Ho boy, it's been a long time since I last updated.
Well, this is a scene that was never going to happen, because I hadn't intended to bring a certain character in at first, but the suggestion of a friend made me realize it'd be a good idea. And then I couldn't resist the idea of another certain character and Crowley meeting up.
Also, this is kind of the bastard child of two very different versions of this scene. One I wrote during study in a notebook which I subsequently lost; the other I wrote much later on, based on my memory of what I'd written. I recently found said notebook again, and decided that I liked parts of the original version, and so I've tried to incorporate both.
That's also why this scene is so much longer than the others. (Or at least it seems to be)
This is probably more for the serious Steele fans.
Disclaimer: I still don't own anything in this, despite my fondest wishes.
P.S. I think we're going to start winding down now. Just a few more chapters after this. Thanks to anyone who read/reviewed, you've all been a major ego-boost!
Previously, in this story (because it's been so long that even I am beginning to forget the plot):
Crowley and Aziraphale, the improbable yet irrevocable angel and demon pair, are going through a bit of a rough patch following Crowley's perceived betrayal of the angel. You see, Crowley's got something up his sleeve, and in order to pull it off, he needs the help of suave, blue-eyed con man, Harry Chalmers (also known as Remington Steele). Aziraphale unhappily stumbled upon their lunch meeting at the Ritz and left in a huff after seeing the demon sharing their usual table with that con man. Crowley, however, didn't notice.
Following this, Aziraphale decided that he needed to find some new friends. He found one, too, in the person of Rupert Giles, expert on the Occult. Their introduction was a bit strained, as Aziraphale accidentally exorcised a possessed book in an Occult book shop, but after Giles' continued queries into the matter, Aziraphale grew to like him and eventually confided his angelic nature to Mr. Giles.
Meanwhile, whatever Crowley's planning has been put on the back burner. Not long after Chalmers' arrival, Crowley began receiving demonic messages on his computer screen from his infernal superiors, warning him not to shirk his duties and reminding him that Lucifer's recent uncharacteristic mercy wouldn't hold for long. Crowley managed to hide this from Chalmers for a little while… until the computer burst into flames, revealing what seemed to be a portal to Hell on the screen. Having doused it with Holy water, Crowley decided it was time to tell Chalmers the truth. He took it pretty well, considering.
Anyway, Crowley finally realized that Aziraphale may be his only hope of disposing of the now-mangled computer, and so he called him up and left a number of increasingly desperate messages on the angel's Ansaphone, finally becoming a bit worried and deciding to pay a visit. Of course, Aziraphale was in no danger; he was merely enjoying a night out with Giles (which is exactly as nerdy as it sounds).
And now, we are temporarily going to divert our attention away from our heroes to pick up another plot line.
We apologize for the inconvenience.
It was sometime past midnight but not yet time for the bars to close. Aziraphale and Giles were doing whatever tweedy English bibliophiles do when they're out on the town; Crowley and Chalmers were on their way to Aziraphale's bookstore; and Crowley's plush London flat was sitting quietly in the dark, breathing sighs of relief to have some peace and quiet. But not for long.
A rental car pulled to the side of the night-hushed road and doused its headlights. Two lanky people dressed in black emerged and silently stole toward Crowley's building. They paused at Chalmers' vintage Auburn Speedster, peered inside, and tried the locked door handles. They moved on. Going around to the side of the building, they spotted the fire escape. The taller made a jump for the ladder and quietly lowered it. They climbed up to Crowley's window and opened it(1). The taller, a man from the looks of his form-fitting sneak-thief getup, examined the inside of the window as best he could, while the shorter, a woman for a parallel but opposite reason, peered inside at the darkness.
Having MacGyvered the window open with bated breath and been greeted with no sounds of sirens, the two slid up the sash and crept through the window.
The woman paced quietly around the flat, checking for a bedroom with a sleeping faux detective in it and came up dry, while the man snooped around the sitting room.
"There's no one here," the woman, returning, informed him in a nevertheless hushed voice.
"Well that makes this a little easier, but it brings up even more questions," he answered, clicking on a flashlight.
Laura Holt clicked hers on as well and joined her ex-partner Murphy Michaels in searching the place.
"What name is this place under again?" she asked from the kitchen.
"Anthony J. Crowley. Perfect credit, always pays his rent on time, the landlord specifically remembers him, and yet there seems to be no existing evidence of his ever going to school or holding a job or living anywhere other than here. Oh yeah, and no birth certificate either."
