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Notes: For applegoo because it was inspired by her latest post of MatsuShin in a dress. Supposed to be a bit more coherent, and not really involved to the ongoing Vincent debacle. Earlier years, right at the beginning - William's stilll new here, the boys miss their old boss, Eric's just getting married. Sort of lost the plot at the end, I suppose?
“You have got to be joking,” Alan groaned, settling a hip on his partner’s desk. His eyes lanced across to the other side of the room, where a flowered dress hung over a lopsided coat-hanger. It was the hospital-pink sash that attracted his attention this minute. Before, it had been the dress itself, but now that the shock had settled, Alan was prepared to dissect and horrify himself over every individual quality of this stupid mission. “No, the boss has to be out of his mind.”
“Well, Mister Hamilton did leave him behind.” His partner didn’t look up from his paperwork. The red ponytail had started to fray, long pieces of hair skittering across the page. If he pressed the pencil any harder, he’d tear through it. “I don’t like him. He keeps treating us like children. For Christ’s sake, all I had was a bloody scratch!”
“Through the lungs,” Alan reminded him, dropping his gaze down to the block-heeled white shoes. “Oh God. How the hell am I going to walk in those?”
Grell glanced up, and offered an unsympathetic shrug. “I’d worry more about the wig, really. It has a poof on top that looks as though you can smuggle bombs into the country, and maybe a very tiny person. Where do you even go to find stuff like that?”
“At theatres, Mister Sutcliff.”
The boys took a little longer than ‘instant’ to straighten their backs. Until now, that voice was new and familiar, and not associated with authority. The boss, for that matter, was really a boss only officially - and it showed in the little slights in their body language. Grell’s hands in his pockets, Alan’s shoulder slumped.
Maybe he did a little more than slump, and turned his face carefully away from the voice, to show him, without binding words, that he wasn’t pleased. Alan did not do undercover female surveillance. That’s what they had Grell for.
“You broke into a theatre and stole a dress and a wig?” Grell asked dryly, turning his head to look at him.
The boss - only in name - was a tall, dapper bloke with the gangly legs of a teenager. He couldn’t have been older than twenty eight, though his clothing aged him considerably: the tie looked strangulation-tight, in dove gray, the suit pressed smooth, also in dove gray. Accents were black. He looked like a well-dressed university preacher. His hair was much too long for a boss, as well - it fell into his eyes, strands of it coming loose from whatever had welded the rest to his skull.
He smiled, showing off straight, white teeth without a hint of boyhood fights still lingering, and said, “No. I broke into a theatre and borrowed a dress. I left money.”
“You’re an angel, boss,” Alan turned away, staring at the dress, then the wig. He sighed.
“I’m sure you are both aware of your orders,” William continued, “so perhaps it is best if you get dressed, Mister Humphries. Mister Sutcliff, your outfit is in my office. I apologize for the late hour.”
“What are you going to dress me as - Alan’s horse?” The redhead pushed himself up from this desk. A stack of papers toppled over, to no reaction from Grell, though it did pull a wince from William. Following behind the boss, he didn’t stay long enough to see Alan peel the dress of the hanger and stare at it with a hatred previously reserved for boon enemies.
With a gaggle of young cadets watching in interest, Alan sighed and pulled his tie loose.
. . .
“The vee goes in the back, ‘lan.”
“Don’t make me take this stupid thing off again, it took me ages to put it on. My reputation is damaged irreparably for not realizing the stupid bloody dress had a bloody zipper on the back. I had to get the aid of a young cadet.”
Alan groaned as Grell yanked the dress back off, twisted it, and handed it back. “It’s a country dress,” Grell explained, “the vee goes in the back. London dresses have vees in the front. They’re usually worn by women who want desperately to appear sexy, but aren’t really willing to make the effort.”
“No wonder I was confused. All Daphne’s dresses have vees in the front,” Alan turned around, letting Grell yank the zipper up hard, “though she knows quite well she’s, ah. Pretty.”
Grell’s fingers brushed at his side, a brief, soft stroke that meant more than words did. “Wedding going on ahead, still?” he asked, bet over the wig on his desk.
