You can't go home again [closed]

[erratic_hematic]

It's either incredibly late or incredibly early, and Spike is leaning up against the equestrian statue in front of the Natural History Museum looking, in general, like someone you wouldn't want to meet in the middle of the night. He's wearing his long leather coat despite the warm night, smoking a cigarette, and contemplating the front of the building.

The last time he'd been in (his universe's) New York, he's had a little storage room to himself down in the basement of the building. He's curious if it's still there in this universe, so many years later. Curious enough that he has both his lock pick set and a pry bar stored in his coat. Not quite curious enough yet to go and check out what the alarm systems look like.

Comments

[erratic_hematic]

Spike is still cringing at the word 'natch' when the guy swing's down into the room and...Well, that move was entirely unnecessary. He'd almost suspect he was showing off if he didn't seem the type to make that sort of entrance as a matter of course. Spike raises his eyebrows in his direction for a moment before turning and making for the door.

"Nostalgia, mainly. Last time I was in New York I lived down here, but that was a few decades ago in a different universe." He expects the door to squeak as it opens, but someone must be taking care of the hinges. It opens with only the sound of the latch slipping out, and then the door itself bumping into a small stack of boxes lined up behind the door.

Beyond the door is much darker, and while he could probably manage, this will be a lot easier with light. He hmms and wanders out into the large open room dotted with crates large and small, half-created exhibits and various odd ephemera. It's strange being here, and with it dark like this, it almost seems familiar. Comforting, if also a reminder of what he used to be. He brushes his fingers against a wooden frame as he orients himself, then heads for the main entrance, guessing that's where the light is. "Got any demonic 'find the bloody light switch' powers?"

[anguiform]

Sneaking into a museum for the sake of pure nostalgia is either remarkably idiotic or a rather pleasingly petty reason for breaking and entering, and Crowley shrugs, mouth pulling down at the corners in a 'well, all right, then' sort of expression. It's more interesting than thievery, at any rate.

The question, leading as it is, gets a lifted eyebrow, (presumably) unseen in the dark. Well, well. Crowley, of course, can see perfectly well; the room they're involves a lot of concrete floors and whitewashed walls, one featuring a giant tackboard covered with papers and clippings of newsprint, metal filing cabinets, crates lined up against the wall, as well something that looks a lot like a turn of the century dog sledge, complete with lines and harnesses. A few life-size plush malamutes lying next to it complete the impression of a half stored piece of some exhibit or other.

'That an educated guess?' he asks, 'Or have you heard of me?'

By way of answer, he clicks his fingers. The fluorescent lights on the ceiling immediately begin to buzz, flickering into life a few moments later.

[erratic_hematic]

Spike snorts out a laugh, "Should I have? I- oh, good." He looks around in the brighter room and grins, having pinpointed what he's looking for. He makes his way towards a tall filing cabinet on the other side of the room that's halfway blocking a door, not bothering to turn his head back as he speaks. "Where I'm from you'd either be a warlock or a demon. I suppose it could've been something else, with all the universes we've got mingling here. But it wasn't."

He kicks aside a stuffed penguin blocking the door and moves behind the filing cabinet to push it out of the way of the door. When he does, about ten years of accumulated dust escapes from behind the cabinet, making the air smell musty and sweet.

[anguiform]

Crowley shrugs. 'Wouldn't be surprised,' he mutters. Not that he's done much of anything of note since he arrived here, bar one fight in Central Park, but Aziraphale seems to have acquired a nasty habit of telling literally everyone he meets about Crowley, and then wondering why Crowley objects to him telling random humans that oh, Crowley's not so bad, really, he's a big softie.

But that's interesting, and he cocks an eye at Spike. 'You've got warlocks in your universe, then, huh? That what you are? Or are there other flavours of occult where you come from outside of warlocks and demons? You're certainly not demonic, I can tell that much.'

His voice descends first into a wet cough, and then a sneeze, and then he banishes the billow of dust with a wave of one hand. He does not need that, thank you very much.

[erratic_hematic]

"Vampire. Reformed- if you were worried." He glances over at the cough, then smiles at the sneeze, vaguely amused that the dust would even effect the demon at all.

"The name's Spike, by the way." And there we have it, the door. He jiggles the handle, happy to find it unlocked. Simply turning the handle doesn't seem to do the job, so he sets his shoulder against the door and pushes. It gives and opens, letting yet more dust out into the main room, but once Spike sees what's inside, his shoulders slump a little.

What, in his day, had been an empty office, is by now a full office. It is a room that has taken the phrase 'junk room' and run with it to an extreme. There are boxes and crates obscuring half of the room, and the rest filled with obsolete technology and slowly decaying bits of exhibits long abandoned.

He can see, in the footprint of the room, where he had slept, and where the little desk had been, but too many years have passed in this universe since it was anything like that. He leans against the doorway, facing into the room, feeling a little silly. He's not even sure what his goal was here- a connection to his own universe, perhaps, or a bolthole in case things go badly at the flats.

