A/N: 'Nother one shot, this one due to Mae (thanks Mae). And— I don't really like it all that much. It went its own way and I couldn't stop it. Oh well.
The Perfect Failure
It was a slow time of the day.
The papers had been left on doorsteps: all interesting portions carefully removed. Kitchens had been infiltrated, the tea-things tampered with, sugar replaced with salt and milk turned sour with a careful breath. Crowley walked his route with a sure and measured step, and in his wake small objects were pilfered, items necessary to the day went missing, leading to a wave of frustration and, in the end, small and sneaky acts of vengeance, taken out on unsuspecting innocents, which, in their turn, went on to make life just a little more miserable for someone else. Crowley's favorite game, unsurprisingly, was dominos. Set up the humans, set them up in a neat little row, give them a breath and watch them all fall down.
It was a routine. He went through the city, a few streets every day, just doing his job. It wasn't smart, it wasn't fun, it wasn't anything life-changing.
Well. Alright, it was a little fun. And it could occasionally be life-changing, if he did it well enough. Not necessarily a change for the better. Not ever, in fact.
Well again.
He heaved a sigh and flicked a thin strand of black hair out of his eyes. It fell back immediately; that was the thing about having perfect hair, it took a while to change it. Usually he had to concentrate on it, and right now there were more interesting things to think about. Like—
The hair was annoying him, though. He frowned and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel; the hair knitted itself to the rest of his stylishly unkempt mane, and he lifted one of his hands to smooth an elegant finger over the top of his shades. Waiting was a game that he played often, and well. As long as there was some sort of payoff to imagine, he could wait forever. He sat silent in the front seat of the car, silent and stoic. Every now and then, if he couldn't help it, a not-quite-human tongue flicked out from between perfectly cut lips. He hissed to himself; he hated it when he did that. It just crept up on him sometimes, when he was concentrating. Like now.
All for a payoff. All for a payoff, here for a purpose, all to the good. He resumed drumming his fingers on the wheel, tapped out a Morse code message for no one or everyone to hear.
I'm waiting here for...
Payoff. Goal. Suckers.
He thought again about what amounted to his greatest failure. Well, that and Mother Teresa, but he was willing to admit he hadn't been at the top of his game with Mother Teresa. Hadn't really put as much effort and time into her as he should have.
It was during the Sixties. He'd liked the Sixties. Lots of fascinating things happened then, not least the emergence of hippies, which neither Crowley's side nor, interestingly, Aziraphael's would take credit for. There was the spirit of rebellion, which was the biggest tip off for the hand of Hell in human matters, but then there was the fact that they were rebelling against the tyranny of the government, which indicated Heaven. There were the peace walks, which were Heavenly, and then there was the immorality of Free Love which, Crowley remembered, Aziraphael had been aghast at, although that hadn't kept him from watching. There were drugs, which was Hellish, and there were random handouts of flowers, which Aziraphael admitted scornfully may be attributed to some of the novice angels who hadn't quite learned the art of subtlety. Crowley likewise opined that the clothes might be attributed to amateurs on his side; but by and large they'd decided that hippies were just nature's way of showing her sense of humor.
As the Free Love movement grew, the nice girls of the past faded away; or rather, started wearing pants and tye-dye and sleeping with guitarists, rendering them perhaps a bit less nice, a bit more rumpled, and a great deal more smelling of special cigarettes. Crowley's own special failure had come with one of the last remaining nice girls, still dressed in a poodle skirt with a broad belt, her blouse coming untucked, a run in her stockings, her lips perpetually parted and her eyes dazed and faraway. Crowley's fingers fluttered lightly over his face, skating his chin, his perfect cheekbones, and brushing lightly on his own mouth, remembering. He'd thought she'd be the perfect opportunity. An easy mark, no less, tempt her, travail her, make her stay out late, come home with her makeup smeared and then lie to her parents.
