ISFJwallflower (they/them - new pronouns woooo) it’s been years but I’m back I guess?? I don’t know what this blog is besides an escapist fantasy and a place to vent.
Doctor who at its best is like the doctor is just some guy who has a very silly time with his friends OR the doctor is just some guy who is floored by the either the beauty or terror of existence, sometimes both at the same time. Doctor who at its worst is like…another long monologue about how I’m the scariest and most powerful guy in the whole universe and why monsters run away when they hear my name.
Thrush had never been to Earth before. There were about 3,000 steps to the surface and he didn’t know why they couldn’t just be sucked up to the surface just as Crowley fell from the sky. He had an infinite number of questions about Earth, humans, and all of it. He was told that he was receiving a promotion that came along with training on the field, but he didn’t know that when he accepted the position he would be shadowing the demon Crowley, one of the most esteemed demons of all time.
“Wait. You can’t go up there like that.” Crowley said. He eyed Thrush behind his glasses. Thrush was wearing his usual black-on-black, the uniform that all demons had to wear. They could change their clothes with a snap, but no matter what they wanted, they would always turn black. “You’re dressed very, erm, 1840s, and it’s the sixties now.” Crowley knew that Hell was always behind on the trends, which was odd because they always received the best-dressed humans for judgment. It was a waste, really, that demons lacked observational skills. Observation was key to temptations. “Well, and I’d like a change too. I’m not really feeling this look.” He snapped his fingers.
Instantly, Crowley was wearing something very different. His hat disappeared and his short, wavy hair grew long. His hair part shifted from the side to the very middle. The back of his hair pinned itself up and two of the front bits braided themselves and swooped back to join the rest. His long coat, his vest, and his trousers transformed into a long black day dress lined with black ribbons. He concealed his head in a bonnet and covered his chest with black silk. His spectacles remained the same. He looked odd for an 1860s human, but he found that if demons were unobservant, humans were even worse. Sometimes he found himself wondering if they had some sort of perception filter layered over them that neither demons nor angels could see. To each other they were identifiable, but to humans, they were whatever the humans wanted to believe.
“There we go,” Crowley said. “I’ve been a man for too long. I really favor womanhood from time to time.”
“Should I also appear as a woman?” Thrush asks.
“Aw, no. You will play the part of my brother. Here: this should do.” Crowley snapped her fingers again. Thrush appeared in an updated look: the ideal fashion for a 1860s bachelor. His tie compressed into a necktie. His mustache grew near the corners of his mouth and flicked up into two distinct curls. She looked him over. “Yeah, that looks alright. Come on. These stairs will take a while.”
“Do I have to wear all of this while climbing the stairs? It feels like I will get very hot.”
“Oh, you will. But that’s part of the torture of Victorian clothing. And torture is kind of our thing. I’m almost certain that’s why we haven’t fixed the elevator yet.”
At the top of the stairs, Crowley looked back and saw that they were walking up the stairs at Paddington Station, the new swanky underground train station. It was still nighttime, in fact, it was the same night that he disappeared from Edinburgh. The pavement was shimmering wet under the street-lamps, and the streets were deprived of people. There was a small carriage parked outside. The horses stood still in the muddy gutters. One shakes its mane and snorts. The driver sat motionless. Crowley waved a hand at the carriage. The driver hopped down from the driver’s seat and walked down the walkway away from the carriage. She hopped up to where the driver sat and took hold of the reins. “Get inside the carriage,” she told Thrush. “We’re going to my apartment. I want to have a word with you. Make some plans about what we do next.” He complied and got in the carriage.
She whipped the horses loudly. They kicked up their front hooves and raced down the street. Soon enough, the world was flying by like one big blur of gray and light. Not a moment later, they arrived at Hyde Park Corner.
Thrush opened the door. His hat was askew, and his coat was draping half off his right shoulder. He stepped down to the ground and immediately threw up on the side of the road.
Crowley got down from the driver’s seat. “You can go,” he told the horses. They walked off.
“You like to drive pretty fast.” Thrush wiped some vomit from his mouth.
“Er, yeah. Though carriages aren’t fast enough for me. I’ve been trying to inspire something new to the humans. A machine that runs on fuel. The catch is that everyone will have one and the roads will crowd. They’ll get very angry. And then the sky will be filled with more smoke. Are you done now?”
She walked toward a new neighborhood made of white stone. Manicured houses lined the streets. Lamp posts traced the pavement so frequently that it hardly looked like the middle of the night. She quickened her pace to an apartment building just across from the water. Sometimes she pretended Hyde Park was St James, sitting on a bench, talking with Aziraphale as if he were there. It had been a while since they met. The angel had become more reluctant about meeting up with him in the last few years. He got into those moods sometimes. Crowley would become ‘the demon’ again, instead of a friend. But Crowley was not a friend, she told herself over and over again. Demons didn’t have friends. ‘Friend’ was not in their vocabulary.
They entered the building. Though it was very late, someone was there at the door to take their coats. Crowley and Thrush shrugged them off, and the servant disappeared into the coat closet. They approached the front desk
“Good evening, sir, madam. How may I help you?”
Crowley spoke first. “Good evening, sir. My brother, Mr. Crowley, and I are here to stay at his apartment.”
The man eyed the two of them and raised an eyebrow. “Sorry, madam, but I am familiar with Mr. Crowley and know that this gentleman is not him.”
Crowley waved a hand in front of the man’s face.
“Of course,” the butler said. “I apologize for the delay.” He motioned toward the hallway behind him.