Alan hitched the skirt up a little, settling on a corner. “Like a train,” he sighed, watching as Grell wielded a comb to the tangled, unruly ends. “At this rate, the most I can hope is that a cow wanders onto the tracks and slows them down a little.”
“You’d be surprised at the high amount of happy marriages that end due to cows. Oh, and the husband killing the wife, that’s a classic one, as well.” Grell lifted the wig, crooking Alan’s chin forward with a fingertip to press it down onto his head. He fluffed up the curls falling over his shoulders, watching Alan’s lashes lower.
“Eric’s not a killer,” he told him, “and cows don’t go near London.” Handing him some eyeliner, Alan closed his eyes, staving off a tangle of emotions - exhaustion, unhappiness, irritation. Grell’s fingers lingered, warm and soft, on his jaw, angling his head up and this way and that.
It would be nice if this was home, and he was with Eric, and not in this stupid bloody dress.
“What did the boss want to give you?”
“The most godawful farmboy outfit this side of the North. You’ll have to see it, words can’t do it justice. It looks like a deranged madwoman was given control of a sewing machine and some fabric scraps. I think it’s possessed by an evil spirit, Alan.”
Alan chuckled, opening his eyes when Grell stopped touching him. “Well, you could always complain.”
“What, and miss a chance to get out of here? I’ll take the chances of getting possessed by an evil spirit due to a horrendously ugly suit, thank you.” Grell leaned back, folding his arms across his chest. His eyes glanced over the other agent’s face, now with a bit of haphazard makeup to finish the entire look - all Alan needed now was lipstick.
It seemed like the agent had read his mind, because he drew his skirt up a little farther and showed him the holster strapped to his right thigh. The little silver gun, Grell was tempted to tell him, did not go with white shoes.
“You get anywhere near me with lipstick, and I’ll beat you with this pistol,” Alan told him. “And after I’m done beating you, I’ll beat you again. Goddamnit. I miss Mister Hamilton. This idiot doesn’t know what he’s doing.”
“Could quit,” Grell mused, “could always quit.”
“If the Agency would let us quit, don’t you think I would have, by now? I asked Mister Hamilton about it. He said the only time agents ‘quit’ are when they’re carried out in urns.” Alan shook his head, taking the mirror Grell held out to him.
“There’s always a way to succeed in an improbable situation, Alan. If we quit together, we co-” Grell stopped. He looked over his shoulder, at the door to the right, way across the other side of the bullpen. “He’s coming.”
Scrambling off Alan’s desk, Grell moved to the other side and pulled his shirt off, dragging a bag of what appeared to be chopped up meat from underneath the desk. He shook out a coarse, hip-length coat, a linen shirt the colour of melting butter, and a pair of trousers that matched the coat - squares of brown and black and red clumped together. They were at least two sizes too big for Grell.
Leaning back, Alan prepared to savour the moment.
“I can see why you think it’s a satanic suit...” he snickered, and slid off the desk when William appeared through the doorway.
Grell shot him a mutinous look, tucking his shirt into the trousers, and sliding the belt tight enough to cut off blood flow to several extraneous areas.
“Gentlemen.”
“Boss.” Alan shifted on his feet, wincing as Grell grunted something unpleasant.
“Your hat, Mister Sutcliff,” William pointed out, and handed the irate redhead a bunch of wadded-up fabric. He turned his back on him - which Alan believed was quite a stupid move - and looked at him, narrowing his eyes as he took in the dress, the shoes, the wig. “Very well. You pass for a woman quite well, Mister Humphries.”
“Thank you, sir,” well, there really was no need to keep such a watch on Grell... if he murdered the boss, everyone here wouldn’t say a word. Silence between spies and all that.
Grell jammed the hat on his head, yanking the brim sideways.
“The car will take you to your destination - there’s a house close by to the drop-off zone that you will be staying in. Grell, you are not to attempt to intercept the villains yourself. Leave that to Agent Humphries, are we clear?” The boss glanced at Grell, and received a scowl as a reply.
Grell gestured to Alan, shaking his head. “No. If he’s in trouble, I’m helping him. Honestly, it was all I could do to get him to stay upright on those heels, and you’re asking him to walk.”