Which was fine, as far as that went. It hadn't been difficult at all. He'd tossed a particularly handsome druggie in her path, they'd gone to a pub, she'd had three drinks and taken off her top. Left the bra on but that was okay, he was willing to work up to that. The point was, where that sweet little young woman, barely seventeen, had been, there was now someone who was well on the way to a life of debauchery. If nothing else, there were bound to be cameras in the audience, and this would come back to haunt her in time. Blackmail letters threatening to tell her future husband, that sort of thing. All she needed was a few more pushes.
The trouble was he'd been admiring his handiwork from closer than he should have been, strictly speaking, and when she rushed past him later that night, sobbing, he'd succumbed to the twinge of curiosity and followed her outside.
She clutched at the wall and cried in huge gasping breaths.
He approached, eyebrows cocked at a quizzical angle, and leaned against the wall a few feet from her, arms folded. "Where've you gone right?" he enquired, in a voice that was little more than a whisper but somehow made itself heard.
She darted him a confused glare. "Just out of curiosity, you're asking? Don't tell me you didn't get enough of the show in there."
"Feeling guilty, are we?"
"You sound rather proud of that." She leaned her forehead against the wall, letting her eyes drift closed, and missed his modest shrug. Her shoulders shook, she let out a few more sobs and a sigh and pounded a small fist against the wall.
"Having second thoughts? Confused about where your life is going now?" He nodded curtly. "All to the good. You've got a whole existence stretching out in front of you. Up to you if you want to have a little fun; you know?"
"What's fun got to do with life?" she said sulkily.
"Everything! Its got everything to do with it. I don't know what point there'd be without it. What use there'd be in going on, y'know?"
She looked at him, now, looked at him and frowned. "What are you to do with me?" she asked slowly. "And why did you follow me out here?"
He shrugged, well-cut shoulders in a well-cut suit, except not by Sixties standards of course. "You seemed to be having fun in there. Wouldn't you like to finish the night off properly? Wouldn't it be better to be in there with your friends instead of out here alone?"
She moved away from the wall and wiped her eyes with the side of her hand. He noticed then that she wasn't wearing any makeup; her eyes were elongated, tilted up at the sides, the lashes very dark, but it was all real, all her. "I'm not alone," she said. "You're here."
Crowley had always made a point of not getting involved. Well, to a point. Certainly he was there, tempting with the best of them, but when it came to the actual sinning he found it was best to let things alone and leave humans to get on with it. But the girl had actually slapped her date on her way out, and it looked unlikely that he'd be able to hook them back up again with any good results. He stepped closer to her, a discontented sigh escaping him, and smoothed her cheek with the back of his fingers.
"Fun?" he coaxed her. "Its there inside, loads of it. This is advice from a friend, you know."
She looked up at him, those eyes dark and wondering. "Can I trust you?"
"Implicitly," he assured her, his smile not showing even a hint of the crooked fancy in his voice. She caught her neck in the crook of her thumb and forefinger, and swallowed hard.
"There's something wrong with your eyes."
He shrugged. "Shades."
"No, there's something else there, behind them." She reached up and tried to take them off, but he caught her hand and dragged it away before she could manage it. "What's wrong?"
"Don't like being touched," he said harshly. "At least, look, not the glasses. Leave the glasses alone."
"But what's wrong with—"
There must have been at least three wrong turns he'd taken in this case, he thought, but he couldn't quite pinpoint what they were. He didn't like the questions, he didn't like the conversation, and he didn't like the closeness, it all felt wrong. By rights he should have contrived a way to get her back into the pub and sitting on someone's lap by now. In reality it seemed that she was ignoring all the hints and the prodding toward the door and kissing him instead. Which was all basically according to plan, except that it was Crowley being inexplicably pushed against the wall, the girl's arms wrapped around his neck, her fingers buried in his perfect hair.
From good to bad so blessedly quick; his head spun. Or was it the kiss? No, humanity was simply baffling. She pulled away from him and looked him deep in the shades.
"There's something wrong," she said distinctly, "with your tongue."
"Did they put something extra in your drink while I wasn't watching?" he asked, a bit confused.
"Powdered elephant tusk," she suggested.
"That's just a myth."
"What's wrong with your tongue?" she asked, and prodded at his shoulder. "What's wrong with your heartbeat, too? I mean, where is it?"