“Thank you, sir.”
“What did you do?” Thrush asked. They continued down the hall to the stairs.
“I planted an idea in his mind that you are Mr. Crowley. I deceived him, and it worked.”
A Good Omens Fanfic (please help me think of a title) *contains some s2 spoilers*
Part 1:
The first thing Crowley remembered was his roaring headache. Then his gut shifted uncomfortably. It had been a long time since Crowley used his powers to shrink and grow his body. He almost forgot the terrible stomach pains that came with that. He recalled stumbling through the graveyard in Aziraphale’s arms. Then the earth opened up and sucked him down what he only could describe as a great big ‘straw.’ Gray shadows shifted side-to-side, and he heard a giggling — no — a chortling. His yellowy snake eyes always took a moment to adjust to change of light. He felt around for his small, circular sunglasses. He wore them for the look of it, of course, but there were other reasons Crowley wore them besides for fashion. They helped him see better, too.
You look silly, the angel said at one point in the last one-hundred years. He had changed his glasses up pretty frequently. He thought that maybe Aziraphale would like each next model. Then again, the angel hardly ever saw what was directly in front of him.
The shadows became grainy and then came together. Lord Beezelbub was sitting on their throne, one leg crossed over the other, body stretched over the arm rests. Flies buzzed around their head and landed on their dark, dark eyes. Between them and Crowley, a long table spanned the length of the room. On one side of it, six demons sat straight. They looked down over their noses at him with disapproval.
“Can you lower your voices? I had a wild night, I’ll tell you.” He said this with a sarcastic tone. He wanted the demons know he wasn’t scared. Demons didn’t ‘get scared’ and he was terrified. “Partied all night. Got many humans drunk with wine. Some man broke a bottle over another’s head. Very, very bad,” an air of pride stung as it left his mouth.
“No one has said anything,” a junior demon spoke.
“Silence!” the lead demon barked. “The Demon Crowley--”
“Yeah? Stating the obvious today are we?” He kept his smile living.
“Do you know where you are?”
“Eh,” he looked around for effect. “I’d say we’re in Hell, but I’m not sure.”
“Of course we’re ‘in Hell.’ Do you know where in Hell we are?”
“Where the hell am I?” he laughed. The demons sat in silence. “Tough crowd.”
But Crowley knew were he was. He was in the Judgment Room. Not the ‘judgment room’ that humans went to at death, but the capital ‘J’ ‘R’ Judgment Room that demons went to when they royally screwed up.
“What were you doing that got you almost disincorporated?”
“Almost disincorporated? I thought you were either disincorporated or not disincorporated.”
“Well—” one of the junior demons spoke.
“Silence!” their leader shouted. “Now, I’m going to ask you again. What did you do to get almost disincorporated?”
“Alcohol poisoning.”
“Alcohol poisoning?”
“Alcohol poisoning.”
“We know it wasn’t alcohol poisoning.”
“Ngh, do you know what a case of alcohol poisoning looks like?”
“Of course I do. Alcohol poisoning is a big deal. It has its own department.”
“Yeeahhh, it’s changed in the last three centuries. Alcohol poisoning.”
Crowley was sweating. He knew that ‘alcohol poisoning’ was not a good lie. He was a demon, and he knew what lies were good and which were bad. But technically good lies were bad and bad lies were good, which puzzled him greatly. The demons looked at each other. The junior demon whispered to the leader. The leader then smacked him in the head with their clipboard.
“You idiot. Of course it hasn’t. Crowley, we’ve given you a chance give us an accurate report and you lied. We know where you were and what you were doing.”
Crowley’s stomach dropped. His lips twitched. “Were you watching me? Ugh. That’s just distasteful. You’re having demons follow me when they could be doing actual demon work.”
“We know you saved a human’s life and another human’s soul.”
“What!” he exclaimed. “I don’t go around doing any saving. It’s all a part of my greater plan. Like how I tempted that one guy on the mountain with infinite money and riches. Well, that didn’t work as I wanted to, big curve-ball on that one, but this time — this time it’s going to work.”
“Be quiet,” Beelzebub said calmly. They sat slouched over their throne as before, but it was obvious to Crowley that no matter how distracted Beelzebub looked, they were always listening like a fly in the corner of a room. “Crowley. You are under review. For the next century you will be under review. The demon Thrush will accompany you to Earth.”
The one demon who kept getting silenced stood. As he was rising, his knees shook, and the chair behind him scooted loudly across the floor. He fixed his eyes on the ground and bowed. “I’m a big fan of yours, Crowley, sir. I would have killed to even be part of some of the projects you worked on.”
“Your name is Thrush? Aww, this is going to be good.” Crowley jumped to his feet. He rubbed his hands together. “When do we get started?”
“You’re not supposed to be enjoying this.” The lead demon shook their head.
“Hi, hey, hello, yes.” Crowley shook Thrush’s hand, ignoring what the lead demon had said. Thrush let his hand sit in Crowley’s. “You’re supposed to shake my hand back. It’s a new thing the human’s invented. It’s called a handshake.”
Thrush shook his hand back.
“There ya go. Now, to the elevator. It’s working again, right?”
“No, it’s still down.”
“What!? It’s been down for the last millennia. Agh, never mind. Let’s take the stairs, Thrush.”
Crowley knew it would be a very, very long time until he could see his angel again.
who else is in the mood to walk barefoot over the moors in a blood-red velvet ballgown w anguish in ur soul and wet leaves in ur hair while the wind blows moodily and dramatically?