"On top of an apartment that's been rented for the better part of fifty years, yet seems totally unlived in. Sounds familiar."
"That was I was thinking," Murphy agreed grimly. "The good ol' days."(2)
"Oh what are you griping about?" Laura asked. "You don't have to deal with him anymore, and your own agency is flourishing."
"Yeah, I don't have to deal with him except when he skips off to a foreign country and you need me to help you find him. And it's funny that you mention my own agency, because I really have better things to do than to be here--"
"To be here with me?" Laura finished, only a little insulted, with a teasing look in her eyes.
Murphy glanced sardonically at her through his eyebrows as he flipped through Crowley's CDs.
"What kind of music does Mr. Steele listen to?" he asked.
Laura joined him and examined one of the cases.
"Good question. With him, it's always been more the silver screen than the platinum record. I couldn't pin him down to a genre."
"Chopin, Beethoven, Mozart… Queen.(3)" Murphy dropped them back onto their shelf. "No videos."
"Mr. Steele prefers to go to the movies," Laura supplied.
Murphy rolled his eyes, and the pair continued searching.
"So," he began, studying the inside of a cabinet, "he still hasn't told you his real name?"
"I hardly think it matters," Laura answered. "That's a part of his life he's left behind, and since he's the kind of man whose current title as much determines who he is as what he does, I'm fine with not knowing."
"Right."
After a lengthy silence, Laura said, "But there are two things that trouble me about this." She closed a drawer and began to pace toward her friend.
"Oh yeah? What are they?"
"This apartment has been rented under the same name for the past forty-five years or so, putting the date of its occupancy several years before Mr. Steele's birth."
Murphy silently rued that particular date.
"And secondly," Laura continued without noticing, "M.O. Our Mr. Steele does have a noted fondness of connecting his aliases to Humphrey Bogart, but I don't recall a famous Crowley in any film noir, never mind a Bogart film."
"Easy answer to both problems," Murphy replied, flipping through Crowley's empty Rolodex: "another con was using this place as some kind of hideout or base of operations--under a fake name dreamed up long before--and when he died or got caught, Mr. Steele just took over."
Laura raised her eyebrows and nodded, seemingly accepting this as plausible.
There was another lengthy silence as they searched drawers and snooped around shelves.
Then Murphy broke it saying to apparently the world at large, "But you gotta wonder why he's taken it over."
"What?"
"Why come back now? What was so important to make him leave on such short notice and keep it all a secret?"
"Well that's what we're here to find out, isn't it?"
"Maybe we shouldn't be," Murphy muttered.
"I beg your pardon."
"Whatever he's up to," Murphy raised his voice, "I'm pretty sure that you and I would be better off not part of it."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Laura asked a little indignantly.
Murphy backed down a little: he didn't want to fight over him. "It just seems unsavory. Like it's something you wouldn't want to know about. He certainly doesn't seem to want you to know about it. And then of course there's the other possibility," he added, bitterness rising up once more.
"And what's that?" Laura abandoned the painting on the wall.
"That maybe he just got tired to playing Sherlock Holmes and split. Come on, Laura, don't tell me you haven't considered the possibility."
Laura shook her head and turned to examine the Mona Lisa. "He booked the flight under Remington Steele; he told me he was leaving; he was still making excuses when I called--on his cell phone, which he took with him. Why would he make it so easy to find him if he was planning to escape?"
"Hey, I don't pretend to understand the guy; I'm just saying it's possible."
"More like wishful thinking on your part."
Murphy silently agreed. Not that it would change anything, he thought.
As he was thinking this, Laura tried to ease the painting off the wall and instead discovered that it swung out in hinges, revealing Crowley's safe. The detectives gave each other the familiar look of having come upon something important, and Murphy stepped forward to coax the safe open(4). It was with anticlimactic disappointment that they released their bated breath upon discovering that the safe was empty. Murphy, however, sensed a small triumph in his reasoning.
"Well there you go."
"There I go what?" Laura asked, sensing smugness.
"There's the reason it was so easy to find him: he was leading us on. It's a dead end, Laura! He probably came here, made off with whatever was valuable, and then booked the next flight to Rio under one of any number of assumed names."
"I can't believe that."