He sighed and, to distract her, stuck his tongue out to let her examine it. She stared somewhat wide-eyed at the fork at the end, and blinked very slowly.
"Who are you, then?"
"Crowley," he said, "though that's not really an answer." He felt rather cold when she pulled away from him; he should have been used to feeling cold, really, but this was different. He fought the urge to take her wrist and pull her back against him. He reached out instead to trace her features lightly; she shivered at his touch. She had freckles; he was vaguely amused by that. "Who're you?"
"Rebecca," she said, and he nodded; yes, that was definitely one of the things he was doing wrong. He'd never asked names before. Well. Mother Teresa. There was a story behind that one, though.
As there was behind this, he realized, a story that shouldn't be getting back to anyone of importance. If he left now, his work went down the drain. If he stayed—
Ah, he figured, what was the good of being a demon if you still had second thoughts about things?
"What the Hell," he said, distinctly, and pulled her back to him. The brick wall behind him was cold on his back, but he was glad of the support. There was one thing that could be said of him: he put his all into corruption, he did his best, or, in this case, his worst, which was nevertheless extremely good, or so she said. It was her first time: which earned him a fiendish chuckle later on and her some pain she hadn't expected. It was outside: a note of unpremeditated immorality that could have been a bad thing (or a good one, if you're looking at the outcome of the whole thing ((good, right?)) and the reason it had all happened in the first place ((bad))), but worked anyway because it also was rather embarrassing when someone walked around the corner into the alley and came upon them suddenly. Her skin was very pale and the ground was very hard, and when she tried to rest her head on his chest he shifted out from underneath her with alacrity.
"Trying to figure this out," he mumbled, "getting confused when I try to work it out. Its bad, of course, because that was the intent in the first place, and yet good because, well—" He gestured at the both of them, and swallowed hard. "And its all just a mix of double entendres and random punctuation and," he waved his hands in the air, "far too many parentheses, I can't work it out. Rebecca. Rebecca."
She watched him for a minute, brow creased in thought.
"Do you know you still haven't taken off those sunglasses?" she said. "This whole time and you still haven't taken off those sunglasses."
He blinked at her— not that she could tell.
"We're lying here naked in an alley, I'm rambling about bad intent and corruption, and you're worried about my shades?"
"Just seemed a bit weird, is all."
So he smiled at her. There didn't seem much else to do. He smiled at her and she smiled back, and guided his head to rest on her shoulder, against her breast. And they lay like that for a while, a few hours all told, though back then, as now, Crowley was a wonder at playing the waiting game.
It was all a mistake, a screw up, and a failure because it hadn't changed her for the worst at all. Not in the least. She had gotten up a bit later and fumbled with belts or buttons, and he'd helped her with the blouse, oddly fascinated by the process.
"Don't you ever mess up your buttons?" she'd asked him, smiling as he patted her hands away and straightened things out.
"No," he'd said, "usually they seem to— arrange themselves."
"How's that?"
"Bit— bit of a bugger to explain, actually."
And when everything was all said and done she'd smiled and gone on her way. He was absolutely baffled as he watched her walk away. Weren't there any— complications when a human slept with a demon? Shouldn't she be shell-shocked? Hadn't there been some visions of the fires of hell bursting behind her eyes when things went all muffin-shaped? And there she was walking away. Alright, so it was frustration. Alright, so he was confused. Alright, so he'd tried his best and not succeeded, because he never saw her near a pub after that again. No pubs, no drugs, no string of guys helping her sneak out her window. Very strange.
Alright, so he'd screwed up. He was a demon. Screw ups were kind of implicit in the job description, if you thought about it.
He had run into her now and then, or heard of her at least; not that he was keeping tabs, because he didn't do that sort of thing. There was no need. Everyone of any interest would be registered in the Books, Down Below, eventually. But from what he picked up, she'd kept her life on the straight and narrow, and kept herself, he had to admit, absolutely stellar. She never had managed to get his shades off; he wondered often if it would have made a bit more of an impact if she had.
