas remained completely silent, not wanting to betray how upset and confused life had made him recently.
29. He stayed in Sandford, in the small cottage on the edge of town. Once a week, Danny would stop by to watch a DVD, and every now and then, Nicholas could be convinced to go to the cinema in Buford Abbey. But he preferred staying at home tending to his garden, and going to the library thrice weekly to shelve books. He'd always wanted to retire to the country; he just didn't expect he'd be doing it before he reached forty.