paradisalogs | and I'll try not to sing out of key

Entry tags:

and I'll try not to sing out of key

Who: Barney & Crowley
What: Actually Talking About Things, gasp!
When: Wednesday afternoon
Where: Barney's room
Rating: Er ... PG-13, maybe? They don't have particularly rotten mouths.

The old journal had fallen out of the kitchen cupboard that morning, while he was rummaging for his favorite coffee mug. Once he'd gotten over the inital shock - and the girly shriek of surprise that he was glad the journal had, for once, managed to not pick up - Barney was left to wonder how the heck it had found its way there in the first place. As he waited for the first cup of coffee of the day to brew, he leaned on the counter in his suit pajamas and leafed through the pages, starting at the end and working his way back. There was the page where he'd basejumped the Eiffel tower ... there was the Halloween he and Faye had dressed as a card shark and Lady Luck ... there was the night he'd told Ted his loss. Jilly, Lorne, Tamaki ... the handwriting of friends he wouldn't see again, and would probably forget if he didn't remember to go back and read them once in a while. Yue, Claire, Neku, Ken ... Jude. People he'd almost forgotten, already.

"Damn."

He closed the journal, set it aside, and resolved to forget about it. He'd just barely begun to find his groove again ... he didn't need old memories dragging him down. Plunking a bowl of apples down on top of the book to keep it closed - old habits died hard - he went to go suit up for the day, singing Bon Jovi loudly to himself as he did, to chase away the blues.

After all, what were the odds of friends who didn't ever actually come around to his room popping in at that VERY MOMENT to say hi?

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It turns out, the odds were pretty high. Not that Crowley would openly admit to showing up to a friends room to check up on someone out of worry for them.

Hell, he'd struggle to admit he was even their 'friend' most of the time.

Still, he was the Serpent and with that came the ability to sense desires. And he knew Barney needed to Talk. And as much as he hated to admit it, the little weirdo human was the best friend he had in this crapsack. He'd rather Barney not get some sort of...stress related illness or whatever.

So, in true Crowley fashion, he just let himself into Barney's room, as if he had every right to be there. Which of course, he thought he did.

"...In my personal experience, prayers aren't a lot to live on."

Somehow, it wasn't surprising at all. In fact, it was all Barney could do not to come racing out of the bedroom with his jacket half buttoned, grinning like an idiot because he'd missed his friend. Bros didn't do that. Bros were chill. Bros were cool. So instead, he just leaned halfway out the bathroom door as he adjusted his tie.

"Maybe not, but it makes for one hell of a good song. What up, bro?"

Crowley decided to nonchalantly lean against the wall, dutifully ignoring any excitement in Barney's tone. After all, it would do no good to either of them to point out such a thing.

"It occurred to me and we haven't had an Awesome Committee meeting for a while," he said. "And given our other chairlady is still in a mood about the space lobsters or...something or other, I figured she wouldn't mind if we had one without her."

Nor would it do, Barney knew, to point out the fact that Crowley had never once taken the initiative to call an Awesomeness Committee meeting, not in three years and change. This was the kind of stuff Real Men/Demons glossed over... the kind of thing that incited Actual Feelings. Especially since as far as he could tell, these days they were pretty mu h it for the committee. Normally he'd get the Scotch and call the meeting to order, but.

Well.

Wait, this was Crowley, there was no way he'd get judged. "Awesome. Can I grab you a drink?"

Certain that keeping a nice gloss over things while trying to talk about Actual Feelings - possibly in the context of 'Awesome Things' was the way to go about this, Crowley nodded. No judgement from the alcoholic demon, nope.

"Do you even have to ask that question?" he asked, lounging into a chair.

"I know, right?" Barney laughed as he poured them each a double, juggling both glasses and the bottle with practiced ease on the trek to the couch. Once the drinks were down, he picked up a remote from the coffee table and turned the stereo on. Rush - also known as what probably played in cars after a fortnight in Canada - drifted out of the speakers at a level carefully selected to drown out their conversation to anyone outside, or in the case of accidentally opening journals.

"Faye needs to get over this lobster thing. It's not like she made them kill anyone." He was trying to keep the edge out of his voice, the one that said he would have known from experience if she had.

Crowley tilted his head towards the stereo, his face scrunching up a little at the choice of music, but at least it served it's purpose. He picked up his drink, taking a sip from it.

"You know how she is, once she gets upset about something, it takes her weeks to come down off her high horse again."

He'd noticed the tone, and sat back a little, contemplating his drink. There it was again, the desire to talk, to get things off his chest. The trick was now to get to that point without making either of them feel awkward and foolish talking about Feelings.

"But I'm sure she'll deal with it eventually. We all have to, right? In whatever way we can."

Barney snorted, sipping at his drink. "She and Ted, man. Maybe that's why they haven't been doing committee meetings. They're starting a Hold On To Stupid Crap Forever club."

They were getting to the meat of it a little faster than he would have liked - a sign that maybe he'd held onto all of this for too long. Barney considered switching to shots, but... well, they were committed. He remembered reading some required business self-help book at GNB once about this sort of thing occurring in meetings, some tripe about how unbridled candor could change companies. Staring down the gauntlet of Feeling Things ahead of him, Barney really hoped that multimillionaire guru dude had known what he was talking about.

"Can't be healthy," the demon chuckled. "They'll end up with digestion problems."