Even the birth was easy, and simple, and painful, and normal, and he felt only the slightest twinge of guilt at disregarding it entirely. Well. A mistake was a mistake, there was no point in avoiding it, though he lied about it because that was just kind of enjoyable. He tapped at the steering wheel and smiled, satisfactorily, when his waiting suddenly paid off. Politician. Brilliant. There was no way he could fail. This man would go far, and along the way, would take several people along with him. The smile turned to sharp, sardonic, crooked grin, and for a minute Crowley's narrow face looked honest-to-badness evil. Politicians. Hell would be proud. Or ask him why he couldn't be more original, one or the other.
Today? Today the man would bribe a police officer. Crowley rubbed his hands together, disregarding the cliche of it. Bribes! Yay. He got out of the Bentley and followed the man in the poorly-tailored suit towards the street corner. Over the years he'd come to appreciate the beauty of observing his handiwork close-up, not to mention a well-handled bribe. Obviously there was subtlety involved, and if there was one thing Crowley admired, it was subtlety.
Not too much subtlety, of course; this was a politician, after all.
He stepped into the bus cover and sanitized a portion of the bench with a glare. After a minute of concentration he scraped off most of the larger lumps off it, too, and sat down, crossing his legs neatly and shoving his sunglasses up his nose. Politician, hike. He wondered if he should get a pair of opera glasses for occasions like these; not that he needed them, of course, his eyesight was perfect. Just for effect. Just for looks, and he shook his head sharply at the thought. Go— Sa— Jes— huh. He sighed.
"Not worth it sometimes," he said quietly, and focused.
The politician was in the early stages of the rotundity that begins its process in the first days of a political career, and along with the poorly-cut suit had shoes a size too small, so he walked with a slight gimp. The policeman was younger, a bit on the small side, and he stood with his back to the politician and Crowley, sitting watching avidly from the bus cover. The politician advanced, mind, what there was of it, intent on the fulfillment of his purpose. The policeman, cannily, ignored him until the politician forced the issue, nudging him in the side with a total lack of subtlety, Crowley saw with disapproval.
The policeman turned round.
"Wha— oh, yes sir? Can I help you, sir?"
His voice was thin and reedy for a grown man, noticeable above the buzz of the crowded street. The politician hissed at him to keep it down. The policeman affected confusion. The politician whispered a few words in his ear.
"What?" said the policeman. Crowley quirked an eyebrow.
The politician whispered again, more urgently this time, and took a small envelope out of his pocket. He caught the policeman's hand and tried to put the envelope into it; the policeman tucked his hands behind his back and stared at the politician with a good show, at least, of outrage.
"Oh my," murmured Crowley.
The argument was joined. The politician wheedled and cajoled; the policeman looked very concerned and rather irritated. Any minute now, Crowley thought, he was going to slip into defense mode and then he'd be unable to say anything other than, "What's all this then?" He sighed in exasperation, and stood up. Clearly, the politician had found the wrong bobby to try and corrupt. E for effort, however; he strode forward, towards the still-arguing pair, intending to distract them and end the discussion. Their time, he reasoned, could be better spent elsewhere, with some copper who wasn't quite so thick.
Crowley was familiar, of course, with the idea of one's mistakes coming back to haunt you; or, if not to haunt you, to come back and bite you on the bum, and so later he realized he should have been watching for something like this; he should always have been watching for something like this. But he still wasn't expecting the vaguely-familiar face of the policeman, a slightly heavier copy of his elfin mother, and wasn't expecting to realize suddenly that the age was perfect ('69, that had been, and here he was clearly headed for forty). But mostly what he wasn't ready for was the golden eyes, which could not have gone uncommented on during the course of an undoubtedly full and useful life.
Crowley stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, and stared. The policeman sighed in exasperation, glanced away from the politician; his eyes lit on Crowley, who stood with his hands in his pockets, staring at them frankly.
The policeman pushed the politician away, gently but firmly, and presented himself to Crowley.
"Can I be of any assistance, sir?" he pressed helpfully.
Crowley stared at him, and was insanely grateful for the shades that hid his eyes.
