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[playswithboys.livejournal.com]

Time: October 14th, 2000
Place: Lobby
Status: Semi-private (Pepper, Crowley, War, John, Bast, Wensley and Roger) [Complete]
Summary: An unexpected visitor


Pepper had spent the day moving various plants into the lobby and trimming them as best she could, throwing the extra leaves and little branches in a garbage bag she'd brought with her. The place needed some greenery and some flowers, and she figured it couldn't hurt now that it was getting colder and things outside would take care of themselves more.

She thought she'd bring in some poinsettias soon.

Granted it wasn't even Bonfire Night, but being English meant that she started preparing for Christmas in October, like everyone else. Besides, Adam had promised a good winter, and she was looking forward to it.

The plants had generally been behaving themselves, all except one. Whoever'd had the bright idea to grow wysteria on the pergola near the garden should have been caught and executed, in Pepper's opinion. The plant had a history of growing up the sides of buildings, destroying framework quite effectively, and yet someone had let the thing go. Pepper had spent half the summer trying to tame the thing and it still wouldn't stop spreading. She was certain that countless people at the manor had probably seen her pitching a fit while hanging upside down from pergola, cursing the wysterias ancestors into oblivion. Those branches were thick.

Maybe that was why she'd decided that she deserved time working in the lobby.

So now she was enjoying a moment of rest, sitting in a chair near the front desk and rereading The Man in the Iron Mask. She'd forgotten how much she enjoyed the book, hadn't read it since she was fourteen or so, and was pretty caught up in it. Pepper had a tendancy to be very expressive as she read or watched movies, and she was currently engaging in gnawing her fingernails down with her teeth, eyes wide as two pound coins, while King Louis ordered d'Artagnan to arrest Porthos and Aramis.

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[playswithboys.livejournal.com]

She made a face. "Wearing stockings before trousers came along must 'ave been awful, I can't stand the things. But sending messages with flowers sounds like fun." Pepper's mind automatically tried to think of some dramatic message you could send with flowers, something probably involving death and scandal. Until she registered the rest of what he'd said. "But how could you miss most of it? Did you run off to Antarctica or summat?"

The more she considered it, the more logical it seemed for him to like a story like that. "Well, if that's your cuppa, I'll make sure to read something from Shakespeare's Histories next around around. One of the Richards, maybe. Or Henry IV. You can surprise me with Falstaff quotes." Pepper quirked her eyebrows laughingly.

Then she thought back to long history classes about French politics and Louis the XVI and citroyens, and cringed. "No, I can't imagine the real thing would be very much fun at all," she conceeded, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. "But if you had all of history to live through, it probably means that you picked up some pretty impressive skills along the way, besides knowing about flowers. Let me guess - you're an expert archer? You can paint like Michelangelo?" She slapped one hand against her thigh in a universal 'I've got it!' gesture. "You can ballroom dance!" she said jokingly.

[anthony-crowley.livejournal.com]

"I hate them myself," Crowley agreed. "I always assumed they were invented by the Church for some sadistic reason. But sending messages with flowers was fun." He made a mental note to send Pepper a floral message in a week or two. "Um, no. I went to sleep for a while. A good eighty, eighty-five years. Slept through most of it. I woke up and huzzah, there were trousers." He tried to play it lightly. Humans got weird about the whole tuning out for a lifetime thing.

"Falstaff?" Crowley raised an eyebrow. "The, 'If to be old and merry be a sin, then many an old host that I know is damned,' Falstaff?" He grinned. "Shakespeare's more the ang... he's not my thing. But you see those damn plays enough and the words get stuck in your head."

The demon didn't want to get into a discussion of French politics and his role therein, so he took the out she offered. "I'm not an archer, though I'm pretty good with a sword. And I can't even paint like Pollack. However..." he looked left and right before leaning in and speaking in a low, intimate voice like he was divulging a state secret, "I can dance. But I'd rather word not get around. I've a reputation to maintain." Crowley sat back in his chair, looking smugly innocent.