No doubt, Crowley would have had a hand in such things, he usually did, when a little bit of evil could be added to humanity. Even when it just involved separating people from their hard-earned money.

"How's that memory thing been going anyway? With Ted?"

Barney snorted a little. "Ted. I know about as much more about Ted as I know about quantum phys -- wait, no, there was that one time Clone rambled on at me for like, an hour at Caritas. Scratch that. I know more about quantum physics than I know about Ted. And the guy spent nearly a week holed up in my room because - get this - he had issues about almost dying on that field trip thing, and Paris made him homesick."

Taking a substantial swig of booze, Barney really, really hoped that Crowley didn't have to have him spell that one out for him. Where did Ted think he got off spewing that kind of stuff? Especially to HIM ...?!

Luckily, that was all the spelling out Barney needed to do. Crowley took a swig of his own drink, before snorting.

"Wow, talk about giving you all of his emotional baggage," he retorted. "How rude."

He tapped his glass in thought.

"Shame there isn't a way to change your loss. It would make your life a tad easier."

"It's happened to people, before, right?" He rattled his glass, watching the ice cubes. "Maybe if I put on a helmet and you kicked me down the stairs or something. That's how it works. Someone falls down the stairs and they wake up with more memories, I've seen it a billion times."

Crowley stared at him for a full minute.

"Barney, I'm pretty sure that would break your neck," he said. "Last time I checked, you humans broke your necks pretty easily. I'd rather you not take a two week trip."

"Another one, you mean." He kicked at the carpet a little. From what he remembered of being Paradisa-dead, it wasn't something he ever wanted to repeat, and if that really was something that happened instead of getting straight magic-castle-cold-cocked, he'd rather avoid it. "Right, bad plan. ... Any other ideas?"

Edited (that tag was tiny and lame. have a better one.) 2012-04-19 02:45 (UTC)

"Precisely," Crowley sighed and shrugged. "There's not much you can do. Remind him often that even if he remembers you, you don't remember him. Maybe he can teach you a thing or two."

"Yeah, but that's one person." Another swig of booze, as he gazed around the apartment, trying to pin his thoughts down to a place where he could actually try to deal with them. It didn't bother him quite as much as it used to, having these conversations. Probably because they were almost always had with Crowley, who was a True Bro in the sense that once they were over, they were never mentioned again, ever.... so he didn't have to think about the causes of them, either. Clean slate, moving on, awesomeness maintained.

"I need a whole committee. I don't think anyone's left, 'cept us."

Crowley chuckled a little, allowing the change of subject and not bringing it up, as it should always be.

"Maybe we need to do interviews or something."

"Yeah, the flyers never really work, for some reason. I guess this just isn't a flyer demographic. ... Any suggestions?"

He was starting to feel vaguely tipsy - which was good. Maybe he'd double back to All The Feelings eventually, this way...

"I could always send a bunch of spam emails," the demon offered. "Hacking into Castlenet is a doddle."

"It's a start," Barney decided. "What about all the people who don't know what computers are, though? Some of them are pretty awesome, too. We'd be missing a whole target market."

"Well," Crowley considered. "We could ask Faye to parade about with a sign."

"Heh. Would people really, honestly, be looking at the sign?" He shot his Best Friend a look.

"You're dating that, Crowley. Don't tell me you wouldn't be ogling the curves of the road instead of the billboard."

"That's why we put the words where the curves are," Crowley was sure there was logic here.

...It was exactly the sort of thought process that got him in consistent trouble.

That suggestion earned Crowley a lecherous chuckle and a smirk that said nothing but complete approval. "Body paint, huh?"

Somehow, he still hadn't quite developed the survival instincts that, in this exact situation, would tell him he was going to end up shot in the head if he actually tried to put that idea into motion.

Crowley would never get those survival instincts. Life was not that kind to him. He grinned, nodding and tapping the table.

"Exactly. It's bound to work."

"Awesome. So ... we're gonna need paint. Like, that facepainty kind they use at carnivals, right?"

How one or both of them would not end up on a two-week vacation was a puzzle possibly best left to fate. Especially since Barney was already dragging out the Trusty Yellow Legal Pad.

"Yes. And booze, to ply her with," the demon paused to consider. "And maybe some diamonds."

Squinting thoughtfully, Barney tapped the end of his pen against the pad. "Yeah, but would she be able to tell if they were wished-up diamonds? That seems like the kind of weird crazy impossible Faye thing she'd do."

Oh. Right. Crowley frowns.

"Probably. That said, if we convince her she can sell them for prettier things, it might work."

And that, Barney reflected, was why Faye was his girlfriend. He actually sort of kind of understood how her crazy girl brain worked. He had to give it to the guy, really. Girls were complicated and scary and just plain weird, most of the time. "Yeah, maybe. ... How do you do that, bee-tee-dub?"

It helped having six thousand years of experience and knowing the First Woman, really. That was a big help.

"There's an art to it," the demon replied, somewhat smugly. "It's a little like distraction. You have to make her see the big personal gain and not what she has to go through to get it."

Barney had a few hundred one-night stands' worth of experience, but in this case it really was shaping up to be a question of quality versus quantity. For now, he would defer to the master. "Huh. And here I thought that trick only worked on horses and little fat kids."

"And Faye Valentine," Crowley nodded sagely. "She likes simple pleasures. Expensive simple pleasures, but simple pleasures all the same."

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and I'll try not to sing out of key

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