“Oh, I’ll think of a way, Grell, no worries,” Alan said cheerfully, wobbling only a little as he made his way across to the opposite desk. “I mean, you know. The boss is right. You should be more careful.”
Grell looked mutinously at him, curling his lips into an unpleasant snarl - though it faded quickly after that, which really wasn’t more reassuring than having seen it in the first place. He probably was risking a little, mocking Grell as he did, but he couldn’t help it.
Offering the redhead an arm, Alan watched him huff out of the room, marching as much as the wide trousers could let him.
. . .
Surveillance and stake-outs were the worst part of the job - aside from the constant lying, the paranoia that got the better of most agents, the high levels of vigilance required; none of those had anything on surveillance. At least they weren’t in a car. Grell was a high-energy, very nervous, fidgety sort. Alan would have had to murder him if they were in a car.
The mission itself wasn’t that difficult. William had gotten wind of trafficking going on in this part of the world - the people who lived in this house had been aiding the traffickers, which was why they were here instead of back at base, possibly with a sniper rifle.
Personally, Alan thought that William might have been reading a bit too much into the testimony of country folk, but he was the boss now. They did what he said.
Phantomhive was probably behind him, regardless. There were only a few crime families that did trafficking in Britain - and only Phantomhive in this part of the north, with the Ravenswood family leader knocked for six in prison. And the-
-a knock on the door.
Grell sat up from being slumped over on the table, and met Alan’s eyes. Inclining his head, he moved away from his position by the window, gesturing for Alan to get behind the front door. With Alan hiding on a puffed-up settee, Grell pulled the door open, and stared up at the man that filled the doorway.
He was easily as tall as he was, if not more, and built like a shed on legs. He held a case in one hand, no gun - which didn’t perturb Grell as much as the size had - and behind him, nobody else. Phantomhive was arrogant. He could deal with an arrogant man.
“Lovely weather we’re ha-“
The man grabbed Grell by the front of his shirt, lifting him to his mouth as though about to take a bite out of his face. Grell turned his gaze away, wrinkling his nose.
“Listen here, ‘m just here to drop this off, I don’t want any trouble.”
Alan eased out of position, nudging the door closed as he laid the gun at the small of his back. “Drop him.”
The man stiffened, tightening his grip on Grell’s shirt. “Wh-?”
“Oh, sure. Come to my rescue after his breath has poisoned the very air,” Grell hissed, and lashed out with his leg, catching the side of a tree-trunk leg.
“You know, if I shoot you from this angle, there is a very good chance that you’ll only be paralyzed - and with the evidence we have against you, there’s really not a hope that you’ll stay out of a jail cell.” Alan lifted his brows, dragging the gun up to his jaw (not quite admitting to himself that the heels helped him reach). “Do you know what they’d do to a disabled man in a jail cell?”
“Wh-What evidence?! I haven’t... I haven’t done anything, I just came to, came to drop this off!” The man let go off Grell, freezing again as the gun brushed against his jaw.
When Grell hit the floor, Alan chuckled, tossing him a scarf. “That was ... ridiculously easy,” he called to the redhead, gun trained on the man as Grell bound his wrists up.
“Too easy.”
“Never say that, Grell,” Alan warned him, and prepared to wait.
. . .
“I told you never to say it’s ‘too easy’.”
“How was I to know it wasn’t the right bloody bloke?” Grell snapped, tearing threads off the edges of the cap.
“It was the right man,” William interjected, “but not the right man. Not the man who does Vincent’s regular drop-offs. A substitute.”
“So we went out there for nothing.” Alan’s shoulders drooped. Most of the makeup Grell had put on had smeared hours ago. “Wasted all that bloody time doing nothing.”
“Not for nothing... We have another lead. That man in there is Barnett.” William turned to the viewing window, eyeing the inside of the interrogation room. The man in question was pacing, staring at them, but not seeing. Light from the single, bathroom-style tube trembled over his face. “He’s married to Vincent’s sister-in-law.”
“So what?” Grell shrugged, tucking his hands into his pockets.