[playswithboys.livejournal.com]

Pepper didn't think it was weird, in fact, she burst out in hysterics at the explanation. "You were sleeping? My mum used to come and bat me with a rolled up newspaper if I tried to sleep past ten-thirty on weekends, and you slept for eighty-five years?" Once she'd calmed down a bit, she swiped a hand across one eye to collect tears. "That's a really nice nap."

She pointed at him when he gave the next quote, saying, "That's the one. Shakespeare's not a real favorite of mine either, but the Them went through a MacBeth period, an' that was truly horrific. Though we all decided together that Romeo and Juliet was complete rubbish no matter how pretty it sounded." She didn't miss the way he'd almost finished the one sentence. Was that why he'd seemed so down the few times she'd seen him pass by more recently - a fallout with the angel? It had worried her a bit, actually, seeing his expressions go so dark.

"What kind of sword?" she immediately asked. She only had experience with three herself: broadsword, foil and Hollywood single sword. But he was certain to be much better than she was, making her automatically interested. As for Pollack, the image of him spattering paint all over a canvas in suits like the one he was wearing now was enough to provoke more laughter on her part before she went perfectly silent as he told his secret. She smirked. "Oh, you can then? Well fine, I promise not to divulge your great secret in an effort to keep your reputation intact. But you have to tell me when you learned and which dances, or no deal." A little blackmail never hurt anyone when it was for fun, right?

[anthony-crowley.livejournal.com]

How could you hear her laugh and not laugh back? Crowley did. "Yeah, well, I did have to get up in 1832 to use the loo..." He grinned. "But I like sleeping. It's one of the pleasures of the world. I just did it because I could. And I thought that century was going to be bloody boring. Like the fourteenth. Guess I was wrong. But I deserved a break after the French Revolution anyway."

Crowley shook his head slightly. "Romeo and Juliet is complete rubbish. I hope Adam was MacDuff, though, and not MacBeth or we're all screwed. Dare I ask who played Lady MacBeth?" He somehow doubted it had been Pepper. Although she was probably one of the few powerful female figures in theatre.

"What kind of sword? I don't know. Whatever I could get and was pointy. You can bet that Athos, Porthos, Aramis, and d'Artagnan didn't mess about with kinds of swords. They used whatever kept them alive. That's how real fighting works." He had a bit too much experience with that, really. Although he tended to prefer being apparently unarmed. No one expected claws.

"Ah, so it's to be blackmail, is it? I knew I should keep an eye on you. Well, you've got me, so I might as well confess. I picked up the Spagnoletta during the Renaissance. da Vinci was fond of that one. Tried up the Chaconne, the Tambourin, and the Gavotte in the French Court in the seventeenth century. I learned the Quadrille during the Regency, took my little nap, and when I woke up, I needed to learn the Waltz. It was a short step to Swing in the 30's and I gave it all up when the Twist came around. But turn about is fair play, right? Now you have to confess a secret..."

[playswithboys.livejournal.com]

The idea of sleeping all that time only to have to get up for the sake of something as simple as going to the loo made the whole thing even more absurd, and Pepper clapped a hand over her mouth to prevent another bout of hysterical laughter. At least he was laughing too, so she didn't feel like a complete idiot. "I'd never really thought of sleepin' that way, but I guess you're right. An' I suppose as a demon you're supposed to indulge in those sorts a things, right?" She was tempted to ask about the French Revolution, but decided that was probably a long conversation that she didn't have the concentration for at the moment.

And then she was remembering the makeshift stages the Them had created around Tadfield, any place they felt needed a performances space. Her expression turned a little sardonic. "It's Adam - he got to play whoever he wanted to play. It all depended on his mood for the day. He actually had a fleetin' interest in Hamlet for a bit, and that was worse. An' you can certainly dare ask who played Lady MacBeth, but dun't look at me. I never let 'em make me play the girl, told them they were bein' sexist if they did. Usually Brian played Lady MacBeth, he thought she was wicked." Her eyes sparkled mischievously. "Actually, when Adam played MacDuff, I got to be MacBeth..."