"No," he said, confused, bemused, befuddled, and slightly aghast. "No, I don't think so, er. How's your mother?" The policeman's brow creased, and Crowley waved his hands at him. "No, sorry, didn't mean that. Er, look," and judging that sufficient distraction, he escaped. The policeman stood and watched him as he rushed through the crowds, too disturbed to even create a path for himself through the surge of humanity.
Crowley found his way back to the car and sank into it with a sigh of relief. Not the most relaxing experience, this sort of thing. Surely something he could do without, from now on. Not that'd he'd create the chance to repeat it. Consider this a lesson learned: do your corrupting, your tempting, your seducing to the dark side, by proxy. Don't get so close. There. No harm done.
He banged his forehead against the steering wheel, sharply. There was a tapping on his window.
"Can I help you?" asked the policeman with the golden eyes, looking worried in the extreme now. "Only its just, that's sure to hurt you in some way, behavin' like that."
Crowley stared at him blankly for a minute. "Oh, go bless yourself," he said, angrily, helplessly, and completely at a loss. The policeman opened his mouth before he thought better of it, and Crowley drove away very fast, crashed his car into a brick wall, and reincarnated himself in a less troublesome body.
Only he didn't; not only was reincarnation a dirty trick to pull on the Powers That Be, it was actually rather painful. Besides, he didn't seem to be able to move. The policeman was looking at him now with something more like suspicion in his eyes than previously. He lowered his head, and narrowed his eyes at Crowley.
"Are you quite alright, sir?"
Crowley swallowed. "Perfectly. Do I not look alright?"
The policeman frowned thoughtfully. "You look as though you've had something of a shock."
Crowley took a deep breath, held it, and nodded. "Well, I have at that. But I'll be alright. If." He peered at the policeman for a minute. "You're alright, aren't you? Nice family and all that? I mean, perfectly okay if you don't," he added hastily. "Almost preferable, actually. You haven't killed anyone, have you? I'm not saying I object to that, I'm just curious."
The policeman appeared to have given up on comprehending anything that was going on. "No," he said, "not killed anyone." He thought for a minute. "Yet."
And Crowley grinned like a maniac. "First time for everything," he said approvingly. "And its not a failure till you're dead, right?"
"Mmph," said the policeman. He looked down at the crazy man in the Bentley. "Why did you ask about my mother, if I may inquire, sir?"
Crowley hesitated for a long minute. There must be a limit on how much he was allowed to say, of course, just as there had, technically speaking, been a limit on how much he was allowed to do. Well, that was shot to buggery now, of course, and sod it all if he was going to pay any attention to the rules. They didn't apply in this case. He was a demon, anyway; he was built for rebellion. And Down Below must approve of it, fundamentally at any rate, they'd probably commend them. He might even get a medal.
He still couldn't make himself tell the truth.
Well, that was fine as well. Truth-telling wasn't in the job description. No problem there.
He couldn't make himself lie, either.
He simply sat and struggled with himself for a minute, and all the time the mortal man with immortal eyes stood and looked at him. Finally, Crowley pulled himself together enough to answer.
"Professional interest," he said, with a disarming and completely fake smile. The policeman nodded.
"You know of her work, then? Spend a lot of time around the food kitchen?"
"Food kitchen?" said Crowley. "She never! Well, alright, so its not quite what I expected. Perhaps she spits in it now and then, if someone's rude to her."
"It seems unlikely, sir," said the policeman.
"You're not half polite, are you," Crowley grumbled. "Look, probably better if we let things alone. Er, tell her I said hi, yeah?"
"But who—"
"Tell her a complete stranger said hello. She'll remember." He shoved the shades up his nose with his forefinger, and set his mouth determinedly, rolling up the window and merging effortlessly into the previously-impossible-to-penetrate traffic. He left behind him a good man, a cop, confused and struggling with assimilated memories gathered in the womb, from the instant of conception. Something about concrete, and an eyeless man, and the last temptation of the last good girl of the Fifties. But the concrete was very definite.
"Good, oh good," she'd cried. And sobbed.
Somewhere else, Crowley swore quietly. And then apologized, over and over, over and over, to the empty car and a long ago alley that contained the last vestiges of long-held virtue, and also a discarded button or two.