“Maybe nothing. You two are dismissed. Stay available.”
“As if there’s a bloody choice,” Alan mumbled, and hurried out of the room to take the dress off.
“You have got to be joking,” Alan groaned, settling a hip on his partner’s desk. His eyes lanced across to the other side of the room, where a flowered dress hung over a lopsided coat-hanger. It was the hospital-pink sash that attracted his attention this minute. Before, it had been the dress itself, but now that the shock had settled, Alan was prepared to dissect and horrify himself over every individual quality of this stupid mission. “No, the boss has to be out of his mind.”
“Well, Mister Hamilton did leave him behind.” His partner didn’t look up from his paperwork. The red ponytail had started to fray, long pieces of hair skittering across the page. If he pressed the pencil any harder, he’d tear through it. “I don’t like him. He keeps treating us like children. For Christ’s sake, all I had was a bloody scratch!”
“Through the lungs,” Alan reminded him, dropping his gaze down to the block-heeled white shoes. “Oh God. How the hell am I going to walk in those?”
Grell glanced up, and offered an unsympathetic shrug. “I’d worry more about the wig, really. It has a poof on top that looks as though you can smuggle bombs into the country, and maybe a very tiny person. Where do you even go to find stuff like that?”
“At theatres, Mister Sutcliff.”
The boys took a little longer than ‘instant’ to straighten their backs. Until now, that voice was new and familiar, and not associated with authority. The boss, for that matter, was really a boss only officially - and it showed in the little slights in their body language. Grell’s hands in his pockets, Alan’s shoulder slumped.
Maybe he did a little more than slump, and turned his face carefully away from the voice, to show him, without binding words, that he wasn’t pleased. Alan did not do undercover female surveillance. That’s what they had Grell for.
“You broke into a theatre and stole a dress and a wig?” Grell asked dryly, turning his head to look at him.
The boss - only in name - was a tall, dapper bloke with the gangly legs of a teenager. He couldn’t have been older than twenty eight, though his clothing aged him considerably: the tie looked strangulation-tight, in dove gray, the suit pressed smooth, also in dove gray. Accents were black. He looked like a well-dressed university preacher. His hair was much too long for a boss, as well - it fell into his eyes, strands of it coming loose from whatever had welded the rest to his skull.
He smiled, showing off straight, white teeth without a hint of boyhood fights still lingering, and said, “No. I broke into a theatre and borrowed a dress. I left money.”
“You’re an angel, boss,” Alan turned away, staring at the dress, then the wig. He sighed.
“I’m sure you are both aware of your orders,” William continued, “so perhaps it is best if you get dressed, Mister Humphries. Mister Sutcliff, your outfit is in my office. I apologize for the late hour.”
“What are you going to dress me as - Alan’s horse?” The redhead pushed himself up from this desk. A stack of papers toppled over, to no reaction from Grell, though it did pull a wince from William. Following behind the boss, he didn’t stay long enough to see Alan peel the dress of the hanger and stare at it with a hatred previously reserved for boon enemies.
With a gaggle of young cadets watching in interest, Alan sighed and pulled his tie loose.
. . .
“The vee goes in the back, ‘lan.”
“Don’t make me take this stupid thing off again, it took me ages to put it on. My reputation is damaged irreparably for not realizing the stupid bloody dress had a bloody zipper on the back. I had to get the aid of a young cadet.”
Alan groaned as Grell yanked the dress back off, twisted it, and handed it back. “It’s a country dress,” Grell explained, “the vee goes in the back. London dresses have vees in the front. They’re usually worn by women who want desperately to appear sexy, but aren’t really willing to make the effort.”
“No wonder I was confused. All Daphne’s dresses have vees in the front,” Alan turned around, letting Grell yank the zipper up hard, “though she knows quite well she’s, ah. Pretty.”
Grell’s fingers brushed at his side, a brief, soft stroke that meant more than words did. “Wedding going on ahead, still?” he asked, bet over the wig on his desk.
Alan hitched the skirt up a little, settling on a corner. “Like a train,” he sighed, watching as Grell wielded a comb to the tangled, unruly ends. “At this rate, the most I can hope is that a cow wanders onto the tracks and slows them down a little.”