She tried to imagine grabbing any sword, any dagger or shield she might find and fighting with what was on hand. It was hard to picture. "I'm too used to stagin' it," she told him, "tryin' to make it look good to an audience. 'Cept for when it was unarmed because I did that a lot when I was little. Takes a lot of the reality out of it, I s'pose."

Pepper straightened up triumphantly in her chair when her coercing paid off. And the list was... impressive. "I don't even know what most of those dances are," she confessed, grinning. "And the ones I do know, I only know from seein' 'em in films. Must 'ave been fun." Or she hoped it was, at least, so he hadn't learned all of it for nothing. As for the rest... "You want me to confess a secret? Like my secrets are going to be half as good as any of yours!" She mock pouted and tried to come up with something. "What do you want to know? Give me some sort of guideline...."

[anthony-crowley.livejournal.com]

Crowley shrugged, smiling. "Technically, I'm supposed to encourage other people in those sorts of things. Although tempting people to sloth isn't generally much fun. But we're allowed to dabble a bit. Just so that we understand how it works, right?" A twitch of his lips said that he wasn't being entirely serious.

He tried to imagine Adam as Hamlet and winced. "Brian, huh? He's that other one...?" Crowley had met Wensleydale, Pepper, and Adam, of course, and only dimly remembered a fourth rather scruffy little boy. "I don't think I've met him yet. I'm sure he made a lovely wife for you, though. But if you were MacBeth you got that excellent speech at the end:

"She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."

Okay, he was really showing off now, but it was pretty much his favourite Shakespearean speech. Crowley had never ceased to be surprised that a moral could understand mortality so well. He wondered briefly where Will had ended up, made a mental note to ask Aziraphale if he knew, then kicked himself for forgetting that they weren't talking.

"Yeah?" he asked, trying to distract himself with conversation. "Well, I have no idea how my sword fighting looks. Probably not terribly interesting to anyone other than the participants. But I won most of my battles, so it can't have been too bad."

The demon shook his head. "I can't say it's my favourite past time. Mostly I learned because it was expected to know. But with the right partner, in the right atmosphere, it can be fun." The grin slipped back onto Crowley's face. "Hey, a secret is a secret. How about something you did once that was really fun but you'd be embarrassed to tell your friends about? Or something about yourself that even Adam doesn't know. Well, something Adam's not supposed to know, anyway..."

[playswithboys.livejournal.com]

The more Pepper thought of it, tempting someone to sloth sounded an awful lot like saying, Go ahead, you can sit in that chair all day. Won't hurt anyone. And that did sound pretty bloody boring. "So in case they ask what sort of work you're doing, you can tell them that you are a Master of Sleep," she said with a great expansive gesture as though it were something to be proud of. It actually made her wonder, though; if sleep for him was the same as sleep for her. "Do you dream, like everyone else?"

She snorted when he suggested Brian as a "lovely wife", now because it had so many new connotations for her friend. "Oh, I don't know if Brian qualifies as that. Mostly, he was just dirty and couldn't remember his lines. Mem'rization isn't one of his strong points. We just shouted 'Out damn'd spot! out, I say!' at him a lot," she recalled, giggling. "I dun't think you've met 'im proper yet, though."

Pepper smiled through the speech. If it was showing off, she didn't seem to notice in the least. Only than it sounded much better coming from him than it ever had from her, but then again, she'd been pretty young the last time she'd recited it. "Excellent speech 'ndeed," she agreed, applauding lightly when he was finished. "Of course, you don't want to actually view your life that way, or you'd be pretty d'pressed the whole way through it, but it doesn' make the point any less powerful."