"Laura," Murphy began in exasperation, "please. Let's just go home, huh? If he's split, he's split, and if he's planning on coming back, he will. We're wasting our time here."
"Well, you can go, but I want to find out what he's up to and yell at him for it. You don't need to stay." She closed the safe and swung the picture back into place then paced back into the bedroom to continue searching.
Murphy almost did leave. Almost. Instead, he followed her and leaned in the doorway, beaten, like the obedient puppy he was.
The object of his obedience turned when she noticed him there and told him again that he was free to go.
"Come on, Laura," was the answer. "You know I'm not gonna leave you."
Laura placed her hands on her hips, and smiled. "It's nice to be working together again, eh, Murph?"
Murphy paused as an icy shock trickled down his back at the sound of the old nickname. He left the room and went on with his searching with a, "Mmh."
"Oh what's the matter now?" Laura joshed as she followed him out.
"That! That--right there--is the problem, Laura." His large eyes were dangerous even in the dark, and Laura was taken aback by the sudden harshness in his tone. "You act like the past twelve years were just--just--nothing! Like I was just on vacation for a while, but now I'm back and at your service. 'Oh, gee, Murph. It's great to see ya again, Murph.' Just like that!"
This took Laura by surprise. "But Murphy, I thought you wanted your own firm! I thought you were content being your own boss, doing what you love--"
"Detective work isn't what I love, Laura; it's what I'm good at. But while we're on the subject, yes having my own firm was nice, but would it have killed you to call? Or were you too busy off having your grand adventures with Mister Tall Dark and Handsome?"
"Hey, leave him out of this--he's got nothing to do with--"
"He's got EVERYTHING to do with it!" They were now both unabashedly shouting. "All he had to do was walk in the door, flash a half-grin and a wink and you were putty in his hands!"
"How dare you?!"
"Don't lie to me, Laura. I know you. I know you better than he'll EVER know you. How long were we friends? Huh, Laura? How long?"
Laura was trying to hold in her seething. "I don't--"
"Well I do!" Murphy lowered his voice a few decibels. "I do." Wearily, he found an ottoman and sat, looking at the floor.
Sighing and still confused at his outburst, Laura pressed her fingers to her forehead. "Murphy, you're forty-one years old." She looked at him earnestly. "Surely you're not still burning a torch for me."
"I'm not burning a torch, Laura, I'm in love with you. I can't not be in love with you. I've tried. Oh, I've tried. I even got married once, but…. Anyway, the point is, we don't see each other for twelve, thirteen years, and then when we finally do get back together, it's all about him. And I could have stood that. I could have. But you…. You don't even pretend like you missed me. You really don't care about me…. Huh. How many con-men does it take to turn best friends into strangers?"
"You're not blameless, you know," Laura countered, determined not to lose this. "You could have called--you knew the number."
"I told you I didn't want to bring this up."
"Too late now."
"Why don't we just do what we came here to do and get the hell out."
"Good idea."
They continued searching the flat in pointed silence. Murphy's words were still tumulting around Laura's mind as she came across a business card left on Crowley's bureau: Messenger Used Books, Heavenly Texts at Saintly Prices, along with a phone number and address(5). The card had lain there for years and years, but Laura wasn't to know that; it looked as if it had been casually tossed there earlier that afternoon. As there had been nothing else to point them in any other directions, Laura picked it up, but as she did so, Murphy's voice carried through the flat in curses and fearful yells.
(1) Crowley used to have a security system, but when Hastur and Ligur busted their way in supernaturally, the thing kind of committed suicide, and Crowley figured there was no point in replacing it, since those from whom he really wanted to guard his home wouldn't be bothered by it.
(2) For those unfamiliar with Remington Steele, here Murphy is referring to the time when Remington Steele was nothing more than a name attached to a fictitious persona, dreamed up by Laura to drum up business for their detective agency. The day Chalmers stepped into that persona is a day he grew to regret with all his being.
(3) Yes, Crowley did own one legitimate Queen album.
(4) This he achieved without difficulty, as it was a simple combination lock. Crowley's safe remained relatively unguarded for almost the same reason as the rest of the flat, but with the addendum that anyone who wanted to break into his apartment and then break into his safe would be deterred more by the contents on the inside than any security the demon could put on the outside.
(5) Aziraphale had mocked up about a dozen business cards at one point, just to look as though he were serious about selling books and had given one to Crowley, who had tossed it onto his bureau and promptly forgotten about it.