“You’d be surprised at the high amount of happy marriages that end due to cows. Oh, and the husband killing the wife, that’s a classic one, as well.” Grell lifted the wig, crooking Alan’s chin forward with a fingertip to press it down onto his head. He fluffed up the curls falling over his shoulders, watching Alan’s lashes lower.
“Eric’s not a killer,” he told him, “and cows don’t go near London.” Handing him some eyeliner, Alan closed his eyes, staving off a tangle of emotions - exhaustion, unhappiness, irritation. Grell’s fingers lingered, warm and soft, on his jaw, angling his head up and this way and that.
It would be nice if this was home, and he was with Eric, and not in this stupid bloody dress.
“What did the boss want to give you?”
“The most godawful farmboy outfit this side of the North. You’ll have to see it, words can’t do it justice. It looks like a deranged madwoman was given control of a sewing machine and some fabric scraps. I think it’s possessed by an evil spirit, Alan.”
Alan chuckled, opening his eyes when Grell stopped touching him. “Well, you could always complain.”
“What, and miss a chance to get out of here? I’ll take the chances of getting possessed by an evil spirit due to a horrendously ugly suit, thank you.” Grell leaned back, folding his arms across his chest. His eyes glanced over the other agent’s face, now with a bit of haphazard makeup to finish the entire look - all Alan needed now was lipstick.
It seemed like the agent had read his mind, because he drew his skirt up a little farther and showed him the holster strapped to his right thigh. The little silver gun, Grell was tempted to tell him, did not go with white shoes.
“You get anywhere near me with lipstick, and I’ll beat you with this pistol,” Alan told him. “And after I’m done beating you, I’ll beat you again. Goddamnit. I miss Mister Hamilton. This idiot doesn’t know what he’s doing.”
“Could quit,” Grell mused, “could always quit.”
“If the Agency would let us quit, don’t you think I would have, by now? I asked Mister Hamilton about it. He said the only time agents ‘quit’ are when they’re carried out in urns.” Alan shook his head, taking the mirror Grell held out to him.
“There’s always a way to succeed in an improbable situation, Alan. If we quit together, we co-” Grell stopped. He looked over his shoulder, at the door to the right, way across the other side of the bullpen. “He’s coming.”
Scrambling off Alan’s desk, Grell moved to the other side and pulled his shirt off, dragging a bag of what appeared to be chopped up meat from underneath the desk. He shook out a coarse, hip-length coat, a linen shirt the colour of melting butter, and a pair of trousers that matched the coat - squares of brown and black and red clumped together. They were at least two sizes too big for Grell.
Leaning back, Alan prepared to savour the moment.
“I can see why you think it’s a satanic suit...” he snickered, and slid off the desk when William appeared through the doorway.
Grell shot him a mutinous look, tucking his shirt into the trousers, and sliding the belt tight enough to cut off blood flow to several extraneous areas.
“Gentlemen.”
“Boss.” Alan shifted on his feet, wincing as Grell grunted something unpleasant.
“Your hat, Mister Sutcliff,” William pointed out, and handed the irate redhead a bunch of wadded-up fabric. He turned his back on him - which Alan believed was quite a stupid move - and looked at him, narrowing his eyes as he took in the dress, the shoes, the wig. “Very well. You pass for a woman quite well, Mister Humphries.”
“Thank you, sir,” well, there really was no need to keep such a watch on Grell... if he murdered the boss, everyone here wouldn’t say a word. Silence between spies and all that.
Grell jammed the hat on his head, yanking the brim sideways.
“The car will take you to your destination - there’s a house close by to the drop-off zone that you will be staying in. Grell, you are not to attempt to intercept the villains yourself. Leave that to Agent Humphries, are we clear?” The boss glanced at Grell, and received a scowl as a reply.
Grell gestured to Alan, shaking his head. “No. If he’s in trouble, I’m helping him. Honestly, it was all I could do to get him to stay upright on those heels, and you’re asking him to walk.”