[anguiform]

Spike the vampire, now that is ringing several bells in Crowley's mind. He squints hard at him for several moments before bursting out with the energy of things suddenly remembered, gesticulating in Spike's direction with a finger. 'Ohhh, I remember you. That dream with the boats, yeah? Before I showed up here, with the, the, bloody what was it, the otter blood.'

Honestly, it probably isn't something Crowley would ordinarily remember, except that that had been the first dream he'd had in perhaps centuries, and certainly the first of the shared dreams that the Rift seems to hook people into. Spike seems to be having some kind of internal reaction to the storeroom he's opened the door onto, but Crowley a) is not actually massively interested, and b) is distracted by the oddity of running into the guy.

'Huh.'

[erratic_hematic]

At the mention of blood, Spike makes a noise halfway between a grunt and a moan. "Otter. the best I've found here is cow or pig. And not great, either."

He's still focused on the room, so it takes him a moment before the rest of what he'd had to say reaches Spike. When it does, he turns around to look at the guy, trying to jog his memory. Boats. Yeah, he remembers that. Sort of. Boats and blood and...oh right.

"Are you..." He distinctly remembers significantly more snake being attached to him than is currently attached. He finds himself looking down at the guy's legs, as if they might metamorphose at any moment into a long slithering tail. "Weren't you a Naga? Or whatever the hell snake demons are called where you're from."

[anguiform]

That lifts Crowley's eyebrows. He's hardly a connoisseur himself, but good to know, should he ever need to earn this Spike's favour for whatever reason.

The question, however, just makes him laugh. 'You never heard of shapeshifting, mate? Though the snake'ssss in my blood, ssso to ssspeak.' He purposefully accentuates the hiss, baring his teeth to flash Spike a flicker of his forked tongue. 'I appreciate the recognition, though, gotta say. Seems so many people these days've forgotten all about Nagas. Bloody blow to the ego, that.'

He grins again, unable to quite resist it.

[erratic_hematic]

Well then. That's definitely a snake tongue. He's met demons with that particular feature before, but it usually came with scales or venom. On this guy it's just...strange. He did say shapeshifting. Maybe his real form is closer to something covered in scales. Looking at him, he can imagine it. Wouldn't be popular in the city, but not necessarily a bad look.

Spike turns back and pulls the door shut to the room. It's not the place he'd lived before, and it isn't a good prospect for the future either. "Hard to forget something that tried to squeeze me to death."

The door closed, he turns back, ready to give this room a better look-over. "So, should I just call you Naga, or have you got a name?" He smirks while leaning over to poke through a stack of papers. "Kaa?"

[anguiform]

Yeah, that'd probably do it, Crowley thinks, eyebrows going up and mouth turning down at the corners in an expression that says, huh, all right then. 'That even possible? I mean, I'm fairly sure we don't have vampires in my universe, but all the fictional rules of what'll kill a vampire that I know of tend to involve more in the way of garlic and stakes through the heart than crushing.'

Crowley finds a rare space of mostly-bare wall to lean against, tucking one knee up and watching as Spike apparently decides that whatever he'd been looking for in the little storeroom isn't there. The Kipling reference gets a little snort. 'Trusssst in me?' he suggests dryly. 'No thanks. Anthony Crowley, but just Crowley'll do.'

[erratic_hematic]

"Probably possible, I don't know. Didn't want to stick around and find out." He continues sifting through papers, but there's really note much of interest here. Some forms, some more forms, a doodle of a mummy, some more forms....

Spike snorts at Crowley's impression, but a moment later, the name itself makes his head jerk up to look at the demon. Aziraphale had told him that his...whatever...lover slash friend slash mortal enemy went by that name.

"Nahhhh." He scrunches up his face, incredulous. This is the guy his nerdy posh employer is attached to at the hip? They're not exactly a matched set, unless you go in for the whole opposites attract thing. "Aziraphale's Crowley?"

[anguiform]

'Oh, fuckssake,' Crowley sighs, deeply aggrieved. 'I don't belong to him. We're independent operatives!'

He needs to start meeting people before Aziraphale does so that he can be Crowley's Aziraphale for once, he thinks huffily. Except that then he'd have to ~tell them all about Aziraphale, which he's not exactly inclined to do. And not that he has any desire to claim ownership over Aziraphale either. Oi.

Belatedly, it occurs to him that this bloke knowing Aziraphale at all is supremely unlikely, and he swings around, brows furrowing. 'Wait, wait, how do you know Aziraphale?

[erratic_hematic]

"I'm his star em-ploy-ee," Spike says, grinning at Crowley's confusion. He's sort of surprised that Aziraphale hadn't found a way to mentioning him yet. He's been so excited by the idea of having him in the store. Or maybe it's just that he's excited about someone being around to scare people off while he sleeps in the back.

"He pays me to sit there and scare people out of his personal collection. Not a bad gig."