Crowley was probably good with a saber, came her next thought, rather suddenly. She had no idea why she thought that, it was just a feeling. "If you won most of your battles you must be pretty damn good, I'd say." Though people tried to make it look graceful all the time, actual fencing was really hard in her experience. "I mostly learned because of the games we played, and then I just kept at it. 'Cept the hand to hand stuff which was mostly because I was little and female and wanted to make sure that everyone listened to what I said." And didn't make fun of her name. But that was another story entirely.

"Something Adam's not supposed to know?" She grinned wickedly. "There are lots of things that Adam's not supposed to know...." Like you giving me flowers a minute ago and me getting all light-headed over it, that'd be a start. "That reminds me, don't ever invite him to read your mind, it's not smart." Pepper thought hard for a moment, staring at the ceiling, tongue peeking from between her lips just like during maths tests. "How about my first year at uni on Hallowe'en when everyone in my buildin' decided it would be funny to get me drunk and make me Queen of the Hallowe'en Parade. Dressed as a domintrix. It was pretty horrific, and I couldn't look anyone on my floor in the eye for a month. I still refused to wear the heels, apparently. So they had a barefoot dominatrix, which I'm pretty sure doesn't make sense..." She was sure to be bright red now. It was still embarrassing, and she was surprised that she'd managed to say it aloud.

[anthony-crowley.livejournal.com]

He had to smirk at being called a Master of Sleep. "I'll be sure to put that on my resume. But, yeah, I do dream (http://community.livejournal.com/neutral_omens/23903.html#cutid1). Although I have no way of knowing if my dreams (http://community.livejournal.com/neutral_omens/79981.html#cutid1) are like everyone else's. They tend to be very literal..."

Crowley laughed. "Now if we do meet, I'll have to yell 'Out damn'd spot!' at him and see if he remembers." He grew thoughtful. "And perhaps it would be a bit depressing to a mortal. I find it rather comforting, though."

There was a quiet moment before the corners of his mouth twisted up. "I'm pretty damn good at a lot of things. It's amazing how much practice you can get in on something in six thousand years, even if you don't do it very often. And I won't say I'm surprised that you learned as a child. Must have been hard to keep up with three boys."

He shuddered slightly at the idea of Adam reading his thoughts. "No, I certainly wouldn't invite such a thing. I'm sorry that you did. It must have been very disconcerting." But at the telling of her secret, Crowley threw his head back and laughed. When he'd calmed down enough to speak again, he said, "Now that's a fair trade. I'm going to have to call you BD from now on..."

[playswithboys.livejournal.com]

Pepper's dreams were usually a pretty wide range, from the very literal to things so far out there that they could have been plots for fantasy novels. "Literal. Huh." She wondered if she had been expecting something else, but found she wasn't sure. Maybe she thought he wouldn't dream at all.

She chuckled at the thought of Brian having that shouted at him by someone he didn't know. "If you ever do, you be sure to tell me how he reacts," she told him. At the thought of asking him why he found the MacBeth speech comforting, she paused, unsure if she wanted an answer. Immortality was something that she was still having trouble coming to grips with, and she figured she should ask when she felt less confused on the subject.

"Wouldn't you forget if you didn't do it that often?" she wondered aloud before smirking in spite of herself. "Oh, those three weren't the hard ones to keep up with. They knew better. It was the other ones, the taller, bigger ones that I had to deal with. Adam, Brian and Wensley sorta knew after Day One that fightin' with me would get them lots more hurt than fightin' with each other. So they stuck to beatin' each other mostly." The times they hadn't had been rather unfortunate for them.

Her mouth quirked anxiously, remembering that conversation with Adam. "Yeah, disconcertin'. And embarrassin'. I shoulda known better, but I think part a me just wanted to know if he could really do it." And then Pepper smacked Crowley lightly on the knee in warning, her mouth gaping wide open, scandalized but smiling nonetheless. "Don't you dare! That'd be one helluva thing to try an' explain if anyone heard you...." And had she been paying attention, she might have heard the front door open a bit earlier....