“Oh, I’ll think of a way, Grell, no worries,” Alan said cheerfully, wobbling only a little as he made his way across to the opposite desk. “I mean, you know. The boss is right. You should be more careful.”
Grell looked mutinously at him, curling his lips into an unpleasant snarl - though it faded quickly after that, which really wasn’t more reassuring than having seen it in the first place. He probably was risking a little, mocking Grell as he did, but he couldn’t help it.
Offering the redhead an arm, Alan watched him huff out of the room, marching as much as the wide trousers could let him.
. . .
Surveillance and stake-outs were the worst part of the job - aside from the constant lying, the paranoia that got the better of most agents, the high levels of vigilance required; none of those had anything on surveillance. At least they weren’t in a car. Grell was a high-energy, very nervous, fidgety sort. Alan would have had to murder him if they were in a car.
The mission itself wasn’t that difficult. William had gotten wind of trafficking going on in this part of the world - the people who lived in this house had been aiding the traffickers, which was why they were here instead of back at base, possibly with a sniper rifle.
Personally, Alan thought that William might have been reading a bit too much into the testimony of country folk, but he was the boss now. They did what he said.
Phantomhive was probably behind him, regardless. There were only a few crime families that did trafficking in Britain - and only Phantomhive in this part of the north, with the Ravenswood family leader knocked for six in prison. And the-
-a knock on the door.
Grell sat up from being slumped over on the table, and met Alan’s eyes. Inclining his head, he moved away from his position by the window, gesturing for Alan to get behind the front door. With Alan hiding on a puffed-up settee, Grell pulled the door open, and stared up at the man that filled the doorway.
He was easily as tall as he was, if not more, and built like a shed on legs. He held a case in one hand, no gun - which didn’t perturb Grell as much as the size had - and behind him, nobody else. Phantomhive was arrogant. He could deal with an arrogant man.
“Lovely weather we’re ha-“
The man grabbed Grell by the front of his shirt, lifting him to his mouth as though about to take a bite out of his face. Grell turned his gaze away, wrinkling his nose.
“Listen here, ‘m just here to drop this off, I don’t want any trouble.”
Alan eased out of position, nudging the door closed as he laid the gun at the small of his back. “Drop him.”
The man stiffened, tightening his grip on Grell’s shirt. “Wh-?”
“Oh, sure. Come to my rescue after his breath has poisoned the very air,” Grell hissed, and lashed out with his leg, catching the side of a tree-trunk leg.
“You know, if I shoot you from this angle, there is a very good chance that you’ll only be paralyzed - and with the evidence we have against you, there’s really not a hope that you’ll stay out of a jail cell.” Alan lifted his brows, dragging the gun up to his jaw (not quite admitting to himself that the heels helped him reach). “Do you know what they’d do to a disabled man in a jail cell?”
“Wh-What evidence?! I haven’t... I haven’t done anything, I just came to, came to drop this off!” The man let go off Grell, freezing again as the gun brushed against his jaw.
When Grell hit the floor, Alan chuckled, tossing him a scarf. “That was ... ridiculously easy,” he called to the redhead, gun trained on the man as Grell bound his wrists up.
“Too easy.”
“Never say that, Grell,” Alan warned him, and prepared to wait.
. . .
“I told you never to say it’s ‘too easy’.”
“How was I to know it wasn’t the right bloody bloke?” Grell snapped, tearing threads off the edges of the cap.
“It was the right man,” William interjected, “but not the right man. Not the man who does Vincent’s regular drop-offs. A substitute.”
“So we went out there for nothing.” Alan’s shoulders drooped. Most of the makeup Grell had put on had smeared hours ago. “Wasted all that bloody time doing nothing.”
“Not for nothing... We have another lead. That man in there is Barnett.” William turned to the viewing window, eyeing the inside of the interrogation room. The man in question was pacing, staring at them, but not seeing. Light from the single, bathroom-style tube trembled over his face. “He’s married to Vincent’s sister-in-law.”
“So what?” Grell shrugged, tucking his hands into his pockets.
“Maybe nothing. You two are dismissed. Stay available.”
“As if there’s a bloody choice,” Alan mumbled, and hurried out of the room to take the dress off.